Category: 2016 Blog Post

I read “Kiss Me with those Red Lips” to supplement my blog, and it added a whole new layer of information to my views about sexuality in Dracula. It talked about gender roles in the story. Men have power, and its “active, progressive, and defensive…. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war and for conquest.” In the book, we see that as the men are the ones who fight Dracula and receive the credit. “Women [bear] a different burden, she must be … incorruptibly good… infallibly wise- not for self-development, but for self-renunciation.” (109) These core facts about how women and men were supposed to act and how they were seen definitely help my understanding of why the characters are portrayed thusly.

Dracula, then, is the corrupter, bringing about danger and neck sucking. Dracula threatens the order of society. The article makes a claim that “vampirism is an excellent example of the identity of desire and fear.” (107) The vampire bite itself is a mix of the traditional male vs. female characteristics. Beginning with the soft lips of the vampire and ending up with the pointy teeth and the bite, like the promise of the sweet actions more traditionally associated with females, but then ending up with a bite which is linked more towards the attributes of a man. Dracula seems to try to bring about change from the perceived gender roles, making women after they have been bitten more overt and outspoken.

With this mix up, men have to brave up and save the day, killing all the vampires and having women revert to their prescribed gender roles. But it is the association that this outside corrupter that turns women into “monsters,” that really makes the modern reader have to think about prescribed gender roles now, and back in the 19th century.

Dracula is based on typically conventional ideas regarding marriage, men and women as well as playing with the themes of ‘abnormal’ sexuality, homosexuality and ideas about the ‘New Woman’.

In chapter 12 (page 172; Penguin Classics edition) Lucy is on her deathbed and so the doctors awaken Holmwood and bring him to Lucy in order to say his goodbyes. ‘Her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and the pale gums, drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than ever. In a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which were now dull and hard at once, and she said in a soft, voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from her lips: – “Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!”‘

Throughout Lucy’s vampire transition, she becomes increasingly sexualised because her suppressed sexuality is becoming more obvious and transparent as well as becoming the sexual aggressor, which in 1897, was not the norm. Women were supposed to accept their husband’s sexual needs and expectations but never act on their own. Throughout the novel a scale was set, Mina on one end, representing the ideal Victorian woman with traditional ideals and Dracula’s three daughters on the other end, depicting the Victorian idea of evil and impurity mostly shown with their hyper-sexuality and vampirism and as Stoker made clear that vampires are evil, then therefore so are hyper-sexual women.

 

In the text above, Lucy portrays a wanton creature, ‘her breathing grew stertorous’, ‘the mouth opened’ and ‘she said in a soft, voluptuous voice’ as well as asking Holmwood to kiss her, ‘Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!’. Indicating her sexual aggression and her desire to the point that even on her deathbed, she is showing signs of impurity and lust.

I think that sexuality figures so centrally in our novel because Stoker uses the character of Lucy to tackle the concept of the ‘New Woman’ and Victorian men’s fear of women rightly taking advantage of newly available educational and employment opportunities to break free from the intellectual and social restraints imposed upon them by a male-dominated society. Stoker portrays her as having weak morals and ‘an unruly desire’ which was so different to what the typical 1897 Victorian woman strived towards in order to please her husband and society but what was starting to happen. Stoker used the character of Lucy to depict the decline from the Victorian feminine ideal to the perceived selfish, wanton, unnaturalness of the ‘New Woman’.

 

 

OK… Remember that scene where Lucy gets a stake driven through her heart? Let’s talk about that. (By the way, the video above is from the 1992 film adaptation of Dracula – viewer discretion is advised.)

As I discussed in my last blog post, Mina Harker is considered pure and chaste (an ideal woman, according to the Victorian definition), while the three “sisters” of Dracula are considered evil, and highly sexual monsters. However, one more prevalent female exists: Lucy. She possesses both features, so I am just going to say that she fits somewhere in between all of the madness.

Let’s look at the scene of Lucy’s final death (which is, indeed, very sexual). “The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam” (Stoker, p. 231). If one reads this in a particular way, it becomes clear that this is so much more than a bloody death…. It is sexual pleasure (an orgasm). However, amidst all of the pleasure, “Arthur [never] falters” (Stoker, p. 231). Rather, he resembles Thor in that he drives a stake through Lucy’s heart (could be read as a penis), never faltering. It almost seems as though Holmwood is trying to retrieve his breath after a sexual act. In general, this is an important instance in the novel because it shows that this is what happens when one falls victim to a vampire’s seduction – to sex. After she is killed, she is finally able to return to her state of purity.

I could be completely wrong, but I’m just going to make a claim about the function of sexuality in Dracula. Bram Stoker intertwines sexuality (continuously) throughout his novel because he wants to remind readers of the problems that sexuality causes. In other words, he wants to awaken their anxieties – introduce a world where women can overtly appear sexual and lustful – only to make them realize that a world where sexuality is prevalent is a world doomed to evil and destruction (as seen throughout Dracula). In other words, sex is being equated with evil. In this scene with Lucy, the language is so sexually-charged because Stoker wants readers to understand that in Victorian society, if a woman falls victim to sexual seduction, she will become a monster until the moment of her death.

