Self-monstrosity Displaced: Dracula, Unwanted Liberator of Societal Repression

True to his in-story metamorphic powers, Bram Stoker’s title character of Count Dracula in Dracula takes on a multi-faceted and difficult to define form. In both action and existence he embodies traits that are normally perceived as mutually exclusive, and often directly conflict. Upon entering into London and Western society, Dracula’s confusing and paradoxical existence transforms the world around him, too, into a paradox, coming into direct contradiction with many of the societal conventions that empower the male-dominant hierarchy and form the foundations of 19^th century Victorian society. This contradiction ultimately threatens to overthrow the society in place, making Dracula a dangerous monster whose eradication is relentlessly pursued.

Dracula’s monstrosity comes primarily in two forms: the monster that defies easy categorization, and the monster that comes from outside to dwell within. Dracula himself is an amalgation of a myriad of traits – he is at once both male and female, homo- and heterosexual, a student of modern knowledge and a master of ancient magical powers. Arriving in London, he appears to introduce this confusion of contradictory traits into society, although it becomes apparent that these traits are not the artificial contaminants of a foreigner, but elements already innate and underlying in Western society.

Dracula represents two primary challenges to society: the sexual liberation and confusion of gender roles, and the powerlessness of logic in the face of belief.

The most immediate monstrosity of Dracula is his predation of women. Not only does he attack women, a cause for concern in itself, but his attacks morph previously virtuous, ideal, and subservient Victorian women such as Lucy Westenra (“My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them?” (Stoker 60)) into wild and openly sexual women driven by lust (“Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!”) (Stoker 146). The vampirification of women reveals a vivaciously sexual side of the female gender wholly unlike the reserved and virtuous woman that society idolizes. This dichotomy of both virtue and sexuality fused into the body of a single woman is unacceptable and monstrous to society, which perceives clear separations and mutual exclusivity between the upstanding and virtuous women of society and the degraded and sexually promiscuous whores and prostitutes – the upstanding woman is not permitted to be sexual, and the whore is not permitted to be acceptable.

The unleashing of female sexuality also reveals something equally abhorrable – the susceptibility of males to female sexuality. As much as the men are repulsed by this unbound female sexuality, they are simultaneously drawn to it. When Lucy Westenra reincarnates as a vampire after her death, the sexuality she exudes upon meeting the men is irresistible: “Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!” Lucy begs, and while recognizing the evil, the response by John Seward admits the vulnerability of man: “There was something diabolically sweet in her tones … which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another. As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms.” (Stoker 188) Just as open sexuality corrupts the virtue of woman, it also corrupts the virtue of man by temptation – the men are drawn to the sexually voracious woman, even though giving in to such an indulgence flies against the reason and self-restraint that Victorian society is based upon, and would mean almost certain death for the men. The irresistibility of temptation also demonstrates another potential monstrosity of this newfound female sexuality: powerless to restrain themselves, the men willingly submit to the sexually dominant female, reversing the traditional hierarchy and making males a subservient class to the sexualized woman.

All of the fears and apparent monstrosities of female sexuality, however, may not actually stem from Dracula. Lucy, before being vampirized, had shown hints of the same sexual wantonness, describing the three marriage proposals she had received in a single day, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all the trouble?” (Stoker 60). Although it is Dracula’s attacks which unleash this sexuality in its entirety, Lucy’s would-be saviors continually strive to separate this sexually voracious vampire from their idea of the “true” Lucy, refusing the notion that the sexuality may have been inherently part of her. John Seward refers to vampire-Lucy’s body, “… there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy’s shape without her soul” (Stoker 190), displacing their fear of the sexuality inherent in women into a foreign trait which is artificially inseminated into them by monstrous means.

Dracula also alternates traditional gender roles throughout his interactions with other characters. For example, while in his first encounters with Jonathan Harker, the Count gives an outward impression of masculinity with his “strong… aquiline” (Stoker 23) face and “grip of steel” (Stoker 17), as well as his title as a patriarch of a grand castle and family name. In practice we see Dracula filling a much more traditionally feminine role, personally upkeeping his own castle, making Jonathan’s bed, and preparing his dinner, much like a housewife or female house servant would.

