Dracula, an unresolved thriller…beginning in 1897

Pramod K Nayyar

An Englishman witnessed an unnatural phenomenon:

I saw around us a circle of wolves with white teeth and lazy red tongues, strong limbs and shaggy hair…I don’t know how he got there, but I heard his voice Raised, with a tone of imperious command, looked toward the sound and saw him standing in the alley. As he swung his long arms…the pack backed away and backed further.

Later, in a tone full of aesthetic pleasure, the tamer announces: “Listen to them!” Children of the night, what music they make! Refers to howling wolves. 2022, 125^day A year of its wickedly explainable existence in dozens of adaptations, quoted in Bram Stoker’s Dracula Like its central figure, well preserved, like Shelley’s Prometheusnot bound.

Dracula Written in alphabetical form and in a dramatic style. From the real-life King Vlad III (affectionately known as Vlad the Impaler) to Eastern European mythology, extensive papers are used to trace the sources of inspiration for Stoker’s novels. However, origin stories tend to rank high when being dragged off Earth.

But beyond the horrors of the vampire and its undead, Dracula It is a serious political novel.

man/beast/thing

Jonathan Harker, the first time we meet Count Dracula, is through his eyes, yes what Earl is. Dracula has amazing strength and a peculiar way of locomotion – crawling like a lizard. The mirror does not reflect him. He controls animals. He’s physically repulsive, like a conventional monster:

So far I’ve been noticing the backs of his hands resting on his lap in the firelight, they look pretty white and fine. But seeing them up close now, I have to notice that they are rather rough – wide, with stubby fingers. Strange to say, there is hair in the center of the palm. The nails are long and thin, cut to a sharp point. I couldn’t help but shudder as the Count leaned over me, his hands touching me. It could be that his breath smelled bad, but a horrible nausea came over me that I couldn’t hide.

As host, he was both welcoming and intimidating: ‘Once again… welcome to my home. from freedom. Go safe; and leave some of the joy you bring’.

Dracula is something between an animal and a human. Stock suggests that it was his inner animality that made the animals respond. He can imitate a lizard and transform himself into a pack of mice or dogs. Shapeshifting is at the core of his “nature”, and like several other monsters, it scares us because of this polymorphism. He is both master and servant: in his castle, he cooks for Huck, waits on him, makes his beds, and drives the carriage. It’s also metamorphosis across classes and professions, and makes Dracula something socially uncategorizable. Then there’s the supernatural ability to hypnotize humans and the disturbing absence of death. These traits make Dracula something that breaks classification systems, his very stinky ontology defeating a category.

Human or beast, human or non-human, Dracula breaks categorical paradigms and is therefore a thing

At one point, when Van Helsing said: “To us, it’s still a child’s brain… Yet he wants to succeed, and a man centuries before him can wait and see before he becomes “the father of a new order of life.” “Children’s brain” connotes atavism and fuzzy evolutionary lines. Stoker may be echoing the racialized biological theory that Africans have primitive brains, and is therefore seen as as pure matter. Stereotyped, Africans are also believed to possess magic and thus beyond the comprehension of Europeans. Eastern European Dracula (The Land Beyond the Forest, “Trans-Sylvania”) is equated with the low race of human intelligence.

first mouthful of a new empire

Dracula’s goal was clear: to move to London. Harker’s firm searched for a suitable property in London on his behalf and secured a property in Purfleet, which closely resembled the Earl’s home in Transylvania:

In Purfleet, on a side road, I came across a place that seemed to need… . It was surrounded by a high wall, of ancient construction, of heavy stone… and the closed gate was of heavy old oak and iron, all rusted. It covers about twenty acres, and is surrounded by a solid stone wall…with many trees on it, making it somewhat shady, and a dark pond or lake, apparently fed by some spring, for the water is clear Yes, in a decent sized stream. The house is very large and dates from all periods, I should say, to the Middle Ages, as part of it is very thick stone, with only a few high windows, and is tightly fenced with iron bars… Houses nearby Rarely, one is a very large house that has only recently been added and formed into a private madhouse. However, it cannot be seen from the ground.

Later, Harker is shocked that he helped the vampire relocate:

This is the being I’m helping to transfer to London, and perhaps in the centuries to come, he might satisfy his thirst for blood among millions and create a new, ever-expanding half-demon Circle to strike the helpless.

