doktori disszertáció - ELTE BTK disszertációk

DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ
THE MORALITY–TRANSGRESSION AXIS IN THE FIELD OF SEXUALITY
IN THE DRACULA TRADITION
MUSKOVITS ESZTER
2012
Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar
DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ
MUSKOVITS ESZTER
THE MORALITY–TRANSGRESSION AXIS IN THE FIELD OF SEXUALITY
IN THE DRACULA TRADITION
Irodalomtudományi Doktori Iskola
Vezetője: Dr. Kulcsár Szabó Ernő, egyetemi tanár
Modern Angol-Amerikai Irodalom Program
Vezetője: Dr. Péter Ágnes, professzor emeritus
A bíráló bizottság tagjai
A bizottság elnöke: Dr. Péter Ágnes CSc., professzor emeritus
Hivatalosan felkért bírálók: Dr. Báron György PhD., egyetemi tanár
Dr. Remport Eglantina PhD., egyetemi tanársegéd
A bizottság titkára: Dr. Pődör Dóra PhD., egyetemi docens
A bizottság további tagjai: Dr. Farkas Jenő PhD., egyetemi adjunktus
Dr. Péteri Éva PhD., egyetemi adjunktus
Dr. Csikós Dóra CSc, egyetemi adjunktus
Témavezető: Dr. Takács Ferenc PhD., egyetemi docens
Budapest, 2012
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I am heartily thankful for my advisor Dr. Ferenc Takács, whose extremely
helpful and encouraging feedback gave me confidence.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Ágnes Péter and Dr. Éva Péteri for their unselfish
support and help over the years.
I am grateful for all the support and encouragment I have received from my father, Dr.
József Muskovits right from the beginning.
A million thanks to my family, friends, students and everybody who has shown interest in
my work: too many to name, but they surely know who they are.
A special thank-you to Dr. András László Magyar and Dr. Edgar Martín del Campo for
their helpful articles; and to Dr. Jenő Király, who first inspired me to see behind the
vampire myth, then encouraged me to continue my research.
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“[W]e become the victims of our feelings, unless we can in some degree command them.”
(Ann Radcliffe)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 7
Chapter 1 - THE RISE OF THE VAMPIRES..................................................................... 14
1.1 The Origins of Vampirism: The Roots of Vampire Beliefs in Folklore............... 14
1.2 Historical Vampires: Vlad Ţepeş and Erzsébet Báthory ...................................... 21
1.3 Literary Bloodline: The Pre-Stokerian Heritage .................................................. 28
Chapter 2 - FICTION .......................................................................................................... 53
2.1 Bram Stoker’s Dracula ......................................................................................... 53
2.1.1 The Chthonic Realm of Our Psyche: Mythic and Moral Aspects of
Dracula’s Nature.......................................................................................... 53
2.1.2 The Split Concept of Womanhood: The Triumph of Patriarchy ................. 70
2.1.3 “This Man Belongs To Me”: Several Aspects of Homoerotism in
Dracula........................................................................................................ 79
2.1.4 Polymorphous Perversity: The Hidden Paraphilias of the Vampires .......... 89
2.1.5 Human Feelings: Romantic Love and Friendship ..................................... 100
2.2 Dracula is Undead: The Sequels......................................................................... 109
2.2.1 Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt: Dracula the Undead ....................................... 110
2.2.2 Freda Warrington: Dracula the Undead..................................................... 120
Chapter 3 - CINEMA ........................................................................................................ 126
3.1 Collective Nightmares: The Classic Approach .................................................. 126
3.1.1 Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau: Nosferatu, eine Sinfonie des Grauens .......... 127
3.1.2 Tod Browning: Dracula ............................................................................. 131
3.1.3 Werner Herzog: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht........................................ 135
3.2 Dracula Goes to England: The Hammer Series.................................................. 138
3.2.1 Horror of Dracula ...................................................................................... 139
3.2.2 The Brides of Dracula................................................................................ 143
3.2.3 The Prince of Darkness.............................................................................. 144
3.2.4 Dracula Has Risen from the Grave............................................................ 146
3.2.5 Taste the Blood of Dracula........................................................................ 149
3.2.6 Scars of Dracula......................................................................................... 151
3.2.7 Dracula A. D. 1972.................................................................................... 154
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3.2.8 The Satanic Rites of Dracula ..................................................................... 156
3.2.9 The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires ..................................................... 159
3.3 Modern Flicks..................................................................................................... 161
3.3.1 Paul Morrissey: Blood for Dracula (Andy Warhol’s Dracula) ................. 162
3.3.2 Francis Ford Coppola: Bram Stoker’s Dracula ......................................... 164
3.3.3 Patrick Lussier: Dracula 2000 ................................................................... 170
3.3.4 Stephen Sommers: Van Helsing ................................................................ 173
3.4 La Belle Dame sans Merci: The Female Dracula............................................... 178
3.4.1 Lambert Hillyer: Dracula’s Daughter........................................................ 179
3.4.2 Peter Sasdy: Countess Dracula .................................................................. 184
3.4.3 Leigh Scott: Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Curse ............................................ 186
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 189
REFERENCES .................................................................................................................. 194
Bibliography................................................................................................................ 194
Filmography ................................................................................................................ 205
APPENDIX ....................................................................................................................... 208
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INTRODUCTION
The emergence of the New Woman in the final decades of the nineteenth century in
Europe and the United States challenged in a radical way the traditional gender roles
specified by strictly patriarchal societies. In literature there had been more or less blatantly
anti-establishment phenomena that contributed to the opening up of the space allotted to
women in the male-dominated world. Among these dissident trends it was probably the
Gothic novel that offered the most flexible medium for subverting the traditional concept
of sexuality. “It is no mere coincidence that the cult of gothic fiction reached its apex at the
very moment when gender and sexuality were beginning to be codified for modern
culture,” argues George E. Haggerty (2), and hardly anyone can argue against this view.
Heteronormativity was beginning to be challenged, and anything that differed from the
accepted sexual behaviour, that is from heterosexual monogamy, fell under scrutiny, and
Gothic novels became the minefields where these unconscious fears of society could be
exposed. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a special phenomenon even among Gothic novels for
its rich sexual symbolism. According to Foucault, Christianity developed a universal moral
code (The Use of Pleasure 30) The moral problematization of sexuality came to the
foreground. Sexual life was seen as something hideous that should in no way be the source
of pleasure. The confrontation between instincts and moral principles is a key issue in
Dracula. My goal is to present evidence that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a dichotomy
between ideal love and sexuality, which corresponds to the morality/transgression axis of
the Victorian ethos. I argue that the acts, desires and motives of the vampire can be
explained as some kind of manifestations of subdued drives pertaining to general human
nature.
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The second half of the nineteenth century was a turning point for conceptualizing
sexual practices and behaviour in Western societies. The Victorian period was an age of
transition characterized by industrial and economic expansions, technological changes,
innovations and reforms that altered the social climate. At the time of the industrial
revolution, the rapid increase in population made it necessary to delve into people’s private
life for economic and political reasons. The birth rate was analyzed, the age of marriage
was examined, even such intimate questions were scrutinized as the frequency of the
sexual act. The focus was not on the pleasure principle, but on the scientific codification of
the sexual act, that is, as Michel Foucault points out, Western society practises scientia
sexualis and is devoid of ars erotica (The Will to Knowledge 58). Further restraints were
imposed, and heterosexual monogamy became the acceptable sexual behaviour. Physical
love was conceivable and morally proper only within the bonds of marriage. However,
decorous women were not thought to enjoy sex; they were expected to be asexual. For
them, sexuality seemed to be reduced to the function of reproduction (Foucault The Will to
Knowledge 3; Mason 197). Women were regarded as passive, while men represented the
active side of gender roles.
Yet sexual puritanism was only the surface; sexuality proliferated in certain circles
despite the apparent prudery. As Duncan Crow notes, if a woman “had been turned into the
virgin in the drawing-room, she had to compensate for this by being the prostitute
elsewhere” (30). Frigidity, however, was not expected from men. It is the case of the
double standard: sexually active women were condemned in the eyes of society, but it was
more or less tolerated if men went to prostitutes to satisfy their needs. The struggle to
idealize and moralize women led to a split concept of womanhood. Women were either
considered to be pure and virtuous, or were regarded as impure and whorish. Those
belonging to the former have often been stereotyped as sexless women without desires,
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whereas the latter have been pictured as oversexed women. Obviously, both images were
exaggerated.
The cultural expectation was the submissive woman type, and while handbooks
appeared which instructed young girls how to be properly submissive and became
bestsellers (Dijkstra 10), many women felt the domestic atmosphere and the selfsacrificing passivity suffocating. The appearance of the New Woman and New Man made
a change in the attitude towards sexuality in the late nineteenth century. They wanted to
break away from the conventional view on marriage, to gain rights to talk about sexual
issues in public and also to enjoy “physical intimacy both within and outside of marriage”
(Hurley 201). The term New Woman is not the same as feminist, despite the fact that both
terms were coined in the 1890s, claims Himmelfarb. Feminists were concerned about a
number of social causes such as birth control, education and suffrage. They continued to
respect family values. The New Woman was looking for sexual liberation and escape from
the domestic sphere. They started participating in public life and doing things which
formerly had been the privilege of men, such as riding bicycles or smoking in public. (189)
Although the New Woman was indeed interested in questions such as education, she laid
great emphasis on freer public behaviour. This need on their part overturned the
conventional passive image of women, and it reflected their association with the monstrous
in their depiction in art.
Femmes fatales have always existed in mythology and literature since “mythology
and literature are imaginative reflections of the various aspects of real life” (199), claims
Mario Praz in The Romantic Agony, a pivotal study of erotic sensibility in Romantic
literature. He traces back the literary tradition of the Fatal Woman, pointing out that the
themes of tainted beauty which were an intellectual pose for seventeenth-century writers,
became, for the Romantics, “a pose of sensibility” (38). These libidinous women who
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threaten men through sexuality have ambiguous characteristics; they are seductive, yet
destructive. Their beautiful outward appearance conceals their inner bestiality. The femme
fatale archetype definitely exists in all cultures, but Hedgehock argues that there is a shift
in the mid-nineteenth-century femme fatale image. She argues that the charming, complex
and devious Fatal Woman image transposes into a one-dimensional, dangerous archetype,
also claiming that this shift is not accidental, but it is “a reaction to the increasing demands
of middle-class and working class women for equality” (xv). The erotic signifying power
of these women suggests “a reversal in economic and social power fuelled by radical
economic cycles of inflation and depression, and threatens the tenuous social power of the
old aristocracy” (Hedgehock 5). The fears about the changing gender roles, which were
threatening to undermine the patriarchal order, became a popular topic, even if in a hidden
form, of Gothic novels. “Gothic novels are about patriarchies, about how they function,
what threatens them, what keeps them going,” argues Donna Heiland (10). “Patriarchy is
not only the subject of gothic novels, but is itself a gothic structure,” she claims (11).
Heiland’s concept of the Gothic applies to Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well; the
disintegration of traditional gender roles evoked anxiety in people, which appears in
various forms in the novel. I argue that this fear of gender inversion is clearly manifested
in Dracula, and that the signs of the New Woman in terms of sexual activity are latent in
the female vampire characters, which Stoker works out with the modern device of
ambiguity.
Dracula has become the basis for not only an entire genre of literature, but also for
film. There are more than a hundred Dracula adaptations, which obviously present
different interpretations. Some of the films follow the plot structure of Bram Stoker’s
novel, whereas others extract from the original story without transmitting the gist of it.
Fidelity as a decisive criterion in the case of adaptations is problematic. Geoffrey Atheling
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Wagner classifies film adaptations into three categories: transposition (“a novel directly
given on screen”), commentary (“where an original is taken and either purposely or
inadvertently altered in some respect”) and analogy (where the adaptation may radically
change the source text) (qtd in Leitch 222-223). In contrast, Deborah Cartmell claims that
in fact the categories are limitless (24). Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been adapted to screen
time and again. “Bram Stoker’s novel is to horror films what William Shakespeare’s
Hamlet is to the theatre and film,” claims Kenneth Muir (46). Undoubtedly, despite the
changes in Dracula movies, all products are of equal significance, reflecting a certain
frame of reference.
The first Dracula movie was made in Russia in 1920. The second film was shot in
1921 by Károly Lajthay. Unfortunately, all copies of the first two Dracula movies have
since vanished (Pivárcsi Drakula gróf és társai 200). On the other hand, much information,
such as the novel which served as the basis for the script of Lajthay’s film and some
illustrations, have survived (Farkas, Drakula és a vámpírok 248). The third adaptation of
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is still available. In 1922 Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau directed
Nosferatu, eine Sinfonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror), which became
immediately a world-wide success. However, the German director did not receive the
rights from Bram Stoker’s widow, so despite the fact that the film follows the plot of Bram
Stoker’s novel, the character names were changed. This is a black-and-white silent film, an
Expressionist horror classic. 1931 is also an important date in the Dracula cinematic
history. Tod Browning shot Dracula, starring Béla Lugosi. This adaptation has become a
standard work inspiring many subsequent vampire films. This year is also the beginning of
the ‘sound’ horror movie (Tudor 6). Browning’s version is considered to be the most
popular one mainly due to Lugosi’s theatrical performance.
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In the classic period of the vampire films sexuality was not foregrounded. The first
signs of the changes appeared in the Seventies. As Tudor notes “more graphic violence,
explicit sexuality, female malevolence and invasion of the everyday by supernatural” (66)
became parts of the vampire narrative. I have chosen a remake of Nosferatu by the German
director, Werner Herzog, which was shot in 1979, and the Hammer Dracula Series (19581974) to examine how the slight changes in sexual representations of the vampires are
visible in these movies. The interest in vampire flicks seemed to be fading in the Eighties.
In 1992 Francis Ford Coppola drew the attention back to vampires in his spectacular
movie. The original title is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which promises a relatively plot-byplot modern version. In the Nineties, vampire characters broke away from the classic
vampire figure in many senses, but the popularity of Dracula did not fade at all. The
Transylvanian bloodsucker has survived into the twenty-first century. I intend to explore
Patrick Lussier’s Dracula 2000 and Scott Leigh’s Van Helsing from this period. Since
“female Draculas” also lurk in movies, and they are in need of a different approach to male
vampires, an entire subchapter is dedicated to them.
I have divided my dissertation into three main parts. The first chapter presents the
background sources of the Dracula character; mythological, folkloric and literary
antecedents are reconstructed to detect the latent and overt manifestations of the main
motifs. The second chapter focuses on Stoker’s novel, Dracula: issues such as the
relationship between human beings, the women characters, sexual otherness and hidden
paraphilias are discussed and two sequels of the novel are examined as later
representations of some of the moral issues. The third chapter is about film adaptations,
wherein I examine how love and sexuality representations have evolved in the cinematic
history of Dracula.
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Working with rich and multifarious source material, the cultural history of the past is
important with current interrelated meanings, so I will apply the attitude of a relativist
historian of literature. Exploring aspects of sex and gender, in my research method the
main approaches I take are prompted by psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, queer
theory as well as morphological studies of popular culture (literature and film), and
contexts constituted by the cultural history of vampirology.
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CHAPTER 1 - THE RISE OF THE VAMPIRES
1.1
The Origins of Vampirism: The Roots of Vampire Beliefs
in Folklore
Vampirism has spread in many cultures all over the world. Every country seems to
have their own vampire legends; vampires are even parts of African, Asian and Arabian
folklores. These tales vary widely; vampires are endowed with different habits on account
of given cultures or cultural conventions. Bloodsuckers appearing in ethnography later
have become popular characters of literature and cinema as well. Nevertheless, nothing
certain is really known about their origin. James Craig Holte and Dudley Wright put the
birth of vampirism long before Christianity (Holte 9 and Wright 6). Daniel Farson finds the
idea likely that superstitions about vampires have existed since the beginning of time
(107). According to Farson and Wright, Babylonia and Assyria might have been the
homelands of vampire legends (Farson 107 and Wright 7). Pivárcsi considers the Balkans
and among the Eastern Slavs the vampires’ homeland, and marks the Middle Ages as the
time of their birth (Drakula gróf és társai 12). These are only a few examples to show how
diverse the opinions are concerning the time and place of vampires’ birth. I intend to
examine where these creatures might originate from, and the main causes of the
development of vampire belief.
As the above examples show, the belief in vampires might have existed long before
Christianity; what is more, superstitions that constitute the foundation of vampirism are as
old as mankind and sprang from the animistic world concept. Death cults, blood myths and
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the myth of darkness (that is, fear from the unknown) are primary sources of vampire
beliefs (Pivárcsi Drakula gróf és társai 8). Blood as the source of life is a very old myth
from ancient times. David J. Skal states that superstitious beliefs in undead bloodsuckers
“are as old as recorded civilization.” The vampire myth can be connected to cannibalism to
a certain extent. It was thought that the ingestion of the body, particularly the blood,
transfers the victim’s strength and attributes to the eater (11).
According to Jenő Farkas, vampirism as a concept appeared at the beginning of the
seventeenth century among south-eastern European ethnic groups (97). In some of these
areas, belief in vampires is still strong even up to present day. The most widespread and
popular beliefs come from here, too. Namely, that vampires make their appearance at
night, in the daytime they rest in their coffins, they can lie only in their native soil, they
drink the blood of the living and their bodies do not undergo decomposition after death.
The usual way they can be killed is to drive a stake through their heart and decapitate them.
Garlic and religious objects like crucifix and the consecrated bread of the Eucharist can
defend people from vampires, and suicides become vampires. These have become
“conventional rules” about vampires in many films and stories.
Whatever the origin of vampirism, Christianity must have played a great role in the
spread of these beliefs. Vampires were thought to be diabolical creatures in the eyes of the
Christian community, but as Wright indicates, priests made a profitable use of these
superstitious beliefs to gain more control over people. They spread the idea that those who
died under the ban of excommunication would become undead and return to the place of
their former life to haunt and torture people. Those also were said to become vampires who
in their lives “had been guilty of heinous sins, those who had tampered with the magic arts
and all who had been cursed during life by their parents” (22).
Suicide was also
considered to be a sin according to Christian doctrines. Attempted suicides were sentenced
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to two years in the nineteenth century. Moreover, self-murderers could not receive a decent
funeral and the dead bodies were buried in a pagan ritual: the heart of the corpse was
driven through with a stake in order to prevent him from resurrection on Judgement Day.
The body was entombed at a crossroads in the hope that the sign of the crucifix would keep
away evil (Davenport-Hines 229). The influence of early Christianity can also be proved in
the widespread belief that vampires cannot stand religious objects such as the crucifix,
Eucharist, holy water or the Bible. On the one hand, the Christian influence is very strong;
on the other hand with the help of the Christian pattern an anti-Christian creature was born.
The figure of the living dead is pervaded by the resurrection myth of Jesus. Leonard
Wolf explains that vampires are imitations of Christ, although they are not on God’s side
(128). The vampire is a certain anti-Christ, a human projection. The conception of the
“living dead” seemingly has roots in the Neoplatonic idea of life after death, but there are
also medical explanations. Jean Marigny draws the attention to Christian logic, where
without last rites, the dead are excluded from gaining salvation, that is why the souls of
sinners belong “neither to the world of living nor that of the dead” (22). In addition, James
Craig Holte thinks it likely that premature burials also played an important role in creating
ideas of undead creatures. These burials were supposedly responsible for the “resurrection”
of the dead since “living victims of shock, anemia, comas and assorted fits were often
thought to be dead and quickly entombed” (15). Other explanations for burying people
alive by mistake can be thanatomimesis, narcotic overdose, syncope or asphyxia (Colman
18).
Medical debates about vampirism evolved only at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, particularly around the 30s, when a new epidemic appeared on the borders of
southern Hungary and in some parts of Transylvania inhabited by Romanians, the so-called
vampire disease. Many died and the illness was explained by vampire activitity. Medical
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debates evolved. In his article Orvosi vita a magyarországi vámpírokról, László András
Magyar examines the medical literature available written between 1732 and 1756 that
deals with vampires. According to the then existing beliefs, vampires had spread an
epidemic. An outbreak of disease occurred in Kisolova in 1725 and in Medvedia in 1732,
which caused hysteria. An imperial board of enquiry was set up to record the data
concerning the cases of the disease. Interestingly enough, none of the doctors dealing with
this issue agreed with the vampiric superstitions, they attributed these ideas to people’s
imaginacio. What divided them was giving explanation to the epidemic, namely whether
death could have been caused by food poisoning, nutritional disease, cholera or any other
infectious diseases. Explanations to why the bodies did not undergo decomposition
included natural mummification, specific soil conditions, physiological causes,
environmental factors and so-called suspended animation (1247-1257).
Magyar consulted the medical literature about the “vampire disease” in Transylvania.
He analyzed several contemporary medical dissertations, including Sámuel Köleséri: Pestis
Dacicae scrutinum et cura (1709), Martinus Martini: Dissertatio inauguralis practicomedica de daemonomania et variis ejus speciebus (1782), and Franciscus Xaverius
Linzbauer: Codex sanitario-medicinalis Hungariae1 (1852). Magyar has found that the
vampire disease is based on folk aetiology; it is a collective name for many epidemic and
endemic diseases which people associated with vampire activities at the time when an
epidemic or endemic broke out (cholera, plague, sepsis or any unknown disease) (Die
siebenbürgische “Vampir-Krankheit” 61). Superstitions about vampires had existed for a
long time in that era but to give an explanation to the hysteria about Transylvanian
vampires, one must turn to history. After the Habsburg Empire’s Balkan expansion,
officials dealing with public health encountered superstitious beliefs about vampires
1
This is a significant book of Hungarian medical science, a collection of documents and official data
providing a schematic picture about the hygienic endeavours of the era up to 1848.
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(Magyar Die siebenbürgische “Vampir-Krankheit” 61), and this new phenomena served as
basis for medical investigations on the vampire topic.
Apart from the aforementioned epidemic diseases, two illnesses are usually
associated with vampirism; both of them are rare. One of them is the so-called pellagra
which has three main symptoms: diarrhoea, dermatitis and finally dementia. The pellagric
are quite aggressive and are without any appetite, so they grow thin quickly. They produce
symptoms similar to some vampire characteristics, because just like vampires, pellagric
patients are sensitive to sunlight and cannot sleep at night. The other illness, porphyria
appears more rarely. It features photosensitivity and in case of not avoiding sunlight, the
skin blisters. Patients suffering from porphyria can be cured by a blood transfusion. (The
symptoms of pellagra and porphyria are based on Pivárcsi Drakula gróf és társai 29-36).
It is most likely that vampirism is rooted in mythology, where the prototypes of
vampires existed in a multiplicity of forms. The figures of the demi-god lamia, who
attacked children and sucked the blood of men, the empusa, who also drank the blood of
men, or the Sumerian ekimmu, who was the ghostly manifestation of that person who had
not been buried properly, are well-known from ancient stories. In Greek mythology, sirens
own the dual characteristic of vampiresses: they are attractive yet dangerous at the same
time. The bloodsucker archetype is often found in divided nature. The Egyptian Sekhmet,
whose blood-lust, according to legends, could be satiated once only by pouring drinks
coloured like blood on the battlefield, is associated with Hathor. The Hindu goddess Kali,
whose victims are men, represents the malevolent side, and Uma the gentle aspect.
Dangerous supernatural females have become parts of folkloric tradition, as well. The
Mullo is a concupiscent gypsy undead. A mullo can change into an animal; the wolf-shape
is mentioned most frequently. Female mullos can drive their partners into death from
fatigue (Bunson 181). Succubus is a female demon, who visits her victim at night and has
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sexual intercourse with him. Its male counterpart is the incubus. Estrie is a Hebrew spirit
who takes vampiric shape and is always feminine. Her favourite prey are children (Bunson
87). Strigoica is a demonic birdlike creature who is hungry for blood and flesh. She spoils
marriages (Pivárcsi Drakula gróf és társai 252). These are only a few examples, as there
are too many to name. These female figures share common characteristics. They are
predators who are fond of nightly “hunts,” they suck the blood of their victims and have
insatiable sexual appetites. They are different versions of the archetypal evil woman, who
fails at motherhood and means a threat to the image of the passive idealized woman. It is
interesting that mythology and folklore teem with sensual females endowed with vampiric
characteristics, whereas in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature the majority of
vampires are male.
As can be seen, in folkloric traditions there are many demonic figures who cause the
death of their partners through sexuality. In most cases, temptation is personified in the
forms of beautiful unknown men or women. However, eros can be represented as another
kind of story with a moral lesson as in the case of the lidérc, the well-known superstitious
figure in Hungarian folklore. Lidérc tales differ from the incubus-succubus types of stories.
Tekla Dömötör points out that a lidérc visits his or her victims at night2 and has sexual
intercourse with them, but not in the shape of a stranger, but that of the dead husband or
wife. The moral behind these nocturnal visits of a lidérc is that one should not yearn for the
missing person too much, because he or she takes up the form of the lidérc, thus comes
back and loves the person left behind literally to death. That is, one should not mourn and
hanker too much after the missing spouse, because it can lead to depression, and finally to
death. (125-131)
2
The details of the lidérc sound an awful lot like sleep paralyis or “Old Hag syndrome,” when the victims
wake up and find that they cannot move, and feel some heavy weight on their chest. These occurrences are
often accompanied by hallucinations. The name of this sleep disorder originates from the old superstitious
belief that a hag is sitting on the chest. Henry Fuseli’s oil painting The Nightmare in 1781 popularized this
myth, with its overt sexual reference to the activity of the subconscious.
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The distant locations of vampiric entities prove that vampirism is a universal
phenomenon; I intend to mention only one example. The teyollohcuani is a Mesoamerican
revenant who has vampiric characteristics; it is a shape-shifter, has an animal alter-ego
(usually avian guises) and sucks the blood of humans, usually that of the infants.3 Edgar
Martín del Campo proves in his splendid article The Global Making of a Mexican
Vampire: Mesoamerican, European, African and Twentieth-Century Media Influences on
the Teyollohcuani that there is no European influence on this creature as many
ethnographers might think. The teyollohcuani is a good example to show that stories of
preternatural creatures can evolve in isolation, which proves that there is more to talk about
than simple influences between peoples. Furthermore, the manipulation of the Spanish
Christians in Mesoamerica shows similarities with the European Christian Church in many
respects. The most important influence is that after the conversion of Nahuatl people to
Christianity, figures of the “old religion” were connected to the devil, thus confirming the
Church’s power on the indigenous population (118). I argue that these similarities cannot
be a coincidence; there is an archetypal explanation to it.
The phenomenon of the monstrous within anthropologist conditions reflects our
ontological and ethical concerns between the Self and the Other. Fears and anxieties are
projected onto metaphysical creatures often endowed with earthly qualities. Later, in the
Middle Ages, the physical and metaphysical spheres were blurred, and concerns became
projected onto real individuals during which procedures many people fell victim to the
scapegoating mechanism of the monotheistic Western religious culture. These myths are
3
The Hungarian lidérc takes an avian guise by replacing her human legs with those of a goose or any other
domestic birds. It is interesting that there is an early colonial documentation in Nahuatl about the so-called
mometzcopinqui which replaces her legs with those of a turkey. Another example is the Sumerian "Scorpionman" or Girtablullu, which also has a human body, a scorpion tail and bird legs. Of course, there can be
found many other instances of this phenomenon. Enriching the domestic animal taken from everyday life
with supernatural qualities results in superstitious beliefs which can be found worldwide.
20
still operating today, hidden in the collective unconscious. They are ready to emerge to
haunt and disturb modern consciousness from time to time.
1.2
Historical Vampires: Vlad Ţepeş and Erzsébet Báthory
At times historical figures are connected to vampirism, as well. The character of
Dracula, the vampire Count is believed to be based on Vlad Ţepeş (Vlad III), a historical
figure who lived in the fifteenth century. Vlad Ţepeş was born in 1431 and reigned three
times in Wallachia (1448, 1456-62, for two months in 1476) until he was assassinated in
1476. He became known for his inhuman techniques of punishment. His favourite torturing
method was impalement, hence the name Ţepeş, which means ‘the Impaler’ in Romanian.
His father, Vlad II became a member of Societas Draconis, an order which had been
established by the emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg to fight against the Muslims in
defence of Christianity. That was the reason why Vlad II took on the name Dracul (=
dragon), and his son, Vlad III simply inherited this name from him (Draculea = son of the
dragon). Alhough Dracula is used abroad, the Romanians prefer Vlad Ţepeş or Vlad the
Impaler. In his ruling method morality and cruelty were intertwined; he liked to judge the
crimes of his victims before he put them on stakes. Cheating, lying, stealing or doing
anything unjust called forth a death warrant immediately. Vlad III executed people of all
nationalities, all religions, and all classes regardless of their gender or age.
Vlad Ţepeş adopted a wide range of tormenting methods including scalping,
skinning, forcing people to eat other victims’ flesh, decapitating and boiling. However, he
applied mutilation and cutting of sexual organs particularly in relation to women. Vlad the
Impaler was very puritanical and extremely sensitive to women’s morality and virtue.
21
Those having an extra-marital affair, unchaste widows and maidens who did not keep their
virginity could easily become objects of the Wallachian voivode’s anger. The consequence
of such immoralities usually ended up in cutting off the breasts of these women (either
compelling their husbands to eat them or putting a baby’s head into their sockets), cutting
off the nipples or cutting out the vagina.
Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally suggest that the nature of Vlad Ţepeş’s
crimes clearly indicates sexual abnormalities and give an explanation to his partial
impotence (Dracula 79). The method of impaling people by attaching each of their legs to
a horse and piercing a stake through their buttocks up, and the cutting of sexual organs
seem to confirm this. Impalement was a slow and very painful way of dying. Vlad Ţepeş
liked to watch his victims suffer on stakes, undoubtedly on phallic symbols. He gained
satisfaction from this, so the sexual nature of his motivation is clearly revealed behind this
cruel act. However, nothing is known about his private sexual life, nor about his supposed
partial impotence. Daniel Lapin suggests another explanation for Draculea’s fondness of
impalement. At the age of 13, he and his brother, Radu the Handsome were imprisoned as
political hostages in Turkey for four years. This captivity must have contributed to Vlad
III’s sadistic nature. Lapin thinks that Draculea had to watch his younger brother being
sexually abused. Later on he took up the role of the rapist, thus the victims’ impalement is
likely the “derivation from the anal rape he witnessed in childhood” (35).
Hardly anything is known about Vlad Ţepeş’s love life and his relationship with his
wives and other women. He had two wives, but little information has survived about them.
One of them was a Transylvanian woman. When the Turks launched an attack on
Wallachia in 1462, Draculea and his (first) wife were trying to find shelter in Transylvania.
Finally, the voivode’s wife committed suicide there, because she was so afraid of being
captured (Pivárcsi Drakula gróf és társai 78). In Romanian folklore one legend ascribes
22
this deed to Draculea’s daughter (McNally 219). Few sources agree on the identity of Vlad
III’s second wife. The marriage took place in Hungary, while Ţepeş was under house
detention at Matthias Corvinus’s court. Russian sources say that Vlad III’s second wife
“was a sister of the king”, and C. Gane, a Romanian author identifies her as “a cousin of
Matthias” (Florescu and McNally 113). The remains of Draculea’s cellar was found in
Pécs in 2009. A document from September 1489 refers to that Draculea co-owned the
house with his wife, Jusztina Szilágyi, who was a cousin of King Matthias (Fedeles Tamás
qtd in Farkas Drakula és a vámpírok 83). Vlad III had two sons from this relationship.
An anecdote has survived about a mistress who fell in love with Vlad Ţepeş. She had
pretended to be pregnant but after careful examination it turned out that she was not with
child. Vlad lost his temper because of this evident lie and cut the girl’s body from the groin
to her breasts, making malicious remarks while the girl was dying (Farkas 16). In this case
the Wallachian voivode’s morality-cruelty philosophy prevailed.
Draculea was definitely feared by his enemies. In German, Turkish and Russian
chronicles he is exclusively portrayed as a bloodthirsty villain, whereas in Romania he is
praised as a national hero, a noble fighter for Christendom and his country. Obviously,
ethnic groups have shaped the story about the voivode according to their political interests.
It is remarkable though, that one of the portraits about the historical Dracula was found at
Ambras Castle. Ferdinand II, the archduke of Tyrol had the perverse hobby of collecting
paintings of physical and moral degenerates. He hung the oil painting of Dracula among
other “freaks” including the wolf man and his family from the Canary Islands, or Márk
Baksa4, the Hungarian courtier, who lived a whole year with his eye pierced by a lance
(McNally and Florescu In Search of Dracula 30). Slaughtering many people was not so
4
McNally and Florescu incorrectly calls him Gregor Baxi, but it turns out in Martinus Schoedel’s book
Disquisitio historico-politica de Regno Hungariac etc. (1629) that not Gregor, but Marcus Baxam, that is,
Márk Baksa was the name of the wounded person. (copy of the picture from Schoedel’s book is available in
the appendix session in Ráth-Végh’s Magyar Kuriózumok)
23
conspicuous back then as it would be nowadays, but having been placed among these
weirdoes, Draculea captured the imagination of people; due to the anti-Dracula
propaganda, he was seen as an oddity.
The cruel side of Vlad Ţepeş’s personality seems to be a primary source in the
creation of the figure of the fictitious Dracula. In the novel there are references to the
historical Dracula when the Count tells the story of his family to Jonathan. Bram Stoker
located Dracula’s residence in Transylvania, where the historical person was born and
educated. There is no evidence that Stoker did research on Vlad III, but it seems that he
took the horroristic side of the myth of the real Wallachian voivode, most particularly his
name, and created a fictitious person. It is known that Arminius Vámbéry, the Hungarian
orientalist Professor met Stoker during a beefsteak supper in 1890, yet there is no evidence
that it was he who initiated him into the myth of vampirism (Belford 260). Although in the
novel, Professor Van Helsing even refers to him as “my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth
University” (Dracula 287), Vámbéry’s role is still ambiguous in Dracula criticism. It is
known that Stoker studied Emily Gérard’s book The Land Beyond the Forest (1888), a
travel guide to Transylvania (Marigny 84), which must have given him the idea to locate
the story in Transylvania. It also seems to be a coincidence that Vlad Ţepeş’s sadistic
nature with regard to sexuality is almost equal to that of the vampire. His lust for blood and
the methods of his tortures suggest sexual aberration, a main characteristic of the fictitious
Dracula. Ironically, while alive, in the legends of some Saxon towns Vlad Ţepeş was
pictured as a vampire (Duţu 239).
The Hungarian Countess Erzsébet Báthory, a blood fetishist, shows some similarities
with the historical Dracula. She is often mentioned as “the female Dracula” beyond the
borders of Hungary. This image comes from legendary stories according to which she liked
to bathe in the blood of maidens, thus she (and her servants) murdered hundreds of girls.
24
Historians like Katalin Péter and Dezső Rexa explain the deeds of the Countess by familial
sexual deviancy, Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss and László Nagy argue that she was a victim of
a politically motivated frame-up.
The Báthorys were a rich family. It had two branches, the ecsedi and the somlyói.
Marriage between relatives was not uncommon at the time. Erzsébet’s parents were related
too; her father, György Báthory descended from the ecsedi branch and her mother from the
somlyói (Péter 17). It might explain if the Countess was hereditarily tainted. She was born
in 1560, so she was fifteen when her marriage to Ferenc Nádasdy was arranged by their
parents. There was no love between them, although that was not uncommon between
spouses, either. Katalin Péter explains that the lack of love and sexual frustration as a
consequence must have contributed to the development of Erzsébet Báthory’s cruel side
(97).
The Countess was captured in 1610 by György Thurzó, a palatine of Hungary, who
started and supervised the investigation against her. Testimonies were collected from 300
witnesses.5 The descriptions of torture are as various as in the case of Vlad Ţepeş. Severe
beatings, burning of the flesh, mutilation, biting the flesh of different parts of the body,
making the girls stand naked in cold water during the night, the use of needles through lips,
fingers, and other body parts are just some examples of the horror the maidens experienced
in Erzsébet Báthory’s castle according to the testimonies. Some of these dreadful atrocities
are of sexual nature, for instance beating and burning the genitals. A strange case is
mentioned when the Countess allegedly cut off flesh and ate from a maiden’s pudendum.
The problem with the testimonies is that they are all based on hearsay. The quotations are
full of ‛I’ve heard it from X’ and ‛on the ground of rumours’ types of expressions, and the
number of the victims also varies. In addition, Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss highlights the fact
5
The testimonies can be read in Péter’s book.
25
that the alleged witnesses relate different techniques of torture in different regions, each
described on the basis of local torturing methods (46). The combination of these
cannibalistic and sadistic methods have resulted in perverted or lesbian stories in the
twentieth and twenty-first century cinematic adaptations, at times in sexual horror films, at
other times as erotic movies.
Politically, the Báthorys were very influential. They owned a great many castles, and
possessed economic and military power as well. György Thurzó – who started the
investigations against the Countess, arrested her and walled her up in a room for the rest of
her life – was an enemy of Gábor Báthory. Gábor Báthory became the prince of
Transylvania in 1608 and as for his personality, he was famous for his debauchery, which
also contributed to the picture of the Báthorys as sexual deviants (Nagy A rossz hírű
Báthoryak 159). His biggest rival was Gábor Bethlen, who became the prince of
Transylvania in 1613, after the assassination of Gábor Báthory. Bethlen proposed the most
famous Hungarian witch trial against Anna, the sister of Gábor Báthory. She was accused
of being a witch together with two widowed ladies, Kata Iffju and Kata Török. All of them
were thought to have fornicated with Gábor Báthory, the latter two using love potions to
seduce him. According to the counts, Anna committed incest, killed her son and hexed
Zsuzsanna Károlyi, the wife of Bethlen. The trial lasted from 1614 and 1621 in
Transylvania.
It must be added that Hungarian witch trials were different from their European
counterparts. In Hungary the main counts could be hexing, making love potions and
applying baleful magic against animals, and never reached such an extent as it did in
Western Europe (Nagy Erdélyi boszorkányperek 24). The accusation of blasphemy and
fornication with the Devil was rare in Hungary, unlike in other European countries. The
link between sexuality and women as witches resulted in distorted pictures about orgies
26
and perversions. The accused women had become scapegoats, the living manifestations of
the institutionalized misogyny on part of the Church. Anna Báthory was accused of being
licentious, but only during her third witch trial in 1621 was she charged with an alleged
relationship with the devil (Pivárcsi Boszorkányok könyve 180). During the three witchcraft
trials Anna Báthory’s estates were confiscated. László Nagy indicates that accusation with
witchcraft provided a good opportunity to seize land and property (Erdélyi
boszorkányperek 22). This must have happened in Báthory’s case, because when she made
an attempt to regain possession of her landed property, another trial was forced on her in
1640. It is obvious that the reason for the defamation of the Báthorys’ name might have
been a wish to tarnish the prestige of the Báthory family, to obtain their wealth and to
eliminate them from the political stage.
It is also interesting that the vampiric vision, the bathing in blood originated from a
Jesuit priest called László Túróczi who released his work Ungarica suis cum regibus
compendio data in 1729. Túróczi claims that when getting married, Elizabeth abjured her
Catholic faith which was consequently followed by the excess of cruelty (SzádeczkyKardoss 230). László Nagy points out that the charge of “bathing in blood” was never
mentioned during the legal proceedings (A rossz hírű Báthoryak 18). So, the picture of
Erzsébet Báthory as a vampire was contrived a hundred years after her death by a priest
who wanted to exploit her name to ‘moralize’, which is why it is quite unfortunate that this
is the most popular image that has spread about the Hungarian Countess.
