SOURCE: Foster, Dennis. “‘The Little Children Can Be Bitten’: A Hunger for Dracula.” In Bram Stoker, Dracula: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Contemporary Critical Perspectives, edited by John Paul Riquelme, pp. 483-99. Boston: Bedford, 2002.

In the following essay, Foster applies a psychoanalytic interpretation to Dracula.

We are all familiar with that moment of dreamlike suspension in movies when the monster, the killer, or some swarming, vital mass of birds, worms, or spiders waits somewhere just out of sight. The protagonist, who should know better, moves steadily, stupidly toward an encounter everyone else can see coming. “Don't, don't open that door,” we scream, and yet how disappointed we would be if the victim turned away, leaving the nightmare behind the door. After all, for the audience, that encounter with the horrid thing is the life of the party, the difference...