Within the texts of Dionea by Vernon Lee and Stoker’s Dracula, there is the shared anxiety over the implications of Darwinism for Victorian society, and can be seen specifically in Dracula and Dionea’s odd and singular power over animals. An interesting parallel between Dracula and Dionea is that both characters are described as being attractive to animals – Dracula is able to control wolves and Dionea is almost always accompanied with her white pigeons. The ability to manipulate animals in this way is a cause for nervousness among the other characters because it shows that they are more closely related to the animals, and whose company they prefer over their fellow humans.
This is aided by the Victorian anxiety fueled by the question of how distant humans are from their primal ancestors. Darwin’s work with evolution suggests that there is a direct link between humans and other primates, which connects to the fear of regression in that humans can very easily slip backwards and once again become animals if they are not careful of how they structure their society. As seen in the other characters’ fear of both Dracula and Dionea, it is disconcerting to see someone – presumably human – able to control animals: “I found Dionea, standing by the side of a big basket of roses, one of the white pigeons perched on her shoulder (Lee 13). This is best characterized by the Victorian fear of having any resemblance to their primal ancestors because it brings up the question of whether or not humans are actually the superior race.
However, Dracula has a more complicated relationship between Dracula and animals because in a sense Dracula is an animal, and Dionea is merely a beautiful girl – if she is more ‘animal’ than human, then it is not shown in her physical appearance. The language Jonathan Harker uses to describe the physical features of Dracula in the beginning of the novel are reminiscent of some sort of half-animal-half-human creature more easily found in The Island of Dr. Moreau, particularly in regards to his hands and his teeth. Dracula’s hands were “… rather coarse – broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point” (Stoker 25). This account in conjunction with “… peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips…” (Stoker 24) gives the reader an impression that Dracula has characteristics more in common with a canine than with Jonathan Harker, especially since he is able to easily transform himself into a wolf or a bat.
Dracula and Dionea also differ in that instead of Dionea resembling an animal, she more closely relates to a ship’s figurehead of a mermaid – made of wood or stone, longing to get back to the ocean – “She spends hours and hours on the terrace overlooking the sea (her great desire, she confided to me, is to get to the sea – to get back to the sea, as she expressed it…” (Lee 6,7) – and indifferent to many human activities except for singing. “…raising her head witht hat smile like the twist of a young snake, she sand out in a high guttural voice a strange chaunt, consisting of the word Amor – amor – amore” (Lee 13). Dracula, on the other hand, while not having the complete appearance of being human, is more emotionally so, as he is heavily invested in the intricacies of human life, reading everything he possibly can about London in order to better understand the inner workings of society: “The books were of the most varied kind – history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law – all relating to England and English life and customs and manners” (Stoker 26).