Category: Dracula

Among many cultural, racial, geographic and literary aspects of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, religion is probably the most important one to be analysed. As the novel itself explains, Christianity is the predominant religion that is chosen to confront with the darkness in order to purify the earth. The followers of this religious movement are found in a situation where they need to save their land, empire and the established socio-cultural system from invasion of the un-dead. The danger comes from the outside and has no logical explanation. This novel is all about the battle between the divine forces against the old and archaic superstitions.

In this gothic novel, Count Dracula is presented as the evil, an anti-Christ. His name literally means “son of the Dragon” which inevitably gives him diabolic features. In all the myths all over the world Dragon always carries bad connotations. He is the one causing troubles to the civilian population and constantly keeping them in fear. His primary diet consists of young and beautiful women that he kidnaps and the only way to stop this terror from happening is the appearance of a knight, a hero. This hero is a saviour, the one who brings the light and ends up with the troublemaker. He is destined to destroy the evil and his mission is to bring peace. There is, of course, no better representative of a saviour than the Son of God, Jesus Christ. His ideological, moral and ethical principles are the basis of the Catholic Church, a religion whose influence is undoubtedly predominant throughout the history since the birth of the Christ.

Christianity was chosen by Stoker as analogy of the knight destined to defeat the beast. Now, all the Christian-men are the embodiment of this ideology which is to fight in order too save the established system so as to ensure the bright future of the succeeding generations. This very idea is strongly affirmed by Abraham Van Helsing in his speech:

“Thus are we ministers of God’s own wish. That the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He has allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise. And like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause.” (Stoker, 1897: 531, chapter XXIV).

The choice of the weapons and tools used in order to fight with the un-dead has fallen on the holy water, fragments from Bible, prays, crucifixes and communion wafers. All these are symbols representing the physical and spiritual aspects of the Christ. These measures were ought to be taken since Dracula is not a human but something mysterious and unexplainable. His powers surpass human’s physical abilities. He even has the ability to change the weather, something only Christ could do. Thus the only way to fight with the unknown is to use something that has no logical explanation either. This one is the religious belief of the holy and divine force of the Christ as the only weapon capable of defeating the evil. This also means that only those who believe have the right to be saved. The ones who do not will inevitably fall into Dracula’s temptations.

This way readers can draw a clear parallel between Dracula and Christ. Many factors indicate their symbolic relationship. In his article Keeping the Faith: Catholicism in Dracula and its Adaptations D. Bruno Starrs states: “The novel’s religious analogy is obvious: in the most basic of his many perversions of Catholic lore, Count Dracula is the figurative anti-Christ who promises eternal life through the ingestion not of sacramental wine representing the blood of Christ, but of actual human blood.” (2004:1). It is well known that during the Holy Communion Catholics drink the holy wine representing the blood of Christ in order to purify their soul and gain eternal life in heaven. Dracula, on the other hand, drinks human blood to continue living on earth.

He also contradicts to the common Christian belief of the sacred meaning of marriage. Dracula practices multiple marriage since has three vampire wives and even tries to make more through Mina and Lucy. However, in Christian Church marriage is considered to be for life and only once.

Another aspect of Dracula’s personality that distorts Christianity is his bisexual behaviour. As Jamili Wetzels states: “In combination with the use of his penetrating teeth, Dracula’s response to both Jonathan and Mina Harker’s blood is almost a sexual one, thus giving Dracula’s behaviour a bisexual connotation.” (2012:11). Furthermore, David Rogers adds: “his luscious mouth with his sharp protruding (and penetrating) teeth combining the symbolic shape of the feminine with a signifier of masculine phallic power to provide (…) only the most conspicuous of many signs of his figurative bisexuality” (2000: XI).

In this horror novel, Dracula is presented as a threat to the Holy Land of England. His journey towards new continents were all in order to spread his beliefs which can be compared with the religious Crusades. These were intended to spread Christianity all over the world. This way the un-dead invades the peaceful city of London and brings his terror to all its citizens. He converts others into himself by biting them, thus making more followers of his diabolic belief. He contaminates their blood so they are left without humanity and finally become monsters. The only way to purify their souls and to bring them salvation is by destroying the diabolic inside them. So as to let the soul to go to heaven and reunite with the God the un-dead has to be killed in an almost religious way.

As the novel itself tells there are multiple ways in which Count Dracula corrupts and distorts Christianity. He is the embodiment of the anti-Christ that comes in order to contaminate the earth with the evil. He makes people become blood-sucking monster by falling into his temptations. He is a powerful antagonist with his own principles and ideology that contradict to many Christian customs. All these aspects of his identity perfectly reflect the difficult socio-cultural situation of England of that time.

References

1. Starrs, D. Bruno Keeping the faith: Catholicism in ‘Dracula’ and its adaptations (2004). Journal of Dracula Studies.
2. Bram Stoker, Dracula, Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York.
3. Jamili Wetzels, 3240622, Bachelor Thesis, English Language and Culture, Utrecht University, The Influence of Science and the Supernatural on the Gothic Novel,
4. Rogers, David. “Introduction.” Dracula. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, (2000).

In this study of Bram Stoker’s literary piece Dracula (1897), I will question the use of the diverse types of narratives chosen by the author and what the different points of view provide to the readership of the novel. Moreover, I will argue to what extent this epistolary narrative heightens the dramatic and thriller-like effectiveness of the novel with a close reading of the text and the support of secondary sources.

To start off, there are two different narrative patterns that must be made distinct before getting ourselves into the main question of this essay. As Seed states in his journal article “The Narrative Method of Dracula”, this novel can be fragmented into 4 different sections that correspond with “the narrative preamble, the working out of Dracula’s intentions, their discovery, and the final pursuit” (1985: 63, 64). However, there is a different way of organizing the narrative of the text and it regards the apparition of Count Dracula whether it is directly -through Jonathan Harker’s journals- or indirectly with the several instances of Dracula’s deeds in England whose ownership the reader can suspect from what they have learnt previously thanks to Harker’s scope.

Stoker’s principle of narration is that only Dracula’s opponents are granted narrative voices and they can only record what in each case they have plausibly experienced (68). This is due to what Dracula represents in the novel; as Christine Ferguson states: Dracula is described […] as anarchic disruption to some historically specific conventions of bourgeois culture, to an order obsessed with the maintenance of order and purity. Anxiety – about the dangers of social and sexual changes, about the replacement of socials stability with chaos and mayhem -remains the dominant idiom of Dracula (2004: 230).

Hence, the male narrators all carry out a job characteristic of the new bourgeoise (professor, doctor, lawyer, etc.) and, in the plot, they are the “heroes” that defeat Count Dracula and symbolically save the English society.

Having said that, the first introduction to anything related to Vampirism comes from Harker’s diary, it details his travelling experience to the utmost detail to keep track and find rational solutions to everything that seems odd and supernatural: “I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too diffuse; but now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy” (Stoker 2013: 28). From him, the reader is able to physically recognize Count Dracula and his modus operandis. This first description serves as a long-distance “memory” (1985: 65) from what the reader is to find in the bits and pieces of information that we encounter in the second part of the narrative.

The second type of narrative is that of letters, phonograph records and telegrams among the different characters. From being used to Jonathan Harker’s lineal diary, in the second part the reader jumps from one perspective to another. The main purpose of this Section Two and Three of the book is the assimilation of everything that is irrational, both for the reader and the characters. “[This] is confirmed by the plausibility of the text, by our predisposition toward evidence, proof, and verification. All the non-Transylvanian characters keep records […] of the action primarily serve to supply information” (1985: 74). Although we cannot see the Dracula act directly, we know from him by several instances that are rationally put together by the voice of the professor, doctor, philosopher Van Helsing. The downfall of Dracula begins when the characters work together and share their knowledge and experience (Cribb 1999: 137). As Van Helsing tells Arthur:

I know it was hard for you to quite trust me then, for to trust such violence needs to understand; and I take it that you understand. And there may be more times when I shall want you to trust when you cannot -and may not- and must not yet understand. But the time will come when you shall understand as though the sunlight himself shone through (2013: 197).

