OK… Remember that scene where Lucy gets a stake driven through her heart? Let’s talk about that. (By the way, the video above is from the 1992 film adaptation of Dracula – viewer discretion is advised.)
As I discussed in my last blog post, Mina Harker is considered pure and chaste (an ideal woman, according to the Victorian definition), while the three “sisters” of Dracula are considered evil, and highly sexual monsters. However, one more prevalent female exists: Lucy. She possesses both features, so I am just going to say that she fits somewhere in between all of the madness.
Let’s look at the scene of Lucy’s final death (which is, indeed, very sexual). “The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam” (Stoker, p. 231). If one reads this in a particular way, it becomes clear that this is so much more than a bloody death…. It is sexual pleasure (an orgasm). However, amidst all of the pleasure, “Arthur [never] falters” (Stoker, p. 231). Rather, he resembles Thor in that he drives a stake through Lucy’s heart (could be read as a penis), never faltering. It almost seems as though Holmwood is trying to retrieve his breath after a sexual act. In general, this is an important instance in the novel because it shows that this is what happens when one falls victim to a vampire’s seduction – to sex. After she is killed, she is finally able to return to her state of purity.
I could be completely wrong, but I’m just going to make a claim about the function of sexuality in Dracula. Bram Stoker intertwines sexuality (continuously) throughout his novel because he wants to remind readers of the problems that sexuality causes. In other words, he wants to awaken their anxieties – introduce a world where women can overtly appear sexual and lustful – only to make them realize that a world where sexuality is prevalent is a world doomed to evil and destruction (as seen throughout Dracula). In other words, sex is being equated with evil. In this scene with Lucy, the language is so sexually-charged because Stoker wants readers to understand that in Victorian society, if a woman falls victim to sexual seduction, she will become a monster until the moment of her death.
In summarization, Stoker utilizes conventional gender and sexual norms in his novel (Lucy is pure), only to disrupt them (Lucy becomes a sex-crazed, blood-sucking vampire), and then return them to their previous state (dead, but nonetheless innocent). Throughout everything, the anxieties of Victorian society are awakened because people are able to see this “side” of women. So, in order to evade the life of Lucy, women must continue to follow a life of chastity and elegance.
Aside from an immediately observable parallel between Lucy and Mina and Lizzie and Laura, Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” utilized challenges to feminine Victorian ideals to convey the amorality of a character over thirty years before Dracula among other parallels. After consuming the Goblin’s forbidden fruit, Laura can no longer do her chores thus forcing her sister to act and eventually save her (unlike poor Jeanie). (Rossetti, 9). This aversion to domesticity is a clear indicator that something has gone wrong, Laura has been led astray, and the world is not at peace. At the source of this issue is Laura’s decision to eat fruits offered by foreign goblin men and selling a piece of herself for it (Ibid, pg. 4). This in itself can be interpreted as a metaphor for pre-marital coitus (I like that word) with foreign men. In Rossetti’s poem, one act of deviance leads to further acts to the detriment of another character who must now go out and endure the goblin men. Furthermore, Laura gives up a physical piece of herself for the transient pleasure of the fruit. As a fable this is a device to convey the virtue of chastity while punishing the vice of wanton sex. On the subject of goblin men I find the parallel to miscegenation a bit odd considering Rossetti herself is Anglo-Italian. Perhaps her social stature allowed her to escape the prejudices suffered by other Italians in Victorian Britain, yet she is still the daughter of a foreign born man.