Course Blog

Dracula and the Harry Potter series share eerie similarities: Dracula features an antagonist who was within society and became evil, just as Voldemort was on track to become a wizard, and decided to instead declare war on his society. Dracula and Mina are psychically connected and Dracula can control Mina, just as Harry and Voldemort can read each other’s thoughts and Voldemort can control Harry (Stoker 344). Mina has a wafer burn on her forehead, a mark of Dracula’s influence on her; Harry has a scar on his forehead, where Voldemort attempted to kill him. Voldemort and Harry have wands whose core came from the same exact phoenix, showing they are inherently connected; Dracula’s blood runs through Mina’s veins.

Both novels also expose a fear of pollution or contamination within society. Harry worries that he will turn bad like Voldemort since his life resembles Voldemort’s and he contains some of Voldemort’s soul. Likewise, Van Helsing notes changes in Mina after Dracula bites her, including “her eyes are more hard” (Stoke 344). Both books contain an anxiety that the evil will overtake the good, and that we can see warning signs of this, whether the person is becoming a vampire or an evil wizard. All these concerns show that perhaps there is a pattern to societal anxieties that has not changed much since the 1890’s. Dracula and Harry Potter are so popular because they are relevant to culture; their messages really do represent some of our cultural anxieties. Perhaps they have so much in common because there is a pattern to cultural anxieties, one that changes little regardless of era or world (real or wizarding).

Considering the similarities the novels share, especially in how the villain affects the “hero,” we can glean insight into cultural anxieties. The villain and the hero are irrevocably connected by something we cannot even see, and therefore have no control over. Harry and Voldemort’s wands share a core connection, and Dracula’s blood circulates through Mina’s body, indistinguishable from her “pure” blood (another Harry Potter reference). Perhaps society’s inability to separate the good from the bad represents an anxiety over reverse invasion and its undetectable qualities. We cannot pry apart Mina’s blood from Dracula’s, so we never know if Mina is purely herself, or if she operates under Dracula’s influence. Similarly, Harry has some of Voldemort’s qualities (the ability to speak parseltongue, legilimency, etc.), and we learn that Voldemort actually implanted some of his powers into Harry when he tried to kill Harry. Thus, the two are intrinsically connected, and “one cannot live while the other survives.” This obsession with penetration and planting a seed in someone is prevalent in both novels because it is so irreversible and intimate, making it a major cultural anxiety.

This uncontrollable, permanent connection terrifies 1890’s England and the 1990’s wizarding world. It represents reverse invasion because it presents a case in which it is impossible to determine who is “supposed” to be in the society and who is a “foreigner.” Because we cannot determine who is stained with the enemy’s influence, we risk invasion by allowing “good” people to operate within society even though they have been contaminated. Authorities do not banish Mina or Harry from society, but in doing that they risk giving the enemy access to society through presumed “good” people.

            Dracula and Harry Potter share many similarities, all of which show that villains present a threat to society’s health. Van Helsing even describes Dracula as, “only [a] body groping his so small measure in darkness and not knowing,” (Stoker 340), which is exactly how Voldemort’s body was after he tried to kill baby Harry. These similarities show that 1890’s England and the wizarding world (and perhaps any society) were scared of the outsider coming in and upsetting the balance. Both stories end, too, with a restoration of order. Dracula dies and Harker notes that, seven years later, England has reproduced (Mina and Harker have a child), and society regains its health. Harry Potter has to fight Voldemort to eliminate the threat Voldemort poses, and the last chapter of the Harry Potter series emphasizes that “all [is] well.” Harry, Ron, and Hermione have reproduced and Hogwarts has returned to its usual self. It seems the threat to cultural balance persists through eras and across worlds, and given Dracula and Harry Potter’s lasting popularity, the anxieties they represent persist, too.

