Here is a paper I wrote for a Gothic Literature class back in uni. Don't steal it! The last changes
Bite Me, Please!: Reflections on the Sexual Vampire in Dracula
Outside the rain
And the heart skips a beat
So you’re lonely
Creature of the night
It’s been only a week
Can you love me only?
-Stevie Nicks, “Outside the Rain”
And the heart skips a beat
So you’re lonely
Creature of the night
It’s been only a week
Can you love me only?
-Stevie Nicks, “Outside the Rain”
It is late, twilight has deepened into full dark, and a young woman is hurrying home. She did not mean to stay out so long, but she was having such a lovely time at her friend’s house. The fog is creeping up, obscuring what little light reaches the earth from the moon and stars. The young woman, feeling foolishly afraid, begins to hurry. She can almost feel something hunting her. She catches movement from the corner of her eye and follows it. Looking behind her, she sees nothing. It was a trick of light, her imagination carrying her off to a darker, more dangerous world. Her heart begins to pound in her ears. She turns forward and quickens her pace to gain distance from monstrous shadows. She almost misses the handsome man standing under the streetlamp before her. He smiles at her, teeth flashing bright in the darkness. His eyes glow with night promises. She knows she should not, but she just cannot help herself: she goes to him.
The scene above is stereotypical of vampire attacks in gothic literature. The young woman is helpless to resist the call of the vampire. She neither fights nor flees; she is seduced by the animalistic charm of the undead. There is something sensual, sexual about the vampire. He does not need to attack those he hunts, they go to him willingly. He seduces their humanity away from them. Through his bite, he strips them of all inhibitions. This is true for any vampire, every vampire, most especially Dracula. Dracula’s victims are willing participants in their own degradation. Dracula is a curious monster. He is cultured, charming, intelligent, sensual, sexual, and he can pass as human. His bites transform a person into an animalistic fiend, yet he professes to love. His harem, the women he converted into beasts, is frightening in their aggressive sexuality. Dracula’s sexuality is transformative. His seduction threatens the sexual identities of every person he meets, men and women; that, above everything else, including threat to life and limb, is what makes the vampire so dangerous.
The seductive powers of the vampire are apparent in Dracula. Neither man nor woman is immune to the vampiric charms of Dracula and his concubines. “The Victorians viewed [sex] as disgusting, animalistic, and depraved. It was even supposed that sex endangered the health” (Brame 21). This is something Jonathan Harker discovers when he encounters three enticing vampires in Dracula’s castle, he says of them:
All three had brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips (Stoker 69).
Jonathan is drawn to the women, regardless of the danger to himself, or to the hurt he could cause his beloved Mina. Because of his helplessness in the face of his attraction, Jonathan is almost bitten, being saved, at the last moment, by Dracula. Mina, in her experience with vampiric seduction is not so lucky. She describes her experience, “He placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other . . . I was bewildered, and, strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him” (Stoker 327). At the time of recall, she regretted her actions, but when Dracula was before her she supped at his breast with the hunger of a child. John Fletcher explains seduction in psychological terms, claiming:
[There is] a primordial passivity for both sexes in relation to sexuality and the other . . . active and passive [sexuality is] not in terms of organs and acts-- but in terms of the presence of representation, fantasy, unconscious desire on the part of the adult . . . indicate that the primary situation that gives rise to the sexual drive in the human being is one of a primary passivity and penetration by the other (Fletcher 104).
Both Jonathan and Mina are passive in their liaisons with the vampires. They want and do not want, but are incapable of resisting. The other characters are no more immune to the vampire’s charms than Jonathan and Mina. Mina records her rescue of the virtually naked Lucy in the church courtyard:
Her lips were parted, and she was breathing-- not softly, as usual with her, but in long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every breath. As I came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled the collar of her nightdress close around her throat. Whilst she did so there came a little shudder through her, as though she felt the cold (Stoker 125-6).
Mina’s interpretation of Lucy’s gasping and shudder strikes the sexually savvy as naive. Lucy, in this scene, displays classic symptoms of sexual gratification and orgasm. She is left heaving and moaning on the bench while her lover, Dracula, makes his escape. Shortly thereafter Lucy joins the ranks of the wildly sexual undead, causing the men who both love and hunt her to look at her with lust. John Seward describes coming upon her resurrected corpse: “The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness” (Stoker 249). He goes on to describe her as having a “wanton smile” and moving with a “languorous, voluptuous grace” (Stoker 249-50). Though he feels an abhorrence for the creature that was once his beloved Lucy, Seward describes her with sexually charged language. She is “voluptuous” and “wanton,” with his embrace Dracula has transformed Lucy into both his newly born daughter and his whore. It is only when the vampire Lucy’s sexuality is destroyed through the simulated act of rape of Arthur driving the stake “deeper and deeper” into her flesh, that Lucy’s innocence is restored and her power over the men lost (Stoker 254).
