Bram Stoker's Dracula and Kate Chopin's The Awakening centralises on the heroes of Count up Dracula and Edna Pontellier in the particular novels, characters marked as the Other because of their variation in racial and cultural traits and their transgression to demanding Victorian social codes of carry out in the late nineteenth century. This essay explores the role and demonstration of the Other in Matter Dracula and Edna Pontellier on the issues race, culture, marriage and the way the Other is represented through literary techniques such as terminology, symbolism, imagery and narrative strategies.
In Dracula, Stoker uses aesthetic imagery in his explanation of the Count up, of his odd and undeniable racial foreignness in his threatening appearance and physical features, where 'his eyebrows were very substantial. . . bushy wild hair that seem to be to curl in its profusion' (Stoker 17). In Jonathan Harker's article, he further notices of Dracula: 'Weird to say, there were hairs at the heart of the palm' and 'the nails were long. . . to a distinct point' (Stoker 18), features associated with nefarious criminals and bad beings that lack spiritual worth and moral expectations. A criminal is what Professor Vehicle Helsing represents Dracula as: 'This criminal has not full man-brain. . . be of child-brain in much (Stoker 341), followed by Mina Harker: 'The Count number is a unlawful and of unlawful type' (Stoker 342); Stoker models Dracula as a degenerate legal that poses serious hazard to the culture and uses Dracula's intimidating features to stand for his criminality, compounding his racial Otherness.
In The Awakening, Chopin uses the same narrative technique of visible imagery where she identifies Edna Pontellier as 'somewhat attractive than beautiful. . . certain frankness of appearance. . . contradictory understated play of features' (Chopin 5). Chopin brings about Edna's racial foreignness by contrasting and contrasting her beauty and body forms to that of Adele Ragtinolle, a Creole descent who's 'the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm' (Chopin 10). Edna's specific attractiveness, as an American from Kentucky and various from the physical exotic dispositions of Creole women stands her out as different, whose form of beauty attracts men such as Robert and Victor Lebrun as well as Alcee Arobin.
In his novel, Stoker portrays Dracula's outsider status, contrasting his archaic Transylvanian social origins in Eastern European countries to that of modernized European Europe where Jonathan Harker comes from. On his introduction in Bistritz, Jonathan represents the primitive land where things were not used to him, including the 'peasant male or female kneeling before a shrine' and 'Slovaks with their-coloured sheepskins. . . having. . . their long staves, with axe at end' (Stoker 8). He compares the new Eastern superstition to his local Western rationality whenever a female offers him her crucifix for his safe practices against Dracula, for he has been 'trained to regard such things as in some solution idolatrous' (Stoker 5). Different in all respects from British nobles, Dracula asserts Jonathan's and his ethnic dissimilarity: 'We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not Britain. Our ways aren't your ways, and there shall be for you many strange things' (Stoker 21).
As a solitary American female who marries a Creole from New Orleans, Edna encounters social dissimilarity and struggles to come to terms with the social norms of the Creole society, in which a woman's place and fulfilment is restricted in the local realm. Equally Adele Ragtinolle positions Edna as - an Other: 'she is not one of us; she is not like us' (Chopin 23), Edna is shocked by the Creole's 'whole lack of prudery' and 'independence of manifestation' (Chopin 12), where personal discussions such as childbirth are openly reviewed, gender to women are considered not for pleasure but rather for procreation and flirtations do not cross the limitations of infidelity; such were the communal rules in the Creole community which Edna seems growingly restrictive and eventually breaches. Where Dracula tries to assimilate the ethnic individuality of the British, Edna resists the interpersonal conventions of the Creoles, yet in his assimilation and her amount of resistance, both personas violates and threaten the communal and social order of the population these are in.
Stoker combines the theme of sexuality with assault in Dracula. The Count is portrayed as a revenant with a bloodlust in the body and is mainly a sexual risk not only to women but even to men. Dracula expresses his contempt for authority and Victorian order in the most self-employed means - through his sexuality. He possesses the hypnotic and seductive prowess that attract involuntary women into his clutches and retains the feministic role of duplication, as his victims do not perish but change into vampires themselves, embracing a new racial individuality and marking them as the Other. The magnitude of menace to the civilized population Dracula carries through his sexuality is illustrated first through Lucy Westenra's transformation from an amiable Victorian lady to a voracious predator and then through Dracula's grave personal invasion of Mina Harker in the very presence her hubby, Jonathan, who lay down asleep beside her.
In the theme of sexuality within the Awakening, Chopin paints a picture of Edna as a female captured in a stifled relationship and who's plagued by a mixture of feminist and subconscious issues. Unlike the mother-women of the Creole community who are defensive of and 'idolized their children', Edna's motherly instincts are seemingly vulnerable and it is uncharacteristically faraway from her two sons (Chopin 10). 'If one of the tiny Pontellier boys got a tumble. . . he was not apt to hurry crying to his mother's arms' (ibid. ). Edna's breakthrough of her dormant sexuality stirs her longing desire for liberty and self-reliance from the confines of guy domination and a married relationship she feels disillusioned with. Her outward sexuality ensues with her forbidden declaration of love for Robert Lebrun to Mademoiselle Reisz (Chopin 90), and also her work of adultery with Alcee Arobin on her behalf growing dependence on love, which breeds immorality and transgresses the traditional social principles of the New Orleans Creole community.
In Stoker's book, blood symbolises the basis of life to Dracula, which he feeds off his victims that not only preserve his physical but soulless existence but also provides its mythical capability to maintain beauty, as Jonathan observed in Dracula's younger looking change in a coincidental encounter in Exeter, Great britain (Stoker 172). Stoker then symbolises blood with racial contamination due to close connection between your vampire and blood vessels, with all its implications of purity and hereditary intimacy. Stoker also creates a symbolic distinction between British modernity in science and technology and Dracula's embodiment of the primitives and superstitions, where Dracula's hazard hinges on the progress of modernity which brushes off the very truth of such a revenant as Dracula himself who looks for to destroy the modern culture.
Chopin likewise uses symbolism in the launch of her book, where caged birds bear symbolic reference to Edna's limited and subservient role as a wife and mom that world presses upon her and just as the birds cannot escape from other cages, Edna too cannot totally release herself from her responsibilities. Before Edna drowns in the final outcome to the book, she notices a bird 'with a destroyed wing was conquering the environment above. . . disabled right down to the water', perhaps symbolizing Edna's unsuccessful look at at escaping the limitations and boundaries in her role as a female and foreshadowing her impending demise (Chopin 127). The ocean also presents a way to obtain new lease of life and a symbol of liberation for Edna, in where she feels rejuvenated and assertive upon her self-actualization of her dissatisfaction in her life and of her tasks. Her acquisition in the ability to swim symbolically empowers her of her sexuality and her chosen identity rather than one decided by the population.
There is no authorial tone of voice in Dracula; somewhat than adopting a continuing narrative voice, Stoker's writing style is straightforward and immediate, interlinking components from the journals of various personas that creates ambiguity but adds much realism to the storyplot. Dracula is not given a narrative voice and his activities and mysterious whereabouts are just revealed by the improvement other characters, so that unambiguously positions readers as jury in the realm of the nice in the fight against the wicked Other in Dracula.
A solo authorial speech is adopted by Chopin in her book in the form of a distant third-person omniscient. Chopin's formal prose relays a feeling of solemn gravity to the storyplot and she adopts a writing trend that is perceptive and concise. In her narration, she alternates between being specific on some situations and hazy on others, for example: 'It was the kiss of life. . . that kindled desire' and 'Edna cried just a little that nights after Arobin left her. . . There was with her an frustrating feeling of irresponsibility', which strongly implies their transgression of societal carry out through their phase of adultery (Chopin 92). However, Chopin uses implicit details to steer viewers, perhaps to mitigate the formality to which her text message means, in a her time when Victorian beliefs still prevailed.
Both Stoker and Chopin uses several literary techniques in Dracula and The Awakening, including foreshadowing, symbolism and imagery that reveals the Otherness in Dracula and Edna in their difference in fundamental ways from the culture associated them. Through artful imagery and language that convey perceptive explanations and ideas, personas and displays in both novels become more active, making a vibrant reading experience.
