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Vampires are so ever-present in our society that they've practically become a part of the cultural zeitgeist of the 21st century. From Twilight to True Blood, The Vampire Diaries to the most recent NBC adaptation, Dracula, vampires are everywhere. But instead of looking at these modern representations, I want to jump back and look at the novel that started it all - Dracula by Bram Stoker. True, Stoker's novel wasn't the original vampire story; the vampire showed up in poetry from the 18th century before becoming more commonly recognized with the publication of John Polidori's The Vampyre, but it was Stoker's novel that really thrust the image of the vampire into the cultural conscious. Looking at Stoker's novel, I want to examine how it puts forth ideals about the women of the time in which it was written, that is, the Victorian Era.

Throughout the Victorian period, one of the predominant concerns was the role of women and the place they occupied in society. One novel from the Victorian era that represents varying types of women is Dracula. Two of the characters that feature prominently in Dracula are Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra. Other female characters worth bringing into the conversation about female representations are the three daughters of Dracula. The way in which Stoker represents females says much about the similarities of views between novels of the time and the Victorian society on the whole. By analyzing the female characters in Dracula, one can begin to understand Victorian views of women in society. This can be done by charting character development throughout the novel.

In Dracula, Stoker depicts some women as overtly sexual beings and depicts other women as pure and chaste beings. These depictions are represented through different characters. The characterization of the women who depict these varying representations are direct reflections of the ideal during the Victorian era. In the Victorian society, women that were pure and chaste were favored. Women that were nor pure and chaste were looked down upon and usually did not partake in societal events. Much like the ideas of Victorians, in Dracula the sexual and unchaste women are depicted as evil; the pure and chaste women are depicted as strong, heroic, and steadfast in relationships.

Mina is the perfect embodiment of the ideal Victorian woman. Throughout the novel, we see Mina as a very loyal and intelligent woman. In the traditional sense, Mina is what the Victorians would consider a perfect wife, or wife-to-be (with regard to the first half of the novel). While Jonathan is missing, trapped at Count Dracula's castle for months on end, Mina shows grave concern for him. One instance in which we see this is in chapter six when Mina is writing in her journal. She writes, "No news from Jonathan. I am getting quite uneasy about him..." (72). Not only does this one of many occasions display that she worries for Jonathan and his safety, but during his long duration away from her, Mina remains faithful to Jonathan. It could have been just as easy for her to find another man when she thought hope may be gone for Jonathan's safe return, but she remains faithful and does what she can to get Jonathan back. Also, when she and Jonathan are reunited once again, she takes care of him and remains at his side like a loyal fiance/wife. Not only does Mina represent traditional values of the Victorian woman because of the aforementioned reasons, but she also represents the values of the Victorian woman because she is not sexualized. By not making Mina a sexualized being, Stoker retains Mina's purity that is so highly favored in Victorian society.

Mina is an interesting character because of how Stoker chooses to represent her. As previously mentioned, Mina is a literary depiction of the traditional woman and traditional values in Victorian society. But along with the traditional woman, she also depicts the "new woman" of the time. Whereas Mina's traditional woman aspects are more so depicted through her feelings, emotions, and convictions, her "new woman" aspects are depicted through her intelligence. One way Mina is considered a "new woman" is through her job as a school teacher. While this is one way of viewing Mina's "new woman" characterization, the way it is depicted most throughout the novel is through her intelligence regarding modern technologies. We know her to be very proficient in shorthand, which not many people knew all that proficiently. We see that she can be determined and quite independent when need be, which are also characterizations of the "new woman." What Stoker essentially has Mina represent is the whole of the Victorian woman. She simultaneously is both the traditional Victorian woman and the "new woman" of the Victorian era. Considering the amount of importance this representation carries, it is no wonder Mina is presented as a good, wholesome, pure woman - the only female who keeps these traits as a constant throughout the novel.

If Mina is on one end of the spectrum, then the three daughters of Dracula are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. These three women are a representation of the Victorian belief toward women of impurity (i.e., a vastly negative, immoral, sinful idea toward women of this nature). Stoker is linking hyper-sexual females with vampires/vampirism, and vampires/vampirism is linked to evil. If A=B and B=C, then A=C. So, through association, Stoker is linking hyper-sexual females with evil. This is likely how Stoker, and many other Victorians, viewed the sexualized and unchaste women in society in Victorian England.

Aside from Victorians simply thinking the overly sexual and unchaste women in society are sinful and evil, they were also probably looked down upon because of the power they were able to exert over men. We see a case of this with the daughters of Dracula and Jonathan. In chapter three, talking about the three daughter of Dracula, Jonathan say, "I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina's eyes and cause her pain..." (42). What this passage illuminates is the power these type of women in society had over men. By Victorian standards, these sexual women had the power to victimize men and tempt them into evil. These unchaste women had the ability to challenge the stability and structure of the home, of the family. This would be another reason why impure women were outcasts in society and why Stoker would link sexual women with evil.

If Mina falls on one end of the spectrum and the daughters of Dracula on the other end, then Lucy falls somewhere in that ambiguous area of the spectrum between Mina and the daughters of Dracula. In Dracula, Lucy becomes a character that represents both the good and the evil Victorian woman. We see that Lucy has similar qualities to Mina. She has a similar innocence that Mina possesses. Lucy has three men yearning for her affections because of her pure qualities. Lucy, in the politest way possible, turns down two in order to be with the one man that she loves the most. It also speaks positively of Lucy that her best friend in the novel is Mina. As established earlier, Mina embodies all of the qualities that make for the ideal Victorian woman. Because of this, Mina would not keep female company that could possibly challenge or taint her pure and innocent being. Having Mina consider Lucy a suitable friend with similar qualities, this displays how Lucy represents ideal characteristics of the Victorian woman.

