Category: 2018 Blog Post

The Picture of Dorian Graydepicts both the raging aestheticism and decadence that permeated the late 19^thcentury.  The story centers on a painting of Dorian Gray, a young man whose beauty captures everyone’s attention.  Basil Hallward, the painter of Dorian Gray, states, “he is all my art to me now…there is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life” (16).  At this point in the story, Basil describes meeting Dorian Gray and being so fascinated and enamored with his presence that he feels he must paint him in order to capture all of his beauty.  Basil describing Dorian as “all my art” signifies an obsession that again revolves around Dorian’s beauty and physical appearance. Later, when Basil states that “there is nothing that Art cannot express,” he is making the claim that Art, which is what his life revolves around, is capable of capturing and expressing all things, even the indescribable beauty of Dorian Gray.  Basil feels that it is his duty to paint Dorian for the sake of Art.

The idea of “art for art’s sake” that is on full display in The Picture of Dorian Gray also appears in Carolyn Burdett’s article “Aestheticism and Decadence.” On aestheticism, Burdett writes, “Art had nothing to do with morality.  Instead, art was primarily about the elevation of taste and the pure pursuit of beauty” (Burdett 2014).  Using this text and specific quote as a lens for The Picture of Dorian Gray,it becomes clear that Basil is an aesthete who is primarily concerned with grasping the beauties of life and reproducing it into art.  Basil is not concerned with the fact that he has developed an obsession with Dorian and acts possessive over him when Harry wants to get to know Dorian as well.  He was willing to destroy his masterpiece when Harry and Dorian began to argue over who got to keep the painting and asked, “what is it but canvas and colour?” (35).  Basil does not fall into the category of decadence like Harry because he is primarily interested in Dorian’s beauty not the painting itself.  He is solely concerned with creating a beautiful portrait of a beautiful person because that is his duty as an artist.

Lionel Johnson’s poem “The Decadent’s Lyric” can also be used as a lens for understanding The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Johnson begins the poem by talking about the “very joy of shame” or the excitement gained in doing something wrong.  In the novel, there is a moment when Dorian is pouring tea for Basil and Harry and is being objectified by the two men.  Wilde writes, “Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea.  The two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the covers” (36).  Johnson’s poem speaks to the aspect of selfishness in decadence, such as investing in expensive material items merely for their beauty as Harry does. While it is understood that it is often wrong to be selfish, decadence argues that selfishness is justified because one is appreciating beauty and art.  Selfishness is enjoyable even though it is understood as shameful.  In this scene, Basil and Harry are objectifying Dorian, who can be viewed as a beautiful item, as he pours the tea. While they understand that it is wrong to do so because Dorian is a much younger man and their actions could be viewed as homoerotic, the men stare at Dorian anyway because he is so beautiful. This moment is yet another example of how both decadence and aestheticism are at work in the novel.

The end of the 18^th century and the end of the 19^th century were tough times for France and England respectively. France was going through the French Revolution during the late 18^th century and had a government that was failing to meet the needs of its people. England was bracing itself for the end of their Queen’s reign in the late 19^th century. As a way to cope with the oncoming changes that were to befall both countries, people turned to decadence. During these times, decadence lead to an indulgent lifestyle that focused on the consumption of material goods and experiences that would make a person feel good. The decadent lifestyle that people adopted is present in Sofia Coppola’s movie Marie Antoinette and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Within Coppola’s movie, Marie Antoinette was the person who was leading a decadent lifestyle. Marie Antoinette, portrayed by Kirsten Dunst, indulged in clothes, food, and a rich, social life as seen in the trailer for the movie. Meanwhile, Dorian Gray indulged in a life of sin. Both characters demonstrate the turn to decadence and reveal the consequences that come with living life in this style.

