Dracula: Sexuality, Gender, and Sharp Teeth
The battle towards modernization has been fought on several different battlegrounds. From movements such as the Industrial Revolution to the instituting of the Vatican II. However, one battle that still reigns today is the battle between modern and traditional views on gender and sexuality. In the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker the theatre of war changes to Victorian England and the battle between Count Dracula and Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. What this paper will analyze is the sexual and gender-related imagery in Dracula and the stance it took on how the two genders are to act.
The lines of gender are often unseen in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. This is shown through the reactions of the men to the situations in which they face. At times it can be assumed that their reactions and feelings towards a situation can be seen as rather weak and lacking machismo. The lines of Gender had become blurred by the differences between how a man or woman was supposed to act and react. When it came to the matter of Dracula this is not true. Dracula acts as the cheif reproducer and cause for vampirism in general, whereas characters such as Lucy Westenra who when she became a vampire was incapable of making more vampires. She was only capable of draining the blood of children and killing them. This gives off the image that reproduction is in the power of men alone and not in the power of women. This is the classical view of how men were supposed to be: strong, powerful, and well to do with women. Considering the role of Dracula is the role of the villian in the novel it can be assumed that the villainy is the traditional machismo view of men and not just the undead visage of such masculinity.
However, as much as Dracula is the masculine dominating character there is always the opposite. For instance, in the case of Johnathan Harker you are introduced to a character who is written as being so strongly affected by his contact with Dracula that he took on, “a grey look which deepened and deepened … till … the flesh stood darkly out against the whitening hair.[1]” To have the events that he had experienced with Dracula affect him so made it apparent that he was a sensitive and in traditional terms a weak man. Geddes and Thomson write that, “Man thinks more, woman feels more. He discovers more, but remembers less; she is more receptive, and less forgetful.[2]” This view of the male gender contradicts the actions of Johnathon Harker. Although his experiences with Dracula and the three women that reside with him are quite horrifying, a man was expected more or less to be manly and view the situation logically and not run away with greying hair.
Another example of Johnathon Harker’s femininity can be shown in the events which occured after the slaying of Lucy Westenra, “The moment we were alone in the carriage he gave way to a regular fit of hysterics. [...] He laughed till he cried and I had to draw down the blinds lest anyone should see us and misjudge; and he then he cried till he laughed again; and laughed and cried together, just as a woman does.[3]”The machismo that men of his time were expected to display was made irrelevant by the events that had come to pass before but men were not expected to be anything more but manly, and women were expected to be prone to hysterics and fits of emotion. When Dr. Seward uses the words, “…as a woman does” he dismisses the act in the carriage as being something of hysterics and therefore is something only women were seen as being capable of having.
Taking into consideration the remark made by Geddes and Thomson which viewed women as feeling more, receptive, and less forgetful. It would be good to note that the women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula take up the masculine role that the men have left behind. For instance in the character of Mina Harker we see a woman who is strong, calculating, and independent. She is a school teacher and is proficient at short-hand, she makes several copies of her journal, and successfully fights off Dracula’s charms on more than one occaision. She not only takes up the role of the receptive, less forgetful female; she also takes up the role of the thinking male. Without her help, the men of Dracula would have failed miserably at the task of destroying the vampire. Later in the novel her several copies of her journal, that she had produced using the manifold function on her typewriter, become essential in her survival when Dracula burned what was thought to be her only copy
4. Although her masculine personality is clearly displayed she is also a woman who’s maternal instincts make her an extremely caring individual. This brings Dr. Van Helsing to comment on her being by saying she has the brain of a man but the heart of a woman
5. This motherly and nurturing side of Mina makes her come to even feel remorse towards Dracula when he is being hunted
6. Canny-Francis writes that, “men are still seen as dominating and controlling the agency by which women are recognised as intelligent; a woman is intelligent if or because men think she thinks like them.[7]” Therefore, Dr. Van Helsing’s comment that she has a man’s brain makes it just a masculine trait and does not define her as masculine.
The sexual concepts in Bram Stoker’s Dracula are found in the sexualities of the female characters. Mina Harker’s appetites are epecially interesting when she makes a reference to the New Woman’s sexual movement. She even boasts about her own and Lucy’s appetites when she writes, “I believe we should have shocked the ‘New Woman’ with our appetites.[8]” When Mina refers to this ‘New Woman’ she refers to a new stage of female sexual daring and prowess. Cranny-Francis notes that she is sexually childish and passive
9, but this leaves the idea that she and Johnathon had engaged in sexual congress either before or after the wedding. However, when she is pursued by Dracula she becomes far more active and even more assertive. Cranny-Francis describes this as,
Then she is attacked by the vampire – and her sexuality, so effectively concealed by intelligence and motherliness, is made apparent. [...] The (displaced) oral rape is followed by the beginning of Mina’s metamorphosis – into a sexually assertive, sensual woman…[10]
This sexually assertive woman that had been created by the “kiss” of Dracula went against the traditional concept of sexuality and femininity. Therefore, the battle between the forces of traditionalism and the new concepts of sexuality rages on in the “soul” of Mina Harker.