Raymond T. McNally believes that Erzsébet Báthory served as the major model for
creating the fictitious Dracula figure, particularly in light of Stoker’s decision to move the
story from Austria to Transylvania, and the fact that Dracula becomes younger after
feeding on blood (Holte referring to McNally’s idea [1983] 98). It is most likely indeed
that the story’s location to Transylvania was under the influence of Gérard’s book and to
27
get rid of the textual echoes of the famous Carmilla novella (see in Ch. 1.3). The Count’s
rejuvenation by blood is falsely associated with the Báthory legend, because vampires in
folklore were always believed to avoid decomposition on account of the vital life-giving
qualities of blood.
1.3
Literary Bloodline: The Pre-Stokerian Heritage
The eighteenth century was full of anxiety and a sense of dissatisfaction due to
revolutions and wars. The French Revolution had a great impact on other countries, as
well. This period was characterized by changes; the socio-political structures were quite
unstable and some sectors of the economy were in the state of change, too. Macro- and
micro-social structures changed and even gender roles became strictly codified, which
resulted in the nineteenth-century prudery and repression. Gothic novels, which thrived in
the 1790s, reflected this anxiety. Manifesting the horrors and fears of society in a Gothic
idiom represented a kind of relief to both the audience and the writers. As Botting notes,
“the uncertainties about the nature of power, law, society, family and sexuality dominate
Gothic fiction… linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested most forcefully in
political revolution” (5). In parallel with English Gothic novels, the so-called
Schauerroman developed in Germany, and the roman noir in France. German Gothic had
two subgenres besides Schauerroman, Ritter- and Räuberroman (Terry 63). Ghosts,
knights and bandits became popular characters of the Gothic fiction. On account of the
translation process of the time, the Gothic had become a European phenomenon. Several
prominent authors translated and published German dramas in Great Britain, including
Matthew Gregory Lewis Minister: a Tragedy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge Wallenstein, and
Walter Scott Goetz of Berlichingen, with the Iron Hand (Gamer 88),
28
When Gothic fiction had its heyday at the end of the eighteenth century, English
prosaic narration had two genres: novel and romance. The novel was a new genre in the
eighteenth century: it was at first romantic – in the sense of being adventurous – or at least
picaresque, then became increasingly realistic until romance returned again and in the form
of the Gothic Novel (Summers 28). The novel, overwhelmed by realism, belonged to the
middle class and it was different from romances, which were considered to be
“sentimentalized tales of times past that focused on the aristocracy” (Heiland 4). Horace
Walpole, who published The Castle of Otranto in 1764, was amongst the first writers who
consciously attempted to combine the romance and the novel.6 The Castle of Otranto is
often said to be the first English Gothic novel, although there are wider origins for a genre
than just one book. The fact that the second edition was published with the subtitle A
Gothic Story must have played a great role in helping it gain its reputation. Nevertheless,
the importance of the novel is beyond dispute, since, as Montague Summers points out,
“we owe [The Castle of Otranto] nothing less than a revolution in public taste, and its
influence is strong even at the present day” (179). Horace Walpole not only contributed to
the propagation of the Gothic in literature, but also by building Strawberry Hill, a castle
which was intended to reflect the medieval past. The building has become a kind of
embodiment of the Gothic world.
Strawberry Hill, Walpole’s real castle, inspired his novel The Castle of Otranto.
Since Walpole’s novel, castles have become conventional settings of Gothic fiction with
sinister chambers, subterraneous caverns, vaults, dungeons and underground passages. A
genre means a set of conventions and formulaic things; besides the setting, Walpole’s
characters have also proven to be influential on the successors of his literary inheritance.
Vulnerable, virtuous young ladies (Matilda, Isabella), a young gallant hero (Theodore), a
6
Quoted from Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto, Preface to the Second Edition: “It was an attempt to
blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern” (21).
29
friar with moral doubts (Jerome), a submissive, devoted wife (Hipolita) and a tyrannical
patriarchal figure (Manfred) have become stock characters of the Gothic ‘idiom.’
Initially Gothic novels were medieval, clearly associated with the idea first used in
architectural reference. The Gothic as an aesthetic term was first used by early Renaissance
art historians in Italy to describe the medieval architectural style that flourished in the midthirteenth century in north-western Europe. Referring to medievalism in a pejorative way
by associating it with the barbaric Goths was a means to indicate the superiority of recent
neoclassicism (Hogle 16). This negative connotation with the medieval came to refer to
“almost any period until the middle, or even the end, of the seventeenth century”
(Summers 37).
Despite the association with destruction and dark powers, typical characters of
Gothic novels are the gallant hero and the virtuous lady, whose images originate from the
medieval description of the ideal relationship between a lady and a knight. According to
Brewer, the feudal model of the knight’s service to his lord also played a role in shaping an
image of ‘the religious and social superiority’ of the lady in the knight’s mind. Apart from
being “God’s ‘man’”, he was his “lord’s ‘man’”, and then became his “lady’s ‘man’”, too.
(95) Certain virtues and ideas were expected from a knight, among others loyalty to the
lord, the protection of Christendom and the protection of ladies. Love was regulated by
certain rules; courtesy became an important part of knightly behaviour besides bravery and
honour. As Scholes states, in old romances the characters were “highly stylized extremes
of virtues and vice” (36), so if there are parties who praise romantic love, there must be
those who are interested in the immoral aspects of sexuality. Abounding in problematic
transgressive sexual elements and psychological insights, Gothic novels dealt with issues
which later became matters of scientific investigation. “The sexological history of the
nineteenth century” George E. Haggerty points out, “began on the gothic stage” (84).
30
In The Castle of Otranto Manfred, an evil usurper prince wants to marry his deceased
son Conrad’s fiancée, the beautiful young Isabella. Manfred’s manoeuvres are embedded
in erotic codes. The friar, Jerome is taken aback because of Manfred’s “adulterous
intention” and his “incentous design on [his] contracted daughter” (Walpole 54). Even
Conrad, the sickly son, who is crushed to death by a massive helmet at his wedding day,
can be seen as “the sexual surrogate for Manfred” (Haggerty 21). After accidentally
murdering his own daughter, infanticide is also put on Manfred’s list of crimes. Walpole’s
great achievement was that he succeeded in combining in a single image “the sexual
anxiety of a victimized female, the incestuous desire of a libidinous male, [and] the use of
the actual physical features of the castle to represent political and sexual entrapment”
(Haggerty 22). This sinister atmosphere is backed up by supernatural, often miraculous
indications.
Apart from The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
and Matthew Gregory Lewis’s novel, The Monk (1796) are seminal writings for the genre.
Ann Radcliffe was liked by readers and critics alike, which seems to be a peculiar case
since critics usually did not praise Gothic writings at the time; literature and criticism
dealing with novels considered them to be inferior to poetry. According to Wellek and
Warren, the reason for this can be explained less by the fact that the novel is a relatively
new genre. They rather think it likely that the main reason is that poetry can be connected
with serious arts, whereas novels have a different function, they entertain, so they are less
sophisticated (217). Radcliffe’s stories were different from the majority, because she
provided rationalist explanations for the supernatural occurrence. In her stories, the
virtuous triumph, and she depicts the malignant machinations tastefully, too. In contrast
with this, Matthew Gregory Lewis’s most famous novel is full of preternatural activities.
Sometimes labelled as pornographic, the novel became a huge success among Lewis’s
31
contemporaries (Summers 213). The Monk is a storehouse of illicit sexuality, and the
thrilling effects of the story attracted the common reader.
The downfall of man is shown by Ambrosio, the well-respected clergyman. Monks,
nuns and other ecclesiastical people – those who are supposed to be the best able to resist
temptation – are favourite characters of Gothic writings. Their weakness is camouflaged by
piety and virtue. Those who are shaken in their moral responsibility are more interesting
characters than people who are simply vicious. They represent the possibility of constant
fluidity between good and evil, and remind readers of their personal choice, their free will.
In his novel’s primary plot, Matthew Gregory Lewis reveals a situation where hidden,
repressed feelings come to the surface in the form of many possible transgressions.
Ambrosio is seduced by a beautiful woman, Matilda, dressed as a young novice named
Rosario. He gives way to his lustful delirium but after getting bored with Matilda, he goes
on to find another target for his desire. The forbidden sexual acts are getting more violent
when he meets Antonia, a young maiden. Her violation at night and the murder of her
mother, Elvira, who discovers the monk’s hypocrisy, is by far not the climax of the story.
Pretending Antonia to be dead by giving her opiate, Ambrosio hides her in the convent
where he rapes her again, then takes her life. Sexual abuses reach a crescendo when
Lucifer discloses that Antonia was Ambrosio’s sister, and Elvira was his mother.
Haggerty argues that Ambrosio’s excessive behaviour is a “heterosexual panic, an
expression of destructive desire for the mother as a way of proving sexual normality” (27).
The ambiguity of the Rosario/Matilda character functions as a subtle hint at
homoeroticism. Suppressed desires as the source of the monk’s frustration resulting in
destructive manifestations and actions such as excessive behaviour, incest, matricide and
sororicide, play out anti-Catholic ideology throughout the novel. The Catholic Church is
seen as a repressive institution. Asceticism and celibacy bring about sexual misconduct of
32
various kinds in Ambrosio. Lust is a sin in the Catholic moral ideology, and Ambrosio’s
high libido motivates aggressive behaviour. The Monk is a Faustian theme and as such, it is
not characterized as good and bad, but the problem is erotic; the battle is between
sublimation and eros, where the devil epitomizes the erotic tempter (Jung Psychology of
the Unconscious 68).
The darker side of the Christian Church revealed itself in the witch hunting hysteria
in Europe that reached its first climax in the mid-fifteenth century and extended across
centuries. By the end of the eighteenth century, witch hunts had come to an end in all
countries of Europe. The evolvement of the popularity of vampire and ghost stories, a kind
of replacement of the witch craze, can be dated back to this period. Vampire stories started
to proliferate in literature, among which German poems were the pioneers. In 1748,
Heinrich August Ossenfelder’s short poem Der Vampir was among the first poems which
dealt with vampirism in the poetic tradition. Being rejected by a girl called Christine, who
adopts her mother’s Christian creed, the disappointed lover threatens her with immoral
vampire activities. Vampirism is seen as a violent outlet with erotic overtones. The young
man turns into a transgressor in order to gratify his desires.
Göttfried August Bürger’s Lenore, written in 1773, delves into the theme of the
undead again. His ballad breaks the boundaries between liminal and subliminal. Lenore, a
young girl is waiting for her lover, William, who has gone on crusade. The girl produces
symptoms of grief after the loss, imagining her bridegroom’s unfaithfulness inter alia.
William returns to his bride, but as an undead creature. The lovers elope. William’s
journey with Lenore, indicating the distance understood in terms of both space and time,
blurs the boundaries of life and death, and leaves the girl struggling between the possibility
of the union with him and the clinging to ordinary earthly existence.7 The boy’s spirit is
7
“Half dead, half living, the soul of Lenore
33
corporeal, therefore Lenore is easily seduced and taken in. Supernatural entities can be
classified into two categories regarding their manifestations: those who appear in the
animated physical body and the incorporeal. Functionally the former is used to attract or to
frighten the victim. The latter expresses people’s concerns with the phenomenology of the
spirit.
Bürger’s ballad definitely influenced Abraham Stoker, for Stoker quotes the line ‘For
the dead travel fast’ (‘Denn die Todten reiten schnell’) in Dracula (20), and it is also
mentioned in Dracula’s Guest when this text is graven in Russian letters on the back of
Countess Dolingen of Gratz’s tomb (22). This mystifying line is indicative of death’s
unavoidability. The dead return figuratively and take away the living. It is a frequent
happening that widows or widowers die soon after their beloved. In Lenore the return of
the dead lover is symbolic, Lenore dies of grief. She loves William very much and she is
unable to cope with the loss, thus the figure of her lover figuratively carries her off and
takes her into the otherworld. In Stoker’s Dracula Jonathan’s travelling companion
whispers these words, a kind of prophecy for the young attorney’s possible fate if he goes
on with his journey to the castle of the vampire. Death and people’s attitude to it shape the
underlying structure of vampire ballads giving an opportunity to deal with ontological
questions in a disguised form.
The third most influential German poem is The Bride of Corinth written by Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe in 1797. The confrontation between heathendom and Christianity,
the transitory part between the old and the new religion is embedded in ballad form. A
mother with strong Christian beliefs takes control over her daughter, but with less success
than the one in Ossenfelder’s poem. The young girl wants to get married with a boy of
pagan beliefs. She rebels against her own mother’s new religion therefore she is forced into
Fought as it never had fought before.” (lines 255-256)
34
a convent and has to become a nun, but finally dies there of grief. The mother is the cause
of the conflict, of the tragedy; she represents authority determining that everybody who
wants to exist outside the dominant ideological construct shall be punished.
The daughter returns from the grave leading an unbearable existence on the border of
life and death. Being an undead creature, she cannot reach salvation, cannot gain quietus;
her immortality is a curse. The poem is full of vampire imagery: she is very pale and cold,
“no heart is beating in her breast” (line 125), she is afraid of silver, lies in a coffin and has
to leave when the cock crows. The girl wants her mother to liberate her from this damned
condition, she entreats a pagan funeral. She demands to be burnt on a pyre along with her
fiancé. Their original union would be sanctified in the domain of death.
Vampires became fitting subjects of poetry in the eighteenth century, and in these
stories love played a central role, it was closely connected with vampirism. In
Ossenfelder’s poem, the rejected lover intends to use vampirism as a weapon in order to
carry out his evil intentions, but in Bürger’s and Goethe’s story, the undead lovers come
back from the grave for love. Paramours are separated, and their union is unattainable in
mortal realms. Their proscription from earthly existence is a rebellion against the
conventions of their social background.
All these three German ballads proved to be influential on the English romantic
poets, and these creatures were mostly used symbolically or metaphorically. For the
Romantic poets, another important source was Dom Augustin Calmet’s book, Traité sur
les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires, ou les revenants de Hongrie, de Moravie,
etc. (1746) in which the author made an attempt at synthesizing vampire beliefs. With the
help of Calmet’s collected superstitions, poets approached folkloric sources, and
supernatural entities became favourable topics in their poetry. With the appearance of
35
frightening hideous creatures, the emphasis shifted from the beautiful to the sublime in the
Romantic period.
Edmund Burke developed the concept of the sublime in his treatise, A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). His idea has
proved to be an essential aesthetical category in the criticism of the Gothic, also acting
upon the entire body of Gothic and Romantic literature. Burke associated the beautiful and
the sublime with pleasure and pain, stating that “[t]hey are indeed ideas of a very different
nature, one being founded on pain, the other on pleasure; and however they may vary
afterwards from the direct nature of their causes, yet these causes keep up an eternal
distinction between them, a distinction never to be forgotten by any whose business it is to
affect the passions” (238). “A mode of terror, or of pain” (258) is the cause of the sublime,
also associated with perceiving danger and the fear of death. The sublime always relates to
darkness and not to light.
European romanticism co-existed with the Gothic. Romanticism, as did Gothic,
revolted against rationalism. Both of them are in favour of a sentimental reverie. The
dissatisfaction with contemporary events and the quest for the ideal are dislocated in the
past. Passionately motivated actions and the expression of extreme emotions are also
pivotal. Although there is no such specific genre as Gothic poetry, there are definitely a
myriad of poems that contain Gothic elements. The gloomy, dark, melancholic atmosphere
and certain “stock of words” are determinant. Both Romanticism and the Gothic have
common sources; one of them is partiality for folk tales and ballads. Ballads belong to the
oral tradition, and are fond of passionate and dramatic actions, often merging the real and
the preternatural. The liking for balladry, and especially the supernatural can be traced
back most obviously in Coleridge’s poetical works among the English Romantic poets, but
John Keats’s La Belle Dame sans Merci also exemplifies the influence of the ballad
36
tradition. Coleridge’s poem Christabel portrays a lesbian vampire and Keats’s vampiric
women fatally seduce men. The horror stories formed unconscious fears into discourse, of
which one of the pictorial expressions has become the vampire.
Coleridge uses Gothic elements in Christabel, including the dark, the castle, the
desolate region and the appearance of a strange woman with mysterious past. Christabel,
the young protagonist represents innocence. She is chaste and absorbed in religion. It is at
a religious moment when she goes out to pray at night that she meets Geraldine, her mirror
image. Telling a story about having escaped from five warriors’ violent assault, Geraldine
is invited into the castle as a guest. Geraldine immediately lies down next to Christabel on
the bed and shares intimate moments with her. The forbidden sexual preference is
camouflaged with a preternatural entity although at first Christabel and the reader might
not realize this. The poem is full of reference to Geraldine’s vampiric nature usually
sprung from folklore beliefs, such as the dark setting, the nightly visit and the vampire’s
coming because of an invitation on the victim’s part, but mainly in the scene when
The gate that was ironed within and without,
Where an army in battle array had marched out.
The lady sank, belike through pain,
And Christabel with might and main
Lifted her up, a weary weight,
Over the threshold of the gate:
Then the lady rose again,
And moved, as she were not in pain.
(lines 127-134 )
Geraldine is always mentioned as a beautiful woman. Coleridge’s vampiress image seemed
to have established a criterion followed later by those depicting female vampires, a
37
tendency that female vampires are exclusively attractive, therefore their main interest
becomes seduction just like in the case of many mythological progenitors.
Lamia can be seen as one of the prototypes of the vampires. Lamias and vampires are
supernatural creatures. They come back from the underworld, but they preserve some
physical qualities as well. The lamia is present in Greek and Roman mythologies. She is
described as a female enchantress who seduces young men and sucks the blood of children.
In Greek mythology, lamias are described as cruel and bloodthirsty creatures, but Keats’s
protagonist in Lamia is not similar to these demonic females at all. She is a vision, the
incarnation of love and beauty. However, there is not only harmony, but also violent
elements in the poem. The experience of pleasure and pain shows that love not only has
good sides, but it is more complex than being a mere positive state of mind.
The main story of Keats’s poem is prefaced by the tale of Hermes and a nymph he is
yearning for. Hermes spots the beautiful nymph and immediately gets enchanted by her,
but Lamia makes the nymph invisible and Hermes has to make a bargain with her in order
to be able to see the beautiful creature again. Lamia promises to make the nymph visible
again if Hermes transfigures her into a humanly figure, because she is in the form of a
serpent. She longs for a human body as well as for love and pleasure. When in snake’s
form, Lamia is described as
“ (…) some penanced lady elf,
Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.”
(lines 55-56; emphasis added)
which refers to something evil. It is as if she had sinned sometime in the past and the snake
form is the punishment for it. There is a connection to other Greek myths, where Lamia has
38
a woman’s upper body, but her lower part is serpentine. Keats’s Lamia has only one
womanish feature, she has a woman’s mouth,
“Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete:”
(lines 59-60)
Serpents are often associated with temptation. Keats enhances this tempting quality by
describing her throat as that of a serpent’s, however it has nothing to do with wicked
intentions at all.
“Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake,”
(lines 64-65)
Temptation plays a very important role in love. It can be considered as the first step
towards a love relationship. Lamia is a snake, but she acts “for Love’s sake.” This points to
human nature where temptation is not necessarily evil, but it is a natural part of a certain
process. Moreover, she has some previous human history:
“I was a woman, let me have once more
A woman’s shape, and charming as before.”
(lines 117-118)
Lamia is capable of certain emotions. She sees a young Corinthian man in her dream and
she falls for him. She wants to be a woman again in order to meet this mortal man. The
serpent begins to change. Her transformation is quite detailed. After transformation, by the
39
wayside she lingers and waits for Lycius like a huntress lurking for her prey. Lamia
becharms the young philosophy student at first sight. She entices through the senses.
Lycius cannot resist her beauty. The girl’s voice has a musical quality. Not only her
physical appearance, but her voice becomes alluring, too. Her visual beauty is strengthened
by audibility. It is also remarkable that Lamia has a sexual duality, but in different terms
than the vampires. She is a virgin and an experienced person in love acts at the same time,
which is an obvious paradox.
“A virgin purest lipp’d, yet in the lore
Of love deep learned to the red heart’s core:”
(lines 189-190)
In the Victorian period the virtue of women was a very important point according to the
moral code. In Keats’s poem virtuous and passionate woman images are rolled into one.
This blended image creates a new woman type. Passion seems to be a natural concomitant
of womanhood and not something that needs to be repressed.
Lamia’s nature includes divinity. Lycius addresses her as a goddess and she responds
to him in this way. The beloved person embodies godliness to a certain extent and the
union between the two connotes the possibility of immortality. Furthermore, she makes the
nymph invisible, and Hermes can see her again only after promising to transform her into a
human figure, which is another proof for her superhuman abilities. This situation changes
when Lycius wants to marry her, because he starts treating her as a mortal. He asks for her
real name and about her kinship. Imposing a name is equal to imposing reality, but Lycius
fails to reveal Lamia’s real existence. He is illuded and blinded by love. The poem is full
40
of Greek images of visible beauty which provides the vision of the eternal. The love of
beauty is also important in Romantic poetry. Harmony and unity are present in the case of
Hermes and the nymph’s relationship. Their union embodies the concept of ideal love.
Keats puts this idyll in a non-human realm. It is as if he was conscious of the impossible
state of the ideal in the human world, so he paints a disappointed picture of humanity as
being excluded from perfection.
Since there is no perfection, only the illusion of it, Lamia is revealed in the end. The
question of time plays an important part, because illusions can be kept up for awhile, but
sooner or later they cease and reality unfolds. Lamia is afraid of Apollonius, the
philosopher. The marriage is about to take place, the guests arrive, and to Lamia’s sorrow
the philosopher turns up uninvited. There is an obvious reference to Apollo and like the
Greek God, Apollonius brings order. The ending of the poem provides an explanation as to
the real nature of Lycius’s and Lamia’s love. Apollonius is able to see the serpent in Lamia
and makes her disappear. Lamia is a mere illusion and the illusion of love is broken by
philosophy. Apollonius makes Lycius see love’s real nature. He wants the young
Corinthian understand that love is temporary and it fades away. Human life as well as
passion is finite. As Perkins argues, the immortal female character’s union with the mortal
man symbolizes “the human yearning to retain forever the apex of passionate intensity”
(Perkins 145).
Love auspicates with the possibility of immortality, but Lycius is unable to accept
this. The consequence of Apollonius’s revelation is disastrous. The truth seems to be
intolerable: Lamia and her lover Lycius both perish. Lycius is a philosophy student, a person who is basically moderate and can resist a lot of things except love and beauty.
Beauty and truth are separated. It can only be seen with the help of the imagination. In
Keats’s poem, reason is part of the imagination. The visionary is confronted with the
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actual. Love is not fulfilled in the human world. There is an idealism in Romanticism and
this idealism is present in the poem. The love of beauty trespasses human limits with the
help of the imagination, and although reality may seem tragic, imagination provides an
alternative reality.
Beautiful physical appearance is a concomitant of supernatural femininity. Lamia and
the nymph as well as vampiresses represent visional beauty. Physical beauty is temporary
just like the illusion of love, but putting these women into a non-human world, the delusion
of eternal beauty survives in the imagination. Lamia and Christabel are both female
creatures who are beyond the realm of the actual. Such supernatural entities have
archetypal aspects. Taking their mythological roots into consideration, it can be stated that
they are personifications of the collective unconscious in given cultures. Lamia is a wellknown figure from Greek and Roman beliefs, and vampires are manifestations of certain
superstitious anxieties amongst the Eastern-European ethnic groups. There is no
individuality reflected in these characters. Appearing in a multiplicity of forms, they are
personifications of fatal beauty, the incarnations of the femme fatale.
Despite some poetic manifestations, the vampire topos is essentially narrative. The
first English prose on the subject was The Vampyre written by John Polidori in 1819. In the
summer of 1816, a prominent company gathered at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Dr. John William Polidori, Matthew Gregory Lewis
and Lord Byron read out German horror stories translated into French, and at the
suggestion of Byron they each began to write a supernatural tale. Mary Shelley’s novel
Frankenstein and Polidori’s novella The Vampyre were both written in this competition.
Polidori was Byron’s travelling physician, and Byron’s indirect influence on the character
and personality of Lord Ruthven, the antagonist of The Vampyre revolutionized the
depiction of vampires. His impact on the subsequent vampire representations is so great
42
that according to MacCarthy, the ambitious young physician established the vampire cult
in England and on the continent, which culminated in Stoker’s Dracula in 1897 (294). On
account of the Byronic vampire, the “walking, predatory carrion” (Skal 14) from folkloric
beliefs has been replaced by the demonic beauty of the romantic hero. In the pre-romantic
era, vampires lived in people’s minds as frightening supernatural creatures. Every country
had had its vampiric figures, endowed with habits adjusted to the given culture. When
vampires appeared in literature, the elements of folkloric vampire beliefs were broadened,
but “middle- and upper-class vampires did not make their appearance until John Polidori
published The Vampyre” (Heiland 106).
Fiona MacCarthy’s relatively new Byron biography lays the emphasis on the poet’s
private life. Byron was the centre of attention not only for his poetic achievement but also
for his dissolute life. Lady Caroline Lamb was one of the aristocratic ladies with whom
Byron had an affair, but Caroline could not accept the end of the affair d’amour and started
pursuing him. She threatened the poet with ruin by accusing him of sodomite affairs. In
1816 she published a novel entitled Glenarvon, in which she located their relationship in a
Gothic environment. Later Lamb denied that the novel was supposed to be a kind of
retribution on Byron (The Whole Disgraceful Truth 152). The irony of the novel is that not
only Caroline and Byron make appearance, but also some members of Lamb’s aristocratic
circle, which resulted in Lamb’s ostracism in the end.
The basic plot of the novel focuses on the romance of Calantha/Lady Avondale
(Caroline) and Clarence de Ruthven/Lord Glenarvon (Byron). Calantha becomes the wife
of Lord Avondale (William Lamb) but after a little while passion runs dry and to
compensate the negligence of Lord Avondale, Calantha begins an affair with Glenarvon.
Clarence de Ruthven is a gothic villain, dark, demonic in personality but with his “angel
face” and “sweetest voice” (Lamb Glenarvon 232) he is most attractive. His charm attracts
43
Calantha, who cannot resist temptation, so becomes a willing victim. Calantha is a typical
passive Gothic heroine at the beginning, who incarnates all the virtues of society;
righteous, but later falling into sin.
She is not the only female victim of Glenarvon; more girls appear from his past.
Elinor, the forsaken inamorata pops up several times. Her fate is a warning for Calantha,
who ignores it. Calantha’s friend, Alice Mac Allain also becomes the “victim” of
Glenarvon, whose story, just like Calantha’s, ends in liebestod. Lust is reset into death; the
female characters literally die of love. Glenarvon cannot escape his fate either; the devil
takes him in the form of his former lovers.
In Lamb’s novel, the seductive bloodsucker is present only metaphorically, although
his impact on the first English vampire prose is undeniable. In Villa Diodati, Lord Byron
composed a novel fragment about a vampire aristocrat, Augustus Darvell, and Polidori
based his novella upon Byron’s main idea. The Vampyre was falsely published under the
name of Byron in England in 1819; a misunderstanding which disturbed Byron and made
Polidori threaten with taking legal proceedings against the publisher. The mistake was later
corrected. It must be no coincidence that Polidori’s vampire is called Ruthven just like
Lady Caroline Lamb’s antagonist. Byron’s wild sexuality is inherently part of the vampire
character, who overtly ruins his female acquaintances through seduction and desertion.
The protagonist of the story, Ruthven’s opposite is Aubrey, a young man who
accompanies him to the Continent. The Aubrey—Ruthven companionship seems to be the
projected version of Polidori and Byron. It is known that when Polidori joined Byron’s
European tour as a physician, a certain Lord Murray, Byron’s publisher offered him ₤500
for the rights to the diary he intended to write about Byron’s journey (MacCarthy 285).
During the trip of Ruthven and his companion, iniquity triumphs. Aubrey is taken aback
when he learns that Ruthven is preparing for a clandestine rendezvous with a young maid.
44
To his question whether he intends to marry the girl, Ruthven just laughs. On account of
this incident revealing Lord Ruthven’s corrruptness, Aubrey decides not to be his
travelling companion anymore and leaves the lord. Ruthven goes on with his pursuit of
women.
Later they meet again in Greece. Lord Ruthven, whose vampiric existence becomes
obvious, kills Aubrey’s lover, the innocent Ianthe. This is also the location where Aubrey
must take an oath to the dying Ruthven, who has been attacked and fatally wounded by
some highwaymen, that he will not tell anyone about Ruthven’s death for one year and one
day. Gelder suggests that the time spent together in Greece and the oath becomes the
concealment of homosexuality (P. Flocke [1999] qtd. in Janion 163). If we accept this
assumption as true, then locating the story in Greece is an apt choice. In the ancient Greek
period people had a freer notion concerning carnal pleasures; the choice of sexual object
was not a question of great moment. The practice of the Self, that is self-mastery, which
can lead to moderateness, was emphasized and there were no strict codifications for the act
itself. People’s attitude was what counted when it came to moral judgments (Foucault The
Use of Pleasure 99). Similarly, Byron had several love affairs in this country, both with
girls and boys, and his bisexuality might have inspired Polidori.
Sex is a weapon, and the victims of the vampire are violated through sexual activity.
Desires evoked by the vampire are of transgressive nature since the character of Polidori’s
bloodsucker is inconsistent with good morals. There is not even a hint at scrupulous
ambiguity: Lord Ruthven is a person of moral corruption, which is made clear from the
beginning. Aubrey observes that Ruthven does not bestow his alms upon the virtuous, but
when a profligate person comes to ask something, “not to relieve his wants, but to allow to
wallow in his lust, or to sink him still deeper in his iniquity, he [is] sent away with rich
45
charity” (Polidori 9). Ruthven leads a decadent life, supports the iniquitous, and it does not
take a long time for the virtuous Aubrey to recognize the Evil in his person.
Aubrey is an orphan, and children without either one or both parents are fashionable
characters of Gothic writings. Without parental authority and proper moral guidance, they
become vulnerable and they are the ones who welcome the transgressive elements in the
form of the supernatural stranger. Aubrey cannot help Ianthe, the girl he loves or his
beloved sister. Ruthven marries Miss Aubrey, and after a while Aubrey breaks his oath and
tells their common secret, but the irony is that nobody believes him. Being ill, nobody
gives credit to his words, everybody attributes it to his alleged madness. The young man
cannot escape his fate, either. Although he is not a conventional victim of the vampire, he
dies, eventually, too.
Another important piece of writing, which has contributed to the popularization of
the vampire in literature, is the “penny dreadful” novel Varney the Vampire, or The Feast
of Blood (1845-47)8. Penny dreadfuls were not critically acclaimed, but they were popular
among the lower classes. “There is no pretense, no purpose, no art; just a rollicking story”
writes Twitchell (124) about this serialized novel, but despite the lack of high literary
value, Varney has provided inspiration for subsequent vampire stories – including Dracula.
Following the tradition of Polidori’s vampire, Varney is also an upper-class bloodsucker,
although he does not belong to the charming Byron-like monsters, he is described as
ferocious and his great height and pallor make him something of an oddity. “His ugliness
marks his otherness” opines Heiland (113). True, Varney cannot use his outward
appearance to tempt his victims, he rather catches his target's eyes. When seducing his
victims, the hypnotic effect of his gaze is accentuated. He holds the victim with his
8
At first, Thomas Preskett Prest was taken to be the alleged writer of Varney the Vampyre, but then the work
was alternatively attributed to James Malcolm Rymer. The inconsistency of the story (full of little mistakes
such as for instance Varney’s reason for becoming a vampire; firstly he is said to have killed his wife, later to
have murdered his son) might mean that more than one person wrote the story, thus can be seen as the
collaboration of the aforementioned writers.
46
“glittering eyes” (Prest 2), and his eyes have a “savage and remarkable lustre” (Prest 3).
The predatory vision reflects the predatory nature.
First of all, Flora Bannerworth, a young girl is subjected to the visitations of the
vampire. She is a typical Victorian woman victim representing female domestic
powerlessness. She is beautiful and has “the charms of the girl − almost of the child, with
the more matured beauty and gentleness of advancing years” (Prest 4). Young girls
budding into womanhood are favourite potential victims in vampire tales. They are not
children nor yet fully adult, they are on the verge of their loss of innocence, and this loss is
set in an erotic context. Vampires are in sharp contrast with this virginal beauty, they
represent the instinctual side of human beings. Varney’s “fearful-looking teeth, projecting
like those of some wild animal” (Prest 6), enhance the penetration effect; the bloody fangs
are ready to pierce the displaced hymen violently on the maidens’ neck. Varney’s
impending act of entry does not promise pleasure to Flora. The girl seems to be aware of
the consequence of the sexual abuse; that his assault on her would make her the same
wretch as he is. This is the source of her fears from him. She has a lover, Charles Holland,
and engaging in premarital sex with another partner is inconsistent with her ethical creed.
Not only textual characters were endangered by fictitious evil monsters, but these
penny dreadfuls themselves were considered “monsters” in the eyes of the critics: they
were regarded as dangerous for middle-class women, who should have no knowledge of
carnal pleasure. Sex is the initiation rite into vampirism in most tales, and the resistance on
the part of the heroine brings about a dramatic struggle between the participants, the
conflict situation in the book. Young girls were advised not to read romance novels and
Gothic stories, for these writings would impose a distorted sense of reality upon them.
Furthermore, the function of these novels is entertainment, they are full of thrills and
47
suspense, which would make the girls think that life is some kind of exciting adventure,
and they come off badly easily because of their naivety9 (Stevens 23).
Sir Francis Varney is a kind of monster that can be dangerous, mostly because his
character discloses a vampire with human concerns. Varney despises his condition. It must
be added that at times his character is a bit confusing, because it is not always sure whether
he is a bloodsucker or a human being who acts like a vampire.10 Whatever the case, his
suicide at the end is quite unusual in vampire stories, he throws himself into Mount
Vesuvius. He seeks relief from pain, and that makes him humanlike.
1872 is another important date in the history of vampire literature, since Joseph
Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla was published that year. The novella – like vampire stories in
general – is abundant in sexual matters. Le Fanu animated a female figure, Carmilla who
breaks sexual taboos, preying only on women, thus overtly looking for same-sex partners.
Carmilla is eroticized and her sexual proclivities are obvious without having displaced
gender identity, as characteristic of Stoker’s vampiresses, as will be discussed later. Her
lascivious attention to Laura, her main victim challenges the heteronormative structure of
society. Moreover, a woman dominates another woman, which provides a new
interpretation to the connection of sexuality with power. The influence of Coleridge’s
Christabel on Le Fanu’s novella is beyond doubt, but from Coleridge’s fragment Le Fanu
succeeded in creating a complete story, which celebrates the first English prosaic
vampiress.
The setting is described in the Gothic idiom, including a gothic chapel, a gothic
bridge, a forest, a ruined village and several tombs. The Gothic atmosphere provides a
9
An extract from Scots Magazine (1797) about Gothic stories which were assumed to be corrupting to the
woman reader: “[Gothic romances are]… liable to produce mischiveous effects… some of them frequently
create a susceptibility of impression and a premature warmth of tender emotions, which, not to speak of other
possible effects, have been known to betray women into a sudden attachment to persons unworthy of their
affection, and thus to hurry them into marriages terminating in their unhappiness…”
10
The chaotic content of the book may be due to the two different authors who supposedly wrote the story.
48
presentiment of transgressive sexuality. Even Laura calls their location a “lonely and
primitive place” (Le Fanu 228). The primitive and the archaic hint at the unconscious, at
repressed desires, and in this way the visual background frames famously the darker side
of the personality that needs to be explored – in this case that of Laura. Laura, the female
protagonist can be seen as a conventional heroine from Gothic novels. She is passive and
innocent, characterized by the lack of a mother figure from infancy, since her mother died
in childbirth. Laura lives with her father in a forlorn schloss, in total isolation from the
outer world. Located in seclusion, they are separated from social norms, thus without
proper mother-woman precedent she lacks an introduction to the issues of sexuality. The
nucleus of the family life, the father figure is supposed to secure the patriarchal structure,
but in Le Fanu’s novella it is he who invites Carmilla, the transgressive stranger, into their
home.
Carmilla is remarked as being “absolutely beautiful”, “gentle”, “nice” and having a
“sweet voice” (Le Fanu 239); clearly positive statements are made about her. She is
endowed with aurally and visually tempting qualities, which makes her victims easier to
draw towards her. It is no wonder that Laura welcomes Carmilla, and with Carmilla’s
image, her own lesbian tendencies. “I have been in love with no one, and never shall, (...)
unless it should be with you” (Le Fanu 255) whispers Carmilla to the other girl
remarkably; never had been same-sex desire so overtly exposed in vampire literature
before. Laura fosters ambiguous feelings towards the stranger, she is drawn towards her,
yet feels repulsion at the same time. The constant alternation of pleasure-unpleasure
principles produces an unfathomable love in Laura. In the vicinity of the pulchritudinous
Carmilla, pleasure predominates over guilty conscience; however, Laura’s moral
conviction constantly collides with her desires.
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Le Fanu’s story includes a lot of elements which later have been widely used in
vampire tales. First of all, the doppelgänger theme, the phenomenon of the double. In
Carmilla, the double, the Freudian uncanny takes the form of a preternatural entity.
Secondly, the vampire has an animal alter ego; she can turn into a black cat on occasion.
The animal side symbolizes the subhuman, instinctual parts of human nature. Animal
metamorphosis is well-known from folklore tales, too, such as the conventional ways of
Eastern European beliefs about how to end the vampire’s existence. A stake is driven
through the heart of Carmilla and she is decapitated at the end. The reader also learns that
she is at least one-hundred and fifty years old, yet remains fresh and beautiful. It is
youthful beauty that paves the way for the vampiress to her victim.
Carmilla’s intimacy with Laura develops gradually; as an ardorous lover, Carmilla
embraces and talks passionately to Laura in daylight, and goes on caressing her at night.
The vampire cunnilingus, which is always experienced in dreams, weakens Laura. The
ignorant girl’s sensual nightmare-sequences suggest a struggle with sexual urges. The
erotic dream-nightmare has become an essential gothic experience. Gothic fiction provides
an exploration of the subconscious, and the profound psychological dimension of the
stories cannot be ignored. No wonder that issues in Gothic narrative have become
favourable materials for scientific investigations. Dreams and nightmares have inspired
psychologists to delve into the nature of these phenomena, and provide their own
theoretical interpretations.
The psychoanalytic approach of dream interpretation was an important area of
research. Both Jung and Freud believed dreams to be meaningful phenomena. Freud’s idea
is that the dream is a wish-fulfilment in the first place, but according to Jung it is rather a
“spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious”
(Jung Dreams 49). Dreams definitely have a figurative or symbolic language. Dreams, or
50
rather nightmares are frequently parts of gothic novels. In Carmilla the first encounter of
the two girls happen in childhood, in a dream. Laura was six years old then, and this marks
the earliest incident in her life which she can recall. As Jung indicates, if feminine figures
appear in dream, they point to the feminine nature of the unconscious (Jung Dreams 126).
Laura’s confrontation with her feminine side is essential.
Yet, another explanation might hold water if sexual implications are taken into
consideration. Written at a time when not only “active sexuality” was looked at with
suspicion, but even masturbation considered a “shameful and criminal act” (Cooke 85) the
logical consequence as a widespread phenomenon had turned out to be the suppression of
desires. During the 1870s, female sexuality had been rediscovered. Before that, the general
notion was that women had no sexual impulse, and thus women were turned into
household nuns11 within the cult of domesticity. Nineteenth-century doctors and educators
contributed to the paranoia about masturbation by declaring that sexual excess was
pernicious and (frequent) onanism could lead to lunacy (Crow 176). In Krafft-Ebing’s
Psychopatia Sexualis, a pathological onanist’s case shows that the first pleasures of
autoeroticism later “disclose[d] its bad results” (199), the patient began to suffer from
neuralgia of the testicles. Masturbation was seen as negative and dangerous. I suggest that
one possible interpretation of the tale of Laura and Carmilla reveals Laura’s autoerotic
“transgression.”
