ABSTRACT
Native bloodlust becomes a trope of otherness, eliciting fear and repulsion that later Gothic writers including James Fenimore Cooper and Bram Stoker would invoke. For Stoker, America is a young nation, and Texas itself, having recently entered the union, stands for rugged independence in contrast with Dracula's feudal yet modernizing tyranny. Texas youth embodied in Quincey opposes the threat of old European decay encroaching on the modern age. After meeting Quincey, Lucy Westenra calls him 'young and fresh', suggesting his frontier vitality and innocence, unlike what Jonathan sees in the sinister old man Dracula who has 'grown young' in London. Quincey Morris stands as a foil to Dracula because he hails from a wilderness setting that has supposedly been recently civilized. Frontier American know-how has tamed Texas, making it safe for Anglo-American families to settle. Quincey's frontier background allows Stoker to allude to expansionism in America, supposedly carried out for a high purpose, the promotion of civilization.
