{"id":261,"date":"2016-03-11T15:28:27","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T15:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=261"},"modified":"2018-09-02T22:05:55","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T22:05:55","slug":"the-blood-is-the-life-the-blood-is-seman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2016\/03\/11\/the-blood-is-the-life-the-blood-is-seman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blood is the Life, The Blood is\u2026 Seman?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The binary systems which govern Bram Stoker’s <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>are broken by the titular monster who does not fit into either myth or reality, living or dead, man or woman. While many of the characters refer to Dracula as an \u201cIt\u201d or as a \u201cmonster\u201d, still just as many use he\/him pronouns for Dracula despite hesitating to identify Dracula as a man (Stoker 95). He does not fit the strict gender binary but is more identifiably male than female and is described as appearing masculine with the exception of his \u201cfull lips\u201d when he has recently drunk blood (Stoker 301). His appearance arguably becomes more feminine with the consumption of his only food is blood, which can stand as a metaphor for milk. Craft agrees and claims that Stoker inverts gender roles further in <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>by \u201cinverting a favorite Victorian maternal function\u201d when Lucy feeds on small children- a mother eating a child instead of feeding a child and Dracula using blood as a substitute for mother’s milk just he forces Mina to drink his blood as a substitute for semen ( 453; 458). All of these inversions of the binary systems in England are due to the foreign and evil activities of Dracula.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once the perspective of the story switches to Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra, the clear separation of the gender binary and its importance in England becomes clear. In the article \u201cGender and Inversion in <\/span>Dracula<\/span><\/i>\u201d, the author claims that Stoker\u2019s novel holds \u201ca fixed conception of femininity\u201d (Craft 450). The two female characters depict narrow stereotypes of femininity; the coquettish Lucy, flirting with her three suitors, and the devoted Mina, anxiously awaiting news of her husband. The correspondence between Mina and Lucy in chapter five contains pleasantries and the rumors that \u201ca tall, handsome, curly-haired man???\u201d is about to propose to Lucy, which are portrayed as innocent and foolish letters in opposition to Dr. Stewards phonographic medical journal (Stoker 63). Mina expresses her desire to practice her shorthand so that she may be of more use to her husband, despite her work as an assistant school teacher (Stoker 62). <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She is consumed by the work she does for men, at first simply for her husband, and then for the whole Crew of Light. \u00a0Mina is \u201cinterpreted solely by males\u201d as she is viewed as a tool for success in dispatching Dracula (Craft 451). Her ability to read Dracula’s mind and thereby divulge his whereabouts is crucial to their quest but also allows him access to control her (Stoker 347). When Dracula turns Lucy into a vampire, she has no qualms about her new identity; \u201c[flinging] to the ground, callous as a devil, the child\u201d moments before using her \u201cvoluptuous grace\u201d on her former fianc\u00e9 (Stoker 226). Thus while both Lucy and Mina are transformed by Dracula, Mina is saved by her intelligence and in her pure dedication to the Crew of Light. At the end of novel, Van Helsing says to the Harkers son Quincey, \u201che will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake\u201d (Stoker 402). The story of the Harkers bravery, but especially Mina, will be passed down to the embodiment of the Crew of Light, their son, the perfect evidence of their non-vampiric, cisgender, heterosexual union. <\/span><\/p>\n

Craft, Christopher. \u201cGender and Inversion in <\/span>Dracula<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Stoker, Bram. <\/span>Dracula<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The binary systems which govern Bram Stoker’s Dracula are broken by the titular monster who does not fit into either myth or reality, living or dead, man or woman. While many of the characters refer to Dracula as an \u201cIt\u201d or as a \u201cmonster\u201d, still just as many use he\/him pronouns for Dracula despite hesitating … Continue reading The Blood is the Life, The Blood is\u2026 Seman?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1800,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782,1],"tags":[122683,122684,122682,1231,2290],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post","category-uncategorized","tag-bram-stoker","tag-christopher-craft","tag-dracula","tag-gender","tag-sexuality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","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\/1800"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}