 

In the trailer for Marie Antoinette, it is clear that Dunst’s character lives a life of decadence once she becomes Queen. As seen between the 1:00-1:15 mark, Marie Antoinette turns to decadence as a way of coping with her new position. All of the shots in this section of the trailer reveal the different ways Marie Antoinette has turned to decadence in her life. She is consuming things physically through cakes and other pastries, financially through gambling, and materially through the jewelry and multiple pairs of shoes that flash by in the trailer. These three aspects of decadence are seen as luxurious, but this lifestyle is revealed to catch up to the Queen. Between the 1:20-1:25 mark, it is shown that these habits of the Queen have rubbed other people the wrong way. The “people of France are hungry” and the portrait that depicts Marie Antoinette with the phrase ‘Queen of debt’ across it demonstrate the consequences that come with living a life of decadence. While Marie Antoinette is having a fabulous time in her castle, the people she is supposed to be leading are suffering. What the trailer ultimately reveals is that a life of decadence has its limits and that there are negative consequences to every indulgence.

While Marie Antoinette has to face the consequences of her actions, as seen in the end of the trailer with the angry mob, one person who is not ready to do so is Dorian Gray. Once Dorian realizes his portrait can bear the consequences of his decadent lifestyle choices, he jumps at the chance to live a life of sin: “Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joy and wilder sins – he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the burdens of his shame: that was all” (117). This is the moment when Dorian is letting go of his responsibility and is passing it to his portrait. Instead of dealing with the consequences of his decadent lifestyle himself, his portrait will “bear the burdens of his shame” for him. The phrases “wild joy” and “wilder sins” reveals the impending life of decadence that Dorian will live. The idea of Dorian partaking in a “wild” lifestyle suggests that there will be nothing to rein in his actions. He is free and loose to do whatever he pleases, an idea that fits well with decadence. There is also no time limit in sight for his lifestyle choices, which is seen through the words “eternal” and “infinite.” Dorian Gray is ready to live a decadent lifestyle, consequences be damned.

The turn to decadence in France and England originated from a place of fear. France was trying to pretend that everything was fine financially and politically when it wasn’t. Meanwhile England was trying to cover up their anxieties over the impending change in reign and the rise of industrialization. Both Marie Antoinette and Dorian Gray partook in the decadent lifestyle through the consumption of food, vice, and luxury. Marie Antoinette demonstrates the consequences that come with living a decadent lifestyle whereas Dorian Gray has yet to face the effects of his actions at this point in the novel.

Lionel Johnson’s 1897 poem, “A Decadent’s Lyric,” exemplifies an erotic atmosphere of the 19^th century that can be used as a lens through which to analyze Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Johnson begins his poem by alluding to sex as a simultaneously joyful and shameful act. He writes, “Sometimes, in very joy of shame,/ Our flesh becomes one living flame” (Johnson 1-2). Joy generally connotes something holistic and good. Contrarily, shame connotes an act that must be kept secret for fear of criticism. Usually, shame is connected with immoral acts. Therefore, by uniting both shame and joy in the sexual act of “flesh becom[ing] one,” Johnson reveals that sex cannot be set apart as either solely joyful or solely shameful. To generalize the time period, people considered sex as a procreative act that was only moral when it occurred in private, between a husband and wife. Taken out of that setting, sex was considered shameful. Wilde’s novel has many erotic scenes that directly connect to Johnson’s sexual poem. However, more generally, Johnson’s poem suggests that he finds a sense of goodness in acts that other people consider immoral, and that such beautiful immorality can be good. This prioritization of beauty to immorality is directly materialized in Wilde’s novel.

Wilde prefaces The Picture of Dorian Gray by asserting the value of beauty and capturing the feelings of aestheticism. He writes, “Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty” (Wilde 3). The idea of beauty is subjective. Nevertheless, Wilde describes how if something could be considered beautiful, its beauty should be all it is appreciated for. Therefore, Wilde states that people who take things that possess any traits that could be considered beautiful and downgrade them as immoral or “ugly” are themselves “faulty,” “corrupt” people. To this extent, beauty should not be overshadowed by whether an act is moral or immoral. If people can see beauty in sexual acts, then that beauty should be celebrated. Wilde would condemn people who consider sex shameful because he would say they are limiting their perspectives.