In the same way that Van Helsing asks Arthur to believe him, Stoker is persuading the reader to do the same. From the outside, the reader has already assembled all this knowledge and has been able to build a bond of intimacy with the characters. One of the aspects that make this narrative so effective is the fact that the reader is peeping into the characters’ private affairs by reading their journals, letters, telegrams or any other mean of communication. While reading Harker’s diary the role of the reader is almost voyeuristic (1999: 134) as it was only meant for his fiancé to read. The second narrative is composed by more perspectives which gives way to the reader to fill in the temporal gaps (136) Epistolary novels are narrative tools that work with the first-person basis, as the protagonist is the only narrator, the reader may have the feeling that they are not being told the whole truth, just the perspective from the main point of view may fall short. This creates a sense of unreliability that is hard for the reader to overcome.

However, Stoker saves this gap by adding other perspectives to the plot, he also uses newspaper retails and witnesses that give plausibility to the novel, so not only the reader is akin to Jonathan’s experiences, but to other sources as well. Stoker’s narrative is a mirror to the English rationality and so it is reflected in the discourse in different ways: the generic disbelief that something natural might be happening -as Mina asserts that if she had not read Jonathan’s diary, she would not have believed her own experience either-, the medical argot used among Dr. Seward and Van Helsing correspondence and blatantly ignoring the customs -and warnings- of the Transylvanian people on Harker’s account serve as examples of how the Western civilization was constructed in the Victorian literature and also its contemporary society as well. The fact that the reader can recognize themselves in the European mentality described makes the narrative more likely. Therefore, the reader participates actively into it and that helps to heighten the dramatic effectiveness of the novel.

In conclusion, stylistically, the fact that it is arranged by the different memoirs of the characters, makes the reader more alert and it helps building an environment of suspense. As well as this, Bram Stoker’s narrative is engaging because it portrays the Western European pride, more specifically, the British one – that of imperialism, punctuality, technologic developments, everything that the Victorian society was proud of. As it is put at jeopardy -Dracula presents the “reverse colonization” of Eastern Europe-, the readers fear for themselves as this novel is narrated in a way plausible enough to believe. At last, Stoker’s Dracula is not the first epistolary novel nor the first novel about vampires, but it was innovative enough to become one of the most renowned literary compositions of nowadays.

Works cited

1. Cribb, Susan M., ‘“If I Had to Write with a Pen”: Readership and Bram Stoker’s Diary Narrative’, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 10/2 (1999): 133–41.
2. Ferguson, Christine. “Nonstandard Language and the Cultural Stakes of Stoker’s ‘Dracula.’” ELH, vol. 71, no. 1, 2004, pp. 229–249. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30029928.
3. Seed, David. “The Narrative Method of Dracula.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 40, no. 1, 1985, pp. 61–75. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3044836.
4. Stoker, Bram. Dracula (Penguin Classics). Penguin, 2013.

Form, Structure, and Plot

The novel Dracula, written by bram stoker; it was released in the 19th century, is a deftly organized structure that is written in epistolary form{an epistle is an ancient term for letters}, which is a novel based on letters, that has the narration take place in the forms of letters. The epistolary novel is an absorbing literary technique, because it authorize a writer to include numerous narrators in his story. This means the story can be told and interpreted from multiple viewpoints. Dracula is mainly narrated by numerous narrators who also serve as the novel’s main protagonists; Stoker added an extra element to the story with infrequent newspaper clippings to make a connection with the events not directly witnessed by the story’s characters. By formatting his novel in the episodic format, Stoker augmented the reading experience, helping it to be a surprise and thrill classical story become clearer and seem more believable to the reader (Epistolary – Examples and Definition of Epistolary). The book itself is four hundred in eight pages long and contains twenty-seven chapters. The novel begins with Jonathan Harker, {a young English lawyer} as he travels to Transylvania. Harker plans to meet with on of his client Count Dracula, in order to complete a property transaction. When Harker arrives in Transylvania, the locals react with horror after he reveal his destination of Castle Dracula. Though this uncertain him vaguely, he continues. The baleful howling of wolves through the air as he arrives to his destination. When Harker meets Dracula, he realize that the man is pale, haggard, and strange. He becomes further concerned when dracula lunges at his throat right after he cuts himself while shaving. Soon after, Harker is seduced by three female vampires, whom he even barely escapes from. He then figure out Dracula’s secret which is being a vampire and survives by drinking live human blood. Harker assumes that he is going to be dracula’s next victim. So he attacks the count, but it was unsuccessful. Dracula leaves Harker trapped in castle and then, along with 50 boxes of dirt, where he departs for England.(Dracula.” Encyclopædia Britannica,.)

Theme

In the novel, Dracula there is an central idea of fragment, Is him being trap with a feeling of helplessness and fear of overcoming himself after he realizes that he has become even more trap . Stoker expresses this by his expression throughout the excerpt of his novel. Stoker uses diction to set the tone of his book. One example where the stoker uses tone to show the fear of being trap is where he begins to question things like the previous incidents that had occurred, “What does it mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand in silence. How was it that all the people at Bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for me?..(Stoker 37)

One of the main themes of Dracula is the role of good and evil. There’re are characters that are either on two different sides – some good, others evil. The only obvious character that is ‘evil’ is Count Dracula, however if you play attention to what some of the other characters have to say, it is sometimes make you wonder whether they are either good or evil. It is not always easy to figure out whether a character has an element of goodness in them, one of the ways to tell is by what they are dressed. We all know that Dracula is on the evil side, however the way he dresses also tells you about his personality. He is described early on, when Jonathan Harker first meets him as ‘A tall old man…clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere’.(stoker )This is the colour which we associate with evil, even . The way that garlic and a crucifix can suddenly create an immense barrier between the two, means it must have a great symbolic meaning. And the way that good people wear white and are described as ‘white figures’ and evil people wear black and are described as a ‘tall black figure’ indicates that these colours show a true distinction between the two. Then there is a theme called appearances versus reality and it is of Dracula during the day (aristocrat) is his appearance, but in reality he is a vampire. His aristocracy is only a persona to lure people.

Lucy seemed to be anaemic since she was pale and she faints, however, in reality, she was transforming into a vampire. Also Feminist Mina and Lucy represents the new form of femininity. They mention the ‘New Woman’ which is a woman who does not care about the social norms in Victorian society and there is Sexual desire

Lucy and the Three Vampire Sisters represents the underlying sexual desires. During the Victorian Era, men and women could not express their sexual desire to one another, as it would be seen as a sin of lust. An example “The fair girl went on her knees and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck, she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white, sharp, teeth” (Stoker 50). This particular passage describes the mixed feelings men had towards forward women; temptation made the “unnatural” occurrence of female sexual advances desirable. (Reflection and Rebuke of Victorian Society) Lucy and the Three Sisters represent the sin of lust and how their sexual behaviours can affect others. For example, the Sisters try to seduce Harker, thus causing him to feel his sexual desires emerging, however, due to his religious beliefs, he continues to suppress his urges until after marriage. finally the last theme is Religion, Throughout the novel religion is the most prominent theme. Dracula can be seen as the alter-ego of God. He uses many concept of Christianity, like the Holy Communion, and perverse it to fit his needs. He also has many followers, like Renfield, the Sisters, and Lucy and has inhuman characteristic, like God.

Point of view

The structure of this novel helps to identify the situation of one of more, it help you get to know each position of a person, explore each position, and examine methodically of the detail of the structure, and what they have learned. This structure helps allow one to see things from someone else’s perspective of their own view. By replaying a scene in which it occurred from the viewpoints of all the characters, one may get a clearer picture of what actually happened, how the other person sees the situation, of there motivation. For instance Mina states in her diary: “I have been working very hard lately, because I want to keep up with Jonathan’s studies, and I have been practicing shorthand very assiduously. When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough I can take down what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I am practicing very hard… I may show it to Jonathan some day if there is in it anything worth sharing, but it is really an exercise book” (Stoker 67).

