Time in the novel “The Snake’s Pass” by Bram Stoker as a plot-forming element

Abstract

The article examines time as a plot-forming element in Bram Stoker’s novel “The Snake’s Pass”. The traditional idea of artistic time as a sequence of events flowing from the past into the present and future is interpreted from the point of view of the concept of linear and monumental time. Ireland’s legendary and historical past are intertwined and expressed in the present through the images of the bog, the treasure, the Englishman and the Irish peasant woman. The monumental past is associated with the uneasy relationship between Great Britain and Ireland at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries and the attempt of the author of the novel to metaphorically resolve the contradictions through the marriage of an Englishman and an Irish woman. Linear time is expressed in the image of an Englishman, the development of his relationships with the inhabitants of an Irish village, the engineering study of a bog, and the transformation of a poor Irish village into a prosperous region. The female image is created according to the canon of the “new woman” in the late Victorian novel, combining femininity and heroism, manifested in a difficult situation.