Capitalism, Violence, and Sexuality ‘American Psycho’ by Bret Easton Ellis and ‘Dracula ’by Bram Stoker. Anonymous College

“It has been said in literature, excessive sexual behaviour always leads to corruption”

To present the significance of sexual behaviour in both novels is to link the psychological power of sexual impulses over the individual’s moral principles, and hence associates all corrupted motives and human destruction to their sexual desires. Both Stoker and Easton Ellis in Dracula and American Psycho have modernised the concept of associating sexual desires with capitalism and align sexual consumption with materialistic values; ultimately playing a role in the act of murder. Easton Ellis portrays Patrick Bateman’s narcissistic personality in relation to his compulsive demand for superiority; which links his sexual impulses to the same sensation as murder. Whereas Stoker’s destruction of women’s sexuality during the act of vampirism shows the empowerment of masculinity among a Victorian society pursuing perverted sexual desires. Despite the differences in eras between the two novels, both perspectives, a typical Victorian society and a 1980s New York society, share a capitalist-driven superlatively moral system; demanding men to survive by means of vice and not virtue, thus creating their sexual desires as symbols of capitalism,...