{"id":1088,"date":"2023-09-30T20:50:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-01T00:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=1088"},"modified":"2023-09-30T20:50:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-01T00:50:37","slug":"whats-more-bloofer-than-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2023\/09\/30\/whats-more-bloofer-than-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s more bloofer than disease?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear readers,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Disease is very much present in Bram Stoker\u2019s <\/span>Dracula<\/span><\/i>. But not in the way you think; No one in Dracula is literally sick with an illness but rather, it is the behavior and spread of vampires along with disturbing scenes that is a disease. Readers, you may be asking why this is. As we briefly mentioned in class, you should understand that \u201cDis-ease\u201d is the sense of uneasiness. <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>makes us feel uneasy because of the violence, animalistic sexuality, and depictions of corrupted purity it provokes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the best examples of this unease is Lucy. \u201cShe seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there ; the pointed teeth, the bloodstained, voluptuous mouth \u2013 which it made one shudder to see \u2013 the whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy\u2019 s sweet purity.\u201d (Stoker<\/span> 366 [online version]) While Lucy is described to be this sexual creature, readers must remember that Lucy is, well, dead. It raises questions of foreshadowing and apprehension: To start, why is Lucy\u2019s purity mentioned in conjunction with her new vampire self? And to end with the most disturbing, why is a corpse being viewed with a \u201cvoluptuous mouth\u201d in such an attentive sexual matter?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s even more puzzling is Lucy\u2019s feeding habits as a new vampire. Readers, did you notice how she only sucked children\u2019s blood?? I know we read this and think huh thats kind of, just a LITTLE, bit pedophilic. And you\u2019re not wrong. But perhaps this is just because Lucy is what we have coined as a \u201cbaby\u201d vampire so she\u2019s only starting off on little kids. But what if there was more to it? What if we\u2019re meant to understand this as Lucy trying to purify herself with children who are the epitome of innocence? Let us delve even deeper into the possibilities. Lucy as a now tainted \u201cvirgin\u201d, as Stoker describes her, is now corrupting other innocents. Regardless of what the answer may be, I believe that Lucy and her victims are a metaphor that signifies the spread of infection\/disease.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/span><\/p>\n

Alucard\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear readers,\u00a0 Disease is very much present in Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula. But not in the way you think; No one in Dracula is literally sick with an illness but rather, it is the behavior and spread of vampires along with disturbing scenes that is a disease. Readers, you may be asking why this is. As … Continue reading What\u2019s more bloofer than disease?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4770,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4770"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}