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.   

Because someone had to mention Twilight..

            As a twelve-year old in 2008, I was obviously a huge fan of the Twilight. Not only did I read all the books and watch all the movies, I even bought Twilight in Spanish while in Cancun because I thought I could read it for some reason. While I quickly started detesting the series because the movie came out on my birthday and people began to refer to my birthday as the same day Twilight came out rather than the other way around (and yes I am still salty about that) amongst other issues I could go on for- there is no doubt that it was still one of the first young adult series I read and therefore, it is special to me in its own way and there can be no doubt it revived a love of vampires and soon werewolves as well. These vampires, however, were different from the vampires in Dracula.

            Edward, the main love interest for the protagonist Bella, is often made fun of and called gay by audiences not because he is (although one certainly could try and do a queer reading between him and Jacob, Bella’s other love interest), partially because of the masculinity he chooses to perform and also because he is an over 100 year old virgin who turns down Bella’s offer to have sex on multiple occasions. While Bella, the woman’s, sexuality is somewhat discussed and arguably not repressed, Edward’s is more feminine in the sense that he wants to wait until they are married and is possibly more repressed- the opposite of the male and female characters in Dracula.

            Another feature in Dracula is the New Woman/ Angel in the House dichotomy. Rather than have a similar dichotomy focused on femininity, there is one that starts to come out focused more on masculinity through Bella’s two love interests, Edward and Jacob.

            The 100 year old metro sexual Edward with his purposefully messy hair, pea coat wearing, Volvo driving ass is the complete opposite of Jacob who is young, muscular, more animalistic as he is a werewolf, and who works on the motorcycle he later rides. These two masculinities are competing not only for dominance, but for Bella’s love. While in Dracula there is discord because of the coming of the New Woman’s femininity, there is discord in Twilight from the “new man’s” metro sexual tendencies which ultimately win over Bella through Edward over Jacob’s rougher, outdoorsy, arguably more traditional/older masculinity.

Look at those competing masculinities 

            One final comparison is that of foreign invasion. While in Dracula, Dracula himself can represent fear of immigration, the Volturi could represent this as well as a general fear of change in Twilight. The Volturi are an old vampire clan who are in control of basically all vampires and are ancient in both age and custom. They end up being the final, main antagonists in the series who want Bella and Edward’s new half-breed daughter dead and come to America to go up against Edward’s all-American, baseball playing family. The differences between the two families/clans are both in age and culture- that of an ancient European one in the Volturi and that of a younger, American culture in Edward’s family who ultimately wins out over the Volturi.

The modern American Cullen family (Edward and Bella not pictured) versus the ancient, foreign Volturi

            Between Dracula and Twilight, there are certain elements that remain like fear of foreign invasion, but others like sexuality and a masculine dichotomy, that focus more on men than women.