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Bram Stoker's Gothic and the Resources of Science

2007; Berghahn Books; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3167/cs.2007.190204

1752-2293

Glennis Byron,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

In a 1909 article for the North American Review on ‘The American “Tramp” Question’, Bram Stoker turns his attention to the issue of vagrancy and urges the necessity of swift action to deal with the ever increasing problem of the ‘wilfully-idle class’: ‘When certain persons – or classes of persons – are manifestly dangerous to the more peaceful and better-ordered classes of communities’, he declares, ‘it is the essence of good government – indeed, a necessary duty to responsible officials – to keep them in restraint, or certainly under observation’. There is consequently a need for some means of identifying these ‘undesirable’ characters, so that they can easily be located and detained in order to be taught to be industrious. Anticipating the introduction of GPS (Global Positioning System) or electronic tagging, he suggests that while the primitive system of ‘ear-marking with a “hot yron”’may not be acceptable to the modern age, ‘surely the resources of science are equal to some method of personal marking of an indelible quality’.