The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker Essay Example for Free

The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker Essay The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker was written in 1897 during the Victorian period in England. This novel expresses the attitudes of that time and also the changing dynamics between men and women. Stokers Dracula captured the imaginations of first the European countries, and then the worlds. This magnetic tale has remained popular for the last century for a myriad of reasons but mostly for its infamous implied sexuality. Although Dracula was not the first novel about vampires, it was the first widely read and mainstream book of the vampire gothic genre. The popularity of this book has been developing for over a century, and has spawned innumerable movies, television shows, books, magazines, music and with all those, a culture. One reason it was very popular when it was first published was because Stoker used a lot of real facts. The description of the eastern European countries excited his readers, because knowledge of other cultures was still very limited. Most countries were still well preserved and distinct and therefore the knowledge of other ways, was very captivating, and gave the British public a chance to look down their noses at the other, more primitive culture. In the first chapter of Dracula, Jonathan Harker writes derisively in his journal : It seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they be in China? (p. 9) Next he describes scornfully the lowly peasant women: The women looked pretty, except when you go near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. (p. 9) Known for their colonizing of other nations and their belief of self-superiority, I assume that the British would scoff at the superstitious customs of Transylvanian and eastern European societies, and would also enjoy reading about such ridiculous atrocities such as the un-dead. So, for the pure amusement of jeering at a foreign culture, the English must have taken immense pleasure in reading Dracula for that reason.