Yesterday I tried to provide a little context for Dracula. Today let’s talk about sex. There are only five female characters in the book. Three of them are Dracula’s vampire women at his castle. They only make a couple brief appearances, most notably when Jonathan Harker disobeys Dracula and falls asleep in a room other than his own. Harker wakes up to the three vampire women discussing who gets a piece of him first. They are pretty and voluptuous and oh so desirable. Harker wants them and fears them at the same time. Lucky for him Dracula shows up and saves him.
They make another appearance towards the end of the book when Van Helsing enters the castle with the express purpose of killing them. It is still daylight outside and so they are sleeping in their coffins. He gazes on their sleeping forms, noting how beautiful they are, and is momentarily transfixed with longing for them. But Van Helsing being the manly man he is, he shakes it off and stakes them each through the heart and then cuts off their heads.
The women we are most interested in are Lucy and Mina. Lucy and Mina are friends but where Lucy is an upper class lady, Mina must work for a living. Lucy is the pure and proper Victorian lady. She is beautiful and blond, is lively but in a proper way. In one day she is proposed to by three different men, Quincey, an American from Texas, Dr. Seward, a gentleman who runs the mental institution, and Arthur who before the book is over becomes Lord Godalming. Arthur is, of course, the best match and happens to be the one who Lucy is in love with and rightly accepts him. Unfortunately for the pair, Dracula gets between them.
Lucy of course becomes a vampire. It is a long and drawn out process of changing not like in the movies. Her fiance, her two rejectees, and Van Helsing who arrives to help Dr. Seward with the vampire problem, all love her and do their best to save her. It begins with a blood transfusion from her fiance. But Arthur’s blood, the best and purest, not only because he is her fiance but also because of his aristocratic standing, is rightfully the first donor. But it is not enough. Dracula keeps finding a way to get to Lucy and she ends up receiving transfusions from all the other men as well. But Van Helsing doesn’t want Arthur to know so he won’t be jealous about the exchange of bodily fluids.
When Lucy becomes a vampire her sexuality is unleashed. Her blond hair turns dark, her lips are bright red, and she is suddenly voluptuous. She feeds off babies and small children and horrifies the men when they come to confront her by throwing the toddler she was holding in her arms at the time down onto the ground. Vampire Lucy is now unclean, carnal and unspiritual. Dr. Seward who loved her so now hates and loathes her and longs to kill her. But the kill is Arthur’s right. They return to Lucy’s tomb when it is still daylight and she is in her coffin. Arthur is to stake her through the heart. When he drives in the stake Lucy’s body “shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions” but Arthur kept on:
He looked like a figure of Thor as his trembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake
All this while the other men watch and urge him on. When the work is done Lucy returns to her pure, blond self. Arthur has redeemed her from the taint of Dracula. But Lucy is never blamed for her infidelity. She sleepwalks and Dracula claimed her while she was sleeping, therefore she did not willing give herself to him and she can be forgiven.
Mina with her man’s brain and woman’s heart, who makes sly remarks disparaging the “New Woman,” making sure that we all know despite her knowledge of shorthand and her typing skills she learned them all to help her husband Jonathan the lawyer. Mina is the one who puts together Dracula’s story from the various letters and diaries of the men. Mina’s work and her smarts are what allow the men to make a plan to kill Dracula. But they cut Mina out of it, tell her that she must be protected from what has now become men’s work.
But the men keeping her in the dark leave her unprotected and while they are running around town Dracula is visiting Mina. Mina doesn’t have the sleepwalking excuse that Lucy had. She knows what is going on, knows why she is getting pale and feeling week but she doesn’t say anything. The men notice she is different but don’t connect it with Dracula. Not until Mina is caught in the act of sucking Dracula’s blood from a scratch he made on his chest while her husband is entranced in bed beside her does she fess up to what had been going on. Van Helsing tries to cleanse Mina by touching The Host to her forehead but she is so unclean that it burns her and leaves a red scar that she carries for almost the rest of the book. Call it her Scarlet Letter.
As Mina begins to change and she and the men chase Dracula to Transylvania, they use Mina and her connection with Dracula to find out where he is. Van Helsing is able to hypnotize her just before dawn and she can sense what Dracula is sensing, shut up in his box that is being shipped to his castle.
In the end Dracula is killed (or is he?) and Mina is released from her sins. The scar disappears, she can have proper relations with her husband again and very soon she has a child, a boy, who is named after all five men linking them all together.
An interesting thing to note is that Dracula only ever propagates through women. Not once does he bite a man, not even Jonathan at the beginning of the novel when he is essentially held captive in Dracula’s castle. The critic Stephen D. Arata suggest this reveals
an affinity, or even an identity, between vampiric sexuality and female sexuality. Both are represented as primitive and voracious, and both threaten patriarchal hegemony.
Dracula being from the East is also a threat. It is a sort of reverse colonization. This foreigner is taking the beautiful women and making them his own. As if the sexuality weren’t enough, Dracula is the cause of xenophobia as well.
