Victorian Foreigners = Today's Minorities

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, foreign invasion proves to be a driving theme throughout the novel. The vampire Dracula is characterized as haunting, pale, and exoctic. His personality and overall demeanor emphasizes a sort of gender conflation and mixed sexuality. His desire for Lucy, Mina, and even his vampiresses prove his sexuality as hetero, but he also conflates that role when he declares to the Van Helsing group that he will get to them through their women. During the Victorian era, British imperialism and industrialization was on a rise and faced a collapse due to foreign invasion. The British at the time were focused on making their country thrive and keep British ties within the homeland, so foreigners were branded as unwanted entities.

The concern of the “Other” creates an allegory between Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Britain of the 19th century. This allegory can be represented by not only Dracula, but by also the Crew of Light group, which included Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Quincy Morris, Arthur Holmwood, and John Steward. If you look at the Crew of Light group, you can see an alliance between British, American, and Western Europe. This alliance must then works together to defeat the threat from Eastern Europe, Dracula. Dracula’s foreign invasion is then parallel to his smaller “invasion” of Lucy’s English home. Lucy represents a kind a light in the west and Dracula is able to victimize Lucy giving an alarm to his potentiality to victimizing an entire nation. But, to compare to present day issues, Dracula’s foreignness could symbolize the personae of minorities, in the sense that they are the “Others”.

If you look at other supernatural movies, television shows, or books, each creature or character has its own characteristic that makes it similar to its species. For example, take a look the Twilight Saga. Vampires are perceived as the eccentric and exotic figures that take the lead in many societal aspects. Since the vampires represent superiority, they are a parallel to white people in America. The Twilight vampires are powerful, graceful, desired beings and you can see this power and desire in a subtle racial hierarchy, which is still present to our current society. Now, take this parallel and focus on the other main characters of the saga, the werewolves. In the novels, these wolves descend from a mystical line of Native American tribe culture. The Quileute pack are goofy, energetic, impulsive, and base their personalities on a more brute/ animalistic side. This is the representation of minorities and how they are the more savage side of people. Relating back to Dracula, the foreignness or sense of other was feared because the British believed these cultures were more primitive and would destroy their nation. In a way, the minorities in Twilight represent that same primitive culture, but make them non-white characters and the supernatural being of an actual animal.