Dracula, and the figure of the vampire, is sexual in ways that have nothing to do with seduction. The vampire reproduces with a fecundity that is both lavish and abject. Dracula is the story of “male reproduction gone monstrously and horribly awry,” according to Anita Levy in her book Reproductive Urges, “practically one nip of the neck and [Dracula’s] sallow cheeks become rosy, his power returns unalloyed, and . . . the process that reproduces his kind is set in motion” (Levy 156). Dracula, with this one sexual act, becomes both mother and father. His reproductive organ, the mouth, which is shared by both sexes of his race, is nearly “indistinguishable from the toothed vagina or vagina dentata” (Levy 156). This is seen in Jonathan’s description of the mouth of one of Dracula’s concubines:
There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth (Stoker 69-70).
The vampire’s moist, tumescent lips mirror the vulva in a state of arousal.
Along with the vulva, Dracula also represents the phallus. He becomes engorged when he drinks blood. When Jonathan breaks into Dracula’s crypt he is presented with an image of Dracula-as-phallus that horrifies him:
There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed . . . The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the cheeks were fuller; the mouth was redder than ever . . . Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh . . . It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted in his repletion (Stoker 83).
Jonathan is intimidated and horrified by the phallic Dracula. He wants to “rid the world of such a monster” (Stoker 84). Kelly Hurley, in her book The Gothic Body, says that Dracula is “an engorged and bloated symbol of always-erect potency, triumphantly tumescent . . . he is more vigorous and commanding-- more manly--than the British male characters.” Jonathan’s intimidation is well founded; juxtaposed with Dracula’s compelling masculinity, Jonathan becomes “feminized” and anxious. How can Jonathan compete? Even “exhausted in his repletion,” Dracula is swollen and tumescent. “In Dracula, [Jonathan] sees the male organ displayed in all its utter materiality . . . [Dracula] serves as a reminder that the male organ is not a phallus but a penis, a “sign” not “of intelligence” but of Thing-ness.” Jonathan’s anxieties may also be symptomatic of “disgust . . . [which] point towards a perhaps more unnerving relation of similarity between himself and [Dracula]” (Hurley 147). Dracula is the ultimate symbol of what Jonathan has: the penis. Male lust personified, Dracula shows Jonathan the monster that lurks deep inside every man, and at the same time, puts Jonathan’s lust, his own phallus, to shame.
The traditional sexual roles of men and women are threatened by the vampire’s existence. “Dracula’s bite,” says Damion Clark, “inverts the gender and sexuality of his victims . . . the norms that Dracula contravenes are sexual . . . the women become like men in their expressions of sexual desire and the men like women.” In the Victorian Age, “it was believed that lust was a masculine phenomenon and that women were sexually lifeless” (Brame 21). The sexual lust displayed by the female vampire is ironic, only in death, or undeath, can her sexuality come to life. The men take a more pliant role in the sexual game when confronted with the vampire, as seen in Jonathan’s passivity when he is pursued by Dracula’s concubines in Transylvania. The women bitten take on the role of sexual aggressor, which is conventionally the role of males in Western society. This is problematic when considering the sexual orientation of the men in the novel, because the men continue to be attracted to the women, perhaps even more so, but the women’s sexuality is decidedly masculine in nature. This phenomenon causes a sort of homosexuality-by-proxy: the men are attracted to men disguised as women (Clark 171-72).
