Count Dracula’s origins are found in Eastern Europe–a marginalized, liminal, obscure, blank space on the map, which is, from the dominant White English perspective, associated with darkness, undesirable ethnic traits, and the practice of religious superstitions (again, from the Protestant English perspective on Roman Catholicism). Like Victor Frankenstein’s nameless Monster, Dracula is violent and bent on revenge, but in Dracula’s case, there are no apparent grounds for grievance or hatred. There is only Dracula’s unquenchable lust for blood which is, of course, in the cases of Lucy Westernra and Mina Murray, expressed also as sexual longing.
In a well-constructed and typo-free essay (1000 words max), describe and discuss Dracula as a repository of English cultural anxiety about otherness, which is represented in the novel variously as deformity, monstrosity, criminality, and racial, ethnic, religious, and gender and sexual difference. The best essays will draw upon the text of the novel as well as the contextualizing materials found in the Appendices in the Broadview edition. Your essay must be entirely your own work: no references to or use of outside works (except the Appendices) will be permitted. Any unacknowledged borrowing (plagiarism) from existing texts will be punished with the grade of 0.
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