The monster figure encodes Western fears of reverse colonization and racial contamination

Evidence

In Gothic horror tales, monsters often transform an innocuous “Western” environment when they cross into it, exemplifying the danger of foreign bodies and the fear of reverse-colonization. When he crosses the boundary from the East (Transylvania) into the West (civilized Europe), Dracula immediately begins infecting the pure racial bloodlines of Britain, an expression of the concerns about Irish, Jewish, and Turkish racial contamination. All of this—Dracula’s poly-sexuality, his violation of English borders, and his insatiable appetite for human flesh—are symptomatic of British anxiety about race, reverse colonialism, and sex. Like other Muslim monsters, Dracula represents a long list of desires, including lesbianism and oral sex. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 428

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s third guiding question — what the monster lets its makers avoid seeing about themselves; the monster is a container for repressed British desire and anxiety.