While reading Dracula I was puzzled by the way that time passed in the novel as well as the way that time functioned for the reader. There are some explicit references to the ways that time changes around Dracula. We’ve discussed how train times and meal times represent a certain lifestyle or status as civilized, and while at Castle Dracula these become harder to set time by. The “normal” progression of time is disrupted.  When Jonathan first arrives at the castle he states that “the time I waited seemed endless” (Stoker 21). We as readers know that it was not endless because he is eventually allowed to enter into the castle. However the way that time is experienced by the narrator is shifted. It is also true that the Count himself disrupts the normative idea of linear time. It is not only “he sleeps when others wake, that he may be awake whilst they sleep” but he is also immortal and does not have the same relation to history that humans do(Stoker 54). Jonathan states upon hearing the Count recount ( 😉 ) his family/his own history that Dracula “seemed to have in it a whole history of the country” (35). Contained within himself or his own history is something much more vast. These anxieties mimic that “the Victorians were troubled by Time. On the one hand, there was not enough of it….On the other hand, there was too much time” (The Victorian Age 1055). This reading points out the fact that simultaneously society was moving at a much faster pace while it was also learning about the vastness of history and the long years that we had never before seen. All this while still imagining time in a linear measurable way.

In contrast to the way that the Count is experiencing time, as something moveable or insubstantial in his life, the “Crew of Light” is determined to document time accurately. There is a date and, if necessary, a time for each diary entry or each newspaper clipping. The meticulously document every train time despite the fact that the trains do not arrive or depart on time. For me, this relates to the way that this narrative insists on its factuality. Throughout the text there is an instance that everything is documented perfectly accurately and exactly how it happened and that the realness of these facts is indisputable. The fact that the normative passage of time is documented relates to the way that these diaries are supposed to give the readers a sense of reality. The opening paragraph states “there is throughout no statement of past things wherein memory may err, for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary” (Stoker 6). Not only does this sentence insist again the factuality of this text but it justifies this through time. It argues that by using “contemporary” documents is part of the accuracy of them; that a short passage of time between the event and the writing of it creates factuality.

However, the presence of the Count disrupts this experience of time. He experiences time differently, I’d assume as he is immortal, and he creates an environment around the protagonists that does not fit into the traditional narrative of time. He simultaneously disrupts the idea of factuality, not only through time but through his mere existence. When Van Helsing is trying to prove to Steward that vampires exist he appeals to the idea of belief. Steward, a man of science, of reason and logic, believes in facts and reality, but Van Helsing asks him “to believe in things that you cannot” (Stoker 206). This is a paradoxical sentence. If you cannot believe in something, then how can you believe in it? However, within the context of the narrative, vampires are real, they are fact. So why is there a need to believe in “so sad a concrete truth” (Stoker 207). The presence of fact seems to contradict the need for belief.

Here’s where I’m really unsure of my ground. Just as this sentence seems to undo the exact thing it does, the presence of linear time measurements undoes the linearness of time in the text. The instance on fact undoes the very presence of fact. This text creates a tension between what is considered reality and what is experienced as reality. While time is considered to move linearly it does not. While facts are considered proven in the text, this is fiction.

The term “eugenics” was invented in 1883 to define the growing Victorian interest in a kind of bastardized evolution, what Ledger & Luckhurst describe as “control over the breeding habits of a new mass population, an artificial intervention into a natural evolution ‘gone wrong’ in its proliferation of the ‘weakest.’” (Ledger & Luckhurst xv) This preoccupation with the so-called strength of the race emerges in Dracula, but in an ambivalent form. Dracula’s own ideas about race, and the inherent qualities of different races, complicate the eugenicist’s conception of race, such that Stoker’s own feelings on eugenics remain unclear.

Prominent in Jonathan Harker’s memories of his stay at Dracula’s castle are his long talks with the Count, which frequently turn to Transylvanian history. In one of these conversations the Count rhapsodizes on his own family’s past in explicitly racial terms: “We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit…till the peoples thought that the were-wolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches…What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins? Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race?” (Stoker 52)

The fascinating aspect of this tirade is that it contradicts the popular idea of the eugenicist as obsessed with the purity of his race. On the contrary, Dracula, though exalting the strength of his people and bloodline, in fact ascribes that strength to the mixture of strong races that has resulted in the Szekelys, rather than to any “pure-blooded” ancestors – a blatant contradiction of common European worries about the “degeneration” of race resulting from mixed blood. At the same time, however, Dracula’s description of his family’s emergence from the struggling “whirlpool” or races is perfectly in line with “the power of the evolutionary analogy in the late Victorian era.” (Ledge & Luckhurst xv) In other words, in Dracula, “survival of the fittest” holds true – but perhaps not in the way a pure-blooded Englishman might wish.

