Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Vampires, Dracula,
and Morality Victorian
Anxieties!
- Themes and background!
- In a time after the
enlightenment, a
world without God
in essence creted
moral anxieties
- People were concerned
with what was right and
moral
- Literature of the time linked these anxeties
to gothic literature with Frankensteins
Monster (1818, Mary Shelly), Dorian Gray
(1890, Oscar Wilde) and Dracula (1897, Bram
Stoker)
- They were concerned with sex and
women in particular being
promiscuous as it was seen as moral
for them to be asexual
- These novels showed morally
corrupt individuals as being or
creating supernatural
monstrosoities, but their
promiscuity made them
desirable for Victorians too
- Links With Dracula!
- Bram Stoker
(1897) changed
this s he
introduced sex
with vampires
- Being set in
Transylvania, he placed
the vampire with the
exotic and foreign being
of Eastern European
dissent
- Dracula being
foreign made
him easy to
scapegoat
- The bite of Dracula was used
as a metaphore for sex, the
bite (sex) turning women into
these horrific baby killing
monsters and seductive
sirens
- The opposite of what a woman was thought
she should be which was to be caring and
nurturing > sex with Dracula makes women
morally corrupt
- Dracula's promiscuity and
high status as a count was
attractive to Victorians
creating moral conflict
- This links with the Witches
Sabbath and the old view of the
witches
- Dracula represents that
hatred felt for Eastern
Europeans at the time who
were the scapegoat/folk devil
- Contemporary Comparison!
- Dracula was of high
status as a count
symbolising the
Victorian material
ideal
- Much like how the
vampires in Twilight
(2005) book
represents
American Value of
the family
- The modern view of the
vampire is idealic, the
vampires are now
alluring and capable of
human affection and are
classically attractive
- In the 1980's, vampires
were used as a
metaphor for AIDS
- Sympathetic
Vampire >
modern
interpretations
concerned with
romance
- Vampires in twilight
hold middle class
family values
- Painful
awareness of
being the
outsider
- Was introduced in 1979 with
Interview with a Vampire novel
- The Old View Of
The Vampire
- Fed on blood as they
were diseased with
vampirism and needed
the strength of the living
- The old vampire
would have been a
grotesque and
frightening creature
- Prejudice
- Europe
- The count is Eurpean
and this links with the
hatred that Germany
ruled Europe according
to the Victorians
- Dracula threatened
the Empire by brining
back servitude and
represented the anti
thesis of
Enlightenment
- The idea of the outsider
- Women
- Hatred for women
> Dracula's castle is
a metaphor for
female genitalia
and housed his
many wives
- Links in with
Victorian fears of
women having sex
and female
sexuality
- Homophobia
- Fear of homosexuality
as vampires are
depicted as bisexual
and therefore
deceptive
- Addiction
- The Vampire's
constant need for
blood represents the
evils of addiction