Dracula Through the Lens of Freud
Count Dracula is one of the most recognizable figures in the world today; his name has become synonymous with vampires and with the sexualization of horror. In fact, the sexual aspect of Dracula has become one of the most commented upon features of the figure and of his story. There is certainly a huge basis for such an emphasis in Bram Stoker's original novel. In Dracula, the first book in which the character of Count Dracula is introduced, the title character is a supreme example of the male ego, with his sexuality and his attitude towards and treatment of women characterized by an extreme imbalance of power in his favor. His ability to rob other men, most notably Jonathan Harker and Renfield, of their potency is also quite telling from a psychoanalytical viewpoint. All of these details make a psychoanalytic reading of the novel not….

Dracula
There are numerous themes and motifs present in Bram Stoker's "Dracula," such as sexuality, femininity, Christianity, superstition, and ancestral bloodline, to name but a few. However, perhaps one of the most obvious themes surrounds sexuality and femininity.

Stoker's "Dracula" can be seen as a sort of Victorian male "Harlequin" novel, filled with adventure, intrigue, and damsels in distress. And much like the Harlequin type novels for women today, Stoker's novel has an underlying theme of dangerous sexuality, the forbidden fruit. Many of Stoker's passages actually read as erotica:

The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply 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 ... Lower and lower went her head as….

I would not send them into Dracula's at the break of dawn; though Dracula was incapacitated during the day, he heard the cockcrow and saw the sun rise with Harker in the mornings. Instead, I would send the party to Dracula's home approximately two hours after sunrise. I would arm the hunting party with garlic, a large number of crucifixes, wild rose, wood ash, long swords, hatchets, guns, and knives. The members of the hunting party would include Harker, Van Helsing, Morris, Seward, and Mina.
In the book, there are many figures that would be willing to battle Dracula, and it would be important to utilize them in any fight against Dracula.

However, I would not use Holmwood to kill Dracula; Dracula recently killed Holmwood's fiancee, which I think would make Holmwood too distracted and personally invested to be an effective killer. In addition, though Holmwood gave Lucy his blood for….

..almost entirely occur within the first sixty pages." If it is true that the best passages of Dracula are found in the early portions of the book, it would make sense that the first chapter (or was it to be the second?), which later became the short story, was not necessary. Perhaps the publisher / editor who handled the manuscript saw the chapter (short story) as overkill (no pun), since the provocative in-your-face un-Victorian themes were so potent there was little need for an additional chapter that stood well on its own.
In terms of that fact that some of the smoothest, most ambitiously graphic narrative was already in the succeeding chapters, it may have been a coldly objective decision to hold the "prefatory chapter" back for later publication.

Critic James B. Twitchell writes (Twitchell 1985) that Dracula's Guest is "...One of the best werewolf stories ever written." Initially believed to have….

..which affects certain natures, as at times the moon does others?" (Stoker, 133). Here we have a clear reference to the power of the sun over Count Dracula who sleeps in his coffin during the day and rises after sunset. Thus, Renfield's reaction to the setting of the sun is to be expected, due to being under the control and domination of Dracula.
In Chapter 18 of Dracula, we discover that Renfield has undergone quite a radical change related to his overall demeanor. In fact, he is so changed that he holds an intelligent conversation with Miss Mina Harker, but soon after, he retreats into his old self and pleads with Dr. Seward to set him free from the sanitarium. hile on his knees with "tears rolling down his cheeks" (Stoker, 272), Renfield begs for his life, terrified that his soul will be forever damned to Hell for being in league….

The girl is freed from her captor, but only at the cost of the life and soul of the young priest: the power of Christ merely served to anger the devil -- it did not subjugate him; such would have been too meaningful in the relativistic climate of the 70s.
The 70's sexual and political revolutions were intertwined to such an extent that hardcore pornography and Feminist politics appeared on the scene simultaneously. hile Betty Friedan opposed traditional gender codes in such works as the Feminine Mystique, Debbie was on her way to doing Dallas and Deepthroat was raking in the profits. The cinematic response to this was the slaughter of sexually-active teenagers by homicidal maniacs (evil incarnate), while virtuous and chaste maidens like Jamie Lee Curtis' character in Halloween remained alive just long enough for the evil to be driven away by a male authority figure. Horror films often….

Dracula
Bram Stoker's Dracula represented for the Victorian reader the assault of the libertine on Victorian sexual morality. Dracula was a predator who stalked at night and had the capacity to transform himself into a beast in order to escape deduction. His method was seduction, which led to death, and in an age when propriety concealed all such discussions as sexual adventurism (which had to some extent characterized the preceding Romantic Era with another author of Gothic fiction Mary Shelley depicted her husband the poet Percy through the lens of Dr. Frankenstein, the man bent on using pure Reason to achieve his ludicrous aim), Dracula served up a hearty dish of danger and taboo that gave the Victorian audience exactly what it wanted -- a whiff of the underlying sexual tension that the moral code of the time disallowed in public. Prying open Dracula's coffin was like prying open the underbelly….

Count Dracula and Hanibal Lector
Program Authorized

to Offer Degree

The Analysis of Count Dracula and Hanibal Lector

Identities of Count Dracula and Hannibal

Supernatural Powers

Gender and Sexuality

lood-Drinking

The relation between Dracula and his victims

Hannibal Lecter

Power

Gender and Sexuality

Criminal Mind of Hannibal: Justification of Diagnosis

Hannibal's Relations with his Victims

The Power of Horror

Dracula

Silence of the Lambs

Count Dracula

Van Helsing

Lucy

Mina

Jonathan

Hannibal Lecter

Clarice

Grumb

Mischa

Starling

Vocabulary

Deployment- the arms and equipment with which a military unit or military apparatus is supplied.

