In chapter I of Dracula, Stoker makes several remarks through Harker’s account of his journey through the Eastern European Countryside that give a sense of English Superiority. On page 5(in the physical edition), Harker records that ” With some difficulty I got a fellow-passenger to tell me what they meant; he would not answer at first, but on learning that I was English, he explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil eye”. Harker describes the fact that being English made it easy for him to learn about the charm that the villagers were telling him about. This lead me to think why being English would suddenly change their attitude about speaking with Him. It took me to another passage about Harker’s judgements of the common folk he comes across on his journey. He ends up using two words to describe the majority of the people he meets in the first chapter, “Commoner” and “Peasants”. Now he says these words about several groups of villagers because of the way they are dressed and the way they act around his presence which leads me to believe he thinks of himself as higher than these people. Stoker might have written Harker’s dialogue like this as that was the viewpoint of Eastern Europeans at the time the novel was written. At that time, Britain had a more lavish lifestyle than that of other countries in Europe at the time. They made classy paintings, rich literature, and expensive clothing, so seeing people with home-made clothes, dirty and more rugged individuals was not the normal. With that said, seeing that image from Harker’s or even Stoker’s perspective did not inspire thoughts of the wealthy, more civilized culture that they were living in. Personally, I do not believe that Stoker consciously thought the English people were superior as he only really wrote comments about other countries’ people in an ignorant way given that he was never really exposed to other kinds of people before. With that said, I believe that Harker’s description of the villagers may be a form of English superiority, but Stoker’s inclusion of these comments makes the story all the more eerie and uncanny.Ā Ā
