In eight pages Dracula is examined from the perspectives of the author Bram Stoker's ethnic and cultural backgrounds as they impact upon the literary work. Two sources are cited in the bibliography.
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of the text itself. As Valente (2003) points out, there was a strong emphasis in the nineteenth century not only on taxonomy of races, but also the interrelationship of gender
with such forms of definition: he points out that the Celts were perceived, according to Renan, as an essentially feminine race: something which might be regarded as ironic in the
light of more modern research into the Celts which strongly indicates that the traditional attributes of gentleness and nurturing were not exactly apposite as a racial characteristic of that culture.
Valente also makes the point that Arnold built upon Renans view by comparing
what he saw as masculinity in the English with femininity in the Celts. Valente notes that Stokers own heritage and residence would, therefore, mean that he identified both in his
personal life and in the text with the cultural affiliations of the Anglo-Saxons rather than the Celts. However, since Stoker combined both his Irish and his English voice in what
Valente refers to as the migrant vision, it is too simplistic to assert that Dracula deliberately sets one cultural perspective as being superior to the other. Certainly, the greater part
of the novel is concerned with conflict in one form or another: the overt differences between the fictionalised East Europe of Stokers Transylvania and the colonialist, expansionist attitudes of nineteenth-century
England provide a dialectic in themselves, especially when the one is inflicted upon the other with Draculas arrival in Whitby. However, the dynamics of the text are rather more complex,
as can be seen by the interaction between Dracula and his victims: on the face of it, we have a single character who drains the resources of the others and