Furthermore, Wilde uses Lord Henry in order to personify aestheticism. In chapter VI, Lord Henry states, “We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices” (Wilde 72). Henry, a manipulative man who challenges the way Basil and Dorian Gray live their lives, does not necessarily deny that people have moral prejudices. Rather, he believes that people can have them, but to articulate them and judge others would be wrong. Henry believes that if a thing is beautiful (which, again, is subjective and what one person considers beautiful another could consider horrid), people should praise it for its beauty. In this sense, Henry chooses not to find “ugly meanings in beautiful things,” but to find “beautiful meanings in beautiful things.”

Additionally, Henry takes pride in the enticing, beautiful nature of his immorality. He tells Dorian, “You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit” (Wilde 77). Henry openly acknowledges that his lifestyle is full of “sins, but he believes it is those sins that make him beautiful to people like Dorian. Therefore, if there is a beauty in his lifestyle, he does not believe he should change it or focus on morality.

 

Johnson, Lionel. “A Decadent’s Lyric.” Aesthetes and Decadents, pp.121, 1897.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York, Penguin Classics, 1891.

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).

In this blog entry, I will be further exploring the themes of racial/ethnic anxieties that are present in Dracula. In addition to Dracula’s quest for English blood, a traditional symbol of ethnic identity, the factors of his aristocratic status, homeland, and his vivacity all contribute to a narrative of the Count as a distinct representation of a foreign invader. I will be using Stephen D. Arata’s article “The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization” to analyze the novel.

When Count Dracula is telling his Transylvanian history to Jonathan Harker, he proudly recalls the warriors of his race: “’Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back?’” (Stoker, 36). The Count believes in his people as conquerors who defended their land against foreign invaders with honor, never sacrificing their racial integrity. As Arata points out, Transylvania is known as a nation with a detailed history of ethnic combat, with a variety of peoples, such as the Huns, the Turks, the Slavs, and Germans, all having fought for ownership of the land. Dracula describes himself and his people as Szekely, a race descended from the Huns that laid claim to Transylvania against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages. Despite the collapse of the Szekely empire, Dracula is still proud and convicted in his belief of the superiority of his race over all the other races that have fought over Transylvania.

Arata also notes Dracula’s aristocracy; he is a wealthy figure, and his wealth is derived entirely from his heritage. He is powerful because of his ancestry. This further reinforces the importance of his heritage to his character as a proudly nationalistic nobleman, and adds to the dimension of his power being a product of his history. Dracula is proud of his generational wealth because it is is directly tied to the history of his race, and is a product of the height of his people’s power.

Dracula’s animalistic physiognomy and healthy appearance as he draws more blood are also important to the narrative of Dracula as a foreign invader. Both of these characteristics make Dracula a domineering, aggressive personality. It suggests that he defends his homeland because he believes in his right to it, and believes he and his people should have control over it. He is a vicious aggressor who gains strength from the expansion of his domain. His thirst for blood is a representation of his need for control.

Arata notes the importance of his bloodlust as being directed to London, as “Dracula’s move to London indicates that Great Britain, rather than the Carpathians, is now the scene of these connected struggles” (Arata, 465), these struggles being the wars for racial domination that compose the history of the Transylvanian region. London was a major economic force, seen as the center of the powerful British empire, and would be a worthy domain for Dracula to rule over and expand with his race of vampires.

This leads me to another important symbol in the novel, which is soil. Dracula brings boxes full of “common earth” to England, which I find puzzling outside of the context of the symbolism of soil. Soil, like blood, had become a nationalistic element of identity in the 19^th century. While blood represents a person’s heritage, soil represents the place where their people belong and have a right to. The symbols of blood and soil were adopted by the Nazis in the 1930’s, and are still used in Neo-Nazi rhetoric today. Dracula’s mission in England seems to be to convert English people to vampires by taking away what makes them English, which is their blood. He also wants to bring soil from his homeland to England, to further solidify his ownership of the nation. The connection between blood and soil in Dracula’s objectives strongly suggest that he is a character embodiment of nationalist ideology, whose inherently aggressive tendencies and generational wealth would allow him to expand his race to England and erase their heritage.