Character

An analysis of the main characters gives a more deep understanding of Dracula.The major characters in the story are Count Dracula, Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing,Mina (Murray) Harker, Lucy, Dr. John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey P.Morris. Dracula is the greatest vampire, who in life had been a man of legend(“Dracula”). This is because Dracula is actually based on a real fifteenth-century family (SparkNotes Editors). He is supposed to be a descendant of the Price of Wallachia Vlad Dracula (SparkNotes Editors). Vlad was exceptionally smart and infamously violent. He Enjoyed a gory career just like Count Dracula (SparkNotes Editors). Vlad has a reputation for slaughtering beggars, forcing women to consume their babies, and piercing his enemies on long spikes (SparkNotes Editors). Dracula is similar to sin: at first sin looks pleasing, and fun; but only after committing it, does it show how destructive it actually isCount living in a castle in the Carpathian mountains, near present-day Romania (or Transylvania), Dracula is a member of an ancient family of warriors, some of whom fought against the Huns, the Turks, and other invaders in Central Europe in the Middle Ages. Dracula is also a vampire, or an Undead being that sleeps at night, turns into a bat at will, and must feed on the blood of the living to survive. At the beginning of the novel, Dracula is doing business with Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor’s assistant, in order to buy property in London; as the novel progresses, Dracula comes to London, bringing with him 50 wooden boxes filled with sacred earth, in which he sleeps to restore and preserve his powers. Eventually, Dracula is tracked down by Harker, Van Helsing, Seward, and others, as he feeds on the blood of the women Lucy and Mina; the group then destroys Dracula’s boxes and, eventually, Dracula himself, by stabbing him in the heart and a stake, and cutting off his head, freeing his soul.

Jonathan Harker is a young solicitor, who is naïve and at first does not take any heed in the warning he got while on his way to Count Dracula’s castle. Once he finds himself a prisoner, he is very inquisitive to discover the truth about Count Dracula, and figuring out a way to escape. It is only after Dracula attacks Mina, that Jonathan changes from a self-doubting, thinking man into a vicious warrior, always sharpening his knife(SparkNotes Editors). It is in this way that Jonathan is the dynamic character, for he becomes almost completely opposite of what he was in the beginning of the story.

Dr. Van Helsing is a philosopher and a metaphysician, who can be strong-willed,and is the only character that possesses an open mind enough to contemplate and address Dracula’s evil intentions. Hellsing seems to have knowledge of superstitions and folk remedies. He lives in two distinct worlds, the old and the new (SparkNotes Editors). The First is marked by fearful respect for tradition, and the second by ever-progressing innovation (SparkNotes Editors). He envisions his band as “ministers of God’s own wish,” and reassures his comrades that “we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more” (SparkNotes Editors) (Stoker 283). An eminent professor from Amsterdam, and a learned ‘man of science,’ Van Helsing was Seward’s former teacher; Seward calls him to England to help with the case of Lucy. Van Helsing later leads the group, including Seward, on the hunt to ‘truly kill’ Lucy and track down and truly kill Dracula. Van Helsing speaks a kind of non-idiomatic, ‘choppy’ English

Mina is the ultimate Victorian woman, for she wants nothing more than to be a good wife to her husband and to be a good woman in the eyes of God (SparkNotes Editors) Harker’s fiancée, and then wife, Mina tends to Lucy, her friend and Arthur’s fiancée, during Lucy’s illness; it then turns out that Lucy was preyed upon by Dracula. Mina, in turn, has her blood sucked by Dracula, and through a ‘blood link’ formed between her and Dracula, Mina is able to channel his thoughts when hypnotized by Van Helsing.

(“Dracula”). In Dr. Helsing words, “She has a man’s brain – a brain that a man should have where he much gifted – and a woman’s heart. The good Old fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when he made that so good combination” (Stoker 208). She Proves time and time again that she is equal to the men, who are on this crusade to kill Dracula.

Lucy is Mina’s best friend and is an attractive, vibrant young woman. Because She is such an attractive young woman, she has three suitors, Dr. John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey P. Morris, from whom she must choose. Lucy chooses Arthur,but does not marry him, due to the fact that she becomes a vampire. After Lucy has turned into a vampire, it compromises her much-praised chastity, and virtue. She is the main reason that Helsing and the rest first start to believe in vampires, and declare war on vampires.

Arthur’s fiancée, Lucy is stricken by sleepwalking and then an unknown illness. As it turns out she is being stalked and her blood drunk by Dracula. Lucy is best friends with Mina, who wonders what is happening as Lucy begins to waste away and lose a great deal of blood. Lucy is treated by Seward and Van Helsing, though she later turns into a vampire, and must be killed ‘again’ in her tomb by Arthur, Van Helsing, and the rest of the group

Dr. John Seward runs the insane asylum near to Dracula’s castle. In this asylum,he conducts ambitious interviews with one of his patients, Renfield, in order to understand better the nature of life-consuming psychosis. Although he is not as smart,brave, or in love as some of the other characters, he is a good narrator for the story(“Dracula”). This is because he smart, and brave enough and informed and inquisitive enough for the plot of the story to unfold naturally through his eyes (“Dracula”).

Arthur Holmwood becomes Lord Godalming after his father dies. He inherits the title, and he also inherits large estates from Lucy’s mother. Arthur is a sensitive, sensible and strong man, and Helsing enjoys him as a colleague. Arthur is strong, because he does whatever circumstances demand. For example, he agrees to kill Lucy’s demonic form. He Is also generous, for he pays for the whole vampire hunt and lets everyone use his title to gain access to information about Dracula. Quincey Morris is an American from Texas, who proves to be a brave and good hearted man. He is an early American stereotype; he calls ladies “little girl” and he calls Seward “Jack” (“Dracula”). He only seems to be in this hunt on Dracula because of his love for Lucy, otherwise he has nothing great at stake. In the end, he sacrifices his life in order to rid the world of Dracula’s influence.fiancé, Arthur is an English nobleman (Lord Godalming) of a somewhat nervous and emotional temperament. Van Helsing convinces Arthur that Arthur must stab Lucy in the heart to ‘free her’ from her vampirism, and to achieve closure—to realize that Lucy can only be ‘safe’ when she is no longer forced to exist as an Un-Dead.

Works Cited

1. “Epistolary – Examples and Definition of Epistolary.” Literary Devices, 9 Oct. 2017, literarydevices.net/epistolary/.
2. Lohnes, Kate. “Dracula.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 24 Jan. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/Dracula-novel.
3. Podonsky, and Amanda M. “Bram Stoker’s Dracula: A Reflection and Rebuke of Victorian Society.” Inquiries Journal, Inquiries Journal, 1 Feb. 2010, www.inquiriesjournal.com/amp/1678/bram-stokers-dracula-a-reflection-and-rebuke-of-victorian-society.
4. SparkNotes, SparkNotes, www.sparknotes.com/lit/dracula/summary/.

Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, is set in the Victorian Era and follows the story of the vampire Count Dracula and his battle with a determined group of adversaries. Stoker’s novel reflects the fears and anxieties of the late-Victorian society, where the change or disruption of traditional Victorian values and anything that did not stay true to society’s norms were greatly feared. In my exploration of literary analysis, I delved into the intriguing world of Dracula essay examples, which shed light on how Bram Stoker’s novel challenges the conservative values of Victorian society.  The conservative Victorian society and its values are challenged in Dracula through the idea of the “New Woman” and the traditional views of sexuality. Stoker introduces these ideas through the female characters, Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra.

Stoker’s use of Mina as a character and her features provide an insight into the fears and anxieties of the Victorian era, where her representation as the intelligent New Woman provides threats to the conservative and patriarchal society. Mina is portrayed by Stoker as the New Woman. A new woman was one that was categorised as someone who was rational, intelligent, and financially independent. Mina represents features of the New Woman through her autonomy and the fact that she has “a professional job, writes in shorthand, and is responsible for collating the recovered texts that materially form the novel.” (Boyd 2014, p.2). Her intelligence and wit are what helps the men win the battle with Dracula. Even the men of the novel acknowledge her cleverness, where Van Helsing describes Mina. ‘Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has a man’s brain – a brain that a man should have were he much gifted – and a woman’s heart.” (Stoker 250). The use of repetition of the words “man” and “brain” puts emphasis on these words to convey the meaning of the sentence. He highlights her intelligence and compares her to a man, and even infers that she is better than the average man, further emphasising her New Woman features. The juxtaposition of the “man’s brain” and the “woman’s heart” puts emphasis on the fact that Mina is both intelligent and caring, and it shows how Van Helsing considers her to be very good. This also highlights the threats that a woman like Mina poses as. The conservative Victorian society is not open to change, where they fear anything that is outside of their social norms. Mina’s portrayal as the new woman poses a threat to the patriarchal society and the conservative views on gender roles. Where males were meant to be the dominant ones, and females weaker and inferior, Mina breaks through these gender stereotypes. The disruption in their traditional views and values make the Victorian society uncomfortable and anxious, as they are not accepting of changes.

