resources
VCE Literature in Victoria
A guide to Dracula on VCE Literature in Victoria. Historical examination material: 2022–2025; current text-list status needs checking. Use the documents for your own paper and year; past material is also useful for wider preparation. The examination format changed from 2023; do not treat the older and newer tasks as interchangeable.
Your task
How Dracula is examined. On the text list for the 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 examinations (not 2020–21; not on the 2027 list; not on the 2026 list, checked against VCAA’s April 2026 version). Among the most popular Section A texts in 2022–2024, and the most popular in 2024. Closed book (to confirm). Source details.
Past questions
Browse the VCE Literature question records. Exact question excerpts, shortened prompts and report-based summaries are labelled separately. Open the original paper for the complete instruction, extract and rubric.
What examiners report
Read each year’s questions before its feedback. The wording labels distinguish recorded excerpts from summaries that still need checking against the paper. General-paper and unseen-passage comments are identified separately; a report may not discuss every question listed.
2022
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| VCE Literature (Victoria) Question Sec A | Question excerpt: ‘Stoker’s Dracula challenges conventional notions of good and evil.’ Discuss (through a literary perspective) | Follow the original VCE task, including its supplied passage or literary-perspective requirements. Find the original paper. |
- 2022: Dracula produced some of the most original literary-perspective writing.
2023
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| VCE Literature (Victoria) Question Sec A Q2 | Question excerpt: …the concept of power is endorsed, challenged and/or marginalised (passage-based) | Follow the original VCE task, including its supplied passage or literary-perspective requirements. Find the original paper. |
- 2023: students should not march through “endorsed / challenged / marginalised” one verb at a time.
2024
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| VCE Literature (Victoria) Question Sec A Q2 | Question excerpt: …the concept of obsession… (passage: Van Helsing in the vampire women’s tomb) | Follow the original VCE task, including its supplied passage or literary-perspective requirements. Find the original paper. |
- 2024: examiners want close analysis of language, not a general “views and values” essay.
2025
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| VCE Literature (Victoria) Question Sec A Q2 | Question excerpt: …the concept of transformation… (passage: Mina’s hypnotic trances) | Follow the original VCE task, including its supplied passage or literary-perspective requirements. Find the original paper. |
- 2025: no Dracula-specific comment or sample.
Board-published candidate answers
Open the candidate-answer catalogue for links, reported marks, page references and what to learn from each response.
- 2022 report – full high-scoring essay (good and evil). Argues the novel ultimately keeps gendered notions of good and evil: the vampire women are demonised, Lucy moves from Angel in the House to “Bloofer Lady”, Harker and Renfield are feminised, and Mina is allowed only a temporary, unconventional goodness.
- 2023 report – high-scoring Q1 and Q2 responses (power). Both are built around the threat of the New Woman: Harker and the vampire women, the waning of British dominance, East against West.
- 2024 report – high-scoring Q1 and Q2 responses (obsession). The Q2 sample reads Van Helsing’s fascination in the tomb as a moral lapse interrupted only by Mina’s voice, the Count’s study of England as threatening, and Seward’s clinical case notes as pushing sympathy for Renfield to the margins.
VCAA says its samples show how different students met the criteria; they are not models to copy. Summarise and link; do not reproduce.
Using context on this paper
VCE asks about a text’s “views and values” rather than its historical context as such. In 2022 students had to write through a chosen literary perspective, which makes a biographical, Irish or postcolonial reading legitimate. From 2023 the passage-based format puts close reading of language first; context earns its place only through the passage.
Papers and supporting documents
Open the board’s assessment-materials library. The source register records individual reports, mark schemes and access notes. Sources for studying and teaching Dracula.
Return to Chapter C · Past-question catalogue · Candidate answers
Prepared by the Bram Stoker Estate. Page last updated 8 November 2026. Report a correction here.