{"id":1307,"date":"2018-11-13T14:56:36","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T19:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=1307"},"modified":"2018-11-13T18:56:36","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T23:56:36","slug":"seductive-savagery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2018\/11\/13\/seductive-savagery\/","title":{"rendered":"Seductive Savages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be conflicting emotions about the status of foreign people in Victorian culture and this is extremely evident in <em>Dracula<\/em>.\u00a0 In \u201cThe Occidental Tourist: <em>Dracula<\/em> and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization\u201d, Stephen Arata claims that the \u201csavage\u201d, \u201cprimitive\u201d foreign people are \u201cdangerous, but also deeply attractive\u201d (624).\u00a0 This is definitely evident in the scenes with Dracula.\u00a0 He has the potential to kill his victims, making him extremely dangerous, but during most of his \u201cfeeding\u201d scenes the characters seem to be in very intimate positions.\u00a0 Dracula always seems to be towering over his victims or clutching them, such as in the scene with Mina when Dr. Seward describes her as \u201ckneeling\u201d, while Dracula \u201cgripped her by the back of the neck\u201d and \u201cheld both Mrs. Harker\u2019s hands\u201d (300).\u00a0 There is also intimacy in the location of his attacks, the neck, as well as the chest, where he made Mina drink from him. This seductive quality to the monsters in the story is also demonstrated in the scenes with Jonathan and the three women at Castle Dracula.\u00a0 There is something frightening yet enticing to Jonathan about them because he uses words like \u201cshivering\u201d \u201csupersensitive\u201d \u201cecstasy\u201d and \u201ctouching\u201d when describing their interaction (45-6).\u00a0 These scenes and the article about <em>Dracula<\/em> help explain the conflicting emotions of many Victorians.\u00a0 It seems as though they fear the influence or invasion of foreigners, but these people are described in such a way that makes them also seem appealing to the reader. \u00a0The decision to describe foreign people this way could also be a tool that Stoker is using to try to persuade Victorians to be open to the idea of foreigners in England, since he himself is from Ireland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be conflicting emotions about the status of foreign people in Victorian culture and this is extremely evident in Dracula.\u00a0 In \u201cThe Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization\u201d, Stephen Arata claims that the \u201csavage\u201d, \u201cprimitive\u201d foreign people are \u201cdangerous, but also deeply attractive\u201d (624).\u00a0 This is definitely evident in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2018\/11\/13\/seductive-savagery\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Seductive Savages<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3893,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}