Laura complains of her suppressed instincts and emotions as well as the absence of a
male lover. After the erotic manifestations, a certain languidness follows the act. Laura’s
dualistic attitude towards onanism is characterized by the constant struggle between
adoration and abhorrence. Religious constraints are primary sources to view onanism as
moral frailty. Carmilla, the metaphoric sexual nature of Laura bears no religious sentiment;
11
The expression is borrowed from Bram Dijkstra. It aptly represents the woman’s or more precisely the
wife’s place in society, the asexual woman whose life should be centered on household chores instead of any
other activities
51
she is clearly anti-Christian. Laura balances between religion and committing the
autoerotic act itself. Carmilla is murdered once in Laura’s dream, but cannot be suppressed
entirely. The unconscious feelings keep coming back. The male characters of authority (a
priest, the doctor, General Spieldorf) fight against Carmilla and for the virtue of Laura.
Finally they terminate Carmilla’s existence, but only seemingly. The novella ends with
Laura’s remark that the image of Carmilla still haunts her sometimes. Instead of
experiencing pleasure, she chooses repression.
Vampire narratives are tales of forbidden desires. Vampires are executed in the end,
therefore the order of the accepted Victorian conservative consensus is restored. Le Fanu’s
vampire novella influenced Stoker, as there are textual echoes in Dracula. Le Fanu’s story
takes place in Styria, which remained as the setting of Dracula’s Guest. Another similarity
is the aristocratic Countess Dolingen of Gratz, whose marble tomb Jonathan12 comes
across in the storm. The Countess is a vampire, described as a “beautiful woman, with
rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier” (Stoker Dracula’s Guest 23).
Critics still argue whether this short story was originally part of Dracula or this is a freestanding narrative on its own. The different narrative style, the use of a single narrator
instead of the novel’s multi-narrator approach suggests that this short story must have been
written in preparation for the novel.
12
His name is not mentioned in Dracula’s Guest, although the similarities to Dracula makes it obvious that
this is the young attorney’s journey to Dracula. A letter from Dracula also indicates a kind of pre-version of
the novel’s first scene.
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CHAPTER 2 - FICTION
2.1
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
When Stoker was bedridden during his childhood years, his mother used to tell him true
stories about the cholera epidemic (Davies 7). His isolation, physical disability and the
dreadful stories must have evoked fears in the little boy, and being alone a lot, he must
have lost himself in fantasies. On the personal level, Dracula can be viewed as an
unconscious flow manifesting the post-traumatic early experience of the Irish writer, but
with its symbolic readings, the novel can be regarded as “a tantalizing Rosetta Stone of the
darker aspects of the Victorian psyche” (Skal 39) for readers in modern times. The
epistolary technique with subjective points of view has deep psychological dimensions.
Dracula is a masterpiece; it is not only entertaining, but unfolds a picture about the coded
Victorian life and a conservative era where more liberated ideas challenge the strict moral
code, something that can be interpreted on the individual level, as well. In the next
subchapters I intend to explore some aspects of the novel’s symbolic reading.
2.1.1
The Chthonic Realm of Our Psyche: Mythic and Moral
Aspects of Dracula’s Nature
Myths reflect the collective experience of mankind. Certain things recur in world
myths. Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychologist, psychiatrist and analyst noticed that his
patients’ dreams contained a lot of similar motifs without being acquainted with one
another. He observed that these motifs in dreams are akin to motifs appearing in myths,
53
tales and legends. These archaic pictures or symbols which are universally recognized, he
entitled archetypes. (Bevezetés a tudattalan pszichológiájába 93) Vampires also reveal a
number of mythic features which can be found in several deities of world mythology. They
are Creators, they have the power to give and take away life, they are preserver and
destroyer. Dracula shows similarities with many creation myths. The vampire does not
need a woman to give birth. That is why he is a divine creature. In this sense, he is father
and mother at the same time. Since he is also the lover of the victim, a very strange
incentuous relationship can be disclosed. Likewise, the first gods were all incestuous:
having no other partner to mate with, they often had a sexual relationship with their own
brother, sister, mother or father.
Vampires clearly possess godlike features. From Stoker’s working notes it is known
that the writer had three possible titles in mind when writing Dracula, namely Count
Dracula, The Un-Dead and The Dead UnDead (Skal 43). These titles allude to one of the
key features of the vampires, to immortality. Athanasia is an ontological boundary that
separates humans from deities. Dracula’s figure as a deity is the most striking in his
relation with Renfield. Renfield’s devoted exclamation that “I am here to Your bidding,
Master. I am Your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful. I have worshipped
You long and after off” (Dracula 126) clearly manifests that he worships Dracula. Once an
attendant even remarks that Renfield behaves at times as if a “sudden form of religious
mania” (Dracula 124) has seized him. Not only Renfield sees Dracula as a God, Dracula
makes himself be seen as a God, he is conscious of his power: “All these lives will I give
you, ay, and many more and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and
worship me!” (Dracula 333) Renfield wants to benefit from the relationship with the
Count; he is eager to have immortality. He is obsessed with bloodlust and eternal life.
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“But those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise
them at the last day” (John 6:53-57) promises Christ: the end of death and the beginning of
eternal life to believers. The idea that the soul is eternal makes humans immortal spiritual
beings. The immortality myth is important for people, it gives hope that there is life after
death and that we have a lot of time still. This delusion boils down to the effort to
overcome our fear of death, and as Freud notes, to “maintain moral order among the
living” (The Uncanny 945). The creation of immortal supernatural entities can be seen as a
power-wish, a metaphysical impossibility to conquer death, but also entails another
explanation with a moral lesson. Beyond our own relation to death, we have to cope with
the loss of our beloved ones. We do not know what happens after physical death, but we
certainly know what it is like to lose someone close to us. The return of the dead in evil
forms unconsciously inspires people to let the dead go and let their former attachment be
broken off. Some old beliefs of primitive races can be traced back in the relation between
the living and the dead in civilized societies as Freud refers to R. Kleinpaul (The Living
and the Dead in Folklore, Religion and Myth, 1898) in Totem and Taboo that
[a]ccording to him too, this relation culminates in the conviction that the
dead, thirsting for blood, draw the living after them. The living did not
feel themselves safe from the persecutions of the dead until a body of
water had been put between them. That is why it was preferred to bury
the dead on islands or to bring them to the other side of a river, the
expressions "here" and "beyond" originated in this way. Later moderation
has restricted the malevolence of the dead to those categories where a
peculiar right to feel rancor had to be admitted, such as the murdered who
pursue their murderer as evil spirits, and those who, like brides, had died
with their longings unsatisfied. Kleinpaul believes that originally,
however, the dead were all vampires, who bore ill-will to the living, and
55
strove to harm them and deprive them of life. It was the corpse that first
furnished the conception of an evil spirit.
(99)
The dead crave blood, that is, they bear the primary qualities of a vampire. Vampires
become parasites who can live only with the help of human blood, or rather, they are
parasitic, because they finally destroy their host, leastways they deprive the soul of their
victim(s) from salvation.
It is important to note that despite the glorious imagination of a Christian afterlife,
vampires’ immortality means damnation. The vampire inverts the ideal representative
image of the good Christian, whose body is temporary but his soul is eternal. In contrast,
the undead bloodsuckers’ body, physicality is what is eternal, but their soul is already lost.
This immortality is paradoxical though, because they can be destroyed. Religious objects
are proper weapons against them, since a vampire is an anti-God, who does not provide
moral principles and lacks ethical attitudes. Their form reveals to people the danger of not
yielding to the Christian religious belief system, and the consequences of leading an
immoral or amoral life. It can be stated that religion and cultural values are intertwined in
the character of the vampire. In Stoker’s Dracula, Renfield realizes this illusionary aspect
of immortality. First, he succumbs to the temptation of everlasting life, but then he changes
his mind when he feels burdened with souls.
In order to keep up their undead existence, vampires need to drink blood, suffer from
blood fixation, and gain power from the red liquid. “The blood is the life! The blood is the
life!” cries Renfield in Stoker’s Dracula after he cuts Dr Seward’s left wrist, and licks up
the vital liquid from the floor (Dracula 171). Blood as being equal to life is a very ancient
myth of mankind. It was early recognized by tribal societies that losing too much blood
resulted in losing one’s life, therefore they attributed the red liquid with magical properties.
56
Drinking from the enemy’s blood was a superstitional belief of conveying the power of the
deceased. In vampire myth it is blood through which the materialization of the evil spirit
can come through. The sanguine fluid serves as a mediator between the living and the
dead, which makes it possible for the dead to animate and come back to haunt human
beings. Blood is the main element in the vampire creation myth, but it is clear that
sanguine drops were primary elements for creating humans in several other myths
worldwide.
In the creation myth of Babylonia, the primordial mother Tiamat’s son Kingu played
a significant role. After Marduk cut Tiamat’s body into two pieces, thus creating sky from
her upper-, and earth from her lower body, he used Kingu’s blood in order to create the
first humans. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica is pervaded by blood symbolism, too. The
priests held down the sacrificial victim, stretched him out and cut out his heart while he
was still alive with an obsidian knife. With this method they sacrificed thousands of
people. Behind these barbarous acts lay the belief of their creation myth. According to
legends, the god Quetzalcoatl sacrificed himself, gave his own blood in order to animate
their ancestors’ bones, and with him several other gods made themselves bleed for humans.
In securing the cycle of nature, the Aztecs gave human blood in return. The victims of the
Aztecs not only died for the gods, but were seen as deities themselves, thus reiterating the
autosacrificial bloodletting of their deities. This sacrifice for humans is apparent also in
Christian myth when Jesus Christ gave his own blood and life for humans’ sins.
Nevertheless, the loss of blood does not always have fatal consequences. In the Middle
Ages, in order to remove the contaminated bodily fluids from the patient’s circulatory
system, as a medical practise, bloodletting was used. Another medical method, blood
transfusion was used to replace blood of anaemic people, and through this auto-sacrificial
act another person’s life could be saved.
57
The vampire legends’ blood myth had an undercurrent of eroticism. “[T]he moment
of bloodtaking has many external signs of the loving and erotic embrace,” suggests Tudor
(163), although the act of bloodtaking is more intimate than it seems at first sight. The first
physical contact brings about a close relationship immediately, a strong mental and
physical dependence between the vampire and his prey. The target of the vampiric kiss is
the victim’s neck. It can be stated that bloodsucking in this way becomes a metaphor for
sexual intercourse. This observation can be justified easily, observing the touching of the
vampire and the victim. The vampire plunges his fangs (a phallic symbol) into his victim’s
neck. A penetrating and a receiving organ play a part in this act, during which bodily fluids
intermingle. The fangs and the bloody scar on the neck become supplementary sexual
organs. So, those human beings transformed into a vampire will become new creatures
possessing active and passive organs as well. They own sexual duality. It is clear that they
become hermaphrodites: male on the mouth and female on their neck.13
Human sexuality carries finality in itself; death is a reality principle. Eternal life is
something that human beings cannot experience. Belief in afterlife is common to a lot of
religions; it helps to endure our limited earthly existence. The only way to “live on” is
through offspring, which holds out a promise of some kind of eternity, thus immortality
and sexuality motifs are correlated. The pleasure principle forces the issue of generation. In
Dracula it is also through sexuality how one experiences infinite state. Dracula is a liminal
numen, the multi-level junction of sex and death. According to Bunson, the physical
sensation of sex with a vampire is just one part of the whole experience, because it is
rooted “in the passing of a soul into the realm of the undead, as a mortal undergoes
13
This gender crossing in the domain of deities is not uncommon. The Egyptian primal sun god, Amenhotep
is depicted as clearly androgynous. The Indian Shiva in iconographies called Ardhanarishvara is seen as godgoddess, having united with Shakti, the feminine creative power. African myths spawn with half-male and
half-female representations as in the case of Mawu-Lisa, or the thunder god Hevioso. These figures represent
both the feminine and masculine energies as well as the wholeness and totality of the universe.
58
seduction, acceptance and the partial death of the physical form – a metaphysical intimacy
unobtainable between mortals” (237-238).
A psychological explanation lies behind Dracula’s sexuality. David Punter identifies
Dracula with “the endless desire of the unconscious for gratification” (26). He is undead,
because desire never dies. His existence can never reach the level of satisfaction, for “his
very nature is desire” (Punter 26). That is why he keeps moving on to different objects.
Vampiric sexuality becomes a perpetual recurrence. Dracula takes advantage of his victims
while they are in a stupor. The blurring of dream and reality brings about nightmarish like
hallucinations. The unconscious works. To identify Dracula with the unconscious
postulates “undesirable sexuality,” which is against the ethics of the Victorian era. In the
famous scene when Dracula forces Mina to drink from his chest, Mina is in a stupor, but
the intrusion of Van Helsing and Dr Seward awakens her. From this point on, Mina catches
on to what is happening to her. As I have implied, Dracula represents the unconscious, the
repressed sexual fantasies of Mina, but these fantasies do not necessarily mean all
perversions of the vampiric nature. It is as if Mina awakens to her sexuality. Lucy
surrenders to her desires, but it goes against Mina’s conscience to do so. Mina remains the
representation of the “conventional” passive Victorian woman.
The shadow often represents unknown qualities of the ego-aspects that might be
conscious as well, often those qualities of a person that she or he tries to deny. The shadow
in dreams often emerges in a personified form (Franz 174). Dracula can be identified as the
shadow. The shadow can have positive and negative aspects. It depends on the given
person whether she or he has the right or wrong attitude to it. Confrontation with the
shadow is important for self awareness. Another indication that vampires do not represent
the complete personality, only a part of the personality which one chooses not to see, is
that vampires have no reflection in the mirror. It also hints at the absence of a soul. The
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non-existence of soul generally means death, in this case the impossibility of getting to
Heaven, the deprivation of salvation. Jenő Király remarks that the lack of a mirror image
indicates that the vampire is an elusive presence; only the material body is tangible, unlike
experience, desire and soul (680-681), which clearly refers to the fictitious bloodsuckers as
representatives of the unconscious.
According to Jung’s analytical psychology, ethical problems cannot only be brought
up by the shadow, but also by the anima and the animus. The animus is the female
personification of the unconscious in men, and the anima is the male personification in
case of women (Gondolatok a szexualitásról és a szerelemről 101). Like the shadow, they
can have good and bad aspects. They appear in the figure of the opposite sex in dreams.
The anatomically male Dracula represents the animus of Lucy and Mina. If a woman fails
to be aware of her negative animus, she can easily be possessed by it;
but if she realizes who and what her animus is and what he does to her, and
if she faces these realities instead of allowing herself to be possessed, her
animus can turn into an invaluable inner companion who endows her with
the masculine qualities of initiative, courage, objectivity, and spiritual
wisdom.
(Franz 206)
Lucy becomes possessed by her animus, while Mina is able to turn consciously to hers.
After the violent blood drinking scene, when Van Helsing and Dr Seward “awaken” Mina,
the girl becomes aware of the negative side of her animus. The masculine qualities of her
character are highly praised by Van Helsing later on. Mina avoids animus projection and
she can withdraw it by integrating it into her personality. Mina’s adventure with Dracula is
a process to her individuation.
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The three vampiresses and the vampire Lucy are in contrast the anima of the male
characters. As Marie-Louise von Franz puts it, “the most frequent manifestations of the
anima take the form of erotic fantasy” (191). This can be observed in the most erotically
described scene of the novel, which is the first encounter of Jonathan with the fair
vampiress:
The fair girl went on her knees and bent over me, fairly 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, till
I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and
on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. 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. Then she paused, and I could hear
the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could
feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle
as one’s flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer –
nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the
supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth,
just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy
and waited – waited with beating heart.
(Dracula 52)
Jonathan projects his repressed sexual urges onto the vampire ladies, and the dreamlike
quality is accentuated. The figurative language of dreams expresses inner anxieties and
dealing with the darker aspects of the personality, nightmares and dreams have become
common devices of Gothic fiction. Dracula is no exception either. Dreams mean distance
and nearness at the same time. Events occurring in dreams are distant in the sense that they
are beyond the borders of reality, but on the other hand they are indicative of the person’s
inner world and relation to the world. As Jung indicates, the dream is an expression of the
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unconscious (Az ember és szimbólumai 30). While seemingly new things are shown, the
events and figures always represent something familiar. This uncanny effect is accentuated
when Jonathan meets the three vampiresses in Dracula’s castle, as the following excerpt
demonstrates:
I suppose I must have fallen asleep; I hope so, but I fear, for all that
followed was startlingly real – so real that now, sitting here in the broad,
full sunlight of the morning, I cannot in the least believe that it was all
sleep.
I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I
came into it; I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my
own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of
dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by
their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming
when I saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind them, they threw
no shadow on the floor. They came close to me and looked at me for
some time and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high
aquiline noses, like the Count’s, and great dark, piercing eyes, that
seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The
other was fair, as fair as can be, with great, wavy masses of golden hair
and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to
know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at
the moment how or where.
(Dracula 50-51)
Jung accentuated the importance of symbols and inner events, a certain kind of
introspection. In contrast with Freud, whose theories were based on sexual interpretations,
Jung’s libido concept was seen as pure life force in which sexuality is just one means of
expression. “The libido is God and Devil” (Psychology of the Unconscious 120), says Jung
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revealing the morally divided dual nature of the libido. The vampire sucks blood, that is,
the energy from conscious life. The consequence of this power and energy loss is that
unconscious contents take control over the individual’s life.
Gothic novels explore the subconscious mind, therefore they are almost never devoid
of dream and/or nightmare scenes. Vampires are active when it is dark. Deprived of
quietus, a ray of light may precipitate the vampire’s instantaneous annihilation, the end of
his bleak state of existence. In all cultures the light and dark contrast is of peculiar interest.
Light is associated with life, whereas dark is linked to death and the underworld. The
vampire goes out hunting from sunset to sunrise and sleeps during the day. Vampires are
anti-solar creatures, and their association with darkness links them with the underworld but
also with nocturnal activities, such as dreams and nightmares. Dracula rises from his coffin
to visit his victim, who is unconscious. His uprising symbolizes those anxieties, fears,
frustration and aggressions that are buried within us. If repressed feelings are not
overcome, they will surface in due course and begin to disturb us. Vampires are
photophobic and in the blaze of day they vanish; that is when they are converted into the
conscious sphere, they cease to exist, they stop their perturbing activities. Northrop Frye
further associates the cycle of waking and dreaming with the cycle of light and darkness,
which can apply to Dracula. The hero being a sufferer of frustrations is really in the power
of darkness in daylight, explains Frye; and the libido, the conquering heroic self awakes in
the darkness (The Archetypes of Literature 431). The Dracula story is instructive in this
sense, indicating that difficulties should not be avoided, but confronted.
The heroes of the novel face a creature that has “the strength in his hand of twenty
men” (Dracula 244). In this manifestation, Dracula is superhuman, immortal and has
power over the minds of humans. He can hypnotize his victims and this way he can control
them. However, pointing out the godlike nature of Dracula is vague in itself. To expose a
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more precise explanation of his nature, I turn to the Jungian archetypes. According to the
Jungian view, Dracula can be classified into the so-called trickster archetype, that is,
[h]e is a forerunner of the saviour, and, like him, God, man and animal at
once. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being,
whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness.
Because of it he is deserted by his (evidently human) companions, which
seems to indicate that he has fallen below their level of consciousness.
He is so unconscious of himself that his body is not a unity, and his two
hands fight each other. He takes his anus off and entrusts it with a special
task. Even his sex is optional despite its phallic qualities: he can turn
himself into a woman and bear children.
(Jung Four Archetypes 143)
One of the chief characteristics of the trickster is his shape-shifting ability into an
animal form (Jung Four Archetypes 136). A good example for this is the trickster Loki
from Germanic mythology, who often changes into an insect or a fly in order to amuse
himself by watching the consequences of the mischief he has caused. Zeus, the Greek
demiurge is known for his frequent shape-shifting when he wanted to carry out his sexual
adventures: in the form of a swan when mating with Leda, or in the form of a bull when
enticing Europa. Vampires also have animal alter-egos; they can appear in the form of bats
or wolves.
The earliest association between bats and vampires was probably drawn by Spanish
conquistadors, who faced bats which sucked the blood of their cattle and horses in tropical
southern and central Mexico. The Desmodus rotundus, the Diphylla ecaudata and the
Diaemus youngi are similar to European folkloric vampires, being night fliers and drinking
blood, According to Jean Marigny, it was the French naturalist Count Georges-Louis
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Leclerc de Buffon who named them vampire bats after the European vampire tradition in
1760 (55). Although these bats prefer the sanguine flood of warm-blooded animals and
birds, they rarely also attack human beings. Dracula can take the shape of a bat, which,
psychologically speaking, clearly indicates his subhuman nature. Animals symbolize
man’s primitive and instinctual side. The animalistic nature of the Count indicates that
instincts have been removed from the conscious sphere, and thus are in need of integration.
In addition, Dracula is said to be able to materialize into fog. Fog corresponds to
obscurity, the lack of clarity, which suggests the idea of losing control over one’s senses. A
gloomy atmosphere surrounds the potential victim of the vampire who is active at night
under the cover of darkness. In Stoker’s novel Dracula’s “blackness” is stressed; he is said
to dress in black and wear a black hat, and his horses are also depicted as black. This
darkness of the Count – just like of all the chthonian “children of the night” – is a sign of
evil nature. Paradoxical again, his outward appearance suggests the opposite.
When vampires are noticed by people, they are described as extremely pale. The
vampire spends his daytime in coffin, which explains his unnatural whiteness. Pallor can
be associated with several illnesses which exhibit similar symptoms to vampirism. I have
already mentioned pellagra and porphyria, where photosensitivity is a key sign. In
addition, tuberculosis patients have vampiric symptoms such as fatigue, wanness, poor
appetite, and consequently, loss of weight. Tuberculosis was romanticized throughout the
nineteenth and early twentieth century and was seen as “a disease apt to strike the
hypersensitive, the talented, [and] the passionate” (Sontag AIDS and Its Metaphors 12). It
is definitely not an accidental analogue how the Byronic, aristocratic vampire came to the
fore, and the pallor of this (dark) romantic hero correlated with the achromasia of the
folkloric bloodsucker. Besides the aristocratic look, it is equally important to note that
public opinion still associates greedy appetite and intense sexual desire with tuberculosis
65
(Sontag A betegség mint metafora 16). Diseases affect everyday life, and thus have some
social aspects. René Dubos explored the social history of tuberculosis in his remarkable
book The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man, and Society, which came out in 1952,
commenting that
[w]hereas the influence of bubonic plague is obvious in Boccaccio’s tales,
and in the dissolution of morals at certain periods of the Reinassance, the
part played by tuberculosis in more recent history is less distinct even
though it was profound and lasting. The disease distorted the norms of life
and behavior for several generations by killing young adults or ruining
their physical and mental health.
(44)
In the case of women, whiteness had become a desirable attribute, indicative of these
ladies’ spiritual, moral and physical purity (Dijkstra 123). This vestal innocence of women
was very important at the time when economic and industrial developments were taking
place at a great pace, and men were involved in business. Wives were expected to defend
the males’ soul from damage in the world of commerce, and become keepers of their
husbands’ souls. Art reflects social changes, and the anaemic depiction of women became
a kind of cult among early Victorian painters. Bram Dijkstra argues that apart from the
reflection of the desired feminine moral consciousness, there is also a subtle hint at “social
status and economic privilige” (28) connecting success with consumptive looks. However,
this near-death condition suggested sacrifice on the part of women, and the dutiful
submission and the entrapment of domestic life became suffocating for some. “The cult of
the woman as corpse” (Dijkstra 46) was beginning to take a different turn in the late
nineteenth century: instead of death, women rebelled against this condition and began to
“rise from their symbolic coffin”. Art had become affluent in beastly females, and the
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vampire, aptly fitting as visual equivalent of this symbolic uprising, became a popular
topic on canvas.
The pale seducer – an obvious paradox since colourful outward features should be
used as symptomatic of passion, and the vampire’s apparent apathy under the white mask
conceals passionate sentiments of all sorts – represents the dangerous aspects of the
underlying threat to the purity of the soul. Dominated by Christian ideology, these perilous
women became stigmatized by the original sin of the fallen woman, temptation. In the
vampire topos, women who lack moral stability are prone to yielding to the alluring
machinations of the vampire, the personification of evil. When it comes to male characters,
they are also tempted by these female figures and it depends on their moral consciousness
whether they succumb or not. The result of the vampiric “loving” is death (of the soul) and
– while people can die of love as the female characters of Glenarvon – death cannot only
be the end but also the efficient cause.
The mors in actu motif appears in medical science, in art, and as myth or superstition
in folklore. As Foucault notes, in ancient Greece, moderation was the keyword when it
came to men’s sexuality. Guilt was not attached to the practices otherwise. Excess was
seen as something that should be controlled by the individual, thus virtue lay in man’s
ability of self-mastery. The emergence of Christianity14 altered the attitude towards sexual
issues; it is different from ancient times, especially from the Classical Greek period, where
more freedom was attached to carnal pleasures (The Use of Pleasure 83). It is striking that
negative judgements and attitudes towards nakedness and the body became emphasized
when religious sentiment was prevalent in the given periods, basically in the Middle Ages
and in the High Victorian Era. The moral problematization of sexuality came to the
foreground. Sexual life was seen as something hideous that should no way be the source of
14
Foucault points out that there is no use of talking about continuity between pagan and Christian sexual
morality, because principles are endowed with different values (The Use of Pleasure 21).
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pleasure. Foucault claims that the seventeenth-century Christian pastoral played a great
role in transforming desire into discourse, also in deciding what is morally acceptable and
what is not (The Will to Knowledge 20-21). Sexuality became associated with sin, and the
division between morality and instincts became sharp. Strange it may seem, immoderate
sexual intercourse served as an explanation for mors in actu both according to the Antique
and Christian views. The reason lies in the fact that in medieval times the inheritance of the
antique medical view was very dominant, and the other reason is the strong influence of
Arabian medical science (Horányi-Magyar 66). Despite the fact that love-making was
considered to be neutral from the point of view of health, the Christian worldview brought
a social anathema on it.
Mors in actu highlights not only morality but also the unpredictability of death.
When plague, the pandemic disease called The Black Death swept over the world in the
fourteenth century and killed almost half of the population in Europe, people were strongly
reminded of the brevity of their earthly existence. Death had become a daily experience,
people grew more conscious about the fact that death can come at any minute for anybody
regardless of gender, rank, age, or religion. This intensified sense of human frailty
manifested itself in iconography known as Dance of Death, or Danse Macabre in French
and Totentanz in German. In Totentanz pictures death is personified in the form of
skeletons who accompany various people to their grave, indicating that death is inevitable
for all humans. During this medieval allegory of death, lovers could be victims while
walking or caught even during coitus when skeletons brought both or one of them to their
way into the other world (Horányi-Magyar 71). To talk about mors in actu in case of
Dracula and his victims is a bit complicated. Vampires cause slow death. Their victims die
of atrophy. Dracula comes back several times to the sufferers, thus the mors in actu motif
is preceded by a long “courtship” before his victims die of anaemia. Victims in a way die,
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but soon they transform into an equally evil creature such as their masters, they become
undead. Blood is what guarantees the survival of the species, the keeping up of the living
dead mode of being. Representing vitality, blood also makes Dracula young – but this
youth operates only on the outside. The vampire is an ancient creature who is supposed to
live for hundreds of years without changing in appearance. This is where the Báthory
legend juxtaposes the vampire myth. According to popular legendary ideas about Erzsébet
Báthory, the Countess struggles to stop time, which entails the avoidance of death. She is
unable to accept the natural order of things and challenges universal laws. Dracula does the
same, except that he goes through the natural way of existence, he experiences death but he
is reborn. In both cases, eternal youth is unnatural and manifests people’s projected
yearning for the capacity of having the youth-immortality-power triad. The Báthory and
vampire legends are popular even today because they both raise ontological questions and
problems that every human has to cope with.
The vampiric non-existence in the ethical sphere can be two-fold. First of all, if
staked, vampires can be liberated from the shackles of Hell, as will be observed in case of
Lucy, who transforms back to her virtuous image. Secondly, moral uncertainty may follow.
The arch vampire Dracula simply ceases to exist, crumbles into dust, and nothing is known
about his ultimate faith. The instructive moral lessons of the traditional Christian religion,
according to which, if one is good, he or she will go to Heaven, and if one is bad, then he
or she will be punished in Hell. The belief in salvation and damnation in Stoker’s time had
been challenged by Darwinism and the new sciences of anthropology and psychology
(Crow 30). In Dracula, Professor Van Helsing represents the man of science, although he
believes in vampires, therefore his character is a proper manifestation of Victorian doubts
and uncertainty occurring between the rational and the irrational. The dichotomy between
morality and immorality still corresponds to Heaven and Hell in the vampire narrative. The
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vampire is the personification of immoral qualities. Those infected by the bloodsucker can
expect the suffering of the netherworld, and those virtuous people who put up resistance
have a good chance to go to Heaven. In this sense the vampire is a morality marker.
Apart from the sharp distinction between good and evil with the vampire as indicator
of the latter, the character of the bloodsucker is ambiguous, for he is a repository of binary
oppositions like living/dead, creator/destroyer, male/female, victim/victimizer, and he is
endowed with a shape-shifting ability yet restricted by space and time, ancient (on the
inside) yet young (on the outside), and immortal yet able to be destroyed. Like myths, the
vampire figure can be interpreted in several ways. This ambiguity as an interpretative tool
responds to unconscious desires and conflicts.
2.1.2
The Split Concept of Womanhood: The Triumph of Patriarchy
Religious ideas were challenged by Darwinism and the new sciences of anthropology
and psychology (Crow 30), resulting in a sudden change in ontological and
epistemological values and convictions. Some people still were against reformers and
believed that “the old God” cannot be replaced by scientific progress. Among others, it was
Nicholas Francis Cooke who kept on voicing the positive effects of Christianity even
regarding the woman-issue when the changing role of women in society became apparent.
He stated that in societies where adultery, polygamy and divorce were allowed – vices in
the eyes of the Christian believers – women were held in the position of slaves, and it was
due to Christianity that women secured a respectable place by the side of man (236-237).
Middle-class women had been idealized into “angels in the house” image, who with their
moral purity and tractability were prone to provide a kind of shelter for their husbands. The
husbands’ extramarital liaisons were overlooked, so seemingly, in a way, women were
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morally placed above men. But this was really seemingly so, because, as Dijsktra points
out, in reality women (along with children) were looked upon as lower beings, with man at
the top of the social hierarchy, while women and children were thought to be closer to
animals on the evolutionary scale (240).
Female characters in Dracula are all connected to the monstrous by way of
vampirism. The three ladies – two brunettes and a fair girl – are Dracula’s company and
they are already vampires, although there is no information why, how and where they
became such diabolic creatures. The novel includes two main human female characters,
Mina Murray (later Harker) and Lucy Westenra. Dracula tries to make victims of them
both, and the endangering of Mina and Lucy brings about the dichotomy between the pure
and the frivolous woman. Mina represents the virtuous woman, who struggles to remain
pure, whereas Lucy – after having been bitten by Dracula – becomes more licentious.
Lucy’s and the vampiresses’ wantonness is contrary to the Victorian moral code.
Furthermore, being vampires, they do the sucking—which in Victorian times could
metaphorically mean a kind of gender reversal—and they do the penetrating.
Mina’s husband-to-be, Jonathan Harker visits Dracula, the foreign vampire count in
Transylvania to do business with him. The Count buys an estate in London and thus comes
over to England, from Eastern Europe to the Western parts, spreading the disease of
vampirism. Vampirism, with its transgressive elements is contagious and plague-like, and
the whole society has to face the consequences.15 Mina is one of Dracula’s desired prey,
but being strong and pure, she resists the monster, and that makes her different from the
other female characters in the novel. Mina epitomizes all the expectations of Victorian
mores regarding wives. In the Victorian era, a woman’s role was to be married and be a
15
Vampirism can be a metaphor or symbol of several notions, but since I focus on sexuality—or more
precisely, taking the strict Victorian moral code into consideration, sexuality with its connotation of
immorality—I do not delve into the question of other possible interpretations.
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good mother and wife. Mina is doing her best to meet these requirements. She is
monogamous and a devoted wife to Jonathan, and as for Mina and Jonathan’s marriage,
sexuality seems to be out of place in their relationship. There is no allusion to sex between
them, and their partnership is highly spiritualized. Mina and Jonathan’s relationship is
mutual, exclusive and heartfelt.
Mina fosters a kind of motherly love over the members of the Crew of Light, as
Christopher Craft has entitled the group consisting of Van Helsing, Dr Seward, Quincey
Morris, Arthur and Jonathan, that is the vampire hunters (445). Mina’s motherly nature is
most conspicuous when she consoles Arthur after Lucy’s death. She regards her behaviour
toward Arthur as similar to that toward her unborn child. Maternal instincts are very strong
in Mina. Nevertheless, this ideal mother figure is destroyed when she is forced to drink
from Dracula’s breast. She becomes nurtured instead of nurturing. According to Roth, this
scene indicates a flashback of nursing at the mother’s breast, a threatening Oedipal fantasy,
which results in the belief that “the sexually desirable woman will annihilate if she is not
first destroyed” (420). Mina’s motherly character is restored after the eradication of
Dracula, and also when she gives birth to her real son, little Quincey. Among the female
characters, she is the one who acts in accordance with expectations, and becomes a mother.
The idyllic wife-mother axis is threatened when Dracula, the vampire endangers
Mina. On account of Dracula’s repeated nocturnal visits, Mina goes through a
metamorphosis, she becomes spiritless and gradually grows weaker and weaker. The
vampire comes like a thief in the night. Taking vampirism’s sexual nature into
consideration, this clandestine sexual activity terminates Mina’s monogamous status. Since
Mina is a married woman, she seems to be on her way to become an adulteress, which does
not happen in the end since Mina is a virtuous, decent woman who has scruples regarding
the transgressive element of the union with the vampire. Later, she is branded by a piece of
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the Host. Since there is no change in her virtuous and pure personality, an external sign
indicates her infected condition.
In contrast with Mina, Lucy is lecherous. While human, that is before encountering
the vampire, she expresses her regret for she cannot marry her three suitors at the same
time. “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this
trouble?” (Dracula 76) she asks, revealing her unconscious desire to have relationship with
men not only limited to three, but as many as possible. Obviously, Lucy has an inclination
to frivolity and this makes her an easily attainable prey to Dracula. According to Bram
Dijkstra, Stoker’s main purpose with Lucy’s character was to make known the danger
threatening “manhood by the bestial polyandry of the unacculturated primal woman”
(345).
Lucy’s polyandry is expressed through blood transfusions. Arthur, Lucy’s husbandto-be provides blood first. Saying “my life is hers and I would give the last drop of blood
in my body for her” (Dracula 148) he expresses his love towards his beloved. He does not
know that this practically turns out to be the case; a love metaphor turns into reality. This
intimacy between spouses is considered proper, however three more transfusions follow
this procedure given by three different men, which exposes Lucy’s polyandry. “No man
knows till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the veins
of the woman he loves” (Dracula 156) declares Dr Seward. His feelings have not changed
since Lucy chose Arthur. Then Dr Van Helsing saves Lucy’s life and finally Quincey
Morris rolls up his shirt-sleeve. These three blood transfusions have been sworn to secrecy
so that Arthur would not be jealous. Later Arthur says that he feels as if he really had been
married to Lucy because of the blood transfusion. Even Dr Van Helsing feels himself to be
a bigamist because of this procedure. Lucy turns into a female beast that drains the essence
of manhood of her suitors.
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Finally, Dracula sucks the life out of Lucy. After her death, there is no trace of decay
on her body. What is more, her “loveliness had come back to her in death” (Dracula 198)
and she is “more radiantly beautiful than ever” (Dracula 240). Lucy does not die, but her
mortal existence as such expires since she becomes a preternatural being levitating
between life and death. Her new form of existence brings about not only a change in her
physical appearance, but makes her even more licentious – at least her lasciviousness is
more conspicuous from then on. She does not try to camouflage her desires any more.
The vampiric form of the female also endangers the socially expected (positive)
mother role. Besides men, children become victims of this new woman type, too. Reports
in Westminster Gazette state that a ‛bloofer lady’ (Dracula 213) lures away children and
wounds them in their throat. It is obvious that children are attracted to Lucy and not
frightened by her at all: “Even this poor little mite [a child wounded by Lucy] when he
woke up to-day, asked the nurse if he might go away. When she asked him why he wanted
to go, he said he wanted to play with the “bloofer lady” (Dracula 235; emphasis added).
Lucy’s endeavour to get rid of the duty of the mother role is most apparent in the scene
when in the churchyard she sucks the blood of a child. Human functions and roles are
exchanged, this time the woman sucks, and the child has become the metaphorical breast.
The holiness of motherhood is overturned. Lucy is hunting for children, who, as Dijkstra
claims, are the “central symbol[s] of the future potential mankind” (345).
The male characters do not identify this nightmarish figure with Lucy, whose altered
personality is reflected in her features. The pure and sweet Lucy has been transformed into
a merciless and lustful monster. She tries to entice Arthur, but Van Helsing intervenes
again and saves Arthur’s life for the second time. Arthur takes on the task to bring an end
to this evil and set Lucy’s soul free from eternal damnation, thus he drives a stake through
the heart of his bride. Lucy regains her former self and then rests in peace. She also regains
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her original place in the Victorian gender code due to the “murderous phallicism” (Craft
455) of the staking. As Rebecca Pope believes, the male murder of Lucy is a “sacrifice to a
patriarchal gender ideology” (75). Holte remarks that penetrating violations caused the
beginning and also the end of Lucy’s vampiric existence thus “[i]n both situations she is
acted upon by powerful older men who use her for their own ends. Even as a vampire, she
is unable to confront adult males; she feeds on children, and her attempt to seduce her
husband fails” (95).
Lucy’s ambiguity is supplemented with pretence. According to Nina Auerbach,
Lucy’s metamorphosis is not a pure girl’s transformation into a voluptuous one, on the
contrary, Lucy “becomes more virtuous after death than she was in life” (160). In life she
receives three proposals and expresses her regret because she cannot marry all her three
suitors. After death, however, she directs her monogamic wish only to her fiancé in the
churchyard: “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!” (Dracula
253) I disagree with Auerbach’s standpoint, in my opinion Lucy tries to play a trick on
Arthur since being her fiancé he is the most impressionable person among these men. In Dr
Seward’s diary Lucy is undisputedly described as a malicious creature from hell and not a
virtuous wife prototype. The only positive remark on her is embedded in duality. Seward
calls her “diabolically sweet in the tones” (Dracula 253); her tempting voice makes her
similar to sirens, who want to mislead men.
Just like the vampire Lucy, the three female vampires who appear in Dracula’s castle
represent a threat against the passive/virtuous Victorian woman model. They are beautiful
and coquettish, belonging to the type of woman who is tempting but also dangerous in the
eyes of Victorian men. Like the transformed Lucy, they are also dominant, masculine (in a
sense that they penetrate and initiate sex) and voluptuous. Beauty seems to be concomitant
75
with female vampirism. Outward appearance makes these females able to seduce men, thus
beauty becomes a means to an end. Even Dr Van Helsing gets mesmerized by the
vampiresses. Men seem to be disgusted by the coquettish vampire ladies on the surface, but
long for them unconsciously. The most erotically described scene in the novel follows this
idea. When one of the vampiresses, the fair girl approaches Jonathan in Dracula’s castle,
she triggers an ambiguous response from the boy: he longs for her and finds her repellent
at the same time.
Female vampires allure differently from Dracula. Vampiresses are attractive and sexy
in contrast with the Count. They seduce with the help of outward appearance, whereas
Dracula uses his inner power to hypnotize his victims. The vampiresses entice on the spot,
while Dracula’s seduction takes place telepathically. Men are under the vampiresses’ spell
only when they are present. At other times, these female vampires are mentioned with
negative connotation:
“for nothing can be more dreadful than those awful women (...)”
