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English Literature Essay - Use of Setting of Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Essay in bulleted form exploring the use of settings in Stoker's 'Dracula' and Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'.
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Tuesday 3rd April 2019Essay Plan: Compare the ways in which the writers of your two chosen texts make use of
setting in their texts.
Introduction:
In both Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ and Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’
location is paramount to the writers’ presentation of the symbolic demise of the
morally safe and secure Western society, particularly in Victorian London.
Context: Since both novels are works of gothic fiction, settings are key in invoking
prevalent fears of the pious Victorian society under Queen Victoria’s stringent rule.
In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ the setting explores the counterculture to prim and
proper Victorian society in the seedy criminal underbelly of London and often
reflects the eponymous character’s psychological state in his journey to moral
degradation.
Meanwhile, in ‘Dracula,’ the mystical foreign setting of Transylvania is contrasted
against the civilised setting of London which is disrupted by Dracula’s chaos,
representing the corruption of natural order the supernatural evil of Dracula poses.
Point one:
From the outset of ‘Dracula,’ the danger Jonathan is in implicitly present in his
journey in which the epistolary form Stoker employs allows him to include mundane
interjections of Jonathan’s reality which is juxtaposed with more menacing elements
of the setting.
For example, Jonathan observes the “green swelling hills,” which attempts to
romanticise the otherwise ominous scene, and the colour symbolism of “green”
carries connotations of nature and life.
In contrast to this, Stoker builds up a strong sense of foreboding through the
pathetic fallacy of “dark rolling clouds” and the “oppressive sense of thunder,” which
has symbolic significance in terms of foreshadowing the fatal threat that Dracula will
pose to Jonathan.
A further factor culminating in this undercurrent of fear in the setting, is the
townspeople’s reactions to Jonathan when he reveals that he is visiting Dracula: they
say “ordog,” “pokol,” vrolok” - meaning Satan, Hell and vampire - and the landlady or
the Golden Krone Hotel insists on giving him a “crucifix,” which he regards as
“idolatrous,” being a civilised “English Churchman.” Ironically, this relic is what later
saves him from Dracula’s “demoniac fury.”
Context: Thus Stoker highlighting the stark contrast between the ascetism of the
Protestant Church in the West, and the superstitious “priestcraft” of in the setting of
Eastern Europe. Most Victorian readers would share Jonathan’s of the customs of
this foreign setting being strange and “idolatrous,” and the fact that the unholy
forces of vampires originate from this setting mirrors the xenophobic fear of
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