Dracula’s own sexuality defies definition. Though the reader, through Jonathan, only sees Dracula’s female concubines in a frenzied sexual hunger, bisexuality is hinted at by Dracula when Jonathan is rescued from the female vampires who hold him in thrall. Dracula appears in a fury, yelling: “This man belongs to me!” Then, when faced with the accusation that he does not love, has never loved, Dracula, in a soft whisper, responds: “Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past” (Stoker 70-1). Eric Kwan-Wai Yu points out: “the appearance of the count complicates . . . [Jonathan and the “Dracubabe’s”] lovemaking [which is, itself] confused with blood-feeding . . . the dialogue between Dracula and his brides further suggests polygamy and bisexuality” (Yu 2006). Polygamy, in the surprising form of polyandry, is suggested further in Dracula’s statement to his concubines: “I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will” (Stoker 71). Not only does Dracula have multiple brides, polygyny, but, it seems, his brides have multiple husbands. That Dracula himself would have a husband if his plans for Jonathan were to come to fruition strengthens arguments of Dracula’s homosexual tendencies and emphasizes Jonathan’s femininity when confronted with Dracula.
Jonathan is not the only man effected by Dracula. The madman Renfield lives his life for the vampiric count. Seward records his impressions of the first time Renfield escapes the sanitarium:
I found him pressed close against the old iron-bound oak door of the chapel. He was talking, apparently to some one . . . Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic . . . I could see that he did not take note of anything around him . . . I heard him say:--
“I am hear to do Your bidding, Master. I am Your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful. I have worshipped You long and afar off. Now that You are near, I await Your commands, and You will not pass me by, will You, dear Master, in Your distribution of good things?” (Stoker 137).
Renfield runs naked through the streets to proclaim his worship of Dracula. He has made himself a slave to the vampire, his love is so great. This goes beyond homosexuality. Renfield’s love of Dracula falls in the realm of sadomasochism. Dracula dominates Renfield in ways that go beyond the simply sexual. Renfield is submissive which makes him womanly, because a man would never submit to another man, not as fully as Renfield has done. William and Gloria Brame explain sexual submission in their book Different Loving: “Theories that submission is inherently a behavior of victims may account for the neo-Freudian eagerness to classify submissiveness as a predominantly female phenomenon” (Brame 73). That Renfield pledges himself to Dracula while naked is significant as well. “Submission is a supreme form of nakedness-- a desirable expsure. It permits one to explore absolute powerlessness” (Brame 75). So Renfield is doubly naked; he exposes himself to Dracula’s will both physically/sexually and mentally/emotionally. Renfield is mad. He is, truly, quite insane, but part of his insanity is mapped in his longing to serve Dracula.
Mina’s masculinity is effectively strengthened by Dracula as well. Her analytic skills, which fall into the non-emotional realm of the masculine, even before she is bitten by Dracula are strong. After she is bitten, however, her mind, which traditionally fall into the realm of masculine attributes, grows more keen. As her health deteriorates, rather than falling into the animalistic sensuality that afflicted Lucy, Mina improves her intellectual prowess. Yu points out, “Mina’s memo included in Chapter XXVI marks the highest point of logical reasoning, where she has analyzes all the evidences collected and has worked out practically all the possibilities of [Dracula’s] movement” (Yu 2006). There are nearly three pages of tightly packed notes (pages 392-394) “demonstrating Mina’s systematic approach and compelling deduction [which] would impress any reader . . . [though] this piece of extraordinary intellectual labor is weirdly framed” (Yu 2006). While the other women in the novel are or become “vampires-- aggressive, inhuman, wildly erotic, and motivated only by an insatiable thirst for blood . . . Mina is the antithesis of those destructive creatures” (Senf 34). She is masculine in her thought processes, but sublimely feminine in her looks and her rejection of both “the forwardness and sexual openness of New Women” (Senf 36).
Dracula’s sexual identity is as confused as his sexuality. Like a woman, or like a woman should be, he is attracted to men as shown in his claim on Jonathan. When confronted about his ability to love he answers softly, another feminine trait. When caught in flagrante delicto with Mina, in the bed she shares with Jonathan,Dracula, mimicking a mother stroking a nursing child, “tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair” of Mina while she drank from a cut his breast. Though, as Yu points out, “Mina’s act is often interpreted as a variant of forced fellatio . . . Dracula here become a lurid mother offering not a breast bun an open and bleeding wound” (Yu 2006). Mina’s sexual impropriety, however unintentional it may be, is not as frightening as the “the ‘anatomical displacements and the confluence of blood, milk, and semen [that] forcefully erase the demarcation separating the masculine and the feminine’” (Yu 2006). Dracula’s mixed sexual identity is also noted by Levy: “Dracula is the truly feminized man long sought by bourgeois culture; he is the ideal man because he is figured as both male and female.” However, the “perfect synthesis” of male and female attributes in Dracula can become nothing but a monster (Levy 157).
