Dracula (Oxford Playscripts)

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With a passion for entertainment, pop-culture, and the arts, he loves to delve into rigorous analysis of themes with broader implications. The keeping of diaries and journals, the telegram, the science of hypnosis, transcription, and the art of using a stenograph are some of the valuable skills that help in dispatching Dracula. When Harker reunites with Mina after escaping from Dracula’s Castle, he does not know whether or not he can trust his memories: “I do not know if it was all real or the dreaming of a madman. Intermingled with the drama is a fine thread of comedy that helps relieve mounting tension and chills.

Indeed, in the fight against Dracula, these symbols of good take the form of the icons of Christian faith, such as the crucifix. Activities include work on Speaking and Listening, close text analysis and the structure of playscripts, acting as a springboard for personal writing.

In Victorian England, women’s sexual behavior was dictated by society’s extremely rigid expectations. Unlike Lucy, she is not most noteworthy for her physical beauty, which spares Mina her friend’s fate of being transformed into a voluptuous she-devil. We build and maintain all our own systems, but we don’t charge for access, sell user information, or run ads. Lust here is an emotion that symbolizes a lack of self-control, in essence, man’s inability to master his own emotions, making him a prisoner to his desires.

Those who fall under the count’s spell, including Lucy Westenra and the three “weird sisters,” find themselves cursed with physical life that is eternal but soulless. We understand that not everyone can donate right now, but if you can afford to contribute, we promise it will be put to good use. Though Stoker begins his novel in a ruined castle—a traditional Gothic setting—he soon moves the action to Victorian London, where the advancements of modernity are largely responsible for the ease with which the count preys upon English society. Bram Stoker’s ‘ Dracula‘ was written during the Victorian period, at a time when Charles Darwin’s theory of revolution, as well as recent technological advancements, were leading to less religiosity among people. It offers both offensive and defensive powers against evil, and that is exactly the intent towards which it is employed in ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker.This selflessness and generally noble predispositions are what make the brotherhood so strong and then ultimately successful against Dracula in the face of huge odds. Van Helsing works not only to understand modern Western methods, but to incorporate the ancient and foreign schools of thought that the modern West dismisses. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book.

Given that Dracula means to use women to access the men of England, Mina’s loss could have terrifying repercussions.In the book, vampirism is like a soul-altering plague that either corrupts or shoves aside the pure soul of the individual in other to replace it with a new, much more evil life force. For Stoker, it is important Vampirism is not native to England but is instead imported from some far away, exotic place. It represents the transformation from pure, innocent life to undead, stopping short of final expiration.

The horror builds up from the increasing eccentricities of the natives, the horror of his hosts at the hotel he stays in at Borgo Pass, and climbs up when he is transferred to the mysterious coach driver with strange features. In Chapter XVII, when Van Helsing warns Seward that “to rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all the knowledge and all the help which we can get,” he literally means all the knowledge. Dracula poses the threat of literally contaminating local bloodlines with a foreign influence, and this threat reveals a deep-seated fear of outsiders gaining power and using it for evil means.Learning all they can of Dracula’s affairs, Van Helsing and his band track down the boxes of earth that the count uses as a sanctuary during the night from Dracula’s castle. This man is far from the Victorian ideal, and if these qualities are found in a woman, it would greatly affect her reputation. Although they all came as competitors, Arthur, Quincy, and Seward ended up forging an undying bond with themselves, as well as with Harker, Mina, and Van Helsing. Read about the related theme of changing ideas of social class in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Most critics agree that Dracula is, as much as anything else, a novel that indulges the Victorian male imagination, particularly regarding the topic of female sexuality.