In Victorian England, people feared the exotic outsider, seeing it as a disease that could weaken the Empire. Bram Stoker's Dracula was born of this fear. England's identity was bound up in its position as the most powerful nation and fear of losing this position reinforced its determination to maintain it.
Jonathan Lyon, a medieval historian, uses 'Dracula' as a means to discuss the differences between Eastern and Western Europe. “It really is this sort of civilizational narrative about a wicked person from the past who brings centuries of Eastern European backwardness when he comes to London.”
Historically, vampires are undead creatures from European folklore who drink blood from the living. Legends and fear of vampires are considered to have formed as early explanations for the mysteries and fears surrounding death, decay, and individual body decompositions that may have appeared abnormal.
The fear of Dracula as a type of foreign invasion also explains why the men are so determined later in the novel to drive Dracula back to Transylvania, and stage their final battle with him there.
Count Dracula can be considered a parasite to humans. In other words, Count Dracula feeds on the blood of humans and preys on humankind. There is not a large number of living animals that only feed on humans, or hunt humans. Knowing one is being hunted can induce fear into a person.
It contained many elements that were considered too shocking or in bad taste for the Victorian population. This included frank descriptions of blood, violence, and sexuality. Many readers were especially disturbed by the portrayal of Dracula's three brides and Lucy Westenra after she is transformed into a vampire.
Moffat and Gatiss settle on this answer: Dracula is frightened of death and the Cross confronts him with a man, Jesus, who was willing to die. They reject superstition and tradition in favour of something far neater, more relatable and very in fashion. Draccy has a psychological hang-up.
Garlic, specifically the chemical compound allicin inside garlic, is a powerful antibiotic. Some European beliefs around vampires stated they were created by a disease of the blood, so a powerful antibiotic would “kill” a vampire.
From Gorgons like Medusa to the giant snake Jörmungandr, monsters can represent our own anxieties and insecurities, such as our fear of change or hidden power. Medusa has become particularly iconic, being a metaphor for the frightful weight of female trauma and the subsequent unleashing of her own power.
Yes, there is deeper symbolism in the characters and events of Bram Stoker's Dracula. For example, the character of Count Dracula represents the fears and anxieties of Victorian society, such as the fear of foreign influences, the fear of loss of morality, and the fear of the spread of disease.
Van Helsing describes him as '… strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal…he is brute, and more than brute, he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not,…' Dracula's brutal strength, callous lack of care for others, and heartlessness are what make him so evil.
Throughout, Dracula plays the role of temptation, perversion, and debauchery, furthering the message that evil corrupts, making those who participate in it “unclean” and separated from God. Only through complete abandonment of such evil, by embracing truth and reinstating religion, is godliness restored.
Count Dracula represents pure evil, while characters like Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker embody goodness and virtue. The novel pits these forces against each other in a struggle for dominance. Sexuality and Repression: The Victorian era was known for its sexual repression and strict societal norms.
Late-Victorians had fears of degeneration and invasion, directly connected to the results of British Colonization. One of the things that made Dracula so terrifying to Western Cultures was the fear of what they don't know, which in this case is Eastern Culture.
Dracula does not change in any meaningful way over the course of the plot, and he is never depicted reflecting on any actions. His appetite for blood is a kind of compulsion and while he is shown to be evil and monstrous, he is not presented as morally accountable in the same way a human might be.
He is also vulnerable to silver and garlic as well as magical items, such as the Bloodgem. Dracula does not cast reflections, and he usually cannot enter a house without being invited. His powers have sometimes been greatly amplified and his weaknesses circumvented by magical sources, such as spells of the Darkholders.
In 1476, while marching to yet another battle with the Ottomans, Vlad and a small vanguard of soldiers were ambushed, and Vlad was killed and beheaded — by most reports, his head was delivered to Mehmed II in Constantinople as a trophy to be displayed above the city's gates.
Dracula was introduced as a myth, a legend, and the perfect villain so to say, only to the Western world. During his on and off reign of Wallachia, he was considered sometimes a hero, sometimes a cruel ruler, even by his contemporaries.
While Stoker's novel is primarily a Gothic fiction novel, Coppola's film is, first and foremost, a romance – and it's a romance between the titular character Dracula and Jonathan Harker's wife, Mina.
Vlad the Impaler, the Real-Life Count Dracula. The man who would become known as Dracula was born the second son of Vlad II, ruler of Wallachia, part of modern-day Romania. He was born in 1431, possibly in Transylvania, though he never owned property there and certainly didn't live in the castle which now stands there.
