So, maybe Transylvania aka Romania wasn’t one of these countries but the uneasy feeling is still there. What does Hollywood do when they want to make an antagonist seem even scarier? They make the antagonist a foreigner. This novel would not have been as enticing and thrilling if Dracula was from England. Even making his character French or American would not have been as effective. These two cultures were ones the Brits already knew well enough not to fear. Stoker was clever to make Dracula a character from an exotic location. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula there is an underlying tone of xenophobia. Stoker seems to be playing on the British nation’s fear of new cultures immigrating into the British Empire. On the surface this is just an entertaining