(Dracula 59; emphasis added)
“for I feared to see those weird sisters” (Dracula 64; emphasis added)
“Three terrible women licking their lips” (Dracula 66; emphasis added)
“I am alone in the castle with those awful women” (Dracula 66; emphasis added)
“They are devils of the Pit!” (Dracula 69; emphasis added)
The negative remarks do not refer to their appearance, obviously, but to their lascivious
nature. The actions of the vamps are governed by their sex drives. The aims of these
females are confined to the satisfaction of their primary needs. Through the vampiric
imag,e men are confronted with their own inner animalistic selves. Vampiresses represent
suppressed sexual desires which are denied on the surface, but males long for them in
secret. These desires cannot be experienced in everyday life because of strict social
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demands. During encounters with these vampire ladies, the repressed feelings are brought
to the surface. However, the male characters prefer virtuous ladies to these horrid women,
thus adjusting themselves to the social norms.
Mina is the decent woman, whereas Lucy welcomes the vampire Count who
represents passion and sexuality. The three vampiresses in the castle are also lustful and
sexually active. Female vampires are equivalent to the New Woman in the sense that they
are awake to their sexuality and are not afraid to enjoy it. They gain sexual power and this
power imperils the male characters’ masculinity and the whole structure of patriarchal
society. The novel was written in a male-dominated society where the appearance of the
New Woman aroused anxiety about gender reversal. Stoker splendidly illustrates this fear,
dealing with taboos in a symbolic form. In the novel, the promiscuous woman falls, but the
woman of moral rectitude is able to overcome temptation, and receives back her happiness
and place in society. The order of the patriarchy is restored.
In her remarkable article Dracula Meets the New Woman, Jean Lorrah takes a
different stance. She argues that it is Mina who embodies the noble New Woman in
contrast with Lucy and the vampiresses. Lucy is helpless against Dracula while Mina fights
off the harsh dominion of the Count; in addition she has learnt shorthand and typing in
order to help Jonathan, and as a secretary and clerk she intends to fulfil traditionally male
positions (32). Her intelligence is a very important component in the fight which leads to
the annihilation of Dracula. Furthermore, Lorrah poses the question that “[i]f these [the
three vampiresses who are completely in the control of Dracula] are liberated New
Women, what would an unliberated woman be?” (32) It is true that Mina is intelligent,
courageous and supports her husband in many ways, but I still favour the idea that she does
not represent the New Woman. The vampiresses and the vampire Lucy are dominated by
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male figures, and all of them are killed by patriarchal figures. In this sense they embody
the threatening aspect of the New Woman.
Dracula is an exception; he is different from the other male characters. He is the
shadow, the manifestation of unconscious contents. The vampiresses are under his control,
but it is by far not the same as being dominated by the patriarch. There is a psychological
explanation. These female bloodsuckers are governed by their desires, and in this sense
they are liberated, or rather, want to be liberated from the shackles of the suffocating
household nun position. They would like to enjoy non-procreative sex, and the first step to
this is to desecrate the sacrosanct mother role as Lucy and the vampiresses do.
David J. Skal also supports the idea that Mina is the New Woman because of her
independent mind, and Lucy presents image of an ideal Victorian passivity (36-37). The
helpless heroine is one of the flat characters in the Gothic novels, and similarly, Lucy
seems to be defenceless against the power of the primary evil. She cannot resist Dracula’s
charisma, and seems to passively submit. In contrast, Mina takes up the fight and plays an
active role in annihilating Dracula. Both are under the effect of the hypnotizing power of
the Count; whereas Lucy is mesmerized and becomes a “puppet on the string,” Mina
makes use of this, and helps the Crew of Light to find the vampire. Despite this assertion, I
disagree with Skal’s opinion. Mina is a helper of the male characters, she supports them,
that is, she “performs her duty.” She takes a conservative position and she is appreciated
for it. Her motivation is clearly revealed when she writes to Lucy her intent to learn
stenography and typewriting.16 Mina is the ideal Victorian wife who subordinates herself
to her husband.
16
“When we 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 n this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I am
practicing very hard.” (D 70)
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Mina’s ‘angel in the house’ image fits the Western image of the virginal. In shaping
female portrayal, Christian theology has played a major role. As Kristeva observes, the
Virgin Mary prototype used for depictions of females follows two rudimentary aspects of
Western love: “courtly love and child love, thus fitting the entire range that goes from
sublimation to asceticism and masochism” (238). In opposition to the immaculate holy
woman, there is Eve, the prototype of the disobedient wife and the wanton temptress
personified in the figure of female vampires.
2.1.3
“This Man Belongs To Me”: Several Aspects of Homoerotism
in Dracula
Hand in hand with scientific research on sexuality for modern culture, gothic fiction
became immensely popular, serving as a displaced field for any kind of sexuality that
crossed the barriers or ‘normality.’ In order to define normality and anomalies, the
prevailing sentiment and public beliefs are determinant. Springing from Puritanism, the
prevailing view dictated that anything apart from heterosexual monogamy was subject to
suspicion and was regarded as a sexual dysfunction. Erotic same-sex relations were among
the paraphilias of the time, and homosexuals were cast into opprobrium by society. The
famous trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895, in which he was sentenced to two years of hard
labour for his sodomy, turned attention to “the other Victorians.” Schaffer suggests that
Dracula fits these anxious times, because Dracula represents “the complex of fears,
desires, secrecies, repressions and punishments that Wilde’s name evoked in 1895” (472).
Schaffrath states that “if fixed gender roles represent order and gender roles in flux stand
for chaos (a lack of order), then one might argue that Dracula, the vampire, represents
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chaos and threatens English values of gender roles” (98). The character of the vampire
definitely carries in itself the anxiety Victorians felt in respect to homosexuality. The act of
bloodsucking is a metaphor for coitus as the canine tooth penetrates into the orifice on the
neck. With this intimate moment between the vampire and his victim, those who fall prey
to the bloodsuckers will be converted into a creature possessing two sets of genitals, thus
the vampiric metamorphosis provides a kind of hermaphrodite status. As Schaffer notes,
the turn-of-the-century approach considered homosexuals neither male nor female but an
intermediate sex (472), and the vampiric two-sex model can be associated with this notion.
“Dracula’s desire to fuse with a male, most explicitly evoked when Harker cuts
himself shaving, subtly and dangerously suffuses this text,” assumes Christopher Craft
(466). Jonathan is the only male whom Dracula threatens with the danger of vampirism.
The Count’s homoerotic desire is the most explicit when he intervenes and chases away his
lecherous daughter-wives when they are about to attack Jonathan. “This man belongs to
me!” (Dracula 53) – he says. This is a manifestation of homosexuality and also the desire
for possession, although the fusion between them never comes about. Craft claims that
Jonathan enjoys a feminine passivity while awaiting the penetration of the vampiresses,
which entails the subversion of the conventional Victorian gender codes (Craft 444-445).
Having protruded teeth, the female vampires are endowed with a male genital and together
with the emasculated Jonathan, all these characters represent the fear of gender reversal.
However, it seems that despite the ominous castle situation, Dracula never means real
menace to Jonathan, at least, not explicitly.
The “murderous phallicism” of the staking puts an end to Lucy’s vampiric existence,
but as Belford opines, Dracula was spared this orgiastic death, because the male-to-male
vampire death would be too overtly suggestive for the novel (267). Hence, the
Transylvanian Count is murdered by Jonathan’s and Quincey Morris’s knives. However,
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taking a closer look at Dracula’s actual death and the marks of the vampire that are left
behind, it is clear that some strong homosexual aspects can be found in his connection to
other men through the mediating body of Lucy. In his life, the vampire Count transgressed
women by way of vampirizing, but after his extermination, he still leaves his mark. When
Dracula enforces Mina to drink from his chest, their bodily fluids intermingle. When
Mina’s condition is getting much worse, she makes an ambiguous remark: “Let us go to
meet my husband, who is, I know, coming towards us” (Dracula 441). She is married to
Jonathan by love, and to Dracula by blood. Mina and Jonathan pay tribute to the memory
of Quincey Morris by naming their son Quincey. Mina thinks that the brave spirit of
Quincey Morris has passed into the child, but in reality, it is Dracula’s blood that has been
transferred into the veins of the little boy. Quincey has two fathers: Jonathan and Dracula.
Schaffer calls this “the rehabilitation of Dracula’s and Harker’s love” (482) and Quincey
can be seen as “the child of Dracula’s and Harker’s mutual desire” (Schaffer 482).
In the aforementioned case the homosexual bond was possible only through the
mediating body of Mina, and similarly another girl’s, Lucy’s body functions the same way.
The Crew of Light, a group of men experience same-sex sexual activity through blood
transfusions. Arthur, Lucy’s husband-to-be gives his blood to the girl, three days later
followed by Dr Seward, one of Lucy’s former suitors. The third operation is done by
Quincey Morris and finally Dr Van Helsing provides blood. Symbolically, blood is
interchangeable with semen.17
It is interesting to note that no other male vampire is mentioned in the novel except
for Dracula. Furthermore, female vampires do not reproduce in the novel. Dracula is the
only vampire who creates other bloodsuckers. The crew of Demeter is destroyed. Jonathan,
the only man, who seems to be really endangered by the Count, escapes. Renfield,
17
Craft tells in his essay that this symbolic interchangeablity was first identified by Ernest Jones in 1931
(454). Actually, the parallel between the loss of blood as life essence and that of semen was already
recognized in Greek Antiquity. For more information, see Hippocrates: The Seed, for example.
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Dracula’s servant is saved, too. The Transylvanian vampire transforms only women.
Again, this masks the same-sex desire in a gender-anxious culture, culminating in the
scene when Dracula announces to Dr Seward, Quincey Morris and Van Helsing that
“[y]our girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet
be mine – my creature, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed”
(Dracula 365). Women seem to be a means to carry out the monstrous transgressive male’s
homosexual intentions.
According to Schaffer, the epidemiological horror fiction, including Dracula,
encodes the fear and anxiety of the homophobic society, which is homosexuals want to
‘corrupt’ heterosexuals (481). Sontag draws attention to the link between diseases and
foreignness (48). Dracula is a Transylvanian count and represents the archaic fear of the
unknown, of the non-us in the novel. When syphilis first swept through Europe in the
fifteenth century, it was also endowed with the “label” of the alien. It was called the
“French pox” (Sontag 47). Later the French called it the “English disease” or the “Italian
disease,” the Russians gave it the name of the “Polish disease,” the Italians called lues the
“Spanish disease” and the Arabs used the “disease of the Christians” label.18 Clearly, the
negative ideas and fears were projected onto those ethnic groups with whom these
nationalities had been on bad terms. The designation of illnesses was a means to express
prejudice.
Connecting Dracula to anti-semitism, which was widespread in Victorian Britain, is
one of the most obvious possibilities of the manifestations of the “other”, the unknown.
Schaffrath refers to Judith Halberstam’s notion, who drew a parallel between Dracula and
the Jews. “His [Dracula’s] appearance, his relation to money/gold, his parasitism, his
degeneracy, his impermanence or lack of allegiance to a fatherland, and his femininity” (5)
18
"Syphilis." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 5 Aug. 2008. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis>
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make the vampire Count similar to the stereotypes that have been developed regarding the
Jews. Obviously, Dracula can be associated with foreignness in general, since xenophobia
can be directed towards any strangers. Contagion and decay, which Dracula represents, are
often affiliated with foreigners.
The Transylvanian count is alien to the English readers, but before he comes to
London, Jonathan travels to his castle. The lawyer’s journey is a trek from civilization to
nature, which symbolizes the West-to-East prejudice axis. As Jonathan Harker travels
along the Carpathians, there is a reference to Transylvania, Moldavia and Bukovina as the
“wildest and least known portions of Europe” (Dracula 10). The negative attitude is further
enhanced by Jonathan’s ironic remark: “the further East you go the more unpunctual are
the trains. What ought to be in China?” (Dracula 11) and of course, people are very
superstitious, indicating their more primitive states compared to their Western
counterparts. As he gets closer to Dracula’s castle even the colours of the setting become
darker and darker, manifesting that this land is not considered to be a part of “modern”
culture, but it is a remnant of older, pre-scientific places. Jonathan arrives on the eve of St
George’s Day, when evil spirits are thought to roam the Earth. Characterized by events
such as this, in Harker’s eyes the peasants and his travelling companions fail to have
reason, which should bring order and safety as in the civilized world. The moment
Jonathan leaves civilization, rationality seems to be replaced by superstition, and therefore
he experiences danger and chaos in the unknown place.
The first chapter of the novel introduces the archaic qualities of Dracula, who leaves
the “barbarous place” and moves to London in order to infect the English. Leastways, this
is how it is seen. Being a foreigner, he does not follow the rules of the Londoners, he
represents different conventions, so he must be regarded as an outsider by all means.
Representing the alien, he is to be feared. Croley conceives that Dracula’s movement from
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Transylvania to England shares “the same trajectory of the lumpen invasion from the East
End to the West End of London,” and finds it more remarkable how the vampire “invades
London itself from East to West” (10). In addition, “vampirism connotes foreignness,
homosexuality and depravity, problems which have been connected strongly with the poor
in England at the start of the nineteenth century,” and as such, the vampire does not only
present a material threat, but also a moral threat (Croley 1). His machinations are of sexual
nature, which endangers local customs in religious and political terms, following the
“traditions” of Gothic fiction where sexual, political, social and religious concerns are
bound together.
George E. Haggerty points out the connection between xenophobia, sexual
transgression and the gothic novels of the period. The deep-rooted fears expressed in antiCatholic writings went hand in hand with attitudes towards sexuality; it was a
commonplace in people’s imagination in England that sodomy was imported from Catholic
countries as Italy and France, or from more exotic places (66). Sodomy had been looked at
with more suspicion and condemned when it came to be seen as the chief cause for
venereal diseases associated with syphilis. Sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis could
be used to cast a shadow on anyone infected by this unhealthy condition. Transgressive
sexuality has always been part of gothic novels, and the fear of infectious diseases has
easily found its way into the genre. Syphilis has different stages, so death does not befall
immediately, only after a certain latency period. Similarly, in Dracula, the victims of the
vampire change gradually. Due to its fatal consequences and ignorance of its real nature,
syphilis had been labelled as alien. Susan Sontag points out that venereal diseases are
traditionally described as punishments on the individuals as well as of the general
licentiousness of certain groups (54), thus it challenged the moral stance of the whole of
Victorian society.
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When syphilis became hazardous to the health of the population, “sexual practices”
were put under control by the British authorities. Several Contagious Diseases Acts were
introduced to regulate the spread of this disease (1863, 1866, 1869) (Walkovitz 1).
Intercourse with prostitutes endangered not only the men’s health, but also their wives’, so
the Acts were drawn in defence of women, too. As Walkowitz notes, under the Acts,
prostitutes were put into lock hospitals for a certain period of time when they had been
found suffering from syphilis (1). As Duncan Crow describes their situation very aptly,
“everyone must be regarded as innocent until proved guilty [Habeas Corpus], where under
the Acts [a] woman was guilty unless she could prove herself innocent” (244). So,
guiltiness was attached to promiscuity and it was almost impossible to get rid of the brand
it had been concomitant to. A woman could be ruined for life if suspicion had been cast on
her. Apart from sexually active women, homosexuals were suspicious, because they were
able to transmit the disease.19 In Stoker’s novel, the highly sexualized vampiresses and
Dracula, the only male vampire, epitomize this threat.
Vampires usually attack their victims regardless of their gender. Using Sigmund
Freud’s term, it can be claimed that vampires are not exclusively homosexuals, but
amphigenously inverted (Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality 30), that is their sexual
objects are members of both sexes. However, the concept of bisexuality has largely been
ignored in the history of sexuality (Angelides 24). When it was beginning to be observed
as a sexual identity, it challenged the binary epistemology of sexuality, that is the gender
structure of hetero- and homosexuality (Angelides 5). Like homosexuality, bisexuality
19
Bram Stoker was also syphilitic. According to Daniel Farson, Stoker’s great-nephew, one possible theory
is that Florence refused to have sex with him after their only son, Noel had been born. This made Bram
Stoker sexually frustrated, so he went to find satisfaction elsewhere, probably among prostitutes (214). He
died of syphilis in 1912. In case of syphilis the route of transmission is sexual (there is congenial syphilis as
well, but this is rarer and Stoker’s mother, Charlotte did not die of syphilis, so this assumption is out of the
question), so Stoker could have received it from a prostitute, from another man or from another woman who
was not a fille de joie. Knowing Stoker’s oeuvre and his fondness for the quest of goodness and morality, the
prostitute-theory is hardly conceivable, though. The rest remains a matter of conjecture.
85
triggers negative social reactions; thus bisexuals are outcasts and socially isolated. Both
homosexual and heterosexual communities are inimical to them, so bisexuals have to cope
with ‘double marginality’ (Weinberg, Williams and Pryor 190). Homosexuals think that
bisexuals are inherent homosexuals who simply dare not admit this fact—not even to
themselves—and are engaged in opposite-sex relations in order to keep up public
appearance. For their part, heterosexuals usually lump bisexuals with homosexuals. Both
are false. Bisexuality is a continuum of sexuality, but not always a transitory state between
the shift from heterosexuality to homosexuality as many might think; it is an established
sexual identity.20
Dracula overtly victimizes women and covertly men, which may indicate his bisexual
preference.21 The Count threatens the accepted heterosexual monogamy by way of
effeminizing Jonathan and masculinizing Lucy. He generates gender fluidity. The “fusion
of sex, sin and death” (Weinberg, Williams and Pryor 202) concerning STDs lurks behind
Dracula’s machinations as well. Menacing sexual activities are connected with death; and
pestilence, the highest standard of collective calamity, is a metaphor often used for AIDS
and venereal diseases (Sontag 44). Perhaps it is not a coincidence that in some twentiethcentury movies Dracula is associated with the plague.
However, confining ourselves for the moment to the physiological state of the
vampire characters, mainly that of the female vampiresses in Stoker’s novel, it can be
claimed that they are rather androgynes. Craft suggests that the open wound is a substitute
for a bleeding vagina (458), and it is clear that the fangs can be seen as a replacement for
the penis. Unfortunately, there is no allusion that Dracula himself has wounds in his neck
20
based on Weinberg, Williams and Pryor’s long-term study on bisexuals. Of course, there are many more
studies on this issue. It is important to note that the term ‘bisexuality’ was coined in the nineteenth century.
“[A]ttraction to both sexes" appeared in 1892 in translation of Krafft-Ebing. The earlier meaning of the term
was "hermaphroditic." Nevertheless, ‘bisexual’ was not in general use until the 1950s. (Harper Online
Etymology Dictionary).
21
I intend to use Weinberg, Williams and Pryor’s term ‘sexual preference’ instead of ‘sexual orientation’
suggesting that this is not something which is fixed at birth.
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or not. Whether he lacks the orifice, the female characteristic which both male and female
vampires should share remains a mystery. Since there is no other male vampire in the
novel, it is difficult to describe the male vampire in this sense due to lack of information.
Dracula is the source of evil, the ultimate disturbing agent which threatens the morality of
the decorous Victorian human beings. As for androgyny, Julia Kristeva makes an
interesting statement:
Androgynous is not bisexual. Bisexual would imply that each sex is not
without some of the characteristics of the other and would lead to a
nonsymmetrical doubling on both sides of sexualization (man would have a
feminine part that is not woman’s femininity, and woman would have a
masculine part that is not the masculinity of man). In the hypothesis of
bisexuality one deals with four components, which assume at the start two
different relations, male and female, to the Phallus’ power. As to the
androgyne, he is unisexual: he is two of himself, conversant onanist,
bounded totality, heaven and earth jammed together, a blissful coalescence
a hairsbreadth away from catastrophe. The androgyne does not love, he
admires himself in another androgyne and sees only himself, rounded,
faultless, otherless. Coalescing in himself, he cannot even coalesce: he is
fascinated with his own image. We are of course dealing with the
homosexual fantasy of androgynism, not with biological makeup. A
fantasy that uses the names of the two sexes (“andro” and “gyne”) only the
better to deny their difference.
(Tales of Love 70)
The vampire androgyne creates another androgyne by the way of vampirism, a narcisstic
machination yet not devoid of the master-slave superiority-inferiority relationship.
Foucault points out that power and pleasure are always close to each other, they overlap,
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and reinforce one another (The Will to Knowledge 48). The love of the vampire is pleasant
and destructive at the same time, Eros and Thanatos are bound together.
Evil does not spring from eroticism, nor is it the death instinct which is born from
lust. Evil brings out our death instinct and poses it in the face of its own service of constant
instinct for life: wanting power (Király 882). In Victorian ideology, reproductive sex is a
marker for sexual power. Homosexuality stands for nonprocreative sexuality, but Dracula
escapes the limitations of sex through his polysexual nature. He is an androgynous god
who stands above rational explanations, a medium through which excessive lust gains way.
Not for nothing is his sexual nature accentuated. He is able to multiply, but it is made clear
in the narrative that no deviations from the norms are acceptable, the only way to secure
the survival of mankind is heterosexual monogamy. Nonconformity is punished, and it is
penalized because it differs from the dominant ethical dogma. Few attempts have been
made to place homoerotism into moral realms instead of stigmatizing same-sex preference
as a form of moral genocide.
A new kind of sexual morality was conceptualized in 1922 by Kenneth Ingram.
Ingram dissents from the ‘procreation-as-the-end’ type of moralist idea, basically because
the emphasis is on the physical; instead of spiritual and emotional love, having offspring is
the motivating force. In his concept he distinguishes civilized men from the savage in
terms of morality. Applying this principle, Ingram does not think those immoral who
function physically, but those who are “entirely on the physical level” (29). His dichotomy
between spiritual purity in sex and pure physicality sheds light on a new concept, a more
open-minded attitude to sexuality. The sharp boundary between emotional and physical
love dominates Stoker’s text. The early Victorian expectation of conjugal relationship
suggests a non-physical bond. Some moralists believed to be procreation the only purpose
of marriage, and the narrative seems to support this sanctimonious requirement, but with
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profound emotional dynamic instead of cold rationality. Physicality is seen as evil, just like
same-sex preference.
2.1.4
Polymorphous Perversity: The Hidden Paraphilias of the
Vampires
Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopatia Sexualis, the famous collection of
pathological case histories came out in 1886. The paraphilias gathered by the doctor
illustrate very well the consensus of the society on sexual normativity. Sexual
maladjustment could end up in imprisonment or confinement in a madhouse. More than a
century later we can observe a loosening tendency compared to Victorian judgments on
deviations; for instance homosexuality as a sexual disorder has been removed from the list
of paraphilias. Krafft-Ebing was progressive well before his time, because despite
mentioning several cases of homosexuals, he did not favour the idea that inversion was a
product of some sort of mental illness. Further on, I restrict my research on the last decades
of the nineteenth century. Having already discussed the idea of inversion, I focus on
anomalies which were considered perversions.
Some hidden aspects of sexual pathology are lurking in vampires as well. Fetishism,
sadism, masochism, and homosexaulity were sub-divisions of paraesthesia22 for KrafftEbing. Fetishism is used with sexual connotation as a substitute for the sexual object. It can
be a piece of clothes or any anatomical part(s) of the partner. Freud calls the fetish “a
substitute for the penis” (Fetishism 953). In the case of vampires the substitute element is
blood, which becomes the exclusive object of sexuality. Haematophilia and haemotodipsia
are under the class of blood fetishism. The haematophiliac has an erotic attraction to the
22
Perversion of the sexual instinct including inadequate stimuli, goal or object
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taste, sight or smell of blood. Haemotodipsia is a stronger form of this disease. People gain
their whole sexual satisfaction from blood, that is “what coitus is to the lover, the bite and
the sucking is to the haemotodipsiac” (Florescu and McNally Dracula 173).
Blood and lust pervade the legends of Vlad Ţepeş, Elizabeth Bathory and Stoker’s
Dracula. Sexual sadism, this psychosexual disorder links these stories, where mutilation of
the body is connected with delight and pleasure. Burning, boiling, beating and several
other brutal and gruelling tortures have become essential parts of the popularized image
about the lifestyle of these “vampirized” historical persons. Functionally, these sadistic
elements satisfy all demands of people’s insatiable appetite for dread and horror in the
given era.
In spite of the common belief that the novel is saturated with sadism, in Stoker’s
Dracula there is only one explicit sadistic incident. When Renfield reveals that Dracula has
been entering the asylum and vampirising Mina, Professor Van Helsing and Dr Seward
burst into Mina’s room and a horrid scene unfolds before them. Dracula stands by the bed
and Mina kneels before him. The Count holds the girl’s head and compels her to drink
blood from his chest. It is described as a violent scene. Dr Seward remarks in his diary that
the “attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a
saucer of milk to compel it to drink” (Dracula 336). The blood and milk analogue is an
clear reference to semen.
Sadism is not only a wish to hurt somebody, but also “the desire for absolute control
over another being” (Fromm 101). Bloodsucking includes the desire for possession. The
dichotomous elements of love in vampire stories are “domination and servitude, possession
and deprivation, exploitation and allurement.”23 Dracula can control his descendants,
exploiting their weakness; it is visible in his sexual relations that he has a sadistic
23
Kristeva uses these dichotomies to refer to the master-slave relationship in Plato’s Phaedrus, but clearly, it
can be related to vampire stories, or any other stories machinating with sadomasochistic hints (65).
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inclination. Dracula’s victims are reduced to the level of objects. The Count’s sadistic
nature is the most obvious when he makes Mina drink from his chest. He forces the girl to
do whatever he wants without restrictions. Dracula’s obsession with power is evident.
Sadism and masochism both include the combination of cruelty and lust. The terms were
coined by Krafft-Ebing in Psychopatia Sexualis,24 referring to two different poles, while
Wilhelm Stekel ascertained that the
decisive thing in the phenomenon of sadomasochism is the affect, which
is fed from two sources: in the sadist, from his own sense of power in
overcoming the resistance of another and from his feeling himself into
the humiliation of his partner; in the masochist, from the overcoming of
his own resistances (power over himself!) and the feeling of himself into
the partner who humbles him, in which we were able to show that we
have to do not with separate events, but with polar expressions of a single
complex.
(57)
The victims of Dracula do not experience bloodsucking as a painful happening. Despite its
violent nature, the vampiric kiss is a source of sensuality and pleasure. Bloodsucking
provides some thrills on the spot, but later, recalling these situations, it is considered to be
dreadful. The after-effect of these intimate moments, the loss of blood enfeebles people.
Lucy weakens physically as well as mentally, whereas Mina shows only physical
weakness.
Daniel Lapin, a psychotherapist has examined victims of so-called vampiric sexual
abuse. He argues that most vampire stories pervaded by sexuality are derived
unconsciously from such traumatic experiences. He has compared real incest victims’
24
Sadism is named after Marquis de Sade and masochism is derived from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch,
inspired by their novels with sadistic and masochistic themes.
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symptoms with the characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and has found that both Mina and
Lucy are victims of this special type of incest. I intend to sum up Lapin’s evidence briefly.
Lucy’s symptoms are as follows: she does not want to sleep, the mother refuses when she
wants to sleep in her room, after Dracula’s kiss she is gasping for breath and feels
compelled to go to Dracula whenever he wants her. (6-14) The same thing can be noticed
when Lucy becomes a vampire: children want to go to her. Mina feels this inherent force to
go to the Count too after her victimization. When Dracula forces her to suck the blood
from his bare chest, Mina either has to drink or suffocate. Lapin calls this a “coerced
fellatio” (41). Mina feels unclean and similarly, victims of incest feel shame after their
molestation.
Dracula visits Lucy and sucks her blood when she is asleep or is in an unconscious
state. He metaphorically rapes her. The girl cannot decide whether the horror she
experiences is a product of dreams or reality. Dracula’s visits evoke a strange bittersweet
reaction from Lucy. Since Lucy gets a taste of vampirism, her longing for blood becomes
the centre of her interest. Stoker splendidly illustrates where one’s fate leads whose life’s
goal is confined to pursuing a desire, be it sexuality or power. These people concentrate
only on this pursuit, which wears them out. They think that if they can fulfil their greedy
desire, they will be happy. This is not so. Lucy’s life – similarly to other vampires’ – will
be full of suffering, iniquity, loneliness and misery. Similarly, sexual deviants often suffer
from melancholy, a sense of guilt and solitariness. In addition, the excessive sexual activity
might correspond to satyriasis and nymphomania, both involving moral turpitude.
The converted Lucy has a peculiar feature in her aberrant behaviour; even compared
to Dracula. It is learnt from the Westminster Gazette that Lucy seduces little children,
although there is no explanation why she haunts only them. Probably because she is a
“new” vampire and does not have enough power. Taking vampirization’s sexual nature
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into consideration, this suggests Lucy’s inclination for paedophilia.25 The other female
vampires also satisfy their sexual appetite on children. When in Dracula’s castle, they are
offered a living child by the Count instead of taking advantage of Jonathan. The young
attorney was “aghast with horror” (Dracula 53) as they disappeared with the bag. This
criminal act of the vampiresses totally subverts the conception about women’s
vulnerability. The woman, who is weak, helpless and exposed to physical exploitation,
turns into something different. After her virtue is violated, she corrupts those who are
weaker than her, the children. Vampirism is contagious, and when infected, the victim
becomes the victimizer.
Besides marginal individuals with sexual anomalies there are a number of other fields
connected with sexuality where the person could be branded, at least in moralistic terms.
Illegitimacy, or more precisely the violation of the sanctity of conjugal motherhood was
one of them. As Walkovitz notes, there was a surplus of women in the Victorian era. Since
the woman’s place was in the home, they were financially dependent. Those having
brothers and/or being married were in a lucky position, since they had people to support
them. The others had to earn a living by themselves. It was rather difficult to find a proper
job for a woman. They received lower wages than men even when they did the same work.
Amongst the poor, one of the opportunities of earning money was to turn to prostitution. A
lot of young girls chose the streets to overcome their temporary difficulties. Poverty was
definitely one of the reasons to follow this path. Most of these girls had lost one or both of
their parents, they were single, local young women and before going onto the streets, they
had already had some sexual experience (16-19). Some were forced by circumstances, but
prostitution also offered an independent way of living for girls. Pleasure was acted out in a
25
It is true that mostly men are reported as child-molesters, although we can find proofs for female
paedophiles as well in the field of forensic psychology.
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business-like manner. Being sexually active, prostitutes were in great(er) danger of
venereal diseases and pregnancy.
There may be some resemblance between Stoker’s vampiresses and the stereotyped
prostitute. Night is when prostitutes are most active, and this is the time when female
vampires stalk. Furthermore, Lucy is a somnambulist, she often goes out in a nightdress
while sleepwalking. According to the Victorian ethos, loose dress meant loose morals. As
Walkovitz remarks, the “most visible symbol of the prostitute’s relative affluence was her
dress” (26). Obviously, appearance was emphasized in order to attract male clients.
Although there is no comment on the female vampires’ dress in Dracula, their outward
beauty is thoroughly stressed. Pre-nuptinal pregnancy was quite frequent in the nineteenthcentury England, therefore pre-marital sex must have been a widespread phenomenon
among all classes, opines Mason (72). Prostitutes became easily pregnant, so these mothers
were not too attached to their children emotionally. The loose attachment between woman
and child is clear when Lucy sucks the blood of a baby and throws her away, and similarly,
Dracula’s vampiresses feed on an infant.
Lucy and the Count meet at night when it is dark, which assumes the importance of
secrecy for various reasons. It is important to note that it is the prostitute who seduces
while in this case Lucy is being allured by the Count. This can be considered as the first
step, because Dracula’s appearance is the primary reason for the changes in Lucy, who
begins to have semi-sexual nightmares and not only her sleep but also her morals get
corrupted. She becomes openly wanton. If discovered, her nocturnal dalliance would
endanger her reputation. Lucy is engaged to Arthur Holmwood, and her liaison with
another man would not be tolerated. This form of the double standard in Victorian society
is obvious, the infidelity of the husband is tolerated, whereas the unfaithful woman’s act is
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seen as moral depravity and could be resulted in exclusion from society. The patriarch’s
opinion is reflected in Krafft-Ebing’s writing, according to which
[t]he unfaithfulness of the wife, as compared with that of the husband, is
morally of much wider bearing, and should always meet with severer
punishment at the hands of law. The unfaithful wife not only dishonours
herself, but also her husband and her family, not to speak of the possible
uncertainty of paternity. Natural instincts and social position are frequent
causes of disloyalty in man (the husband), whilst the wife is surrounded
by many protective influences.
(16)
The hypocritical attempt of men to justify their own infidelity is resonant. It was thought
that women were inferior and weaker, and they were held responsible for the fall of man
due to the Christian Church’s misogynist approach.
The way of looking at women as subsidiary is what lurks in the nature of female
vampire figures. There seems to be allusive harlotry in Lucy and the vampiresses; their
nocturnal appearances (sexuality is conventionally associated with darkness), their
polyandry, their attachment disorders and their seductiveness provide similarities with
prostitutes. They can be connected with syphilis, so they can represent women with loose
morals in terms of prostitution, as well. But despite this evocative analogy, it would be an
exaggeration to say that Lucy and the vampiresses are “Victorian prostitutes”, rather,
bearing in mind the era’s strict mores and ethos, it is that attention is focused on their
predatory sexual appetite. This picture results from the ideal image of the angelic woman
where anaesthesia is a key feature. The vampiresses upset the Victorian standards for
females, and their sexual activity is depicted in a very negative way. They are associated
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with the promiscuous whores in the sense that they are also considered “low women” of
defective moral sense.
Turning the girls into lustful vampiresses brings about the image of voluptuous
death-like sexuality. Copulation with the vampire has a touch of necrophilia.26 Necrophilia
means sexual intercourse with a dead body, where the possibility of resistance is excluded.
Vampires are not dead, but undead, so they are moving objects of desires. Symbolizing
forbidden passion, they keep coming back from the dead until they are killed by men of
moral conviction. Necrophilic imagery, where sex and death are intertwined, was quite
popular in the fin-de-siécle movement, and – although a border-line case with her semilifeless condition – the vampire figure was a proper manifestation of necrophilic longing
with her connotation of death and sexuality.
Bunson describes necrophilia as “the uncontrollable desire to engage in assorted
sexual activities with a cadaver” (187). The disability to control desires has proved to be a
key motif in the interaction with the vampire. Symbols in dreams are a manifestation of the
psyche in most cases, which is outside the control of the conscious mind (Jung Az ember és
szimbólumai 63). It is at night when subconscious contents are without control; they come
to the surface and gain power over the individual. Being a somnambulist, Lucy is unable to
control herself, and becomes an easy quarry for the Count. Similarly, Mina is seduced at
night. Sexually active women are so hideous that they are described as nymphomaniacs,
who cannot control their desires. In Stoker’s fiction, the passive Victorian woman has
turned into a beastly libidinous creature.
26
It is interesting to note that among Krafft-Ebing’s psychopathological case histories there is a necrophile
man (Case 23) – who had pleasure when he would dig up corpses and masturbate while tearing them into
pieces, and even after the brutal act – was named as a “modern vampire” by the doctor: “The sex of the
bodies is said to have been a matter of indifference to him, though it was ascertained that this modern
vampire had dug up more female than male corpses” (38; emphasis added). In this case vampirism is
associated with sadistic impulses. The picture provided is by far not the romanticized portrayal of the
charming evil as seen in Romantic literature at the time, but the emphasis is on the psychopathic act of a
degenerate with absence of moral.
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To be put back to their original passive place, women have to be transformed into
death-like condition as well. The erotic dead women of the late Victorian art symbolized
liberation from temptation. On the other hand, the sexual attraction to dead bodies
unfolded the patriarchal “obsession” with power. In the first place, this dominance could
be maintained in the bedroom.
Ideally women would produce children by parthenogenesis; failing that,
male impregnation should take place in a dark bedroom into which the
husband would creep to create his offspring in silence while the wife
endured the connection in a sort of coma, thereby precluding any stigma
of depravity which would have been incurred by showing signs of life.
(Crow 25)
Women were forced into a comatose state, they became the embodiment of passivity, the
dead “paramours” of their husbands. The Victorian woman became an automaton with
clear-cut functions, and a penitent for the sin of Eve (and of all women). Meanwhile, her
moral advancement was the slogan for being in such a situation.27 The focus is not on the
preoccupation with death, but a desire for absolute control which can be easily achieved
on account of the passivity of the partner.
Another paraphilia which lurks in the vampire figure is bestiality. In the novel
Dracula, the only male vampire is seen to take shape of animals. Lucy and the other
vampiresses do not have animal alter-egos, and it seems to be unnecessary to have one,
27
The double-dealing Christian propaganda regarding woman question was widespread in the Victorian era.
I have already highlighted Nicholas Francis Cooke’s promotion of the positive effects of Christianity on
women, but the following extract from Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopatia Sexualis demonstrates so well the
pharisaical situation that it is worth a quotation: “Above all things Islamism excludes woman from public
life and enterprise, and stifles her intellectual and moral advancement. The Mohammedan woman is simply
a means for sensual gratification and the propagation of the species; whilst in the sunny balm of Christian
doctrine, blossom forth her divine virtues and her qualities as housewife, companion and mother. What a
contrast!” (5)
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because of the gender discrimination of the period. Women were thought to be closer to
animals than men; the (supposed) bestiality of their nature connected them to animals
(Dijkstra 240). Originally, folkloric vampires were beasts until the revolutionary humanlike literary depictions in the Romantic era. It is true, that even at the time they were
associated with animals with a hidden, nocturnal lifestyle which intimated their demonic
nature. Wolves and bats have become animal emblems for vampires, just as the cat is
strongly connected with witches. Throughout the witch-hunt hysteria in Western Europe
cats accompanied witches or witches took a cat’s form according to superstitious beliefs,
and fornication with the devil in the form of an animal was one of the fatal counts of those
being accused of witchcraft. The zoosexual act entails the exploration of the pleasures of
bestiality, and animality always refers to the instinctual, more primitive stages of
mankind.
I have already pointed out the incentuous nature of the vampire (in Chapter 2.1.1)
which is another sexual deviancy. The act of incest is a cultural taboo and as Freud notes
“persons who obey the taboo have an ambivalent feeling toward what is affected by the
taboo” (Totem and Taboo 54). This is most explicit in the novel when Dracula explains to
Mina that “you, their best beloved one, are now to me flesh of my flesh; blood of my
blood; kin of my kin (...)” (Dracula 343). Vampire love is always incentious. Sexual
intercourse is between relatives, thus close blood relations might have repercussions on the
mental health of the offspring. In vampire narratives offspring perpetually hand down this
kind of “love,” which always bars out the possibility to reach the high(er) standards of
civilization.
In Dracula, the presence of a mythical structure can be found. Actually, the novel
operates with mythical patterns, from the death and revival myth to the quest-myth. In
Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye points out that one possible way of organizations of
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myth and archetypal symbols in literature is the so-called undisplaced myth with its two
contrasting worlds of the apocalyptic and the demonic (139). Both are linked with
existential heavens and hells of the contemporary religion in which the literary work is
produced. The demonic world is “the world of the nightmare and the scapegoat, the
bondage, pain and confusion” (Frye Anatomy of Criticism 147). Menacing powers threaten
the individual(s), usually in the form of preternatural creatures; composed of animal,
human and divine features. The demonic contrasts the hero’s pleasure with his duty or
honour (Frye Anatomy of Criticism 147), and his dilemma becomes the source of his
frustrations. Stoker’s Dracula is set in this demonic archetypal world where a number of
individuals are threatened. The novel’s sexual imagery aptly fits the symbolism of demonic
erotica.
