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Gothic StudiesArticle 4 · Vol. 1, Issue 4, June 2026 · pp. 33–45
Monstrous Nations: Gothic Anxiety and National Identity in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk
Ankita Sarkar
Doctoral Researcher, Department of English, Raiganj University
Abstract
This article examines how Matthew Lewis’s The Monk and Bram Stoker’s Dracula construct monstrosity through anxieties surrounding institutional authority, national identity, and social exclusion. Rather than presenting evil as an isolated moral condition, both novels reveal how religious and political structures generate the very forms of instability they seek to suppress. Emerging from distinct historical moments, the texts trace a shift from late eighteenth-century fears of religious corruption and moral discipline to Victorian anxieties about imperial decline, foreign intrusion, and cultural contamination. Ambrosio and Dracula function not simply as Gothic villains, but as figures produced through systems of repression, surveillance, and ideological control that depend upon the construction of threatening others to preserve social coherence. Through a comparative reading of the two novels, this article argues that Gothic fiction exposes the contradictions embedded in institutions that claim to maintain order while simultaneously sustaining themselves through violence, exclusion, and spectacle. By situating monstrosity within the intersecting structures of religion, nationalism, and disciplinary power, the article demonstrates how Gothic narratives transform fear into a critique of the political and cultural mechanisms shaping modern identity.
Keywords:
Gothic fictionmonstrositynationalismsurveillanceDraculaThe Monk
How to Cite
Ankita Sarkar (2026). Monstrous Nations: Gothic Anxiety and National Identity in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. Veritas: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1(4), 33–45.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21194739
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