Dracula, and the vampire myth more generally, has also been read as a narrative on class relations and the struggle between capitalism and labour. It is this context that we shall examine below, with sharpened stake and cloves of garlic ready at hand, should they be needed.

Vampire fiction as class allegory predates Dracula. The means by which vampires feed not only has sexual and Freudian subtexts, but is also a powerful representation of a classically exploitative relationship – one body drawing strength whilst the other weakens – and Marxist writers were not slow in appropriating this imagery. Crucially, the vampire is also aristocratic, unlike, for example, the lumpen-proletariat Frankenstein Monster. Early vampires in Balkan folklore may have been re-animated peasants, but by the time the vampire novel emerged in the early-nineteenth century the classic undead was very much from the noblesse.