Sociopolitical Philosophy in the Works of Stoker and Yeats
Around the turn of this century there was widespread fear throughout
Europe, and especially Ireland, of the consequences of the race mixing that was
occurring and the rise of the lower classes over the aristocracies in control.
In Ireland, the Protestants who were in control of the country began to fear the
rise of the Catholics, which threatened their land and political power. Two
Irish authors of the period, Bram Stoker and William Butler Yeats, offer their
views on this "problem" in their works of fiction. These include Stoker's
Dracula and Yeats' On Baile's Strand and The Only Jealousy of Emer, and these
works show the authors' differences in ideas on how to deal with this threat to
civilization. Stoker feels that triumph over this threat can only be achieved
by the defeat of these "demonic" forces through modernity, while Yeats believes
that only by facing the violent and demonic forces and emerging from them could
Ireland return to its ancient and traditional roots and find its place in
society.
The vampire was a common metaphor used by many authors in an attempt to
portray the rising lower class and foreign influence as evil and harmful to
modern civilization. The Irish Protestant author Sheridan Le Fanu uses vampires
to represent the Catholic uprising in Ireland in his story Carmilla. Like much
of gothic fiction, Carmilla is about the mixing of blood and the harm that
results from it. When vampires strike, they are tainting the blood of the pure
and innocent, causing them to degenerate into undead savages who will take over
and colonize until their race makes ...