Dracula’s vampire is encoded as a Jewish monster through medieval blood myths.

Evidence

Dracula’s pale skin color identifies him as a monster, but what does the “extraordinary pallor,” the almost translucent quality of his skin, say about his racial identity? This is situated in his identity as a Jew. Accusations of Jews as the killers of Christ and later of the murder and consumption of Christian children often included ancillary fantasies: among these are myths of Jewish male menstruation, genital hemorrhoids, and internal hemorrhaging of blood. These bleeding afflictions are explained as God’s punishments for Jewish crimes. … And some say that the Jews bear this shame, that in vengeance for the Passion of the Lord they suffer a flux of blood. And that is why they are pale. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 530

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core thesis: the manufactured monster as a container for Western self-anxieties, with the vampiric Jew as a parallel construction to the conquering Muslim monster.
• FICTION: Dracula as racialized Jewish vampire rather than purely generic Gothic monster is a surprising analytic reframing.