Sexuality in Bram Stokers Dracula - Essay Example

Sexuality in Bram Stoker’s Dracula When people think of the Victorians, they think of a strict society where manners and control of emotions was very important. However, this society was changing with the new innovations and inventions of the Industrial Age which brought in new ideas and concepts. As these ideas came face to face with the concepts of the past, it became necessary for the moral codes of the past were being taken out, dusted off and re-examined. Within this environment, highly socially constrained women were beginning to question their social roles since more and more opportunities became available to them through the factories and in other professions. Women who chose to embrace the new concepts were considered to be deviant because they defied the customs of the past in favor of living in the present. It was often suggested that these women who deviated from the social expectation of stay-at-home wife and mother lacked a certain moral fiber that led to unacceptable increases in sexuality. Yet, sexuality was being explored more and more in the literature of the age. Although some women undoubtedly lacked the moral fiber they were expected to have in order to be fully accepted as a ‘proper’ woman, the dividing line between the ‘good’ woman and the overly sexual woman did not necessarily correlate to those women who sought employment outside of the home. This concept of sexuality is explored in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula through the various female characters presented as the author explores the relationship between the traditional, stay-at-home women and the working women with their own sexuality while framing the unacceptable elements of sexuality within the gross form of the male vampire. The first introduction of sexuality within the novel occurs with the appearance of three women within Dracula’s castle the night Jonathan Harker leaves his room. These three women are described in terms of over-red, over-ripe voluptuous sexual energy. “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” (41). These women would seem to be perfectly in keeping with the traditional values of women in the Victorian era as they apparently do nothing more than drift about the castle, never leaving its grounds and existing in the background of the house. However, in their obvious perpetual hunger, they are clearly not able to conform to the moral standards of their society. The appearance of these women is continuously described in terms of these red lips and red tongues, associating them quickly with the color of the prostitute and the sexually wanton character. To be sure the association isn’t lost between the color and the concept of blood, Stoker even makes an outright reference to blood as the blond vampire’s breath is described “with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood” (41). This takes the concept of the unacceptable sexuality of these women to any man that crosses their path to a deeper level as it becomes linked with the life fluid of existence. “This interfusion of sexual desire and the fear that the moment of erotic fulfillment may occasion the erasure of the conventional and integral self informs both the central action in Dracula and the surcharged emotion of the characters about to be kissed by ‘those red lips’” (Craft, 1984: 107). It is never fully clear if these women have greater hunger for Jonathan’s blood or for the carnal satisfaction of sex, an almost taboo topic at the time. For each woman affected by the vampire, here and elsewhere, a strong characteristic of carnal voluptuousness is described as becoming a part of her person, regardless of whether this was an aspect of her character beforehand. She has become corrupted by sexuality. Also defying the traditional values of the woman’s role in life, Mina Murray is next seen as the more deviant of the two female main characters because she is working as a school teacher’s assistant. As a school mistress, Mina is a working woman, a fact that automatically labels her deviant and threatens to release her latent dangerous sexuality. She is able to keep some respectability because her profession is considered to be within the realm of ‘female’ roles. In every way except her professional position, she fits within the traditional expectations. She is seen as a fine, upstanding young woman because she is in a semi-professional position, properly meek, properly engaged and loyally attempting to make herself useful for her future husband. In chapter 5 she writes to Lucy: “When we [Mina and Jonathan] are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough I can take down what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter.” In this account of her current activities, there is no mention of what she might want for herself, only what she can do for Jonathan’s benefit. She seems to have no ‘improperly’ physical thoughts of her marriage with Jonathan as she focuses exclusively on the various ways that she might serve as a helpmate to him. When Jonathan is discovered in Buda-Pest suffering from brain fever, she flies to his side as a means of providing him with nursing care and when he tells her that all that happened to him was written in his journal, she faithfully seals the book and keeps it safe for him without making any attempt to read it first. Since she is doing all the right things to uphold the traditional roles and values