Item Details

title

THE CONSENT OF THE CORPSE: TRANSGRESSIONS OF THE BODY AND THE QUESTION OF AUTONOMY IN BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

author

Grasty, Victoria Rose

abstract

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a novel intimately connected with the horrors of having a body. Examining the constant, penetrative violence Lucy Westenra faces through the needles of doctors, the fangs of Dracula, and the killing stake that returns her to a natural, dead state, Stoker depicts horrific violations of consent. Utilizing the connotations of bodily violation and transgressed boundaries of the term “consent” together with its Victorian and modern conceptions, this thesis will show how depictions of violations of consent create horror within Dracula. The novel’s transgressions against unconscious or unwilling bodies mirrors Victorian anxieties surrounding threats to bodily autonomy by contemporary medical movements such as the Contagious Diseases Acts, antivaccination, and antivivisectionist movements. While establishing the connection between living ideas of consent and Lucy’s body, this thesis also explores the role of consent and the corpse after death, reflecting anxieties surrounding the physical afterlife of bodies in the operating theatre, particularly in light of the 1832 Anatomy Act. Lucy’s relationship to consent illustrates the tense relationships between control of the body from the cradle to the grave, as well as consequences for when those boundaries are transgressed. 

subject

Bram Stoker

Consent

Contagious Diseases Acts

Dracula

Gothic literature

Vampires

contributor

Pyke, Jenny (advisor)

Shirey, Ryan (committee member)

Greiman, Jennifer (committee member)

date

2025-06-24T08:36:29Z (accessioned)

2025 (issued)

degree

English (discipline)

embargo

2027-06-23 (terms)

2027-06-23 (liftdate)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/111012 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis