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