In summarization, Stoker utilizes conventional gender and sexual norms in his novel (Lucy is pure), only to disrupt them (Lucy becomes a sex-crazed, blood-sucking vampire), and then return them to their previous state (dead, but nonetheless innocent). Throughout everything, the anxieties of Victorian society are awakened because people are able to see this “side” of women. So, in order to evade the life of Lucy, women must continue to follow a life of chastity and elegance.

 

Throughout the novel, female characters are transformed into vampires through Dracula’s unending thirst for blood which is representative of both Europe’s syphilis outbreak as well as the masculine fears of the “new woman” as someone who as discovered their sexuality after centuries of oppression.

Lucy is the epitome of the novels message regarding the impurity of women as she remarks that it’s quite unfortunate women cannot have 3 husbands,  contrasting the social acceptability of men having multiple love interests. She goes on to become tainted by Dracula’s vampirism and ironically has the blood of 3 men running through her veins.

These prevailing fears at the time could be cured by only one thing, that being religion. This theme is repeated since the beginning of the novel when Mina gives Harker a Catholic cross that he uses to ward off vampires. Following the introduction of Dr. Van Helsing, additional religious symbols and tools are used such as communion wafers to prevent the vampires from returning to their dirt boxes or tombs. Thus religion, and a fallback to traditional values is considered by Bram Stoker to be the only cure to these issues plaguing 19th century Europe.

In this blog post I would like to address the first prompt of Dracula as a novel that addresses the science and pseudoscience in the Victorian era. The notion that science has the ability to explain all things in life is a predominate belief in modern times. Humans are starting to rationalize their lives, and consequently distancing themselves from humanity. However, in Dracula, there is a reoccurring theme of doubt about scientific beliefs and theories. There is a constant struggle between scientific beliefs and superstitions in this novel. For example, when Van Helsing first puts garlic in Lucy’s room to ward away the evil spirits, Lucy’s mother then uses her common judgement and opens the windows as to not “suffocate” her child. Ultimately, this causes the near-death of Lucy. The whole novel is based on the Gothic motive of doubt because it plays on both the fascination of the inexplicable, but also the need for everything to have an explanation. John Bowen in his article “Gothic Motives” explains: “The uncertainty that goes with Gothic is very characteristic of a world in which orthodox religious belief is waning; there is both an exaggerated interest in the supernatural and the constant possibility that even very astonishing things will turn out to be explicable.” Bowen points out that even the strangest character such as Count Dracula ends up having an explanation, even if it is supported by pseudoscientific facts.

Throughout the novel when all else fails the doctors of the novel turn to pseudoscience. I believe the scene that best displays something “you cannot understand” is the scene when Lucy struggles for life. In this scene there is a moment where Dr. Seward notices that “whenever she got into that lethargic state, with the stertorous breathing, she put the flowers from her; but that when she waked she clutched them close” (Chp 12).  Even in Lucy’s state of falling in and out of consciousness she finds comfort in the garlic necklace, that Dr. Van Helsing had tried to explain to Lucy’s mother was a part of her treatment. However, Dr. Van Helsing never truly explains  scientifically how garlic will help Lucy, and it is interesting that no one else cares to ask him why he resorts to this form of medication once the blood transfusions no longer work. Even Dr. Seward doesn’t appear to care why Van Helsing is turning to this form of pseudoscience as a form of treatment. I believe that no one questions the treatments prescribed through pseudoscience because of the placebo effect it has on patients. Placebo’s may even be seen as the new version of pseudoscience in today’s world. Yet, going back to this moment in the novel once Lucy dies Dr. Seward says “Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!”; however, he cannot comprehend what Dr. Van Helsing means when he responds “Not so; alas! Not so. It is only the beginning!”.  So of course, after hearing this, Dr. Seward puts his faith in pseudoscience, and most likely believes that response from Van Helsing may be due to the garlic treatment, because the truth behind Dr. Van Helsings treatments has yet to be revealed in this scene.

This video talks about the science behind the placebo effect as well as the correlation I’m trying to make with why people believe that pseudoscience/magic can heal people and work .

In the novel there are many instances of sexuality as an indicator of deviance. As both Lucy and Mina become more vampires they also transform into sexual being, a taboo for women in Victorian times. There is a strong implication to uncivilized which would be even more clear to a Victorian audience that prizes propriety. The very movements of Lucy are languorous and carless. More words show uncivilized characteristics is the way she is referred to as, “diabolically, cold-bloodedness, unclean”. These seem to imply a wicked evil in a sexual powerful woman.

