The vampire's night light: Artificial light, hypnagogia, and quality of sleep in Dracula
Critical Survey June 1, 2015 DOI: 10.3167/cs.2015.270205 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key points | Argues that Stoker's Dracula reflects late Victorian anxieties about artificial lighting and sleep, using the concept of hypnagogia to explain vampiric control. Proposes that men are depicted as both resistant and vulnerable to sleep, while women rely on male sleep deprivation. |
Abstract
In a cross-disciplinary investigation of lighting technology and sleep science, I strive to illuminate the ways in which Victorians under the seductive influence and increasing availability of bright city light saw night as a useful space and time. Stoker's Dracula (1897) is a crucial text for examining change in late Victorian nightlife because one of the key determinants of power and powerlessness in Dracula is in the way the body rejects or succumbs to the instincts of sleep. First, I analyse the late nineteenth-century social and medical opinions surrounding technological advances in artificial lighting in order to ascertain the significance of light's apparent effect on Victorians' sleep patterns and sleep quality. Second, I liken the descent from wakefulness into sleep, a state called 'hypnagogia' in sleep science, to the vampiric state of the undead. Dracula holds his victims within the hypnagogic trance to assert his power over them in their weakened and liminal consciousness. My study concludes that Stoker writes men as both strong and weak in their resistance to sleep, and the women as reliant upon the sleep deprivation of men for health and life.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |