Author: Kara Smith

“On a Picture” by John Gray conjures the image of Sir John Everett Millais’s painting entitled “Ophelia.” By reading this poem through Christopher Craft’s “’Kiss Me with Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” which is included in the Norton Critical Edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this poem’s treatment of Ophelia can be read as twisted by images of deviant sexuality.

The poem begins by placing Ophelia in “the river’s arms,” which are described as “steadfast” (Gray l. 4). This stagnant position evokes a sense of entombment in her watery grave, as Dracula is when in his box. Ophelia, however, is surrounded by the “[p]ale petals [that] follow her in very faith” (Gray l. 5). Flowers are, in themselves, representative of sexuality and sensuality in their hermaphroditism (flowers have both pistils and stamens, both reproductive parts), which leads to the supposition that Ophelia may be enveloped by the intersection of sexualities or gender norms. Her “maidly hands,” which carry the connotation of youth, femininity, and possibly innocence, “look up, in noble sloth / To take the blossoms of her scattered wreath,” and thus reach towards this androgynous sexuality (Gray l. 7-8). Even in her “noble sloth,” one of the seven deadly sins that may be viewed as “noble” because of its languorousness, her reach for the “blossoms” is as if to grasp and accept the sexuality sprinkled around her that is marked as her property, as it’s “her scattered wreath” (Gray l. 7-8). The androgynous sexuality belongs to her, and she yearns to embrace it.

In her immobile state, though, “[n]o weakest ripple lives to kiss her throat” (Gray l. 9). In Craft’s article, “Dracula’s authorizing kiss, like that of a demonic Prince Charming,” is what “triggers the release of this latent power and excites in [Mina and Lucy] a sexuality, so mobile, so aggressive, that it thoroughly disrupts Van Helsing’s compartmental conception of gender” (p. 452). This quote describes the kiss as the inciting incident to Mina and Lucy’s mobility, whereas Ophelia experiences the additional step of needing the “weakest ripple” to occur before she can achieve this liberating kiss, a kiss from mobility itself. In Dracula, Craft writes that this kiss results in a “sudden sexuality” for Lucy, who “grows ‘voluptuous’ (a word used to describe her only during the vampiric process), her lips redden, and she kisses with a new interest” (p. 452). Here, the sequence of events places Lucy’s sexual emergence as after the kiss upon her throat, which has, presumably, not yet happened to Ophelia.

In the last stanza, the narrator’s voice fades while recognizing that “[u]ntil some furtive glimmer gleam across / Voluptuous mouth, where even teeth are bare, / And gild the broidery of her petticoat…” (Gray ll. 12-14). This seems to reflect that while the narrator knows that a change will occur after “some furtive glimmer” glances across her, they’re not sure or unwilling to write what the presumed change will be. This disruption of the status quo segues to the new, overtly sexual description of Ophelia: “Voluptuous mouth, where even teeth are bare” (Gray l. 13). Craft defines the mouth “as the primary site of erotic experience in Dracula,” noting that it “[lures] at first with an inviting orifice, a promise of red softness, but [delivers] instead a piercing bone” (p. 445). More, “the vampire mouth fuses and confuses… the gender-based categories of the penetrating and the receptive” (Craft p. 445). In having this hyper-sexual mouth that represents the intersection of traditionally masculine and feminine sexuality, Ophelia is marked as already corrupted by the intersection she seems to reach in the flowers that surround her. If Ophelia is already sexually fluid, then, why highlight the “broidery of her petticoat,” which seems like such a delicate, traditionally feminine thing, directly after noting her sexual mouth (Gray l. 14)? Maybe this points to the ability of traditional femininity and sexuality to coexist. If that, can they only coexist in death, as Ophelia remains in her watery grave, or is the “petticoat” simply a remain of her life before her sexual awakening?

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the narrator mentions Lord Henry’s fascination with vivisection, as applied to himself and others. Reading The Picture of Dorian Gray through The Island of Dr. Moreau contextualizes this reference to vivisection as alluring in the eyes of Victorians because it was a manner of scientific research, though gruesome, that could possibly answer great questions in the medical field and about our own selves.

Although both took stake in vivisection, Dr. Moreau and Henry pursued it in different ways and for different purposes. According to Wilde’s narrator, Henry “had been always enthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others” (Wilde 38). That is, Henry has a sick fascination with vivisection that Moreau shares, but Henry’s seems to stem from a general interest in science for entertainment purposes. Vivisection appears to be a stumbled-upon method that happens to serve Henry’s need to learn about and manipulate himself and others psychologically, not a consciously chosen and pursued path. Moreau, however, consciously dedicates his life to “the study of the plasticity of living forms” with the original goal of applying his research to medical advancements for humans (Wells 53). Moreau’s focus seemed to shift throughout The Island of Dr. Moreau, as his test subjects “were animals—humanised animals,” “animals carven and wrought into new shapes” in a creation-esque way (Wells 52, 53). Moreau convinces himself that he has a godlike ability to craft these new forms. Henry’s pride in his manipulation of Dorian is akin to that of an experiment-gone-right, which could foreshadow the magnification of Henry’s ego and god complex as his experiment progresses.

Currently, Henry observes Dorian “with a subtle sense of pleasure” because he has changed so much from the “shy frightened boy” Henry met in Basil’s studio (Wilde 36). Henry notes that Dorian’s “nature developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame” (Wilde 36). Through the lens of The Island of Dr. Moreau, in which Moreau’s experiments ‘betray him’, this observation of Dorian’s blossoming can be read with a sense of warning. Dorian “developed like a flower,” and is strongly associated with beauty, but his “blossoms of scarlet flame” foretell a dangerousness in this transformation that may come back to harm Henry as Moreau’s vivisected animals caused his downfall.

Further, Henry describes the “crucible of pain and pleasure” seen when watching life as “curious,” which connotates the mixture as merely an entertaining curiosity that he is interested in observing. Henry does, however, go on to note that “pain and pleasure” are infectious, and that “one could not wear over one’s face a mask of glass nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams” (Wilde 38). By comparing the observation of “pain and pleasure” in life to “sulphurous fumes,” Wilde (through Henry) labels it as toxic, a poison that inevitably harms the observer. As we are reading about Henry’s views on vivisection, we can assume that he has been a victim of these “sulphurous fumes,” “monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams,” and yet he continues to experiment with Dorian and watch for Gray’s newfound experiences with pleasure and pain. Moreau takes a more aggressive stance towards these sensations, claiming that “pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven and hell. Pleasure and pain—Bah!” To Moreau, “[t]he store men and women set on pleasure and pain… is the mark of the beast upon them, the mark of the beast from which they came” (Wells 55). Read through this belief, Henry’s vivisection of Dorian, which introduces him to pleasure and pain, brings out the bestial nature within him and within Henry himself, marking them as inferior in the eyes of Moreau.

Overall, Moreau and Henry practice vivisection in different ways, but both explore the push and pull between humanity and bestiality. The death of Moreau and degradation of Henry by pain and pleasure both lead to the conclusion that messing with humanity results only in the ascension of bestiality.

In Vernon Lee’s “Dionea,” the majority of the factors that cause Dionea to be seen as a dangerous ‘other’ stem from her interactions and preferences rather than from her mysterious past. Reading “Dionea” through Henderson and Sharpe’s “The Victorian Age” from The Longman Anthology of British Literature helps us see how many of these actions and preferences are undesirable because they oppose the established values of the “ideal Victorian woman” (Henderson and Sharpe 1061).

According to Henderson and Sharpe, the “ideal Victorian woman was supposed to be domestic and pure, selflessly motivated by the desire to serve others rather than fulfill her own needs” (Henderson and Sharpe 1061). Within this desired domesticity is the expectation of acquiring “’female accomplishments’ such as needlework, sketching, or flower arranging” (Henderson and Sharpe 1062). Dionea is intended to learn these skills at the school and convent, as “the accomplishments of young ladies are taught at a very moderate rate at Montemirto” (Lee 6). Doctor Alessandro De Rosis writes, however, that “poor Dionea has no skill” and condemns her to uselessness (Lee 6). The Mother Superior furthers this condescension by insisting that she and the other sisters “will pray to the Madonna and St Francis to make [Dionea] more worthy” (Lee 6). In other words, not only is Dionea incompetent because she can’t learn the trivial “accomplishments” expected of well-bred women, her deficiency marks her as unworthy of the care and education she receives.

Dionea is bad at the “accomplishments of young ladies” and despises them as well. Doctor De Rosis writes that “[Dionea] hates learning, sewing, washing up the dishes, all equally. [He is] sorry to say she shows no natural piety” (Lee 6). Her lack of “natural piety,” in addition to her hatred of activities she’s expected to enjoy, seems to cause the assumption that she is, again, not worthy of the investment of her patron, Lady Savelli. This lacking also seems to automatically mark her “character” as “not so satisfactory,” and makes “[h]er companions detest her, and the nuns, although they admit that she is not exactly naughty, seem to feel her as a dreadful thorn in the flesh” (Lee 6). The nuns’ concession that Dionea “is not exactly naughty” highlights that Dionea doesn’t have to do anything malicious to be treated with scorn; the mere fact that she isn’t like the rest of the women at the convent designates her as an object of hate.

Dionea’s deviation from her expected role as a woman continues from her days at the convent to after she leaves. Henderson and Sharpe note that while “[o]nly a small portion of the nation’s women could afford to remain at home… the constant celebration of home and hearth… made conspicuous domesticity the expected role for well-born and well-married women” (Henderson and Sharpe 1062). Whether or not Dionea is well-born is questionable, but she is constantly called the protégée of Lady Evelyn Savelli, Princess of Sabina, by Doctor De Rosis. This sponsorship elevates Dionea’s status and grants her the education of a woman of higher status, so that Doctor De Rosis expects to be able to marry her well. Even her beauty, however, “does not bring her any nearer getting a husband” due to her poor reputation (Lee 10). Doctor De Rosis writes that Dionea’s “ostensible employment is mending nets, collecting olives, carrying bricks, and other miscellaneous jobs; but her real status is that of village sorceress” (Lee 16). As “[i]t is love-philters that Dionea prepares,” it is known that Dionea works with and prompts matters of love and desire (Lee 17). Dionea’s “evil trade,” as Doctor De Rosis calls it, can be compared to that of the “so-called ‘redundant’ women who could not find husbands or work” and were driven “into prostitution” because of the common subject of socially unacceptable dealings with desire (Lee 17, Henderson and Sharpe 1062) Dionea’s occupation is further from acceptable, though because she chooses it and incorporates the other-worldly variable of sorcery into it.

By defying the social norms she is expected to adhere to while in the convent and living as an adult, Dionea models the characteristics of the new Victorian woman that is considered to be of lesser value than the “domestic and pure” “ideal Victorian woman” (Henderson and Sharpe 1061).

In their “Introduction: Reading the ‘Fin de Siècle,’” Ledger and Luckhurst assert that “[p]opular culture of the time was fascinated by exotic, imperial terrors,” which is directly seen through the composition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (xvi).  Characterized as a bestial ‘other’ from old money, Count Dracula embodies the role of a predatory upper-class individual that profits off of the suffering of the helpless lower class.

Jonathan Harker describes Count Dracula as having “peculiarly sharp white teeth,” “ears [that are] pale and at the tops extremely pointed,” “broad… squat fingers” with “hairs in the centre of the palm,” and “nails [that are] long and fine, and cut to a sharp point” (24-25).  In noting features that are “sharp,” “extremely pointed,” and “cut to a sharp point,” Stoker emphasizes the innate danger that Dracula’s image holds. His ability to incite fear in Harker, in the forms of a “shudder” that cannot be “repress[ed]” and a “horrible feeling of nausea,” with only physical proximity demonstrates his predatory aura and appearance (25). Not only does the Count have a dangerous aura, he also embodies the mystery and danger associated with foreign individuals during the fin de siècle. Ledger and Luckhurst note that the alluring “exotic, imperial terrors” of the time included “fantasies of reverse invasion by the French or Germans” (xvi). In Dracula, the Count fulfills this fantasy because of his Transylvanian heritage and his transfer from Transylvania to England.  As an Eastern European individual, Dracula would have been considered an outsider in terms of language, culture, and race.

