Bram Stoker Dracula And The Social And Historical Representation Of His Work

Bram Stoker Dracula and the social and historical representation of his work

Dracula de Abraham ” Bram ” Stoker, published in England on May 26 of 1897, has undoubtedly been one of the greatest literary works that humanity has seen, and that has also served as inspiration for more than one movie, but we cannot always see only the superficial, we cannot see Dracula as a simple work done to entertain, the present work aims to analyze whether the work that we will study could also be a way of representing the society in whichThe writer lived, it would not be something new, because several writers have become famous at the sameReply is: how reliable is the social and historical representation of the literary work about the time in which it was produced? To do this, we will study the society of the 19th century, the literary work and the behavior of its characters regarding society, and then make a comparison and obtain an answer.

To begin with, Dracula, is a work written by Irish novelist Abraham ” Bram ” Stoker, in 1897, the work is about Count Dracula, who is willing to buy some properties in London, for this he hires the lawyerIn real estate Jhonathan Harker to Romania, where the count is based, when Jhonathan Clarke arrives at the Count’s castle, he begins to see strange things, as the count is not reflected in the mirrors, or that when he made a cut when shavingThe count will look forward to his blood, all these strange things and everything he lives in the castle will write it up in his diary, later the count would ask Harker to stay for another month, at this time he would know 3 womenThat they were vampires, they would try to devour, but when they were about to do so, Count Dracula said saying that they moved away from him, because this was his property.

After a while, Harker is determined to escape, one night he succeeds and comes a convent where he writes to his wife.

While all this happened, Harker’s wife, Mina, was and England with her friend Lucy, one day Lucy was attacked by a strange being, they realize that this attack was not normal, it was not any animal thatHe did, it must have been something else, therefore they call Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, when he reviewed it he finds two holes in his neck and immediately recognizes that he was attacked by a vampire, thanks to this he begins an arduous research work where he discovers that heCount Dracula was the major vampire who had already looked for a long time, then Mina would show her the aforementioned newspaper that her husband wrote during the time she was in the Count’s castle, in the mine, because she looked like her wife of400 years.

One night, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing tells Lucy’s husband that he must kill his wife again, because she is a vampire and therefore has become a non -dead, at first the idea is unworthy, but theSee that his wife’s cofcoffin, where her husband would nail a stake in the heart that would give her eternal peace.

When they return home they find Dracula with Mina, he was trying to make her a vampire, Van Helsing stops him, however, before leaving, Dracula says he will return, Van Helsing is determined to end dracula, that’s why he tells HarkerThat they have to go to Transylvania to kill once and for all to Dracula, to locate it they use mine because she and dracula have a connection, they place it through a hypnotization, when they arrive a strong and difficult battle against Dracula, whichIn the end it would be a victory when they saw that Dracula was beheaded and that he was beheaded, this would be the end of Dracula, both of the count and the novel.

Now, how does this contrast with the social and historical representation of the time in which it was elaborated? To start, the user writing Bohemia Nols would say that: ” At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Europe has just transition from moving from a monarchical system to a republican system, all this generates a political crisis ” (writeBohemia, 2013)

We must also understand that Dracula is much stronger in the dark, unlike the cinematographic adaptations where the light destroys it, here only disables it to use certain powers, Loreto Gómez López-Quiñones would say that:

The contrast between light and darkness, day and night, symbolize a constant tension between good and evil, God and devil, purity and lust, religion and heresy, social order and chaos. The vampire is comfortably established in darkness, becoming the reverse of religion, morals, purity, etc. Values associated with clarity but at the same time hide us and repress us against freedom, impudice and immunity offered. (Gomez Lopez-Quiñones, 2014)

If we take into account this definition, we can see in Dracula a classic hero belonging to the Romancist movement, which as an article of the Cuban encyclopedia tells us:

Its fundamental characteristic is the break with the classicist tradition based on a set of stereotyped rules. Authentic freedom is your constant search, so that is why your revolutionary trait is unquestionable. Because romanticism is a way of feeling and conceiving nature, life and man itself is that it occurs differently and particularly in each country where it develops;Even within the same nation, different trends are also projected in all arts. (Ecured, 2011)

And although Dracula, it is not in itself a romantic work, but an epistolary gothic novel, we have that our Nosferatu, when taking refuge in the dark, takes refuge in total freedom, nothing prevents him from doing what he wants, is totally free, even ifBreak with stereotypes, even if the moral of the time mustIt is repressed, therefore, and the whole work in general, can be considered romantic, although at the time when this literary movement has been written, we could already be in decline, but we could also take this as another reference to romanticism, as it wasA movement that like the count is decadent, but refused to die.

