The Subject of Sexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bram Stokers Dracula - Essay Example

?The of Sexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bram Stoker’s Dracula Introduction In Gothic fiction, deviant or unusual sexuality is usually portrayed alongside torment and fear. In Gothic fiction, abnormal sexuality is usually related to mystical creatures, such as vampires or monsters. This link between the mystical and sexuality in Gothic fiction appears visibly associated with the sexual indulgence pinned on the evil spirit. Whatever the case may be, sexual distress is a psychological, emotional, and physical reaction felt by numerous audiences/readers of Gothic fiction (Sedgwick 1986, 5). As observed by Bayer-Berenbaum (1982), “Sexual excess functions physically as madness does psychologically; one drive, one intention, becomes overpowering, all-consuming” (p. 39). This essay analyses how two Gothic fictions, namely, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bram Stoker’s Dracula represent the theme of sexuality. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde The relationship of Hyde to Jekyll portrays remarkably the relationship between pleasure and power. If Jekyll embodies power, Hyde embodies the pleasure disallowed and still created by the powerful elite. Hyde is inhibited, concealed, and still he emerges from the longing or urges of the decent and highly regarded Jekyll. By summoning Hyde from the inexplicable core of his own longing, Jekyll builds a link to his depravity, or, a sexuality that is repressed and brutal, that forces depravity upon several actions that he methodically detaches from himself (Stevenson 2006). Hating his own self for his hidden lusts, Jekyll falls back on science to discover the path towards power and pleasure, suppression and excesses. The twofold identity divided between decency and lust distinguishes power as the capacity to be completely both. Hyde represents sexuality as debasement and depravity. Jekyll gives life to Hyde by ingesting the correct concoction of substances. Hyde, therefore, is a medical result, or, a by-product of chemical trial. Jekyll is the character that ‘wrapped the sexual body in its embrace’ (Halberstam 1995, 69). Jekyll, through chemical experimentation, generates a vicious entity and afterwards he struggles to suppress it and control it. This representation of sexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde depicts several Victorian values. Audiences immediately associated the two characters of Dr. Jekyll to the ‘double standard’ social order of that period; double standard, because it was a period of contrasting principles—usually regarding sexuality above all. The common attitude towards it was extremely strict and suppressive, but at the same time obscene materials and harlotry flourished (Halberstam 1995, 69-70). Thus, when the author narrated about Hyde’s wicked acts, without in fact bringing them up, audiences associated that immediately to sexuality. By changing the focus on this form of sexuality, a frequently talked about theme of the author’s original narrative becomes ensnared into contemporary analyses: a large number of intellectuals today infer a hidden allusion to homosexuality in his fiction. Clues are scattered all over the narrative. First of all, there is virtually an absence of female characters in the novel. In addition, the dual self that Dr. Jekyll had to create can be understood as the widespread core immorality homosexuals at the time had to confront. Homosexual relationships at the time the story was written were established as illegal and an evil doing (Hogle 2002). Jekyll’s blend of reproductive features reflects the medical portrayals of ‘homosexuals’ who are making their presence more felt than ever before (Cooper 2010, 75): This perverse sexuality appears spontaneously, without external cause, with the development of sexual life, as an individual manifestation of an abnormal form of the vita sexualis, and then has the force of a congenital phenomenon; or it develops upon a sexuality the beginning of which was normal, as a result of very definite injurious influences, and thus appears as an acquired anomaly. Upon what this enigmatical phenomenon of acquired homo-sexual instinct depends is still inexplicable, and only a matter for hypothesis. Nevertheless, identifying sexual value in the fiction, as stated by the author himself, arises from the irrational fascinations of the audiences/readers. But whatever the author’s real motives are, his fiction further enriches the Gothic imagery of pathological sexuality. Bram Stoker’s Dracula In Dracula, the author clearly addresses the society’s “unprecedented anxiety and uncertainty about the social roles, sexual nature, and natural spheres of activity of men and women” (Bohme 2012, 2) by burying female fierceness, autonomy, and sexual greed in the devilish imagery of vampirism. The story challenges predetermined gender differences and stereotypes in the Victorian society. Dracula is a classic illustration of ‘useful’ restriction, vampirism embodying a gruesome embellishment of the wickedness Stoker finds in ‘lewd’ literature. The ‘obscenity’ of Dracula criticises while describing abnormal sexuality and its objective is the perpetuation of boundaries (Hogle 2002). However, while the novel’s characters control vampiric eroticism by pursuing Dracula, they