Science And Technology In Bram Stoker's Dracula

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) is his best-known novel, the content of which has been adapted numerous times and to numerous media, like cinema, television, other novels or video games, during the decades after its first publication. The story takes place from 3rd May to 6th November of an unknown year with a postscript note dated seven years after the main actions. Although the year is not further specified, the state-of-the-art media, science and technology employed in the novel indicate that its actions take place roughly at the same time the novel was published, namely the late 19th century. Although scholars like Carol A. Senf claim that it is a Gothic novel (28), the modernity it evokes is undeniable. This modernity is produced mainly …show more content…
Stoker, like many Britons at that time, was an avid fan of state-of-the-art inventions and “enthusiasm for science and technology is characteristic of turn-of-the-century England” (Senf 18). Instead of using only letters, which would make Dracula an epistolary novel, Stoker uses numerous different types of documents which originate from a variety of sources in their initial form. Therefore, although Dracula is regarded as a Gothic novel, it “addresses the role of technology in record making and keeping, and explores devices and techniques that were cutting edge at the end of the nineteenth century” (Radick 516). As John Sutherland states, “England […] [was] the most modern country in the world - the most modern, that is, in its social organization, its industry, its education, its science” (237), which underlines the difference between modern England and old-fashioned, traditional Transylvania. To what extend the modern media, science and technology is used in the novel and how the modern characters like Mina and Jonathan Harker, Dr Seward and Van Helsing are contrary to traditional Count Dracula, will therefore shortly be addressed in the following and more thoroughly in the analytical