Lucy Westenra represents the New Woman and challenges the traditional views of sexuality, reflecting the fears and anxieties which the Victorian society has. By juxtaposing her with Mina, Stoker highlights the difference between the ideal Victorian woman and the New Woman. Mina is effectively an ideal Victorian woman. She is simultaneously both the traditional Victorian woman and the New Woman where she has features of both. Mina is presented as a good, wholesome, chaste, and pure woman, where she is rarely seen in a sexualised light. The features of the traditional Victorian woman would include being domestic and one dominated by care, where Mina often shows her maternalism. This can be seen in the novel when Mina recounts herself comforting Arthur and Quincy, who are mourning Lucy’s death: “We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked.” (Stoker 245). Stoker’s diction and the use of the inclusive pronouns “we” and “us” creates a generalisation of all women. She demonstrates her motherly figure and generalises about all women that they have motherly traits. It displays her support of the traditional views of gender roles. It shows how Mina is depicted as the ideal woman, as she fits with the criteria of a traditional woman. Mina’s portrayal as the ideal Victorian woman is also reflected in the plot of the novel. Mina had been attacked by Dracula and was therefore beginning to become a vampire. However, she is saved from vampirism due to her portrayal as the ideal traditional Victorian woman. On the other hand, Lucy is depicted as the New Woman, where they were categorised as “a sexually independent woman assertive in decision-making.” (Clippard 2017, p.3). Through her freedom and sexual independence, Lucy was portrayed as the New Woman. Dracula biting Lucy and her transition into becoming a vampire was symbolic of the rise in sexual appetite. Once she becomes a vampire, her desire for sexual independence is heavily brought out, as seen when the vampire Lucy calls out to Arthur: ‘come to me, Arthur… My arms are hungry for you.’ (Stoker 226). The use of overtly sexual connotations highlights her sexuality and her lust for him. Stoker’s choice to use the command “come to me” shows how Lucy is pursuing Arthur, instead of the traditional stereotypes of man pursuing the woman, further emphasising how Lucy is the New Woman. Additionally, the denotation of “hungry” suggests danger, where Lucy was literally going to “eat” Arthur, highlighting the fear that the Victorian society, especially men, had of these New Women with sexual appetites. The fear of Lucy’s representation of the New Woman is also reflected in the plot. In contrast to Mina, Lucy’s end was not desirable where she is unable to be saved from vampirism and is killed by the ones she loved. The killing of Lucy also symbolises the killing of sexual appeal and the return to purity, as sex was a threat to man. By juxtaposing Mina and Lucy, Stoker reflects the fears and anxieties of the sexually independent New Woman.

The Victorian era was conservative and did not like change, where they were opposed to the notion of the “New Woman”. Stoker employs the characters of Mina and Lucy to portray the two aspects of the New Woman, where Mina was intelligent, and Lucy was sexual. Dracula reflects the fears and anxieties that the new woman presents to the Victorian society through these characters.

Dracula (1897) written by Bram Stoker, is a Gothic novel composed in England in its late Victorian age. Its engaging use of invasion literature exposed the oppressiveness in this society and to a transitional period, specifically involving the evolution of the New Woman and fear of the ‘other’, its unfolding narrative reflected the fears and anxieties of the era. Dracula holds a mirror up to the late-Victorian society, towards the epoch of where social norms and beliefs were being challenged and subject to change and the conflict and contrast between the new and the old values created the inclinations for fears and anxieties. In Dracula, Stoker explores the creation of the New Woman as it led to a change in a male-dominated culture and the fear of the other opposing classic social principles. It was a hallmark text that was well received at its time albeit with societal criticism in its taboo-breaking and continues to influence in contemporary times.

Dracula challenged Victorian conservative values of femininity by foregrounding female sexuality in its characterisation of the females and the alluring setting of Transylvania as a direct contrast to the British setting. The rise of the New Woman distinguished an age where women who were once suppressed in a conservative society became the subject of sexuality, desire and promiscuous conduct. The novel Dracula recognises and reflects how this fear and anxiety was perceived by patriarchal and how this threatened the traditional Victorian society not only in terms of changes for women but how his caused sexual unease for men. The visual imagery and use of antithesis in ‘All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips” There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear,” allows Stoker to engage the audience to create contrast between Jonathan Harker’s longing for Dracula’s wives, against his fear of them. Upon seeing them Harker quickly demonstrates that his intrigue of these women comes from their unnatural and perverse characters against the traditional form of women, as shown by the first sentence. As a prolific example of the stereotyped Victorian society, Dracula’s Jonathan Harker sets the foundation in which his immediate expression and judgement of Dracula’s wives goes against the standards of what the Victorian society would expect of all women. As the first character in Dracula to witness Dracula’s wives, the novel reflects how all women of the late-Victorian society had the expectation to conform to specific notions of gender respectability of the doting wife and mother. The implication of consonance within Dr Seward’s entry “The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness” creates the unearthly feeling and transition from the purity and innocence of Lucy to her promiscuous nature. The New Woman was a defining moment in Victorian society, changing the cultural appropriations women had to conform to and it was often criticised by the conservative public. Dracula reflects the fears of the New Woman through how even though Dr Seward is recognised for his factual, scientific beliefs as a result of his many degrees, even he succumbs to the Victorian fears of the New Woman, seeing the harm in this newfound sexuality, instead of realism. As told through the perspective of Dr Van Helsing in “Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain, a brain that a man should have were he much gifted, and a woman’s heart,” Mina’s characterisation depicts that she has become the embodiment of the most distinguishable traits of both sexes; the brain of a man and the heart of a woman, and thus allowing her to be a rising symbol of the New Woman, by her desirable nature. Being seen as a desirable being, through her intellectual and emotional maturity, Dracula instils the anxiety that Mina poses towards the men of the late Victorian era, through her development as a New Woman, rather than adhering to her gender role.

The fear of the ‘other’ or anyone that was not English was also considered a threat to Victorian society and reflected as a major concern in the novel. It was a significant fragment towards the exposure of the late-Victorian society to reverse colonisation, immigration to Britain and their experience of diverse cultures, in which Dracula became the projection of the late-Victorian society’s worst anxieties and fears. At the height of Queen Victoria’s reign, Britain was a global empire based upon imperialistic power, which evidently created contact with other nations, instilling the fear of a more diverse, unconventional colonisation. The fear is reflected in the physical setting which introduces the social conflict of the narrative: “One of the greatest and suddenest storms on record has been experienced here, with results both strange and unique.” The foreshadowing of Dracula’s arrival through the storm created the characteristic fear of foreign invasion that made the novel relevant to the fin de siècle epoch, a term used to signify themes of cultural decline. Dracula became an imitation of the late-Victorian era, building the tension and unease through the storm, depicting chaos and change whilst creating the emergence of a strong oppositional force, Dracula. Similarly, the idea of foreign immigration and reverse colonisation was seen as a flood of change and it was their beliefs based upon a national, racial and moral sense that saw the foreign as a potential threat and fear against the British imperialistic power. “We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.” Through the use of metonymy, associated with the concept of liberalism, described in “Transylvania” and “ways” this suggests to the argument that the concept of diversity within culture and values was an obstructed subject to the Victorian people. Dracula alludes to this in the last line, referring to the Victorian society’s limited view on world culture, provoking their fears of immigration to Britain and anxieties against experiences alongside non-European nations. “The books were of the most varied kind, history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law, all relating to England and English life and customs and manners.” Through the use of cumulative listing, Stoker reveals how Harker discovered Dracula’s view and enthusiasm upon learning about England. The late-Victorian era had involved experiencing various humanities other than the English society, however, it also manifested into a fear involving reverse colonisation and instability once foreigners would arrive. Stoker presents the Victorian’s fears of the foreign through Harker to enable to speak from the perspective of a stereotypical English man, aligning the character’s views with the era’s beliefs that outsiders would desire to become a part of their founded English society.

Dracula became a reflection of the late-Victorian era, offering an insight into the society’s values, thoughts, fears and anxieties. It tackled the two prevalent issues that rocked the conservative community, including the New Woman who was perceived as a threat to the male-dominated society and the Fear of the Other, an opponent to the traditional, orthodox culture. Dracula offered a glimpse into the perspectives of the men and women of the late-Victorian society, citing their point of views as they witnessed the change from the old to the new.

My comprehension about Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bram Stoker, is that they are all around creators of renowned books, for example, Robert’s well known novel ‘Fortune Island’, Bram Stoker’s epic ‘Dracula’, in like way, Mary Shelley’s story ‘Frankenstein’. These creators all lived amidst the times of the late, late 1800’s. They were all amazing in their inheritance.