Ledger and Lockhurst’s “The Victorian Age” focuses on the feelings of anxiety and ambiguity in the Victorian era. Be it intentional or not, Stoker’s Dracula essentially embodies this mindset, particularly in the way Stoker chose to end his story. In comparison to the intense  suspicious atmosphere beginning with Jonathan Harker, then with Lucy, and finally the men’s subsequent vampiric hunt, the culmination of it all feels rather disappointing, or anti-climatic. Count Dracula’s death is uneventful, as he merely turns to dust in the snow: “It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there” (Stoker 401). There is no bloody ordeal with the cutting off his head (and neither is he properly stabbed in the heart with a stake?). The vampire’s body is even so old and so ready for release from its evil vampiric form that it disappears into thin air. A final feeling of horror remains in the back of the mind—is it possible Dracula was able to turn into dust himself with the setting of the sun at the exact moment Jonathan and Mr. Morris managed to “fatally” stab him? Mina uses objective words to describe Dracula himself, allowing for no humane identification of the monster with the “body” and its “dissolution.” Not long after, Quincey Morris is given a proper death as he “died, a gallant gentleman” (Stoker 401). Despite Dracula’s demonic characteristics, however, he is able to achieve what Mina believes to be peace in his “dissolution,” or to put it more humanely, death.

Mina talks of happiness in the idea that this horrible monster could have found peace in death like her Lucy did, just as Ledger and Lockhurst pinpoint one cause for Victorian anxiety surrounding their faith: what happens to us after death? The newly established idea of time in the fin de siecle is the source of this anxiety: “On the one hand, there was not enough of it: the accelerated pace of change kept people too busy to assimilate the torrent of new ideas and technologies….Victorians felt they had little opportunity for reflection and often took scant comfort in it” (1055-1056). “Little opportunity of reflection” may go on to mean the purpose of life and what comes afterwards—what we are all living towards.

This fear of not having the chance to reflect on one’s life stretches to everyone in Stoker’s novel. It occurs when Mina is in danger of becoming a vampire, as time becomes more and more of the essence: “You are but a mortal woman. Time is now to be dreaded—since once he put that mark upon your throat” (Stoker 334). Even the vampires, who are caught between life and death, are given an opportunity to reflect. Lucy Westenra is freed from the shackles of vampirism in her “true death” by the hands of Arthur and takes on a “calm that was to reign forever” (Stoker 231). Though less explicit, Count Dracula, despite the fact that he has acted as the ultimate antagonist of the novel, receives the same fate. He is freed and reduced to dust, and now Mina, Dr. Seward, Van Helsing, and Arthur are all freed of their anxiety of what may come of the Count. Speaking for them all, Mina finds satisfaction with both the dissolution of their dangerous enemy and what comes next.

Dr. Seward gives his account of Lucy as a vampire in the passage below:

“And she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it! With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning. There was a cold-bloodedness in the act which wrung a groan from Arthur; when she advanced to him with outstretched arms and a wanton smile, he fell back and hid his face is his hands. She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said: — ‘Come to me, Arthur.’” (225-226)

