{"id":839,"date":"2017-10-25T23:28:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T03:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=839"},"modified":"2017-11-30T11:43:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T16:43:03","slug":"the-fear-and-fetishizing-of-exotic-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2017\/10\/25\/the-fear-and-fetishizing-of-exotic-beauty\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fear and Fetishizing of “Exotic Beauty”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Bram Stoker\u2019s<\/span> Dracula<\/span><\/em> has an overtone that speaks to fears of the supernatural, it also contains an undertone that speaks to the Victorian fear of the foreign and channels these fears into the portrayal of foreign women. In Jonathan Harker\u2019s narration of his time in Transylvania, he makes sure to make it apparent how odd everything was in this land. Besides the offhand remarks referring to Slovak people as \u201cbarbaric\u201d (Stoker 9), the depiction of foreign women struck me as particularly interesting. When Harker was visited by the three women in Dracula\u2019s castle, the women\u2019s \u201cdark\u201d skin and \u201chigh aquiline noses\u201d (Stoker 44) added to their dangerously sensual spell over Harker. He says how their exotic spell over him compromised him morally, and that, \u201cThere was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear.\u201d(Stoker 45) While their features are similar to those of Count Dracula, rather than making them monstrously fearful, the women\u2019s exotic features make them dangerous in a sexual way. This fetishization of women is also seen in \u00a0Joseph Conrad\u2019s <\/span>Heart of Darkness<\/em>,<\/span> which depicts the treacherous journey of an Englishman and his crew through the Congo River in Africa. Once again, the depiction of the foreign lands and its people are shown as odd and barbaric in the eyes of a Victorian-era man. The women are the exclusion of this barbaric depiction with a fetishized one in exchange. \u00a0In this story, the portrayal of a black woman with her exotic beauty and sensuality serves as a source of danger for the Victorian man. In both, women are used to demonstrate\u00a0the primal nature that these foreign lands and people incite in otherwise honorable British men. The irony of these fears lies in the cruel colonization on the British front to said foreigners. Perhaps these fear steamed from the realizations of how harshly the British treated those they colonized, leading the Victorians to be fearful of the same sort of \u201ccolonization\u201d of their\u00a0lands and culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Although Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula has an overtone that speaks to fears of the supernatural, it also contains an undertone that speaks to the Victorian fear of the foreign and channels these fears into the portrayal of foreign women. In Jonathan Harker\u2019s narration of his time in Transylvania, he makes sure to make it apparent how … Continue reading The Fear and Fetishizing of “Exotic Beauty”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","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\/3650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}