As the novel progresses, we begin to see Lucy's ideal Victorian woman character become blurred until it has completely disappeared altogether. While Lucy does possess similar qualities to Mina, there is a striking difference that we notice between the two. Lucy, unlike Mina, is presented as somewhat sexual. There is definitely emphasis put on Lucy's beauty, which is not the case with Mina. It is not an overt sexualization like that of the daughters of Dracula, but apparent nonetheless. (This could have perhaps been foreshadowing what will happen to Lucy.) Dracula gets to Lucy and turns her into an extremely sexual vampire. Lucy ends up being described by the quote, "The sweetness was turned to ... heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness" (187). The only way to return Lucy to her former sweet self in death is by stabbing a stake through her heart. Lucy shows characteristics of both the good Victorian woman and the impure, hyper-sexual Victorian woman. By essentially giving Lucy two personalities in the novel, Stoker is showing the ease, ability, and potential in which the ideal Victorian woman can be converted into the evil, unchaste, impure, sexual woman of Victorian society.

Dracula, in one aspect, is a novel about the types of Victorian women and the representation of them in Victorian English society. Through examination of Mina, Lucy, and the daughters of Dracula, we begin to see how Stoker and other Victorians view what they considered to be the ideal Victorian woman. The representation of Mina shows the ideal Victorian woman through purity and intelligence. The three daughters of Dracula represent the evil and social stigma surrounding the impure and hyper-sexual woman in Victorian society. Lucy represents the possibilities for women in Victorian society to go from pure to impure. For all of its greatness in character development, storytelling, concept, etc., Stoker has also written a novel that served as a timely social commentary on women during the Victorian Era.

What do you think? .

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Ideals of the Victorian Woman as Depicted in 'Dracula'

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Vampires are so ever-present in our society that they've practically become a part of the cultural zeitgeist of the 21st century. From Twilight to True Blood, The Vampire Diaries to the most recent NBC adaptation, Dracula, vampires are everywhere.

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'THERE IS no actress on earth who will not testify that Williams created the best women characters in the modern theatre,' wrote Gore Vidal after Tennessee Williams' death in 1983. He also said: 'It is widely believed that since Tennessee Williams liked to have sex with men (true), he hated women (untrue); as a result his women characters are thought to be malicious creatures, designed to subvert and destroy godly straightness.' With the opening tomorrow of Sweet Bird of Youth opens at the National, the debate will no doubt reopen.

The critical assault on Williams began in the Sixties. Howard Taubman, drama critic of the New York Times, fired the first cannon, accusing Williams of portraying women as destroyers and sex maniacs. They were, said Taubman, homosexuals in disguise. Six years later the paper's new critic Stanley Kauffman was still castigating Williams' 'viciousness towards women, the lurid violence . . . (and) the transvestite sexual exhibitionism'.

Yet actresses have leapt to play his roles. With their huge emotional range and their emphasis on disguise and exposure, they present unique opportunities. Williams' women, more than those of any other 20th-century dramatist, only truly exist in performance. That they are merely feminised men has been disproved time and again. Unlike critics, actresses are never surprised by his admission that 'I have had many close relationships with men which were without any sexual connotations, God knows. But I have found them less deeply satisfying than those I have had with a few women.' Here, four actresses tell David Benedict the inside story.

LOIS WEAVER

I've always been a little in love with Tennessee Williams. We were both Southern Belles, we both had the same training about what it means to be feminine, and shared a fading, overly romantic view of the South. After he died, I felt I had to keep his memory alive and I drank Jack Daniels every day. This might be prejudice, but I see a passion and heat in him that I don't see in other writers. People like Albee are too Northern and sophisticated. Williams' plays are brutal but there's beauty within them which will make them survive. The plays are smelly and of the South. There's a sense of decay about them, from which this flowery poetry springs forth.

Williams understood women. He empathised. He had a feminine nature. He understood loss and longing and displacement in a society that had no regard for women. He identified as a gay man, it was part of his vision.

The situations of the women were devastating. They were the fighters. It's the men who are static and objectified. His women struggled within themselves and the circumstances around them.

I remember reading Summer and Smoke and recognising the sense of missing out, the longing. Finding out about my own desire. It crops up all the time in his work. The conflict between body and soul. I also like the short plays. The women in them are incredibly idiosyncratic.

Although they are often brutalised by the situation, I think of the women as the cats, the fighters. Stella loves sex and she loves it with Stanley. That means she has to put up with a lot. That doesn't make her a victim, it's something she wanted. It's so rare to see plays where women express their desires. It doesn't matter whether they are fulfilled or frustrated, it's never invisible. Their desire drives them. That was really shocking. Women who wanted sex and had their own desires.

Lois Weaver directed and played Stella in 'Belle Reprieve', a radical re-working of 'A Streetcar Named Desire' which toured Britain and the USA

SHEILA GISH

I played Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire for about seven months. That was quite long enough. When you're not on in that play, you're off singing in the bathroom] His roles are physically and emotionally wrecking.

He changed my acting. It freed me. Before that, I was a very English actor. It has informed everything else I've done. I met him when I did Vieux Carre. He was very ill and I was very young. He said, 'You must play Blanche one day,' adding, 'You must remember, Blanche is a very witty woman.' When we did it, we played the first two acts to more laughs than many a so-called comedy.

The women are survivors. If Blanche weren't a survior she would have been dead before the play began. She has come to Stella's to live, to survive. It may be the last post, but she hasn't slashed her wrists. There's received opinion that she's a nymphomaniac. Not true. That she's a prostitute. Not true. Olivier never really liked the play. He only did it because Vivien Leigh was desperate to do it. It's nonsense to suggest that his women are just gay men. Men and women are far more similar in our sexuality than we are brought up to believe.

The women's parts in his plays are the best parts. That's so unusual. We get used to it being the other way round and having to flesh roles out. Men find it rather difficult to play what are seen as subsidiary roles. John Garfield was the original casting for Stanley, but he turned it down, so then Brando took it.

I think Streetcar is his greatest play and Blanche is the single greatest part ever written for an actress. It's easy to get involved in the liquor, the sex, the lurid quality, but the thing that makes Blanche such a true heroine is her spirituality. It's what makes her tragic. Without it she'd just be tiresome. In the film, they took all of that away. So come the second half of the film, you really like Stanley a lot. You sit there thinking, 'Go on, get her out of there.'