I’ve gone on enough in spite of there being more that could be said. On a side note, don’t be offended if you leave a comment and it gets swept up into moderation. Any mention of sex tends to get caught up in the filters. I’ll keep an eye on the filters and make sure all legitimate comments get published. I also read this for the R.I.P. Challenge.
Ha, that quote about “looking like a figure of Thor” is hilarious!
I still retain my Dracula virginity, but I’d love to do some kind of “classic vampire fiction” project at some point – there’s so much meat there to, you know, drive deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake into. And I hadn’t even heard the stuff you bring up related to race anxiety! Great pair of posts.
Also, naming Mina’s son after all five men = eww.
How fascinating! I’ve never read Dracula and like the critics you mentioned before I though of it as just a horror story. I didn’t realize it had these other elements. Do think these aspects were intentional or does the book simply reveal biases and anxieties held by Stoker and his time and place?
Love the bit about the scarlet letter! I’m intrigued by how redemptive this story is. In most literature of the period, any hint of infidelity in women (no matter how innocently done) must be punished by death. It’s interesting that instead the men save and reclaim both women and they carry on to have productive, even fertile lives (again, punishment by barrenness is very common). That seems quite progressive to me.
I really need to read Dracula at some point. I should be reading it now instead of Dracula in Love…
Good observation about the xenophobia! I hadn’t thought of that.
Emily, Thanks! Isn’t the Thor image a hoot? There is lots of classic vampire goodness awaiting the driving stake. The racial bits are not originally my own, they were hinted at in some stuff I read on historical context and one of the critics in the Norton Critical brings it up too. Once it was pointed out though it became really obvious. It is rather ew that Mina’s child is named after all five men. If we didn’t know better there could be a question of paternity.
Sylvia, most of the sexuality appears to be quite intentional. The racial aspects are at least partly intentional because Stoker changed the setting of Dracula’s castle from a location in Austria to Transylvania, changing him from a European to an Easterner and at the same time he gives him a rather swarthy appearance.
Litlove, thanks! It is unfortunate though that Mina was ashamed of her mark instead of, like Hester Prynne, wearing it proudly and defiantly. Mina had every right to scorn the men for their failure to protect her but she took the blame all upon herself. One of the critical notes I skimmed said that Mina having the baby at the end was necessary to prove that the men triumphed over the evil Dracula and perpetuated the English race through proper methods.
Kailana, it was really different than I expected.
Rebecca, thanks! I had a little help with that observation but it is definitely there.
…is momentarily transfixed with longing for them. But Van Helsing being the manly man he is, he shakes it off…
Maybe he’s not so manly, so it was easier to shake it off. Um, don’t tell him I said that.
I’ve never read Dracula, so it was interesting to see a few details.
Ohhhh, you’ve revived my childhood terrors! Excellent review. I feel as though I have read it, although I haven’t and won’t ever…ever…ever.
Well, I’m definitely going to give it a go. Apart from anything else I’m intrigued by all those weeping men!
What weirdness with all the blood transfusions as a stand-in for sex and the connection between vampire sex and female sexuality that the critic points out. And also the scarlet letter. It’s interesting, as Litlove says, that Mina gets to survive. I guess she’s been brought back into the proper feminine sphere again by being punished, and now she’s safe to keep having babies. England will go on!
Did you get the version with all the critical essays at the back and the illustrations? I love that extra content.
I studied ‘Dracula’ in uni, but I’d already read it a few times before then so your critical Dracula posts have been very exciting. I always got the impression that Bram Stoker was deliberately commenting on many of the aspects critics pick up on, especially the racial aspect, because he writes that very careful set piece of all the men donating blood, creating a mix of blood Victorian readers would have found abhorent – he intends to horrify by playing on prejudices he recognises in society. There’s the mention of the child at the end and the way he’s named after I think every male character in the book, suggesting a new generation of ‘impure’ origins (the fear of American stock infiltrating the British was a big fear back then, as was the more obvious racists fears about races mixing). Although I remember that aletrnating view about the child meaning the men had triumphed over Dracula (the other), I remember occidentalist critique taking that to task and saying Stoker was slyly seeming to say they had, but then subtely reminding the readers of the mixture of blood in Mina, the child’s mother, through this bizare naming strategy. And since Mina has been bitten by Drcaula how ‘clean’ can the child be of othering influences passed through the blood?
I always worked on the assumption that the misogynistic sex is meant to comment on his society, not reflect his own views, but I’m not sure I can remember what textual evidence I would use to justify that view…Maybe the fact that Mina gets her own voice in the text. Although as you note her thoughts always have to be qualified and she has to bind herself by misogynistic standards – is this similar to the way Charlotte Bronte felt she had to appease her audience for Jane Eyre (because she’d presented a sensible, independent women) by killing off the mixed race character, Bertha?
You’re making me want to read it again!
