Date of Graduation

5-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English (MA)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

English

Advisor/Mentor

Lissette Lopez Szwydky-Davis

Committee Member

William Quinn

Second Committee Member

Sean Dempsey

Keywords

Dracula, Hyde, Mobility, Monsters, social mobility

Abstract

This thesis explores Late Victorian Gothic texts that are central to theories on monstrosity in terms of mobility by examining Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula. The goal of this project is to survey the ways in which two exemplary monsters, Mr. Hyde and Count Dracula, promote mobility for others and themselves as an inherent part of their monstrosity. The variety of this mobility is demonstrated by examples showing how monsters move and encourage movement in ways that are social and transformative as well as physical. Because social mobility is essential to these movements, this study also considers the societies these monsters enter and interrupt. The gentleman bachelors of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula's Crew of Light and the women they seek to protect are presented as monolithic groups that the monster joins, transforms, and spurs into movement. By identifying mobility as one of the main attributes of monstrosity, this argument seeks to not only add to the copious amount of scholarship already done on these works but also to reconcile some of them since many of the most critically controversial aspects of these texts are rooted in the monster's mobility. A study focused on movement not only adds something that is missing from the existing discussion on these seminal monsters but also provides a new framework through which to discuss constantly evolving theories of monstrosity.

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