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Stoker - Bram Stoker Videos 11 videos

Dracula
27348 Views

What is Dracula really about? Just Count Dracula? Or is there more to it than vampires? This video addresses some major ideas in Bram Stoker’s cl...

Dracula: Father of the Modern Vampire
17557 Views

There are plenty of famous vampires that send chills up our spines, but Dracula was and still is the king of them all. No one else can touch him. N...

Dracula Part 1: Course Introduction
29641 Views

Readers may be already be familiar with Dracula, but what about the mathematician and author, Bram Stoker? And yes, he graduated with a degree in m...

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Dracula Part 5: The Mortals 28746 Views


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Description:

Dracula knows how to charm a lady. Maybe it’s his charisma, maybe it’s his looks, maybe it’s his...hypnotism? Yeah, it’s probably the hypnotism. That seems like an unfair advantage.


Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:07

Dracula

00:09

The Mortals

00:11

a la Shmoop

00:13

Dracula's affected by women around him in a unique way.

00:17

Can you talk a little bit about

00:19

the effect that Lucy and Mina have?

00:22

[ evil laugh ]

00:24

How does Bram Stoker portray women in Dracula?

00:29

Yeah, no, that's interesting. So they're two --

00:31

Mina and Lucy, they're two sort of

00:34

potential archetypes of the "New Woman."

00:37

They meet different fates,

00:38

as people will find out as they continue reading Dracula.

00:42

So Mina, who is Jonathan Harker's

00:45

first his fiancee and then his wife,

00:47

is a very efficient clerical person

00:51

who collates all of these documents that they need in the hunt for Dracula.

00:55

Lucy is...

00:57

sort of a blonde, sweet, virginal character.

01:00

When we first meet her, she's writing.

01:02

She's in a letter correspondence with Mina

01:05

about the fact that she's

01:06

fielding three marriage proposals.

01:09

[ wolf whistle ]

01:10

And that's sort of the ambivalence that Stoker has about women.

01:13

Because on the one hand, Lucy is this very sweet, virginal character.

01:17

Eventually, she'll get vamped to death,

01:19

and then herself become a vampire.

01:22

And vampire in the pejorative "vamp"

01:26

sense that we have for

01:28

women who claim to have loose morals.

01:32

[ laughs ]

01:34

So both of that is sort of

01:37

implicit and dueling in the representation of women in Dracula.

01:40

Got it. Okay, that makes sense.

01:42

[ whoop ]

01:42

What is the Crew of Light?

01:45

So, the Crew of Light is the three men who propose marriage to Lucy,

01:50

then Jonathan Harker, who's the first to meet Dracula,

01:54

and Van Helsing, who's a scientist from The Netherlands.

01:58

And these are the five men that come together.

02:02

I think there are five men who come together

02:03

to hunt Dracula.

02:05

They'll eventually go all the way back

02:07

to Carpathia, to Castle Dracula, to stake him to death.

02:13

They are the Crew of Light, versus

02:15

- Dracula's obvious darkness. - Got it.

02:19

[ whoop ]

02:20

How does Bram Stoker portray women in Dracula?

02:25

What is the Crew of Light?

02:28

[ evil laugh ]

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