Undead Blonde Hair in the Victorian Imagination: The Hungarian Roots of Bram Stoker’s 'The Secret of the Growing Gold'
January 2011
in “
Hungarian Cultural Studies
”
Studysummary This paper discusses how Bram Stoker's "The Secret of the Growing Gold" reinterprets a Hungarian folktale to reflect British Victorian racial anxieties, linking Teutonic superiority with Hungarian folklore. Our plain-language summary of this paper — not a Tressless recommendation.
This paper examined how Bram Stoker's short story "The Secret of the Growing Gold" reinterpreted the Hungarian folktale "Woman with Hair of Gold," originally part of a feminine mythos, to reflect British Victorian racial anxieties. Stoker's adaptation removed the feminine perspective and introduced themes of Teutonic superiority, linking these ideas with Hungarian folklore, which the author argued was a dangerous and nefarious fiction.
