Dracula - VCE - Unit 1 & 2 Literature Study Guide - Research guides at Westbourne Grammar School at Westbourne Grammar School

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About Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker
Overview of the author’s life, career, and lasting literary influence
Bram Stoker
A detailed biography, image gallery and links to further resources.
How Bram Stoker found his inner Dracula in Scotland
Explores how Stoker’s time in Scotland helped shape his gothic imagination and influenced his creation of Dracula.

Context

BBC Bite Size: Gothic literature
An overview of Gothic fiction’s key features which provides a foundation for understanding how Dracula by Bram Stoker uses Gothic conventions.

The above video summarises the novel’s plot, explores Bram Stoker’s life and historical context, discusses its publication and reception, outlines key themes and allegories, considers its enduring audience appeal, and highlights how numerous adaptations have cemented its status as a timeless classic.

The above episode is part of a 4 part BBC documentary exploring gothic horror. It focuses on Stoker's influences and the impact of the novel.

Science or Séance?: Late-Victorian Science and Dracula's Epistolary Structure

Views and values

Illness, madness and confinement

Dracula and theme of gender

Foreigness and the 'other' [video]

Literary Criticism

Stoker's response to the New Woman
Senf argues that in Dracula, Bram Stoker responds to the New Woman movement by portraying sexually aggressive female vampires as dangerous and by presenting Mina Harker as his ideal heroine who embraces intelligence but ultimately conforms to traditional Victorian female roles.
Blood, Lust, and the Fe/Male Narrative in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and the Novel (1897)
Nystrom argues that Dracula (1897) seems to be about a select group of men and their patriarchal dominance over women but that there is a secondary narrative “that is driven by a presence that is most definitely female,” a presence that is also apparent in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Those Monstrous Women: A Discussion of Gender in Dracula
Senf (2013) in her essay argues that the novel reflects late-Victorian anxieties about shifting gender roles, particularly as women began to enter the professions and public life more visibly.
Dual Life: The Status of Women in Stoker's Dracula
In the essay, Johnson (1984) explores the depiction of women contending that the novel depicts an "incisive and sympathetic analysis of the frustrations felt by women in late nineteenth century Britain"

An Interpretation of Stoker’s Dracula on the Basis of Psychoanalysis and Gender Criticism
This article analyses Dracula through the lenses of psychoanalysis and gender studies, focusing on the psychological transformations of characters such as Mina and Lucy and their representation of the emerging “New Woman.” It argues that Stoker’s portrayal of Dracula exposes repressed Victorian fears and desires surrounding sexuality, control, and the subversion of traditional gender roles.
Desire and loathing in Dracula

Dracula and post colonialism

The Dracula Difference: Bram Stoker's Dracula and the Threat of the Other
Kern (2020) argues that Dracula reflects late-Victorian England’s imperial anxieties by portraying the foreign Count as a destabilising “Other” who threatens British cultural, spiritual and geopolitical identity. Kern uses a post-colonial lens to show how the novel frames the East (Transylvania) as exotic and dangerous, reinforcing colonial fears of invasion, reverse colonisation and cultural contamination.

Racialization, Capitalism, and Aesthetics in Stoker's "Dracula"
Patricia McKee looks at Dracula through a Marxist lens by showing how money, power, and social class influence the story. She argues that the novel uses ideas about race and the “exotic Other” to show how wealthy Western characters maintain control and benefit from colonial and economic systems, highlighting fears and tensions in Victorian society.