Gothic Romance: Bram Stokers Dracula - Term Paper Example

BA English Gothic Romance Q: ‘The potency of Bram Stoker’s Dracula lies in the way it interweaves sex and race and thus addresses the core concerns of late Victorian readers.’ Explore the meaning of this statement. Introduction: Bram Stoker’s Dracula Count Dracula is portrayed by Bram Stoker as a well-educated and hospitable elderly gentleman, who, as the story unfolds, is later revealed to possess supernatural powers and a diabolical character. He makes his way to England from his native Transylvania, where he preys upon a young woman named Lucy, in the course of which the help of Professor Van Helsing is solicited to counter the diabolical events taking place. The tale is one of horror, religiosity and superstition, as well as sexual and racial undertones that outwardly comply but inwardly defy the norms of the period. The Victorian mindset Early in the 17th century, society and literature still retained a certain frankness, where sexual practices had little need of secrecy, words were not unduly guarded, and there was “a tolerant familiarity with the illicit” and “when bodies ‘made a display of themselves.’”1 This atmosphere of permissiveness changed, however, during the Victorian era in the nineteenth century. At this time, the concept of sexuality shifted from being one of entertainment to one of functionality. Acceptable sex was confined to the marital bed, between legitimate husband and wife whose duty is to procreate. The writing of the period was one of “verbal decency” and a “general and studied silence” on the matter of sex.2 The hypocrisies of the period compelled society to make some concessions. There was tolerance of illegitimate sexualities in brothels and similar establishments, the clandestine trysting places between prostitutes and their clients.3 Similarly, in the field of literature, reference to the illicit sexual act is coded in suggestive phrases and images which outwardly comply with the restrictions of the period.4 Aside from the repression of explicitly illicit sex, Victorian norms likewise maintained an attitude of overt racism and a low regard for races and nationalities other than that of England. According to Victorian literature and the pseudoscience of the times, the Irish, Blacks, and members of the lower classes and other inferior races were seen as: (1) unreasonable, irrational and easily excited; (2) having no religion but only superstition; (3) criminal, having no respect for private property or no notion of property; (4) excessively sexual; (5) filthy; (6) sharing physical qualities; and (7) inhabitants of unknown dark lands or territories.5 Sexual overtones in Dracula The earliest explicitly sexual passage in Dracula was in Chapter III when Jonathan articulates in his journal the feelings that the vampires arouse in him, simultaneous feelings of both horror and arousal, as shown in the following passage. I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. 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. . . . Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. . . . I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart.6 In the full text of this passage, Pikula noted that even the rhythmic repetition of several words and phrases, particularly the adjectives, heightened the sexual references already evident in the words. Jonathan mentioned the word “tingling” three times in two paragraphs, while “the limited capacity to express himself belies Jonathan’s focus on the sensory overload of his excited body.”7 Some phrases assumed a “throbbing rhythm,”8 i.e., “lower and lower went her head”; “waited - waited with beating heart” in the selection above. Likewise, the narration of the time Van Helsing opened the coffins of the female vampires in order to kill them contained similar repetitive and rhythmic phrases. He was entranced by the “swaying round forms” and “tingling tones” as he looked at the unconscious female vampires. Like the foregoing passage quoted above, Van Helsing mused on the “voluptuous” bodies that awoke “the very instinct of man.” He chanted “search, and search” and “delay, and delay, and delay,” and repeatedly mentioned the words “voluptuous” and “fascinated” in the manner that a mesmerized man would think.9 It is important to note that at that time, Lucy was said to have had just accepted the marriage proposal of one of her three suitors, but was inwardly saddened at having to turn away the other two. While Lucy was earlier depicted in the novel as one who was considered a virtuous and virginal woman according to the Victorian code, she nevertheless had suppressed desires for more than one man that is evident in Chapter V – “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?.”10 Lucy’s sexuality is further alluded to in the subsequent account of her sleepwalking, which makes her more susceptible to Dracula’s advances and influence.11 Thus, later when Lucy is turned into a vampire, she is transformed into a woman of carnal appetites, and exhibited a perversion of the maternal role.12 She preyed upon young children, luring them away from their homes and leaving then weak and emaciated with tiny wounds on their throat. She had one such child in her arms when she returned to her grave and found Arthur, Van Helsing, and the others waiting for her. