“Who Wants To Live Forever”: A Study In Queer Temporalities With Dorian Gray And Dracula

The overall goal of this thesis is to illuminate the ways in which time is queer for both Dorian Gray and Dracula, how that affects the perception of them-by both readers and characters-throughout the novels, and finally, how each author chooses to utilize what we today would call queer temporalities, as established by Elizabeth Freeman and Jack Halberstam in their works, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories and In A Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, respectively. In the first chapter, "'Eternal youth, infinite passions:' Time, Queerness, and Vampiric Figures in The Picture of Dorian Gray," I examine the disruption of time within the novel, particularly in regard to how it turns Dorian into a vampiric figure and enforces his ideas regarding the preservation of youth and beauty, allows for the exploration of queerness throughout the narrative. In the next chapter, "'Let's Do the Time Warp Again:' Time, Queerness, and Vampires in Dracula," I discuss the depictions of queerness throughout the text, how Stoker connects that to vampires, and finally, the ways in which Stoker presents the effect vampires and queerness have on the British Empire during the Victorian era.