The likenesses that the greater part of the makers share for all objectives and purpose behind existing is that they are all in all Gothic story analysts. A large portion of their extraordinary books that they have made are Gothic and for the most part awfulness stories. Stevenson’s ‘Fortune Island’ wasn’t a frightfulness story yet his ‘Seized’ was named like a spine chiller story. Mary’s epic ‘Frankenstein’ is likely a victor among the most acclaimed books ever. Everybody that has heard on the off chance that it has made their own one of a kind sort of Frankenstein and has made plays about it. In this novel the creature was seen as a ‘mammoth’, ‘fallen heavenly attendant’, ‘inconvenient birth’ and an ‘it’. In Bram’s epic ‘Dracula’ he tells about a vampire called ‘Check Dracula’ that prerequisites to spread the ‘undead chastise’. Dracula is doled out to the class of ‘evil fiction’, ‘gothic novel’. In Steve nson’s novel it was really not a gothic novel, it is delegated a ‘difficulty novel’ or a ‘recorded novel’ yet in the story it tells that the tyke in the story was hijacked.

The refinements of the books and essayists are that Bram begun to start these gothic stories when he graduated College and he advanced toward getting to be partners with a Gothic composition distributer. Mary disseminated Vindication of the Rights of Women around 1798. Mary and her significant other Percy Shelley were collaborating on the novel Frankenstein together. One of Stevenson’s books ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, is proposed to be in the gothic composition. It is about a Lawyer named ‘Gabriel Utterson’ and his sidekick ‘Dr. Henry Jekyll’ and the mischievous ‘Mr. Hyde’. The story should alert even the title of the story. The qualifications of these are makers is that Bram and Shelley are generally gothic frightfulness makers, Stevenson was both in any case, he it appeared as if he was for the most part in the class of understanding and history. He was a gothic writer be that as it may, his most praised book was ‘Fortune Island’.

Considering, there are various qualifications in these makers, for instance, their time allotments and how they were in the midst of the Dark Ages and some were absolutely run of the mill events. They all had an ear for Gothic composition and all of them had a capacity for considering surely understood records of vampires, ghosts, zombies, and even just hair-raising trepidation. I think it is very fascinating that most of their ‘first stories’ are without a doubt the most outstanding stories on earth. Dracula has had such a critical number of changes and a huge amount of movies that were created utilizing it. These stores wouldn’t be possible if these expert never had an ear for section, so in case they were up ’til now alive, I’d like to offer thanks toward them since they are an inspiration to a huge amount of energetic columnists that need to wrap up a notable creator.

This essay aims to argue in favour of the category of ‘Irish Gothic’ with reference to Bram Stoker’s Dracula and a film directed by Neil Jordan entitled ‘The Butcher Boy’. The themes of paranoia, Protestantism, anti-Catholicism and the desire or fear of the Other are typical of the reoccurring motifs found in Gothic literature generally (Hoeveler 2). Their inclusion within Irish literature does not in itself create the category of ‘Irish Gothic’ and Irish Gothic artists, both writers and directors copy many of the themes which were prevalent in England and elsewhere from the eighteenth century onwards (Killeen 35). At the same time this paper argues however that Irish Gothic is a substantive category and stands alone because it is derived from a pervasively gothic setting. Ireland has been identified as a Gothic space as suggested by Melville in the novel ‘The White Knight, or the Monastery of Mourne’ published in 1802 (Melville 1). In his text Melville portrays Ireland as a peculiarly gothic landscape reinforcing the stereotypically English perception of Ireland as a ‘spatial and temporal anomaly’ (Morin 113). Irish writers have traditionally accepted that there exists a colonial ‘version of Ireland as a Gothic madhouse’ and it is this that has dominated analyses of Irish Gothic literature (Morin 113). The works of Regina Roche, Charles Robert Maturin and Sydney Owenson amongst others helped to establish Ireland as a primary Gothic setting in the nineteenth century and beyond (Morin 113).

Secondly, this paper will also argue that Irish Gothic is a unique category of the Gothic genre owing to the influence of Irish history on the works of Irish literacy greats. Sir John Temple in exploring the Irish Rebellion of 1641 in his famous text in 1646 drew upon many gothic images that would re-emerge in later centuries in his adoption of a decidedly anti-Catholic stance (Temple 34). Much of the Gothic literature was developed and articulated by Irish Protestants who lived in fear of extinction at the hands of the majority Catholics as testified through the works of Archbishop William King and others in the eighteenth century (Hadfield 15). This second point then maintains that the Irish Gothic tradition is dominated by historical themes of colonialism, Protestantism and the fear of marginalisation influenced strongly by Ireland’s own history as far back as the seventeenth century which remerges within Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Neil Jordan’s ‘The Butcher Boy’. This paper will explore these two issues as they are explored within both of these texts in order to demonstrate and argue in favour of the category ‘Irish Gothic’. This paper will explore these two ideas through traditionally Gothic themes including ‘the other’, paranoia and anti-Catholicism as they permeate these texts.

This paper will firstly document why Bram Stoker’s Dracula reaffirms this paper’s argument that Irish Gothic is a substantive category in its own right. Dracula represents a Freudian projection of sexual anxieties and a perverted archetype existing within the context of Ireland’s social, political and cultural upheaval at the close of the nineteenth century (Ingelbien 1089). The Other as featured within Dracula, demonstrates Protestant’s unease and anxieties about their existence amongst a majority Catholic population in Ireland and about the survival of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Purves (2) argues that the prevailing critical view is that Gothic is a vehicle for anti-Catholic anti-clerical sentiment with such work demonstrating a prejudice against Catholicism. Colm Toibin suggests too that Irish Gothic is distinct because its roots lie in Protestant paranoia, ‘a fearful colonial neurosis’ (Toibin 154). Dracula’s religious analogy is quite obvious and in one of a number of perversions of Catholic doctrine Count Dracula is the figurative ant-Christ who promises eternal life through the ingestion not of sacramental wine that is the blood of Christ but of actual human blood (Bruno 1). This paper will not argue that Dracula is anti-Catholic as its not expressible so (Bruno 1). One can confidently argue that Stoke’s characterisation of Dracula is anti-Semitic, modelled on a Semitic view of a blood sucking, baby-stealing Jews (Gelder 13; Yu 145). Rather Dracula articulates the fears of Protestants and of wider Victorian society in response to a number of issues, the weakening hold of creationism as a result of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, of increased industrialisation and its weakening of the traditional social fabric as well as a fear for the survival of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland (Bruno 1). “Indeed it is essential to see that the anxieties that animate these novels are inextricably bound up with the most deeply rooted dilemmas facing late Victorian culture (Glover 15). Indeed Stoker would have only been ‘too aware of the decline of the Anglo-Irish gentry’ (Bruno 1).

A strong theme of Irish gothic is a mingled repulsion and envy where Catholic magic is concerned such as when Van Helsing, a Dutch Catholic, who arrives with the Host, with a papal dispensation to combat the undead at Whitby (Toibin 154). Van Helsing is revealed as the Archangel Gabriel, the Left Hand of God who was the one to have originally killed Dracula (Toibin 154). Stoker was himself a member of the Church of England having grown up in Clontarf where he later attended Trinity College Dublin before moving to London after his marriage. Count Dracula for many represents the ‘Protestant Ascendancy in terminal decline’, a ‘blood thirsty caricature of the aristocratic landlord who remains clinging to feudal power who fears being engulfed by modernity and nationalist agitation (Ingelbien 1089). His novel represents an ‘indictment of a class incapable of adapting to new realities’ (Ingelbien 1089). The Other represents somebody who is seen by society as an outsider with Gothic literature giving a voice to the dark side of our collective unconsciousness (Beville 41). Otherness was drawn upon in the Romantic Gothic novel because it played on the fears of Victorian society’s values and morals. The other ‘comes to represent those parts of the self that society, and perhaps the individual as well, find unacceptable’ (Joshi 190). The Other is decidedly inferior, has sub-par intelligence and lacks those qualities that are respected by society. Gothic literature in Ireland is tied explicably to Irish Protestants.