In erotic symbolism, Dracula’s vampiric nature also blends male and female anatomy and sexual roles. Dracula’s sharp, piercing fangs of the vampire, penetrating through the skin of his female victims, provides a vivid metaphor for the male penis, while his attacks on women are a form of predatory rape that is the manifestation of the most lustful male aggression. In action, however, Dracula’s vampiric attacks embody traces of female sexuality himself – though his fangs, like the male penis, penetrate the female body, he simultaneously sucks the bodily fluids from his victim, as if a female engaging in oral sex. His interactions with Jonathan also carry sexual overtones – on the night before Jonathan’s supposed departure, Dracula “kisses his hand to me (Jonathan)” and proclaims that “To-night is mine” (Stoker 52), indicating that he plans to feed on Jonathan. This dichotomy of both male and female sexuality fused into a single act represents quite a shock and challenge to the refined society of 19^th century Western Europe: not only is Dracula overtly sexual, nor does he simply expose his female victims to wanton sexual desire - he himself combines both female and male sexuality into a single body, making him a grotesque vessel of overt and predatory sexuality, homosexuality, and hermaphroditism.

In attacking his victims, Dracula also takes on a motherly role – through his vampirism he effectively “gives birth” to new vampires, and by nature has a parental responsibility to all of his converted vampire children. In his attack on Mina, for instance, Dracula takes on this maternal role literally, forcing Mina to suck the blood from his chest, mimicking a mother breastfeeding her child. Like his victims-turned-vampires, this embodiment of a mothering role turns monstrous as the vampires become the anti-mothers: Dracula’s three vampire women devour the smothered baby in an earlier scene in Dracula’s castle; Lucy Westenra as a vampire preys upon the little children of London; and Dracula forcibly feeds Mina his own blood, presenting her not with the life-giving nourishment of breast milk given to human babies, but with a blood lust which slowly breeds Mina into a monster.

Dracula and his converted vampires present a horrific distortion of the typical family structure: filled with sexual desire and wantonness, the female vampires abandon their motherly roles in nurturing children, and worse yet turn to preying upon them. With the mother figure gone, the parental responsibility shifts to the male patriarch. In this parental role, Dracula does nothing to nurture the child either – ironically he “provides for” the household by bringing home a baby for the three vampire women to feast upon. Upon moving to London, he is more preoccupied with preying on other women and spreading his seed, converting them, too, into vampires, and after doing so, such as in the case of Lucy, abandoning his parental responsibilities to them as well, never again giving consideration to Lucy after her death. As a further physical manifestation of this Dracula destroys society by tearing apart family after family of the traditional, socially expected kind, detaining Jonathan Harker and preventing him from returning home to his fiancé; stripping away Lucy Westenra before she can begin her married life with Arthur Holmwood; and corrupting Mina Murray with a potential vampirism, ostensibly removing her relationship to society, with the band of men, and even with her own husband, unless Dracula can be destroyed. These ordinary, cohesive, nurturing family structures and the eloquent well-mannered society are replaced in vampire society by a disturbing and barely recognizable community: one in which each member is savagely predatory, indulges in their own individualistic sexual pursuits to the forfeit of virtue and human life, and abandons all kinship bonds between husband-wife and parent-child, holding nothing sacred.

All the fears which Dracula brings to Western society are in fact, already present within it. As exemplified in pre-vampiric Lucy Westenra’s wish to marry all three of her suitors, females already bear some innate sexuality, albeit one that is mostly repressed. The susceptibility of men to open female sexuality is already a very real occurrence with the openly available sexuality exuded by prostitution. Alternative sexuality – that which does not fit the typical mold of reserved, wed-locked heterosexuality – is, while only privately discussed, a feature that very much exists in Victorian sexual life, as evidenced by public commentary regarding Oscar Wilde’s conviction of homosexual acts in the same time period, “Why does not the Crown prosecute every boy at a public or private school or half the men in the Universities?” (Hyde 170). Each of these – female sexuality, sexual temptation, and alternative sexuality – holds the potential to destroy the traditional family structure and society just as much as Dracula does explicitly.

