What Bram Stoker's Dracula Reveals about Violence
In spite of its violent content, few scholars have asked what Dracula reveals about violence. The scholarship is replete with articles cataloguing multiple forms of sexuality: homosexuality, voyeurism, coitus interruptus, sadism, masochism, and necrophilia. Dracula is also a story of competing forms of violence; the titular Count's mythical violence opposes the hunting party's terrestrial violence. This article examines scenes detailing violence against women, men, animals, earth, institutions, monuments, and nations to show how they provide narrative momentum. At the novel's close a contest of natural and unnatural violence is borne out. Dracula's supernatural ability to use violence to immortalize victims is outdone by the ability of natural violence to end life. The narrative, having been propelled to this moment through encounters between the two forms of violence, closes. [128 words]