An example of sexual taboo is when Lucy is a vampire and calls to her husband. The way she is described is wrought with sexual language like “voluptuous, wanton, hungry”. Not only is she sexual but she is also sexually aggressive. She is the one calling for him by saying, “Come to me, Arthur… My arms are hungry for you”. This is very atypical of a Victorian woman who is sexually demure and at the power of men. This could reflect a fear of the changing culture that woman may become sexually aggressive and therefore a threat to men. These men are men, like Arthur, who cannot resist the call of his wife even though she attends to kill him. There could be an anxiety about how women be an unpreserved danger to husbands and men who are at women’s power and also the devils and animals within the skin of woman.

(Quotes from chapter 16, page 191 in Barnes and Noble edition)

In Dracula, there are several scenes featuring a perversion of Victorian ideas. Of these, the scene featuring a vampiric Lucy demonstrates the Victorian anxieties over the notion of the “New Woman.” In this blog post, I will focus upon the idea that Lucy represents a distortion of maternal femininity when the protagonists of the novel encounter her. In this scene, Stoker sets up the encounter by having Dr. Steward state that “When [they saw]… the thing that was before [them was Lucy but] she drew back with an angry snarl [and her] face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile”(225,226). Even then, before she advanced towards the men with a “languorous, voluptuous grace,” she “flung to the ground… with a careless motion… [while clutching a child] strenuously to her breast”(226). As a result of this passage, Lucy the Vampire is portrayed as a perversion of maternal femininity and of Victorian ideals. In an article written by Greg Buzwell, he discusses the idea of how vampires in Dracula represent Victorian anxieties. Greg Buzwell comments on this scene, stating that “Lucy behaves in a manner that would have been viewed as an affront to both femininity and motherhood” because she was feeding upon a child like an animal. In addition to this, by having Lucy approach the men in a manner that would be compared to a succubus, Stoker shows one of the social anxieties that were present in Victorian Society; sexually liberated women. As a result of these developments, Lucy, through becoming a vampire, acting like a seductress and behaving a predator, reflects upon the negative thoughts that Victorian society had about “The New Woman.”

The themes in Scarborough’s essay Science or Séance?: Late-Victorian Science and Dracula’s Epistolary Structure are central both in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Victorian life. In Dracula, the cutting-edge scientific techniques of the day are shunned in favor of both regional and religious superstitions. This is especially evident when Harker and Van Helsing kill the vampiric incarnation of Lucy, as they stuff her mouth with garlic, which is a traditional Transylvanian way to ward off vampires. Furthermore, they seal her tomb off with fragments of a communion wafer, once again representing their use of religion in order to prevent the vampire from ever rising again. The use of religion is once again prominent later in the novel when it is discovered that Mina Harker is a vampire. She is pressed with a communion wafer, which burns her, showing that she is unholy, a damned soul. Upon this discovery, she begins reciting scripture, saying “unclean”, a word which is constantly used in the book of Leviticus to refer to any unholy being, be it non kosher food, a dead body or a menstruating woman. This is clearly a rebuke of the wealth of scientific discoveries that were made throughout the Victorian era. These discoveries pushed the people of London away from religion, in favor of using science to explain natural phenomena. However, many people in Victorian London, especially members of the clergy, felt that the use of science, and the multitude of scientific advancements of the time, were blasphemous, and punished or shunned those who favored science over religion. Because of this conflict, the points in Scarborough’s essay ring true to the conflicts presented both in Victorian life and in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

By the end of the 19^th century, Britain was in major decline of power. The poverty and mortality rates were uncontrollably high and the people were filled with “anxiety of cultural decay” (Anxiety of Reverse Colonization pg 623). Stoker uses his novel, Dracula to emphasize the fears of Victorian culture in the 19^th century. In particular, sexuality acts as a major fear of Victorian people and also acts as a major motif in the novel.

There is no coincidence in the fates of Lucy and Mina by the end of the novel. Lucy, who desires three husbands, has the blood of three men pulsing through her and gives in to Dracula’s temptation, dies a horribly painful death when her husband drives a stake through her heart. This scene of Arthur stabbing Lucy is like a punishment for not being a loyal, Victorian wife. Mina, on the other hand, escapes punishment. Throughout the novel she is a dutiful, motherly figure. She takes care of Jonathan when he is ill, comforts Van Helsing when he cries and remains true to her Victorian virtues even when tempted by Dracula. It is because of this that she survives. Therefore, it is quite apparent that Stoker despises the idea of a sexualized woman. To put it simply, to be voluptuous means death (Lucy), and to be traditional/ non-sexualized means life. This could also have implications connecting sex with disease.

As mentioned in “Dracula; Vampires, Perversity and Victorian Anxieties”, the use of vampires in a text suggest the fear of sexually transmitted diseases. With vampires comes tainted blood and with that comes disease and with disease comes death. The more promiscuous women are, the more likely diseases like syphilis will spread. The spread of sexually transmitted diseases suggest not only health troubles but moral as well. No man wants to be the husband of a cheater. It ruins their reputation and their health all at once.