What does this treatment of eugenics say about Stoker the Irishman, who, whether he supported English policy in Ireland or not, would certainly have seen English society and preoccupations as an outsider? Is it a dig at Victorian conceptions of “pure” British identity? It is impossible to determine, of course, whether Stoker’s views were at all similar to Dracula’s, especially since this peculiar conception of eugenics is put in the mouth of a figure of utter evil. Nevertheless, that the theme of eugenics made its way into even such a piece of popular literature as Dracula, even in this ambiguous form, testifies to its power and prevalence at the close of the nineteenth century.

William Crain’s Blacula, released in 1972, was an American adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The film follows Prince Mamuwalde, an Abani African prince who went to Transylvania to seek Dracula’s help in ending the slave trade in 1780. Instead of helping Mamuwalde, Dracula turns him into a vampire, giving him the name of ‘Blacula’, and Mamuwalde lays in rest until 1972 when his coffin is bought by interior decorators in an estate sale and shipped to Los Angeles. After slaying the interior designers Dr. Gordon Thomas, a pathologist for the LAPD, begins to investigate their deaths. Blacula therefore changes the nuances of the story itself, but preserves the undercurrents of fear of foreigners by the invaded society, changing the nuances to create the same feelings in American society in the 1970s.

One of the clearest anxieties felt by Victorians was the anxiety towards foreigners, entering their nation and causing disorder and uncertainty of ones’ place within society. The story of Dracula is particularly blatant about this fear. Dracula is a nobleman from the far reaches of Eastern Europe who enters British society and wrecks havoc on those who aided him in entering the nation in the first place. Since Blacula was an adaptation, it would make sense that the general premise of the vampire as the foreigner falls in line with Dracula, since he, as an African Prince, is an undoubtedly an outsider. The anxiety towards those from the Balkans, whose culture was not understood or commonly replicated in Britain, can be compared to the lack of understanding that white Americans in the 1970s held towards both African and African American culture. Even in the trailer for the film, Blacula is pronounced Dracula’s ‘Soul Brother’, and the use of Funk for a horror movie’s soundtrack makes it clear that Blacula is different, and ‘othered’ from other horror movies.

As a film Blacula has a unique focus on the repercussions of slavery. Blacula was hailed the “Black avenger” in his film, since Mamuwalde originally sought out Dracula to end the slave trade. When he arrives in Los Angels, he is a bought good from the estate sale – making the coffin he was shipped over in even more symbolic. Mamuwalde then turns Americans into vampires, and therefore enslaving them for his dark purposes. This can be seen as a product of the slave trade, as Mamuwalde enslaves Americans before they’re given the chance to enslave him. He was unable to stop the slave trade in 1780 and therefore still holds the fears of that time period in relation to America. Once this line of thinking is worked out, it can also be applied to the original Dracula. Dracula hails from a nation untouched by the British during this period, but in the course of Britain’s history, England has invaded 90% of the world’s countries, and during this time is was an Imperial power. Dracula could therefore be seen as attempting to colonize England before it attempts to colonize him. Even when talking with Harker about his anxieties of moving to London, Dracula mentions that he is a noble in his homeland and that common people know him to be a master. Dracula does not want to give this position in society up; therefore he would attempt to exert dominance in England. By entering a country that is not his own and forcing those already there to accept him as a man of power, Dracula is colonizing England.

Through the way in which foreigners are presented and interact with their adopted societies within the vampire genre, it is apparent that they represent not only the fears of the unknown held by society, but the fear that the harm countries like Britain and America have done on to others, will be done on to themselves.

 