This is the formation of a vampire empire.Dracula’s Trans-European Action is part of 19^day century globalization. For example, Huck’s boss, Peter Hawkins, is keen to facilitate Dracula’s acquisition of the property. Stock noted that the UK market was actively colluding with foreigners for profit. It is this transnational network that brings England to the brink of disaster when Stoker hints that the Earl will feast on a decaying England.

Dracula’s contamination of British women is often interpreted as a symbol of British corruption by foreigners

Victims Renfield and Lucy epitomize England’s fall under the hands and teeth of foreigners, so that after Lucy’s death, in London, “for many a long day, solitude will hang over our roofs with brooding wings” , as Dr. Seward said it. The transformation of Renfield and Lucy is emblematic of the mixing of races, and therefore of the deracialization of the British character. The theme of England’s degeneration embodies an anxiety about England’s multiculturalism, where different races will enter and multiply.

The clue to this multicultural invasion lies in Van Helsing’s line: Count Dracula just “follows[s] Awakening of raging Icelanders, demonic Huns, Slavs, Saxons, Magyars.

The critic Stephen Arata said of Dracula As an example of “reverse colonization”, British culture saw “its own imperial practices reflected in dire form”. That said, Stoker referred to Europe’s own history of invasion and colonization, which is now coming back.

Dracula and cultural identity

The count represents the inner but terrifying other of Europe. The clue to his otherness appears on the first page of the novel when Huck records:

I was afraid to be too far from the station as we were late and would try to leave at the right time if possible. My impression is that we are leaving the West and entering the East.

Dracula’s country is thus the “East” of Europe itself.

According to critic Burton Hatlen, Dracula represents all “dark, foreign (i.e., non-English) races”; all “dark”, foreign (i.e., non-bourgeois) races class. With his powers, Dracula is the exact opposite of the famous European rational mind. European science itself is called into question because, as van Helsing puts it, “It is our science’s fault that it wants to explain everything; and if it does not explain, then it says there is nothing to explain.

Dracula Represents Europe’s Inner, Terrible Other

As a manifestation of cultural identity, Dracula is the other that standard European whites fear. Van Helsing once said:

In fact, he must have been Dracula the Governor, who earned a reputation against the Turks… Armenius said that Dracula was a great and noble race, although sometimes considered by his contemporaries to deal with evil Children and grandchildren one.

Dracula highlights the complex and often violent history of European races and kingdoms:

There is scarcely a foot of earth in this whole region that has not been nourished by the blood of men, patriots, or invaders… Is it not surprising that we are a conquering race?

Dracula called the area “the vortex of the races of Europe”. His lands are described as antiquities, distinct from “civilized” England:

[The] The Slovaks were more brutal than the rest, wearing big cowboy hats, baggy dirty white trousers, white linen shirts and huge, heavy belts, almost a foot wide, all studded with brass studs. They wore high boots with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and bushy black beards. They are picturesque, but not flattering to look at. On stage, they’d be instantly put down like some old Eastern bandit band.

The comparison with the oriental bandits shows that the Slovaks were an unacceptable other to the rest of Europe.

victory in his eyes

But Dracula also sees himself as defending his own culture, as the critic Attila Virag puts it: As sole heir to a vanishing civilization, he is losing his own historical record even as he tries to learn from the British Empire Dominant imperial language and culture. “

Sexual politics abound in the novel, too: Huck attempts to seduce three vampire women, Homewood stabs Lucy through the heart with a stake, and Mina sucks blood from Dracula’s chest. British women are at the center of cultural and sexual politics: vampires seek out women to ‘infect’.Minaj declares she is now ‘unclean’, expresses threat to British women foreigners Dracula representative, lead Nina Auerbach writes in our vampires ourselves: “Even before Arthur celebrated their wedding night with a hammer and a stake, when her “body trembled, quivered and writhed wildly,” Dracula had baptized Lucy as his wife’s faithful.”

Sexual politics meets another: Dracula espouses a different paradigm reproduction itself, for his race.

Dracula pioneered a new form of reproduction, a vampire at the service of his race

dracula will complain in the animated film Hotel Transylvania He never said “blah blah blah” but whatever Stoker made him say exist Fiction has always stayed with us.

When we finish the novel, everything we can think of – because we Know He’ll be back – yes:

The last time I saw Count Dracula was when he kissed my hand. The red light of victory shone in his eyes…

(The author is a Professor of English at the University of Hyderabad and a UNESCO Chair in Fragility Studies, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society)