This week’s entries marveled at a variety of aspects of Dracula.  To begin, two were linked to the sexual sins described in the book, which appeared in both human and vampiric characters.  One entry noted that sexuality was only described actually occurring with the vampires and not in any human relationships, depicting how uncouth a discussion of the topic of sex was back then, thus making it monstrous.  Another entry noted that Stoker created a “New Woman” character with scandalous ideas such as marrying multiple men and noting that she becomes a vampire, giving into sin. 

The first entry mentioned also described how superstitions arrived in Romania in a number of ways that eventually captured the imaginations of English writers.  These included the legends that were born within Romania’s borders, those that were brought from Germany, and those that wandering Gypsy tribes imported. That second entry was the most varied of the three, taking note of a number of Dracula’s topics.  This entry mentioned that Dracula was a representation of a fear of Eastern European immigration to England, and that vampirism is symbolic of STDs and the feared spread of decay in society, like that which inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write Hyde into being.  It was also mentioned that Dracula depicted religion being the savior when science was not enough to cure vampirism, showing the Victorian view that religion should still be more important than science and that there will always be that which science can’t explain.  This entry also went over the history of how vampires came into English writing and looked at the writings about Transylvania that inspired Stoker. 

Finally, this entry noted the history behind the original cover of Dracula, which was simply plain yellow, representative of scandalous French books with yellow covers to give a hint at its material.  The final entry I will discuss also looked at covers, depicting a diverse set of them.  One had Dracula drawn as handsome to capture the attention of romantics, one had the castle surrounded by impaled bodies for the most dark-minded readers, and one looked creepy yet cartoonish for those who simply love horror.  This entry also included the quote from the book in which a mother comes to Dracula’s castle searching for her kidnapped child and Dracula sends wolves after her.  This shows his blatant cruelty and may also be representative of the young falling into sin (the child) while their parents despair (the mother).