Dracula’s assault on Mina Harker, as well as her reactions afterwards, represent a highly tangible moment of terror, anxiety, and the paranoia of reverse invasion. As the only surviving woman of the entire novel she alone possesses the promise of the continuation of the English bloodline. Her response and self-loathing after realizing what has happened came as a shock to me, primarily because none of the movies portray her in this manner. Especially in the Dracula adaptations of the last few decades there is the notion of the Count and Mina belonging together. In some productions and films (most notably Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie) the two of them are actually an eternal couple, with Mina being the reincarnated wife of Dracula, who has lived through the centuries to find her again. However, this presents a dilemma of sorts. Does the new plotline give Mina more agency in choosing to let Dracula turn her into a vampire, or does it sweep her assault under the rug?
Christopher Craft delves into the ideas of sexual and societal upheaval in his essay “’Kiss Me with Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, focusing on the antagonist as a trigger of sexual perversion and a confusion of gender roles. He notes that Mina’s drinking of the blood possesses a double meaning, a “symbolic act of enforced fellation and a lurid nursing. That this is a scene of enforces fellation is made even clearer by Mina’s own description of the scene a few pages later; she adds the graphic detail of the ‘spurt’.” (Craft 457-458) There is also her sorrow and feelings of self-hatred and impurity following the assault “Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear.” (Stoker 302)
The Coppola film shows none of this, and even has Mina try to stop the men from attacking Dracula as he flees the room. Later on in the film she also tries to seduce Van Helsing and kill him, and tries to thwart the men’s efforts to kill the count. Whether this is due to the vampire’s influence or her own nature as his apparent soul mate (or both) no one can say. In any case there is still a clear ignoring of Mina being raped. This primarily has to do with the male gaze and turning sexual assault into a horrid display of “passion.”
Another distinction between the film and the novel is that Mina ends up killing Dracula and setting his soul free. Through her true (pure?) love the Count is freed from his curse of demonic immortality and allowed to pass onto heaven. This creates an interesting shift of agency from a band of men (Crew of Light as Craft calls them) to a single woman taking power from her rapist and using it to ultimately end the threat to England herself. There is a fine line here, but it also makes Mina more than just an observer and victim. To me it would have been a better decision to actually keep the assault the way it was in Stoker’s novel, but then have Mina use the newfound powers herself to bring Dracula down rather than be passive and constantly hypnotized by Van Helsing. In any case there is bound to be another Dracula adaptation in the next twenty years, and perhaps the soul mate part will be omitted. However I would like to see Mina be given more agency, especially if she is the true protagonist.
Below is the scene from the Francis Ford Coppola version of Dracula when the Count assaults Mina. (It’s not violent but can be very uncomfortable for some people)
Eek, I just watched the Coppola clip and I was astounded at the blatant eroticism that is linked between assault and the act of blood-sucking. In the text, the sexual undertones are certainly present within the specific scene in which Mina’s face is “forced down on his [Dracula’s] bosom” (Stoker, 300), but the media clip somehow managed to make this action more sexual than I had envisioned it. Comparatively, the clip shows Mina as a willing participant whilst Stoker establishes Mina as a reluctant victim. However, I feel like a gross human now because I found the visual clip more startling than the text. Our consumption and interpretation of different media forms is absolutely fascinating and most definitely terrifying.