Why was bram stoker sick

Abraham Bram Stoker was born on November 8th, , in Clontarf, then a popular holiday resort on the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland. He was the third of Abraham Stoker, Sr. His brother William Thornley was two years older; sister Matilda one year older; brother Thomas two years younger; brother Richard Nugent four years younger; sister Margaret six years younger, and brother George seven years younger. As a child Bram was so sickly as to be confined to his bed for much of his first seven years, subject to bloodletting and probably not expected to live.

Both with the melancholic mood of the times, plagued as they were by disease and famine, and the darkly wry, slightly fantastical nature of Irish narrative, many of these tales were somewhat gothic in character—supernatural mixed with the real and believable, bound up in dark mood and lyrical language. At the time of his enrollment at Trinity College , Bram had not only survived his still-undiagnosed childhood illness, but had bounced back in a big way.

It is that we become as him; that we henceforward become foul things of the night like him—without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best. This idea would have rung true in a society ravaged by cholera and tuberculosis, when the contagious nature of the epidemics was just being revealed — many people would have wondered in retrospect if they had the death of their loved ones on their hands.

Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it is I who am now his worst enemy! Much commoner than cholera and tuberculosis, syphilis flourished in the disease-ridden cities of Victorian England, and the risk of sexually transmitted ills was a constant threat for the poor, the prostitutes and the upper-class gentlemen who frequented them.

Bram Stoker himself succumbed to the venereal plague in In Dracula , he equates the exchange of bodily fluids that occurs during vampiric infection to a sexual act where blood replaces semen — the penetration of teeth, the breaking of skin, the blood given and received, the disease transmitted. No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves , says Seward. It would at once frighten him and enjealous him.

In both cases, it is safe to exclaim: The blood is the life! While both women get infected by the vampire — through attacks that are intrinsically sexual — they react in very different ways.

Lucy is attacked while sleepwalking — some critics have argued that it symbolizes her hidden adventurous and sexual desires, thus portraying her as a subconsciously willing victim.

Just after becoming a vampire, she suddenly turns from a virginal, sweet girl into a sex-hungry, voluptuous woman — by Victorian standards, a prostitute. During the 19th century, disease was often conflated with poverty, promiscuity, and villainy. With his left hand he held both Mrs. After she and Dracula have exchanged fluids, she hides her bloody face in shame, unable to confront her husband: she considers herself impure, unclean — a word she will repeat many times in despair and self-loathing.

He that can smile at death, as we know him; who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole peoples. The Victorian city could readily turn into a deathtrap.

Bram Stoker used the metaphor of the vampire and the framing of the Gothic novel to embody an era of widespread nosophobia, wherein a suspicious population lived in terror, and valiant doctors scrambled to find causes and cures to nightmarish pandemics. One hundred and sixty-five years ago today Irish novelist and short story writer Abraham 'Bram' Stoker was born. November 8, The third of seven children, Stoker was extremely fragile as a boy. By his own telling, he was a bedridden child who never stood upright until the age of seven.

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It was at the age of 7 that he made a full recovery going on to become a superior athlete at Trinity College in Dublin. It was during his early illness that he developed his love of fiction and was encouraged by his nanny, Ellen Crone, to give free rein to his imagination.

Stoker was known as a skilled theatre critic in Dublin and attracted the attentions of the famous actor, Henry Irving , who invited Bram to manage his theatre in London called the Lyceum. The Stoker family moved there and it was during this period in his life that Bram visited Whitby, site of the famous monastic ruins which were to be included in his novel, Dracula.

It was prior to penning his gothic horror that Stoker met the Hungarian writer, Armin Vambery. It has been speculated that the Prince of Darkness emerged from stories of the Carpathians that Vambery shared with the Irish author. Dacre Stoker , who manages the family estate today, believes that it was the Hungarian who formed the basis for the vampire hunter, Van Helsing.

Although many commentators and fans have stated that the figure of Dracula is based upon Vlad the Impaler , ruler of Wallachia during medieval times, there is no evidence beyond the family surname Vlad Dracul to suggest that this is the case.

Stoker never mentioned Vlad in his notes for the book, and is believed to have known little about the bloodied figure from next to, but not in, Transylvania. And although Stoker did travel extensively in Europe, he never visited the eastern portion of the continent.

Still, the connection has taken root in popular fiction and is not easily removed. Stoker continued to live in London until his death on 20th April, He was cremated and his ashes placed on display at Golders Green Crematorium in north London.