Dracula "is so suggestively amorphous in Stoker's novel that he is free to shift his shape with each new 20th century trend." In 1897, though, Dracula was, despite his occult powers, so comparatively docile a vampire, so amenable to others' definitions, that he stifled the tradition that preceded him (Auerbach 83).

Like Dracula, the 1890's were a decade shaped by medical experts ... particularly on the "homosexual." (Oscar Wilde's trials)

Dracula is silent, cannot love, cannot participate...

Dracula inhibits more taboos than he breaks...his existence is hedged by absolute of arbitrary rules vampires fear to break even now.

But he has the ability to shapeshift ... though this ability, in the novel, is downplayed (i think for creepiness effect ... "his changes are modestly presented compared to those of Lucy and Mina...once again, women perform of behalf of withheld males the extreme implications of vampirism" (87).

Sexually, Stoker's vampires are dutifully conventional; personally they lack flair, craving only power and possession -- they are striking only in their transformative potential.

In most vampire films, animalism is less metamorphosis than coded eroticism, but is late Victorian England, animals were not represented as notably sexual. Instead, they generated a lonely awe human  beings were too socialized to inspire (88).

• Also watch Kinski/Herzog's Nosferatu