The obscene, the perverse and the immoral achieve expression in displacements in
Gothic novels, and the vampires’ polymorphous perversity secures the dark analogies in
sexual terms. Pursuant to Frye’s arrangement, the matrimonial and the virginal go on the
apocalyptic, but the incestuous, the homosexual and the adulterous always go on the
demonic side (Anatomy of Criticism 156). Gothic novels are set in demonic realms, but
their characters have the opportunity to make a decision in moral questions. Frye’s
archetypal world division is also expressed on a lower scale regarding the dichotomous
treatment of female characters. Those remaining true to moral precepts can gain mastery
over temptation, so only virtuous women (and men) have the chance to survive. This
makes clear that the general world does not exclude the possibility of individual worlds.
The former seems to shape the latter, but in reality, it works the other way round, single
worlds make up the lion’s share, that is why the order-disorder-order sequence is secured
in Gothic novels. Bearing in mind the pivotal place of ethics in Gothic stories, I would
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complete Frye’s mythic comprehension of the apocalyptic and the demonic by adding the
division of the moral and the immoral ad referendum.
2.1.5
Human Feelings: Romantic Love and Friendship
To put love into discourse, it is necessary to make a distinction between love and
mere desire. Love is a reasonably complex feeling. The varied intensity of this emotion
makes it possible to talk of different kinds of love (unrequited love, flirting and so on).
People cannot only feel love of different degree, but also there is a wide range of objects
which this feeling can be projected onto. People can feel love for their beloved, for their
parents, for animals, for objects, for ideas, for God and for many other things. Love
between man and woman is the most intensive feeling. As close as desire and love seem to
be to each other, they bear different qualities. José Ortega y Gasset has made a division
between these two feelings by defining love having an active emotional nature as opposed
to desire’s passivity. Love triggers emotional reactions, whereas desire does not
necessarily do so. Desire is an effort to possess somebody or something, but as soon as it
gets satisfied, this feeling appeases (23). Alan Goldman has dissociated love and sexual
desire on the basis that “love is a long-term, deep emotional relationship between two
individuals... permanent, at least in intent, and more or less exclusive” (273), whereas the
goal of sexual desire is the physical contact with another person’s body, focusing on what
this contact produces, and not on the emotions that this contact may express (268).
Vampirism is often seen equivalent to sexuality or as Király puts it, the “illness of desires”
(683).
Love between human beings in the novel is essential for moralistic reasons. Sexuality
was limited to be a conjugal duty, although it may be exaggeration to think that Victorians
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saw marriage only as a purpose to maintain the species. The right place for generation was
within marital bonds, but it would be prejudiced narrow-mindedness not to see that
marriage could have been the consummation of love between two people as causa finalis.
Monogamous relationships that had been promoted partly by economic and social reasons
would secure home-life stability, or as Ingram states, the reversion to free love would on
the one hand completely change the basis of human society, on the other hand it would
undo our evolution from animal to man (48). Morality separates mankind from earlier
primitive stages. In this sense Michael Mason is right to have proposed that the Victorian
code was “progressive” (6) and conceived “as reactively as ours” (3) bearing in mind the
loose morals of people before Queen Victoria’s reign.
Morality is a recurring theme in Stoker’s writings, usually appearing in the form of
chivalrous men saving virtuous girls. Romantic love only occurs between good characters,
and it is a central concern of the human couples in Dracula, as well. Despite Mina and
Jonathan’s married status, sexuality seems to be out of place in their relationship. Mina’s
and Jonathan’s love is profound, genuine and full of emotions. When Jonathan is in
Transylvania, he cannot help thinking of his bride. Similarly, Mina’s thoughts are full of
her fiancé. They are devoted to each other and would do anything for the other, even if that
meant self-sacrifice. Their relationship embodies the concept of ideal love full of romantic
manifestations:
“I do wish he would write, if it were only a single line.” (Dracula 92)
“It [a letter] is of Jonathan, and must be next my heart, for he is in my heart”
(Dracula 122)
“I was the happiest woman in all the wide world, and that I had nothing to give
him except myself, my life, and my trust, and that with these went my love
and duty for all the days of my life.” (Dracula 130)
“that if ever there was a woman who was all perfection, that one is my poor
wronged darling.” (Dracula 369)
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“You are nearest and dearest and all the world to me; our souls are knit into
one, for all life and all time.” (Dracula 394)
Before Lucy’s victimization takes place, Lucy and Arthur want to get married for
love, as well. Much as Lucy feels sorry for her two other suitors, she carries out her
monogamous intention. Their romance is not as detailed as Jonathan and Mina’s. Arthur
does not keep a diary, and there is no correspondence between Lucy and him. Lucy writes
about her feelings for Arthur to Mina, her best friend: “I love him. I am blushing as I write,
for although I think he loves me, he has not told me so in words. But, oh, Mina, I love him;
I love him; I love him!” (Dracula 72). Lucy is a sexually maturing young woman whose
flirty behaviour seems natural. Later she shares the excitement of her approaching wedding
with Mina, clearly describing her husband-to-be as an ideal lover and friend in the same
person.28
The ideal of two spouses who are lovers and friends at the same time, that is, who are
soul mates, seems to be dear to Bram Stoker. His yearning for such a companionship
underlies most of his writings, where couples are flawless and whose union is totality in all
its sense. According to Farson’s biography, friendship was very important for the Irish
writer. His lifelong friendship with the actor Henry Irving may be a proof for his taking
this spiritual attachment really seriously.29 According to Skal, this comradeship
overshadowed Stoker’s marriage so much that it has become a kind of cliché that his “real”
marriage was to the actor, and not to his wife (25). Their friendship even had precedence
over the newly-weds’ honeymoon, as Irving summoned them to Birmingham. Barbara
28
“I am very, very happy, and I don’t know what I have done to deserve it. I must only try in the future to
show that I am not ungrateful for all His goodness to me in sending to me such a lover, such a husband, and
such a friend.” (Dracula 77)
29
“Soul had looked into soul” – wrote Stoker about their first encounter in Personal Reminiscences of Henry
Irving. “From that hour began a friendship as profound, as close, as lasting as can be between two men” (31).
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Belford points out this event’s textual echo in Dracula as Jonathan’s and Mina’s wedding
has to be postponed due to the Transylvanian Count’s command30 (87).
Another famous friendship of Stoker’s was with Walt Whitman, the controversial
American poet. In 1855 Whitman’s collection of poetry Leaves of Grass came out, which
was regarded as an obscene book because of its strong sexual imagery. Stoker defended
and admired this work – under the influence of his English professor Edward Dowen – and
began corresponding with Whitman; he sent overemotional letters to him, and they finally
met in America (Belford 40). They share some common motifs; most conspicuously, male
bonding seems to be a significant element of both authors’ subjects. Leaves of Grass
clearly has homoerotic overtones, and Dracula is with hidden same-sex symbolism,
although Stoker claimed to be conservative. This short extract is from Stoker’s letter; it
was written, but never posted to Whitman:
“How sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman’s eyes and a
child’s wishes to feel that he can speak so to a man who can be if wishes
father, and brother and wife to his soul.”
(Stoker’s letter quoted in Belford 43)
This fragment suggests craving for a kindred soul of intellectual, spiritual, but not
necessarily of physical quality; a wish that could not be satisfied in Stoker’s marriage to
Florence Balcombe.
Stoker married Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe in 1878, whose hand he had
gained from Oscar Wilde, whose first infatuation was this pulchritudinous Irish girl. At the
time of their wedding Florence was nineteen, and her husband eleven years her senior. As
30
Belford sees the main characters of the novel as projected versions of Stoker’s closest circle. Abraham Van
Helsing as the good father figure (named after Stoker’s father and Stoker himself), loyal Mina as his mother,
Charlotte, the young Jonathan as Stoker’s own alter-ego, the frivolous Lucy as her wife, Florence, a
remarkable beauty of her age, and Irving as Dracula, the dominant father-surrogate (5).
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for their conjugality, the general notion (basically based on Stoker’s grandnephew, Daniel
Farson’s biography) is that Florence married him for social position and not for love.
Florence is described as a remarkably beautiful young woman who attracts gazes, but also
as a distant mother and a frigid wife.31 The couple had only one son, Noel. By way of
compensatoncompensation, in Dracula Mina’s and Jonathan’s romantic love is reasserted
after the erotic temptation generated by the vampires, and behind their passivity there is a
strong emotional bond. If not in his marriage, Stoker was able to experience profound
attachment in the form of strong bond of friendships and also made comradeship the
elemental victorious force against the evil in Dracula.
The hero is part of every tale, yet in Dracula there is not a solitary hero, but a group
brave the evil. Heroes are ideal figures strengthened by ordeal—they have to weather
some difficulties. They are endowed with positive characteristics, such as courage, virtue,
moderateness and unselfishness. Concerning these traits heroes may seem superhuman, but
in contrast with the perfect deities, they are fallible. They do not go their own way all the
time, but take advice from others if necessary. The hero archetype is often accompanied by
the wise old man archetype who balances the heroes’ initial weaknesses and gives
guidance (Jung A szellem szimbolikája 21). He represents wisdom, knowledge and
morality ((Jung A szellem szimbolikája 26). In Stoker’s story the old wise man archetype is
embodied by Professor Van Helsing. He is the parental figure of the whole group, he
reveals Dracula’s real nature and gives a clue to the others how to destroy the vampire.
The structural principle of Dracula is a quest myth in which the heroes travel
through the dark to reach the light, the sun. Vampires are essentially associated with
darkness. In Dracula the first chapter is remarkable when Jonathan travels to the vampire’s
31
George du Maurier, the well-known cartoonist, illustrator and novelist of the age, featured the Stokers in a
cartoon entitled ‘A Filial Reproof,’ in which the young boy (Noel) is berated for talking, since “little Boys
should be Seen and not Heard.” Noel says in reply to her mother: “Yes, Mamma! But you don’t Look at me!”
(cartoon appeared in British weekly magazine Punch known to make sarcastic and humorous comments on
Victorian society and manners, 1890)
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castle, because his journey to the Borgo Pass actually sets the atmosphere of the whole
novel. By way of describing the young man’s trip, Stoker invites the reader to the world of
darkness. He relies on the colour contrast of light and dark, and the sharp boundary
between them marks the frontier between the ordinary and the demonic world, as
expressed in the form of a landscape allegory in Jonathan’s journal:
“[a]nd at last we saw before us the Pass opening out on the eastern side. There
were dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the air the heavy, oppressive sense
of thunder. It seemed as though the mountain range had separated two
atmospheres, and that now we had got into the thunderous one.”
(Dracula 18)
Once the travellers step into the realm of the night, the emphasis shifts to gloomy visual
imagery and eerie aural references. Stoker uses a relatively great amount of nouns and
adjectives describing the landscape and express extreme emotions.32 Dark/darkness is used
the most frequently, but Stoker adds more and more words to the description as Jonathan
gets closer and closer to Dracula’s dwelling place. When Harker changes the coach for the
Count’s carriage, the dark imagery gets enhanced. Dracula’s carriage, hat, cloak and horses
are all black. From now on, until they reach the castle, new types of nouns and adjectives
appear, those expressing fear, such as fright, dreadful, uncanny, (dreadfully) afraid and
horror. Jonathan Harker’s trip to Dracula is a symbolic journey to his (plus the writer’s and
the readers’) uncanny inner self.
The novel has a cyclical movement, even characterized by the alternating patterns
of dark and light contrasts, where the original order is disturbed by a demonic presence,
but after some shocking scenes the original state is restored finally. The solar imagery
32
Bram Stoker makes use of the Gothic idiom including grey/greyness, shadow, dark/darkness, mistiness,
gloom, thunder/thunderous, black, terrible, cold, ghost-like, suspense, dreadful, fear and so on.
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suggests the archaic form of the solar myth, where heroes become sun-gods and sungoddesses. The sun is the source of energy; it symbolizes the cyclical nature of creation.
Dracula subdues the sun, but the Crew of Light, representing an aspect of the sun, brings
order to the universe and secure cosmic balance.
In the novel, the good characters are on good terms with one another. They share
their innermost thoughts and reveal their emotions, and communication works famously
between them. Their friendship is based on affection and trust, which is inevitable for
overcoming evil. However, this friendship is apparently idealized just like Jonathan’s and
Mina’s love. Quincey, Seward and Arthur are rivals for Lucy’s hand. Quincey and Seward
are hopelessly in love with Lucy, because the girl chooses Arthur as her fiancé. Since this
love is unrequited, Seward finds relief only in his work. His craving for Lucy can be
followed throughout the novel due to his journals. Despite the rebuff, he stands by her and
cares for her even if she becomes “ill”. Similarly, Quincey Morris remains Lucy’s friend
after the rejection. Nevertheless, by virtue of blood transfusions, a more intimate
relationship is hidden behind their friendly relations. Symbolically, as I have already
surmised, blood transfusion is a form of marriage.
Roth questions the real friendship among Dr Seward, Arthur Holmwood, Quincey
Morris and Van Helsing because of these operations’ sexual nature. He thinks that the
friendships in the novel actually “mask a deep-seated rivalry and hostility” (415). The
characters are constantly assuring each other of their mutual affection. What is more,
Professor Van Helsing gives the impression of a philanthrope. He entitles Mina as his
friend without ever seeing her when he notifies her of Lucy’s death. The characters are
close to each other. Their common goal to destroy the vampire increases their group
cohesion. They must have a strong sense of belonging. If there was any hostility among
them, traces would surely be found at least in Dr Seward’s diary. Furthermore, Seward and
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Quincey remain good friends of both Lucy and Arthur. They respect and accept Lucy’s
decision. They are unselfish. The friendship in Dracula is more spiritualized than masking
hostile aspects. It must be stated though, that it is so exaggerated that it lacks credibility, as
do the representation of all the human characters. All human characters are flawless,
endowed only with good characteristics. There is not a single person in the novel who
would not be praised by someone. Even the maids of the Westenra household are
appreciated, as well. People seem to be real altruists, wishing only the benefit of the others
as if human nature was essentially good. These ideal love representations between human
beings compensate the dark side of sexuality evoked by vampirism.
Besides the previous patriarchal interpretation, it is also worth examining these
transfusions from another point of view. On account of vampirizaton, Lucy has undergone
a change. She loses blood, which enfeebles her. She is not a vampire yet, but throughout
the metamorphosis she needs blood in order to stay alive. Not being a bloodsucker yet, she
cannot take the blood herself, what is more, she does not seem to be aware of the fact that
blood is the only thing that can save her life at that point. However, the men around her
recognize this need and are willing to give their blood to her to keep her alive. Being kind
to Lucy and wanting to help her, these men dubiously represent the oppressive maledominated patriarchal society. They are chivalric knights from the past, feeling that it is
their duty to save a virtuous girl’s life. Dominant or not, these Victorian gentlemen, with
courteous manners, echo the already mentioned idea of Nicholas Francis Cooke, according
to which women can be happy to have such Christian men by their side, and they are not
slaves but have a respectable place in society.
Not only cross-gender friendships and the brotherhood of men who appreciate and
help one another are central, but also the companionship of the two girls. Lucy and Mina
share all their thoughts and feelings, and sharing the same sleeping room in Whitby, Mina
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tries to take care of the somnambulist Lucy even at night. “She and I were like sisters”
(Dracula 275) – as later Mina explains their relations to Lord Godalming. In Stoker’s story
all people form connections, making humankind a system of noble sister- and brotherhood.
In Dracula there is not a solitary hero, but a group of joint forces with the symbolic
meaning that it is easier to surmount difficulties if there are friends and family members
around who are supportive than facing problems alone. Friendship is an important form of
social bonds. Community members with altruistic sentiments produce good effects on the
whole of society. Absolute confidence is a must, and self-disclosure and reciprocity are
also necessary to form such an intimate attachment. This confidential and affectionate
fellowship of the characters outlines an extended family of people acting in complete
unison. Stoker attaches great importance to family, which becomes the microcosm of an
ideal society in his fictional universe. Everybody has their proper role in this community,
and those who accept their social role and reflect (classical and Christian) virtues and
values are those who contribute to this social utopia.
Love and affection seem to be the prerogative of human beings, but the question is
raised whether such profound emotions exist between vampires or not. In the novel there is
one scene where the conversation includes this topic. “This man belongs to me!”
intervenes Dracula and chases away his lecherous daughter-wives when they are about to
attack Jonathan in the Transylvanian castle. Although the vampiresses obey, it is a splendid
opportunity for some teasing. “You yourself never loved, you never love!” (Dracula 53)
laughs the fair girl at the Count. It sounds like a discontented wife’s reproach and derision.
Dracula retorts: “Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past” (Dracula
53). There is no clue what relationship the vampiresses had with Dracula before they were
transformed into such diabolical creatures, their identity is a mystery. It is possible that the
two dark women were his sisters or his daughters, because of their resemblance. If Bram
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Stoker followed Vlad Ţepeş as a model, the latter is likely since the historical Dracula did
not have sisters, only brothers. There is no precise data about his children, but he may have
had several daughters from his mistresses. The fair girl might be the Count’s former wife
or mistress. They all must be people whom Dracula adored in the past, which is why he
transmogrified them, in order to be with him forever. The fair vampiress’s comment, then
refers to the act of vampirism. Apart from the fact whether Dracula chose to convert them
for love or any other reasons, vampirism means malediction and eternal suffering.
Another interesting remark can be found for Dracula’s momentary sentimentalism in
Dr Seward’s diary. During the forced bloodsucking scene between Mina and the Count “it
interested me [writes Seward], even at that moment, to see that whilst the face of white set
passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lovingly stroked
the ruffled hair” (Dracula 339). Dracula shows a sign of loving tenderness for a human.
This attraction may be the same as toward the vampiresses when they were human, a
remnant of Dracula’s own human past. These two allusions provide evidence that the
Count was able to love in the past. At present he is a lover, yet seems to be incapable of
loving. Vampire love is a form of inhuman attachment.
2.2
Dracula is Undead: The Sequels
Bram Stoker’s vampire story proves to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration for
subsequent writers. Among so many novels, I chose two which stand out for a number of
reasons. One of them is Freda Warrington’s. She was asked to write the sequel, and her
book was published a hundred years after Stoker’s Dracula. Regarding the form of the
novel, she followed the epistolary conventions of the original Dracula novel. Dracula the
Undead also has a multiple-plot structure; it is made up of journals, diaries, letters,
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newspaper articles and memoirs. The other one is considered the official sequel written by
Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt. Both novels are mirrors of modern times, and it is very
interesting how certain issues appear in these writings, how moral questions are shaped.
2.2.1
Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt: Dracula the Undead
The so-called official sequel of Bram Stoker’s Dracula came out in 2009, written by
one of Bram Stoker’s descendants, Dacre Stoker together with Ian Holt, a Dracula
historian. The novel is entitled Dracula the Un-Dead, referring to one of the three possible
titles originally intended for Stoker’s novel. The forte of this book is the combination of
fantasy with historical truth, so this novel is a successful piece of magic realism. The story
is full of rich historical details of events from Vlad Ţepeş’s and Elizabeth Bathory33’s life,
but it also provides an insight into the late Victorian life, where the story takes place
twenty-five years later after the annihilation of Dracula by a brave band of heroes at the
end of Bram Stoker’s novel. As appropriate, real-life people and places are mixed up with
fictitious characters. Hamilton Deane, the playwright and director of the Dracula stage
adaptation34 and Bram Stoker also appear as characters in the novel. Explanations to every
event in Bram Stoker’s Dracula are given, but in a very witty way. Even the 1897 original
novel is included as a fictitious piece of writing, resulting in an interesting “story-withinstory-within-story” type of triad structure. The narrative style is different, too. Instead of
the multi-narrator level, third-person narrative is used. Bram Stoker’s novel is more
33
Since Erzsébet Báthory is known abroad as Elizabeth Bathory, I use this version of her name when
discussing her in nonhistorical context, also using her name variant accoding to the given novel and movie
adaptations.
34
Hamilton Deane, Irish playwright, actor and director, wrote the script and adapted Dracula into a stage
play in 1924. He has contributed to popularization of Stoker’s novel, mainly when John L. Balderston
rewrote some parts for the American audience in 1927. Their common work had become a huge success.
This stage adaptation also established Béla Lugosi’s career, who played the vampire count on Broadway.
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subjective. The use of the first person narrative makes the reader sympathize with the good
characters, making him or her feel as one of them, whereas Dacre and Holt’s book offers a
rather distant perspective. The character of Dracula is not seen through the glasses of the
participants and is more objective.
As for themes, the book gives a twist to Stoker’s original work by making Dracula
fight on the good side, a figure whose undead existence does not necessarily mean
choosing the evil. By virtue of humanizing the vampire to such a great extent, this novel is
an adaptation of a Victorian story looking back at events of the time, but doing so with
some modern sentiment. Formerly vampirism was inconsistent with the question of free
will. Even in folklore the vampire status is seen as the direct consequence of infamous
deeds committed before the undead metamorphosis. Damnation as punishment fits well
into the dual morality system of the Christian afterlife conception. Our modern creed is
less religious compared to the High Victorian period’s, and the hierarchy with God at the
top has changed, man has gradually come to the foreground. Regardless of the shift in the
hierarchy, in vampire narratives religion has always remained a significant point.
In Dracula the Un-Dead, Dracula embraces the idea of God – a seemingly different
idea than in Bram Stoker’s book. Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt have followed the historical
Vlad Dracula as a model, who was a warrior for Christendom. If Dracula is good, then
another great force should be introduced as the ultimate enemy against mankind. It is
Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian Blood Countess, whose legends the writers wanted to
depend on. The fictitious Elizabeth loathes God and turns her back on him. She blames
him for every destitution in her life, it is clear that her perception of the world is limited.
God as ultimate agent reveals a dichotomous aspect in which the given person’s attitude is
what matters. Considering the idea whether it is good or bad reveals the characters’ own
personal ethical values and worldview, in this case those of Bathory’s and Dracula’s.
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Stoker and Holt’s Dracula is a creature who is half human, half vampire. Despite the
vampire existence, he does not cease to cherish emotions. Some gaps left in our knowledge
by Bram Stoker’s novel are clarified, and the authors of the sequel put the Transylvanian
count into this new context. For instance, Dracula is said to have transformed Lucy into a
vampire in order to save her life, who was dying from Professor Van Helsing’s botched
blood transfusions. Dracula’s human characteristics are mostly outlined in relation to
Mina. Mina’s experience with the Count is the cause of her marriage failure. Jonathan
suspects that deep inside, Mina desires Dracula, and the human husband feels unable to
complete with his supernatural rival. Dracula offers Mina pleasure, but Jonathan is stuck in
the conservative sexual ideology. Since the writing of the original novel, birth control has
changed attitudes to sex. The former ‘duty’ of procreation has been replaced by the focus
on enjoyment and recreation. Mina welcomes liberated ideas, not only in the field of
sexuality, but her desire for the egalitarian model can also be blamed for the change in
their marriage.
I have argued that Mina in Bram Stoker’s Dracula is not a New Woman. Although
she is invested with properties attributed mainly to men in Victorian times, such as
cleverness or courage, she is supportive of her husband and keeps up family values.
Overcoming her former repressions, in Stoker and Holt’s novel Mina becomes the typical
New Woman, an independent lady who is not dependent on her husband. Her rebellion
against the proper womanly role is accentuated throughout the story. Signs can be found
regarding her changed self. She feels free to wear the dress she received from Lucy, an
item of clothing she once found far too provocative. Another example is the way she is
irritated by minor things like Arthur Holmwood’s chivalrous manners, which she considers
“an insult to her independence” (Stoker and Holt 256).
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From a certain feminist point of view, gallantry is a manifestation of men’s
superiority. The first really important work in feminist theory was Mary Wollstonecraft’s
treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which Wollstonecraft also
mentions that the fraudulent polite attentiveness is degrading to women.35 In a
phallocentric society where the difference between men and women is so conspicuous,
gallantry becomes a question of supremacy.36 Wollstonecraft not only blamed men for the
internalized norms of patriarchal society, but also women for staying in that situation.
Dacre’s Mina is not a twenty-first century girl, but a Wollstonecraftian woman who does
not acquiesce, but tries to change the situation she is in. The path is thorny because the fact
of being a woman is a disadvantage (to her). Mina writes to Daily Telegraph under the pen
name of William Harker.37 She has to adopt a masculine identity to let her voice be heard.
Her pseudo-identity demands she be treated as an equal. Changing the name from feminine
to masculine as the only solution to have the right to be heard implies phallocentric
thinking. This procedure reflects real Victorian problems of women who often wrote as
men in order to remain anonymous, which in this case means giving up their own identity
and symbolically becoming someone else they are not in order to be accepted by publishers
and the public. Mina also conceals her gender, although she keeps on promoting
emancipation.
She fights for rights equal to men’s, and the field of sexuality is no exception, either.
She struggles between her husband and an external partner. She loves Jonathan, but their
love is not a passionate one, their sexual life is not a discovery of pleasures. Jonathan is
35
“I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it
manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. It is not
cendescension to bow to an inferiour. So ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely
am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude to life a
handkerchief, or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.”
(120-121)
36
It must be added that there is a multiplicity of feminist literary theories and criticial works, but one of the
points they may agree on is that women are different from men by nature, and this difference ought not be
approached in terms of power relations.
37
Mina is short for Wilhelmina, hence the choice of William.
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unable to yield to sensual gratification. Previously, before learning of the Dracula incident,
there was no sexual dysfunction in the background, but rather social constraints coconstructed with personal moral regulations. Even their bodies represent their given sexual
ideology. Mina has eternal youth because of having Dracula’s blood in her veins, in
contrast with Jonathan, who is getting old in accordance with the laws of nature. Jonathan
fades away like old ideas, but Mina is preserved by her own decision to integrate new ones.
Jonathan, mainly on account of his wife’s feelings for another, has become an
alcoholic. The fight with Dracula has left its post-traumatic effects on all participants. Dr.
Jack Seward, still haunted by the memory of Lucy, has become a morphine addict. Arthur
Holmwood, an experienced soldier, is unable to forget his former bride, Lucy. He rather
exists than lives, looking for a way to die, but too afraid to commit the horrid act himself.
Quincey Harker has grown up. At first, he does not know the dark secrets of the Harkers,
which gradually start to infiltrate into his life.
In the Freudian view, Quincey Harker suffers from Oedipus complex according to
which the boy is fixated to the mother; he discovers that there is a close relationship
between his parents, he becomes jealous of his father, whom he starts to hate. He fears that
his father will discover his true emotions (desire, hatred, jealousy), and he is terrified of
castration, the most fearful punishment for him (Az Ödipusz-komplexus eltűnése 186). The
sub-phases appear symbolically in the novel. Quincey is in a close relationship with his
mother, Mina, but he is estranged from his father, Jonathan. Quincey is fond of the theatre
and wants to become an actor. Jonathan is against this for safety reasons, and demands he
study law at the Sorbonne. Jonathan, the father is an authority figure; therefore this clash of
views leads to repression in Quincey. While at theatre, the young boy befriends Basarab.
Quincey is alienated from his “real” father, and Basarab becomes a father surrogate, he
serves as a father figure for the boy.
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In order to resolve the conflict, Quincey has to identify himself with his father,
Jonathan. He has to become like Jonathan, he has to incorporate his parent’s values,
opinions and ethical views (the latter leads to the development of the superego). The
turning point is when Quincey discovers that his mother is cheating on Jonathan. From that
point on he starts to sympathize with his father. Since Jonathan is murdered before this
disclosure, Quincey feels a kind of compunction, but to add more to the story, it turns out
that Basarab is none else than Dracula38, and he is the real father of Quincey. The father
crisis distorts Quincey’s view, as he considers Jonathan his real father, and splits Dracula’s
personality in two with a schizophrenic observation, according to which he loves Basarab
as a friend (Dracula’s virtuous alter-ego), but hates Dracula (regarding him as the destroyer
of his family).
The love between Mina and Dracula seems to be the primary cause for failure of the
Harkers’ marriage. Dracula does not haunt Mina as her nightmare anymore. Basarab, the
great Shakespearean actor from Romania “transform[s] Dracula into a tragic hero” (Stoker
and Holt 210), observes Quincey (not knowing Basarab’s true identity). Actually, this is
what happens with the Dracula character in this novel. He is endowed with the (alleged)
moral and noble qualities of the historical Vlad III,39 embellished by the new conception
of an ideal passionate and caring lover who considers his sweetheart’s desires even above
his own needs. In the original Dracula, Mina is at her husband side, in Dracula, the UnDead she is an independent woman with a perfect lover, indicating that women do not have
to be subordinate to men, let alone to be men’s possession. Whereas Mina is struggling to
be autonomous, Elizabeth Bathory, the other main female character is totally independent.
38
The historical Dracula was a direct descendant of the princely House of Basarab. His pseudonym in the
novel is a hint at his original personage.
39
The authors of the novel have used the historical background of Dracula to build up their fictitious
character – clearly relying on the Romanian view. Vlad Dracula was seen as a national hero, a defender of
Christendom, a just ruler with strict moral sense in the eyes of the Romanians, in contrast with the
representations in other chronicles, both versions shaped by political interest, obviously.
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The triad of vampiresses seems to be the “compulsory bond,” but despite Dracula’s
submissive, weird sisters, Dacre’s female vampires do not depend on male authority. The
leader is Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt drew on Vlad Ţepeş to
create their fictitious Dracula, but as for Bathory and Ferenc Nádasdy, they created
fictitious figures who are backed up with little real information. The enemy of mankind, as
it turns out, is not Dracula but Bathory, and as such, she is invested with all negative
aspects of womanhood. Not only she, but also her husband Count Ferenc Nádasdy is
depicted as cruel and loathsome. The whole Bathory legend is presented in a pejorative
way – again. It must be stated though that when it comes to fiction, the bloodbathing,
sadistic version of the legend is more exciting for the audience than a politically motivated
frame-up. Dacre and Holt created a story to satisfy the masses’ craving for sensationalism,
but this representation further denigrates Bathory’s name.
Elizabeth appears in the story as a cruel, sadistic creature, devoid of any human
feelings; a “perfect carnivore” (Stoker and Holt 149). Her luscious outward appearance is
highlighted; she is described as an exotic raven-haired beauty with fair skin. She wears
man’s tails and coat, but “her voluptuous feminine figure [is emphasized] while projecting
a masculine strength” (Stoker and Holt 14). The Countess is not the embodiment of gender
ambiguity, like Stoker’s vampiresses, but she is a woman who deliberately chooses to
behave like a man. She represents POWER, and her character is a complete fulmination
against the patriarch. She abides no authority: neither man nor God; in Darwin’s
evolutionary scale she is “the fittest” (Stoker and Holt 148). She escapes patriarchal society
through identification with it.
According to traditional social roles, woman is submissive and man is dominant, that
is, man tends to the sadistic, woman to the masochistic side, and if the opposition happens
then a sort of inversion of the original sexual character is said to occur (Stekel 154).
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Elizabeth Bathory is paraphiliac, because in addition to the strong sex drives of Bram
Stoker’s vampiresses, she manifests sadistic components which are not repressed at all, but
are all unleashed. The female vulnerability of the angelic Victorian woman is far away, as
the vampiress is not only sexually active, but sexually deviant. The reader faces with this
representation immediately in one of the first scenes when Elizabeth appears. When a
young girl is hanged upside down with a slit throat, “Bathory’s fanged mouth open[s] wide
as she orgasmically bathe[s] in a shower of blood” (Stoker and Holt 17). Bathory is a
dangerous foe who threatens middle-class values, and brings about crisis over family
values. She not only uses her sexual force as a weapon, but she is educated and intelligent,
which makes her more dangerous than a mere raving undead creature. Her murders are the
climaxes of the games she plays with her victims. She is socially destructive, and her
showdown with humanity is based on her overreaction, on the trauma caused by violence
and victimization which she had to endure in the past. Elizabeth Bathory is both a victim
and a victimizer.
Her metamorphosis into a bloodthirsty monster is explained by her unhappy marriage
with Ferenc Nádasdy, which was based on military and political alliance and not on
romance. In the sixteenth century it was not uncommon that marriages were arranged by
parents, and therefore love was totally out of place in these relationships. The historical
Nádasdy was a well-respected commander, a talented soldier who was away from his wife
most of the time (Péter 27; Nagy 40). His is the most negative image in the novel. He is
described as a sexual sadist and a drunkard with “no thought that originated from above his
waist” (Stoker and Holt 41), so anything but an intelligent man. Elizabeth is an unhappy
wife but a devoted mother, whose children die at a young age due to disease. Having lost
her own children, she vows revenge on the children of God. The distress generated by the
assaults of her husband intensifies, and the loss of her beloved children adds more fuel to
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the fire. She develops an antisocial personality and the pain she causes to others does not
evoke any feelings of moral responsibility from her. She shows no signs of repentance, but
is aggressive and egocentric. The criminal consequences of her antisocial personality
spring from those psychic effects which she experienced when she was the victim.
A turning point seems to be her escape to Aunt Karla, who introduces her into
lesbianism, which means her final break with the Bible and religion. From then on
transgressions of all sorts follow including orgies, murders, heretical pagan rituals and
perverse practices. Her new persona as a female rapist who rapes women is frequently
accentuated. In the form of mist she violates Mina. It must be added that when Mina has no
idea who her mysterious attacker is, she thinks it must be Dracula because Jonathan never
knew “how to touch her this way” (Stoker and Holt 172). She overwhelms with passion
and only after the orgasm she does realize that it was another woman who “played with
her”. After the recognition she is disgusted by the whole situation, thinking of the sex
scene, after the fact, as non-consensual. A new picture unfolds suggesting that it is genderneutral to be a sexual predator.
The vampire kiss is far from the ambiguous pleasure-and-pain type of kiss, it is
sadistic, too, with the intent to rip out the throat. The scene when Mina and Bathory share
blood is also described as a violent action:
She moved to escape her misty rapist, but her attacker forced her back down
into the armchair, straddling her. Then she leaned forward, covering Mina’s
mouth with her own. As she forced her tongue into Mina’s mouth, she ran it
over her fangs, slicing it open. Blood dripped into Mina’s mouth.
(Stoker and Holt 182)
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During their fight, “the harder Mina resisted, the more aroused Bathory became” (Stoker
and Holt 312). Bathory is depicted as sadistic, although the love motif is not completely
absent; only the chosen ones can benefit from her fondness. She turns her lascivious
attention to her two Women in White. Their attachment is still master-servant relationship
but not devoid of intimacy. Furthermore, she could be benevolent to marginalized people,
whose identifications are constructed as loathsome, perverse, miserable or queer. In fact,
she reinterprets the concept of normativity. The world of Elizabeth’s imagination is a
complete reversal of the existing society. She wishes to create an “antisociety” where
devaluation would lose its meaning and “the other” would be replaced by “the ideal”. Her
utopian notion is a dystopian reality; the wishful meaningless state could only be achieved
in the form of retaliation against the discriminative society.
Bathory fails in her attempt to create an antisocial future, as she is killed by
Dracula. During the fight, the vampire Count dies, too. The Crew of Light is destroyed: Dr
Seward is run over by a driverless carriage, Jonathan is impaled in Piccadilly Circus, Van
Helsing and Arthur Holmwood kill each other. Mina is the only survivor from the ‘original
group’. In this novel, the patriarch is exterminated, and the fight between good and evil is
settled, at least for the time being. Stoker and Holt do not depend upon the ‛everybody-isperfect’ type of human beings, and they do not moralize with black and white schemes.
Their figures are shown in their human frailty with their faults and weaknesses. They do
not belong to the “stock characters” of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic
novels, but this is what makes them real in the eyes of the contemporary reader. This is
also true for vicious women characters.
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2.2.2
Freda Warrington: Dracula the Undead
From one point of view, Dracula can be seen as an intruder to female characters’
unconscious lives, a subversive force urging to destroy the social barriers and undermine
the actual system. In the Victorian era, dominated by strict rules in the patriarchal spirit,
the abject nature of womanhood came into the foreground. Symbolically, staking restored
women’s status quo in Stoker’s late nineteenth-century “nightmare vision,” but a hundred
years later Warrington shapes her narrative in a more liberated fashion. En masse women
are accessories to male domination in conventional Dracula narratives. This novel does not
differ from them in the sense that the female body seems to be defined by male-controlled
ideology. Whereas Mina’s problem is on the sexual level, Elena (the other main female
character) typifies the desperate woman who is totally entrapped by male dogma.
Warrington slips between the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters. If Dracula
speaks, his words are noted down by other characters (as in Stoker’s novel). This objective
view about him enhances his identity as the double, the shadow nature.
The story takes place seven years after Dracula’s supposed death, but the spirit of the
book rather echoes 1997, the year in which the book was written. Mina, Jonathan, Dr
Seward and Van Helsing travel back to Transylvania to face their inner demons and
perform a Christian ritual in the vampire’s castle in order to rid themselves of their
haunting past. On their way there they are assisted by Van Helsing’s Hungarian friend,
Professor André Kovacs.
New characters are added to Bram Stoker’s original heroes, and Elena is the most
pivotal. She lives in Transylvania with her father. She has no mother, so she is a typical
Gothic heroine in this sense. She lacks a maternal figure(s) or female companions, and is
surrounded by men (her father, Professor Kovacs, Miklos), amongst whom her father’s
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presence is the most determinant. Elena feels repressed in her situation. Emil, her father is
a strict patriarch with the orthodox view according to which a girl’s only aim in life is to
get married and bear children. Elena wants to live her life without commitments; she is
irritated by the demands of marital life. In the novel it is the Elena plot which echoes High
Victorian times, mores and expectations most of all. Elena wants to be educated, and
would like to travel a lot. In brief, she wants to live in the realm of intellect and
intelligence, and rid herself of the superstitious surroundings in which she has to exist. The
situation she is in is a minor mirror of the male-controlled society. Similarly to Lucy’s
metamorphosis, rebellion seems to be the only solution to get rid of the shackles of her
suffocating plight.
After meeting Mina, she takes up the habit of recording her thoughts in a diary.
Through writing she confronts her inner needs, and textuality means a certain kind of
liberation process. It is dangerous in Elena’s family milieu when a woman thinks and
knows too much instead of being told what to think and feel. Nevertheless, Elena’s textual
alternative for her sexuality does not posit her outside the binary representation. Dracula
sets her free from conventions; she is able to love freely, she does not have to deal with
senescence, marriage, or childbirth, and it is Elena’s shadow nature that ends her father’s
supreme authority over her body. This freedom, much as she deludes herself by turning
against domesticity, is illusionary, because she has become a slave to the vampire. Having
totally succumbed to lust, she functions only physically.
Dracula appears to Elena at night when the censor is no longer able to repress. These
times Elena is overcome by the shadow presence: “I feel that I have met the other half of
myself, my shadow, my soulmate” (Warrington 60) she writes in her diary, naming
Dracula shadow through Freudian slips. More and more she is at the mercy of her
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unconscious. Having her shadow, now in the person of an evil intruder, is a painful and
ghastly experience.
The terrifying effect of Gothic novels is that the shadow animates, and we can see its
harmful consequences, while in real life it is invisible. Fiction gives shape to the shapeless.
The fear of the shapeless, the unknown is an archaic fear in humans, and writers have made
effective use of the psychology of the shape creating their fictitious monsters, the animated
manifestations of the shadow. Elena is affected by the shadow, and it is her uncanny
projection that determines her later development. She falls entirely under the influence of
the subliminal contents:
“When I say ‘I’, I mean whoever I was in the dream – for I was not myself.
These visions and nightmares distress me more than I can say”
(Warrington 34).
“I felt that a tall shape was watching us; a solid black shadow, simply watching
yet exuding such an intense, brooding malevolence that it pushed all the breath
and reason out of me – yet if returned, there was never anything there”
(Warrington 21).
Dreams and nightmares are Gothic “devices” with hidden meanings in figurative
language. Elena’s encounter with Dracula first happens when he is in the form of a wolf.
