The novel Dracula is set in Transylvania and England in the late 19th century. The period of rapid transition which saw a growth in modernization. From rural Eastern Europe to Victorian England to the industrial revolution. Scientific discoveries and revolutionary theories fought against religious doctrines and tradition. In this Bram Stoker proposes a problem according to which blindly following the theories of science is equivalent to blindly following religious doctrines. What we know as truth today may not be so in the future. May the lessons of the rural past not be forgotten because we may learn something we may need. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Time and setting are very compelling as they provide the specific point of view of the story from which we can see a divergence between two cultures and see how they contrast with each other. 19th century Victorian England is a time of intense confusion, with various women dying of as yet unknown diseases (tuberculosis). Dying the same way you turn pale, vomit blood and lethargy. Almost the same symptoms of vampirism in the book. This is perhaps the inspiration for Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker's affliction. Sexuality is also a controversial part of the book, with Victorian expectations for women to be kind and also comes the unclean affliction of seductive vampirism. Transylvania is where Castle Dracula is located. The distance between England and Transylvania is not only literal but also figurative. It symbolizes the distance between progress and the prospect of superstition between the two places. Transylvania symbolizes the traditional past while England represents the secular present. Bram Stoker's use of setting to establish some of the key Gothic elements of the novel Dracula proves crucial in developing both suspense and intrigue. This can be studied particularly thoroughly by reference to Jonathan Harker's account of his trip to the Carpathians and Mina Harker's description of her home town of Whitby. Both passages highlight the natural beauty of the area as well as a lingering sense of mystery, resulting in greater dramatic tension. This is most evident in Jonathan Harker's account of his crossing through an area that is one of the "wildest and least known portions of Europe". Even Mina's description of Whitby, a "wonderfully green", "lovely" place, is shrouded in legends which are a direct consequence of the way the setting is perceived. Indeed, the perception of Whitby Abbey as a ruin enclosing the "white lady" is linked to the myth of the bells ringing when ships are lost at sea, causing the reader to have an apprehension that steadily increases throughout the novel. Meanwhile, the repetition and reiteration of the "darkness" and "gloomy," "solemn effect" of the sunset in Transylvania foreshadows the impending horror that awaits both Jonathan and Mina. Both selected passages precede the arrival of Count Dracula: initially, before Jonathan meets him at Castle Dracula, and subsequently, upon the Count's arrival in Whitby, England. Therefore, using setting as a tool to create suspense is very successful. The result is an emotional anticipation of an “atmosphere” that will soon evolve into an “overwhelming sense of thunder.” The reader is forced to acknowledge the fear of the unknown. Jonathan Harker's passage through Transylvania and towards the Carpathians begins with pleasant and reassuring scenery. "A bewildering mass offruit blossoms" in a "sloping green land" encourages a false sense of security which Stoker soon exploits. Indeed, it leaves the reader in awe of a land so dark and distant: "the mighty slopes" are said to have "towered" over Harker, while the "jagged rock" and "sharp crags" of the mountains present the landscape ASdaunting and emphasizes its differences from Harker's homeland, Britain. It should be noted that the foreign and unknown land of the East is a major theme throughout the book. Transylvania is said to be "an imaginative vortex", while Harker notes that "every superstition known in the world is gathered in the Carpathian horseshoe". which with its indistinguishable location" is "a land neither wholly material nor locatable, nor defined by the rigid negotiations of those terms." Indeed, for a Victorian audience who had seen the borders of imperialism stretching across the entire globe, such an isolated area was rare and unnerving. The loss of the comforts and civilized nature of the West is accentuated in the novel's early chapters when Harker acknowledges, "There were many things new to me: haystacks among the trees, and here and there, beautiful masses of weeping birches." Interestingly, the popularity of travel books in the Victorian period was enormous: Stoker is thought to have used Emily Gerard's The Land Beyond the Forest (the English translation of "Transylvania") to provide factual information to Dracula. Indeed, the Victorian desire to explore and gain knowledge for remote lands meant that the setting of books was crucial to the reader's overall disposition. Stoker suddenly describes the setting differently, causing a noticeable change in mood. While previously the setting of the passage through the Carpathians was both beautiful and foreign, when night falls, the reader is suggested to a disturbing tension of the uncanny. Harker notes that "the shadows of night began to creep around us." This is evidence of the peculiar change that occurs at the end of the day. Stoker ensures that the reader is aware of Harker's growing apprehension about the "great masses of greyness" and the "bestowed trees" which are said to be "peculiarly strange". Meanwhile, the night is a "growing twilight" that "seemed to merge into a dark mist of darkness." Stoker uses the repetition of key ideas of the landscape as night falls to produce a relentlessness that seems to engulf the valley in which the carriage is travelling, in a "darkness" that is both "grey" and "gloomy". The landscape has become a negative backdrop with an impending sense of doom. The "ghost-like clouds" and, later, the "dark, wavy clouds", slide "ceaselessly through the valleys" to give a feeling of enclosure while the clouds form a ceiling to trap in the "thundering" and already claustrophobic atmosphere . Stoker's intent is to establish the metonymy of darkness and horror, a characteristic of Gothic drama. Metonymy, a subtype of metaphor, uses one thing – here, darkness or darkness – to represent something else – here, mystery and the supernatural. The prolonged darkness sets a precedent for the rest of the novel. The reader learns that the darkness, the period in which Dracula thrives as a vampire, is the time to expect the horror to reach its climax. Like much Gothic literature, such as The Mysterious Stranger (1860), which is believed to have influenced Stoker, the dramatic tension steadily increases, with all of the text contributing to the author's intention, including metaphors such as the "serpent-like vertebra…of the road” – all used to reaffirm Gothic suspense and intrigue. Whitby's description..