The Representation of Time Modernity and Its Prehistory in Dracula

Abstract

The essay deals with the bifurcated representation of time in Dracula that is split into a modern and pre-modern time. In Stoker's novel the time of Western modernity and the modern nation depends on the repression of the past and of the past-becoming of the present. While modern technologies purportedly create an imaginary sense of control over the wayward mythologies of the past supplementing and stabilizing the modern present they cannot fully obstruct the haunting of the prehistory of modernity represented by the vampire and Transylvania. The predominant fears of the novel derive from the powerful eruption of this prehistory in the form of a Gothic romance that spawns unspeakable sexual perversions adulterating both the modern time and the Victorian body. This essay performs a close reading of the passages primarily belonging to the first part of the novel that depict the perils and pleasures of being haunted by the distant past and shows how the oft-sexualized eruption of the past in the novel forces modernity to regress to the romance genre.