Sheila Gish played Blanche at the Greenwich Theatre and at the Mermaid

CLARE HIGGINS

The character of the Princess in Sweet Bird of Youth is Tennessee Williams in drag. He has made her a woman, but as he said himself, 'I've made every speech that the Princess has made, and then some.' But then, I've met women who are Tennessee Williams in drag. But these characters are women.

He doesn't separate men and women in the way most playwrights do. He affords them the same respect and dignity. Normally when I'm in a play, as a woman I think I'm always in drag, wearing high heels and make-up; it's a given before I've even started. Tennessee is much more honest: there you are, it's drag. It's a survival mechanism.

What's really refreshing about his women is that they may be victims of circumstance, but they make choices. Right or wrong, doesn't matter. At the end, Princess leaves knowing exactly what will happen to Chance. She chooses stardom over humanity. Whether you agree with it or not, that's a pretty profound choice. His homosexuality makes him non-judgemental about his women. Most straight male writers adapt women to a set of circumstances, but he gives them a much broader range. Circumstance is made to bend to the women, who often make the final move.

The Princess is almost two people, the great big movie star and this person who is utterly terrified of life. He doesn't judge either of them. He's not afraid of them. Blanche and Princess are raised to cult status because they come out of a deep reality. People find that very difficult to address. Here's a homosexual man who gets into the mind of both genders so wonderfully and with no fear. He's also not afraid of sex.

With Tennessee Williams you're either on the bus or off the bus. You can't be climbing up the stairs ever so slowly. You can't be twee about acting this stuff because you're nervous about what it says to you. If you try and hide, you'll be found out.

Clare Higgins opens tomorrow in 'Sweet Bird of Youth' at the National Theatre

FRANCES BARBER

I always think this business about him having access to the feminine side of his nature 'cos he was gay is wrong. It's much too simple.

He was asked once what he regarded as the most wicked thing he'd ever done. 'That I forgot to buy my sister a birthday present one year.' I genuinely believe it, his guilt and remorse. That may be an example of his 'feminine side', and if so, maybe that's why women are so attracted to his writing. There's something elliptical and enigmatic about him. But he's much more complicated and more difficult to pin down than just saying it's to do with him being gay.

He also said, 'Nothing human disgusts me unless it's unkind, violent.' The world is unkind but his central characters are not.

Many of his women commit violence to themselves and so many actresses are excited by the possibilities of this. We tend to turn upon ourselves and implode when unhappy. Williams understood that in an uncanny way. They humiliate themselves, like Blanche in front of Stanley (in A Streetcar Named Desire), and when it all goes wrong, they take a lot of pills and sit and drink. There's a terrific sense of inevitability. It's fatalistic, but at the same time self-induced. He charts them moment by moment. You watch them drink and you're thinking, 'Don't] Don't]' They prostrate themselves on the altar of soul- searching, and you know it's all going to go horribly wrong.

A great deal of religion permeates his work. Forcefully so in Summer and Smoke. So many of his characters have such large souls. Without spirit, experience is animalistic. The world is so shitty that if you are not unkind, then inevitably you are going to go mad, like his sister Rose, or else hit the bottle. That's so enticing to act - genuine human emotions. His women continue in the face of hell. The men won't.

Frances Barber played Alma in 'Summer and Smoke' at the Leicester Haymarket and Maxine in 'Night of the Iguana' at the National Theatre

(Photograph omitted)

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THEATRE / Tennessee Williams and his women

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'THERE IS no actress on earth who will not testify that Williams created the best women characters in the modern theatre,' wrote Gore Vidal after Tennessee Williams' death in 1983.

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A Level Literature & Language Past Paper Qs

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Key scenes or parts which the author left out:
Conversations between Hassan and his father about Amir and Baba. Think about the important conversations we DON’T hear about such as after the rape, or the decision to leave.
Conversations between Rahim Khan and Baba about Amir and Hassan, which we don’t hear, and Baba’s marriage.
The story of Baba and his first wife, who died in childbirth.
Soraya’s “disgrace”, more details about why she is viewed as a “fallen” woman by the Afghani community.
Sohrab’s early life in the orphanage

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Dracula: vampires, perversity and Victorian anxieties

The vampire is a complicated creature: caught between life and death, at once alluring and horrifying. Greg Buzwell considers the way the novel reflects the fears that haunted late 19th-century society - fears of immigration, sexual promiscuity and moral degeneration.

The vampire has always been a contradictory figure: on the one hand a repellent blood-sucking creature crawling from the grave, and, on the other, a strangely alluring representation of nocturnal glamour and potent sexuality. The very concept of vampirism horrifies and fascinates in seemingly equal measure, and much of this perverse duality stems from the most famous vampire novel of them all - Bram Stoker's Dracula, first published in 1897.

First edition of Dracula

Front cover to the first edition of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, 1897. Yellow was synonymous with the more adventurous and transgressive elements of the Victorian fin de siècle - it was the colour of bruising and decay.

Poster promoting the 1958 film adaptation of Dracula

Poster advertising the 1958 film version of Dracula.

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Anxiety and the vampire in late-Victorian Britain

Dracula - described by a reviewer in the 26 June 1897 edition of Punch as 'the very weirdest of weird tales' - presents a series of contrasts and clashes between old traditions and new ideas. Stoker uses the figure of the vampire as thinly-veiled shorthand for many of the fears that haunted the Victorian fin de siècle. Throughout the novel, scientific rationality is set against folklore and superstition; old Europe is set against modern London; and traditional notions of civilised restraint and duty are threatened at every turn by the spread of corruption and wanton depravity.

Dracula's forays into London, for example, and his ability to move unnoticed through the crowded streets while carrying the potential to afflict all in his path with the stain of vampirism, play upon late-Victorian fears of untrammelled immigration. The latter was feared as leading to increased levels of crime and the rise of ghetto communities. Dracula creates several lairs in the metropolis, including one in Chicksand Street, Whitechapel - an area notorious for the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 - and one in Bermondsey, the location of Jacob's Island - the low-life rookery immortalised by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist. The Ripper murders had created a storm of hysteria in the press with the local Jewish community bearing the brunt of the outbursts. The secretive nature of the Jewish ghetto was also cited as a reason why the murders were never solved, with the Jews seen as having closed ranks around one of their own number who had committed the crimes. Such fears, which Dracula mirrors very closely, ultimately lay behind the introduction of The Aliens Act of 1905, which was put in place largely to stem immigration from Eastern Europe.