also create and circulate a theme about vampirism. Without a doubt, this theme organises and guides their vampire pursuit. Furthermore, Dracula portrays the Victorian era, the one that was intensely obsessed with sexuality. Nonetheless, sexuality is merely the superficial theme of the novel. For contemporary audiences the suppression of sexuality is already dead. Sexuality can be represented in a straightforward manner nowadays that numerous scenes in the novel would have been considered ‘obscene’ in the past. Sexuality is not the theme of the novel’s metaphors, but it presents imagery and symbols that represent the sacred and the physical, the love and power. For the author, sexuality was the stabilising aspect between good and evil, higher forms and lower forms of animal, thus he presented definite and clear differentiations between evil desire and sexuality (Stoker 1998). The vampire’s sexual character is inhuman; Dracula is portrayed as a demon, unnatural or as a misshapen, gristly bat-looking beast. When Dracula slaughters one of the female characters he rapes her as a wolf, and her indistinctly sexually-pleased whimpers are filled with torment. But the imagery of inhuman sexuality do not express its real meaning but illustrate what sexual act becomes when joined with aggression, fury, and power. The novel establishes that divine love can emanate from sexuality, rescuing it from distortion by fury and the desire for power. For Stoker (1998), the essence of love rests in being selfless, in sacrificing oneself for others. It was argued in the past that sexual components or eroticism appear to be usual for vampire novels. Phyllis Roth remarks that “vampirism is equivalent to sexuality” (Haeberlain 2009, 4). Analysing Dracula’s plot, this formula can apparently be expected. Intense sexual acts seem to prevail in the story and hence it is not surprising that this fiction is generally understood for its sexual themes. According to Kathleen Spencer, scholars do not truly have the same opinion “as to what kind of sexuality is present in the novel,” but they agree that “a given sexuality [...] is repressed and displaced throughout the text” (Haeberlain 1009, 4). If the imaginary protagonists of the novel represent a heterosexual and old-fashioned view of moral and physical masculinity, then their female equivalents show a more vague rotation between submissive and active femaleness. Stoker’s heroines are usually creative and ingenious characters. However, their ingenuity is typically positioned in behalf of the courageous men with whom they are placed side by side. For instance, Mina Harker survives cruel weather and defies voracious vampires, although her highlighted ability to organize and write is possibly most valuable to her male colleagues. Strong women seem to be interesting. They are, however, securely held in fiction in a manner that they cannot simply integrate into a society apprehensive of the social and moral transformations they could provoke. Stoker is hence a contributor in the 19th-century discourse about sexuality and gender, and a romantic who reminisces a time when the division between the genders was more definitely and constantly indicated (Botting 1996). His novel Dracula portray the fixed character of masculine gallantry, and its core emphasis on safeguarding the women, as a means of deactivating the danger created by the noticeably unbalanced sexual divisions related to the end of the 19th century. Conclusions If sexual urges and anxieties are fundamental to the development of Gothic fiction, the role of females in Gothic literature indicates that sexuality in the Gothic is essentially and, possibly, furtively feminised. As shown in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula, Gothic fiction is often recounted from what is, at least apparently, a female’s perspective and narrates itself by putting emphasis on the difficulties and struggles of a spellbound, ingenious heroine with inadequate understanding and boundless fears. Such connection of Gothic fiction with sexuality can be interpreted in two major ways: the making and interpretation of Gothic fiction may strengthen or challenge institutionalised social inequalities. Sexuality, therefore, is one of the basic themes in Gothic fiction. The value of Gothic fiction rests in its fortification or destabilisation of institutionalised sexual behaviour patterns. References Bayer-Berenbaum, L. (1982) The Gothic imagination: expansion in Gothic literature and art. Michigan: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Bohme, C. (2012) Gender in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Sexual New Woman. Germany: GRIN Verlag. Botting, F. (1996) Gothic. London: Routledge. Cooper, L. (2010) Gothic Realities: The Impact of Horror Fiction on Modern Culture. North Carolina: McFarland. Haeberlein, C. (2009) Issues of Sexuality in ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’. Germany: GRIN Verlag. Halberstam, J. (1995) Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. New York: Duke University Press. Hogle, J. (2002) The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sedgwick, E. (1986) The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. London: Methuen. Stevenson, R.L. (2006) Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales. USA: Oxford University Press. Stoker, Bram. (1998) Dracula. USA: Oxford University Press. Read More