Both the phallic and abjectly maternal aspects of Dracula harken to the psychoanalytic definitions of the mother explored by Angelica Michelis in “Dirty Mamma.” Michelis states:
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory the mother . . . is only ‘visible’ retrospectively when with the introduction of the father as the third term the pre-oedipal phallic mother will be identified as the object of the child’s narcissistic identifications and sexual desires (Michelis 7).
In other words, when the father is introduced into the child’s world, the mother suddenly becomes a sexual being, and the child, recognizing that, covets her. This can be translated into the desire humans feel towards the vampire, because the vampire is everything. Father, mother, lover, Dracula when he drinks from Mina becomes all of those things. The attraction of Dracula is the attraction, both sexual and comforting, that a child has for her mother. Dracula seduces by making the unfamiliar familiar. Fletcher points out, “the primary situation that gives rise to the sexual drive in the human being is one of a primary passivity and penetration by the other. It involves a breaking in that is characteristic of pain . . . in its initial impact by the outside other” (Fletcher 104). The piercing of the flesh of the neck by a vampire, though, at first, painful is infinitely seductive.
Dracula, the man, the monster, and the book, challenges preconceived convictions of sexual and social reproduction. Through Mina’s seduction Dracula claims dominion over the men in her life: “You, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and helper” (Stoker 328). By claiming Mina, Dracula gets revenge upon the men in her life. Of course, Dracula’s vengeance turns back on him when the men in Mina’s life use her connection with Dracula to spy on him. Even in flight the vampire is sexually enticing, Law says: “up to this point the effort to catch up with Dracula has been vested in a project of narrative which Mina has anticipated with an almost sexual intensity” (Law 2006). Therein lies another layer to the sexual aspect of the vampire: the sexual gratification of the hunt, specifically hunting him. Unfortunately, perhaps because the sexual act of hunting the vampire is initiated by humans, catching the vampire, or at least Dracula, is decidedly anti-climatic. There is no thrusting, or driving of the stake into soft flesh, as there was in Lucy’s final demise. Instead: “it was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight” (Stoker 418). It seems as though Dracula has enormous stamina to give and take satisfaction while the pursuer, but does not have the staying power to end satisfactorily when pursued.
The sexual nature of the vampire’s attack is not a sexual attack, but an aggressive seduction, that once entered draws the vampire’s victim into a web of sadomasochistic pleasures. The vampire subverts the sexuality of his victims. He makes them crave him, and then transforms them into uninhibited and carnal creatures. This is illustrated by Dracula’s conquests over Lucy, Mina, Jonathan, and the men of the Circle of Light. Lucy walked practically naked through the nighttime streets to reach her dark lover, and was reduced to helpless shudders and moans (Stoker 125-6); later, after Lucy was transformed Arthur nearly succumbed to her wicked charms (Stoker 250). Jonathan’s iniquitous heart longed for the kisses of Dracula’s concubines (Stoker 69); and Mina did not want to stop Dracula from taking what he wanted from her (Stoker 327). In the face of such monstrous sensuality no one can resist the lure of the vampire, that is what makes him such a threat.
The man pulled the young woman to the shadows of the alley, and crowded her against the wall. Gently he pushed her hair to one side, exposing her slender throat. She tilted her head to the side as he placed his teeth and lips against her pulse. She gasped in pain, then moaned in pleasure. Shortly thereafter, she knew no more . . . She was surrounded by dark ecstasy.
The scene above is stereotypical of vampire attacks in gothic literature. The young woman is helpless to resist the call of the vampire. She neither fights nor flees; she is seduced by the animalistic charm of the undead. There is something sensual, sexual about the vampire. He does not need to attack those he hunts, they go to him willingly. He seduces their humanity away from them. Through his bite, he strips them of all inhibitions. This is true for any vampire, every vampire, most especially Dracula. Dracula’s victims are willing participants in their own degradation. Dracula is a curious monster. He is cultured, charming, intelligent, sensual, sexual, and he can pass as human. His bites transform a person into an animalistic fiend, yet he professes to love. His harem, the women he converted into beasts, is frightening in their aggressive sexuality. Dracula’s sexuality is transformative. His seduction threatens the sexual identities of every person he meets, men and women; that, above everything else, including threat to life and limb, is what makes the vampire so dangerous.