Manuscript of Bram Stoker's Dracula playscript

On this page Count Dracula discusses his desire to visit London, a city in which he would be regarded as a 'stranger'. From Bram Stoker's manuscript of the theatre version of Dracula, 1897.

'Seventh Ripper murder' from the Illustrated Police News

Newspaper coverage of the seventh Jack the Ripper murder in Whitechapel, 1888. In Dracula, the post-Jack-the-Ripper urban environment is seen as an area where sensibilities of control are neutralised, and where free-thinking women lack the moral steadfastness to resist evil.

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The act of vampirism itself, with its notion of tainted blood, suggests the fear of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and, more generally, the fear of physical and moral decay that was believed by many commentators to be afflicting society. Towards the end of the book the character of Mina, who stands for everything Stoker sees as morally upright and respectable, observes 'The Count is a criminal, and of criminal type, Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him' (ch. 25). The Hungarian social critic Max Nordau's influential book Degeneration, an impassioned attack on what he regarded as the prevalent air of hysteria and moral decline in Western Europe, had been translated into English in 1895. Degeneration was dedicated to the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso whose work used a similar pseudo-Darwinian language to analyse the psychology of the criminal mind. In an era noted for its foppish dandies, its pleasure-seeking aesthetes and the rise and fall of brilliantly flamboyant figures such as Oscar Wilde, Stoker is deliberately aligning Count Dracula with everything 'respectable' late-Victorian society would have regarded as morally corrupting, criminal and perverse.

Sex and the Vampire

Victorian literature tends to present the vampire myth as a sexual allegory in which English female virtue is menaced by foreign predators. For example Sheridan Le Fanu's short story 'Carmilla' (1872) places the virtuous English girl Laura at the mercy of the predatory East European vampire of the title. Dracula follows a similar pattern, with the Count's attentions focused in particular on Mina, a woman who selflessly (and symbolically) spends her honeymoon nursing her sick husband in a convent, and the beautiful Lucy Westenra, who is, by contrast, dangerously modern in her ways. All women, though, are seemingly at risk: as the Count suggests when he pointedly taunts Professor Van Helsing and his followers by saying 'Your girls that you all love are mine already' (ch. 23). During the course of the book Dracula attacks both Mina and Lucy; but Mina, due to the traditional Victorian qualities of determination and loyalty towards her husband is able to resist his advances. The rather more free-spirited Lucy is not so lucky.

Promotional poster for the 1931 film version of Dracula depicting Dracula's numerous female victims ensnared in a web.

Copyright: Allstar Picture Library

Some critics have argued that Stoker uses the character of Lucy to attack the concept of the New Woman - a term coined towards the end of the Victorian era to describe women who were taking advantage of newly available educational and employment opportunities to break free from the intellectual and social restraints imposed upon them by a male-dominated society. Those who took a hostile attitude towards the New Woman saw her either as a mannish intellectual or, going to the opposite extreme, an over-sexed vamp. Stoker certainly portrays Lucy as racily 'forward' in her desires. At one point Lucy receives three proposals of marriage on the same day and comments, as she regrets having to turn down two of the proposals: 'Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?' (ch. 5). Lucy's moral weakness allows Dracula to prey repeatedly upon her during the night, and only a series of desperate blood transfusions from each of her former suitors - a sickly symbolic echo of Lucy's desire for three husbands (and thus three lovers) - delay, for a while, the inevitable. As Lucy joins the ranks of the 'undead' she herself becomes a vampire, leaving her tomb by night to feed upon a succession of defenceless children in a parodic distortion of the Victorian ideal of maternal femininity. When confronted by Van Helsing after one such raid, Lucy behaves in a manner that would have been viewed as an affront to both femininity and motherhood: 'With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone' (ch. 16). For Stoker, Lucy's decline from the Victorian feminine ideal to the perceived selfish unnaturalness of the New Woman is complete.

Promotion for the film adaptation of Dracula starring Helen Chandler and Bela Lugosi

Promotional still from the 1931 film version of Dracula; the scene shows Dracula at the point of attacking Lucy. The two women in Dracula (1897), Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray, embody two different vews of womanhood, and meet very different fates.

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Keynotes, a collection of short stories

Keynotes (1893) by George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne) is a collection of short stories seen at the time as typical of the 'new woman' sensibility. In the stories women manage their relationships with other women in a way that excludes patriarchal power structures.

Dracula and Modernity

Bram Stoker includes numerous references to the very latest ideas and inventions in his novel. Dr Seward keeps his diary using a phonograph which was a relatively new and expensive piece of technology in 1897; similarly, references to Kodak cameras, portable typewriters, telegrams being sent across Europe and the blood transfusions carried out by Professor Van Helsing all reflect the rapid technological changes taking place in the late-Victorian period. In addition, as already shown in the earlier mention of Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso, the characters in the novel frequently refer to contemporary theories in medicine and psychology.

The entire novel is presented in the form of letters, diaries and newspaper cuttings: so the scientific method of observing and recording information is integral to both the structure of the book itself, and to the attempts of Van Helsing and his friends to destroy Dracula. Set against this atmosphere of scientific advance, however, are the intangible concepts of religious faith and the supernatural. Van Helsing may use blood transfusions in an attempt to keep Lucy alive, but he also resorts to garlic flowers and crucifixes to hold the vampire at bay. Throughout the novel there is a sense that Dracula, with his ability to pass through keyholes like a mist and his affinity with bats, rats and wolves, represents the inexplicable; an alien force which science on its own cannot defeat. Early in the novel Jonathan Harker observes the Count climbing lizard-like down the outside of the castle walls. Unsurprisingly the sight shakes him to the core. Returning to his room he writes '... in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is the nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have powers of their own which mere "modernity" cannot kill' (ch. 3). Dracula suggests modernity and science may have their limits and, faced with the supernatural figure of the Count, Harker fears such limits may have been reached.