The overriding consensus is that Protestants were fearful of the majority Catholic population who were subjugated by the English, torn of their rights and treated as second class citizens to the Protestant Ascendancy (Hoeveler 3). They expressed this through their literature at the time and this remains a central feature of Irish Gothicism which emerged from the eighteenth and nineteenth century. At the same time this was not on its own unique to Ireland with anti-Catholic sentiment lingering in England due to the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions and the 1780 Gordon riots (Hoeveler 3). British anti-Catholicism emerged as a political distrust of the clergy, theological disagreements about transubstantiation and popular fears about foreign invasions from the Catholic France and Spain all shaped anti-Catholicism which permeated through Gothic literature at the time where the devil found its embodiment as a lurking Jesuit, Dominican or Capuchin who sought to assassinate innocent victims, steal their inherit ate or seduce their hapless pretty (Hoeveler 3). Dracula himself is represented as the Other in Stoker’s novel in religious terms. Van Helsing uses the crucifix and holy water to make the vampire cower in fear and in drawing upon these symbols of Christ they instead become weapons possessed with divine power (Bartlett and Bellows 294).

Dracula is commonly viewed as a Christian heretic and he draws upon red wine to rejoice and ensure his immortality in contrast to Protestants who use wine to symbolise the blood of Christ’s eternal life (Arata 621). His Otherness was depicted by the descriptions of him as having strange features including a beaked nose, red lips and eyes and a strange smell coming fromhim (Bartlett and Bellows 294). Dracula subverts Christianity’s most valued icon, that of Jesus on the cross (Bartlett and Bellows 294). Indeed the text relies upon many traditionally Christian themes and motifs; the concept of conversion, the symbolic value of blood in religion, the importance of antiquity and the link with the eternal life (Arata 621). Dracula also relates strongly to the concept of the Wandering Jew which was an archetype pervasive during Bram Stoker’s lifetime and considered the ultimate expression of anti-Christian (Yu 145). The anxiety of the Protestant Ascendency concerning modernity is seen in the fact that Dracula is seen as foreign, somebody who represents the Monstrous Other and this Otherness is reiterated by his unusual appearance and activities (Bartlett and Bellows 294). Dracula is capable of granting immortality on all those he chooses and in turn creates the potential for a vampire colony which represents a threat of a foreign invasion by the Other (Bartlett and Bellows 294).

Muskovits (43) suggests that the homosexual Other is that which is illustrated in the novel drawing on and stoking the fear and anxiety that was endemic in Victorian society about the desire of homosexuals to corrupt heterosexuals (Auerbach 22). Haggerty also highlights a connection between xenophobia, sexual transgression and gothic fiction during the Victorian era with a common view that sodomy arrived into England from Catholic countries including Catholic France and Italy (Auerbach 22). Auerbach (83) notes that the English of the 1890s were not only haunted by the Undead but by a monster of their own making, the homosexual. It is evident then that ‘Irish Gothic’ while strongly influenced by what was happening within the Gothic literacy tradition of the era was distinct too and dominated by a fear for the longevity of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland who were increasingly at the whim of Catholic violence. The antiquated feudal system that the largely Protestant Ascendancy had perpetuated through Irish history exacerbated the devastation of the Irish Famine of 1845-1852 and exaggerated the imperial condemnation of the Irish as a ‘diseased stock’ and the deaths of over one million people due to starvation and disease (Snow 114). As such it is evident that the Irish Gothic tradition was dominated and influenced by historical themes of colonisation, Protestantism and a fear of marginalisation that symbolised the growing fears of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland itself following the Land Acts in the decades before Dracula to the Second Home Rule Bill of 1893 which was subsequently defeated in the House of Lords (Valente 46).

Alongside the historical narrative that has shaped Irish Gothic as a category this paper maintains that Irish Gothic is a substantive category and stands alone because it is derived from a pervasively gothic setting. Literature has located Ireland within a ubiquitously Gothic space (Melville 1). Dracula is depicted as foreign to the English while the landscape surrounding him is described as remote, inaccessible and inhospitable while he also speaks broken English (Luckhurst 17). In his text Melville portrays Ireland as a peculiarly gothic landscape reinforcing the stereotypically English perception of Ireland as a ‘spatial and temporal anomaly’ (Morin 113). While Dracula himself may hail from Transylvania the landscape, the people, and the history reflect either facts, stories or legends about Irish life and Dracula himself resembles the dying Anglo-Irish landlord class (Valente xx). Dracula’s movement to London occurs on a boat that is filled with his coffin boxes of dirt where it is suggested that Bram Stoker is playing on the name ‘coffin ship’ which described the ships that would take the poorest Irish wretches from Irish famine shores to their new homes in England, Wales or the USA (Valente xx). Dracula’s coffin boxes end up in the East End of London which was where most of the poor Irish arrived where they earned a reputation for living in squalor and spreading disease (Valente xx). Bram Stoker was also influenced by his mother’s stories of the cholera epidemic in Sligo as a child and these brought with it images of debilitating disease, death and burial (Miller and Miler 63). It is suggested that the Irish landscape and culture influenced Stoker’s choice of ‘Dracula’ which may have been utilised because of its similarity to Gaelic ‘droch-fhola’ which is pronounced ‘drok-ola’ and which translates to ‘bad blood’ (Miller and Miller 63). In this respect this paper maintains that the category of Irish Gothic is distinctive and wholly justifiable in its own right. This paper will now draw upon film ‘The Butcher Boy’ to further support the distinctive category of Irish Gothic.

The Butcher Boy, directed by Neil Jordan and adapted from the novel of the same name by Patrick McCabe, was released in 1997 (Potts 82). The original novel has been described as bog gothic while this genre can be read as a ‘sub-category of eco-Gothic which provides us with a way of examining the intersections of colonialism, culture, natural history and the Gothic in Irish literacy and colonial production’ (Potts 82). This concept of the bog-gothic has been extended to Neil Jordan’s adaption of the novel to the big screen (O’Rawe, 2003). One way by which Jordan’s films reflect gothic themes is through genre dispersion whereby gothic images and motifs are dispersed across the film that may otherwise appear to not have any relationship to the genre otherwise (Maher 201). In this respect we can see gothic horror moments in many of his films including Michael Collins released in 1996 and The Butcher Boy released in 1997 (Maher 201). In Mrs Nugent’s murder scene at 1:19 minutes Brady shoots her in the head with his butcher’s stun gun, and attacks her repeatedly with a beat cleaver using her blood to write ‘Pigs’ on the walls upstairs (Maher 201). In the minutes before, during and after the brutal assault and murder we see pervasive Catholic imagery most notably statues of the Virgin Mary (Jordan 1:19).

We see an image of Jesus Christ in a picture beforehand while during the attack we witness blood spattered on the walls behind a small statute of the Virgin Mary (Jordan 1:19). The grotesque imagery continues and as Brady goes back to work we see Mrs Nugent’s foot sticking out of a cart (Jordan 1:20). Gothic themes include madness, blood and core and these are amply illustrated in this film. What makes The Butcher Boy a tenet of the category of Irish Gothic however is the allegory that is contained throughout concerning the confluence of social, ethnic and political violence along the border region in the 1960s and the historical subjugation of the Irish at the hands of both the colonial British and the Catholic Church (Terrazas 301). In this respect traditional Gothic themes are inherently intertwined with Irish social history and the challenging of the Catholic Church demonstrating its influence on Gothic literature and the rationale for the emergence of a uniquely Irish Gothic. Jordan is critical of the inadequacy of traditional Ireland and its institutions and particularly the Catholic Church and its ‘failure to nurture is young, to confess to its own sickness, to acknowledge that its various forms of denial have created and perpetuated mental illness’ (Schneider & Williams 134). O’Sullivan (11) argues that in Jordan’s The Butcher’s Boy, the world ‘deserves everything it gets’.

“Jordan’s film offers a dirt-poor Ireland, befuddled and priest-ridden, full of drunken, proud and feckless fathers with put-upon and irresponsible wives. In this way it comes very close to confirming the ‘bog-man’ stereotype that tortures (he never forgets Mrs Nugent calling him a pig) and structure Francie’s imagination’ (O’Sullivan 11).