The seductive powers of the vampire are apparent in Dracula. Neither man nor woman is immune to the vampiric charms of Dracula and his concubines. “The Victorians viewed [sex] as disgusting, animalistic, and depraved. It was even supposed that sex endangered the health” (Brame 21). This is something Jonathan Harker discovers when he encounters three enticing vampires in Dracula’s castle, he says of them:
All three had brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips (Stoker 69).
Jonathan is drawn to the women, regardless of the danger to himself, or to the hurt he could cause his beloved Mina. Because of his helplessness in the face of his attraction, Jonathan is almost bitten, being saved, at the last moment, by Dracula. Mina, in her experience with vampiric seduction is not so lucky. She describes her experience, “He placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other . . . I was bewildered, and, strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him” (Stoker 327). At the time of recall, she regretted her actions, but when Dracula was before her she supped at his breast with the hunger of a child. John Fletcher explains seduction in psychological terms, claiming:
[There is] a primordial passivity for both sexes in relation to sexuality and the other . . . active and passive [sexuality is] not in terms of organs and acts-- but in terms of the presence of representation, fantasy, unconscious desire on the part of the adult . . . indicate that the primary situation that gives rise to the sexual drive in the human being is one of a primary passivity and penetration by the other (Fletcher 104).
Both Jonathan and Mina are passive in their liaisons with the vampires. They want and do not want, but are incapable of resisting. The other characters are no more immune to the vampire’s charms than Jonathan and Mina. Mina records her rescue of the virtually naked Lucy in the church courtyard:
Her lips were parted, and she was breathing-- not softly, as usual with her, but in long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every breath. As I came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled the collar of her nightdress close around her throat. Whilst she did so there came a little shudder through her, as though she felt the cold (Stoker 125-6).
Mina’s interpretation of Lucy’s gasping and shudder strikes the sexually savvy as naive. Lucy, in this scene, displays classic symptoms of sexual gratification and orgasm. She is left heaving and moaning on the bench while her lover, Dracula, makes his escape. Shortly thereafter Lucy joins the ranks of the wildly sexual undead, causing the men who both love and hunt her to look at her with lust. John Seward describes coming upon her resurrected corpse: “The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness” (Stoker 249). He goes on to describe her as having a “wanton smile” and moving with a “languorous, voluptuous grace” (Stoker 249-50). Though he feels an abhorrence for the creature that was once his beloved Lucy, Seward describes her with sexually charged language. She is “voluptuous” and “wanton,” with his embrace Dracula has transformed Lucy into both his newly born daughter and his whore. It is only when the vampire Lucy’s sexuality is destroyed through the simulated act of rape of Arthur driving the stake “deeper and deeper” into her flesh, that Lucy’s innocence is restored and her power over the men lost (Stoker 254).
Dracula, and the figure of the vampire, is sexual in ways that have nothing to do with seduction. The vampire reproduces with a fecundity that is both lavish and abject. Dracula is the story of “male reproduction gone monstrously and horribly awry,” according to Anita Levy in her book Reproductive Urges, “practically one nip of the neck and [Dracula’s] sallow cheeks become rosy, his power returns unalloyed, and . . . the process that reproduces his kind is set in motion” (Levy 156). Dracula, with this one sexual act, becomes both mother and father. His reproductive organ, the mouth, which is shared by both sexes of his race, is nearly “indistinguishable from the toothed vagina or vagina dentata” (Levy 156). This is seen in Jonathan’s description of the mouth of one of Dracula’s concubines:
There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth (Stoker 69-70).
The vampire’s moist, tumescent lips mirror the vulva in a state of arousal.
Along with the vulva, Dracula also represents the phallus. He becomes engorged when he drinks blood. When Jonathan breaks into Dracula’s crypt he is presented with an image of Dracula-as-phallus that horrifies him:
There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed . . . The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the cheeks were fuller; the mouth was redder than ever . . . Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh . . . It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted in his repletion (Stoker 83).