Dracula’s monstrosity comes from a displacement of these societal problems. Dracula reveals these societal threats to traditional society by confusing clear-cut divisions and roles, and blending the repressed features of society into reality. While female sexuality certainly exists for example in prostitution, prostitutes as outcasts of society can easily be ignored as people who were ineffectual and non-representative of the actual women of society. By unleashing the sexuality in socially accepted women such as Lucy Westenra, Dracula blends together the same sexuality of the disgraced whore with the virtuous woman of refined society and confuses the male perception of the woman: no longer is she easily classifiable as either an upstanding society woman such as Lucy Westenra or a common whore such as the three vampire women, as the one-dimensional female characters in Dracula are perceived. Dracula similarly blends the righteous, impervious man with the sexually vulnerable one. Though the heroes of Dracula are continually extolled for their courage and righteousness in their cause (Mina writes in her journal, “How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave!” (Stoker 308)), these same men nearly falter at the sexual whims of Lucy the vampire. By blending together erotic elements from female, male, and homosexual realms, Dracula confuses the very nature of sexuality itself, revealing a form which is far outside the confines of heterosexual, monogamous sex. Though all of these elements which threaten to destroy Victorian society as it is known already exist in society, Dracula brings them into reality by blending sexuality into the virtuous woman, sexual frailty into courageous man, and alternative sexuality into conventional sex, combining the repressed taboo elements which seem mere fantasy into those that are accepted, respected, and very real in society.

Dracula also crosses the boundaries between the scientific world of reasoning that modern Western European society functions by – his operations and powers fit no logical explanation, but are firmly rooted in the world of mysticism and superstition. Though at the outset he seems very much the knowledgeable epitome of the modern man – masterful in the art of languages, a studious reader of books, and a curious student of modern society, Dracula’s true powers are rooted in centuries-old superstition. When he immigrates to London, he carries with him these superstitious powers into a world that, through the scientific upheaval during the Enlightenment Era and Industrial Revolution, has been trained to rationalize everything, and dismiss that which can’t be reasoned out – Van Helsing explains to John Seward, “It is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.” (Stoker 171). This disbelief in the existence of Dracula and his vampiric powers ensures that none of London or modern society is able to stop him.

Dracula’s superstition-based powers represent an evil which the citizens of “modern” science- and logic-based civilization cannot combat. The characters’ attempts to make sense of the bizarre circumstances surrounding Lucy all lead to the wrong conclusions, in constant denial of the fact that such a mythical vampire could exist in their city and be preying upon Lucy: Mina attempts to attribute the wounds and blood on Lucy’s neck to accidentally puncturing her when wrapping a scarf around her; Dr. Seward attempts to find a medical cause, to no avail; and Lucy repeatedly receives blood transfusions, addressing the effects of her mysterious illness but never their causes. Neither ever considers the possibility of a vampire in their midst – to them and the rest of modern society it is scientifically implausible, and thus not a possibility worth considering. With only the powers of logic at their disposal, they leave themselves completely defenseless against the magical powers Dracula. Even after Dr. Van Helsing arrives, his magic-based countermeasures fail because of the same lack of belief in them: Mrs. Westenra, Lucy’s mother, doesn’t recognize the value of the garlic, telling Dr. Van Helsing that she had simply disposed of all “those horrible, strongsmelling flowers” for concern that “the heavy odor would be too much for the dear child in her weak state.” (Stoker 123), allowing Dracula to revisit Lucy. Similarly, upon Lucy’s death, the maid simply steals the crucifix placed upon Lucy to prevent her vampirification, not recognizing any powers of its sanctity, and instead only recognizing the material value of the gold ornament.

Fulfilling Jonathan Harker’s prophetic claim from early on in Dracula’s castle, “And yes, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere “modernity” cannot kill.” (Stoker 40-41), it is only after Dr. Van Helsing, who despite being a man of science keeps an “open mind” to superstition, arrives that the possibility of a vampire is realized and can be properly combated. His array of weaponry consists not of modern or technological tools, but of the same religious ornaments and superstitious enchantments that Dracula’s powers are rooted in. The effectiveness of Van Helsing’s methods seem to defy logic: it does not make sense that garlic or a simple crucifix would repel any creature, or that a vampire could not physically pass through a communion wafer or rest in a place without sacred dirt, nor that staking the heart of a corpse would “release” a body from the undead vampirism. That these methods do prove effective serve to further confuse the logic-based world of the Victorians – not only do the vampires in their existence demonstrate a superstitious power that defies reason, but Van Helsing’s superstitious methods further demonstrate an exclusive power in a realm where logic-based methods have failed.