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness… She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said:—“Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”     There was something diabolically sweet in her tones—something of the tingling of glass when struck-which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another.13 The perversion here is that Lucy by her actions appears to depict the role of wife to Arthur and mother to the children, although she violates them rather than care for them. Lucy’s corruption is the culmination of a threat made good by Dracula to his pursuers earlier in the novel: “Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine.”14 After Lucy has become one of the undead, Van Helsing has her submitted to the ritual of vampire slaying – a stake is plunged through her heart, her head is cut off, and her mouth stuffed with garlic. This ritual is said by some observers to be replete with sexual symbolism, the stake being a phallic symbol, and being forcibly plunged into Lucy’s heart standing for the hidden desires of women for physical consummation of romantic love.15 In contrast with the eroticism and sensuality of the “New Woman” associated with Lucy, Mina on the other hand is portrayed with the independence and intelligence of the “New Woman.” In Chapter V, she alludes to having a responsible profession as assistant schoolmistress, and the means for economic independence.16 It is in Mina where the best of the traditional role of women is combined with the strengths of the modern woman. The story ends, however, with Mina’s refeminization, her return to the traditional role, thus suppressing the threat of female emancipation, creating a happy ending consistent with the Victorian norm.17 Racism in Dracula Racism is the belief that differences in human character are accounted for by racial backgrounds. Abiding by this definition, there is indeed much reference to racial discrimination in Dracula. Throughout the novel, there is a differentiation between the West and the East, the West being equated with modernity and the East with backwardness. It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?18 From the first chapter, Jonathan is immediately struck by the difference in outlook of the various nationalities he encountered on his way to the Count’s castle in Transylvania, but notes mainly their references to the strange and superstitious, in contrast to his English sense of the scientific and pragmatic: “It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?”19 In Jonathan’s early encounter with the Count, the latter describes his dilemma of being a stranger in England, and noted that he is regarded as below the status he deserves simply because he speaks unlike Englishmen: “Well, I know that, did I move and speak in your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is not enough for me. Here I am noble; I am boyar; the common people know me, and I am master. But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one; men know him not…I have been so long master that I would be master still—or at least that none other should be master of me.”20 In the Victorian era this is consistent with the running theme of the East-West dichotomy, which some authors elevate to a contrast between life and death21. Despite his expressed sense of being treated as an inferior, Dracula nevertheless is an image of the “consummate international male, virile in both the West and the East.”22 In the novel, he rants: “You think to baffle me, you—with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher’s. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest; but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side.”23 Establishing Dracula as the foreigner is further developed in Chapter XIII. Here Mina describes in her diary her impression of Dracula as having a “beaky” nose; several have tied this to the Anti-Semitism of the period24 and associate his drinking of the blood with Jewish stereotype of drinking the blood of Muslim children.25 His association with having a large collection of money of various currencies is also Semitic in overtone.26 Professor Van Helsing, who was summoned by Dr. Seward, to help treat Lucy, was depicted as a man of science, of religion, and of superstition, a combination of the modern and the traditional, of Eastern and Western knowledge. Even his place of origin, Amsterdam,27 is geographically in between England and Transylvania. Van Helsing sought to stave off Dracula’s attacks from Lucy, his victim, by having her chamber covered with garlic, the traditional charm against vampires, as well as by having blood transfused into her – a scientific procedure. Van Helsing