Vampires, Dracula, and Morality Victorian Anxieties!

Vampires, Dracula, and Morality Victorian Anxieties!

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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