Jordan’s film is set in the 1960s in Clones, Co. Monaghan and the main character is a twelve year old boy, Francie Brady who is strongly influenced by television and the themes that emerge from within it including that of aliens, Atomic bombs and communism (Stack and Bowman 46). Brady emerges from a difficult family life characterised by domestic violence, his mother’s ongoing mental illness and his father’s alcoholism (Stack and Bowman 46). His mother later dies by suicide and he is left in the case of his father who is emotionally distant and a short-tempered alcoholic (Stack and Bowman 46). When placed in reform school because of his deviance Brady is molested by Father Sullivan and on his return finds his former best friend having befriended his enemy (McCabe 33). Brady’s life spirals downward and he unleashes an uncontrollable brutality murdering Mrs Nugent in the process and shocking his local community to its very core (McCabe 134). Jordan depicts Brady’s schizophrenia through the use of voice-overs where the adult narrator Francie speaks to the child Francie (McCabe 143). As highlighted previously a key theme of Gothic literature is its anti-Catholicism and anti-clericalism and this is documented throughout The Butcher Boy (Stack and Bowman 46). Since independence the Irish State had been shaped by the Catholic Church and social policies heavily influenced by Roman Catholicism (Auerbach 22). The 1990s began a period which sought to challenge this traditional order in the wake of increased female emancipation and education and in response to the uncovering of sexual abuse perpetuated by priests within the Catholic Church (Auerbach 22). The Butcher Boy contains gothic elements of paranoia as well as a criticism of the Catholic Church and its abuse of children and its hold over Irish society (Auerbach 22). Irish singer Sinead O’Connor was cast in the dual role of the Virgin Mary and Irish colleen because Jordan believed that her face resembled many of the statues of Mary that existed in Churches across Ireland (McCabe 25). In the 1990s O’Connor was one of the most visible faces of abuse that the Catholic Church meted out to its followers (McCabe 25). Much of the ensuing success of The Butcher Boy was that it was able to tap into the anger and fury which the Irish people felt towards the church who they maintained betrayed Irish people (McCabe 25).

This paper had set out to argue in favour of the category of Irish Gothic with reference to Bram Stoker’s Dracula and a film directed by Neil Jordan entitled ‘The Butcher Boy’. The premise behind this argument was that Ireland itself has been identified as a Gothic space and ‘peculiarly gothic landscape’ which is believed to have inspired Gothic literature and Gothic motifs as evident to varying degrees within Dracula and The Butcher Boy (Morin 113; Melville 1). Rather than simply copying the themes explicit within gothic literature overseas Irish gothic writers and those influenced by gothic motifs were able to draw upon Ireland’s rich and traumatic heritage to inform their narratives. In Dracula anxieties within the Protestant Ascendancy concerning their fragility as a minority group in an increasingly hostile Catholic country appear to dominant the fear of the Other that pervades the film. In The Butcher Boy the criticism of the inadequacy of the State and the Catholic Church was brought to the fore by the graphic and brutal decent into madness of a twelve year old boy who murders a neighbour and smears her blood on the walls. In sum, the conceptualisation of an Irish Gothic category is very much evident through an analysis of these two texts which demonstrate strong gothic influences and a very distinctive gothic literature that draws upon features of the Irish landscape and culture and Irish history to shape and characterise the literature.

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During the late Victorian Era, Britain experienced a controversial period of development where new technology and science threatened the religious beliefs of society. Bram Stoker’s gothic novel of Dracula (1897) addresses the fears and anxieties brought about by modernisation and highlights the clash between old and new beliefs and values. Stoker incorporates a variation of superstitious and scientific elements into this fictitious context to pose his view that science alone isn’t enough to prevail the supernatural forces and that traditional values and attitudes can’t be neglected in societal progression. He constructs the main characters with diverse experience in science and religion to portray the conflict that is produced as a result of contrasting views. The novel is composed of the epistolary form to express the personal responses of different characters towards the changes brought about through foreign exposure. The development of each character’s journal writing throughout the novel assists in conveying the personal development experienced by each of them as they try to conquer foreign mysteries. Dracula is a complex and multi-layered story with messages engrained deep beyond the surface of the narrative. Hence, this novel is Stoker’s symbolic means of portraying the tensions between the foreign and the familiar during the late Victorian Era.

Throughout the earlier section of the novel, Stoker uses the male protagonist Jonathan Harker’s response to the supernatural concepts as a symbolic representation of British society’s view towards science. Jonathan Harker is characterised as a typical English businessman whose been conditioned to conformity, believes in rational thinking and dismisses superstitions. He reflects the general population of Britain at the time whose attitudes were conditioned by British superiority over neighbouring European empires and who believed that ‘others’ were primitive, occult and superstitious. As he journeys to the East, he observes the foreign people and towns with judgemental tone as peculiar and lower class, manifested in his comment, “The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more Barbarian than the rest… They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing”. Harker portrays himself as sensible, modest and dignified and neglects superstitious advice from foreigners as demonstrated during his stay at the Golden Krone Hotel remarking, “It was all very ridiculous… there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it”. The dramatic irony employed through his resentment for any knowledge and scepticism from these ‘peasants’ is what leads to his downfall and foreshadows his imprisonment by Dracula later in the novel. As the story progresses, he becomes Dracula’s victim and surrenders his innocence to the filthy, menacing supernatural world. His pure mind is tainted by the ‘blood’ of the supernatural elements, and his cries to be salvaged from this exposure as expressed in, “I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me… I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of…” become progressively powerless against Dracula’s dominance. Harker’s emotive language reflects his mental struggle against the reality of Dracula’s evil which parallels with Britain’s similar response towards the growing scientific intervention that disrupted religious beliefs of Christianity. Stoker, therefore, initiates the idea that avoiding exposure to new ideas is a flaw and that one must be open to new possibilities to avoid the dangers of ignorance.

During the Victorian Era, the West used their growing knowledge of new technologies and science to broaden their understanding of the world as manifested by the characters who Stoker specifically contrived to utilise a variety of scientific methods in their attempts to defeat Dracula. When Lucy is bitten by Dracula, Van Helsing – although not aware of the cause – observes a sign of blood loss and urgently states “There must be a transfusion of blood at once”. During their mission to restore Lucy, the two neurologists Van Helsing and Seward use what they consider as a superior scientific method to solve this obscure condition just like “The mind of great Charcot” who Van Helsing alludes to as having applied formal and advanced new techniques. Helsing prepares his medical ‘paraphernalia’ and ‘instruments’ for the procedure. This language choice is reflective of Helsing’s methodical style of medical treatment which contrasts with the Eastern superstitious methods of ‘garlic’ and ‘crucifixes’. This process is repeated four times on Lucy by various men with little success and ironically the ‘Londoners’ aren’t aware that Dracula is the source of this blood loss and so are indirectly battling against him to save Lucy’s life. Their investigations become increasingly more tactical, and they continue to refer to previous journal entries for clues. This style of investigation is not unlike criminology which was the most sophisticated method of crime study at the time. Van Helsing demonstrates this analytical thinking when describing Dracula as a criminal stating, “The criminal always works at one crime – that is the true criminal who seems predestinate to crime and who will of none other”. The metonymy in comparing Dracula to a criminal portrays Helsing’s preference towards applying scientific knowledge to solve problems rather than considering less logical and rational methods which implies the ‘East’. However, there are many times where the ‘Londoners’ resort to using superstitious methods to dissuade Dracula from further action which in the end is a stake through the heart. Thus, Stoker strategically uses this novel to express his criticism of scientific and technological progress during the Victorian era by undermining it with traditional methods.

The developing beliefs in science and technology of the late Victorian Era is thoroughly explored in Dracula. Bram Stoker uses the outcome of the story and the characterisation of his protagonists to pose a statement regarding the value of science in society. He also emphasises the power of superstition and Eastern culture and promotes it as something that shouldn’t be undermined by new technologies. Furthermore, Stoker’s novel behaves as a symbolic representation of the threat of science to the West during the late Victorian Era and is constructed to pose questions concerning the value of progress and its contribution to society.

Following its publication in ‘Lippincott’s Magazine’ in 1890, Oscar Wilde’s novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, was widely criticised for its focus on the sensual and passion driven behaviours of its main character. Wilde’s novel is classed as a gothic novel as it features common devices of the genre. We can also draw similarities and differences between ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and Bram Stoker’s gothic fiction ‘Dracula’.

Stoker’s novel, written in the late nineteenth century, focuses on the horrifying villain, Count Dracula. Both writers evoke a sense of suspense and fear towards the reader through their literary texts. When Dorian sees Basil again, since he first began his mysterious pleasure-seeking journey, we see Dorian react rather melodramatically as he starts to feel anxious upon the encounter with his old friend. Basil is previously seen to be associated with morality and goodness or the superego in Freuds psychoanalytic theory about the unconscious mind.

