Time and Space Divided in Dracula

Abstract

This essay investigates how Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) portrays the identity of modernity. Using the theoretical framework developed by Zygmunt Bauman in Time and Space Reunited (2000), we argue that Dracula contains a dialectic between two incompatible ways of being, associated with different time-periods and conceptions of time itself. These, the Gothic and Modern, must do battle, and as Stoker shows, the victory of the latter is assured by its technological power. This power is derived, as Bauman suggests, from the new conception of time, and itself defines this conception. Finally, Dracula shows the violence that Modernity, through its technology, is capable of, as much as its mediaeval counterpart.