Why is this important? Because as already said before, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century Europe was going through the change from monarchies to republics, where people yearned with freedom, with democracy, with which their voice was heard, in addition to this time at this time , we also lived the industrial revolution, an era of great changes in society, this is essential if we take into account that the work is set in Victorian era, where the revolution was on its cusp, Noelia Fernández would make an analysis of the work With the Victorian era, making a comparison between the two would tell us that this was an era where the separation of the woman from man was fundamental as social roles refers, even medicine limited certain aspects between men and women to determine that she could Or they could not do each one, in the book this can be evidence For a woman, in the text it is present that at this time the woman was had the only functions of being a wife and of giving birth, we can also notice that in the work, sexuality between Harker and her wife, it is almost null, the The only time they manage to consummate their love is at the end of the book, where they have a child who would call fifteen, this is also characteristic of the Victorian era, of a time when Count Dracula, with his unbridled eroticism and his impulse to get carried away by desire represented the opposite of what she wanted to impose. (Fernandez, 2013)

We must take this into account, because as we have already said, romanticism sought freedom, Count Dracula, representing the opposite that society wanted in Victorian era, an extremely conservative era, where there were some roles for each sex wellDefined in society, the wife was nothing more than this, a woman whose work was to attend her husband, take care of the house, and raise and have children and where sexuality was something extremely reserved and that basically only was done in marriage,Taking into account that most of the men of the Victorian era married in their 30, and there were sexual impulses in them, Esteban Canales would say in their book “ Victorian England ” that:

Prostitution was an omnipresent reality in some streets of the cities and those who exercised it were in an important proportion single young people without resources and who saw in it a momentary exit to their situation as they sought a job (…) prostitution remained as ”’social disease’ ‘or bad necessary, without interference from public authorities, until the fear of expansion between the army of venereal diseases, especially syphilis, led to the approval of successive health inspection provisions of suspected women ofExercise prostitution in areas close to military concentrations. (Canales, 1999)

We can see that the Victorian society was markedly macho, where it was totally allowed, although repudiated, the man resorts prostitution to satisfy their sexual impulses, while the young women were treated as objects, without any consideration for them. And as a counterpart does not appear to Dracula, but Lucy, the best mine friend, who is just as uncontrolled to the count, this is evidenced that receiving the 3 letters of men who proposed marriage, she was extremely happy, but that her only sadness was that she could not accept all the propositions, this attitude of wanting to be free against the Victorian repression of sexuality, is what leads her to be so easily seduced by the vampire.

In addition, Dracula not only puts the repression of sexual desire at risk in the Victorian era, we could also say that it puts the idea of traditional family at risk, when in a chapter it seems to have a romantic interest in Harker, which would be the chapter in whichis with the 3 vampires:

With a fierce movement of his arm, [Dracula] threw the woman away from her, and went back to the others as if pushing them (…) exclaimed:

– How do you dare to touch any of you? How do you dare to put your eyes on it when I am prohibited? Behind! This man belongs to me! Be careful to get you with him, because you will see them with me!

The young blonde, with a laugh of obscene coquetry, stirred to answer:

-You have never loved, you never love!

[…]

Then the count, after observing my face carefully, turned and said in a bass whisper:

-Yes, I can love too;You could check it in another time (…) I promise you that when you have finished with him, you will kiss him as much as you want. (Stoker, 2004)

In conclusion, the cultural, social and historical representation made by Bram Stoker in his work “ Dracula ” represents society very well at that time, where Dracula was an evil being, which put this system at risk thanks to how freeIt was, that he could do what he wanted, to be carried away by his wishes and to induce others to do the same represented a great danger, and that he has a tragic ending to continue maintaining the status quo of society at this time. Undoubtedly, Dracula gathers all the characteristics of a romantic hero who, although we are presented as the villain of this work, may be Bram Stoker’s repressed desire to leave the oppressive society in which.

Bibliography

• Canales, e. (1999). Victorian England. Akal. Retrieved on the 24th of 2019
• Ecured. (February 10, 2011). Ecured. Retrieved on November 23, 2019, from Ecred, Cuban Encyclopedia: https: // www.Ecured.Cu/Romanticism
• Write bohemia. (15 of 11 of 2013). Slideshare. Retrieved on 11 of 2019, from Slideshare: https: // es.Slideshare.Net/Mora Wilo/Analysis-Literario-de-Dracula
• FERNANDEZ, n. (June 16, 2013). Lithiinglesa. Retrieved on November 23, 2019, from Lithiinglesa: https: // litinglesa.WordPress.com/2013/06/16/el-conde-dracula-and-la-transgre-anti-victoriana/
• Gomez Lopez-Quiñones, L. (2014). Cervantes Virtual. Retrieved on November 23, 2019, from Cervantes Virtual: http: // www.Cervantes Virtual.com/nd/ark:/59851/bmcdj769