Religion

After reading the first nine chapters of Bram Stokers Dracula, followed by the two essays, “What is the New Historicism?” and “Ambivalence and Ascendancy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, an obvious emphasis on the historical content within the work of Dracula becomes apparent. The use of crucifixions, religious superstitions, and the placement of an “Englishman” in Jonathan Harker, truly helps to establish the imagery of some form of real life tension on a religious basis. Gregory Castle’s description of the, “relationship between the Anglo-Irish ruling class (the Irish Protestant Ascendancy) and the Catholic-Irish ‘natives’” (518), makes a compelling argument for the failure of “political and cultural hegemony” (518), within the historical context portrayed throughout the work symbolically. It is in this manner that “New Historicism” as a style appears to play a powerfully dramatic role. I have to say though, as quickly as I picked up on the religious connotations as an overall meaning throughout Dracula, my first instinct was not the conflict as presented by Castle, but a conflict more directly rooted with a Catholic verses Pagan relationship. The images of nature and the moonlight represent to many degrees worship for nature, in direct conflict with the religious undertones of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, turning Pagan worship into a demonic practice, the worship of the devil and portrayal of demons and the un-dead, appears as a much more predominate image while still containing a historical background throughout the narrative. Did anyone else find a similar religious relationship that varied with Castle’s?