{"id":728,"date":"2018-10-15T13:03:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T17:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=728"},"modified":"2018-10-15T13:03:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T17:03:09","slug":"dracula-through-a-cultural-lens-explorations-of-xenophobia-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2018\/10\/15\/dracula-through-a-cultural-lens-explorations-of-xenophobia-continued\/","title":{"rendered":"Dracula Through a Cultural Lens (Explorations of Xenophobia continued)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this blog entry, I will be further exploring the themes of racial\/ethnic anxieties that are present in Dracula<\/em>. In addition to Dracula\u2019s quest for English blood, a traditional symbol of ethnic identity, the factors of his aristocratic status, homeland, and his vivacity all contribute to a narrative of the Count as a distinct representation of a foreign invader. I will be using Stephen D. Arata\u2019s article \u201cThe Occidental Tourist: Dracula<\/em> and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization\u201d to analyze the novel.<\/p>\n

When Count Dracula is telling his Transylvanian history to Jonathan Harker, he proudly recalls the warriors of his race: \u201c\u2019Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the\u00a0Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back?\u2019\u201d (Stoker, 36). The Count believes in his people as conquerors who defended their land against foreign invaders with honor, never sacrificing their racial integrity. As Arata points out, Transylvania is known as a nation with a detailed history of ethnic combat, with a variety of peoples, such as the Huns, the Turks, the Slavs, and Germans, all having fought for ownership of the land. Dracula describes himself and his people as Szekely, a race descended from the Huns that laid claim to Transylvania against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages. Despite the collapse of the Szekely empire, Dracula is still proud and convicted in his belief of the superiority of his race over all the other races that have fought over Transylvania.<\/p>\n

Arata also notes Dracula\u2019s aristocracy; he is a wealthy figure, and his wealth is derived entirely from his heritage. He is powerful because of his ancestry. This further reinforces the importance of his heritage to his character as a proudly nationalistic nobleman, and adds to the dimension of his power being a product of his history. Dracula is proud of his generational wealth because it is is directly tied to the history of his race, and is a product of the height of his people\u2019s power.<\/p>\n

Dracula\u2019s animalistic physiognomy and healthy appearance as he draws more blood are also important to the narrative of Dracula as a foreign invader. Both of these characteristics make Dracula a domineering, aggressive personality. It suggests that he defends his homeland because he believes in his right to it, and believes he and his people should have control over it. He is a vicious aggressor who gains strength from the expansion of his domain. His thirst for blood is a representation of his need for control.<\/p>\n

Arata notes the importance of his bloodlust as being directed to London, as \u201cDracula\u2019s move to London indicates that Great Britain, rather than the Carpathians, is now the scene of these connected struggles\u201d (Arata, 465), these struggles being the wars for racial domination that compose the history of the Transylvanian region. London was a major economic force, seen as the center of the powerful British empire, and would be a worthy domain for Dracula to rule over and expand with his race of vampires.<\/p>\n

This leads me to another important symbol in the novel, which is soil. Dracula brings boxes full of \u201ccommon earth\u201d to England, which I find puzzling outside of the context of the symbolism of soil. Soil, like blood, had become a nationalistic element of identity in the 19th<\/sup> century. While blood represents a person\u2019s heritage, soil represents the place where their people belong and have a right to. The symbols of blood and soil were adopted by the Nazis in the 1930\u2019s, and are still used in Neo-Nazi rhetoric today. Dracula\u2019s mission in England seems to be to convert English people to vampires by taking away what makes them English, which is their blood. He also wants to bring soil from his homeland to England, to further solidify his ownership of the nation. The connection between blood and soil in Dracula\u2019s objectives strongly suggest that he is a character embodiment of nationalist ideology, whose inherently aggressive tendencies and generational wealth would allow him to expand his race to England and erase their heritage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this blog entry, I will be further exploring the themes of racial\/ethnic anxieties that are present in Dracula. In addition to Dracula\u2019s quest for English blood, a traditional symbol of ethnic identity, the factors of his aristocratic status, homeland, and his vivacity all contribute to a narrative of the Count as a distinct representation … Continue reading Dracula Through a Cultural Lens (Explorations of Xenophobia continued)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3885,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","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\/3885"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}