Author: Elizabeth Bennet

In Christina Rosetti’s “The World” she writes of being tempted by some mysterious “she,” writing “By day she woos me to the outer air, / Ripe fruit, sweet flowers, and full satiety” (45). As Rosetti uses fruit and sweetness in Goblin Market to represent sexuality, by pairing “ripe fruit” and “sweet flowers” in conjunction with the repetition of wooing, a sexual undertone is created. The contrasts between the lines about night and day, as represented by the opposites of night and day and switching between the two, create a duality of the woman’s nature. While the day represents a sexual relationship, night shows an evil, monstrous side. By night the woman who was so “soft” and “fair” before transforms into a horned, cloven footed beast. With “serpents gliding in her hair” she is compared to Medusa, incapable of love and threatening to turn anyone she looks at to stone.

Between the sexual undertones of the relationship, the representations of this woman as a monster, and the fact that it was written by Rosetti, a woman, about a woman, I think this poem represents a sexual relationship between two women and the cultural rejection of homosexuality. In the 1860s when this poem was published, not only was homosexuality widely discouraged, same-sex relationships between women weren’t even commonly acknowledged and there was relative blindness towards female sexuality. The fact that a relationship between two women would likely be rejected by society and religion explains Rosetti asking if she “should sell / my soul to her, give her my life and youth, / Till my feet, cloven to, take hold on hell?” The religious anxiety shown in the fear of going to hell due to acting on homosexual desire is also shown in the line calling the presumed lesbian woman “A very monster void of love and prayer,” demonizing the seductress beyond any hope of redemption.

The duality of the woman’s nature represented between the day and night dichotomy in this poem also reminded me of Lady Audley. While Lady Audley was able to woo most with her beauty, her willingness and ability to do anything necessary, including arson and murder, made her into a monster in secret. Lady Audley’s “monstrosity” and her ability to use her beauty to hide her secrets and cunning landed her in a mad house. During the Victorian Era some lesbians and spinsters who refused to marry were also viewed as mentally ill and placed in asylums, much like Lady Audley. Whether giving of “life and youth” and taking “hold on hell” represent an asylum or not, “The World” has strong lesbian undertones representative of the cultural attitudes of the time towards homosexuality.

Throughout Dracula, Stoker represents societal anxieties toward the “New Woman” and changing female sexuality through Lucy’s modern morality and eventual Vampiric transformation, while Mina plays the role of the pure traditional woman with strong values. From the very beginning Lucy and Mina are set apart, Mina wanting only to marry Jonathan, while Lucy laments not being able to accept marriage proposals from three men saying, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” (67). As Dracula preys on Lucy, she receives blood transfusions from four men, representing sexual encounters with them. Stoker reinforces the underlying message of the dangers of female sexuality when Lucy, the only sexually impure and liberally thinking woman in the story, becomes a vampire, telling readers that the “New Woman” is a monster. Finally, Stoker puts the final nail in the New Woman’s coffin when Lucy demonstrates her lack of all maternity as, “With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone” (226). As a Victorian woman, Lucy is a true monster as a woman who throws aside any maternal instinct or care for children, which is still thought of as a mark of femininity.

In order to ensure that readers understand the monstrosity that is the “New Woman,” Stoker presents Mina Harker as the ideal representation of traditional Victorian femininity. Throughout the story, Mina is true to her husband and loyal to her friends. Remaining pure until marriage in love, lust, blood, and sex, Mina presents Victorian ideals of women’s sexuality perfectly in that she lacks any. Once Dracula decides to prey on Mina, even then she shows that she is an unwilling subject, wishing she could fight him and doing everything she can to help the men end Dracula’s existence. While Lucy’s relationship with the four men is group of men is represented as a polygamous marriage due to their blood sharing, Stoker portrays Mina as a queen and the men as her knights, as more than once they all kneel at her feet and pledge to be true to each other and to do whatever they can to save her or to kill her if she becomes a vampire (317, 352). Mina still has a career, but works only to help her husband. She is the perfect wife and even acts as a motherly figure at times. She is truly the perfect Victorian woman. Lucy is doomed to Vampirism and death due to her sexuality and modernity as a “New Woman”, while Mina’s traditional character saves her from Dracula in the end.

On many occasions throughout Dracula we have seen Vampires occupy and manipulate dreams in a supernatural and strategic way. From Jonathan Harker’s first experience with the three voluptuous women at Castle Dracula, throughout Lucy’s nights of sleepwalking, and now potentially into Mina’s dreams of creeping fog and misty columns in her bedroom, Vampires seem to be central to the characters’ experiences of dreaming.