In the context of Ledger and Luckhurst’s discussion of the 1870 Education Act and the issue of “massification,” Conan Doyle’s “The Red-headed League” displays anxieties about education and intelligence through the implicit hierarchy of intelligence visible in the characters’ interactions with one another. As Ledger and Luckhurst state, “The audience for… popular literature was perhaps the first generation to benefit from the 1870 Education Act” (xv). Anxieties about the “lowering” effect that this new expansion of the reading public had on the types of literature being produced were intimately connected to the issue of “massification,” which Ledger and Luckhurst link to the increasing population of the “London poor” (xv). Although Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories could be considered to be included in the newly developing genre of popular literature, they display an anxiety about the consequences of knowledge coming into the minds of the masses. By establishing a hierarchy of intelligence in stories including “The Red-headed League,” Conan Doyle presents a ordered vision of which classes of society should be knowledgeable, reserving true intelligence for the most privileged members of society. Naturally, Holmes resides at the highest level of the intelligence hierarchy, as Watson’s frequent testaments to his intelligence demonstrate, and it is Holmes’s judgement in “The Red-headed League” that deems Clay worthy of inclusion at the upper level: “He is, in my judgement, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third” (31). Holmes’s statement explicitly reveals the presence of the hierarchy of intelligence that Doyle creates in this story through the numerical rank that he awards Clay, which implies that Holmes holds the full list in his mind. The authority of his “judgement” is sufficient to secure Clay’s place at the top of the hierarchy, and Holmes’s wealth and privileged social position, implied through his ample leisure time, correspond with John Clay’s credentials: “His grandfather was a royal duke, and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford” (33). Through the credentials that he awards Holmes and Clay, Doyle implies that true intelligence is only accessible to the elite. He therefore moves true intelligence out of the hands of many of his readers, who, as the “masses” reading popular literature, will never reach the level of intelligence that Holmes and Clay represent– it is unattainable. Watson is also elevated above the level of the reader. Although he is consistently stymied by the inner workings of Holmes’s mind, he acts as an authority figure by allowing the readers access to Holmes’s mind, and his relationship with Holmes allows him to experience firsthand the power of Holmes’s mind: “I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes” (32). Here, Holmes confirms the implication that Holmes possesses an intelligence that even he, a physician knowledgeable in his own right, cannot hope to possess. However, his ability to relate the events of Holmes’s cases makes him more knowledgeable than the reader– again, privilege allows access to intelligence, even indirectly. By thinking about “The Red-headed League” through the lens of Ledger and Luckhurst’s discussion of the effects of the 1870 Education Act, it becomes evident that Conan Doyle was expressing his own anxieties about “massification” and the rise of popular literature at the end of the 19th century. By creating a hierarchy of intelligence in his Sherlock Holmes stories, in which Watson, the character that the reader is supposed to identify with, cannot fathom the intelligence of Sherlock, Doyle renders true intelligence inaccessible to all but the most privileged.

As classic as reading Sherlock Holmes has become, it has also become tradition to recreate the story, and bring the beloved detective to light again. Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone, Robert Downey, Jr., Ian McKellan, Benedict Cumberbatch, and many, many more have taken on the role to bring the story into more modern context. As of late, the trend has been to bring Holmes and his trusted partner, Watson, out of the Victorian context, and into the modern era, as this can be seen with both the series Sherlock, and Elementary.

Elementary even takes Holmes one step further out of his original context, by bringing the stories across the pond, and having them centered in New York City. With that, and the racebending and genderbending of Watson, I tend to see Elementary and the original Sherlock Holmes stories as being inherently different. She is brought in as a mostly different character– a woman having seen the worst as a resident surgeon, and having left practice after a fatal mistake, is now acting as a sober companion. This is extremely different from the Watson of the stories, an army surgeon looking for someone to share a flat with after coming home from deployment. The terms of their living arrangement is totally changed: instead of Watson looking for a flat to share, Joan is hired to live with Holmes as a sober companion. The point of view changes entirely, from the enamored view of Watson in the short stories, to the outside view, following the story of Holmes as he interacts with Joan.

Changing Watson’s character as they did, Elementary starts to try and reflect a more modern and diverse world. Creating Joan as a woman who not only speaks and thinks for herself, but exists as an individual outside of Holmes, starts to chip away at some of the sexism and misogyny of the original text. Even Irene Adler, who was only ever a character through Holmes, takes on her own agency. Instead of an opera singer who blackmails German royalty, she is an art dealer turned master forger, who refuses Holmes advances to start. She created her own terms to start the relationship and, in the end, creates her own terms to end it, as well.