Jonathan is intimidated and horrified by the phallic Dracula. He wants to “rid the world of such a monster” (Stoker 84). Kelly Hurley, in her book The Gothic Body, says that Dracula is “an engorged and bloated symbol of always-erect potency, triumphantly tumescent . . . he is more vigorous and commanding-- more manly--than the British male characters.” Jonathan’s intimidation is well founded; juxtaposed with Dracula’s compelling masculinity, Jonathan becomes “feminized” and anxious. How can Jonathan compete? Even “exhausted in his repletion,” Dracula is swollen and tumescent. “In Dracula, [Jonathan] sees the male organ displayed in all its utter materiality . . . [Dracula] serves as a reminder that the male organ is not a phallus but a penis, a “sign” not “of intelligence” but of Thing-ness.” Jonathan’s anxieties may also be symptomatic of “disgust . . . [which] point towards a perhaps more unnerving relation of similarity between himself and [Dracula]” (Hurley 147). Dracula is the ultimate symbol of what Jonathan has: the penis. Male lust personified, Dracula shows Jonathan the monster that lurks deep inside every man, and at the same time, puts Jonathan’s lust, his own phallus, to shame.
The traditional sexual roles of men and women are threatened by the vampire’s existence. “Dracula’s bite,” says Damion Clark, “inverts the gender and sexuality of his victims . . . the norms that Dracula contravenes are sexual . . . the women become like men in their expressions of sexual desire and the men like women.” In the Victorian Age, “it was believed that lust was a masculine phenomenon and that women were sexually lifeless” (Brame 21). The sexual lust displayed by the female vampire is ironic, only in death, or undeath, can her sexuality come to life. The men take a more pliant role in the sexual game when confronted with the vampire, as seen in Jonathan’s passivity when he is pursued by Dracula’s concubines in Transylvania. The women bitten take on the role of sexual aggressor, which is conventionally the role of males in Western society. This is problematic when considering the sexual orientation of the men in the novel, because the men continue to be attracted to the women, perhaps even more so, but the women’s sexuality is decidedly masculine in nature. This phenomenon causes a sort of homosexuality-by-proxy: the men are attracted to men disguised as women (Clark 171-72).
Dracula’s own sexuality defies definition. Though the reader, through Jonathan, only sees Dracula’s female concubines in a frenzied sexual hunger, bisexuality is hinted at by Dracula when Jonathan is rescued from the female vampires who hold him in thrall. Dracula appears in a fury, yelling: “This man belongs to me!” Then, when faced with the accusation that he does not love, has never loved, Dracula, in a soft whisper, responds: “Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past” (Stoker 70-1). Eric Kwan-Wai Yu points out: “the appearance of the count complicates . . . [Jonathan and the “Dracubabe’s”] lovemaking [which is, itself] confused with blood-feeding . . . the dialogue between Dracula and his brides further suggests polygamy and bisexuality” (Yu 2006). Polygamy, in the surprising form of polyandry, is suggested further in Dracula’s statement to his concubines: “I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will” (Stoker 71). Not only does Dracula have multiple brides, polygyny, but, it seems, his brides have multiple husbands. That Dracula himself would have a husband if his plans for Jonathan were to come to fruition strengthens arguments of Dracula’s homosexual tendencies and emphasizes Jonathan’s femininity when confronted with Dracula.
Jonathan is not the only man effected by Dracula. The madman Renfield lives his life for the vampiric count. Seward records his impressions of the first time Renfield escapes the sanitarium:
I found him pressed close against the old iron-bound oak door of the chapel. He was talking, apparently to some one . . . Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic . . . I could see that he did not take note of anything around him . . . I heard him say:--
“I am hear to do Your bidding, Master. I am Your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful. I have worshipped You long and afar off. Now that You are near, I await Your commands, and You will not pass me by, will You, dear Master, in Your distribution of good things?” (Stoker 137).
Renfield runs naked through the streets to proclaim his worship of Dracula. He has made himself a slave to the vampire, his love is so great. This goes beyond homosexuality. Renfield’s love of Dracula falls in the realm of sadomasochism. Dracula dominates Renfield in ways that go beyond the simply sexual. Renfield is submissive which makes him womanly, because a man would never submit to another man, not as fully as Renfield has done. William and Gloria Brame explain sexual submission in their book Different Loving: “Theories that submission is inherently a behavior of victims may account for the neo-Freudian eagerness to classify submissiveness as a predominantly female phenomenon” (Brame 73). That Renfield pledges himself to Dracula while naked is significant as well. “Submission is a supreme form of nakedness-- a desirable expsure. It permits one to explore absolute powerlessness” (Brame 75). So Renfield is doubly naked; he exposes himself to Dracula’s will both physically/sexually and mentally/emotionally. Renfield is mad. He is, truly, quite insane, but part of his insanity is mapped in his longing to serve Dracula.
