“I Am Full of Vague Fear, and I Feel So Weak and Worn Out”: The Fin-de-Siècle Syphilophobia in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

“I Am Full of Vague Fear, and I Feel So Weak and Worn Out”: The Fin-de-Siècle Syphilophobia in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

The syphilis epidemic of late Victorian Britain not only marked a health hazard but also attributed its spread to prostitution, the fin-de- siècle decadence, in a pervasive oppression and surveillance of female sexuality. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of the novel, vampirism works as a trope for venereal diseases, reflecting the response to the period’s syphilis epidemic and its perceived threat to Victorian society. By analysing the similitude between the vampiric and syphilitic contagions, this essay attempts to dissect how Dracula constructs and“Gothicises”the fear of syphilis as a gender anxiety within late- Victorian social disciplines.