Count Dracula’s characterization as a predatory creature rings true through his victimization of the innocent. To appease the three female vampires who try to “kiss” Jonathan Harker, Dracula gifts them a bag which produces a “gasp and a low wail, as of a half-smothered child” (47). Lucy, Dracula’s other notable victim, also fulfills this ideal of innocence. In the throws of fighting her fate of transforming into a vampire herself, Lucy’s “breast heaved softly, and her breath came and went like a tired child’s” (171). In describing Count Dracula’s victims as innocent children, Stoker makes him more villainous, as only a monster would prey on children.

Aside from being a dangerous predator, Count Dracula is also exceptionally wealthy. He is a count, owns a castle, is buying another property in England, and has literal old money in his room. Harker describes in his diary that

“[t]he only thing [he] found was a great heap of gold in one corner – gold of all kinds, Roman, and British, and Austrian, and Hungarian, and Greek and Turkish money, covered with a film of dust, as though it had lain long in the ground. None of it that [he] had noticed was less than three hundred years old. There were also chains and ornaments, some jeweled, but all of them old and stained” (55).

This extreme amount of gold and his nobility ranks Count Dracula above all of the other characters in class and wealth.

Ledger and Luckhurst provide a framework to map Dracula’s relationships with the other characters in Stoker’s novel. The “often unsympathetic accounts of working-class city dwellers” Ledger and Luckhurst write about is mimicked by Dracula’s predation of the innocent individuals that are of lower classes than him. As a wealthy, upper-class individual, Dracula’s infiltration of England and of Lucy’s life, as the catalyst of her change, marks him as a controlling figure who profits off of the suffering of others.

“And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the prohibition of what I thought were the maddest, most impossible and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic fervor fell on all of us ; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law. Superficially the contagion of these brute men was upon me, but deep down within me laughter and disgust struggled together” (p. 43).

This passage, in the chapter entitled “The Sayers of the Law” in H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, follows Prendick’s first introduction to “the Law” of Moreau’s creatures. Upon hearing parts of their recitations, Prendick concludes that they are “acts of folly… the maddest, most impossible and most indecent things one could imagine.” By judging their rules so quickly, Prendick distances himself from the situation and proclaims the inferiority of Moreau’s creatures. Prendick exacerbates the supposed differences between himself and the creatures through dehumanizing language. He denotes that the “contagion of these brute men” infects him, characterizing the creatures as diseases that impair his being. Even as he labels them as contagious diseases, Prendick gives no agency to the creatures. They are not human enough to have infected him, but their “contagion” spread on its own course “upon [Prendick].” His description of his warring reactions, “laughter and disgust,” further degrade the creatures to being worthy of two equally humiliating responses. By repeatedly shaming Moreau’s creatures, Prendick places himself on a pedestal above them.

The second sentence of the passage, however, provides opposition to this placement. Rather than separating himself from the creatures, Prendick notes that “[a] kind of rhythmic fervor fell on all of [them]; [they] gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law.” The indication that Prendick himself also falls under the spell of the “rhythmic fervor” and recites the Law with Moreau’s creatures, participating in their most revered ceremony, acts as a sort of induction into their group. The word “gabbled” itself acts as an equalizer between Prendick and the creatures because it gives the impression of madness and unintelligible noises. It seems that Prendick attempts to counter this inclusion by claiming that “[s]uperficially the contagion of these brute men was upon [him].” That is, the fervor affecting Prendick is only surface-level and is caused by the disease of the creatures. He, however, calls the creatures “brute men” in this phrase, highlighting that he feels some sort of connection to them, as he could just as well call them monsters. Prendick’s induction and mutual awe of the “amazing law” illustrates that he and the creatures are more similar than Prendick realizes.

Prendick’s struggle between relating to and separating himself from the creatures relates to views of the lower class by wealthy individuals during the fin de siècle. According to Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst’s “Introduction: Reading the ‘Fin de Siècle,” the “often unsympathetic accounts of working-class city dwellers fueled existing fears of degeneration” (xvi). In terms of the selected passage from The Island of Dr. Moreau, Prendick is akin to the wealthy upper class individuals who saw the lower class as degenerates that were dangerous to the English race. Dr. Moreau’s creatures would take the place of the lower class, misunderstood people who were looked down upon, as Prendick degrades the creatures, and feared, again as Prendick does. The “laughter and disgust” Prendick describes as “[struggling] together” within him are similar opinions some wealthy, upper class individuals would have towards the poverty-stricken lower class they were unable to understand, yet innately similar to.