{"id":849,"date":"2017-10-27T15:48:56","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T19:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=849"},"modified":"2017-11-30T11:42:37","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T16:42:37","slug":"dracula-and-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2017\/10\/27\/dracula-and-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Dracula and Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ideas of sanity and insanity are both clear cut and obscure throughout <\/span>Dracula<\/span>. We have blatant forms of insanity – such as the clearly crazed Renfield – yet we also have other characters who exhibit more obscure signs of madness, such as Lucy and Jonathan. Lucy is put under constant surveillance, as she often sleepwalks throughout the night. Moreso, even when awake she can be found in a trance, as if enchanted by Dracula\u2019s influence. When Lucy spots Dracula on her walk with Mina, she notes \u201c\u2018his red eyes again! They are just the same\u2019\u201d (126). Mina reflects that Lucy went into a \u201chalf-dreamy state, with an odd look on her face\u201d (126). Merely seeing Dracula is enough to cast Lucy into a daze. Somehow he manages to disturb the inner workings of the brain, perhaps in order to get his victims to do his biddings for him. Lucy, for example, is so entranced by Dracula that she leaves her bedroom in the freezing cold to meet him outside, where he consequently sucks her blood.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, Jonathan goes insane following his time spent with Dracula. While it may be fair to attribute his hospitalization to the disturbed, terror inducing torture he endured in Dracula\u2019s abode, his severe reaction seems to suggest something more than that. After escaping Dracula\u2019s castle, he is hospitalized for brain fever. It seems that Dracula inspires madness in his victims. The mere sight of him is enough to catapult an entire crew of men off of their own ship. Upon seeing Dracula, one of the last men aboard the <\/span>Demeter <\/span><\/i>emerges from the hold \u201ca raging madman, with his eyes rolling and his face convulsed with fear\u201d (113). After a few moments, \u201chis horror turned to despair and\u2026 he sprang on the bulwark and deliberately threw himself into the sea\u201d (113). A single interaction with Dracula is enough to send each man overboard, as each man opts for suicide over enduring the rest of the trip with Dracula. In general, it seems that Dracula\u2019s presence sends characters into a state of self-destructive madness.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ideas of sanity and insanity are both clear cut and obscure throughout Dracula. We have blatant forms of insanity – such as the clearly crazed Renfield – yet we also have other characters who exhibit more obscure signs of madness, such as Lucy and Jonathan. Lucy is put under constant surveillance, as she often sleepwalks … Continue reading Dracula and Madness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3654,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","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\/849","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\/3654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}