Since she dreams about him, it shows that it is not a conscious thing. If sexual/erotic
moments become conscious, they collide with moral convictions. “As an animal lower than
man it represents the lower part of the body and the animal impulses that rise from there”
writes Jung (On Dreams 107) about the instinctive nature of every human. The symbolic
form of the wolf captures a disturbing hidden side of the personality, often with its base
emotions of sexual urges. Wolves are well-known figures in Eastern-European folklore,
and superstitious beliefs hold that vampires can turn into wolves, or people can transform
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into such creatures, known as werewolves. These animals lived in the vicinity of people
who have endowed them with preternatural nature. Mythologically speaking, the wolf is
the traditional enemy of the sheep. The sheep is connected to the pastoral, it represents the
good, the virtuous and the pure. The sheep is an animal in the apocalyptic world and the
wolf is its demonic counterpart.
In the form of a wolf or not, all female characters partake of Dracula’s animal
magnetism. On developing an ambivalent feeling of fear and yearning toward the wolf, the
act of copulation turns out to be an ambidextrous move away from moral idealism.
Supernatural figures threaten the protagonist to bring something out of herself. The guiltladen wishes of the vampire’s victims go beyond ‘normality’ and results in various forms
of sexual non-conformity. Elena commits incest with her uncle, Professor Kovacs, and –
‘having Dracula in herself’ – she manifests homosexual desire toward Mina. Kovacs is also
inverted by way of vampirism. As the following excerpt illustrates, same-sex desire falls
into the category of immoral deeds:
Beherit’s next action I could hardly believe. He bent to Kovacs and kissed him
full on the lips, just as a man would kiss a woman – and Kovacs allowed the
kiss, nay, returned it! Now I know for certain that I am in the Devil’s realm,
where all of nature is turned upside down.
(from Mina’s journal, Warrington 267)
Elena’s Dracula experience is used against the apparatus of normalization and
productivity, whereas Mina’s experience with the Count helps her to absolve her
frustrations within the conjugal bonds. Both Mina and Jonathan are full of inhibitions.
Their religious upbringing have taught them to bottle up their feelings and forbid to
abandon themselves to ecstatic pleasure. The erotic act is a vice, an object of a moral
disqualification. As Jonathan notes,
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“Mina and I have both been educated – by Church, family and society – in the
true Christian belief that base impulses must be sublimated by the will. All our
lives, out of the love and intense respect I bear for my wife, I have adhered to
that principle.”
(Warrington 106)
This confession reflects Christian doctrines where pleasure is connected with sin, but
Mina’s experience with Dracula and Jonathan’s with Elena change their attitude. They both
face and accept their inner desires represented metaphorically by vampires. While in
Stoker’s magnum opus the relationship between the Count and his victims is based on
erotic submission (also between the vampiresses and Jonathan), in Warrington’s novel the
spiritual and the physical dimensions of sexuality are reconciled. The Harkers realize that
intense sexual intercourse has place within the bounds of wedlock and is not something that
they should be ashamed of.
Warrington’s novel describes women who are wise, and are able to develop
themselves. Typical Gothic representation is the helpless heroine in need of aid by men.
Stoker, writing Dracula, managed to deviate from this cliché, because in the person of
Mina the victim learns to fight during the victimization process, therefore she
metamorphoses from the victim into the Amazon archetype. Regarding the question of
morality, this is a triumph over doubts. The fictitious Alice, Dr Seward’s wife in
Warrington’s novel, goes one step further, in her person a new archetype mode has
emerged. Her image is the Amazon-warrior archetype, who cannot really be threatened,
because instead of fear, she immediately accepts challenges. This is because she is so
strong morally that she cannot be shaken by immorality, she cannot be enticed to break the
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moral law. She represents maturity and wisdom. This Amazon archetype has no place in
Victorian literature; she is the product of a (more) modern age.
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CHAPTER 3 - CINEMA
3.1
Collective Nightmares: The Classic Approach
The twentieth century brought great changes in the nature of culture due to the
emergence of mass media by virtue of technological advance. One of the new interactive
models, cinema provided visual entertainment by way of moving images. “Cinematic
adaptation is as old as cinema itself,” claims Leitch (22). The debt horror flicks owe to
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mysterious fiction is beyond doubt. At the beginning of
motion pictures, horror movies were based on classic gothic literature. Dracula,
Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde proved to be influential and became favourite
sources of screen adaptations during the first phases of visual horror. The vampire movie is
a sub-genre of horror and, as in literature, Dracula is the supreme character here. To trace
back his most important moments in cinema, two classic movies must be mentioned as
parts of the cinematica canon of Dracula40: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922)
and Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931). In addition, Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu (1979) is
included, which is a remake of the Murnau’s movie. Despite its later release, the film
reflects the classic sentiment.
40
As I have already mentioned, in 1921 Károly Lajthay shot Drakula halála, a film whose copies are not
available, although the novel which served as the basis for the script is. Sixteen-year-old Mary Land visits
her dying father in Bedlam. There she meets a lunatic who calls himself Dracula and claims to be immortal.
Mary falls asleep in the asylum and she experiences a nightmare with Dracula in the centre. It is interesting to
note that Dracula’s figure is ‘traditional’ in the sense that he is a symbol of lust, desires and instincts. Mary is
about to get married with George Marlup, and the nightmare-section indicates her fear of sexuality (probably
of losing virginity) where the cross symbolizes moral convictions. (The text can be read in Jenő Farkas’s
book Drakula és a vámpírok)
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3.1.1
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau: Nosferatu, eine Sinfonie des
Grauens
Murnau’s Nosferatu is a plagiarized version of Stoker’s original story. Murnau did
not receive the rights from Stoker’s widow, Florence to make this adaptation, and therefore
there are changes in character and place names. The court’s judgement was that all copies
of this movie were to be destroyed (Joslin 13), but fortunately some copies have been
saved from this procedure. The film’s forte lies in its grotesque imagery. Murnau
succeeded in capturing the essence of horror movies. There are certain periods when horror
and invasion stories are popular, basically when grave economic, social or political
situations prevail. Murnau’s film came out soon after the First World War, in an era
characterized by post-war disillusionment, disappointment, social alienation and general
dissatisfaction. Weimarism, which stands in the background of the German expressionist
films, as Kracauer expounds it in detail in his book, From Caligari to Hitler, the
disintegration is the simultaneously intoxicating and dire experience of the boisterous
freedom which regenerates the desire for order, yet projects the sinister rising of a new
leader. Murnau’s Nosferatu belongs to the films of group Kracauer identifies as specialized
in the depiction of tyrants, which nurse “no illusions about the possible consequences of
tyranny” (77). The film’s dark imagery and the haunting evil in the form of the vampire
warn the spectators of the impending devastation of humanity. Count Orlock (Dracula) is
aptly associated with the ultimate epidemic invasion, the plague.
Pestilence caused unprecedented number of deaths in fourteenth-century Europe, and
was accompanied by the philosophy of carpe diem. To live and praise the moment, and to
make the most of every opportunity is the recognition of the brevity of life, the reality of
mortality. The vampire is a reminder of our existential condition. By threatening mortal
existence, he stalks the individual, the core of community, until all shall perish. Murnau
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discloses a classic monster whose inner bestiality is in accord with his outward appearance.
In the novel, information about Dracula can be gathered basically from Jonathan’s journal.
The Count is a tall old man with a heavy moustache, thick eyebrows, pointed ears, long
nails and sharp teeth. Initially he is a courteous host, but later he turns to show his
malignant, demonic side of his personality. When Mina spots Dracula in London, she
describes him as having “black moustache and pointed beard” (Dracula 207). Apparently,
he has grown young from the consumption of blood. Murnau’s nosferatu resembles Bram
Stoker’s Dracula; he is ugly, frightening, having sharp pointed nails and a wan-looking
face. He is dressed in black. His two longer teeth are near to each other. Despite the Irish
writer’s imagination, Murnau’s vampire is totally bald. Murnau’s Dracula is the
embodiment of horror, an inhuman monstrosity.
Orlock is without company. The three vampiresses are not included in this movie
adaptation. In the castle the Count attacks Jonathan instead of the seductive “weird sisters.”
However, there is no consequence of this “biting,” it does not cause any change in
Jonathan. Functionally, it serves the same purpose as the vampiresses’ initial flirtation with
the young attorney: it anticipates the horror awaiting Mina. The Lucy plot is a very
important part of Bram Stoker’s story, but the Lucy episode is also omitted in Murnau’s
version. Flirtatious women do not make their appearance.
Temptation is only experienced by Orlock, the monster himself, who is drawn
towards Ellen. On the potential victim’s part Orlock’s figure does not hold out hopes for
temptation at all. Ellen, the only woman in the story, sees him as he is, but evil has no
power over her. Orlock is an ambiguous force. He is strong because he is able to
exterminate everybody around him, but his weakness reveals when it turns out that he
cannot get what he wishes for. Will is not enough at times, wish fulfilment can be
impossible, just like in the case of Murnau’s vampire, who is so driven by desire that he
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ignores the fatal consequences of his act and the sinister circumstances. The price of his
imprudence is death.
Among human relationships, marital status is in the limelight. The romantic
description of Jonathan’s and Mina’s love is well observable in Murnau’s Nosferatu as
well. Since it is a silent movie, mimicking and non-verbal communication are very
important modes of expressing the inner world of the characters. In the opening scene
Ellen (Mina) is playing with a kitten. Hutter (Jonathan) is knotting his tie. Both are
smiling. The dulcet music in the background contributes to this almost kitschy picture. The
idyllic representation continues. Ellen is sewing when Hutter enters smiling, and they
embrace each other affectionately. Hutter gives a bunch of flowers to Ellen. The girl is not
overjoyed at the idea of picking flowers. This is not the rejection of Hutter’s love, but it
rather reveals Ellen’s sensitive nature. The white flower symbolizes innocence. It is
indicative of Ellen’s virtuous and pure nature. When Hutter announces that he has to go to
Transylvania, Ellen is inconsolable. She begs for him to stay through her eyes, through her
glance. Hutter leaves his wife with Harding and his sister. These two friends of the couple
make only a brief appearance on screen. Murnau does not delve into the theme of
friendship. Ellen and Hutter’s parting scene is very sentimental. Ellen and Hutter kiss, then
Hutter runs downstairs. Ellen is crying bitterly, but when Hutter stops, she rushes after him
and they kiss again. Their affection and devotion is very apparent. As for pictures, the most
beautiful love representation in Nosferatu is the scene when Ellen is sitting on a bench
yearning and waiting for her husband. The headstones around her and the sea in front her
symbolize infinity. The headstones, the sea and Ellen’s emotions together manifest the
concept of eternal love.
Ellen’s love for Hutter is so strong that it actually saves his life. Hutter’s nights at
Count Orlock’s castle are full of horror. The Count appears menacing at his door. He is
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ready to attack the young man for his blood. Hutter is in a circular light as he lies trembling
on the bed. This lighting technique makes the boy seem more vulnerable compared to the
frightening appearance of the Count. Meanwhile Ellen has a presentiment of this danger
that lies ahead of her husband. She lets out a cry. The frequent cuttings (the alternation of
the Orlock-Hutter and Ellen scenes) stress the contrast between horror and Ellen’s love.
The dread pictures enhance the love line. Ellen’s psychic cry gets through to Orlock and
this is enough to prevent him from doing anything to Hutter. He leaves. The power of love
triumphs over horror this time. Ellen reads that only a woman without sin is able to destroy
the vampire if she offers her blood voluntarily and keeps him by her side until daybreak.
Ellen embroiders ‘I LOVE YOU’ for Hutter after she has made up her mind to sacrifice
herself. She pushes through what she has planned and kills the nosferatu. With the
monster’s death the plague is over. Ellen’s last word is her husband’s name, her love for
him is obvious, but she pushes her own interests into the background and sacrifices herself
for the community. The love for mankind is a form of altruist affection.
Love and horror are central themes of Murnau’s film. He increases the tension
between them. Censorship did not permit sexuality on screen at the time, although
Murnau’s Dracula representation seems to comprise a wider concept than that of repressed
sexuality. Dracula embodies the unknown, all fears of humanity. This screen version is
rather a dichotomy between good and evil in general than in sexual terms. Good and evil
are not fixed concepts, but this classic movie – similarly to Stoker’s novel – draws the line
very sharply between them. Morality is represented by Ellen and transgression by Orlock.
A woman triumphs over evil; the strength of morality is emphasized. In Murnau’s world,
oppositions are needed to define a fight between the participants, including good vs. bad,
woman vs. man, innocent vs. monstrous, young vs. ancient, and a desire to save the
community vs. a wish to destroy it. The vampire has no partner, he is a solitary being, and
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has nothing to lose, but in contrast, the heroine, who has much to lose, is ready to sacrifice
herself. Representing an active force, the vampire does not meet the accustomed passive
heroine from Gothic fiction, but an active woman. Ellen’s metamorphosis from passivity to
activity is vital. Unconsciously it indicates, that (wo)man of action alone, instead of a
group, is able to overcome difficulties.
3.1.2
Tod Browning: Dracula
German expressionism reached its peak in the Twenties, but in the thirties vampires
and monsters were beginning to revive in Hollywood, as well. After an era of silent
movies, cinema had moved on, and sound motion pictures have become a worldwide
phenomenon. Universal Studios played a significant role in adapting the classic works of
Gothic literature. The most outstanding production from this era is Dracula directed by
Tod Browning. This American movie has turned out to be a landmark horror classic, a
huge success, also making Béla Lugosi a star. It is based on a Broadway play by Hamilton
Deane and John L. Balderston (Waller 382) also starring Lugosi, whose rather theatrical
performance provides a dramatic emphasis to the character of the Transylvanian vampire.
Playing Dracula in the Broadway play, he was eager to get the role in the American screen
version. With his exotic, heavy Hungarian accent he authentically formed the character of
the Transylvanian Count. This movie has largely contributed to the boost of Dracula as
well as the whole horror genre, but made Lugosi a typecast artist with a fixed screen
persona. Until his death he could not really separate himself from Dracula’s character.
Browning’s Dracula is invested with human traits. He does not have external signs of
supernatural nature. He is an excellent host, a smiling, polite and good-looking aristocrat.
When he wears his top hat, black cloak and white gloves, having a walking-stick, his
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aristocratic elegance makes him conspicuous among the passers-by. His charming
appearance and manners are enough to seduce all women easily. His hypnotic power is
used on every female character in the movie. The maids, the flower girls on the street,
Lucy and Mina all prove to be easy prey for the foreign count. He is smiling, but on closeups his countenance becomes frightening. He is good on the surface, but evil inside, but
this viciousness reveals human concerns. “To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious!”
cries the Lugosi vampire. He has a peculiar, non-monstrous characteristic: he is capable of
feeling; he is not an evil automaton, a usual fictional monster without sense of his
existence, but a perceiving creature. His wish to die sheds light on his horroristic mode of
existence, one that sooner or later leads to boredom and suffering. The vampire myth has
been broadened by a new element: it serves as a compensatory surrogate which helps to
value life as it is, and reduces yearning for its expansion. By this understanding and
acceptance of our human mode of being, an unconscious sympathy awakes in the audience
for the monster.
Not only Dracula, but also the other characters slightly differ from Stoker’s figures.
In Tod Browning’s adaptation, Lucy is pushed into the background. Her personality is
different from that of her equivalent in the novel. Lucy does not have a suitor at all. Instead
of being a frivolous girl, she is rather romantic to some extent. Her first encounter with
Count Dracula seems to be love at first sight on her part. The way she looks, the way she
talks, unambiguously reveals her attraction towards the Count. At home, Mina is
mimicking Dracula making fun of Lucy’s lingering on him. She even calls Lucy a
countess. Waller thinks Lucy to be such an easy prey partly because of her romantic
sensibility, partly because she is independent: she has neither a father nor a lover to protect
her in contrast with Mina (385). The night is not over. Dracula visits Lucy in bat form
while she is lying in bed. The next cut shows the Count in the room, this time in human
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form. Lucy has fallen asleep, being under his trance. Dracula is approaching the sleeping
girl’s neck, but before the blood-sucking takes place, the screen fades to black. Due to this
abridgement, the cannibalistic act of the Count is not shown, but soon turns out that the
blond girl is only a food source for the vampire, which prevents inanition. Lucy appears
only once after her violation. She walks in the cemetery in a white gown similar to
Dracula’s three vampiresses and there her story ends in the movie. Her ultimate fate
remains unclear.
The three vampiresses are referred to as Dracula’s wives in Tod Browning’s Dracula.
Their relationship with the Count is based on power, superiority and inferiority. Dracula is
an arbiter. He is authoritative and he commands respect from them. When Renfield falls to
the floor, the three vampiresses approach him. Suddenly Dracula appears on the terrace.
His very presence is enough in itself to make the female vampires stop. The Count enters
the house and sends the vampiresses away with a flick of his wrist. The three women obey,
they are obviously in an inferior position. The vampiresses are cold beauties in this movie.
They are far from being the luscious “weird sisters”. They do not have the chance to
behave so, because the Count always intervenes. These ladies’ impact on men is wrapped
in mystery, too. The only man they meet is Renfield, but he faints before he can catch a
glimpse of them. These female vampires do not represent sexuality. They are rather the
servants of Dracula. This idea fits in the Victorian life, too. Women had to manage the
household and look after the children and the family. They were raised to see this as their
only duty in life. Furthermore, they were not allowed to enjoy sex. Sexuality’s only
function was procreation. Lucy and the three vampiresses are closer to the sexless frigid
wives of the Victorian Era than to the fallen woman.
Mina’s victimization is also excised in Tod Browning’s Dracula. She tells the others
about her transformation. She describes the whole event as a dream. While Mina is talking,
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Dracula enters. When Mina catches sight of him, it seems as if an invisible magnet was
drawing her to the Count. Dracula is the smiling aristocrat here; there is no trace of his
monstrosity at all. Some minutes later they meet in the garden tête-à-tête. Dracula
embraces the girl; she is engulfed by the black cloak. Mina is undoubtedly under the
influence of the Count. She is like a lover under the influence of her beloved. Mina’s
change culminates in the terrace scene. “Mina, you’re so... like a changed girl” remarks
Jonathan, “You look wonderful!” “I feel wonderful” replies the radiant girl, “I’ve never
felt better in my life.” Mina’s external beauty is concomitant with her inner bestiality. The
vampire’s effect has grown a lot. Mina obeys, not because she wants to please the Count,
but because she has become a mental slave to him. “I love fog. I love nights with fog”
muses Mina. Vampires are shapeshifters. The audience know, unlike Jonathan, that the fog
is Dracula. Mina speaks in riddles about her secret lover in front of her fiancé. She loves
Dracula. Mina directs Jonathan’s attention to the stars. While the young man is immersed
in the sight, she stares at his neck, longing for his blood. She is a sensual predator by this
time. Like Dracula, she is looking for prey. Jonathan notices the change in Mina’s glance.
She looks like a wild animal. Bestiality comes over her. The animal instincts have revived.
Jonathan turns back to her thus saving himself from the attack.
The movie was distributed under the following advertising slogan: “The story of the
strangest passion the world has ever known!” Indeed, the passion between Mina and
Dracula is so strong that Mina stops feeling for Jonathan when the Count is near. This is
the first adaptation where passion overcomes Mina. She can get rid of the psychic
connection that has chained her to the vampire only when Van Helsing murders him. When
the Dutch professor drives a stake through Dracula’s heart, Mina also feels the pain. She
suffers with her lover. Interestingly enough, when the Count is dead, Mina’s feelings for
him die, too. Mina and Jonathan’s reunion assures the happy ending and the restoration of
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order. Sexuality is not yet foregrounded in Browning’s Dracula, as bloodsucking and any
other intimate manifestations are censored. Dracula is not the dreadful monster here; he is
more dangerous than that, because his inner bestiality is masked by his charming
appearance. He attracts his victims. These women do not offer themselves for to
exterminate the monster. They walk to the Count purposely, because they are weak. They
are at the mercy of their desires, lacking the ability to control them. Lucy’s passivity has
not changed after being bitten. As opposed to her novelistic counterpart, Mina is the one
who transforms from the virtuous girl image into the femme fatale. The psychic link
between the vampire and his victim has evoked sexuality and emotions from Mina.
3.1.3
Werner Herzog: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
The 1979 remake of Murnau’s 1922 screen version does not make significant plot
and theme changes, but Herzog slightly changed Dracula’s character. As for appearance,
Herzog’s nosferatu is similar to Murnau’s vampire. Nevertheless, the ugly looks do not
conceal a scary, inhuman monster; Herzog’s Dracula has a human trait, he suffers from
solitude. The absence of love is the greatest pain for him. When he sees Mina’s picture, he
immediately signs Jonathan’s contract in order to get to the girl. “Give me some of your
love which you give Jonathan” asks the Count from Mina.41 Pain is present in his voice,
pain reflects through his eyes. The rooms in his castle are as empty as his soul. The
inability to grow old and loneliness are worse for him than death.
Death means horror to people, but it would be a blessing for him. He is like a
depressed person who wants to commit suicide, yet is unable to do so. According to Freud,
41
In Herzog’s Nosferatu, Jonathan’s wife is called Lucy. Since she has the similar personality to Bram
Stoker’s Mina, and does not resemble the novel’s Lucy at all, I call her Mina for practical reasons.
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depression is caused by internalized feelings of anger, guilt or shame. The person
subsumes his identity and develops self-hatred instead of directing the abomination toward
the intended person, the lost object (Mourning and Melancholia 252). This object-loss is
the loss of ego, which is the outcome of the loss of love. The melancholic senses the world
as meaningless, and his own self as worthless. Dracula’s isolation is very dangerous, as he
corresponds to the shadow archetype. Those who live in seclusion, isolated from people,
project their unconscious onto others. They are at the mercy of their unconscious.
Loneliness attracts the wicked from another point of view, as well. The others also project
their unconscious onto that person who is away for longer periods. The consequence is
total estrangement from the community.
Dracula is incapable of dying and terminating his agonizing existence, but unlike
Stoker’s Dracula, he is capable of loving, which becomes the source of his frustration. He
lives alone in his castle waiting for a companion to share his damned existence. When he
sees Mina’s picture, he becomes lovesick for her, and her presence holds out hopes for an
aim in existence. Dracula’s wickedness lies in the fact that he ruins Mina’s and Jonathan’s
marriage. By transforming Jonathan, Dracula repels the couple into loneliness. Jonathan’s
and Mina’s love is reciprocal until Jonathan is victimized by the Count. Mina is concerned
about Jonathan, because she loves him so much. She is constantly having misgivings about
Jonathan’s journey to Transylvania. Jonathan feels the same, he calls her wife “the dearest
thing in the world,” which is a typical avowal expressing exclusiveness. Their romance
ends, at least on Jonathan’s part, when the boy arrives home from Transylvania. He does
not recognize his wife. Despite this alteration, Mina keeps on loving and taking care of
Jonathan. Their romantic love has turned into unrequited love.
The beautiful love representation when Mina is waiting for her husband among
headstones was incorporated from the 1922 adaptation. Mina states that what she feels for
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her husband is exclusive and she “won’t even give that love to God.” Love is often
compared to religious conviction. Mina goes beyond this idea with her nearly blasphemous
statement. The love she feels for Jonathan is based on true emotions, and the vampire
cannot get close to her because of that. Mina’s transformation is not a gradual process in
Herzog’s Nosferatu; she never feels attraction towards the Count. When Dracula visits her
for the first time, they have a conversation about love and death. The Count wants her love,
but Mina rejects him. Dracula clearly suffers from solitude, and love would be a
redemption for him. Herzog’s Dracula is far from being the bestial monster. He does not
even try to attack the girl, he leaves silently. He is like a depressed person who rather
chooses resignation to any other activities. Dracula is not only a lonely vampire, but
symbolically he is solitude itself. He makes his appearance to Mina, inspiring her to see the
senselessness of her one-sided love, but Mina refuses this. She does not choose to give up
her feelings for Jonathan.
Their second meeting is evoked by Mina of her own free will. People are dying in the
town and Mina suspects that Dracula causes the plague. She reads a book about vampires
and according to superstitions, if a pure-hearted woman makes the vampire forget the first
crow of the cock, the first rays of the sun eradicate him. Mina asks for help from Van
Helsing, but he does not believe her. He is a sceptical person and prefers science to
superstition. Finally Mina entices Dracula to her room and offers herself to the vampire in
order to stop the plague. The Count cannot resist Mina’s blood. He wants to stop sucking
all at once, but Mina draws him back to her neck. When the dawn comes, both of them die.
Death is a blessed release for Dracula. As in Murnau’s movie, Mina sacrifices herself for
other people.
Herzog focuses on the theme of isolation and loneliness, and the pernicious
consequence of what they can cause. Herzog’s Dracula can feel love, or at least he thinks
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so, but he is rejected. His longing for companion fills his life. He is separated from
companion and death as well. His suffering brings about malevolent actions which only
appease his longing, but do not terminate it. The nosferatu’s love is fulfilled only for a
night. The union with his beloved provides gratification for him. Mina sacrifices herself for
others, while Dracula sacrifices himself for his own desires. Happiness and death are
connected in this story. The precious moments implied in happiness are temporary, but the
evanescent bliss is worth much more to Dracula than the long-term indifference. The
Count finally experiences joy and dies in that state. Having lost Jonathan’s love, Mina
becomes as lonely as Dracula. The loss of happiness drives her to bring an end to her
sufferings. Death liberates both of them from solitude. However, the community is not
liberated. The film has a so-called open metamorphosis narrative (Tudor 102). The infected
Jonathan carries on the dreadful curse of vampirism, indicating that horror is imperishable
and suffering is a part of human life. This is not a negative thing since happiness is
impossible without suffering.
One might wonder what would happen if a vampire stopped drinking blood. In the
1979 movie adaptation of Dracula the main problem is the unbearable solitary existence:
Herzog’s nosferatu wants to die but he cannot, so the absence of blood does not mean
death, it does not terminate the vampire’s cursed mode of being. Hence, vampires are
properly referred to as undead creatures, placed somewhere between the living and the
dead. They represent a separate category which springs from superstitious beliefs.
3.2
Dracula Goes to England: The Hammer Series
Inspired by Gothic literature, Universal Studios created iconographic monsters in the
person of Béla Lugosi as Dracula, or Boris Karloff as Frankenstein. After the relatively
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brief American boom, Europe went on with the popularization of the Dracula myth. The
British Hammer Studios are best remembered for their modern horror productions, among
others their Dracula series. Nine films were released from 1958 to 1974; most of them
starring Christopher Lee, whose name, despite the fact that he did not play a part in all the
movies, has been added to the glorious name-list next to Max Schreck and Béla Lugosi.
This triad has become one with Dracula in the vampire film world; no other actor playing
the Transylvanian bloodsucker has proved to be so prestigious. All Hammer Dracula flicks
are reflections in the mirror of human conscience, in which the tense cultural background
of an age is shown. People experienced a social revolution dealing with issues like the
Vietnam War, the counter-culture movements, the rise of feminism and the sexual
revolution, hence the popularity of horror movies which deal with the constant flux of
experience not only at the individual but also at the social level.
3.2.1
Horror of Dracula
The first of the Dracula Hammer Series, Terence Fisher English director’s scary
story, Horror of Dracula is based on Stoker’s novel, although there are definite deviations
from the original work. Renfield and Quincey Morris are excluded. Dr Seward appears in
the movie, but has a very trivial role. He does not even take part in the fight against
supernatural powers, he is completely unaware of what is going on in the background.
Jonathan does not correspond to Stoker’s effeminate young attorney, he is a middle-aged
man, who goes to Dracula in order to kill him under the guise of working for him as a
librarian. His fiancée is Lucy, whose brother is Arthur Holmwood, who has a wife called
Mina. Dracula’s castle is located in Klausenburgh. The exact location of Arthur’s is not
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known although they cannot be too far from the Count’s castle, because they make their
way between the two places by coach quite fast.
Dracula’s vampiress companion is limited to one instead of Stoker’s triumvirate.
Jonathan first encounters the vampiress when he sets about his dinner on his first night in
the castle. The vampire appears behind him so silently that he does not notice her; the
camera shows only the end of the girl’s long skirt as she approaches the guest. She looks
human. Fisher’s vampiress is alluring, but in a different way than the usual Dracula
daughter-brides. Rather than seducing Jonathan right on the spot, she tries to make him feel
pity for her. She implores him to help her to escape from Dracula’s power. The bondage
between the vampiress and the Count reveals their inferiority-superiority relation where
Dracula is clearly in command. The sudden appearance of the Count ends the conversation,
Dracula’s woman runs away. Later she begs Jonathan again, who – after realizing that he
himself has become a prisoner – agrees to help the girl. It cannot go unobserved that
Jonathan’s eyes kindle when the vampiress comes in, however their incipient romance is
nipped in the bud by Dracula. When the girl succeeds in tricking herself near Jonathan, the
damsel-in-distress suddenly turns into a hungry predator. She gets a taste of Jonathan’s
blood, but Dracula prevents her from serious biting. Animal instincts have overcome the
vampiress so much that she does not want to pretend herself anymore, she wants to
emancipate herself, but Dracula does not allow her to do so. The Count averts her attacks,
puts an end to her further ambitions and leads her back to the traditional female gender
role.
At first glance Dracula seems monogamous, having no outside sexual partner. His
eagerness to prevent his companion, the vampiress from having another man reflects his
moral stance on the number of the sex partner. Similarly to Stoker’s vampire, Dracula
never defiles more than one girl at the same time. He starts stalking on another young
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woman only when the former paramour is dead. His attacks upon Jonathan seem to be
rather a display of his power, both over Jonathan and the errant vampiress who wants to
get out of the orthodox conjugal parity, than sexual delight. It is unfortunate for Dracula
that before metamorphosis, Jonathan kills the vampiress. The pale girl, lying in the coffin
in a nightdress, smiling with bloody fangs in a state after sexual satisfaction, provides an
image so odious to Jonathan that he decides to stake her first. This act of violation is
Jonathan’s retribution for her wild initiative sexual attack. They are even, but Dracula
makes use of the situation and makes his getaway.
Dracula goes in search for Jonathan’s bride in retaliation for his own having been
taken away. He easily violates Lucy, since he is a kind of desideratum for his female
victims. Both Lucy and Mina welcome him. All females are endangered by Dracula except
Tania, Lucy’s young niece and the maidservant. Dracula stalks on woman of sexual
maturity, thus the young and the old are excluded from his potential targets. Van Helsing
compares the victims of the vampire to drug addicts, who detest being dominated, although
they are unable to relinquish the practise. The penetration is taboo, but the bloody fangs of
Fisher’s Dracula are discernible after the act, which produces a horrific effect on part of the
audience for the first time. In classic films, blood is not displayed at all. During the act,
Dracula’s eyes change red. The amount of blood increases in the penis during erection,
therefore Dracula’s blood red eyes are an erection (Dadoun qtd. in Janion 137).
In Stoker’s novel, Mina is a faithful wife of Jonathan, but in Fisher’s adaptation the
name change of Mina and Lucy seems intentional. Lucy, being the wife of Jonathan, is
prone to be seduced by Dracula, while Mina, Arthur’s wife is the one who does not fall in
the end. The different poles represented by Mina and Lucy on the morality-transgression
axis remained from the original story, only the characters themselves were displaced. Lucy
covets the union with Dracula and fights anything that would hinder her from their
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clandestine meeting. She instructs the maidservant to remove the garlic flowers and to
open the windows, not recognizing at the time that her infidelity will cost her life.
Similarly to Stoker’s Lucy, the innocent child-bride waiting for her bridegroom
metamorphoses into a girl who is looking for sexual satisfaction even though it means the
crossing of the boundaries of “normal” sexuality. Lucy overtly proclaims her incestuous
wishes by seducing her little niece into the graveyard, and when her brother Arthur
appears, she is immediately ready for an intimate relationship with him. Lucy’s libido
distorts. Since Lucy cannot gratify her passions, she assumes a self-indulgent, violent
character. Mina does not transform into a profligate woman, although it is not her moral
triumph; Arthur and Van Helsing keep Dracula away from her. After the first sexual
gratification with Dracula, Arthur does not fail to notice his wife’s energy and prettiness.
An attempt to get back Mina to her proper place is illustrated by the blood transfusion
scene when Arthur, the husband provides blood and forces Mina back into conjugal
monogamy.
Fisher’s movie is imbued with religiousness. Vampirism is referred to as a hideous
and unclean state all along. The good characters’ main concern is the purity of the soul.
The dominant device used against evil is the crucifix, the representation of the ultimate
good. Religion and morality are intertwined. Death is redemptive, but only in case of Lucy.
After staking and decapitation, she regains her former beauty, her face looks peaceful; she
has gained access to salvation. In contrast, the vampiress turns into an old hag. The
physical ugliness correlates her moral squalor. As for sexual issues, the main topic is
conjugal monogamy. Jonathan kills Dracula’s companion. What constitutes the basis of
Dracula’s reprisal is not only the loss, but also Harker’s disrespect for his authority over
the vampiress.
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3.2.2
The Brides of Dracula
In 1960 Terence Fisher made the sequel of the first Hammer Dracula. Christopher
Lee is missing from the cast, but the figure of Dracula overshadows the whole production.
The story focuses on Dracula’s disciples. The title The Brides of Dracula is fallacious in a
sense, because not the brides, but Baron Meinster, the main antagonist’s relation with
women is the principal concern. The source of conflict is seen in Baron Meinster’s and his
mother’s relationship. The baroness typifies the possessive mother who is domineering
over her son’s masculinity. Her emotional dependence is so great that in the film she
literally shackles the boy in the castle to the maternal home. Jung differentiates the mother
complex as it appears in sons and daughters, pointing out that a mother plays a significant
role in her son’s masculinity. The effect of this possessive kind of love may result in
homosexuality or in Don Juanism. (Four Archetypes 19). Baron Meinster becomes Don
Juan, who keeps changing his sexual partners with an unconscious intent to find mother in
the girls. He struggles to get rid of his mother’s emotional dependence, whereas he projects
his emotional needs onto his partners, changing them into equally dominant and
authoritative persons by way of vampirism.
The vampire’s victims cover a wide range of women types. The baron’s first victim is
a peasant girl, the ordinary anybody, nothing is known about her. The other extreme is
Marianne, the main female character, who represents the trapped heroine among the Gothic
genre’s stock-characters. Marianne Danielle is a young French woman en route to a teacher
post in a girl school. Since her coachman leaves, she has to spend the night in
Transylvania, invited into Baroness Meinster’s castle. While in the baroness’ chateau, she
spots the handsome baron. Falling in love with him, she is ready to set him free from
maternal captivity. Another victim of the vampire is Gina, a fellow student teacher of
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Marianne’s. She overtly yearns for the union with Marianne’s bridegroom, who is the
Baron Meinster, without respecting their engagement. The licentious girl is glad to receive
the baron’s vampiric embrace with a semi-orgasmic reaction. Later she tries to tempt even
Marianne. “Put your arms around me please. I want to kiss you, Marianne!” – she sighs
after getting out of her coffin. Without emotional quality, this wish goes further than a
lesbian allusion; it reflects that vampiric sex is a mere physical expression.
The core of the vampire hunters and the vampires’ conflict is the battle between
conservative and liberal, as well as natural and cultural forces. Van Helsing is a defender
of civilization and higher cultural values. When endangered, he is ready to act
immediately, even if that means to embrace the pain principle. Before the climatic end,
Van Helsing is bitten by the vampire, but with a red hot poker and some holy water he
prevents a fate worse than death. He is the one who burns down the windmill and
terminates the vampiresses’ existence. Although the baron, the arch vampire escapes this
kind of death, he has to face a Christian ‘weapon.’ The sharp-witted professor makes a
giant crucifix from the windmill blades whose shadow kills the baron. Van Helsing is a
hero pervaded with Christian morality, with austerity and strictness according to the
puritanical tradition. He saves the life of Danielle by warning her to avoid the hypnotic
gaze of the vampire. Women have to abstain from eye-contact with the ‘demonic’ male as
it reveals sexual attraction, an initial element of flirting. In an orthodox narrative,
temptation must be recognized and nipped in the bud.
3.2.3
The Prince of Darkness
After digression to Dracula’s disciples, The Prince of Darkness (1966) continues
with the happenings of the first Hammer Dracula production. The story is removed from
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Victorian England, but Dracula still threatens English middle-class values. Four English
travellers – Charles, his wife Diana, Charles’s brother Alan and his wife Helen – go on a
journey to Klausenburgh, where they meet a rather eccentric cleric, Father Shandor.
Learning of their destination, Shandor warns them to avoid Carlsbad. When they get near
the castle of Carlsbad, the coachman refuses to go on and leaves them on the spot in the
night. A coach without driver approaches, and the horses, in an unfathomable supernatural
way, take them to Dracula’s castle.
The castle is a sinister Gothic element in which the vampiric violation takes place.
The metamorphosis of the decorous woman is still a matter of some central concern. Helen
is rigid and frigid, and she is the one who senses the ominous presence of evil after
entering the castle. “Everything about this place is evil,” she declares, and “the worst part
of it is that I’m the only one who can see it.” The code of conduct put forward by society is
threatened by the vampire, by instinctual nature. Too loose codes would lead to animality.
Helen becomes the Count’s first victim. Since Helen is the strongest upholder of moral
values among the member of the posse, by challenging her, Dracula directly attacks the
dominant ideology. Helen initially immures herself from prohibited desires but the vampire
bite endows her with voracious identity. The vampire Helen lets her hair down, puts on
lipstick and make-up and wears wanton clothing. She turns into a luscious creature who
yearns for everybody, including her master, Dracula. She is eager to coax Diana and
alienate her from Charles, her husband. Charles, who is Helen’s brother-in-law, is also a
target of the vampiress’s lustful revelations. The transformed Helen defiles social ethics
and the sanctity of conjugal love. The only way she can be stopped is the crucifix, the
symbolic sign of Christian morality.
Helen tricks Diana into her room, but some helpers arrive, who hold down the
vampiress. Terence Fisher does not spare the horroristic visual side, as Helen’s body is
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stretched and the camera shows how the stake penetrates the flesh. The story’s
psychological turn is important, revealing the real nature of the undead fiends. Father
Shandor verbalizes this reality warning the frightened Diana that “[t]his woman is not your
sister-in-law, she’s dead. This is a shadow,” and this can be understood as the key sentence
for vampire existence. Those who become vampires lose their identity and their lives are
directed by unconscious processes and accompanied by alienation and disconnection from
their surroundings. The protagonist’s task is to realize the victims’ disturbance in their
sense of self, and set them free from their inner demons. This freedom can only be
guaranteed by death. Physical death means spiritual liberation.
3.2.4
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
The fourth Hammer Dracula flick, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
celebrates a new director for the Dracula series; Freddie Francis, another English director
took over Terence Fisher’s job. Francis’s interpretation of the Dracula story is still
dominated by religious questions, but he provides an unconventional perspective. The plot
is the direct sequel of The Prince of Darkness. An altar boy rides his bike to the local
church. When he pulls the bell as part of his service, blood drips down the rope. Going
upstairs, he faces a dead girl’s body stuffed into the bell. The brightly-coloured two
vampiric marks on the neck indicate the return of the vampire. After the traumatic event,
the altar boy becomes speechless. The Monsignor visits the local vicar and learns about the
vampire activity in the village, so the battle against Dracula begins. The Monsignor and the
priest, the two representatives of the Catholic Church go to Dracula’s castle to destroy the
vampire. On their way there the priest stays behind, and the Monsignor is the one who
reads the service of exorcism and seals the gate with a huge crucifix. In the storm, the
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priest, who has been ordered to wait for him, falls down the rocks. He hits his head and his
blood flows into a stream of melting ice and wakes up Dracula, who has been entombed in
ice as remembered from The Prince of Darkness.
