Legacy of Bram Stoker's "Dracula"

Female Vampires

Bram Stoker's novel, "Dracula" is arguably the most influential piece of literature that is based on vampires of all time. The characteristics we observe in vampires today in cinema or television are inspired by many of the features presented in "Dracula." Greg Buzwell of the British Library puts it well, "Victorian literature tends to present the vampire myth as a sexual allegory in which English female virtue is menaced by foreign predators. (1)" Throughout "Dracula" this theme is repeated and emphasized, Lucy and Mina are targeted by the foreign Dracula in his attempt to use them to kickstart his eugenic takeover. This part of Stoker's legacy is carried on in today's cinema for women in vampire stories remain to be sexually targeted by a foreign predator. An example of this would the character of Bella Swan in the infamous "Twilight" series, she is notably pursued by a foreign family of vampires who throughout the movie often show difficulty in even being around her because of their overwhelming desire to bite her. A man's inability to protect his female comrades has long been seen as a threat to one's masculinity and to society as a whole. This common theme originating in "Dracula" is carried over to various versions and each portrays the woman as something that needs to be saved but is also juxtaposed in comparison to the sexual female vampire. Female vampires according to Christopher Craft in "Kiss Me With Those Red Lips" are "feminine demons equipt with masculine devices. (6)" Which at the time made them extremely dangerous and powerful based on their ability to seduce for their master, Count Dracula. 

A promotional poster for the 1931 film release which presents Lucy and Mina caught in a spider's web. (1)

Pre-Dracula

Vampire lore is constantly changing and realigning the characteristics we think of when we hear the term vampires. Before the novel "Dracula", vampires would often be disguised as an intimate family friend or perhaps just an acquaintance and this was a common theme in vampire literature up until the release of Bram Stoker's novel. As reader's become more familiar and aware of certain ideas like this one they tend to lose their spookiness because the idea becomes known and it's anticipated rather than shocking. However, vampire lore has always been able to adapt to the time period and this is one of the many reasons these stories survive era after era. Bram Stoker in the later 19th century releases "Dracula" which explores elements of the unknown and in doing this Stoker comes back to the original, more frightening vampire given the time period. Jennifer Fountain, a grad student from Dartmouth writes about vampires in her B.A. thesis paper and states, "Instead of appearing in the visage of a family friend, Dracula exemplified the threat of the unknown. Some scholars believe that this return to a more traditional approach to the vampire archetype occurred in response to the "acceleration" of the fields of science and technology that were occurring at the end of the century." As I mentioned Stoker's adaption of the vampire to the cultural insecurities at the time are one of the many reasons his novel has succeeded for over 100 years. As "Dracula" enters the vampire lore kingdom it definitely leaves its mark and returns to the vampire to its original foreign invader perception that highlights societies feeling culturally insecure about foreigners. 

Foreign Invader

Before Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula", literature about vampires existed mainly across Europe and didn't quite enter the United States culture and make any significant impact. This all changed after the release of Dracula. Many times characters in literature that were cinematized in the United States fell short of the reality the author had hoped for, however "Dracula" seemed to be the exception. The flexibility of Stoker's character left directors room to cast him as someone who both acted and appeared foreign in comparison to the rest of the characters in the cinema production. Jennifer Fountain comments on the casting of Bela Lugosi saying, "The decision to cast Lugosi as the central character of the tale was vital. His speech, mannerisms, and dress all identified the Count as a profoundly alien entity." Stoker's visual foreign invader theme can be noted in various other cinema productions about vampires including "Nosferatu," where the main character looks notably different than the others and this makes him more likely to be declared to be a vampire in the eyes of the 'normal' society that surrounds him.

Nosferatu appearing less human looking with long ears and long fingers and a set of shark-like teeth (3).

The Counts Infamous Characteristics

The most important part of Stoker's legacy is the characteristics he designated to the vampires in his novel "Dracula." This is because these specific characteristics have survived the test of time and are what we often use to identify vampires or associate them with something today. Stoker's physical descriptors of the vampires present them as pale and somewhat sharp-looking with extremely red lips and facial features too perfect to be mortal. Another legacy Stoker annexed to the vampire is their sexual appeal and seductive voluptuous red lips that are enticing to the human characters in the novel. The Count's ability to morph into other species in Stoker's novel is described well by Dorothea Schuller in "Vampirism, Victorianism, and Collage in Guy Maddin’s Dracula", she says "his formidable powers of metamorphosis may be regarded as one of Dracula’s most significant and, at least for his Victorian antagonists, most disturbing characteristics. (4)" His ability to transform himself is the most unnerving aspect of Bram Stoker's vampire because it makes them lack a stable identity which in turn leaves them unidentifiable and more powerful than those who fear him. As audiences progress, this aspect becomes more receptive and eventually it becomes something we identify vampires by. Stoker also gives his vampire characters the power to see through the eyes of those whom the Count has bitten and vice-versa which is another Victorian uncertainty that causes uneasiness based on the level of power these creatures possess that has been continuously portrayed in cinema today. Ronald R. Thomas notes that "We should not be surprised that Hollywood's obsession with making and remaking nineteenth-century novels into movies simply will not die, nor that "the movies" have become the principal medium through which the Victorian novel, and even Victorian culture, has maintained its ghostly afterlife in modern society. (5)" Thomas is suggesting that without cinema playing its part in popularizing this novel and Dracula himself, we may have never ended up with the hundreds of spin-offs and retellings of Stoker's original Victorian classic that has now become a part of modern-day pop-culture.

Works Cited

SOURCE 1: “Dracula: the Victorian Vampire.” The British Library, The British Library, 26 Feb. 2014, www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/dracula#authorBlock1.


SOURCE 2: Fountain, Jennifer A. The Vampire in Modern American Media, Web Jewels, 2000, www.dartmouth.edu/~elektra/thesis.html.

SOURCE 3: “Nosferatu (1922).” BFI, Film Forever, www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b74e11d41. (Just Photo)

SOURCE 4: Schuller, Dorothea. “‘Nineteenth Century (up-to-Date) with a Vengeance’: Vampirism, Victorianism and Collage in Guy Maddin’s Dracula - Pages from a Virgin’s Diary.” Monstrous Media/Spectral Subjects: Imaging Gothic Fictions from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, edited by Fred Botting and Catherine Spooner, Manchester University Press, 2015, pp. 103–115. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1729w2c.13.

SOURCE 5: Kucich, John, and Dianne F. Sadoff, editors. Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century. NED - New edition ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2000. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttt439.

SOURCE 6: Craft, Christopher. “‘Kiss Me with Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula.” Representations, no. 8, 1984, pp. 107–133. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2928560.