Mina’s masculinity is effectively strengthened by Dracula as well. Her analytic skills, which fall into the non-emotional realm of the masculine, even before she is bitten by Dracula are strong. After she is bitten, however, her mind, which traditionally fall into the realm of masculine attributes, grows more keen. As her health deteriorates, rather than falling into the animalistic sensuality that afflicted Lucy, Mina improves her intellectual prowess. Yu points out, “Mina’s memo included in Chapter XXVI marks the highest point of logical reasoning, where she has analyzes all the evidences collected and has worked out practically all the possibilities of [Dracula’s] movement” (Yu 2006). There are nearly three pages of tightly packed notes (pages 392-394) “demonstrating Mina’s systematic approach and compelling deduction [which] would impress any reader . . . [though] this piece of extraordinary intellectual labor is weirdly framed” (Yu 2006). While the other women in the novel are or become “vampires-- aggressive, inhuman, wildly erotic, and motivated only by an insatiable thirst for blood . . . Mina is the antithesis of those destructive creatures” (Senf 34). She is masculine in her thought processes, but sublimely feminine in her looks and her rejection of both “the forwardness and sexual openness of New Women” (Senf 36).
Dracula’s sexual identity is as confused as his sexuality. Like a woman, or like a woman should be, he is attracted to men as shown in his claim on Jonathan. When confronted about his ability to love he answers softly, another feminine trait. When caught in flagrante delicto with Mina, in the bed she shares with Jonathan,Dracula, mimicking a mother stroking a nursing child, “tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair” of Mina while she drank from a cut his breast. Though, as Yu points out, “Mina’s act is often interpreted as a variant of forced fellatio . . . Dracula here become a lurid mother offering not a breast bun an open and bleeding wound” (Yu 2006). Mina’s sexual impropriety, however unintentional it may be, is not as frightening as the “the ‘anatomical displacements and the confluence of blood, milk, and semen [that] forcefully erase the demarcation separating the masculine and the feminine’” (Yu 2006). Dracula’s mixed sexual identity is also noted by Levy: “Dracula is the truly feminized man long sought by bourgeois culture; he is the ideal man because he is figured as both male and female.” However, the “perfect synthesis” of male and female attributes in Dracula can become nothing but a monster (Levy 157).
Both the phallic and abjectly maternal aspects of Dracula harken to the psychoanalytic definitions of the mother explored by Angelica Michelis in “Dirty Mamma.” Michelis states:
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory the mother . . . is only ‘visible’ retrospectively when with the introduction of the father as the third term the pre-oedipal phallic mother will be identified as the object of the child’s narcissistic identifications and sexual desires (Michelis 7).
In other words, when the father is introduced into the child’s world, the mother suddenly becomes a sexual being, and the child, recognizing that, covets her. This can be translated into the desire humans feel towards the vampire, because the vampire is everything. Father, mother, lover, Dracula when he drinks from Mina becomes all of those things. The attraction of Dracula is the attraction, both sexual and comforting, that a child has for her mother. Dracula seduces by making the unfamiliar familiar. Fletcher points out, “the primary situation that gives rise to the sexual drive in the human being is one of a primary passivity and penetration by the other. It involves a breaking in that is characteristic of pain . . . in its initial impact by the outside other” (Fletcher 104). The piercing of the flesh of the neck by a vampire, though, at first, painful is infinitely seductive.
Dracula, the man, the monster, and the book, challenges preconceived convictions of sexual and social reproduction. Through Mina’s seduction Dracula claims dominion over the men in her life: “You, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and helper” (Stoker 328). By claiming Mina, Dracula gets revenge upon the men in her life. Of course, Dracula’s vengeance turns back on him when the men in Mina’s life use her connection with Dracula to spy on him. Even in flight the vampire is sexually enticing, Law says: “up to this point the effort to catch up with Dracula has been vested in a project of narrative which Mina has anticipated with an almost sexual intensity” (Law 2006). Therein lies another layer to the sexual aspect of the vampire: the sexual gratification of the hunt, specifically hunting him. Unfortunately, perhaps because the sexual act of hunting the vampire is initiated by humans, catching the vampire, or at least Dracula, is decidedly anti-climatic. There is no thrusting, or driving of the stake into soft flesh, as there was in Lucy’s final demise. Instead: “it was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight” (Stoker 418). It seems as though Dracula has enormous stamina to give and take satisfaction while the pursuer, but does not have the staying power to end satisfactorily when pursued.
