Author: nomournersnofunerals

At the beginning of Chapter 9, Basil visits Dorian to console him about Sybil and is surprised to find him quite at peace. In his explanation of his quick emotional recovery, Dorian says of Sybil, “She lived her finest tragedy. She was always a heroine. The last night she played – the night you saw her – she acted badly because she had known the reality of love. When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet might have died. She passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr about her. Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty” (Wilde 93-94). In this passage, Dorian considers Sybil’s death as a final act of theater, which he finds pleasing. He continues to use theater terminology, framing her life as a “tragedy” and declaring that she “was always a heroine.” This is true, at least in Dorian’s mind. To Dorian, Sybil was never more than the characters she played on the stage. He reiterates this by once again comparing her to Juliet, suggesting that her death was merely a completion of her character arc. Looking back, Sybil’s death was certainly foreshadowed as her final performance was as Juliet, a character famously known for dying for love. In Dorian’s eyes, Sybil was inseparable from Juliet or whatever role she was playing; he only ever appreciated her as a piece of art and never saw her as her own individual person. Thus, in her dramatically canonical death, Dorian once again expresses his admiration because she fulfilled the narrative he expected. He also mentions her “wasted beauty,” which for him means not only her physical appearance but also the way in which she expressed beauty through her performance. To Dorian, Sybil simply is art, and he only loves her when she is conforming to that image.

This moment underscores the novel’s broader implications about Aestheticism and Decadence in the fin de siècle. Dorian embodies Aestheticism in his worship of beauty and art, which is channeled through Sybil. When she fails to perform art because of her individual human emotions, Dorian loses all interest. This reveals the dark side of Aestheticism, Decadence, because in reality Sybil is not a piece of art but a real person who dies a real death. Dorian’s moral corruption is exposed by the fact that he expresses no remorse for Sybil and instead is pleased that in her death she returned to art and beauty. Through Dorian’s character, Wilde implies the detrimental effects of an obsession with art. Sybil’s death was Dorian’s first sin, as it is the first flaw to show in the portrait, so it is this all-consuming Aestheticism which incites his own moral degradation, making him an embodiment of Decadence.

For this blog post, I will examine the sharp duality exhibited in two passages of Vernon Lee’s Dionea which occur only one page apart. Just before the climactic ending of the story, Doctor De Rosis describes the imagined form of Waldemar’s wife Gertrude resting peacefully in bed: “I can imagine Gertrude lying awake, the moonbeams on her thin Madonna face, smiling as she thinks of the little ones around her, of the other tiny thing that will soon lie on her breast…” (Lee 25). Throughout the story, descriptions of Gertrude remain consistent in their physicality and allusions. The first mention of Getrude labels her as the “thin, delicate-lipped little Madonna wife of [Waldemar]” (16). A more thorough illustration again mentions “her thin white face” and “her long, delicate white hands,” as well as once again comparing her to “a Memling Madonna finished by some Tuscan sculptor” (19). The three recurring descriptions summarily capture Gertrude’s character: she is thin, white, and delicate, all symbolizing her innate purity. Most importantly, she is repeatedly framed as the Madonna, the holiest female figure of Catholicism. This passage on page 25 in particular reinforces this characterization: Gertrude is bathed in moonlight, emphasizing her whiteness and giving her an almost ethereal quality. Secondly, she is surrounded by her children and is even pregnant with another, explicitly aligning her with the figure of Mother Mary.

This passage is closely followed by a jarring turn in the story when the next morning Waldemar and his wife are found dead at the castle where Waldemar had been working on a sculpture of Dionea. Doctor De Rosis once again describes Gertrude’s body at rest (though not so peacefully) in an eerie echo of her previous positioning: “We found her lying across the altar, her pale hair among the ashes of the incense, her blood – she had but little to give, poor white ghost! – trickling among the carved garlands and rams’ heads, blackening the heaped-up roses” (26). Though Gertrude is still defined by whiteness as she is called a “poor white ghost,” her “pale hair” is sullied by the dark ashes of incense, representing how her purity has been damaged by the unholy desecration of her body. Despite ambiguities in the story, it can be assumed Waldemar, in a fit of insane passion, attempted to sacrifice his wife to the altar of Venus. Not only is the altar related to the Roman goddess of love, but it is also decorated with “carved garlands and rams’ heads,” other symbols of ancient mythology. Since she has been repeatedly posited as the modern manifestation of the Madonna, this marks a sinful misuse of Gertrude’s body in a non-Catholic ritual sacrifice. Even the roses, a hallowed symbol of love, are “blackened” by Gertrude’s blood, symbolizing how the sacred relationship between Waldemar and his wife has been destroyed by this crazed act.

