Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Exploring the Count’s Psychological Yearnings in the Fin-de-Siècle Britain Through Abraham Maslow’s The Hierarchy of Needs

While most studies of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) concentrate on the societal apprehensions and anxieties prevalent in Victorian English society—particularly the fear of foreign influence—embodied by the strict refusal to accept Dracula as a symbol of foreign invasion, this study takes a different approach. Adopting Abraham Maslow’s (1943) theory of the Hierarchy of Needs, the paper shifts the focus onto Dracula himself, analyzing his personal hierarchal needs; that is physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs. The paper also analyzes the novel from the specific historical and cultural context of the fin-de-siècle era, which was characterized by rapid urbanization, societal upheaval, and a sense of secularity. By doing this, Dracula’s states of paranoia, destructive impulses—with a focus on the blood imperative—and contradictory behaviors such as his desire for both isolation and connection could be reexamined from a new standpoint. Hence, Stoker’s vampire narrative will be reconsidered as a tale of ungratified needs. The paper compromises two major parts: it first illustrates the traditional perceptions of Dracula as a representation of the fin de siècle society’s xenophobia (Dracula as seen by the society), and then introduces a new approach through analyzing the character of Dracula through the lens of Maslow’s theoretical framework to see the society’s effect on Dracula.