[Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula: gender and science in literature]

Throughout the ages, literary works have expressed fears and expectations generated by scientific discoveries and have portrayed images and myths about science itself. Several parameters can contribute to these representations of science, including the culture and social class to which the authors of these works belong. We also cannot deny the influence of gender, as due to the fact that the male sphere of action dominates science, male or female authoring can determine a peculiar characterization of the scientific world. In the present work, through a comparative analysis of two important literary works from the 19th century, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, and Dracula, by Bram Stoker, the issues concerning the view of science and their relation to gender are highlighted. While Shelley, as a woman, apart from the scientific world, reveals in Frankenstein all her distrust about it, Stoker, the model of a Victorian man, expresses in Dracula his total trust in science.