In both Jonathan and Mina’s diary entries, their dreams are described as lifelike, Jonathan calling the dream “so real that now, sitting here in the broad, full sunlight of the morning, I cannot in the least believe that it was all sleep” (44). These dreams seem so real because they are Vampires manipulating their victim’s perceptions of reality and their actions, so as to prey on them. I think that this representation of Vampires as manipulating victims in their sleep allowed Victorian characters to maintain the purity of innocence in their seduction, while also allowing for allusions to sexuality and fears of the night. Lucy’s dreams caused her to sleepwalk, going places she would never normally go during the night and allowing herself to be fed on by Dracula in her altered state of mind. By removing Lucy’s will and allowing vampires to manipulate their victims in their dreams, vampires become even more powerful. This also creates the contrast between the typically peaceful image of dying in one’s sleep and the violence of being bitten and attacked by a vampire.

In all of these cases, the victims lack control while they are dreaming, as Mina says she is “powerless to act” (275). As there are such sexual connotations to the exchange of blood in this novel, and as vampires are hypersexualized with their youth, beauty, and reliance on seduction to lure in victims, I think the powerlessness of the victims allows these characters to be viewed as innocent and pure in the sexualized encounter with a vampire. Where the Victorian era emphasized sexual purity so heavily, this total lack of awareness and control by victims could ease the fear that they may be made impure by their interactions with vampires.

“‘The story took a great hold upon the imagination of Sir Charles, and I have no doubt that it led to his tragic end…. His nerves were so worked up that the appearance of any dog might have had a fatal effect on his diseased heart.'” – pg. 65

In this passage, Stapleton tells Watson his thoughts surrounding Sir Charles’s tragic death. I think the way Stapleton words this sentiment is very interesting because it implies that the hold that the legend of the Hound of Baskervilles had over Charles’s imagination is what caused his death and not the presence of an actual hound. In the description of Charles’s death and the footprint of the hound, it is clear that the hound, if it truly exists, never touched Sir Charles on the night he died. Charles seems to have died from fear. Why would this vicious, murderous hound get so close, only to leave his body untouched? If this is the case, what or who should Sir Charles have actually been afraid of?

Throughout the story there have been multiple mentions of the supernatural and prehistoric men, as if to make readers consider ritual sacrifice of the ancient Baskervilles as the cause of their recurring deaths. There is also the questioning of the hound’s cry as if to say nobody knows what the sound is, but assume it to be the hound. I have noticed, though, that there are also too many suspicious people involved for anything to just be caused by the supernatural. Miss Stapleton seems to know something and delivered a message to Watson strangely similar to that in the newspaper. There was the strange disappearing man on the moor and the escaped convict, as well as Stapleton and the Barrymores, both of whom have good reasons for their strange behavior, as long as we believe their explanations to be true. At the very least somebody seems to know something about the Hound of the Baskervilles or the death of Sir Charles, but is reluctant to tell Henry anything other than that he should leave the moor. Between all this and the fact that Sherlock Holmes is a man of logic and reason, I am left questioning whether the supernatural hound that scared Charles to death that night actually even exists, or if there is a person or natural cause to blame.

“I believe,” said Robert, in the same solemn, relentless voice, “that my friend never left Essex; and I believe that he died on the 7^th of September last.”

“Oh! No, no – for God’s sake, no!” he shrieked hoarsely. “No! you don’t know what you say – you don’t know what you ask me to think – you don’t know what your words mean!” (172)

 

In this passage as Mr. Maldon is informed of George’s death, his adamant refusal and grief stricken reception of this news affirms our suspicions that he has been hiding something. Mr. Maldon’s repetition of the word “no” could be interpreted as the disbelief he claims, but it could also be regret and sadness for the implications of what the circumstances of George’s death must mean. He also says “you don’t know what you ask me to think” and “you don’t know what your words mean,” implying that he is hiding something from Robert, either about George or about “the pretty lady.” As Robert already suspects Lady Audley’s involvement in George’s death, I believe Mr. Maldon must know something about Lady Audley, as well. The phrase “you don’t know what your words mean” may also have deeper meaning for the novel as a whole with the themes of secrets and maybe we as readers do not yet know what some things mean.

 

From the use of the words solemn and shrieked, it seems as if there is some worse sadness here for Mr. Maldon than the death of his son in law, whom he didn’t seem to like very much. Later Mr. Maldon mentions an officer arresting a murderer and not implicating other people, although Robert has not mentioned murder or anyone he might implicate. This raises questions of whether Mr. Maldon is trying to protect Lady Audley and why? Is Lady Audley really Helen Talboys and Mr. Maldon cannot bear to think of his daughter murdering her husband? Is there someone else he is trying to protect?