The basic plot is somehow unusual in vampire films: Dracula vows vengeance
against the Monsignor for putting the cross across his gate. The vampire Count is played
by Christopher Lee again. He is aristocratic, sensual yet sadistic, and his formidable
presence still preponderates over mortal characters’ struggles. Close-ups provide an
opportunity to show the minute changes and reactions on the actor’s countenance. On
close-ups Dracula’s face hardens and his eyes become red. Besides the enhancing element
of vampiric sensuality, being a revenge play, Dracula now literally sees red. The
alternation of light and shadows sets the tone of the film, and the visual dimension of this
horror movie is well-developed but provides a more sinister atmosphere than its
predecessors. The technique of upward lighting of the criminals is a way to express their
dark souls (Nemes 10), and Dracula’s close-ups always create suspense in the audience.
Lee’s upper-class vampire has become part of the popular consciousness.
The title hints at Jesus Christ’s resurrection. The anti-Christian creature’s rise is also
symbolic. Hidden and buried doubts, repressed thoughts get out of the coffin, that is, from
the unconscious, and begin to disturb the participants. In Francis’s movie, two main
characters struggle with religious doubts. Paul, the lover of Maria Muller, who is the niece
of the Monsignor, becomes the chief adversary of the vampire, despite being an atheist. He
is a young university student, who works in a bakery. He is constantly looking for the
truth. He does not deny the existence of God, he simply does not believe it, and this leads
to confrontations with the religious uncle of his beloved. The loss of Christian faith and the
repudiation of God bear serious consequences. Instead of being the upholder of moral
values, the local priest becomes mentally enslaved to Dracula and aids the Count. Weak
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priests are likely to fall and convert into enemies of God and the holy sanctity. Being a
priest is not a guarantee for a moral life. Hypocrites in the Church are dangerous but not
uncommon.
Although the weapon against evil does not seem to be Catholicism in the first place,
the climax restores Christian values to their proper place in the vampire narrative. Involved
in some fisticuffs, Paul manages to push down Dracula, who gets impaled on the huge
crucifix which was used to frighten him off from his castle. Paul’s earlier attempt to
destroy Dracula failed because he did not persuade himself to tell a prayer and the priest’s
alienation from God hindered the “holy” man from praying, too. Seeing that there is a
possibility for the liquidation of evil, the priest prays and finishes Dracula’s evil existence.
Paul makes the sign of the cross and the doubters “eventually reclaim the god image in
their conscious selves” (Iaccino 63). When hard times fall upon men, they are prone to turn
to religion for help. Paul’s sudden conversion does not signify his beliefs in salvation and
any other religious commitments, but can be seen as an act of relief.
Besides the priest, Dracula has another mortal assistant, Zena. The Victorian split
concept of womanhood between the unscrupulous, lustful woman and the virgin-like
beauty has turned out to be a universal dichotomy in Dracula’s cinematic world. Zena, the
waitress is so salacious that Paul remarks in the tavern that “You have more boyfriends
than you can remember.” Zena is ready to seduce Paul, but in vain, s Paul is attracted to
Maria Muller, the virtuous niece of the Monsignor. The two want to get married, but Zena
and Dracula intervene. Zena’s character overturns Stoker’s idea of the from-virtuous-intoflagitious woman type. The promiscuous waitress changes radically after the first contact
with the Count, and she expects her liaison with Dracula to be exclusive. This is not at all
the intention of the vampire, as he longs for the corruption of the seemingly incorruptible.
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Zena does not hide her jealousy, which is rewarded with a big smack in her face. Intending
to impress Dracula, Zena finally agrees to bring Maria to him.
Maria is a blond beautiful girl, who is the primary interest of both Dracula and Paul.
The love between Paul and Maria is strong, but when Dracula visits Maria in her bedroom,
the girl responds to the Count’s advances. Unlike the sudden biting of Zena, Dracula
“seems to engage in some loving foreplay” (Iaccino 65) whenever he visits Maria. The act
of penetration is not yet shown in the film, but the wound on the victim’s neck is visible.
The marks of the fangs are ugly, each red puncture wound has a purple ring around it. This
sickening sight points to sickness, but this time it is moral sickness that harms those
infected. Science cannot be used to make judgements and to define principles of right and
wrong, as sex with the vampire is a pure ethical problem. Alienation from God does not
mean estrangement from moral values, although most of the time these two conceptions
are closely intertwined. Cultured, scholarly man is opposed to demonic soul, and the girl
has to contact both in order to transform into a woman. During the scene of seduction,
Maria is suddenly transferred into a spectral dimension, to the realm of dreadful lusts.
Experiencing the dimension of adoration and that of frustration is necessary; they both
belong to the empirical knowledge about love.
3.2.5
Taste the Blood of Dracula
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave ends with the dying Dracula left impaled by the
cross. Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) continues here when a man named Weller
accidentally becomes a witness of the vampire’s agony and his disappearance. He collects
the remains of the Count; his cloak, necklace, ring and blood, which he later sells to four
men who want to engage in some diabolic practices. The leader of this group is Courtley,
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who is totally obsessed with the idea of bringing back Dracula, “the biggest evil” into life.
He drinks from the blood of the vampire first, but feeling unwell, he asks for help. The
other three get so terrified that they kick him to death. The “direct” plot of the story is very
weak, for the motive of Dracula’s haunting is his revenge for the death of his servant. This
argument is so weak in itself since being a vampire, Dracula could create as many servants
for himself as he wishes to. The construction of the story makes more sense if we turn to
the social and psychological dimensions of the story. The “indirect” plot introduces a
rather Victorian topic; Dracula turns children against their fathers, the hypocritical
patriarchs.
To keep up appearance before their family and the community, the three gentlemen
mentioned above, William Hargood, Samuel Paxton and Jonathan Secker pretend to be
devoted to charitable work, but in reality they are frequent visitors of brothels. The church
scene in the beginning of the movie shows them as proper gentlemen with good mores, but
this picture is shattered to pieces when one pries into their secret private life. Getting bored
with harlots, they are open to seeking more sinful activities for the sake of pleasure. When
they come across Courtley, the young gentleman who has been disinherited for practising
Black Mass, they gladly form an alliance. After the murder of Courtley, William Hargood
takes a turn for drinks, and it is his character through which the personal evil hidden under
a virtuous mask is revealed.
Hargood’s daughter, Alice is berated by her father for “smiling and flirting” with a
young man, Paul. Hargood demands apology for her “provocative manner” and for
“behaving like a harlot.” Women figures around Hargood are oppressed. His wife is the
typical ideal product of Victorian patriarchal demands: she is a good mother and a
submissive wife. This indicates a stereotyped Victorian picture of the husband leading a
double life, with a passive, obedient wife on his side and a daughter whose sexual impulses
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are supposed to be suppressed. Beneath the veneer, Hargood’s abusive nature is revealed
when he whips Alice, and there are further hints at his violent (even sexual) abuse towards
her in the past. He hates Paul, Alice’s lover and wants to separate them, mainly for the
unconscious reason that Paul is the good Victorian gentleman who he ought to be.
The vampiric metamorphosis makes Alice able to stand up against her tyrannical
father. She hits him with a shovel, causing his death without remorse. Alice’s friends, Lucy
Paxton and Jeremy Secker are secretly engaged without parental knowledge and approval.
Although they may not have as dysfunctional families as Alice has, the lack of their own
right in partner choice is evident. It is important to note that none of the girls are
promiscuous; they intend to get married and are committed to a monogamous relationship.
Father figures intervene even in this, as they want to regulate the courting process and have
control over them in every possible way. With the help of Dracula, the younger generation
fulminates against their oppressed conditions. Becoming a vampire, Lucy takes an active
part in staking her father, and Jeremy also commits patricide.
3.2.6
Scars of Dracula
The next movie, Roy Ward Baker’s Scars of Dracula was mainly disparaged by
critics and was regarded as a low-standard sequel in the Hammer Series. The film came out
in 1970, the same year as Taste the Blood of Dracula, and is more dreadful visually than its
predecessors, with more sex and a lot of blood on display. In the first scene blood dripping
forth from a bat’s mouth brings Dracula back to life in a church. The killing of a beautiful
village girl, the vampire’s first victim disturbs the local community’s peace. The men
immediately decide, with the leadership of Ripper, to set Dracula’s castle on fire and
annihilate the evil. When they return from their mission with the good news, they head for
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the church, where women and children were left behind for safety reasons. In the temple
they face a dreadful gory scene, a pure massacre; the bodies of their loved ones are lying
everywhere covered in blood. Slaughter in the house of God is a new turn on the vampire
Count, he has never before trespassed the boundaries of Christianity. Neither the sight of
the cross nor holy devices prevented him from entering the church. At first it might seem
to be a misogynous climax on part of the church, but in reality, on account of the vampiric
act, all passive women of the past have been stamped out. The story goes on with flirty
women in the limelight, including the barmaid Julie, Dracula’s companion Tania, and
Sarah, who feels for both Paul and Simon, the two brothers. Taste the Blood of Dracula
has drawn the line for the Victorian moral sentiment, and Scars of Dracula marks the
beginning of a more liberated attitude towards sexuality.
All the girls are frivolous, and in addition, a new type of male character is introduced,
the oversexed libertine in the person of Paul. During the seduction scene between Paul and
Tania, the whole room is embedded in visual codes; red candles, curtains, chairs and a bed
refer to passion and prurience. It is most interesting that Tania and Paul make love in a
human way, and the vampiric attack is postcoital. The vampiress is about to bite her
nocturnal paramour in the morning when the cuckold Count interrupts. There is no mercy
for the infidel “wife”, as Dracula stabs her in the heart, and a most brutal scene unfolds. In
Scars of Dracula, the chief vampire is the one who expects monogamy, but only on his
lover’s part. He lives the double standard of expectations according to which only women
should be faithful. In reality, in this movie everybody longs for polygamy. Whereas certain
liberating processes are taking place in the background, enhanced by sexual revolution of
the time when the movie was shot, the problematic aspects of women representations came
to the foreground.
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Within the framework of second-wave feminism, several film studies came out with
the basic focus on the image of women in film narratives. Among film genres, horror films
provided a very good background for analysing stereotypes. Cinematic art means a new
way of representing and interpreting besides written sources; the voyeuristic technique of
films offers gender-based comprehension by way of conscious formal language. One of the
most influential essays dealing with the function of women characters is Laura Mulvey’s
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (written in 1973, published in 1975). With the help
of Freudian psychoanalysis, Mulvey explores how the erotic is coded in Hollywood
movies, which are dominated by patriarchal ideology.
Watching films is a voyeuristic activity, which offers pleasure in looking
(scopophilia). Mulvey differentiates three types of look, where the female character is
always used as “an object of sexual stimulation through sight” (2183). Firstly, woman is
seen by the male character in the movie. Secondly, the woman functions as the object of
the male spectator’s gaze. The third perspective is the male spectator’s view of the woman
through the male character. Mulvey promotes the idea that woman should be portrayed
without sexual objectification. Scars of Dracula is the stereotypical embodiment of the
prejudiced view of patriarchal society against which Mulvey warns, where all women
without exception are erotic objects.
One of the possible examples of the male character’s view on female characters is
Paul’s lascivious perceptive, in whose gaze all women are eroticized. Klove, the mortal
servant of Dracula, lives in seclusion, but when he sees Sarah, she immediately becomes
an erotic object to him. Klove becomes infatuated with the girl and helps her to escape, but
his love is unrequited. He even dares to resist the authority of the Count, but Dracula
punishes his illusionary reverie with death. Since the undead do not have the priviliges of
the living, a mortal helps Dracula, so Klove is a mediator between the secular and the
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netherworld. Like other minions of the Count, he is wicked and morally weak. Klove could
have a chance to get rid of the malevolent influence, but only if his love was reciprocated.
Since this is not the case, his betrayal by his own emotions means help for the object of his
desire, and results in a deleterious effect on himself. The evil is who does not receive
enough positive feedback on his existence, so it can be stated that lack of love is the
genesis of wickedness.
3.2.7
Dracula A. D. 1972
Victorian values are buried in Scars of Dracula; a new sexual code is emerging. Alan
Gibson goes one step further, and puts the Dracula story into a contemporary setting. The
prologue theme of Dracula A.D. 1972 is the 1872 battle between Dracula and Lawrence
Van Helsing on the top of a coach. An accident happens and both of them die – Dracula
gets impaled by a wagon wheel and his remains are collected by a follower. The picture
and time shift to London one hundred years later. Dracula’s resurrection is carried out by a
group of hippies. Placing Dracula into present-day surroundings did not gain the
audience’s and the critics’ approval altogether, but focusing on sexual ethics it is a major
shift in the Dracula films.
Throughout the 1960s and the early 1970s new codes of sexuality were introduced
and accepted. The new subculture, that is, the counterculture of youth had been realized in
the Hippie Movement. The hippies rebelled against industrial society and any other social
bondage. They became friendlier and more open-minded, and thought in terms of
community first. The flower children, as they called themselves, believed in peace and
favoured the concept of free love, and some used drugs in order to expand their
consciousness and were associated with rock music. Their ideas about a loving, peaceful
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community, where all people are equal living in harmony was manifested most
prominently in the 1969 Woodstock festival. Nevertheless, their underground movement
came to an end, and did not become what they wanted, though significant changes
occurred in society. The minorities gained rights, censorship was mitigated and sexual
liberation took place after a long conservative era.
Gibson’s modern adaptation of the vampire myth relates the original myth to its “own
present frame of reality” (Iaccino 14). An attempt is made to see vampirism as a
contemporary event in the form of ‛cult murder,’ as the inspector is looking for a rational
explanation for the murder of three girls. Bodies found mutilated and drained in blood
assumes the ritual killing of a psychosocial pervert. The ancient superstitious beliefs are
out of place, and it is Van Helsing, the anthropologist professor, who insists that his
grandfather was a scientist and collected conclusive evidence to support the idea that
vampires do exist. It is he who finally dissolves Dracula with holy water. The vampire is
the personification of evil, and in stories like those involving Dracula, the date of horror
films do not matter indeed. These films are constant reminders that corruption (be it
physical, psychological and/or moral) does not disappear, it is part of society and the
continual re-awakening of Dracula indicates the “invincible shadow nature” (Iaccino 29) of
the vampire figure, in which it comes back to haunt society. It must be added though, that
Gibson’s present-day interpretation is rather a disadvantage to the vampire myth; for
instance the unsuitable contemporary music that can be heard in the background when
vampire hunter Van Helsing fights the bloodsuckers totally lacks the Gothic atmosphere
and is rather ridiculous. These scenes should be frightful, but instead they are farcical
without relevant comic elements.
An attempt is made at demystifying vampirism and presenting it as a contemporary
phenomenon backed up by rational explanation. When the dead victims’ mutilated bodies
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are found, the suspect is accused of cult murder. In a more scientifically advanced period
the movie seems to relate the audience to earlier myths, but this is not a coincidence if the
social background of the time is taken into consideration. In 1969 Charles Manson’s TateLaBianca murder shocked the world. The confessed Satanist, Charles Manson had been a
cult leader of the so-called Manson Family, a kind of hippie commune, which committed
the most atrocious crimes. In American folklore he has become the incarnation of evil.
Dracula A.D. 1972 echoes the Manson murders as Alucard (Dracula written backwards), a
young follower of Dracula worships the satanic vampire and offers people up to
destruction.
The victim choice of the vampires shows gender-based discrimination. Girls are
killed, but Bob and Alucard are turned into bloodsucker revenants. The movie is full of
underlying conservative warnings against young people’s drug induced sex, but
interestingly enough women die while men multiply. Foucault’s notion that sex is powersaturated is appropriate here, since women’s action is erotic submission while the
masculine term is differentiated. Vampirism actually approves and strengthens men’s
dominant position in the social system.
3.2.8
The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Directed by Alan Gibson again, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974) is a direct
sequel of Dracula A.D. 1972. Set in present day, Gibson goes on with modernizing the
Gothic. Still favouring the occult theme, the first scene shows the celebration of a black
mass ritual. A naked young girl lies on an altar and a Chinese woman, the leader of the
cult, cuts a rooster’s neck and drips blood on the girl’s body. The rite is attended by, as
later turns out, four prominent members of society reflecting their corruptness underneath a
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public persona. These men baptize themselves in the blood, drawing the sign of the
inverted cross upon their foreheads. Ancient rituals and human sacrifices were of high
value in pre-historic times. The subject of human sacrifice is introduced into modern times,
reflecting the return to the earlier primitive stages of man. The uncivilized past recurs and
haunts our modern consciousness, indicating that the civilized man is still savage to some
extent. As the title promises, the visionary image is a complete reversal of Christianity.
The reversed crucifix, the black mass and the baptism in blood are acts of blasphemy.
Dracula intends to fulfil the Biblical prophecy of Armageddon. He chooses four carriers of
the plague akin to the messengers of death, the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse.
This movie can be seen as an allegory of the threat of germ warfare. One of Dracula’s
disciples, Professor Julian Keeley is working on a project aiming at developing a virulent
form of the bubonic plague. Dracula wants total annihilation of mankind, the “ultimate
revenge,” on a world where everybody “pray[s] for death”.42 His own death wish is
realized in the terminal destruction of humanity. There is no evidence, but Van Helsing
thinks that the Count is yearning for death. Dracula projects his own misery onto other
people; he wants them to share his wish to die. He is tossed aside by society as an outcast,
but if his wish was realized, it would terminate his marginalized status. Bearing in mind
the sexual implications of the vampire, it is clear that the erotic is coded in a malady. Life
is a sexually transmitted disease which ends with death.
Dracula is the Freudian melancholic, whose sadistic disposition stems from the clash
between the ego and the lost object. His own suicidal wish is a replacement of the hatred
he feels toward the lost love-object. As Freud notes,
42
Germ warfare is not a new “event” in the Dracula tradition. It has nothing to do with this film, although it
is an interesting coincidence that the historical Dracula already used germ warfare in the fifteenth century, a
tactic almost unheard at the time. Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu have found evidence that Vlad
Ţepeş encouraged those affected by leprosy, tubercolosis, or the bubonic plague to enter the Turks’
encampment in disguise and infect as many of the soldiers as possible. Those who survived were rewarded
(In Search of Dracula 52-53).
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“[t]he melancholic’s erotic cathexis in regard to his object has thus undergone
a double vicissitude: part of it has regressed to identification, but the other part,
under the influence of the conflict due to ‘ambivalence,’ has been carried back
to the stage of sadism which is nearer to that conflict.”
(Mourning and Melancholia 251-2)
Dracula has companions indeed, but only seemingly. The vampiresses have increased in
number, but their personal characters are not amplified, they have totally lost their
individual aspects. The gain during the process of transforming women into vampires, is a
catalyst of loss. Functionally speaking, the non-individual aspect of the vampiresses has its
own meaning, but it often happens that in modern vampire movies human nature is not
elaborate at all, there is no transition between the pre-vampire and the vampire state. The
lack of subtle characterization becomes a great drawback for these flicks. The nonpresence of the potential victim who struggles between doubts reflects the desensitization
of our modern culture.
The Satanic Rites of Dracula seems to celebrate the lack of morality, but it would not
be a vampire movie if the were not at least one crusader for moral issues. In a world
disclosed as chaotic, violent and greedy, it is Professor Lawrence Van Helsing who braves
the evil. Throughout the Dracula “history” it is obvious that Van Helsing and his
descendants are archetypal images of the wise old man, who gives guidance and offers
help to (good) people in need. The last fight between Van Helsing and Dracula is the
“conventional” combat between good and evil, embedded in Christian metaphors. During
the final battle the house catches fire, but both Van Helsing and Dracula manage to escape
into the nearby forest. Dracula gets entangled in tree branches, his palms are pierced
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through by branches, on his head a crown of thorns. Like Jesus Christ, the Antichrist is
crucified.
3.2.9
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
Dracula rises from his grave for the last time in The Legend of the 7 Golden
Vampires. The last Dracula movie in the Hammer Series was directed by Roy Ward Baker
and Chang Cheh, a Hong Kong action-film director. The movie combines elements of
horror and kung fu in a peculiar way. This vampire kung fu film was unique in the 1970s.
The Transylvanian narrative is taken to China. The backstory of The Legend of the 7
Golden Vampires is explained by a prologue set in 1804. Kah, the High Priest of the seven
golden vampires, visits Dracula in his Transylvanian castle where Dracula possesses Kah’s
body and returns to Kah’s temple in his image. The change is noticeable, Kah walks like a
cripple, but after Dracula makes use of his body, he walks straight and behaves selfassuredly.
Time shifts to a hundred years later. Joseph Van Helsing is giving a lecture on
Chinese vampires in Chung King. The professor’s lecture elucidates the legend of the
seven golden vampires. Each of them wears a golden bat necklace. According to folk tales,
one of them was destroyed by a local farmer. University students do not believe in the
existence of vampires, but attribute these creatures to superstitious phantasmagoria. One
exception is Hsi Ching, who visits the anthropologist professor at night and asks him to
join him to destroy the vampires in Ping Kwei, the village where his ancestors used to live.
Meanwhile Chinese vampires terrorize the village of Ping Kwei and abduct young women
for their blood-drinking rituals. The victims are exclusively girls and they must be chained,
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because they are horrified and scream when the vampires lean forward to suck their blood.
There is no trace of willingness on the part of the victims; temptation has been replaced by
pure aggression. The vampires’ encounter with the victim is a rape act rather than the
establishment of (hidden) romantic ties. Chinese vampires are very ugly; they have become
rotten, often without eyeballs. The film’s idea is to return to folkloric creatures who are
dreadful and devoid of any human traits.
The horroristic experience doubles, since zombies, another group of the undead tag
along with the bloodsuckers. There is an undead hierarchy. Dracula is undoubtedly at the
top of the hierarchy as the master vampire, and the zombies are under the rule of the
vampires. Zombies are without personality, and their only ability is to make everybody
lifeless around themselves. It is a depressive expression, the ‘one-who-cannot-exist’s’
attempt at existence. In contrast, vampires have servants and organize a world around
themselves, so they seemingly solve the problems of being. Nevertheless, power and
exploitation are pseudo-solutions. Zombies are devastators of every higher existence; they
represent the power of impotence, and vampires the impotence of power.
A group of vampire hunters join forces against these animalistic creatures. The
multiracial team consists of Professor Van Helsing, his son Leyland, Hsi Ching and his
five brothers, their sister Mai Kwei and Vanessa Buren, a young wealthy woman who
finances their whole journey. Romantic attachments form between Vanessa and Hsi Ching,
and between Mai Kwei and Leyland. Interracial relationships are no longer taboo but are
depicted shyly. According to Hunter, the movie suggests that “such transgressive liaisons
lead to tragedy” (143). Vanessa is bitten by a vampire and killed by Hsi Ching, who kills
himself after the act, but Mai Kwei survives, and there is a possible implication that her
affair with Leyland may still have some chance in the future.
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The changing perception of the seventies underlies in the movie. Not only interracial
couples, but women characters are described as appropriate to the 1970s. Hunter implies
that the characters of Vanessa and Mai Kwei both mark out new territories, they deviate
from the conventional dichotomous Hammer representations of women as dark/dangerous
and blond/passive (Hunter 143). Vanessa is a combination of ‘blondness, foreignness,
virtue and liberation’ (Hunter 143), and Kwei is a fighter, an active participant in the
vampire hunt.
3.3
Modern Flicks
Vampires did not make any significant appearance on screen in the eighties. They
remained off-screen, but they were resuscitated in literature. Anne Rice released her first
novel, The Interview with the Vampire in 1976, which became a best-seller in that year,
followed by several sequels, now known as The Vampire Chronicles. “It is probably no
exaggeration to say that with The Interview with the Vampire, Rice revived and elevated
the vampire story to much the same degree as Stoker did with Dracula, and much more
craftily” opines David J. Skal (274). Although this statement seems an exaggeration,
indeed, the merit of Rice’s vampire creations is beyond question. Stoker “placed” vampires
on the literary map, heavily influenced by folkloric traditions, and Anne Rice actually
reformed the customary vampire conventions, adjusting them to the time she was living in.
Rice’s vampires are overtly bisexual, sensual and sensitive; she has transformed the
nightmarish vampire figure into the paradigm of human conditions. Although there are
exceptions, the emotional bloodsuckers dominate the cinema in the new, modern era. As
for movies, Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula adaptation brought back the attention to
vampires in movies in 1992.
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3.3.1
Paul Morrissey: Blood for Dracula (Andy Warhol’s Dracula)
Andy Warhol’s Dracula directed by Paul Morrissey is a tragic satire. The film is rated X,
but not for violence, as one might expect of a horror film, but for its sexual content (Muir
310). The basic plot of the film is Dracula’s travel to Italy to find a virgin whose blood he
can feed on. He gets accommodated in La Marchesa Di Fiore’s house, but his approach to
the Marchese’s daughters does not meet his expectations. Two of them (Saphiria and
Rubinia) frequently visit Mario, the handsome gardener. The couplings and oral sex are
explicitly shown in the movie. Sex is not only limited to Mario and the girls; the two
frivolous sisters go on fondling each other after they have had the handyman. Their
experience with the vampire produces the same effect on them. They reach orgasm under
Dracula’s bloodsucking activity. In contrast, the vampire gets sicker from their nonvirginal
blood. Besides the two lascivious sisters, Esmeralda and the fourteen-year-old Perla could
save the sick count’s life; however, the latter is deflowered by Mario, in order to save her
from the vampire.
The character of Dracula is different from the usual interpretations, as he is a sickly,
suffering bloodsucker instead of a scary monster. According to John Kenneth Muir,
Dracula is a creature of impotence, which is even clearly reflected in his death:
“Mario chops his arms off, then his legs. The purportedly regal count is thus
left flailing about with no usable limbs. He’s a weakling, not a figure of
fright or authority at all. At one disgusting point, Dracula is reduced to
licking a virgin’s blood up off the floor, after Dallessandro’s Mario has made
love to her.
(309-310)
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Despite the Count’s ineffectiveness, sexual exploitation seems to be a principal theme. In
the film sexuality and politics intertwine. The corrupt aristocracy - represented by the
enfeebled Dracula - is defeated, but the vision following is no brighter, either. Mario, the
gardener is a Marxist idealist, with a hammer and sickle painted on his wall. He is the one
who annihilates the monster, yet he is as destructive as the Count. Yacowar suggests that
what the whole film represents in political terms, is that “the Marxist simply replaces one
predatory politic with another” (86). The sexual content regarding morality is equally
interesting. In an 1973 interview, Paul Morrissey explains:
“We’re trying to make movies in a style that’s commensurate with the way
people live their lives today. For instance, before the war, there were moral
codes, a certain guilty conscience about things, there was more of a form to life
itself. Now life is formless, aimless, people aren’t tormented by guilt and
they’re not bound by moral codes. You can make a movie about that subject,
but it’s a different thing to make a movie in that frame of mind.”
(Morrissey qtd in Yacowar 75)
In Blood for Dracula the figure of the vampire embodies a nostalgic yearning for the past.
Yet the Victorian framework of moral values is not available anymore, Dracula is unable
to find virgins representing the strict moral code. The shift in values in the modern era is
well represented by the Count’s failure; he is chopped to pieces, and the only daughter of
Di Fiore’s who believed in the “old values” dies, too, whereas those who represent the new
moral code survive.
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3.3.2
Francis Ford Coppola: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Coppola’s Dracula is identified with the historical figure to a certain extent. The
Wallachian prince fights against the Muslim Turks in order to defend Christendom in the
first scene. The Order of the Dragon is also mentioned, and the book of Van Helsing
contains pictures from real historical sources. Dracula introduces himself to Mina as Prince
Vlad when they meet on the streets of London. The problem with this idea is that
Coppola’s Dracula has a totally different personality and appearance than the historical
figure. Gary Oldman is a tender lover in the role of the prince despite the real Dracula’s
sadistic nature. His face does not resemble Vlad Ţepeş’s fierce face at all. Moreover, his
personality has nothing to do with Bram Stoker’s vampire figure, either. Coppola’s
Dracula interpretation is a new, more humanized concept of the vampires. He exhibits
human emotions. Stroking the wolf in the cinematograph, Mina and Dracula find a way to
express their growing attraction by caressing each other’s hands. They share a host of
intimate moments throughout the movie. Dracula quite often changes shape, and his bestial
form is the projection of his inner anguish.
Mina’s and Dracula’s love is in the centre of the Coppola adaptation. This story is
undoubtedly a love story, a reincarnation romance. The vampire existence is a means to
meet a reincarnated lover. In Bram Stoker’s novel Mina’s and Jonathan’s love embodies
the pure and unconditional love concept, but in Coppola’s movie Mina and Dracula share
this kind of love. Actually, the whole story is built around this line, which is why it is
deceptive and false that Coppola’s adaptation is entitled Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
According to Holte, the issues that Stoker’s Dracula addressed such as the changing role
of women, imperialism, threats to European culture and the role of religion, which were
repressed by the Victorians, are no longer subjects for repression for our culture, rather
“they are subject matter of political debate among presidential candidates and of freshman
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composition courses at colleges and universities. What remains,” he explains, “as Coppola
observed, is the love story” (119-120).
As reported by some peasant legends, when the Turks attacked Wallachia, Dracula’s
first wife committed suicide rather than to be captured by the Turks. This event is
romanticized in Coppola’s version. In the movie the Turks shoot an arrow into the castle
with the false news of Dracula’s death. Elisabeta, his bride thinks life meaningless without
her prince, thus she jumps into the river and drowns. The Greek Orthodox Church believed
at one time that the bodies of those being objects of excommunication, murderers, suicides
or those who had been cursed by their parents do not undergo decomposition after their
death. (Wright 21) These all were believed to become vampires. Later this belief spread to
other branches of the Christian Church (Wright 22). This superstition is used in Coppola’s
version. Being a suicide, Elisabeta’s wish to unite with Dracula in Heaven cannot come
true since her soul cannot be saved. She is damned forever. Dracula rebels against the
Church when he sees his bride lying on the floor, dead. Since he fought for Christendom,
he feels as if he has been betrayed by God. He loves Elisabeta so much that he even
renounces God for their love.
The advertising poster of the movie reads, “Love Never Dies”, suggesting love
eternal. When Dracula meets Mina in 1897, he loves her as much as he did in 1462. His
feelings have not changed for four centuries. His love is beyond time. Time is a problem
for mortals. Eternity is something that human beings can never experience. Dracula wants
Mina to exceed the limits of time. The everlasting true love that Dracula offers to his
beloved is so divine that it suggests godliness. Nevertheless, the divine-animal nature of
the vampire is overshadowed by human concerns. The prince realizes that if he transforms
Mina, he does her a lot of harm. He condemns her as well. However, Mina is reluctant to
accept this. She is so obsessed by her complex that she wants to be with her lover at all
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costs and she easily forgives the charming prince for murdering her best friend, Lucy. This
is a typical example of animus obsession.
Jonathan and Mina love each other, but passion is lacking in their relationship. Mina
experiences passion with Dracula. Dracula is quite human. When he talks about his dead
bride, his eyes are filled with tears. It is diametrically opposed to the previous scene when
he draws his sword, looking like a bloodthirsty warlord. This cruel outcast monster is one
of the protagonists of the true love notion. Mina and Dracula’s love is actually expressed as
the tale of the Beauty and the Beast. Dracula has an undoubted outward appearance of
monstrosity in the last scene. Mina does not care about this, she passionately kisses the
dying monster. Consequently, her true love sets Dracula free from damnation. By loving
Dracula, Mina awakens to love’s erotic form as well. Hereby she redeems herself from
repression.
Coppola’s representation of Lucy and her three suitors’ relationship breaks the
illusion of their friendship. Mina describes Lucy as a “pure and virtuous girl”. The problem
with Lucy’s character is that she is far from being this. Lucy in Coppola’s movie is an
attractive girl with long red hair. She is coquettish, provoking men. It is no wonder men
flock around her. When Quincey arrives, she runs and snuggles up to him. She shocks
Mina with her ambiguous sexual remark, “Let me touch it, it’s so big”. The virtuous Mina
is relieved when she realizes that Lucy is actually talking about Quincey’s dagger. Lucy is
coquettish with Jack Seward and Arthur Holmwood to the same extent. “I love him,” says
Lucy running to Mina with the news of her marriage to Arthur. Following her relationship
with Quincey and Seward, this statement lacks credibility. Then Lucy exchanges a kiss
with Mina in the rain. This lesbian kiss seems superfluous and senseless concerning the
plot. Although it may enhance Lucy’s lascivious nature, it cannot really be reconciled with
Mina’s personality.
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Lucy first falls victim to the vampire while she is sleepwalking. Her night-dress is
red, the symbolic colour of passion. She is very alluring, even in her sleep. Mina is a
witness of Lucy’s transformation, although this scene is different from that of the novel. In
Coppola’s movie Lucy is lying on a slab and embraces Dracula with her legs. This sexual
position clearly refers to coitus. In earlier adaptations, as well as in the novel the biting is
endowed with symbolic meaning in itself. Lucy murmurs that Dracula lured her with his
red eyes. It is interesting because Dracula is in the shape of a werewolf at this time. He is a
hairy monster, which is anything but visually attractive. So, the attraction is not triggered
by outward appearance, nor even by virtues. Dracula must have a strong mental power
with which he draws his victims towards himself. This psychic connection between
Dracula and his victims is also mentioned several times in the novel.
Lucy remarks that she is changing. During her metamorphosis, she behaves
coquettishly. Seward still feels attracted to Lucy, so when the girl asks for a kiss, he obeys
happily. Later, when Lucy rampages and throws a vase on the floor, Quincey is “used” to
draw her attention. The idea is successful, although Lucy becomes frivolous again. She
tries to coax a kiss out of Quincey, but this time she intends to give a vampiric kiss. Van
Helsing has to hold the girl down before she can bite Quincey’s neck. Lucy is prevented
from giving them her fatal kiss; what is more, soon she is transferred from the attacker’s
position into the victim’s. While Jonathan and Mina’s wedding ceremony is going on,
Dracula seals Lucy’s fate. In parallel with the wedding, Dracula visits the dying Lucy in
the shape of a wolf. As Jonathan and Mina kiss, Dracula bites Lucy, that is, symbolically
he kisses her. This proves to be fatal, making Lucy an undead creature. The cuts alternating
between these two scenes intensify the difference between beastly physical contact and
profound, spiritual love. Lucy transforms, and the cemetery scene follows Bram Stoker’s
depiction. Lucy is a white, ghost-like creature. Her white dress is like a wedding dress.
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Arthur and Lucy could not marry in life, and Lucy wants her fiancé to share her misery
perpetually in an existence between life and death. In this screen version of Dracula, Lucy
has bloody fangs. She looks like a supernatural being, a mixture of horror, beauty and
mysticism. The Count’s other vampiresses share these attributes, revealing their driving
force behind their prurient and egotistical nature.
Dracula and the three vampiresses’ erotic scene is different from that of the foregoing
films. Due to the mitigation of censorship restrictions, explicit sexuality can be seen in this
adaptation. Coppola’s woman vampires are very sensual like Lucy. They blend vampiric
and human sexual elements. The three vampiresses whisper Jonathan’s name, thus luring
him to a large bed. Jonathan obeys the voices and lies back. Between his legs a half-naked
female figure appears suddenly. Two other lustful women emerge from the bed and start
caressing Jonathan. Soon their human kisses convert into vampiric kisses. The young
attorney seems to abandon himself to pleasure. He gets filled with disgust only when the
vampiresses pounce on the baby whom Dracula has thrown down to the ground.
Coppola well depicts female vampires as the anima of men. They are very erotic.
One of them has snaky hair referring to the Gorgon Medusa. In Greek myth, anybody who
looked at her face was turned to stone. Athena offered Perseus, the Greek hero, a magical
mirror to be able to see the Medusa in order to avoid being turned to stone. According to
Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, the mirror symbolizes the power of the unconscious in
dreams, providing an objective view about the person (218). This view is often painful and
shocking.
Although some scenes faithfully follow Stoker’s novel, the main plot is different.
Dracula has been depicted more human than ever before. Dracula feeds on Lucy to appease
his appetite, while his relations with Mina are totally different from the usual monstervictim relationship. Lucy apparently longs for sexual fulfilment, thus she welcomes
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Dracula, whereas Mina is initially frightened by the Count and his sexuality. Dracula can
feel, and Mina returns his love, which produces the Beauty and the Beast tale on screen.
Lucy and the other female vampires are extremely lascivious. The problem with the Lucy
character in the Coppola adaptation is that the change in her personality after
transformation is not noticeable. In the novel, she is pure and transforms into a voluptuous
girl, while here she actually behaves in the same coquettish way all the time. This means
that human characters are more realistic than Bram Stoker’s “only-virtuous-humans”.
Vampire characters have undergone slight changes in the postmodern age, but blood
as central sexual symbol has remained. STDs have been known for hundreds of years, and
while syphilis meant the biggest threat in the Victorian era, AIDS is the pandemic disease
of the postmodern. As John S. Bak notes, cleverly recognizing Dracula’s transgressive
sexual subtext,
[i]f the Victorians believed seriously in the corruption of blood, literal and
figurative alike, then the postmodernists have understood it to its fullest,
epidemic extent. In the age of AIDS and widespread HIV—that postmodern
plague not only of sexual transgression but also, and if not more so, of ThirdWorld poverty and postcolonial wreckage—Dracula seems as poised as ever to
haunt humanity.
(xiv)
When in the 1980s AIDS spread over the world, sexually active people were its primary
target. The belief that this disease originated from homosexuals furthermore stigmatized
same-sex relations. AIDS – like syphilis – connoted judgments on a certain community, on
the alleged sexual deviants. In case of STDs love turned into death, and thus were
“regarded as retribution for the licentiousness of a community” (Sontag 46) by
heterosexual consensus. Later, the blame shifted to polyamorous bisexuals as well,
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blaming them for transmitting the disease from homosexual communities among the
heterosexuals. Even Coppola admitted that he had deliberately used vampirism as a
metaphor for the spread of AIDS (Bak xiv). The licentious vampire is a perfect
representative of the fear of STDs. He promotes promiscuous, unprotected sex — and the
consequence of such sexual behaviour can be fatal.
3.3.3
Patrick Lussier: Dracula 2000
The new millennium brought fresh insights in the film world. Patrick Lussier’s
Dracula 2000, followed by two sequels, Dracula II: Ascension (2003) and Dracula III:
Legacy (2005), set the Dracula story in recent days. In Patrick Lussier’s modern
adaptation, Dracula is confronted with Mary Van Helsing, the daughter of the vampire
hunter Abraham Van Helsing. Mary’s personality is similar to Mina Harker’s character.
She also incarnates the pure and virtuous woman type, in contrast with the other girls. She
works for Virgin record store, and in some scenes until Dracula finds her, she has the
virgin logo in obvious letters on her T-shirt. This witty idea is a combination of typical
horror (virgin being chased by the monster) and modern elements, indicative of Mary’s
chastity and purity.
Lussier’s Dracula is an attractive young man. He is part of the everyday secular
world. Like vampiresses, he seduces with the help of outward appearance. He has hypnotic
power over women. Mary is the only girl who tries to resist. Women are easy prey for him,
because they are willing victims. Dracula victimizes numerous people regardless of their
gender or ethnicity, but the young victims experience their transformations as fun. They
enjoy their new power. They are far from the centuries-old suffering nosferatu. Van
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Helsing is also infected. He has kept himself alive by injecting himself with the blood of
Dracula in order to find a way to destroy the vampire.
Dracula is immortal in every sense of the word. He is the only vampire who cannot
be destroyed, as even the conventional vampire killing methods fail to terminate his
existence. His true identity is disclosed in the story. He has been in this world for a very
long time under different names. In the fifteenth century he was called Vlad Ţepeş, in 1897
Bram Stoker called him Dracula in his novel. He seems to be the incarnation of evil. In
reality, he is Judas Iscariot, who is haunted by the anger of God, and that is why he is
repelled by anything which is in connection with Christianity. The money he received for
his blasphemous betrayal of Christ makes him dread silver. He is immortal because God
rejects him.