Cranny-Francis believes that this does not mean in any way that Lucy Westenra had active sexuality or more-than-common awareness of sex
11 she is only sexually active after she is, “kissed into sexuality.” Craft writes,
Dracula’s authorizing kiss, like that of a demonic Prince Charming, triggers
the release of his latent power and excites in these women a sexuality so mobile, so aggressive, that it thorougly disrupts Van Helsings compartmental conception of gender.[12]
The concept of the New Women and the classical idea of how a woman should act seem to be two forces at work in this novel. Craft also writes that, “…the traditional dualism most vigorously defended by Van Helsing and most subltly diverted by Dracula is of course, sexual…the vampiric kiss excites a sexuality so mobile, so insistant, that it threatens to overwhelm the distinctions of gender.[13]” The true battle that Bram Stoker writes about is not the battle of the living versus the dead, but rather the battle between traditionalist values, and the more or less modern views of the distinctions between man and woman.
Lucy Westenra’s painful transformation into the creature of the night that is eventually slain by Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward is a direct symbol of sexualism. Craft writes:
Here is the novel’s real –and the woman’s only-climax, its most violent and misogynistic moment, displaced roughly to the middle of the book, so that the sexual threat may be repeated but its ultimate success denied[...][14]
Showalter views the imagery in this scene as being, “…embarrasingly clear.[15]” Her interpretation views the act of slaying Lucy as being a gang rape of sorts, and by utlizing almost Freudian imagery they slay her with an “impressive phallic instrument.[16]” The act of slaying Lucy is made possible by Dr. Seward driving a wooden stake through the hear of Lucy whilest Dr. Van Helsing cuts off her head and stuff her mouth with Garlic. According to Craft this scene clearly restores the sexual initiative established by men:
...by the negation of Lucy’s ‘aggressive’ (because apparent) female sexuality. She can henceforth live on as a beautiful, spiritual memory for all of them – her troublesome physical presence removed…A woman is … better dead than sexual
17
The battle of Lucy Westenra’s spirit and sexual being ends in victory for the team of Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward. Lucy now lives on as a beautiful memory and not the cursed being she had become through the modernist actions of Dracula.
The topic of homoeroticism is also prevalent in Dracula and can be found in the situation involving the contact between Dracula and Johnathon Harker. When Johnathon wakes after his first night in Castle Dracula he finds three beautiful women molesting and seducing him. Shortly after Dracula appears to ward off the strange women and declare, “How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me.[18]” This denotes a sexual dominance over Johnathon Harker in which Dracula is the only one capable of “penetrating” him with his teeth. Craft supports this claim by adding
Dracula’s intercession here has two obvious effects: by interrupting the scene of penetration, it suspends and disperses throughout the text the desire maximized at the brink of penetration at the brink of penetration, and it repeats the threat of a libidinous embrace between Dracula and Johnathon Harker.[19]”
It is not implied that Dracula ever kissed Johnathon Harker instead he decided to use the man’s intelligence in Law, Customs, and the language of England. Dracula had no intention to use Johnathon in a sexual way, but he used the sexual dominance he had over Johnathon to get what he needed out of him. Therefore, the topic of homoeroticism is implied, but it is merely seen as a means to an end on the part of Dracula.
In Conclusion, Bram Stoker’s Dracula may be a work of fiction, but through the examination of it’s sexual and gender-related imagery it can be made certain that it is a manifestation of the battle that was raging on in Victorian England: Modernism and Traditionalism. Although the conclusion of this battle is still yet to be assertained, the eventual defeat of Dracula shows the reader that change is not yet acceptable.
Bibliography
Craft, Christopher. ””Kiss me with Those Red Lips”: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Representations (1984): 107-133.
Cranny-Francis, Anne. “Sexual Politics and Political Representation in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Nineteenth Century Suspense (1988): 64-79.
Geddes, Patrick J. and J. Arthur Thomson. The Evolution of Sex. London: Walter Scott, 1889.
Showalter, Elain. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle. London: Virago, 1990.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Hamondsworth: Penguin, 1994.
[1] (Stoker 344)
[2] (Geddes 271)
[3] (Stoker 209-210)
[4] (Stoker 340)
[5] (Stoker 281)
[6] (Stoker 367)
[7] (Cranny-Francis 70)
[8] (Stoker 110)
[9] (Cranny-Francis 69-71)
[10] (Cranny-Francis 71)
[11] (Cranny-Francis 68)
[12] (Craft 119)
[13] (Craft 117)
[14] (Craft 122)
[15] (Showalter 181)
[16] (Showalter 181)
[17] (Craft 122)
[18] (Stoker 53)
[19] (Craft 110)
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