I always prefered (scarred) Mina to (dead, if pure) Lucy. I loved that she had such an active part in the plot. I even thought it a good name for a bb girl
!
I kept the feeling that the book was not as repressive against active women as other Victorian novels, but you made me realize not so much after all.
I so enjoyed all the sexual innuendos and double entendres in the book, it made me laugh and really it’s a good enough reason to read the book, even for people who don’t like vampires!
Bikkuri, heh, better wathc out, Van Helsing might have to show up at your door to prove his manliness!
Grad, thanks. You are funny. I’m a horror wimp and the book didn’t even scare me. The photo on the cover was scarier!
Katrina, if it was the 1980s they probably would be out in the woods beating on drums too! The weeping was really weird.
Dorothy, the Victorians and blood purity make for an interesting combination of events and metaphors. It is odd that Mina is the one who got to survive and not Lucy who technically is the “purer” of the two. But you are right, maybe because they were able to turn Mina’s sexuality back to the domestic sphere she is forgiven. Plus they needed a human baby.
Jodie, how fun that you got to study the book at university. I read the Norton Critical. It had essays at the back and textual footnotes. No illustrations though. Stoker was very good at picking out the things that would horrify his readers. Poor Quincey. He was the last blood donor because of his American blood but he was always the most eager and what does he get as a reward? Death. And good point about how pure Mina’s blood still being questionable at the end. I do think the misogynistic sex is meant to comment on his society but I seem to recall reading something about how Stoker did not like the New Women very much. Stoker’s wife was also apparently frigid and after they ceased having relations he began sleeping around and got syphilis. I was surprised at how much there is in the book, I was expecting something much simpler.
Smithereens, I much prefer Mina too and her “man’s brain.” While she gets a voice and an active role, she still must be kept to the proper confines of womanhood. Aren’t the sexual innuendos great? There are some definite howlers in there!
I’m so glad you’re posting about Dracula! I’ve never read it and always been meaning to. In fact I have a big beautiful new annotated edition that came out a couple years and haven’t gotten around to it. I keep looking for the right place/time…which is probably bedtime. I really need to get on it, so thanks for the inspiration! And I’m taking inspiration from the R.I.P V Challenge to get on reading some Lovecraft, which I also haven’t as of yet.
tara
I first read Dracula my sophomore year of high school for an advanced lit class, despite my teacher’s attempts to make me pick a different book. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much controversy there is about the book–no wonder she was worried about my project! If you’re interested in the subtext of sexuality and feminism in Dracula, I greatly recommend the book Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Culture by Bram Dijkstra. She has a chapter analyzing the female characters in Dracula. I hope you’re enjoying the book, I know every time I read Dracula I love it just a little bit more.
As I’m pretty sure you know, Dracula is one of my all-time favorites of all the horror works and characters (I LOVE Frankenstein, too, but I don’t find that one horrific. It always makes me cry for the poor monster). I’ve always found the story to be extremely sexy — women given “permission” to be truly sexual (“bitten” in order to be so), men driven to pursue other men, mysterious foreigners and mixes races…Unfortunately, I never seemed to realize that Dracula had only ever pursued women. For some reason, I saw him as “bisexual” in his pursuit, not caring off whom he fed. I’m not easily spooked, but some of the scenes in this book made me hesitant to look out windows on those nights when I found myself wide awake and unable sleep the first time I read it. It’s spooky, but it’s also all very earthy, something that probably added to the Victorians’ fear. I’m immensely enjoying your take on it.
I never knew Stoker was oppossed to new women – that casts a different light on Dracula for me, so thanks for the extra information. I think I remember hearing, but I’m not sure…did he give his wife syphilis as well?
What a great post. This book is really dripping with meaning, isn’t it? I’m sure I didn’t pick up on it when I first resd it. It’s sort of weird that all five men need to give Mina their blood for her transfusion–it’s all a little kinky really. I do need to read this one again–I’ll be looking for the Norton anthology! My library has several different annotated versions but they are all checked out at the moment. ‘Tis the season I guess.
Tara, I’m surprised you haven’t read Dracula before! I hope you enjoy it. I’ve been meaning to read Lovecraft for years but haven’t gotten around to it. Maybe next Halloween
Keisha, thanks for the recommnedation about the Evil Sisters book. It sound right up my alley!
Emily, I always feels sorry for the monster in Frankenstein too. There is no sympathy for Dracula though! Until I read the book I had always thought of him as bisexual too but he never bites a man. He kills them to be sure but never bites them that we see. And you are right, the book is very earthy. I hadn’t really thought about it but with the tombs and the boxes of earth. Nice touch, that.
Jodie, I’m not sure if Stoker gave his wife syphilis. He got because she became frigid and so he visiting prostitutes. Whether he and his ever resumed relations after that I can’t say.
Danielle, thanks! Yeah, I was surprised at how literary the books is. the whole transfusion thing is rather kinky. I liked the Norton version and the critical stuff at the back is great.