Greg Buzwell is Curator of Contemporary Literary Archives at the British Library. He has co-curated three major exhibitions for the Library - Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination; Shakespeare in Ten Acts and Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty. His research focuses primarily on the Gothic literature of the Victorian fin de siècle. He has also edited and introduced collections of supernatural tales by authors including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edgar Allan Poe and Walter de la Mare.

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Dracula: the Victorian vampire | The British Library

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The vampire is a complicated creature: caught between life and death, at once alluring and horrifying. Reflecting on the social, political and sexual anxieties of the period, Greg Buzwell considers the significance of the vampire for Victorian readers of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

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The Kite Runner progresses through much of the historical turmoil of contemporary Afghanistan, starting with King Zahir Shah, who was overthrown by his cousin Daoud Khan in 1973. The communist party then took power in 1978, which led to The Soviet War involving Russian forces and US-backed mujahideen guerillas. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the country became the Islamic State of Afghanistan, but violent infighting between parties continued. In 1996 the Taliban, an ultra-conservative Islamic group, took control of the country and began imposing a strict and violent religious rule. The Kite Runner ends soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center by al-Qaeda terrorists, the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the fall of the Taliban.

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The Kite Runner progresses through much of the historical turmoil of contemporary Afghanistan, starting with King Zahir Shah, who was overthrown by his cousin Daoud Khan in 1973. The communist party then took power in 1978, which led to The Soviet War involving Russian forces and US-backed mujahideen guerillas.

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Imagined Worlds - The essentials - Essay Prep

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A Streetcar Named Desire - Blanche Tragic Hero

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Many of us like nothing more than getting our teeth into a great novel. But in the case of Irish author Bram Stoker, it was to lead to one of fiction's most enduring characters - Dracula.

Stoker's connections with the Yorkshire town of Whitby have been well documented.

But it was his time in the Aberdeenshire village of Cruden Bay - or Port Erroll as it was known in his day - which appears to have unlocked his creative genius.

Stoker had been sitting on his definitive work for years while working as business manager for the Lyceum Theatre in London before he headed to Cruden Bay for a holiday in 1893.

He already had the plot and characters figured out - but hadn't made a start on the writing.

That was all to change after he started visiting the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in Cruden Bay.

It was there, in room number eight, that the first few chapters of the book - which was finally published in 1897 - were written.

Cruden Bay resident Mike Shepherd, who is a member of the Port Erroll Heritage Group, is writing a book on Bram Stoker's links to the village, where the author was to spend most summers for the best part of 20 years until his death in 1912.

Based on his research from public sources and local archives, Shepherd believes that the village "nurtured" Dracula by giving Stoker the space, time and atmosphere to bring the character to life.

"As early as 1890, he already had the plot and characters worked out but what I think happened is that he wanted to write Dracula as a popular book," says Shepherd.

"But he was worried about the reputational issues in producing what was for its time increasing the horror ratchet of novels.

"So basically he was blocked for several years, in my opinion, and that changed when he came to Cruden Bay.

"Port Erroll fired up the boiler - it was the spark that got him going."

But there were other factors at work as Stoker sat down to bring the character of Dracula to life, according to Shepherd.

"What Stoker discovered in the village was an ambience of the supernatural," he says.

"The local people here - as common at the time - were deeply religious but they also had a large amount of superstitions and traditions that had absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.

"For example, when people were cooking they would stir their pots in the direction of the sun. To stir anti-clockwise would be asking for trouble - probably induce food poisoning.

"And at Halloween they would march around the bonfire in the direction of the sun - they wouldn't go the other way."

Accounts from Stoker's family - including his son Noel who was present in Cruden Bay in 1895 - suggest that Stoker immersed himself in the main character of his most famous novel while he was in Aberdeenshire.

Shepherd explains: "There is some evidence from his family that he decided to get into the mindset of Count Dracula to help him to write the novel.

"It drove his family absolutely bonkers because he started behaving very strangely.

"He withdrew from the rest of his family and if he got interrupted while he was thinking out his book, he'd get very annoyed.

"In fact, he spent most of his time walking up and down Cruden Bay beach, or sitting on isolated rocks on the seashore while writing the book.

"It is a two-mile long crescent-shaped beach and, as he wrote in a later novel The Mystery of the Sea, he thought it resembled a mouth with the rocky headlines at either end looking like teeth.

"He also mentioned that some of the rocks looked like fangs."

Stoker's decision to start on his gothic horror classic may also have been fired by Slains Castle, which overlooks the North Sea.

Shepherd explains: "I think Slains Castle, with its dramatic cliff-top setting, provided him with a degree of inspiration while he was thinking out his novel here.

"There is some evidence that Bram Stoker used the floor plans of Slains to get him going while he was writing his book.

"There's a very distinctive room that still survives in the ruins - the octagonal room. It is present in the novel, when Jonathan Harker arrives at Castle Dracula."

Kilmarnock Arms Hotel owner Lucy Taylor says local weather conditions may also have helped to inspire Stoker during his stays at the hotel.

She explains: "When the haar [cold sea fog] rolls across the front of the hotel it casts a spooky air, and we could imagine Bram Stoker sitting in his bay window looking out and picturing Dracula himself arriving in a cloak of dark mist."

Bram Stoker's Cruden Bay connections have been acknowledged by his estate.

His great-grand nephew, Dacre Stoker, was giving a lecture on his famous ancestor at the Kilmarnock Arms on Monday.

He told BBC Scotland: "Cruden Bay has been on my list of 'Bram Stoker places to visit' for a few years.

"I feel a need to be there to absorb the atmosphere and hopefully experience similar feelings of peace, relaxation, creativity, as Bram did during his many summers there."

Dacre Stoker's visit is being welcomed by local residents.

Shepherd says: "It is remarkable that of all the places Bram Stoker could have chosen to write his books, he chose an Aberdeenshire fishing village more than 500 miles form his London home.

"I believe Bram Stoker found his spiritual home in Cruden Bay and anchored his soul here."