Dr. Seward does not portray Lucy in a positive light. In fact, he does not say anything favorable about her. He calls her “careless”, “callous”, and “cold-blooded”. He also compares her to the devil and suggests that she is unholy. In addition to describing Lucy in an incredibly negative way, Dr. Seward also describes her as sexual. The word voluptuous gets used twice in this small passage, first to describe a part of her body, her smile, as voluptuous, and secondly to describe her grace. Lucy’s smile is mentioned again later in the passage when Dr. Seward describes it as “wanton”. By describing Lucy as sexual while simultaneously portraying her in a negative light, it suggests that it is unacceptable or incorrect for Lucy to be sexual. Dr. Seward witnesses Lucy feeding on a child, yet what makes him shudder is not this shocking act of vampirism but the fact that Lucy’s smile is “voluptuous”. To Dr. Seward, Lucy as a vampire is horrifying, not because she is killing children or drinking blood, but because she has become more sexual. A sexual woman was seen as dangerous during the time Dracula was written. As stated in Ledger and Luckhurst’s “Reading the Fin de Siècle”, “the New Woman…could mark an apocalyptic warning of the dangers of sexual degeneracy, the abandonment of motherhood, and consequent risk to the racial future of England” (xvii). Lucy, by becoming more sexual, has become one of the degenerates that were feared during the Fin de Siècle.

Another fear that existed during the Fin de Siècle, the fear of the abandonment of motherhood, can be seen in this passage. The description of Lucy “clutching [the child] strenuously to her breast” evokes images of breastfeeding, something tied very closely to motherhood. While breastfeeding nourishes and keeps a baby alive, Lucy is doing the exact opposite of this by sucking blood, and therefore life, out of the baby. Instead of feeding the baby, as a good 19^th Century mother is supposed to do, Lucy is feeding on the baby. Lucy tossing aside the baby could be representative of the concept of the abandonment of motherhood. Arthur’s fear over Lucy not demonstrating proper motherly behavior alludes to the fear of the abandonment of motherhood that existed during the Fin de Siècle. Just as Lucy’s sexiness was more terrifying to Dr. Seward than her being an actual vampire, we see Arthur moan not in response to Lucy being a vampire, but in response to Lucy tossing aside the baby. It is not Lucy sucking blood that gives Arthur a reaction, but her rejection of proper mother behavior. Dr. Seward and Arthur’s horror at Lucy’s sexiness and rejection of “motherly behavior” is not individual to Dracula, but rather a cultural fear that is visible in many novels written during the Fin de Siècle.

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).

Stoker’s Dracula is divided into clear villains and heroes. Characters such as Harker, Van Helsing, Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood, and Mina are the civilized English citizens and Dracula’s is the violent, animalistic, outlandish villain.

However, in her article Dracula: the Unseen Face in the Mirror, Carol Senf argues that the body of “good” characters and the character of Dracula are more similar than they appear at first read, the difference in perspective being that “Stocker’s narrative technique does not permit the reader to Enter Dracula’s thoughts…”(Senf 427). Dracula’s behavior seems evil, but in reality, the Protagonists echo the exact same behavior. Their saving grace in the eyes of the reader is that the readers get an inside look at the logic behind their actions, while readers are left to assume the worst of Dracula’s.

Senf notes that “behavior generally attributed to the vampire—the habit of attacking a sleeping victim, violence, and irrational behavior—is revealed to be the behavior of the civilized Englishman also” (Senf 427). In fact, the protagonists might even commit more of these behaviors than Dracula himself, yet they are justified because the believe that they are doing it for the sake of ridding the world of evil. Among the first shows of rationalized violence comes when Harker is staying at Dracula’s castle and comes across Dracula lying in his coffin. Harker says, “A terrible desire came upon me to rid the world of such a monster. There was no lethal weapon at hand, but I seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases, and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face” (60). It is difficult to distinguish the sudden urge to hack at a body with a shovel as anything but grossly violent and wild, yet it is forgiven because the reader can see that Harker’s purpose in doing it is in the interests of saving the world. The most violent and graphic scenes in Dracula are carried out by the protagonists; Arthur Holmwood kills the now evil undead version of Lucy while she lies in her tomb, ambushing her in the same way the Dracula does to his own victims. “[Arthur’s] untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it” (230). The graphic imagery of Lucy’s violent death is more disturbing than any scene in which Dracula They later kill Dracula in the same way, stabbing him while he lies in his box at sunset.