Basil elicits a ‘strange sense of fear come over Dorian’, this perhaps suggests that Dorian seems to fear the judgement that may come from his morally virtuous friend. As Basil begins to address the rumours he’s heard about Dorian, he comes up with the idea to show Basil ‘his soul’ through the stained portrait. Wilde evokes a sense of fear as he begins to foreshadow Basils death as ‘a bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man’. This shows Dorians hubris nature as he claims to Basil he can show him ‘soul’, to which Basil replied, “only God can do that”. Basil identifies Dorians blasphemous language and attempts to save him, ‘you must not say things like that’. Similarly we see Stoker also evoke a sense of fear and suspense through the use of religious imagery, which intends to shock the Victorian reader. In the opening chapter of ‘Dracula’ we see Jonathan Harker arrive in Transylvania where he is faced with the strange superstitions of the townspeople. His landlady warns him that it is the eve of St George’s Day, a night when at the stroke of midnight ‘all evil things in the world will have full sway’, the landlady then continues to place a rosary around his neck, which is idolatrous for him as ‘an English Churchman’.

As he continues on his journey on the coach Jonathan is aware he is being talked about by the people around him and begins to translate their words – ‘satan’, ‘hell’, ‘witch’ and ‘vampire’. This creates a sense of suspense as these phrases connote to the supernatural and may foreshadow any unexplainable events that might occur. In the beginning of chapter 13, we see Wilde reflecting elements from the gothic into his settings. Dorian is seen to lead Basil up the stairs where ‘fantastic shadows’ cast on the wall and a ‘rising wind’ which make the ‘windows rattle’. Wilde’s use of carefully established sound and lighting effects begin to create a sense of fear and dread as the description creates an eerie atmosphere and perhaps foreshadows Basil’s tragic end. It can be interpreted that these gothic terrors are a projection of Dorian’s mental state as Dorian murders Basil near a policeman in a civilised urban landscape, this contrast intensifies the horror whilst developing the gothic genre. Dorian tells Basil that “Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him” thus showing Basil’s views on repentance and salvation. This may be an allusion to the play ‘Doctor Faustus’, as the devil Mephistopheles tells Faustus ‘This is hell, nor am I out of it’.

The echoing of this line may intensify fear as the writer references hell, which to a Victorian reader would not only shock them, but scare them as Victorian England was predominantly Protestant, where the thought of Hell was a common anxiety. Similarly, Stoker is seen to equally create a sense of fear and suspense through his settings. When Johnathan first arrives at the Counts’ castle he is unsure if he is in reality “what sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked?”. The ruined castle can be seen to be a typical location of the Gothic genre and Stoker’s description matches up to the conventions of Gothic tradition. Typically Eastern Europe was perceived as medieval and superstitious which links to the fear of immigration in Victorian England. As the fear of STI’s and moral decay began to grow and was seen to be afflicting society. Stoker links this to ‘Dracula’ in the way he aligns Count Dracula with what Victorian London would have regarded as morally corrupting.

Furthermore, we see fear and suspense first peak towards the end of chapter 3 when Johnathan is visited by three women who begin to see him as their victim. ‘I suppose I must have fallen asleep; I hope so but I fear for all the followed was startlingly real’. This shows how Johnathan hopes his dream was ‘all sleep’, but he fears this as there is a conscious actor defiance

However, a mere simulacrum’s ability to divulge insatiable desire foreshadows the power of the unfamiliar to eradicate virtue, implying Ambrosio is dissatisfied, desperately seeking the untainted woman. Ambrosio’s fragile humanity is implicitly threatening- animalistic imagery used later in the novel depicting his demise, like Dracula, exaggerating his “fall,” likened to an archetypal Gothic creature, “acting out the repressed fantasies of the other5”-the pure embodiment of the uncanny. Using anthropomorphism to describe Dracula and Ambrosio amplifies the unfamiliar’s ability to shroud humanity in monstrosity, Dracula’s “long” and “sharp” teeth, his ability to “rip” and “tear” akin to Ambrosio’s “violation” and “sucking” of Antonia, the semantic field of inhumane violence exemplifying the monk’s utter moral collapse and Dracula’s sheer inhumanity. Dracula’s actions isolated, and incredibly mundane, incite fear because he personifies a terror of being simultaneously unknowable and known, threatening to breach the definitive constraints of “living” through pure personification “one evil thrown into a pure society,” as Podinsky opines, beginning “an onslaught of corruption6;” like Ambrosio his inherent humanity, contrasting with physical metamorphous, embodying the immoral unfamiliar. Ambrosio becomes the “licentious monk,” the adjective insinuating his sexual deviations to be unprincipled; Lewis’ use of hyperbole exaggerates this transgression. As Dracula is the embodiment of pure evil, Ambrosio is excessively personified. The motif of ruinous, stifling weather, such as “thunder” and “fog” describing the two antagonists show the unmerciful omnipotence of the uncanny, suggestive of utter nihilism, a return to the “Dark Ages” void of metaphorical enlightenment, expressing the moral darkness of Ambrosio and Dracula’s ability to reinstate desolation. Pathetic fallacy intensifies Ambrosio’s power, possessing the omnipotence of a Deity ironically at his most satanic, but one devoid of benevolence and humanity and therefore, demonic. Ambrosio is compared to a force of nature in his corruption; the Romantic ideals of the Sublime highlight the human conscience’s fragility.

Contrasting Ambrosio, Dracula is characterized as the complete “embodiment of the unleashed Id7,” an externalized “other” exploiting natural weakness within the conscious and, despite both novels citing superstition as resulting in declining civility, Dracula embodies apprehensions of Darwinian evolutionary thought- the concept of evolving spurring an assumption that one can “de-volve8,” becoming a “modification of pre-bourgeois fears9.” Indicative of collapsing tradition, Dracula evokes xenophobic ideas from a society fearing corruption, a motif in both novels lured from the Unconscious, Dracula is not only physically intimidating but a non-cognitive threat preying on erring morality. Fluctuating from “man” to “beast” suggests the external uncanny to be feared because of its ease of assimilation, this physical transition threatening the established order, usurping normalcy because his non-contingency lacks the weakness of mortality. Through Dracula’s dehumanization, Stoker infuses the supernatural into the novel, and the dangers of the uncanny intensify as, unlike Ambrosio, he’s unconfined by contingent limitations. Unrestricted by English societal norms, “Transylvania” void of superficial civility, Dracula’s inhumanity curates a wholly destructive force, his reckless fearlessness resulting in his death and paralleling Harker’s snobbery of the “ridiculous(ness)” of the Landlord’s superstitious wife; this nationalist arrogance scorned by both authors as ignorance masked in arrogance, exposing characters to ready manipulation by the “other,” fearing diminishing imperial prowess.

In addition to this, explicitly alluded to within both novels is the sacrilegious woman craving the uncanny as a form of macabre liberation. Purely objectified in ‘The Monk,’ women are stripped of their ability to physically participate, simultaneously worshipped and abhorred; dehumanized into unfamiliarity, and subject to intransigent masculine desires. Matilda and Antonia’s “ivory” flesh implies unconcealed feminine “otherness,” ivory’s rarity introduces this idea of profit, its “off-whiteness” and softness implying easily exploited weakness; female sexuality is something to be gained and purity revered but desired. Miles opines Ambrosio imagines women “conditioned by textuality10” the semantic field of material in Antonia’s description implying her purpose being to be surveyed and touched, the act of concealing more important than the concealed, expressing contemporary views of feminine otherness exploiting masculine virtue, concealment deflecting blame to female incompetence. Her neck is “notable for its symmetry,” her beauty “a dazzling whiteness,” and her figure “light, airy,” implies an emptiness, female worth reduced to aesthetics; the interplay of light and dark imagery signifies how her otherness is “veiled” she is ethereal, suppressing the uncanny meaning its repressed within the male unconscious also. Juxtaposing her whiteness and the “blackness” of her veil, Lewis implies, as understood by a modern audience, physical societal restrictions to fuel the uncanny not feminine otherness. Her veil and body are intrinsically linked, the veil’s superficial protection, the ability for it to be forcefully stripped away making her an object of wanton desire. Lewis becomes the “complex revealer11” the motif of removal forcing blame of “otherness” upon man, reiterated in ‘Dracula,’ the ease of Mina’s contamination, her inability to “hate” implying innate female weakness- something unchangeable.