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The village that brought Dracula to life

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Many of us like nothing more than getting our teeth into a great novel. But in the case of Irish author Bram Stoker, it was to lead to one of fiction's most enduring characters - Dracula. Stoker's connections with the Yorkshire town of Whitby have been well documented.

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When Bram Stoker was researching his world-famous novel Dracula one of his biggest influences was a woman who was born into a wealthy family in the Lanarkshire town of Airdrie.

One of the UK's leading literary institutions has establish how Stoker had a copy of Emily Gerard's book on Transylvanian folklore and took notes while researching his own novel.

Gerard's The Land Beyond the Forest is credited with introducing Stoker to the concept of "nosferatu", a vampire-like creature who sucks the blood of innocent victims.

She wrote her book after spending two years in the mid-1880s in Romania with her husband, who was posted there as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army.

In her book, she wrote: " More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Romanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell.
"Every person killed by a nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent persons till the spirit has been exorcised by opening the grave of the suspected person, and either driving a stake through the corpse or in very obstinate cases of vampirism it is recommended to cut off the head, and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic."
A decade later in 1897, Stoker published Dracula, based on reading on the subject he had done in the previous seven years.

Four hundred miles away from Airdrie, the London Library has just discovered how Stoker researched his project.

Stoker was a library member and they have found 25 books he used as reference material.

Many have notes in the margin in his own hand plus dog-earred pages for finding relevant passages.

According to the London Library's Philip Spedding, Emily Gerard was one of Stoker's main two sources.

In fact, the Irish author's main reference book "The Land Beyond the Forest" was one he actually owned rather than having to borrow from the library.

Mr Spedding says Stoker's son gifted his father's copy of Gerard's book to the library in 1935.

It was on a list of books cited as sources for Stoker's work.

The list led to a recent trawl of the library shelves.

According to Mr Spedding, the "hairs on the back of my neck" stood up when he found the very books Stoker had used in the library, complete with the exact markings he had made in his notes.

"You think 'these are the books that encouraged this man to write one of the most remarkable books in the English language'," he says.

"Certainly one of the most remarkable characters, that has somehow chimed with us ever since he wrote it."

Back in Airdrie, do local people know anything about Emily Gerard's role in inspiring the Dracula legend as created by Bram Stoker?

Well, at least one person does.

Chris McKay has taken on the role of graveyard historian for St Joseph's Cemetery.

The ground it lies on belonged to Emily's father, Archibald Gerard, a wealthy landowner in the Rochsoles area who rented it as a burial ground for St Margaret's Church.

A number of Gerards are buried in the cemetery including Archibald's son General Sir Montagu Gerard, Emily's brother.

Mr McKay says Emily's brothers were accomplished and interesting men but he was astonished to find her Dracula connection.

He says: "When I speak to people and tell them about my research and I tell them about Emily Gerard coining this phrase they can't believe it was someone from Airdrie.

"I was stunned to find out myself."

In Aberdeenshire the ruined Slains Castle at Cruden Bay is thought to be a main inspiration for Bram Stoker's dramatic setting of Dracula.

And while Emily Gerard left Scotland for a life in Central Europe and was buried in Vienna, we can still perhaps add St Joseph's cemetery in Airdrie alongside it on that spooky list.

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The Scottish writer who inspired Dracula

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When Bram Stoker was researching his world-famous novel Dracula one of his biggest influences was a woman who was born into a wealthy family in the Lanarkshire town of Airdrie. One of the UK's leading literary institutions has establish how Stoker had a copy of Emily Gerard's book on Transylvanian folklore and took notes while researching his own novel.

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Speech & Pragmatics (you only need bits of this)

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Speech & Pragmatics (you only need bits of this)

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Multiple Critical Interpretations of Streetcar

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Multiple Critical Interpretations of Streetcar

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A Streetcar Named Desire: A Level Bite Size Revision Facts

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Bite size Revisions Facts for A Streetcar Named Desire: A Level with York Notes Revision Cards

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Link to Streetcar essay on language of Poetic Realism

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Link to Streetcar essay on language of Poetic Realism

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History of Theatre | Ancient Greece to Modern Day

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Key Quotes - as requested! These quotes are as good as any others - but only valuable IF you can remember them and analyse them in detail using literary and linguistic methods and terms.

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Key Quotes - as requested! These quotes are as good as any others - but only valuable IF you can remember them and analyse them in detail using literary and linguistic methods and terms.

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A Vampire in the mirror- the sexuality of dracula.docx

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Key Quotes & Explanations

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"As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, i could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal."

Chapter: 2, Page Number: 19
Explanation: This quote was said by Jonathan Harker in his journal. It was written towards the beginning of the novel, when Jonathan just entered the castle and has not yet been horrified by the count. In this account, the count touched Jonathan and Jonathan could sense that something was off, shown by him shuddering and feeling nausea. The theme of good vs evil is evident through the Jonathan's reaction. Dracula is characterized as an evil character, while Jonathan Harker is described as being good, although at this point we don't know for sure if Dracula is evil. The interaction between the two characters can confirm our suspicion. Since we know Jonathan is a protagonist, when he shudders at the touch of Dracula, we can tell that there is some repellent. The good is repelling evil, such as the same poles of a magnet would repel each other. Also, Jonathan Harker feels nausea and shudders, characteristics that are generally associated with bad things.

"When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demonaic fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away, and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever there."

Chapter: 2, Page Number: 26
Explanation: This quote is part of Jonathan Harker's journal. It was written about when Jonathan cut himself and Dracula attempted to attack him and drink his blood. The crucifix saved Jonathan from this. The theme of good vs. evil is demonstrated in this quote because of Dracula's reaction to the crucifix. The crucifix is a holy symbol, representing good, while Dracula represents evil. Dracula seems to be repelled by the crucifix, showing that he is evil, because evil things cannot touch the crucifix. Also, we see that the good overpowers the evil, as the crucifix (good) overpowers Dracula (evil) by repelling him, not the other way around. This could foreshadow the end of the book as we can tell that good will triumph over evil.

"At least God's mercy is better than that of these monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. at its foot a man may sleep - as a man. Goodby all Mina."

