{"id":223,"date":"2016-03-02T20:08:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T20:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=223"},"modified":"2018-09-02T22:05:55","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T22:05:55","slug":"the-whirlpool-of-european-races-eugenic-ambivalence-in-dracula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2016\/03\/02\/the-whirlpool-of-european-races-eugenic-ambivalence-in-dracula\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Whirlpool of European Races”: Eugenic Ambivalence in Dracula"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term \u201ceugenics\u201d was invented in 1883 to define the growing Victorian interest in a kind of bastardized evolution, what Ledger & Luckhurst describe as \u201ccontrol over the breeding habits of a new mass population, an artificial intervention into a natural evolution \u2018gone wrong\u2019 in its proliferation of the \u2018weakest.\u2019\u201d (Ledger & Luckhurst xv) This preoccupation with the so-called strength of the race emerges in Dracula, <\/em>but in an ambivalent form. Dracula\u2019s own ideas about race, and the inherent qualities of different races, complicate the eugenicist\u2019s conception of race, such that Stoker\u2019s own feelings on eugenics remain unclear.<\/p>\n

Prominent in Jonathan Harker\u2019s memories of his stay at Dracula\u2019s 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\u2019s past in explicitly racial terms: \u201cWe 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\u2026till 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\u2026What 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?\u201d (Stoker 52)<\/p>\n

The fascinating aspect of this tirade is that it contradicts the popular idea of the eugenicist as obsessed with the purity <\/em>of his race. On the contrary, Dracula, though exalting the strength of his people and bloodline, in fact ascribes that strength to the mixture <\/em>of strong races that has resulted in the Szekelys, rather than to any \u201cpure-blooded\u201d ancestors \u2013 a blatant contradiction of common European worries about the \u201cdegeneration\u201d of race resulting from mixed blood. At the same time, however, Dracula\u2019s description of his family\u2019s emergence from the struggling \u201cwhirlpool\u201d or races is perfectly in line with \u201cthe power of the evolutionary analogy in the late Victorian era.\u201d (Ledge & Luckhurst xv) In other words, in Dracula, <\/em>\u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d holds true \u2013 but perhaps not in the way a pure-blooded Englishman might wish.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cpure\u201d British identity? It is impossible to determine, of course, whether Stoker\u2019s views were at all similar to Dracula\u2019s, 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, <\/em>even in this ambiguous form, testifies to its power and prevalence at the close of the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The term \u201ceugenics\u201d was invented in 1883 to define the growing Victorian interest in a kind of bastardized evolution, what Ledger & Luckhurst describe as \u201ccontrol over the breeding habits of a new mass population, an artificial intervention into a natural evolution \u2018gone wrong\u2019 in its proliferation of the \u2018weakest.\u2019\u201d (Ledger & Luckhurst xv) This … Continue reading “The Whirlpool of European Races”: Eugenic Ambivalence in Dracula<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1581,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1581"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}