Superstition and Modernity

The text of Dracula provides the reader with an interesting dichotomy between modernity and the past. Dracula himself embodies this contradiction by the simple fact that he has existed for centuries at least. The Castle text, “Ambivalence and Ascendancy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” states that, “Critics typically interpret the contradictory interdependence of superstition and modernity in Dracula as a reflection of the ambivalence generated by competing ideologies of gender, race, class, and nationalism within modernity.”(Stoker, 525) Superstition and modernity are laced throughout the novel, as Stoker has Harker being given garlic and crucifixes to protect him right before Seward records his contribution to the novel on a phonograph, which is one of the first recording devices of its type.
At one point while exploring the castle Harker makes a similar remark about modernity and superstition when he speaks the line, “And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill.”(60) These powers of centuries old can be considered the superstitions which despite all the advances of science, as represented by Seward, still hold a certain level of influence on all of the locals who try to ward off the evil eye as Harker rides away.