In this week’s commonplace book entries on Dracula, there were many themes that were common amongst the entries I read. One of the main ones is the idea of modern London versus old Europe. The idea that there were evil practices and strange people in other parts of the continent scared many people at the time. This once again goes back to the idea that much of the fear of a monster is simply from a lack of understanding. The people of London at the time had no idea what happened in other parts of Europe, and therefore feared it. Also, the idea of sexual depravity or deviance is very apparent in this book. The fear that the image of a perfect, high society woman could be destroyed by some creature from far away was one that worked very well in this novel, and I’m sure scared many at the time of its publication. Also, in many of the commonplace entries I read, images of Dracula and the girl were seen on posters, with Dracula always depicted as a monstrous being and the girl always depicted as powerless. This idea that a “monster” could make a girl love him scared many people reading this at the time.