Despite losing this smitten narrative from Watson, and the Victorian context, these two story lines are inevitably similar, as they have to be. Holmes is still and addict, to both substances, and solving crimes at whatever the cost. One can see in plenty of episodes Holmes insatiable curiosity, in how he continues to try and figure out Joan, and how he continues, in his boredom, to experiment on his pet tortoise, Clyde. Joan Watson is still the grounding factor, ever intwined in Holmes’ life, fascinated by how he works. She even goes forward, as the Conan Doyle version of Watson did, to work her own cases as a private detective. The two different versions of the classic criminal mystery stories, as told and solved by Watson and Holmes, stay essentially the same. But, through the modernisation of the roles of Joan Watson and Irene Adler, and the change in time and place, the underlying narratives are thoroughly different.

Upon reading the beginnings of Stoker’s Dracula I was immediately surprised at the religious aspects discovered early within the book. Once Harker tells his landlord that he is headed to Count Dracula’s castle the couple both begin to act anxious and seem to lean on God as a way to avoid any further conversation with Harker regarding the count.

The first moment the reader sees this is when Stoker asks if they’ve been to his castle, “When I asked him if he knew Count Dracula, and could tell me anything of his castle, both he and his wife crossed themselves….simply refused to speak further” (10). Rather than discuss the count it seems that the couple know something that Harker doesn’t, to the point in which they feel inclined to make the sign of the cross it order to connect to God. In doing the sign of the cross the couple ask for protection of God which means that there is something unsafe regarding the count. Furthermore the fear surrounding the count’s castle culminates when the Landlord’s wife begs Stoker to not leave by stating, “It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?” (pg 11) To this Stoker admits that he is now feeling rather anxious, ‘It was all very ridiculous, but I did not feel comfortable however’ (11) but he must go to the count on business to attend too. Ultimately the woman then pulls out a crucifix to which Stoker thinks, “As an English churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure of idolatrous…She saw, for I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put it round my neck, and said, ‘For your mother’s sake’ (11). Unbeknownst to Stoker, there seems to be something to fear surrounding the count to the point in which the woman finds it necessary to put the crucifix around his neck in order to keep him safe through the power of Christ.

The doubt in which Stoker portrays can align with the Victorian ideas surrounding the “crisis of religious doubt” upon the arrival of scientific studies such as Darwin, which denounced aspects of the bible. However, Stoker’s doubt, is contrasted with the fervor in which the woman portrays over religion. Upon reading the chapter, “Crisis of Faith” within The Victorian Age, there seemed to be a mix of emotions regarding religion especially within the coming of the Modern. The woman portrays the influential Evangelical religion of Britain during the time whom George Eliot “maintained that an Evangelical sense of duty and ethics was essential as a social “glue” to prevent the disintegration of society in the absence of religious authority” (1056). Thus upon the woman noticing the “doubt” on Stroker’s face she places the crucifix around his neck portraying the “sense of duty” to which she felt necessary in order to save him from “disintegration”.
Yet Stoker’s uncertainty surrounding the couple’s fear and viewing the crucifix as “idolatrous” conflicts with his previous statement saying that he is a “churchman”. Why then, if Stoker is a churchman, does he refuse to listen to the woman’s warnings as well as his own uncertainties surrounding his journey to Count Dracula?

The dynamic between Holmes and Watson instantly transformed from the moment that the directors of CBS’s show “Elementary” decided to cast Lucy Liu, an Chinese-American woman, in the role of Watson. Britney Broyles, author of “From the Opium Den to Partner-in-Crime…Solving: The Chinese Presence in Sherlock Holmes Adaptations,” proposes the idea that BBC’s strict adherence to Conan Doyle’s classic Watson/Holmes white-male dynamic allows “racial essentialism” to creep into the essential plotline whereas CBS’s “looser fidelity to the [text]” allows for “ideological revision” in which the use of binaries are neither fundamental nor significant. (Broyles, 150.)

Perhaps in switching the formulaic aspects of Holmes and Watson’s physical appearances, Elementary can more readily dismiss frequent criticisms about the implicit and explicit sexism and racism that customarily accompany Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Sherlock Holmes, as a text, has the ability to indirectly rely on racial themes because the detective must place his confidence in his ability to locate societal patterns and criminal motives whilst remaining pure and incorruptible in the eyes of the reader.

However unintentional and innocent the insertion of foreign criminals may seem, Broyles takes issue with BBC’s astounding amount of “foreign villains” during season one of Sherlock citing “The Great Game” with criminals from the Czech republic and “The Blind Banker” which the evildoers are Chinese and portrayed in a farcical manner. (Broyles, 155-156.)