Sentence: "I suggest that we add Winchesters to our deployment." (324).

Dexterously- dexterous; nimble; skillful; clever

Sentence: "He really continued then, quickly and dexterously, to carry out his intent." (128).

Disquietude - the state of uneasiness; discomfort.

Sentence: "…it was not right in my heart to believe that I was really hoping to keep anything from her and so instigated her to be disquietude." (266).

4. Projection - a bulging rim, collar, or ring on a shaft, pipe, machine housing, etc., cast or shaped to provide extra strength, difficulty, or….

As Frost emphasizes, "Although there is no reason to believe that Stoker regarded Dracula as anything other than a straightforward story of Good vs. Evil, most commentators today interpret it as a sexual rather than a theological allegory, even going so far as to call it one of the most erotic novels ever written" (55). The legends of vampires that prevailed well into the 19th century throughout Europe were enough to give anyone nightmares, and the author consistently maintained that this was in fact the source of his inspiration for Dracula. As Frost points out, "Stoker, himself, always maintained that the genesis of his novel was a vivid nightmare; but following recent disclosures about his private life the book has taken on a new significance, and is now generally regarded as an expression of the author's frustrated sensuality" (55).
Although the novel is slightly flawed in places from a purely….

Dracula's cultural impact
Dracula's Immortal Cultural Impact

Nearly five centuries after his death, Vlad "Tepes" Dracula's reputation continues to intrigue, inspire, and terrorize people. Vlad the Impaler, as he was often referred to as, was the Prince of Wallachia in Romania and a three time Voivode of Wallachia, and was born in 1431 and killed in action near Bucharest in 1476. Vlad the Impaler is known for his leadership as well as his extreme cruelty. It is this terrorizing historical figure, and the lore surrounding him, that inspired Bram toker to write Dracula. Dracula holds an important place in popular culture thanks to the literary work of Bram toker who published Dracula in 1897.

While toker's novel is not based upon the historical figure of Dracula, it does draw upon the legend surrounding the prince and provides an insight into Romanian culture, their superstitions, and the area surrounding Transylvania and Wallachia. Additionally,….

Dracula
The novel "Dracula" was written by Irish author Bram Stoker in 1897. Set in nineteenth-century Victorian England and other countries of the same time, this novel is told in an epistolary format through a collection of letters, diary entries etc. The main characters include Count Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Dr. Van Helsing. Count Dracula is the antagonist character of the novel, and is a vampire. The group of men and women led by Dr. Van Helsing are the main protagonist characters. The novel talks about Count Dracula's endeavor to relocate from Transylvania to England, and his demise. The story begins with an English lawyer, Jonathan Harker, visiting Dracula's castle to assist him with some real estate issues. During his stay in the castle, Harker discovers that the Count is a vampire and barely escapes with his life. Then the narrative turns into a….

Gothic Fiction
Dracula is a far more traditional Gothic novel in the classic sense than the four books of the Twilight series, in which Bella Swan and her vampire lover Edward Cullen never even fully consummate their relationship until they are married in the third book Eclipse, and Bella does not finally get her wish to become a vampire until the fourth and final book Breaking Dawn. Far from being Edward's victim, or used as a pawn and discarded, she is eager to leave her dull, empty middle class life behind and become part of the Cullen vampire family. When she nearly dies giving birth to their half-vampire daughter, Edward finally does 'turn' her to save her life, and to paraphrase the title of the old song, we can only hope that she is satisfied. Bella in fact is a very traditional and conservative character, including her religion and even her….

Troy Boone writes Van Helsing "affirms a utilitarian view of the vampire-fighter, whose role is to minimize human suffering by combating evil" (Boone). He goes on to explain how Stoker explores this notion by adding to his summation that Van Helsing realizes the different forces at work. Dracula is "finite, though he is powerful to do much harm" (Stoker 320-1) and he cannot be avoided or ignored, he must be stopped. Such a character leaves Van Helsing as a kind of "monster of righteousness" (Bloom), writes Harold Bloom. Van Helsing is the vampire's enemy and opposite and Stoke has situated him in the novel as the only person qualified to fight this evil.
Another way in which Stoker presents Van Helsing as a hero is through the different characters he must face when fighting evil. He is not simply after stopping Dracula. Dracula's women pose the same great threat Dracula….

Though the Monster tries to refrain from interfering; "hat chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people, and I longed to join them, but dared not…[remembering] too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous villagers" (142). The Monster learns how society behaves through the observation of the family, and through the reading of books. Much like Frankenstein, the Monster is greatly influenced by what he reads including Plutarch's Lives, Sorrow of erter, and Paradise Lost. The Monster's innocence and ignorance, at this point, does not allow him to fully understand or relate to any of the characters in the books (166). The Monster eventually relates to Adam in Paradise Lost, not considering himself a monster, because even "Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him" (169). As Adam was created in God's own image, the Monster is a "filthy….

Lucy and Mina
In Victorian England, when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, the vampire was used as a symbol for, among other things, society's sexual taboos, including overt female sexuality. Nowhere is this idea better explored than in the characters of friends Lucy estenra and Mina Murray. In Stoker's book, Lucy is symbol of the improper female, the one who is coquettish and flirtatious and sparks sexual interest in the male. Mina is her opposite. She is the ideal Victorian woman whose function is to be chaste and supportive of her future husband. Mina's attraction to men is always one of potential wife or mother. These ideas were somewhat diluted in the 1931 film version to make a horror story with less moral and more thrill, although the flirtatious girl still dies and her less sexual counterpart still survives. In the novel, the line between good and evil tends to be unclear.….