Chapter: 4, Page Number: 54
Explanation: This quote is said by Jonathan Harker when he is stuck in Dracula's castle. At this point, he is terrified of what will become of him. He is writing to Mina as a part of his journal. In this quote, he directly compares God to monsters. God is a symbol for good and the monsters represent evil. By comparing the two, he says that evil is not merciful and he is scared for his life, leading to his farewell to his soon to be wife, Mina. The theme of Good vs. Evil is in this quote because the two sides are being compared with respect to the mercy they give.

"the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white. The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately; but it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. what is was, whether man or beast, i could not tell"

Chapter: 8, Page Number: 93
Explanation: This quote is from the journal of Mina who is writing about Lucy's sleepwalking. In this scene, Lucy has sleep walked to a cemetery and Mina finds her in a chair with something dark behind her. There is defiant good vs. evil shown here. The symbolism of colors plays a role by contrasting good vs. evil. The dark figure (Dracula) represents evil, while the white figure (Lucy) represents goodness and purity. Also, Mina describes the dark figure as possibly being a beast, which has a negative connotation associated with things of evil and darkness. Here, it seems as though the evil is taking over the good, which leaves the reader in suspense as to what the end result will be. Will evil actually triumph over good? Or maybe Lucy is not the innocent and good character we think of her to be.

"I stayed, and in the dimness of the night i say it-him! god forgive me, but the mate was right to jump overboard. it was better to die like a man; to die like a sailor in blue water on man can object."

Chapter: 7, Page Number: 87
Explanation: This is a quote from the captain's journal, who documented his trip from the time he was aware of suspicious behavior on his boat. It was written when he was the only member of the crew left on board the ship. Although he did not know where his crew went, he had reports of there being a strange man on board, one who is not in the crew. As a reader, we know that Dracula is the strange man on the boat, both because of the events leading up to this scene and because of the events that happened on the boat. We see the weather element in this quote, with it happening at night. Nighttime is a symbol for evil, because bad things happen in the dark. Also, we see that a good and nobel character, the captain, was afraid of the dark figure. He even says that his mate was right to jump off the ship, suggesting that dying from the figure would be worse than dying in the ocean. This quote demonstrated the struggle between good and evil and how someone good may not have the best short term outcome.

"The world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it."

Chapter: 17, Page Number: 225
Explanation: This is a quote from Mina's journal towards the end of the novel. It was written when Mina was translating Seward's journal. The quote is what Mina thought of Seward, characterizing him as a good character. In the quote, the monsters represent the evil. The theme good vs. evil is represented in this quote by the direct comparison between good and evil. She says that there is good and evil coexisting together in the world and even thought in her mind, things are probably looking like evil has one, she can recognize that there is some good. Previously, her friend had died due to an evil force (Dracula) and Jonathan Harker has been terrorized by the same person, so instinctively, it is easy for her thing that things are against her and there is night and that everyone is evil. By sitting with her while she finished her work, Seward proved himself to be a good character and a reminder to Mina that there are also good people, which also gives her a sense of hope that good might triumph over evil.

"The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness."

Chapter: 16, Page Number: 211
Explanation: This quote was from Dr. Seward's diary and was after the transformation of Lucy from human to vampire. He described her as being beautiful, but empty. He mentions how this is not the girl he fell in love with, as Dr. Seward was one of Lucy's potential husbands. Here, we see a shift between good vs evil. In the beginning, we thought of Lucy as being innocent and almost perfect. She was an ideal woman in the Victorian society, but once she is transformed into a vampire, her characterization shifts to bad attributed such as having "heartless cruelty". The battle between good and evil still prevails and again, it seems that evil has taken over. Although it may seem like there might be a chain reaction and the number of vampires could multiply, we finally see good starting to take over. Lucy is killed as soon as she is thought to have been a threat. Van Helsing and his crew (the good) kill Lucy to prevent the spread, which begins the shift in power between good vs evil. Before, evil seemed to have won, with no losses and the gain from Lucy's conversion. Now, we see that good is starting to become more prominent with the death of Lucy.

"Now God be thanked that all has not been in vain! See! the snow is not more stainless than her forehead! The curse has passed away!"

Chapter: 27, Page Number: 379
Explanation: This quote is at the very end of the novel after Dracula was killed. Unfortunately, this brought along a death on the good side. Quincey Morris was the man who died in the fight to kill Dracula and the quote above was his last words. This represents Quincey's devotion to riotousness, but also acts as a sort of victory speech for the death of Dracula. He says that the curse of evil is gone and good has won, ending the battle between good and evil. Like most other good vs. evil stories, the good comes out on top in the end, even if it did take the life of a good man.

"Had I not seen the repose in the first place, and the gladness that stole over it just ere the final dissolution came, as realization that the soul had been won, I could not have gone further with my butchery."

Chapter: 27, Page Number: 373
Explanation: This quote is about the killing of Dracula and what he looks like when he is dead, as described by Jonathan Harker. This quote is interesting because it makes us feel bad for the Dracula. The quote says that his dead face showed that he was happy that his soul was saved, suggesting that what when he was evil, he was soulless. This makes us feel sympathy for Dracula because he may not have been a bad person and didn't want to be evil. His soul may be pure. In this case, good vs. evil is shown through the character Dracula alone. Is Dracula evil or is he actually good? When he died, he was happy because he could finally stop being evil, which would make him a good character. It is possible that Dracula is actually a good character who was turned evil when he lost his soul. The character Dracula seems to exhibit the same battle followed in the novel. In the beginning, good was on top of evil, which would be the past, where Dracula was actually good. In the middle of the novel, we begin to see evil creep over and begin to spread its reign, just as the character Dracula changed into evil. In the end, we see good triumph over evil in both the character and the novel. I believe that Dracula wanted it this way. I think he wanted to be cured of his evil and restored to being pure, as he was happy at the end when he was killed and his soul was returned.