Naturally, within a detective narrative, the characters are bound to categorize or identify the unknown miscreant with an “othering” trait that separates themselves from the idea of the criminal. Perhaps the detective will keep a level head in regards to the assumption of racial differences or cultural customs, but the subliminal or explicit racism within criminology reports and descriptions by bystanders tend to be less concealed. Within Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Sherlock’s client provides ambiguous information about a speckled band and since she cannot easily make sense of this evidence, she turns to the familiarity of racial discourse in order to identify “gypsies on the plantation” as potential suspects. (Conan Doyle, 45.)

The witness’s practice of pointing out racial and cultural differences to further disassociate with potential criminals is a common device that authors have relied upon within the detective genre. For instance, the plot of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue relies heavily upon subjective interpretation of the unknown. Within the tale, witnesses are called upon to provide statements about the peculiar voices of the murderers. In each case, naturally, the witnesses provide contradictory information about the languages and the ethnicities of the potential murderers. Isidore Muset claims that one of the criminals was a Frenchman who was certainly not a woman whilst the second murder certainly spoke in Spanish. Incompatibly, Henri Duval suggests that the murder was definitely a woman whilst the other accomplice spoke in Italian. In both scenarios, the “words” and languages are indistinguishable, but the witnesses still provide information that conveniently distances him or her from any consequence or suspicion.

Naturally, it makes sense to identify qualities that are contradictory to their own traits because they wish to disassociate with horrid criminal acts. For instance, in a more innocent situation, when a driver cuts you off, you are more likely to exclaim, “Come on, lady!” if you identify as male and “Watch where you’re going, man!” if you relate more to a female identity before even seeing the gender of your road-nemesis.

By switching the idea of Watson as a white male figure to the new identity of Watson as a Chinese-American female, the audience of CBS’s Elementary is prompted to view race and “othering” factors in a different manner. Since Watson is presumably “good” and holds traits and values that are admirable, the race and gender issues of Conan Doyle’s classic tails are reconstructed, questioned, and modernized for contemporary viewers.

Sources:

Reference to The Murders in the Rue Morgue

poestories.com/read/murders

Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

From the Opium Den to Partner-in-Crime…Solving: The Chinese Presence in  Sherlock Holmes Adaptations by Britney Broyles

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, one of the more prominent horror novels of the 19^th century (while it was initially dismissed as a cheap thriller), plays not only on this fear of the supernatural, but the paranoia and fascination with “reverse invasion.” In Ledger and Luckhurst’s Fin de Siècle they describe a particular fascination with “fantasies of reverse invasion by the French or Germans.” (xvi) While Transylvania is neither of those areas it still falls within the mystery and almost primal realm of Eastern Europe.

Count Dracula himself plays on multiple fears and anxieties of this time period: supernatural, educated and powerful Transylvanian noble, and in combination he present the third fear of the foreigner both as something not human and not English. Aside from the dubious transaction of real estate close to the capital city of England there is also the intention to assimilate into British society. As the Count is showing Jonathan around the castle he insists that the young man stays so that he can learn to speak proper English. When Jonathan remains confused, as Dracula speaks perfect English, he is offered this explanation, “ True, I know the grammar and the words, but yet I know not how to speak them…I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me, or pause in his speaking if he hears my words, to say, ‘Ha, ha! A stranger!’ I have been so long master that I would be master still.” (25) By assimilation into British culture and sounding like an Englishman Dracula can dominate the nation from the inside, and no one will suspect a thing until it is too late.

This ties into The Island of Doctor Moreau as well, relating to Prendick’s fear of every human he encounters possessing an inner beast that could break free at any moment. Dracula would become one walking among many, unsuspected and able to be a “master” in England as well as Transylvania. Jonathan is correct in stating that Dracula speaks perfect English, but he does not possess the accent necessary to maintain his high-class position[1]. In learning the “Queen’s English” dialect spoken by a majority of the upper class there is already a leap forward in Dracula’s social standing. He has the vast estate outside of London and soon will have the opportunity to become the new master of England (we all know he’s a vampire). There is also this interesting need to give the foreigner a supernatural or animalistic quality. In order for the paranoia and fear of the unknown to have any validity the foreigner must be distinguished as an “other.”