The sexual nature of the vampire’s attack is not a sexual attack, but an aggressive seduction, that once entered draws the vampire’s victim into a web of sadomasochistic pleasures. The vampire subverts the sexuality of his victims. He makes them crave him, and then transforms them into uninhibited and carnal creatures. This is illustrated by Dracula’s conquests over Lucy, Mina, Jonathan, and the men of the Circle of Light. Lucy walked practically naked through the nighttime streets to reach her dark lover, and was reduced to helpless shudders and moans (Stoker 125-6); later, after Lucy was transformed Arthur nearly succumbed to her wicked charms (Stoker 250). Jonathan’s iniquitous heart longed for the kisses of Dracula’s concubines (Stoker 69); and Mina did not want to stop Dracula from taking what he wanted from her (Stoker 327). In the face of such monstrous sensuality no one can resist the lure of the vampire, that is what makes him such a threat.
The man pulled the young woman to the shadows of the alley, and crowded her against the wall. Gently he pushed her hair to one side, exposing her slender throat. She tilted her head to the side as he placed his teeth and lips against her pulse. She gasped in pain, then moaned in pleasure. Shortly thereafter, she knew no more . . . She was surrounded by dark ecstasy.
Works Cited
Brame, Gloria G., William D. Brame, and Jon Jacobs. Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance & Submission. New York, NY: Villard Books, 1993.
Clark, Damion. “Preying on the Pervert: The Uses of Homosexual Panic in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Horrifying Sex: Essays on Sexual Difference in Gothic Literature. ed. Ruth Bienstock Anolik. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc. 2007.
Fletcher, John. “Gender, Sexuality and the Theory of Seduction.” Women 11.1/2 (2000). 95-108. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 23 April 2010.
Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the FIn de Siecle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Law, Jules. “Being There: Gothic Violence and Virtuality in Frankenstein, Dracula, and Strange Days” English Literary History 73.4 (2006) 975-996. Project Muse. Web. 23 April 2010
Levy, Anita. Reproductive Urges: Popular Novel-Reading, Sexuality, and the English Nation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Michelis, Angelica. “‘Dirty Mamma’: Horror, Vampires, and the Maternal in Late Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fiction.” Critical Survey 15.3 (2003): 0-22. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 19 April 2010.
Nicks, Stevie. “Outside the Rain.” performed by Stevie Nicks. album: Bella Donna. Goodnight LA; Record One: Studio 55 compact disk 1989. originally recorded January 1981.
Senf, Carol A. “‘Dracula’: Stoker’s Response to the New Woman.” Victorian Studies 26.1 (1982): 33. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 19 April 2010.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. ed. Glennis Byron. Toronto, ON: Broadview Press, 1998.
Yu, Eric Kwan-Wai. “Productive Fear: Labor, Sexuality, and Mimicry in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 48.2 (2006) 145-170. Project Muse. Web. 23 April 2010.
Clark, Damion. “Preying on the Pervert: The Uses of Homosexual Panic in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Horrifying Sex: Essays on Sexual Difference in Gothic Literature. ed. Ruth Bienstock Anolik. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc. 2007.
Fletcher, John. “Gender, Sexuality and the Theory of Seduction.” Women 11.1/2 (2000). 95-108. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 23 April 2010.
Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the FIn de Siecle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Law, Jules. “Being There: Gothic Violence and Virtuality in Frankenstein, Dracula, and Strange Days” English Literary History 73.4 (2006) 975-996. Project Muse. Web. 23 April 2010
Levy, Anita. Reproductive Urges: Popular Novel-Reading, Sexuality, and the English Nation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Michelis, Angelica. “‘Dirty Mamma’: Horror, Vampires, and the Maternal in Late Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fiction.” Critical Survey 15.3 (2003): 0-22. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 19 April 2010.
Nicks, Stevie. “Outside the Rain.” performed by Stevie Nicks. album: Bella Donna. Goodnight LA; Record One: Studio 55 compact disk 1989. originally recorded January 1981.
Senf, Carol A. “‘Dracula’: Stoker’s Response to the New Woman.” Victorian Studies 26.1 (1982): 33. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 19 April 2010.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. ed. Glennis Byron. Toronto, ON: Broadview Press, 1998.
Yu, Eric Kwan-Wai. “Productive Fear: Labor, Sexuality, and Mimicry in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 48.2 (2006) 145-170. Project Muse. Web. 23 April 2010.
text copyright 2016. ALiposchak