Psychosexuality in Dracula: The Fall of Lucy Westenra
The Gothic Lit Collection…
If you haven’t read “Dracula”... Just read Dracula. It’s a wild story. Also, it says so much about Victorian sexual mores and British societal opinions surrounding the “New Woman” (protofeminism, Wikipedia article linked here). And man, does the book riff on the interweaving of Victorian Exoticism/Orientalism and the British fear that someone, somewhere might be Not British, and might tempt others to dally with their Sexy Foreign Ways (especially if those Sexy Foreign Ways are gay…which many parts of Dracula, arguaby, are). Stoker’s repressed, unwilling fascination ran wild, and it ran deep, and reading the book through that lens grants the story such spicy life.
For example, we’ll look at Lucy Westenra, one of the main female characters, and what she represented. *takes a deep breath* Sharing blood in the context of “Dracula” is (naturally) a metaphor. A vampire’s attack is the exchange of bodily fluids as the result of penetration (It’s sex. You know. In case… In case you hadn’t realized.). This connects to Lucy Westenra’s stated wish: she has three suitors, and wants to accept all of them (To avoid hurting their feelings. What every healthy marriage is based on: making sure that the guy’s ego never fractures.). Lucy says yes to Arthur, a British Lord, but her repressed desires (I use the term loosely; she only wants to marry these guys because they want to marry her) still comes to perverse fruition.
When Lucy consents to marry Arthur, Lord Godalming, she starts to wander in her sleep, and is drawn to Dracula while in a trance (while vampires in the book are high-key gross, they are also irresistibly sexy for reasons that remain a mystery, but are certainly Not British). This nighttime wandering is triggered by Lucy’s impending nuptials and results in an early “defloration” (gross archaic term, but here we are). Lucy’s characterization transfers to that of the Victorian “fallen woman.” Victorian women didn’t always “fall” (again pointing out the nastiness of this language) by choice. A woman could be a victim of nonconsensual advances, but once she was forced past that line, society considered her corrupted, and, while pitiable, a corrupting force in herself. Why is this such a big part of the book? Because the more radical New Women were claiming sexual independence, as well as asserting their intelligence, competence, and strength. And Bram Stoker had some shit to say about that.
After Lucy says she’d like to marry three men, after she wanders neck-first into a pair of fangs while under a vampire-and-sleep-lust-induced trance, Dr. Van Helsing is called in to try to solve her “mystery illness” (so many scare quotes in this article). The good doctor says the only way Lucy might be saved is by being pumped full of the bodily fluids (blood) of three men… Ahem. Yeah.
In this scene, Bram Stoker dabbles in some xenophobia when Van Helsing lists whose blood will be best for Lucy’s revival. The best blood was that of Lucy’s fiance, an English lord. The second best was that of an American cowboy (still Western, white, and ever so manly). The third best was that of Van Helsing, himself, a brilliant and British-approved foreigner (who brought Lucy garlic flowers to ward off further attack. Garlic flowers are white. Like a bridal bouquet. Just saying. This is about Lucy marrying three men in physical act, if not spiritually).
The British at this time (while Stoker was not English, he was of the British Isles) were fascinated by the ever-expanding world outside their borders, much of which they were in the process of trying to lay claim to. At the same time, they feared the literally perceived "base blood" of other races infiltrating their middle-class and upper-class Britishness. Here, Lucy, almost insensible, and not strongly characterized throughout the book, could be as a metaphor for Britain itself. Her strength was sapped through congress with, and eventually the internalization of the blood of, an outsider. This outsider was foreign both to Britain (Dracula was Eastern European) and to the human race (consider Darwinism, and the Victorian idea of devolution).
Lucy, the fainting flower of English womanhood, was many things: a symbol for Britain, a childlike dependent, and a woman seen, even through her own eyes, as a vessel for the desires of men.
If we read Dracula and interpret it thusly, Bram Stoker seemed disapprove of the sexually liberated New Woman, but there was another off-shoot of the movement to which he granted support. This strain found expression in the character of Mina Harker, the fiance and later the wife of Jonathan Harker, whose diaries describe his imprisonment in Castle Dracula. But that’s a different part of the story.
Which I will cover next.
Oh! And in case this wasn’t clear in the article, I’m a firm believer in intersectional feminism. I’m just also fascinated by history, historical attitudes, and the way that fiction churns up the deep layers of societal zeitgeist and the author’s unconscious.