In his desire to learn the “proper” way to speak English the antagonist is bypassing the labels placed upon him as a foreigner. This is what makes him even more dangerous. While he still maintains the supernatural qualities, Dracula becomes an everyday English nobleman[2]. Of course there are still the ties to Translyvania, but the perfect pronunciation of the language gives comfort to the British, assuring them that he is not a wild and dangerous foreigner who has come to destroy their society.

[1] The play/film Pygmalion (also adapted as the musical My Fair Lady) demonstrates this need to have perfect language. “An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him.”

[2] In some versions of the film adaptations Dracula keeps his Transylvanian accent (most notably in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version). By some supernatural power he possesses the ability to go unnoticed by others.

Below is a scene from My Fair Lady in which the Professor Henry Higgins discusses with his colleague the importance of speaking English in a proper manner. Keep in mind at Higgins is incredibly misogynistic and a bit racist especially when it comes to people from Eastern Europe (mostly Hungary). It doesn’t have the horror of Dracula, but perhaps it provides a bit of cheer to act as a counterpart.

Irene Adler is one of the few ‘criminals’ against whom Sherlock Holmes is unable to exact some sort of punishment. She is an intellectual match for Holmes, even causing the man to hold off “[making] merry over the cleverness of women” after he is bested by her (19). However, this supposed female equal to Holmes only has one line in her own words in the entire story of A Scandal in Bohemia – “Surely. Bring him into the sitting-room. There is a comfortable sofa. This way, please!” (15). These are the only words Adler utters in her own voice: otherwise Holmes retells her words and the reader is given a mere sense of her voice in the letter she leaves for Holmes.

Adler’s character is conveyed through the opinions of the men who come into contact with her. Holmes file on Adler reveals her American birth and operatic career (7). The King tells the detective pair that “she has the face of the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute of men” (8). Holmes decides while following Alder that “she is the daintiest thin under a bonnet on this planet” and “she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for” (10 – 11). Watson remarks on “her superb figure” as she watches the crowd tends to the injured Father Holmes, and calls her a “beautiful creature” (15). Adler is revealed to the reader piece by beautiful piece through the eyes of men; she is an object of which they discuss its merits, usually with the King wishing that she was of a higher birth because she would “have made an admirable queen” (19).

This Holmes adventure is an example of the male gaze at work. Laura Mulvey discusses the male gaze in her piece “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” showing that the camera takes on the role of a man looking at a woman. This is why sex scenes usually focus heavily on the females face because that is what the male audience wants to see. It is a moment of scopophilia, or gaining pleasure in looking – basically a peeping Tom situation (Mulvey 835).  This scenario is repeated in Doyle’s work – all three men name Adler as an extremely beautiful creature and they are all after a photograph of her with the King.

The photo, however, complicates this narrative. A picture is something that can also be looked at and allow the viewer to gain pleasure from it. But this photograph, this potential source of scopophilia, is possessed by a woman, which means it must be wrong. Adler having the picture of her and the King opens the doors for a female to gaze at an image of a man for her own gain, and her only crime is threatening to let another woman look at said picture. The King claims that she is black mailing him to ruin his reputation and marriage, but Adler never has the chance to divulge her motives – who says she wasn’t trying to save another woman from an unhappy union to a man who she knows has done wrong? Adler has a set of man’s clothes, her “walking-clothes,” that she uses in order to be able to move about freely, and this guise is even convincing enough to fool Holmes as she passes him at his apartment, which shows that she understands the limited power women have over their own lives –– so why would she not be willing to help a woman who was being forced to marry a man without knowing his true character? (18)

The men see the photograph as a weapon that would hinder the proper social order: the King marrying a worthy princess to continue the royal bloodlines in Europe, but Adler views it as a weapon to safeguard herself “from any steps which [the King] might take in the future” (19). In this case, she is able to retain her weapon of protection, and in its hiding place she leaves another “which [the King] might care to possess” – this “photograph was of Irene Adler herself in an evening dress” (18 – 19). In this sense, Adler gets the last laugh because she willingly gives the men an attractive picture of herself in the midst of foiling Holmes’ plan. She is proving that she is not an unwilling object being viewed, but a person worthy of merit, even if she does fulfill the stereotypical marriage plot in the end, maintaining the original status quo.