When looking at Dracula through a lens of Reviews & Reactions of the San Francisco Chronicle on Dracula, I realized that both writings include the linkage to beauty and death, but more interestingly the way they address sexuality is different.
In Dracula and Reviews & Reactions of the San Francisco Chronicle on Dracula they both include the idea of the human-vampire being attracted to beautiful women solely to use them for their blood. It can be inferred that beautiful women resemble beautiful blood, meaning that beauty is ultimately linked to death. Also, the term “human-vampire” (Chronicle, 366) implies that the Count was human on his exterior and a monstrous vampire in the inside. The Count could then pretend to be attracted to beautiful women and lure them in with his human exterior only to “use [the] beautiful women…. and compass the death of many innocent people” (Chronicle, 366). One might question why are the Count’s victims always women? Why not men? I think that women are easier targets for the Count because of his human exterior as a man. He can pretend to be attracted to them and aim for a kiss near a women’s “throat” (Stoker, 75). Similarly, the 3 female vampires attracted Jonathan and lured him in with their sexual attention to his body.
The way Dracula addresses sexuality is different from Reviews & Reactions of the San Francisco Chronicle on Dracula in that Bram Stoker addresses sexuality in a demonizing way. He portrays women as threatening or wicked as their method to lure in men. For example, when Lucy is a full on vampire and was supposed to be dead in her coffin, “she advanced [forward], however with a languorous, voluptuous grace, [and] said: –“Come to me, Arthur” (Stoker, 181). After Lucy called to Arthur, “he seemed under a spell” (Stoker, 181). This made me infer that beautiful women can get practically anything they want, despite how they act. While in the Chronicle Review, sexuality in Dracula is addressed in their opinion as “realistic… one actually accepts its wildest flights of fancy as real facts” (Chronicle, 367). This review made me question how is the way sexuality is addressed in Dracula realistic? Especially if someone who is wicked lures in men? If someone were wicked, wouldn’t that make one want to rebel, and not get drawn in? If human men are so easily drawn to women, why aren’t there more men as vampires in the novel?