![]() ![]() Why has this odd and terrifying figure exerted such a hold on our collective imagination? Why does the image of the vampire both attract and repel, in apparently equal measure? If, as has been argued, Dracula owes its success to its reflection of specific anxieties within the culture, why then has its power continued unabated throughout more than a century of unprecedented social change? Late-Victorian anxieties and concerns were rather different from our own, yet the lure of the vampire and the persistence of his image seem as strong as ever.ĭracula's durability may in part be due to Tod Browning's 1931 film, for when most people think of the character, it is Bela Lugosi's portrayal that springs to mind. Now, more than a hundred years after his appearance in print, Dracula has shed the status of "fictional character" altogether and has become an authentic modern myth. But this one was different: Over the course of the next century Count Dracula, the aristocratic vampire, left his natural habitat between the pages of a book and insinuated himself into the world's consciousness as few other fictional characters haveever done. Most such "shilling shockers" were forgotten within a year or two. Upon its publication in 1897, Bram Stoker's Dracula was seen as nothing more than a slightly cheesy thriller, if an unusually successful one. From Brooke Allen's Introduction to Dracula ![]()
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