 

Although one party commits the same acts of violence as the other, the narration of the protagonists’ thoughts and logic behind these acts allows them to be excused from the consequences that Dracula faces for doing the same things. Dracula is given characteristics that highlight his “otherness”—his foreignness, his animalistic physical features, the quaint beliefs of his home country—in order to disguise the fact that he is no worse than the narrators themselves. It is simply a matter of perspective.

Carol A Senf’s article, “Dracula: The Unseen Face in the Mirror,” asserts that Count Dracula may not be the real villain of Dracula, and therefore challenges the usual reading of Bram Stoker’s novel. Senf states that most people consider Dracula a myth about “the opposition of Good and Evil” (421). It is this general assumption that allows Count Dracula to be labeled as the evil character who contrasts and challenges the virtuous intentions of Jonathan Harker and his acquaintances. Senf picks up on similarities, however, that show the likeness of Dracula’s and Jonathan’s group’s actions. To this extent, Senf tries to argue that readers must question whether the “evil” characters are Dracula or Jonathan’s group.

To start, Senf challenges the narrative structure of Dracula. She states that the narration is a “jigsaw puzzle of isolated and frequently trivial facts; and it is only when the novel is more than half over that the central characters…band together to destroy [Dracula]” (Senf 422). By comparing the narrative formation to a “jigsaw puzzle” Senf arouses ideas of a confusing layout that has to be put together piece by piece until it fits into place in the mind of the puzzle maker (or in this case Mina Harker). Mina, Jonathan, Van Helsing and Seward’s perspectives are only subjective. Senf continues, “Dracula is never seen objectively and never permitted to speak for himself while his actions are recorded by people who have determined to destroy him” (424). Jonathan and his friends have observations about Dracula, through which they assume Dracula is evil, but their assumption of his lack of goodness challenges the reader to consider how Dracula would see himself or how he would label Jonathan.

Furthermore, the fact that it takes Jonathan’s group more than halfway through the novel to realize that Dracula is dangerous and needs to be killed challenges their credibility. If he had been truly evil, they should have known that from the beginning and been willing to stand up to him then. However, they did not feel threatened at first by him, and many of the characters (including Jonathan, Lucy, Mina and Van Helsing) each experience a moment of enticement by Dracula or the other vampire characters. Their mixed sentiments of interest, confusion and fear places doubt in the readers minds over whether or not they correctly chose to label him as dangerous. Additionally, any group that “bands together to destroy” a character or establishment engages in group-think, which prevents them from critically analyzing Dracula’s actions. Jonathan and his friends’ group-think perspectives are blind to any of Dracula’s good qualities and makes them robotic people who have been convinced to kill Dracula even though they only have limited evidence.

On another note, the narrative of Dracula justifies the actions of Van Helsing and the other men even though, from a different perspective, their actions could be just as bad. For instance, they “break into [Lucy’s] tomb and desecrate her body, break into Dracula’s houses, frequently resort to bribery and coercion… and openly admit that they are responsible for the deaths of five alleged vampires” (Senf 425). Taken together, the actions of the protagonists are also bad, but their first-person narration justifies and protects them from being labeled as the villains.

At the end of the novel, Mina makes Dracula look liberated after being murdered by Jonathan and Quincey. Mina narrates that as soon as they had killed him, she thought she would “be glad as long as [she] live[s] that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace” (Stoker 401). From Mina’s perspective, Dracula settles into a “look of peace” because he has been freed from his never-ending evil obligation to desecrate souls. However, if, as Senf argues should be, the audience were to hear Dracula’s perspective in this scene, there would be an opportunity to confront Mina’s subjective analysis with Dracula’s description of his real feelings. Although the audience cannot know for sure if Dracula’s murder was peaceful for him or not, only analyzing it from Mina and her friends’ perspectives does not allow an objective opinion to be made and leaves out key elements of the plot that only Dracula could articulate.