"so thin and pale and weak-looking. all the resolution has gone out of his dear eyes, and that quiet dignity which i told you was in his faace has vanished"

Chapter: 9, Page Number: 106
Explanation: This is when Jonathan Harker arrived home from his terrifying experience in Dracula's castle. He is in shock and Mina describes him in her journal in the quote above. Good (Jonathan) has just faced evil (Dracula) and lost. At this point in the novel, we start to see the shift from good rule to evil rule. In this quote, good is described as being weak and without dignity after a battle with evil.

"Poor lucy! gone, gone, never to return to us! and poor, poor arthur, to have lost such sweetness out of his life! god help us all to bear our troubles."

Chapter: 13, Page Number: 173
Explanation: This quote is from Mina's diary shortly after Lucy had died. The quote describes the emotional impact Lucy's death had on Mina and possibly, the loss of hope for good. Although things may seem hopeless, Mina still asks God for help, which means she still believes that good will prevail. This exemplifies the theme good vs. evil because is shows the emotional impact of the battle between good and evil on Mina. It shows what is happening internally to some of the characters who represent good.

"The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of."

Chapter: 4, Page Number: 51
Explanation: This quote is from Jonathan Harker's journal when he is in Dracula's Castle. At this point, he knows that Dracula is evil and is scared of him. He describes Dracula as having red eyes and a satanic smile, which both are associated with evil. The biblical reference here adds to the characterization of Dracula being evil because Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus, which makes Judas an evil character. Comparing similar attributed of Judas and Dracula show the evil characteristics of Dracula. The theme of good vs evil is represented because of the interaction between good (Jonathan Harker) and bad (Dracula). Dracula seems pleased that Jonathan is terrified as he has triumph in his eyes. Here, it is evident that the bad is posing some kind of threat to the good, although the future events are not certain, we can tell that there the evil (Dracula) is going to try to spread his reign.

"Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man's brain - a brain that a man should have were he much gifted - and woman's heart."

Chapter: 18, Page Number: 236
Explanation: This quote was said by Dr. Seward in an account in his journal. He is talking about Mina and saying that she is not like an ordinary woman. Dr. Seward says that she is smart, which differs from the common belief of women in the Victorian age society. This quote demonstrated the theme of the role of woman in the novel because it shows what an ordinary woman is though of as. In general, women were thought of as being less than men, not having the full capacity or smarts to do "men work", so women would normally do domestic work such as taking care of the kids. Mina shows a different type of woman in the victorian age society. She could be described as being progressive and behaves strangely for her time. This is exemplified when Dr. Seward says that she has a man brain, which means she is different in the way she acts and thinks from other woman in this society. This could also be seen as a shift in gender roles. Maybe this shows that woman are becoming more equal to men in society, that they can do more than just domestic work.

"I used to fancy that life was a positive and perpetual entity, and that by consuming a multitude of live things, no matter how low in the scale of creation, one might indefinitely prolong life...I tried to kill him for the purpose of strengthening my vital powers by the assimilation with my own body of his life through the medium of his blood"

Chapter: 18, Page Number: 235
Explanation: This quote is a part of Dr. Seward's journal about Renfield. It is the reason Renfield gives for eating animals and attempting to kill a person. The statement also gives a explanation for why Dracula drinks blood, as Renfield and Dracula have some sort of connection, although it is not clear why or how this connection exists. The quote is an example of the role of blood in the novel. Blood is seen as a symbol of life and drinking it, continues and strengthens the life of Dracula. It represents someones life, so symbolically, drinking blood is like stealing or taking in their life to be more alive. Because we know that Dracula is not human, we can assume he is undead and is trying to gain life through the drinking of other people's blood, therefore gaining their life. Also, the color of blood plays a role in what it symbolizes. The color red represents love and violence. This is what gives the novel Dracula a sexual connotation, as drinking blood is viewed as a sexual act. Red also symbolizes violence, which is shown in the killing of Lucy through Dracula drinking too much of her blood.

"As he placed the Wafer on Mina's forehead, it had seared it - had burned into the flesh as though it had been a piece of white hot metal."

Chapter: 22, Page Number: 297
Explanation: This quote is part of Jonathan Harker's journal and was written after Mina was bitten by Dracula. She is afraid she is unclean and Van Helsing puts the wafer on her forehead and it burns. The wafer is a religions symbol for the body of Christ, which is eaten during Holy Communion. This is a defiant symbol for good, which contributes to the good vs. evil theme. The evil is Dracula, through the physical body of Mina, as they are connected somehow because of him sucking her blood. The searing that occurred when the wafer was placed on Mina's forehead acts to contrast and show the good vs evil and works to identify Mina transitioning to evil and that evil will spread if Dracula is not stopped. This gives urgency to Van Helsing and brings another major theme in the novel - Survival. For Mina to survive, the good must win. If the evil prevails, she could have all of her blood sucked from her, leaving her lifeless like Lucy. Finally, this quote shows the religious element in the novel Dracula. The wafer is an important Christian tradition and the using of the wafer shows the religious influences in the novel.

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"As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, i could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal."

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Wed 20th - please read (you might want to print off and highlight) and make links as per task on last page! x

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Monday 4th June
Is the ending to Dracula effective? Consider the points made below in relation to Quincey and reflect on them in light of this question. Prep notes for Wed.

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Explore the significance of the character of Renfield.

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Contextual reading - the influence of the Romantic ideologies on the Gothic

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Contextual reading - the influence of the Romantic ideologies on the Gothic

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https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_1/burke.htm

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Please read this article from the British Library today. Make notes and be prepared to discuss this - and the Whitman article on Friday.

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Please read this article from the British Library today. Make notes and be prepared to discuss this - and the Whitman article on Friday.

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https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/dracula

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https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/novemberdecember/feature/when-bram-met-walt

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Please watch / listen and take notes for Wed. 

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Please watch / listen and take notes for Wed. 

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01g5zfc

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Please make notes on sentence types and clauses.
https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/2-4-clause-analysis/

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This is the edition I recommend - please purchase £3.74 on Amazon. 

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This is the edition I recommend - please purchase £3.74 on Amazon. 

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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dracula-Penguin-Classics-Bram-Stoker/dp/014143984X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1509546566&sr=1-1&keywords=dracula+bram

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNohDegnaOQ

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Impact of lexis