Religion and sexuality are explicitly combined. Mary has nightmares about Dracula,
although she has never seen him. Dracula has tried to contact with Mary through her
dreams since escaping from Van Helsing’s custody. Mary tells her priest friend about her
mixed feelings. She is afraid of the man in her dreams, although she feels attracted to him.
Because of Dracula’s seductive power, Mary is afraid that she will not be able to resist
him. The priest warns her that if she behaves so, she denies her faith in Jesus Christ.
Initially, Mary cannot keep away from Dracula’s hypnotic power; she obeys him, being
under his control. Dracula puts his fangs into her neck, then opens a vein and lets Mary
drink from his blood. This is a modern version of the scene when Dracula forces Mina to
drink from his chest. Unlike the novel, there is no forcing element here. Mary is
mesmerized, and acts of her own free will. Transgression appears not only at a moral but
also at a religious level. Mary is also tempted, but she realizes this, and having strong faith,
she is able to brave the evil.
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The creation of Dracula’s three vampiresses is also part of the story. The female
vampires-to-be are good examples of how easily women can be swayed when they meet
the seductive monster. Lucy is part of the triumvirate. She is so enchanted by Dracula at
first sight that she immediately invites him to the house where she lives with Mary. Lucy is
very flirtatious all the way. Dracula and Lucy are having sex when the vampire puts his
fangs into the girl’s neck. They consummate they desire. Vampirism is not only
metaphorically sex, it is sex. After her metamorphosis, Lucy’s coquettish nature is
supplemented with malicious intentions. “I’m with your father” Lucy shocks Mary over
the phone. Lucy is moaning as if having great enjoyment. Mary soon finds out that Van
Helsing has been murdered by the blond girl. Lucy, the vampiress, gains sexual satisfaction
from killing.
The second vampiress, the correspondent also assumes some touches of frivolity in
herself. She is concerned that her breasts should be visible while she is covering the crash
of Dracula’s airplane. Dracula’s sudden appearance scares her to death. He is invisible, but
the minute he shows himself, the girl’s attraction to him is made obvious. Dracula holds
out his hand and the correspondent walks to him intentionally. Solina, the third vampiress
is Van Helsing’s employee. She also belongs to the band trying to burgle the old antique
dealer. Solina reacts the same way to Dracula’s “offer” as the other girls. She feels blessed
to have been chosen as Dracula’s lover. The advertising slogan of the movie, “The most
seductive evil of all time has now been unleashed in ours,” seems to be supported.
The three vampiresses are the embodiment of sexual pleasures. They were flirtatious
even before being transmogrified, but now their sexuality has been mixed with bestiality.
For some reason, the female vamps try to convert only male characters, while male
vampires attack both male and female human beings. They are unscrupulous predators,
stalking on men. Bloodsucking is not a gradual process. Dracula sucks the blood of men
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then his interest in them ceases. The three vampiresses remain his companions, although
there is not much interaction going on between them. Vampire sexuality contains
perversity and sadistic nature in itself, but Lussier’s women go even further. In early films,
the act of bloodsucking is equal to sexual satisfaction, while these modern vampiresses
gain gratification from killing.
3.3.4
Stephen Sommers: Van Helsing
Horror films lend themselves to remakes more frequently than any other genres. In
the 2000s remakes of classic horror movies, which obviously are to be distinguished from
adaptations based on literary works, became quite fashionable. On the other hand, horror
became steeped in clichés. There are bad and good clichés of the genre, and complete
novelty seems to be inconceivable. In spite of commonplaces, horror’s sub-genre, the
vampire film is a progressive type. Stephen Sommers’s 2004 movie, Van Helsing is a
multi-monster movie, focusing on the eternal battle between Dracula and Van Helsing, but
with appearance of such horror classic monsters as Frankenstein’s creature or Mr. Hyde.
This is an action-packed movie, but, which is a great merit of the film, new elements were
added.
One of the typical elements is the presence of the three vampire women as Dracula's
company. The vampiress triad may be derived from the voluptuous iele, nasty feminine
creatures from Romanian mythology. They are some kind of female vampires “who travel
about their sordid business in numbers, perhaps for safety, generally in threes or sevens”
(Florescu and McNally Dracula 167). Nevertheless, it is much more probable that these
evil brides are the blasphemic mirror of the Holy Trinity. In the unity of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit the one God exists in three persons, while the arch male vampire is higher in
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rank than the vampiresses’ Unholy Trinity. This representation of women and their
supposed weaker, more frayed morals have misogynist overtones. They are in the service
of Evil, and since they are considered weaker morally than men in patriarchal society, the
conservative ranking system ranks them lower.
Despite their inferiority, the vampiresses share similarities with their master. Their
strength is superhuman, they are able to lift up and throw away a cow or a man easily.
Their movements are abnormally quick. All of them are able to walk on walls and ceilings,
and they are shape-shifters. An innovative idea is Dracula’s new alter-ego: he does not
appear in the form of a bat, of a wolf or as fog, but he is a winged demon when he assaults
his victims. In earlier versions only a few vampire ladies had the ability to transform
themselves, and they usually were associated with cats. Modern adaptations require
innovative experiment, but filmmakers are prone to draw back on mythological sources
and mix the past tradition with present devices. When Sommers’s vampiresses attack, they
take the form of harpies. Harpies are from Greek mythology, they are birds with human
heads. Dracula’s bird-women are also able to fly, and as for their external appearance, their
carnivore and cannibalistic nature is accentuated. They have protruding teeth and jaws, and
extra long tongues; the emphasis is on their predatory side. A most pleasing aesthetic
solution is how the veil of their dresses changes into wings at the time of attack; a
transitory visual example for their metamorphosis from graceful into disgraceful.
These female fiends, like every other vampire, undergo regular periods of dormancy
where they are almost human excepting their unnatural eye colour and unspeakable
lustfulness. Pulchritude can be a weapon, and in the case of vampires it can be deadly.
Interestingly enough, Sommers’s vampire ladies do not try to lure their victims – although
they definitely would have the ability to do so – they attack immediately. Despite their
aggressive behaviour, for Verona, Aleera and Marishka, the three vampiresses, the sense of
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belonging to Dracula and to one another is of crucial importance. After Marishka’s death
(the first death experience within their group) they confront Dracula's distinctness:
Verona: We lost Marishka.
Aleera: Master.
Dracula: There, there, my darlings. Do not worry. I shall find another bride.
Verona: What?
Aleera: Do we mean so little to you?
Verona: Have you no heart?
Dracula: No! I have no heart! I feel no love! Nor fear… nor joy… nor sorrow! I am
hollow. And I will live forever.
(quoted from the film Van Helsing)
In contrast with them, Dracula is incapable of love and emotions. It was believed up to
now that vampires and vampiresses were equal and could go only for the physical level, or
alternatively, that they were invested with human traits, including emotional responses.
This sharp division between the King of Vampires and his brides is a new element in the
Dracula tradition. This sexual dimorphism of the vampires reflects a postmodern view on
the difference between the perception of human gender and identity in society.
In their book Brain Sex (1989) Moir and Jessel explore the biology of gender. At the
time of this book’s publication, one social view was that women and men should be treated
equally, but Moir and Jessel challenged this statement by claiming that “the sexes are
different because their brains are different” (5). This dissimilarity is not based on an
inferior-superior power relation concept like the one in a patriarchal society, but rather,
these differences are complementary. Moir and Jessel point out that sexually dimorphic
behaviours are linked with biological influences. Men differ from women not only in their
perception, but also in their sexual energy. Whereas men miss sex, “women miss the
companionship of sex” (105). Women are thought of as being more emotional than men.
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They receive more emotional input, and react more strongly to it (138). Sommers’s
vampire and vampiresses are representative of this new perception.
As for human characters, there are slight changes, but the most crucial is the female
protagonist’s personality. The only main female character on the good side is Anna
Valerious. Unlike former heroines, she personifies the Amazon archetype without shifting
from the passive into an active person. She even risks her life in the battle against Dracula.
The romance between her and Van Helsing is rather in the background, and the movie does
not get overemotional. Anna Valerious is not callous, and is capable of emotions, but she
can control them. She is tough, because her life circumstances force her to become a
fighter.
According to a curse, if she dies, then nine generations of the Valerious family lose
the chance to get to Heaven. Their admission into Heaven, that is, the purification of their
soul is at stake. Beliefs in an afterlife are pivotal for various reasons. Gabriel Van
Helsing’s and Anna’s budding love cannot be consummated because Anna dies. The film
does not feature the customary happy ending. In the last scene, Van Helsing and his helper
Carl are performing Anna’s last rites. Van Helsing is sad, but a vision appears: he sees
Anna in Heaven, and later he sees himself with her there. Despite his unhappiness, he
smiles at the thought. This picture sequence symbolizes the strength and necessity of faith
in an afterlife. The hope of reencountering with the departed loved ones allays the fear of
death. On the other hand, in the figurative language, the loss of Anna points out the fact
that one cannot expect a real victory without suffering, without loss.
Even though love is not fully present, the key motifs of the story are the importance
of affection and a tremendous feeling of togetherness in a group. The lonely hero does not
fight the largest adventure of his life alone. This adventure is the discovery of his own past,
and his relations to others function as a mirror. He has friends to share the hardships with,
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a nice courageous woman, a slightly fishy monk, and a marginal creature cast out by
society. Frankenstein’s monster is a typical victim of the so-called halo effect when the
perception of one trait influences the overall picture about a person, and it is Van Helsing
who recognizes the goodness behind the ugly looks. Each single member of this heroic
group is peculiar in his or her own manner, and it is the fight against evil that unites them.
They all struggle for the good, and thus follow the same moral principles. Much to their
disillusionment, though, their joint force is not enough to triumph over the vampires; there
is only one way to exterminate Dracula and his descendants: Van Helsing has to turn into a
werewolf and in this way he can destroy Dracula at midnight. It is inevitable to evoke the
beast in man in order to conquer the monster. The modern civilized man marks a definite
stage in the development of civilization, however, the earlier savagery or lower level of
culture is still part of this modern consciousness.
Good characters form a group, and the most menacing thing is not Dracula and his
vampiresses, but the bloodsuckers’ attempt to form a group by way of reproducing. The
most dangerous aspect of the vampires, besides their desire to kill, is their ability to
multiply. They can be reproduced by way of metaphorical sex performed on the neck. In
Stephen Sommers’s film, the question of reproduction, specifically the prevention of the
vampire descendants' birth, is an important task. It is another novel idea that Sommers’s
vampires are able to mate and multiply in a rather unconventional way. Neither the union
nor the labour have pictorial appearance on screen, but it can be found out that thousands
of offspring are born from only one vampire woman from one single birthing. This danger
may indicate the propagation of evil, but it also sheds light on a current problem, namely
the danger of the overpopulation on Earth. If too many bloodsuckers were born and able to
survive, then sooner or later – as they feed on humans – this would lead to the extinction of
mankind. Earth’s natural resources would run out in case of overpopulation, and this would
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lead to the extinction of the human race in the long run. In Van Helsing, in a paradoxical
way, (too much) life would bring death.
3.4
La Belle Dame sans Merci: The Female Dracula
There is a prevalent demonic female presence in world mythology, but folkloric and
literary vampires tend to be male, forcing women into the role of the victim. Joseph
Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla was outstanding with its introduction of an independent
seductress in the limelight, echoing the dangerous female entities from mythological past.
Carmilla’s character has become an inexhaustible source for later vampiresses, and she is
as important a figure in vampire narrative as Dracula himself. They can be viewed as the
mother and father of subsequent vampires, and while Dracula’s dominion is unshakeable,
the vampiress has to share the throne with another woman. Carmilla seems to be the female
equivalent of Dracula in literature, but Countess Elizabeth Bathory has so closely been
connected to the vampire Count on screen that she has become the “queen of vampires” in
the cinematic history of the bloodsuckers, despite the fact that Bathory has no historic or
literary relation to Dracula.
The widespread legend about Elizabeth Bathory, who rejuvenates from young
maiden’s blood, has become a very popular myth, and most of the time the real story
behind the historical Elizabeth is a matter of no concern at all. The answer to the popularity
of this legend lies in the fact that the story raises the question of aging, it deals with the
problem of getting old, a fate that concerns everybody. To remain young, and not let the
once external beauty fade, is a subject of yearning, an impossible wish, yet with such
stories like Elizabeth’s, the reader and the movie audience can “experience” this wishful
state with the help of imagination through different media. Bathory has been connected to
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Dracula; at times she is regarded as his daughter, his wife, or even as the personification of
the vampire in the shape of a woman.
3.4.1
Lambert Hillyer: Dracula’s Daughter
Dracula’s Daughter (1936) is a direct sequel to the 1931 Dracula film. Produced at
Universal Studios again, this black and white sound movie takes advantage of the visual
techniques of German expressionism. The “perturbing” lighting effects, the elaborative
utilization of chiaroscuro and the use of extreme camera angles produce an emotionally
disturbing effect. As Kavka points out, they serve “to externalize a psychological (or
psychopathological) crisis in the subjects on screen” (215). The movie was shot without
Lugosi, but his haunting presence pervades the story. The focus is on Dracula’s
descendant, although it is not explained how she became a vampire. Countess Marya
Zaleska, played by the stylish Gloria Holden, is stigmatized by the curse of her unholy
father. The focus is on the inner anguish of being a vampire. She wants to find release from
vampire conditions and live a normal life. She is able to see the evil in vampirism – sooner
than male vampires in cinematic history. Society hates when somebody differs from the
majority, and Zaleska wishes to conform instead of projecting her self-reproach back to
society. She steals Dracula’s body (he was killed by Professor Van Helsing) and burns it
ritually, hoping that the fire will cleanse Dracula’s soul and she can get rid of his evil
influence.
People have different reactions to death. These reactions vary according to religious
conviction and geographic regions. Cremation, as a way of letting the dead go, was already
practised by prehistoric people, but it was in the early Stone Age when it was beginning to
become a general way of burial in Northern Europe and the Near East (Colman 61). To
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connect cremation with the belief that it hinders the deceased from coming back to haunt
the living was an idea of the Franks (3rd-5th C.E.), and that was the reason why they set
the body on fire (Colman 67). Some ancient Greeks and Romans also believed in the
purifying effects of the flames. In ancient times, dead people were feared, and in Dracula’s
Daughter, the cycle of rebirth is understood as one with pernicious consequences. In spite
of the pagan burial of burning, the Countess cannot be released from the evil influence of
her father. Even after this failure, she does not surrender; she seems to have made up her
mind to make a moral choice.
Every morality comprises the elements of “codes of behaviour and forms of
subjectivation” (Foucault The Use of Pleaure 29). Self-awareness, self-examination and
self-activity are all important phases for subjectivation. As Foucault emphasizes,
[t]here is no specific moral action that does not refer to a unified moral
conduct; no moral conduct that does not call for the forming of oneself as an
ethical subject; and no forming of the ethical subject without “modes of
subjectivation” and an “ascetics” or “practices of the self” that support them.
(The Use of Pleasure 28)
Zaleska’s wish to assimilate to moral precepts entails her recognition as an ethical subject
of sexual conduct. She has to be able to master her desires in order to transpose her
damned immortality into a blissful one. When superstition fails, she turns to science. The
Countess would like to be cured through psychiatry, but the ancient cannot be stopped and
made to disappear by the modern. There are cases when science fails, where no rational
explanations can be given. In an effort to explain Zaleska’s situation scientifically, she is
seen as a person suffering from maniac obsession. Dr. Jeffrey Garth advises her to confront
her fears, face her inner demons and fight them, as the only possibility to get rid of them.
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Wise advice, but the Countess cannot shake them off. She is overpowered by something
which is more archaic and demonic. Zaleska seems to be an independent, powerful woman,
but this is really only appearance, since it is true that Dracula (the source of evil) is not
present, but his patriarchal authority is there. The female vampire cannot detach herself
from male dominance. The Countess is fighting hard to be released from the invisible
chains, but she is seen as in need of medical treatment in the eyes of the community. Dr.
Garth gives medical explanations for her conditions, but Professor Van Helsing points out
the real formative existence of the Countess. The nature/culture dichotomy reflects natural
impulses that ought to be repressed, and their attempt at coming to the surface, bound by
cultural constraints.
Dracula’s daughter possesses androgynous aspects, although her appearance is
gender specific if the body is a signifier for gender. As for appearance, she is a stylish,
elegant aristocratic lady without phallic protruding teeth. The Countess gets involved in a
lesbian entanglement in her studio with Lili, a streetwalker, who is brought into her studio
to be a model for her painting. The victimization scene “remains one of Hollywood’s more
memorable coded allusions to lesbianism,” writes Skal (234). This is quite an
exaggeration, since Zaleska is not interested in her victims, only in their blood (except Dr.
Jeffrey Garth at the end). Lili fears, there is no reciprocity, she has to be hypnotized in
order to be possessed. Zaleska’s gaze is mesmerizing. The libidinal stare is a key element
in vampire narratives. Wide open eyes with hypnotic power are subtle weapons of
allurement. The first scene in which Zaleska appears highlights the power of the
compelling gaze. When the Countess comes to steal Dracula’s body, she is dressed in
black, covered everywhere except for her eyes. The body loses significance, the vision
becomes central. The audience focuses on the perceptive element, which unconsciously
inspires them to identify themselves with that look. In Hillyer’s movie, the female gaze takes
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precedence over the male’s. Mulvey argues that woman is the object for the male spectator
and the male gaze is representative of power, hence the film is structured around “a main
controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify” (2187). Zaleska’s character is an
example for the possibility of the woman as the active party and not the objectified other.
Men and women are equally displayed as sexual objects of the Countess. In Stoker’s
Dracula there are overt cross-gender assaults whereas Zaleska targets both men and
women. In addition, she is not procreative, she does not want to create a mate for herself,
she does not wish to change anybody but herself. She is a person with conflicted desires;
her antiprocreative deviance places her into a new interpretative scheme. She challenges all
social expectations. Zaleska went through the process of being dead, that is a loss, and now
she is undead, which state can be interpreted as if she had lost the significance of gender.
This raises the question whether it is necessary to categorize in terms of sex, gender
and/or sexual preference. Desire is a natural component of the human condition, but it has
been pilloried by the power mechanism. Cultural and social restrictions have shaped and
legalized certain aspects of sex and gender, and it can be claimed that these categorizations
serve political and economic purpose. When the “acceptance” of bisexuality43 as a sexual
identity challenged the binary thinking of heterosexuality and homosexuality, a “third
category” seemed to emerge. It looks as if out of the ‘black-and-white’ scheme, a hybrid of
the two adamantine categories, ‘grey’ has been born. I argue that this notion is false, too.
Bisexuals vary so much that, applying the metaphor of the colour palette, I would say there
are several other colours, not just grey.44 Vampires represent this polysexuality, they
challenge culture in the name of nature. In other words, as Bosky puts it, “the vampire can
be a vehicle of or symbol for any desire, in part because it is a symbol for all desire” (227).
43
By acceptance I mean bisexuality’s barrier breaking emergence in textuality, and its subjection to scientific
investigations.
44
For more information see Weinberg, Williams and W. Pryor’s studies
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Society is prone to exclude those who differ from the dominant norms, which is why
the Countess wants to change for the sake of conformity. Zaleska wants to hoist herself
with her own petard; she wants to recover through hypnosis. There are several ways in
which the unconscious can come to the surface: with the method of free association, by
means of dreams, through Freudian slips and – in a direct way – by way of psychoanalysis
and therapy. In the story, hypnosis is inefficient, and science fails. When Dr. Garth wants
to hypnotize Lili, the girl dies because the method reminds her of Zaleska’s attack in the
studio. She dies of a heart attack. When the Countess realizes that the doctor cannot help
her, she seeks another alternative to tolerate her eternal existence. Her attempt to transform
Dr. Garth into a vampire is unsuccessful, Sandor, her own servant, shoots her dead (for
breaking her promise to make him immortal). The Countess’ wish to create a mate is
selective, she wants the person who is reluctant to turn into a vampire, and ignores the one
who wishes that condition. Again, she wants what she cannot have. It is human nature to
want more, which most of the time can be a primary motivating force in life - and in
vampire existence.
Countess Zaleska’s destruction helps to maintain the patriarchal social structure. She
is powerful because of her vampire being. She has the active power of the erotic gaze, but
in turn, male characters regard her as a hysterical individual. Phallocentrism is the
dominant perspective in Hillyer’s movie, but the possible female gaze signifies social
wishes to alter the symbolic order the traditional male gaze represents.
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3.4.2
Peter Sasdy: Countess Dracula
After the successful cavalcade of literary monsters, Hammer Studios turned to
historical sources. In 1971 Peter Sasdy, Hungarian director shot Countess Dracula, a
movie about the Hungarian “Blood Countess”, Elizabeth Bathory. Elizabeth Bathory lives
in the collective unconscious as a blood fetishist. She has an obsessive interest in sanguine
fluid; a tool which delays her fleshly deterioriation. Although she is not put down for a
vampire, the strong vampiric overtones have tied her personage to the vampire myth.
Blood lust, sadistic impulses, her selective sex-object choice of young girls and her
achievement to gain sempiternal youth and beauty are all similar to the key features of the
vampires.
External beauty is a basic requirement for seduction. Vampiresses in literature are
traditionally described as beautiful. The ugly folkloric male vampires have gradually
changed into charming humanlike creatures, but the female vampires’ attractive looks have
overwhelmingly been emphasized in all phases of their literary appearance. Both the
vampiresses and Elizabeth Bathory hunt down their victims by means of attractiveness.
Both have eternal beauty, which can be kept up with the help of blood. The mask of
unnatural beauty conceals degenerative tendencies. The young beauteous predatory woman
has no raison d'ętre in society, thus she is always a target. Like the libidonous vampiresses,
who threaten power relations, she is dangerous and needs to be destroyed.
Vampiresses are superhuman and subhuman at the same time, but Elizabeth has no
preternatural aspect, she is a monster in human form. The Bathory story does not confront
anonymous threats, unlike the vampire myth, where vampires represent the dread of the
shapeless, the monstrous. Men cannot resist the animal magnetism of the vampiresses
when in the vicinity of their overpowering erotic aura, but Bathory has no such spell on
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men. The legendary approach to the Hungarian Countess differs from the ‘usual’ female
beast images. Unlike mythological female monsters, she does not stalk men and children,
but is interested in maidens. Bathory as a lesbian is a taboo breaker, a nightmarish vision
for the heteronormative system. Her desire is always transgressive characterized by
uncontrollable sexual excess and same-sex preference. She is dangerous, because the more
girls she victimizes the more power she gains.
Sasdy changes the lesbian aspect of the story from that of the legendary source
material. Sasdy’s Elizabeth wants to preserve her youthful beauty in order to maintain her
relationship with Imre Toth and not because she is aroused by blood, nor does she feels
sexual attraction towards young girls. Bathory is vain, selfish, egotistic and megalomaniac
with narcissist traits. Narcissism has its place in sexual development, but the Countess is
trapped in that phase. Elizabeth is pathological, because she does everything for her own
good, reducing other people to the level of objects. She uses them mercilessly, what is
more, she kills them. She acts aggressive instead of confrontation and acknowledgement,
which reflects her immature and dangerous personality.
Her lack of ability to confront the natural senescence process makes her choose a
young lover, an illusionary displaced surrogate of her own past youth. After discovering
the rejuvenating effect of blood, Elizabeth takes up the identity of her daughter, Ilona, as
the only way to seduce Imre, her new next-door neighbour. The charming boy, being the
son of Nádasdy’s former army companion, inherits Nádasdy’s stable with his famous
horses. Mistaking the rejuvenated Elizabeth for Ilona, her daughter, Imre commences a
love affair with her, but is interested in the bogus Ilona only as long as he does not see her
true colours (her metamorphosis, her bathing in blood). The problem of the vampire is that
he cannot see himself in the mirror, but the problem of Bathory is that she can. Elizabeth
cannot accept human mortality, and acts as a goddess. Being a countess, a person of rank,
185
she exercises power over many people; in fact, she wants to see everybody under her
control. It is easy for her to gather and murder lower-class young girls, whom she
unscrupulously sacrifices.
Her choice of potential victims is selective, as she only makes use of the blood of
young girls. Only virgin’s blood can make her young again. Virginity universally
symbolizes innocence and purity, and the loss of blood, the loss of innocence. When
Elizabeth puts a whore’s blood on her face, the opposite happens, she becomes uglier.
3.4.3
Leigh Scott: Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Curse
Scott’s film operates with various elements which are now can be called typical in
modern vampire movies. These elements unfortunately attribute to the loss of mysticism,
the greatest appeal of earlier films. One of these things is when vampires have short hair.
Folklore legends give an account of creatures found in graves with long nails, long hair,
looking still alive with blood pumping through their veins. Bodies do not undergo
decomposition, the grown hair and nails indicate the undead state, something that in
death’s realm would be impossible. In contrast with these tales, in modern vampire flicks
everybody can turn into a vampire, it is not always a threat, it is sometimes fun. Potential
victims rarely have scruples about the danger of metamorphosis. The transformation does
not take too much time, it happens in a flash. The only external difference between human
and vampire form is the fangs.
Other typical (negative) modern element is how bloodsuckers can be killed. In
Scott’s movie one of the hunters says that there are three ways to kill a vampire: to expose
them in sunlight, to decapitate them, or to drive a stake through their heart. It looks as if
186
something has been borrowed from old tradition, but it is really illusionary. Vampire
hunters break these rules; one of the vampires’ neck is wrung, others are murdered by
bullets (and not always through the heart). Machine guns and several other weapons
corresponding to modern warfare. Vampires are so easily destroyed that transformation
and damned immortal state mean no threat for the majority of people. This new take on the
vampire stories reflects a new age with a new mentality, a kind of desensitization, some
moral crisis. Scott Leigh’s film reflects the shallowness of our modern age.
This means a new representation of vampires, as well. Vampires have taken off their
scary masks, it is not extraordinary anymore if the main protagonist is a bloodsucker.
There is no sharp boundary between humans and vampires, each of them can either be
good or bad. It is not a question of species. Among good vampires it is Draculya who is the
most exciting character. According to the story, Vladimir Draculya, a Romanian count who
is good and pure in heart is visited by one of Lord’s angels. He becomes powerful but turns
into a bloodthirsty warlord and the vampire existence is the punishment for his crimes. He
is banned from Heaven and Hell. He commits horrible deeds until he grows to hate
vampirism and becomes a vampire hunter. Draculya’s good-evil-good moral route is
indicative of the fact that good and bad are not always fixed categories.
Another representative modern idea in the film is that there is a system and order
among vampires. In earlier stories the undead rise from their grave and stalk people for
blood to maintain their existence. The former solitary monster now lives in clans, and there
is hierarchy among them. The community is divided into vampires and humans. Vampires
hunt people for food and pleasure, whereas humans hunt and assassinate bloodsuckers.
Vampire community is a source for collective power. Certainly, there are some who live
outside the community. Elizabeth Bathorly, Hungarian Countess is one of them. She
practises witchcraft, bathes in the blood of virgins and seeks out Draculya in order to
187
receive everlasting youth from him. She represents the greatest danger, and is feared by
humans and vampires alike. If she succeeds in purifying the bloodline, she will have the
power of Draculya. Pure blood is power.
Draculya’s three Hungarian brides have pure blood, and with their and Bathorly’s
exception, women are described as inferior. They do not even have place in the Council (of
vampires). “Perhaps the time for change has come” says Darvulia, Bathorly’s minion. The
story takes place in 2054, and this statement seems a bit anahcronistic. One thing is for
sure, nevertheless, that the representation of women characters is always of significance in
vampire topos. The chief characteristic of vampiresses has always been their unspeakable
beauty, but in this adaptation vampiresses are low women devoid of beauty and eroticism.
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CONCLUSION
To explain the origin of vampirism, primarily superstitious beliefs need to be
mentioned. Real life incidents and experience have contributed somewhat to the
development of the vampire figure, but religious and mythic elements are predominant.
Myths are determinant in a culture, they provide an insight into people’s frame of
reference. The most conspicuous characteristic of the vampire myth is its presence in all
the cultural traditions of the world. Related cultures tend to have common elements in their
folklore, but vampire traits can be found in isolated locations, as well. These similarities
attest to some common experience of humanity. Vampires have been with mankind since
the beginning of time, and they have never lost their appeal to the imagination. The
vampire figure’s popularity and raison d'ętre lie in the fact that the vampire figure is part
of the collective unconscious, that is, it embodies an archetype.
Several mythological creatures can be considered prototypes of the folkloric vampire.
All libidinous supernatural creatures with vampire qualities are evil. They victimize their
prey through sexuality, and the act is always transgressive. Physical attractiveness is
determinant in the allure of the overwhelming majority of female monsters, and beauty
appears as the phenomenon of horror. The concept of vampirism appeared in Eastern
Europe in the seventeenth century, and interestingly enough, vampires were reported as
male and were mentioned as ugly walking carrions. Vampires rose from their folkloric
graves and became part of literary works. Although folk beliefs were rich sources for the
writers’ imagination, new elements have been added to the character of the haunting
undead. The ugly revenants have been endowed with human traits in literary works.
It was in the Romantic period when the sexuality of the vampire was beginning to
intensify. Byron was the model for Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, who revolutionized the
189
vampire character. The upper-class vampire is different from his folkloric counterparts:
being a member of the aristocracy, he became part of society. Based on this innovative
interpretation, Bram Stoker created his fictitious aristocratic vampire, Count Dracula, who
is still the most well-known vampire to the general public. To the question why Stoker’s
Dracula was so successful, the answer may be that the novel came out in the late
nineteenth century when scientific investigations were taking place in the field of
sexology. Gothic novels have a psychological dynamic, and transgressive social-sexual
relations have always been part of the idiomatic instrumental writings of the Gothic.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic novels are sexually codified.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the culmination of the Anglo-Irish Gothic. In an era of
sexual Puritanism, Dracula challenged the orthodox view on sexuality and its normative
ethics. The fear of the other is inherent in individuals, and the ambiguous character of the
vampire can be seen as an agent of what the normative patriarchal gender system
marginalized as the other. Anything apart from heteronormative sexuality was a menace to
the Victorian ethos, and Dracula with his vampiresses, who correspond to excessive lust
and sexual nonconformity, represent this threat. The vampire’s polysexuality indicates that
desire itself was considered transgressive at the time.
Dracula escapes the limitations of sex. As far as the vampiric sexual nature in
Dracula is concerned, it can be claimed that all sexual relations are heterosexual in the
novel; homosexuality, however, emerges as well in metaphorical implications. Same-sex
desires can be found in heterosexual displacements. It is not only homosexual tendencies
that the presentation of the vampire suggests, but actually the fluidity of gender identity in
a seemingly rigid gender structure of the Victorian society. The novel breaks gender and
sexual taboos, but moral conviction collides with desires.
190
It is Dracula who is in control of the moral world of the novel: as soon as anybody is
tainted by him, she shifts to the transgressive pole on the axis of sexuality. Interestingly
enough, in the definition of the female characters the orthodox moral values of the society
dominate the narrative: the woman of moral rectitude survives, while the immoral woman
is damned. This picture corresponds to the dichotomous Victorian woman portrayal when
women were divided into two images. They were either considered to be virtuous or
whorish. Vampiresses are degraded into the latter category. Endowed with power, they
challenge the patriarchal structure.
When it comes to power relations, Victorian society tends to be sadomasochistic, in
the sense that men represent the active and women the passive pole. The appearance of the
New Woman in the late nineteenth century challenged this notion and aroused anxiety
about gender reversal. Female vampires reflect the concept of the New Woman in so much
as vampirization makes women lustful, dominant and sexually active. These females are
allowed to enjoy their sensuality. Women gain sexual power, and this power imperils the
male characters’ masculinity. The vampire Lucy’s death is highly sexualized. She dies of
penetration and the stake, the phallic symbol gives back Lucy’s proper place in society.
The sexually active woman is punished. Mina, the virtuous girl is also endangered, but her
purity is restored in the end. She returns to her original passive place in society.
Morality can be found only in the relationships between human beings. The
friendship between human characters is based on the notion of mutual concern and
affection. Love between man and woman is highly spiritualized. Passion is excluded from
such relationships, and sexuality is connected to vampirism. Bram Stoker carries love
representations to the extremes. However, the dark side of sexuality between the vampire
and his victims and the spiritualized, ideal love between the human beings are both
191
exaggarated. They balance each other. Love and sexuality are separated in Bram Stoker’s
novel just as in the conventional Victorian mind.
Every age has its twist on Dracula, and at the end of the twentieth century the
question of transgression has been reassessed. The two sequels of Bram Stoker’s novel
(Freda Warrington: Dracula the Undead, Dacre Stoker és Ian Holt. Dracula the Un-Dead)
reflect a much more liberated attitude. This tendency is well observable in the cinematic
history of Dracula. Sexuality becomes more and more explicit in the movies. Censorship
bans sexuality in early adaptations, and symbolic intercourse – bloodsucking – is treated
carefully in these films. The acts of blood-taking are present in hidden forms of allusion.
The intimate parts of the physical contact between the vampire and his victims are not yet
discernible for the audience. Later, the meeting of the neck and the lips is shown, although
without any visible signs of violence. Only the heroine’s death from anaemia implies the
negative side of this contact. Both the sensual and the violent nature of the vampiric kiss
are parts of the visual world of modern adaptations. Blood spurts from the scars on the
neck, not only two punctures indicate the atrocities of the vampires. The symbolic
intercourse shifts to a more naturalistic depiction. In the 1992 screen version there is an
explicit reference to the coitus, while in 2000, the union with the vampire literally becomes
sex.
The character of Dracula is endowed with more and more human traits in the films.
Initially, he is an inhuman monstrosity both externally and internally. Later, he is attributed
human features, which, however, are used merely to make it easier for him to seduce his
victims. Some qualities of man are gradually added to the Dracula figure. He is invested
with human feelings and emotions. In modern adaptations, bestiality is shown as a natural
part of human nature.
192
Elizabeth Bathory’s name has been interwoven with Dracula’s name several times in
literature and cinematic history. They are blood fetishists, they have an obsessive interest
in blood; a tool which delays their fleshly deterioration. The Bathory and vampire legends
have preserved their popularity up to the present day, because they both raise ontological
questions and such problems that every human has to cope with.
There is an archaic form of erotica, not separated from destructivity, which
underlies these vampire stories. These tales are about the power of the subconscious; the
fight takes place between the conscious and the unconscious for control. Vampire figures
lack the moral codes of civilization, they personify the instinctive drives. It is the victims’
attitude to them that counts and reflects the ethos of the given age. Followed by a vast
number of adaptations, it can be stated that Bram Stoker’s novel is one of the last bulwarks
of Victorian values against modernism.
193
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Filmography
Blood for Dracula. (Andy Warhol’s Dracula) Dir. Paul Morrissey. Perf. Joe Dallessandro,
Udo Kier and Vittorio De Sica. Bryanston Distributing Company, 1974.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Perf. Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder,
Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins. Columbia Pictures, 1992.
205
Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Curse. Dir. Leigh Scott. Perf. Thomas Downey, Eliza Swenson,
Rhett Giles and Christina Rosenberg. The Asylum, 2006.
Countess Dracula. Dir. Peter Sasdy. Perf. Ingrid Pitt, Sandor Elés, Nigel Green and
Lesley-Anne Down. Hammer Film Productions. 1971.
Dracula 2000. Dir. Patrick Lussier. Perf. Gerard Butler, Justine Waddell and Omar Epps.
Miramax, 2000.
Dracula AD 1972. Dir. Alan Gibson. Perf. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Hammer
Studios. 1972.
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Dir. Freddie Francis. Perf. Christopher Lee, Rupert
Davies and Veronica Carlson. Hammer Film Productions, 1968.
Dracula. Dir. Tod Browning. Perf. Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, Dwight Frye and Edward
Van Sloan. Universal Pictures, 1931.
Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Dir. Terence Fisher. Perf. Christopher Lee and Barbara
Shelley. Hammer Studios. 1966.
Dracula’s Daughter. Dir. Lambert Hillyer. Perf. Gloria Holden, Otto Kruger, Marguerite
Churchill and Edward Van Sloan. Universal Studios, 1936.
Nosferatu, eine Sinfonie des Grauens. Dir. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Perf. Max Schreck,
Gustav von Wangerheim and Greta Schroeder. Prana Films, 1922.
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht. Dir. Werner Herzog. Perf. Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani
and Bruno Graz. 20th Century Fox, 1979.
Scars of Dracula. Dir. Roy Ward Baker. Perf. Christopher Lee, Dennis Waterman and
Jenny Hanley. 20th Century Fox/Hammer Studios. 1970.
206
Taste the Blood of Dracula. Dir. Peter Sasdy. Perf. Christopher Lee, Geoffrey Keen and
Gwen Watford. Hammer Film Productions, 1970.
The Brides of Dracula. Dir. Terence Fisher. Perf. Peter Cushing, Martita Hunt, Yvonne
Monlaure and David Peel. Universal Pictures, 1960.
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Dir. Roy Ward Baker and Chang Cheh. Perf. Peter
Cushing, David Chiang and John Forbes-Robertson. Dynamite Entertainment, 1974.
The Satanic Rites of Dracula. Dir. Alan Gibson. Perf. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
Hammer Studios, 1974.
Van Helsing. Dir. Stephen Sommers. Perf. Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale and Richard
Roxburgh. Universal Pictures, 2004.
207
APPENDIX
Vlad Ţepeş is considered
a national hero in his
native country (left), but
his political enemies’
pamphlets painted him as
a bloodthirsty and
inhuman person (right).
The most classic film vampires
MAX SCHRECK
BÉLA LUGOSI
The Great Metamorphosis:
During the history of Dracula films, the inhuman, ratlike monster has become one of us in the street.
Illustrated by Murnau’s nosferatu (left) and Coppola’s
Dracula (right). The slight changes are well observable,
not only the physical appearance has altered but also the
nature of the vampire figure. The monster has gradually
become a creature with emotions and self-doubt .
208
CHRISTOPHER LEE
The sexuality of the vampire
The HYPNOTIC GAZE
as sexual invitation has been
accentuated since Polidori’s
Lord Ruthven. In early
adaptations, sex was treated as
taboo, but hints were made at
Gloria Holden in Dracula’s
Daughter (1936)
the eroticism of the vampires.
Béla Lugosi in Tod
Browning’s Dracula (1931).
BLOODSUCKING is a metaphor for
sexual intercourse. Fangs are the
penetrating organ.
Max Schreck in Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). The
screen fades before the actual penetration would take
place.
… the monster cares for Mina and
bestows her with human kisses.
(Coppola, 1992).
Scene taken from Coppola’s adaptation (1992).
Dracula as a werewolf copulates with Lucy,
animalistic sexuality is shown with human
references. Lucy, the frivolous girl is a sexual
object, whereas….
209
The Daughter-Brides of Dracula
*
A significant characteristic of the
vampiresses is their submissiveness.
Whereas in some vampire films women
challenge the patriarchal structure, in
Dracula movies it is a trend to let the
Transylvanian Count be in command.
Dracula’s vampiresses in Browning’s
adaptation (1931). (left)
Dracula is not alone (most of the
times). The lustrous female company
of three is Stoker’s heritage for
modern film adaptations.
The vampiresses in Van Helsing
(2004) (left) and in Dracula 2000
(right below).
The three predatory
vampiresses are
about to have a taste
of Jonathan
(Coppola, 1992)
(above). Gender
roles are reversed:
females are
masculinized and
males are feminized
Elizabeth Bathory has been connected to
Dracula through art. Her supposed
cruelty (hence her nickname the Blood
Countess) has served as a basis for many
paintings, literary and film adaptations.
A copy of her contemporary
portrait from the 16th century.
(right)
Christina Rosenberg as Countess Bathorly taking
a blood bath in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Curse
(2006).
The Countess enjoying a sadistic
scene, the picture shows Elizabeth
in István Csók’s painting (1895).
210