Dracula Is One of the Most Important and Influencial Novels of Its Genre, Why, What Has Made It So Successful?

Authors Avatar
Dracula

IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND INFLUENCIAL NOVELS OF ITS GENRE, WHY, WHAT HAS MADE IT SO SUCCESSFUL?

BRAM STOKER'S GOTHIC HORROR

ANDREW STEVEN HOWELL

DRACULA

A STUDY OF THE CLASSIC GENRE GOTHIC HORROR

Writer of one of the world's most famous horror novels, Abraham Stoker (Bram Stoker) was born to the loosely defined socio-cultural group known as the Anglo-Irish. A Protestant Dubliner, he was the son of a civil servant, and he was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. As a child, Abraham Stoker was a sickly child often on the point of death by his own account; he never stood upright without aid until he was seven years old. At Trinity College, he studied mathematics and became president of the Philosophical Society and the Historical Society.

Dracula is an epistolary novel, meaning that is composed from letters, journal and diary entries, telegrams, and some newspaper clippings. Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray (later Mina Harker), and Dr. Seward give the largest contributions to the novel, although other characters such as Lucy Westenra and Abraham Van Helsing contribute to some key parts of the book. Because of this, the novel has a slightly journalistic feel, as though it is an account written by the people who witnessed the events.

A brief overview of the book would start with a young Englishman named Jonathan Harker, who is travelling through Transylvania on a business trip. He is there to aid Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman, in buying an English estate. Once meeting the Count he settles in within the castle, but although initially he is charmed by the Count's generosity and intelligence, gradually, he comes to realize that he is a prisoner in Dracula's castle, and that the Count is a demonic being who plans to prey on the teeming masses of London. During the course of the novel Dracula leaves Jonathan to die at the hands of three female vampires, but Jonathan is desperate and attempts to escape.

Meanwhile, in England, Jonathan's fiancée Mina visits her best friend, Lucy Westenra. Three men, Arthur Holmwood, Dr. Seward, and Quincey Morris have recently proposed to Lucy. Out of the three she chooses Arthur to be her happy fiancé. Mina and Lucy go on a vacation together to Whitby, a quaint seaside town. While they are there, a Russian vessel is shipwrecked, and strangely large dog leaps from the wreck and runs away. All of the vessels crew are missing. The Russian ship was carrying fifty boxes of earth taken from Dracula's castle. Yet despite the accident, the boxes are delivered as ordered to their destination. Not long after Lucy begins to exhibit some strange behaviour i.e. she sleepwalks often, and she seems to be growing paler and weaker. Then some eerie things happen one night, Mina finds her Lucy unconscious in the cemetery, as a figure with glowing eyes bends over her. The figure disappears as Mina comes closer, but night after night strange events continue and Lucy grows thinner and paler with each passing day.
Join now!


DRACULA

A STUDY OF THE CLASSIC GENRE GOTHIC HORROR

Word comes from Budapest that Jonathan has been found, sick with brain fever. He can remember nothing of his travels in Transylvania. Mina goes to nurse him back to health and to help him make the trip back to England. When she arrives, they marry immediately. He gives her his diary but is afraid to read it; she seals the diary and promises that she will never read it unless it is for his sake.

Back in England, Lucy has returned to her home in ...

This is a preview of the whole essay