Dracula

There are numerous themes and motifs present in Bram Stoker's "Dracula," such as sexuality, femininity, Christianity, superstition, and ancestral bloodline, to name but a few. However, perhaps one of the most obvious themes surrounds sexuality and femininity.

Stoker's "Dracula" can be seen as a sort of Victorian male "Harlequin" novel, filled with adventure, intrigue, and damsels in distress. And much like the Harlequin type novels for women today, Stoker's novel has an underlying theme of dangerous sexuality, the forbidden fruit. Many of Stoker's passages actually read as erotica:

The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue ... Lower and lower went...
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