Perceptions in Dracula

This essay explores the perceptions of Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. It discusses the fear of foreigners and women's changing roles in Victorian England.

Running head: PERCEPTIONS IN DRACULA
PERCEPTIONS IN DRACULA
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1PERCEPTIONS IN DRACULA
Essay:
Entry 1.
Blood! How tempting, sumptuous and luscious it is. I am mouth watered when the tart
and sharp liquid gradually enters into my mouth. I feel hungry and more tranquil when I
slowly suck the blood of a human body. I cannot explain the heavenly feeling because I
renounced god and heaven but only can encourage myself to be sharper every day. I need no
love, no empathy no companionship but satisfied within my Count Castle. My castle creates
fear in the human society and I want this fear to spread to entire England including London.
Yes, I have three companion, the weird sisters living in my castle but they are also like me,
having no life, no love and no hope. Their voluptuous lips and sensitive touch do not appeal
me because they are not able to quench my thirst of blood. I have now called Jonathan
Harker, a young lawyer for my property which is of no use of mine.
Entry 2. I will destroy everything, all the pretentious human in the city. I will capture all of
London and tempt all the women here to love me. Their home will be infiltrated with the dark
evil of night and the outside world. They do not know me yet. How perverted and corrupt I
can be. Their fear of being dominated by the others will become true. How dare he attacked
me? A mortal? Does not he know I am the vampire and he can barely escape from my hold?
Jonathan would have been safe if he let me taste his delicious blood. But no he did not. Now
he will suffer. I am going to London to ruin his fate.
Entry 3. Yes I am misogynist but I cannot resist myself from being with Lucy. She is the
angle of her household, a symbol of light that I fear the most but her smell, roil my desire to
have her. My thirst gets temper when she walks at night and came over me. How fair and
honeyed she is. I bite her and feel a sexual satisfaction that I never had in my immortal life. I
will train her, corrupt her and give her all the freedom that a woman’s heart needs. The

2PERCEPTIONS IN DRACULA
society will not support her as she is a woman but I shall make her a vampire. This can put
her into death but is she alive being an object of proposal and virginity? She will not be able
spend her life as a wife and mother only.
Entry 4. I cannot let Lucy to be exploited by the ostentatious norms and prejudice of the
society. I cannot take suitor to see her in a lusty manner but only appreciate her innocent and
mental beauty. Have they even feel that how dissatisfied she is with her life? I will take
revenge on this hollow society. I will let her to be fearsome to those suitors.
Entry 5. Mina has found Lucy today in the graveyard. She might have seen my shadowy
figure also. May be she is wondering two small red marks on Lucy’s neck. She does not
know that I often enter Lucy’s room as a bat and constant to quench my thirst with her blood.
I am determined, I will take Lucy so powerful and lusty that these meek men in the city will
be desiring to penetrate her but run away in fear.
Entry 6. Mina is worried about Lucy’s health as I am sucking all the blood from her. She is
under treatment of Dr. Seward and Dr. Van Helsing, but their treatment will of no use.
Nobody can sae Lucy from my hold. They have started blood transfusion and drape her with
garlic. It has smeared her with a bitter and undesirable smell. They are thinking that in this
way they can cover their women from me? Never. What I have exchanged with Lucy has
spoiled her making her unacceptable without the virginity and white woman’s value. Lucy
will die and this will be my triumph over this corrupted society.
Entry 7. I am very happy today. The entire city is talking about me and explaining how they
fear a tall, evil smiling face of mine. The fear what I had seen on the face of Jonathan is again
seen the face of each of the male in the city. They are trying to impose an idea of a foreign
culprit who is not living the corpse of Lucy even after her death. I have stolen their children,

3PERCEPTIONS IN DRACULA
their wives and all their lights of life. They have restored the dead body with garlic to prevent
me to use that corpse.
Entry 8. They have attacked my dirt, my health. I will not let them take all my dirt killing me
once again, I have captured Mina, to enter Jonathan’s house. Today, I instigated Mina to
drink blood from a gash in my chest that had made Jonathan unconscious.
Entry 9. I am being chased by a groups who are trying to capture my life by burying me in
the box stabbing my heart. I will be destroyed like but I shall again return in another form and
ruin the human civilisation.
Critical appendix:
This appendix will be detailing the dominating fear about the women and the
foreigners lumbering the minds of the people of the Victorian England. The threat that the
foreigners will be capturing the country by the means of mixing with the English women has
been appropriately described in the novel by Bram Stoker. The fear of being engulfed by the
other culture and ethnicity is directly concept in many of the novel of late Victorian age.
Mention can be made of Merry Shelley’s monster Frankenstein and Emily Bronte’s
Wuthering Heights.
The pretentious society of the late Victorian England where the power of the women
is curbed by snatching away all their rights to be active and imposing the idea of being virgin
are reflected through corrupt, lustful and perverted character of count Dracula. His desire as
well as the method of taking over London, the heart of the country through the contact of
blood associate a feeling of fear. This is due to the fact that the idea actually associates the
thought that the foreigners will be taking over the city and the country through mixing with
the white people. This is why all the men who fight back to Dracula are representative of the

4PERCEPTIONS IN DRACULA
British imperial men serving their country and displaying love to the women opposing the
idea of lust.
The novel represents the Victorian fear of the perverted and corrupt male lust
interfering the traditional norms of the women in the society. The process of sucking blood
are the representative of the sexual contact with the white women, personification of virginity
and chastity that is to be won over. The men in the society are awestricken to find the
perverted lust of the count which questions the responsibility of the women in the Victorian
society wither to the virgins or maintain monogamist marriage, even if it is painful.
All the characters of the novel by Stoker are revolves round the evil features of Count
Dracula. He has long teeth, evil smile and beastly figure which are foreign to human society.
This aspect is again found in the evil feature of Mary Shelley’s monster Frankenstein. This
later character has 8 feet of height, translucent yellowish skin, glowing watery eyes,
prominent teeth and black lops making it hideously ugly (Shelley 2012). The tendency of
associating evil with anything that is not very common in the human society is quite frequent
in the Victorian age. This is why the fear of the unknown has connection with the destructive
power possessed by both these characters. The choice of the place Transylvania itself is a
region which is occupied by the people living outside law, fearless about the British religion
hence undesired by the civilised society of Britain.
Stocker though this novel has hammered the socially acceptable idea of women if
being morally superior and angels of the house through submission to their husband of the
male counter parts. In contradicting this idea, the psychological changes are brought in Lucy
and Mina by Dracula’s influence that changed them to ask for their own identity leading them
to become New Woman just as the women characters like Catharine, Isabella and Nelly have
transformed in Wuthering Heights (Brontë 2009). Thus Dracula represents the fear of the

5PERCEPTIONS IN DRACULA
Victorian era about women infected changing in lustful creatures themselves making them
rebellious and voluptuous (Stoker 1997).
References:
Brontë, E., 2009. Wuthering heights. Oxford University Press.
Shelley, M., 2012. frankenstein. Broadview Press.
Stoker, B., 1997. dracula. Broadview Press.