proclaimed that he brought the Host and an Indulgence during the attempt to catch Lucy during her nightly sojourns, showing religiosity.28 Conclusion While the Victorian era was renowned for its prudish and sexually-restrained norms, it was unavoidable to deal with the consummation of physical love as much as it is to deal with family life. The novel Dracula is replete with dichotomies – sexuality and sexual restraint, modernity and traditionalism, science and superstition, East and West – that reflect the conflicting issues of the late Victorian era. The novel itself has a duality of purpose, that of providing a release from the constrictions of Victorian mores while at the same time exhorting the reader to reject these sinful liberties and embrace the conformity demanded by society. The novel was a means to speak the unspeakable in a restrictive society,29 but at the same time it attains to purge the readers of evil tendencies, leading to the ultimate resolution that is consistent with the conservatively Victorian. The latter is necessary, so that the novel may be well-received in a society that demands conformity with tradition. Bibliography Bollen, Katrien, and Raphael Ingelbien. "An Intertext That Counts? Dracula, The Woman In White, And Victorian Imaginations of the Foreign Other." English Studies 90.4 (2009): 403-420. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Botting, F. & Townshend, D. Gothic: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. (2004) London: Routledge Bowles, Noelle. "Crucifix, Communion, And Convent: "The Real Presence Of Anglican Ritualism In Bram Stokers Dracula." Christianity & Literature 62.2 (2013): 243-258. Religion and Philosophy Collection. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Ciasen, Mathias. "Attention, Prédation, Counterintuition: Why Dracula Wont Die." Style 46.3/4 (2012): 378-398. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Clare, C. Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Leader (2013). Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, Inc. Cohan, S & Shires, L M Telling Stories: A Theoretical analysis of Narrative Fiction. (2002) Taylor & Francis Domínguez-Rue, Emma. "Sins Of The Flesh: Anorexia, Eroticism And The Female Vampire In Bram Stokers Dracula." Journal Of Gender Studies 19.3 (2010): 297-308. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Dukes, Paul. "Dracula: Fact, Legend and Fiction." History Today 32.7 (1982): 44. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Foucault, M The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. (1978) New York: Pantheon Books Glendening, J. The Evolutionary Imagination in Late-Victorian Novel: An Entangled Bank. (2007) Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Hensley, Wayne E. "The Contribution of F.W. Murnaus Nosferatu To The Evolution Of Dracula." Literature Film Quarterly 30.1 (2002): 59. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Kershner, R. B. & Mecsnóber, T. European Joyce Studies 22: Joycean Unions, Post-Millennial Essays from East to West. (2013) New York, NY: Rodopi B.V. Amsterdam Khader, Jamil. "Un/Speakability And Radical Otherness: The Ethics Of Trauma In Bram Stokers "Dracula.." College Literature 39.2 (2012): 73-97. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. McCrea, Barry. "Heterosexual Horror: Dracula, The Closet, And The Marriage-Plot." Novel: A Forum On Fiction 43.2 (2010): 251-270. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Pikula, Tanya. "Bram Stokers "Dracula" And Late-Victorian Advertising Tactics: Earnest Men, Virtuous Ladies, And Porn." English Literature In Transition, 1880-1920 55.3 (2012): 283-302. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Pitt, David. "Who Was Dracula? Bram Stokers Trail of Blood.(Brief article)(Book review)." Booklist 2013: 43. Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Schafer, A.R. “A Paradise of My Own Creation”: Domesticity and the Gothic in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (2008) UMI Number 1456130 Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest LLC Smith, Eric D. "A Presage Of Horror!" Cacotopia, The Paris Commune, And Bram Stokers Dracula." Criticism 52.1 (2010): 71-90. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Stein, W. “Enter the Dracula: The Silent Screams and Cultural Crossroads of Japanese and Hong Kong Cinema.” In Browning, J.E. & Picart, C. J. (eds.), Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms: Essays on Gender, Race &Culture, (2009), p. 235 Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Viragh, Attila. "Can The Vampire Speak? Dracula As Discourse On Cultural Extinction. (Critical Essay)." English Literature In Transition 1880-1920 2 (2013): 231. Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Wohl, A S “The Victorian Web: Literature, history & culture in the age of Victoria.” Race and Class Overview: Parallels in Racism and Class Prejudice. (2012) Retrieved 26 Jan 2014 from http://www.victorianweb.org/history/race/rcov.html Read More