The untempered reign of superstition poses a direct threat to the logic-based modern civilization. While the powers of reason are firmly founded upon factual basis and built up by logical analysis, the powers of superstition are loosely rooted in ignorance and a lack of education, drawing a contrast between the modern society of Western Europe’s London, and the generally uneducated villagefolk of Eastern Europe initially seen by Jonathan. Despite the worlds being polar opposites, they share similarities: as much as Eastern Europe’s blind belief in superstition puts them in constant fear of Dracula, Western Europe’s adamant dismissal of superstition leaves them susceptible to and equally under the control of Dracula’s powers.

By coming to London, Dracula blends two worlds together: the modern, technological, and logic-based world of Western Europe, and the superstitious, irrational, and “backwards” world epitomized by Eastern Europe. In every way, modern society believed their view of the world to be correct – science had repeatedly disproved many of the baseless suppositions and religious/superstitious theories that had governed old world thought. Dracula defies any plausible logic, yet, his obvious existence refuses dismissal. Thus, he reintroduces elements of the old world into modern society, distorting the boundaries between science and superstition, reality and fiction.

The blending of old world superstition back into the modern world challenges the very roots that modern society is founded upon – knowledge and reason. In facing Dracula, all of reason and technology fail, and society’s continued dedication to and belief in those methods blinds them. The most powerful tool against Dracula’s magical powers is one that modern society with its reasoning has forsaken: religion. As much as Dracula is susceptible to the sacred powers of the communion wafer or the crucifix, the denizens of modern logical society are susceptible to the superstitious powers of Dracula because they are equally godless. The effectiveness of the superstitious powers of Dracula, as well as the superstitious and religious powers employed by Dr. Van Helsing against Dracula, confuses the world that the characters of modern society live in – it is no longer a world purely of clear-cut fact and logical workings, but one which also operates under ambiguous magical elements which cannot be explained.

Despite modern society’s attempts to progress, through scientific advancement, beyond the state of civilization in past centuries, or those in lesser-developed regions such as Eastern Europe, Dracula reveals the need for belief which logic can never replace. Though facts and logic have firm foundations, the conclusions reached by logic are neutral and hopeless. While reason may eliminate such supernatural horrors as mythical monsters, reason also precludes such supernatural concepts as religion. Though the world of superstition contains such evil as vampires, it also allows for salvation, which Lucy, the three vampire women, and Dracula all eventually attain upon death. Despite modern society’s attempts to rationalize out the supernatural, much like Jonathan’s attempts to rationalize with the superstitious villagers on his journey to Castle Dracula, the human need for faith and belief is unsubstitutable – despite disbelief and a strong resolve to reason, all of the characters of modern Western Europe fall prey to Dracula. Dracula, stating “Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine” (Stoker 267), also implies that even if there are those in society educated and resolved to reason enough to be impervious to the powers of superstition, the susceptibility of those in the same community with weaker resolve will always provide a vulnerability through which society can be manipulated and upturned. Although the band of men cling with fairly strong resolve to reason and never come directly to harm from Dracula’s powers, Dracula still attains the blood of all four men through the vulnerability of Lucy Westenra. Though modern society considers itself learned beyond the influences of petty superstition, the ease through which Dracula overtakes vulnerable members of society, or the grip which he already holds over the uneducated of Eastern Europe, demonstrate that because of the human need for belief in some, if not all society, civilization can never truly progress to exist on reason alone.

While the physical events which surround Dracula are readily monstrous in themselves, the characters’ relentless pursuit of the Count’s destruction, or even their quest to excorcise the body of Lucy Westenra stems from a far greater fear. Dracula’s introduction into the Western world, bringing with him the sexuality and superstition so foreign to the sexually reserved, logic-based Victorian society, heavily warps the world by unleashing the repressions of sexuality by propriety, and spiritual belief by logic. This distorted potential society, though rooted in elements already existent in their society, seems completely foreign to denialist Victorians – they thus displace this disgust onto Dracula as the monstrous constructor of this perverse world and the corrupter of theirs, rather than simply as a liberator of their own society’s inner monstrosity.