"Your girls that you all love are mine already": Dracula, Mormonism and New Women's Degenerate Polygamy. (June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Roth, Jenny; Chambers, Lori; Walsh, Dana
• Is Part Of: Law, culture and the humanities. Volume 12:Number 2(2016:Jun.)
• Page Start: 353
• Page End: 372
• Publication Date: 2016-06
• Subjects: Dracula -- law and literature -- mormonism -- new women -- polygamy -- Bram Stoker; Culture and law -- Periodicals; Sociological jurisprudence -- Periodicals; Law and the social sciences -- Periodicals; 340.11505
• DOI: 10.1177/1743872113483093
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1743-8721

Abstract

Polygamy, often unmentioned or glossed over by critics, is central to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Representations of law in relation to the polygamy threat borne by vampires connect the novel to contemporary legal and popular debates about the perceived threat Mormonism posed to patriarchal power within empire and home. Stoker's treatment of polygamy places the novel within the contemporary contextual canon of anti-polygamy and anti-Mormon novels, thus situating it as a popular participant in the legal debates about polygamy, empire and women's rights which took place in the fin-de-siécle courts and popular press on both sides of the Atlantic.