The stark contrast between these two images of Gertrude reveals the story’s implications of the dreaded downfall of modern society itself. Beyond Gertrude’s symbolization of Catholicism, it is essential also to recognize how she serves as a foil to Dionea. While Gertrude is the white, delicate Mother Mary, Dionea is described as having darker skin and a sharp, almost threatening beauty, and is constantly compared to Venus. Even her name implies she may be related to the ancient goddess, as well as her skill with love potions. Throughout the story these characters are constantly at odds, and in the end it is Gertrude who dies, her beautiful pure body desecrated by an archaic pagan ritual, while Dionea disappears. This desecration exhibits the societal fears illustrated by this story through a hallmark of Gothic fiction: the threat of the ancient coming back to the present and endangering modernity. Just like poor Lucy Westenra, Gertrude represents the white, beautiful, vulnerable woman whose purity is defiled by a non-Western, non-modern “other.”

Trapped in Castle Dracula, Jonathan Harker writes in his journal: “Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is nineteenth-century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill” (Stoker 43). This moment comes after Jonathan has witnessed Dracula’s lizard-like descent down the castle walls, which marks a tonal shift from mere eeriness to something decidedly sinister. With this journal entry, Jonathan reflects on the relationship between modernity and ancient times within the castle, considering an imagined “fair lady” who may have sat at the very same desk centuries before. This fictional woman is the paragon of innocence and poses no threat to Jonathan; she is simply writing a love letter, wholly guided by her feminine emotions. In fact, with the inclusion of her letter being “ill-spelt,” Jonathan frames this lady as his inferior. While she was just some silly woman, blushing and scribbling out a love letter (which she can’t even spell correctly), he is using the modern invention of shorthand to record a journal of his experiences. He is professional, scientific, and formal – clearly far more advanced than this ancient woman. This comparison emphasizes the idea that the modern Victorian man is superior to the people of the past, a belief which has carried Jonathan confidently through the events of the novel thus far. Jonathan’s explicit reference to the time period – “It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance” – stresses this point.

However, this fundamental belief is subverted with the final line of the entry, signaled by the words, “And yet.” Jonathan cannot deny that the very things which he is recording in his modern journal with his modern shorthand expose the threat of the ancient world that he is beginning to uncover. He writes, “unless my senses deceive me,” which invokes the conflict between what knowledge science necessitates and what one sees with his own eyes. With the following line, Jonathan admits that “the old centuries” are much more than the “fair lady” composing a sloppy love. History is not all quite so benign.

Thus launches Jonathan’s inner turmoil: he is grappling with the realization that modernity does not carry all the answers. Jonathan is the hallmark of the modern Victorian man – he is educated and sophisticated; he is training in a respected career; he is engaged to a proper, devoted woman – and yet all this does not grant him security. All throughout his journey to Castle Dracula, he was met with warnings and signs of danger which he ignored because he thought himself untouchable. In his eyes, his modernity placed him far above the peasants of Transylvania and would thus keep him safe.

In fact, I think the country of Transylvania as a whole represents this idea of the “old world” within the novel. Despite its noted eerie features, Jonathan never felt truly threatened because he came from London, the century of technology and science, the most advanced society in the world (in his mind). Why should an Englishman fear any part of the primitive, heathen country of Transylvania? Jonathan even saw himself as Dracula’s savior, tutoring him to be a proper Englishman and helping him to emigrate from an inferior nation. Although Dracula is a high-ranking individual, Jonathan sees the entire Transylvanian social hierarchy as beneath the Englishman.

To return to the journal entry, I argue that this moment marks when Jonathan begins to question his confidence in modernity, and not just modernity but in Britain as an empire. What he has witnessed in Castle Dracula causes him to doubt his assumed superiority and, more imminently, his untouchability. Not only is he realizing that his education, his technology, and his social heritage do not make him superior – they also do not make him safe. With the line “The old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill,” Jonathan admits the immediate threat of the ancient world. The specific wording of “had, and have” invokes the Victorian fear that the barbarism of the past which society has strived to rise above can still tarnish the world of the present. The word “kill” makes these “powers” real, tangible threats, something that must be physically stopped. And, of course, that threat is made physical in the form of Dracula.