of women, her deviance in working is deemed acceptable as long as she stops working after she’s married. Her sexuality is properly subdued. Lucy Westenra, Mina’s friend, also appears to be a proper Victorian young lady at the opening of the story because she does not work to support herself and she has no plans to enter the workforce, but she is seen as deviant in many other ways. Her daily activities are the acceptable activities of a fashionable young lady. She attends picture galleries, walks in the park and goes for rides in the country. She is thrilled to have three proposals of marriage in a day, indicating she has done quite a bit of flirting and is thus more sexually aware than her more stable friend. This begins to hint at Lucy’s more dangerous sexual nature in spite of being properly contained in other ways. Lucy deviates from Victorian rules even further by making her own decisions regarding which marriage proposal she’ll accept rather than deferring to her father as would have been expected. Her decision is not made based upon practical considerations such as which man might be able to better provide for her future or which would be politically advantageous for her family but instead bases her decision on which of the men she feels more attracted to on a physical level. Again, sexuality emerges as being dangerously deviant. Even this early in the story, it is seen that Lucy struggles to break out of the bounds of her strict Victorian definition in order to find her own voice and character as she expresses excess of emotion that is considered deviant from the moral codes of her society. By chapter 8, Lucy is sneaking out at night and meeting with Count Dracula, as is described in Mina’s journal, in terms that suggest sexual imagery and activity. Although she is outwardly performing within the accepted norms, her sexuality is swerving dangerously out of control. Both Lucy and Mina are seduced to some degree or another by the Count, who doesn’t seem to understand the need for all the moral constraints he observes in England. He is very obvious about his sexuality and his carnal desires regarding the women, something neither female character is used to dealing with and something they both find attractive. The Count shows Lucy how to release her emotions and enjoy life, finally feeling the blood coursing through her veins in the desire and passion she always knew she had locked inside her. Although she is already engaged to a man, this engagement does not touch her on the same physical level that her connection with Dracula does. This excitement proves impossible for her to resist, even before Dracula has full control over her mind. Through Lucy, it is realized that a traditional life conducted in a traditional household with traditional values is not able to completely subdue the inner sexuality of the female spirit and may instead push it to its outmost extremes. This concept is made possible through the comparison of Lucy’s death to sexuality with Mina’s life. Dracula has much the same effect on Mina in awakening her sexuality, but she is more rooted in her society through her longer and more meaningful commitment to Jonathan as well as her decreased contact with the Count and the warning of her concerns for Lucy. While both women’s lives will be changed forever as a result of her encounter with the Count, Mina will be able to grow old and have a family while Lucy is forced to suffer a stake through the heart as a means of ridding society of her type of overtly sensual behavior. As the novel progresses, both female leads demonstrate signs of resistance against the socially established ‘norms’ of constraint upon their natural sexuality, predictably more pronounced in Lucy than in Mina, yet the author continues to point out the dangers of the traditional approach. It is guessed that it was because of her excessive need to express her emotions and a stubborn insistence upon having some control over the events of her life that Lucy ends up in the mental institution where much of the action of the story takes place. Her sexuality is too apparent and she is improperly insistent on realizing her own passions. Lucy’s dual nature in the asylum could easily be explained by the fact that she’s been locked up to begin with. It can be seen that she struggled with attempting to fit society’s definitions of what she should be despite being what she was even when she was given freedom of movement within the home. This was perhaps the result of having a previous difficulty in conforming to the social roles she was expected to play, and the awakening of her sexuality with the introduction of a man willing to explore it with her. Her death could also be attributed not necessarily to the vampire Dracula but to the dangerous nature of the blood transfusions she was receiving. Mina herself admits to being a willing and active party to her seduction within her diary, indicating an awakening sense of sexuality in the breast of that young lady as well. However, these awakening ideas are not part of the constrained and ‘civilized’ social ideals of the upper class and are therefore condemned as ‘other’ by blaming them upon an unnatural creation (Dracula) and mental illness. Works Cited Craft, Christopher. “Kiss Me with Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Representations. No. 8, (Autumn 1984): 107-133. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Penguin Popular Classics, (2007). Read More