A Barrier of Primitive Relapse

Paper Summary:

This paper examines English propriety in the story of "Dracula" by Bram Stoker. The writer suggests that if restrictions are merely barriers to temptation, then it seems that no other author is more familiar with this idea than Bram Stoker. The writer further discusses how, by using "Dracula" as a cautionary tale, Stoker creates his story with the supreme antagonist restricted from a direct voice or expression. The writer also explains how Stoker allows his readers to watch events unfold according to the perceptions of the narrators. The writer describes Dracula as the uninhibited alpha male, untouched by the most confining restraint of English society--the suppression of sexual desire. The writer concludes that Stoker uses the character Dracula as a manifestation of the hidden desires of Van Helsing and his Englishmen avengers to illustrate the fatality of straying from English propriety.

From the Paper:

"Stoker first generates a group of unreliable narrators to establish their vulnerabilities as humans to temptation and fallibility. He chooses a style of narration that is undependable in itself to stress the skewed nature of the story. Told through a series of journals, newspaper articles, diaries, and letters, the reports of events are subjective and affected by unique perspectives and individualistic observation, the latter having a heavy reliance on a sharp memory. For a story with events as spectacular as in Dracula, it seems implausible then, particularly when they recall dialogue, for each narrator's recollection to be flawless and perfect retainers of events."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Pick, Daniel. "'Terrors of the Night':Dracula and 'Degeneration' in the Late Ninteenth Century." Reading Fin de Siecle Fictions. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Publishing, 1996.
• Roth, Phyllis A. "Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula." Bram Stoker's Dracula. Pennsylvania: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.
• Senf, Carol A. "Dracula: The Unseen Face in the Mirror." Bram Stoker's Dracula. Pennsylvania: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.
• Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London: Penguin Group, 2003.

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