"Dracula"- sexual women

“With his left hand he held both Mrs harkers hands keeping them away with her arms at full tension;his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeard with blood, and a thin stream trickeled down the man’s bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a sauser of milk to compel it to drink.”

The few sexual scenes in the novel are both heterosexual and incestuous. It is only scenes with vampires that are allowed to be sexualised. All the “healthy” or normal realationships are spiritualised. The way people are viewed changes after they become a vampire. For example it is only when Lucy has become a vampire that she is reffered to as “voluptuous”.  Phyllis Roth comments;

 “Clearly, then, vampirism is associated not only with death, immortality and orality; it is equivilent to sexuality.”

In psychoanalytic terms, vampirism conceals desired and feared fantasies, fantacies that point to the Oeipus complex. Dracular turns people into vampires, he plays the creator and therefore father figure. The brothers battle against the father who has stolen the desired woman , and mother figure from them.

Rivalry between the men in the Van elsing group is also present yet it is covered up by constant use and often too much stress on their value of friendship. This is evident in the giving of blood from rivals Arthur, seward, quincy morris and helsing to lucy. The rivals friendship is futher strained when Helsing emphasises the sexual nature of these transfusions. Arthur feels asthough he is married to lucy due to the transfusion. So we can understand Roth’s statement

“the friendships of the novel mask a deep seated rivalry and hostility.”

And so, the Oedipul rivalry between the sons themselves aswell as against their father for their mothers affections becomes clear in dracula.  In this novel the fantasy of paracide - killing your parents is depicted as satisfying. Other fantasies are life after death, good over evil, man over super human forces and the west over the more mysterious east.  These fantasies bring out the moral of the story, that, as Roth puts it, “All is right with the world ” – Dracula is killed, mina is purifed and the boys have won. Eveything is as it should be.Yet, the underlying oedipul theme brings out the darkness of the novel.

 Many of the same characteristics are shared by both the asexual Helsing group and  sexual vimpires. As the Helsing group feel overwhelmingly attracted to the female vampires they utilize the defence of denial and project the blame onto the vampires of the females wanting to seduce and kill them rather than the other way round.

   Religion is often used to justify the actions of murder in the Helsing group, and Roth notes;

“The repeated use of the Host , the complicated ritual of the slaying of the vampires, and the ostensible,though not necessarily conscious, renunciation of sexuality are the prnance paid by thoses in Draula who violate the taboos against incest and the murder of parents.”

The repressed fatasies of the characters are acted out by Dracula himself  meaning an identification with the aggressor becomes apparent.

The reader can identiy with Harker at the castle as a hero, whose narrative includes

 the others. This defends us against identifying with Dracula’s attacks on women. Both Harker and Dracula are more concerned with the vampiressess than eachother.

The women are far more horrible and threatening yet intriguing.

We can now see and accept the agressors victimisation of women.

Lucy and Mina are essentially the same mother figure, and Dracula longs for their destruction. Lucy is the more desirable and threatening mother who must be destroyed. She is also described under the conventional dark/fair split as earlier on her hair is “in its usual sunny ripples” and later as a vampire she is a “ darkhaired woman”. Roth believes this split is unconcious here which reflects the ambivalence produced by the more sexual woman. Lucy is also the more rejective of these two females. At the end of her story she is rejected.

 Mina’s story reduces  the anxiety occasioned by matricide as she is less sexually threatening and in the end, saved. She is the reverse of lucy, never described physically and never rejecting, yetr welcomes the men in as her sons emphasised by naming her real son after them all. Still the want to destroy the mother is still apparent.  

The female vampires prey on children, and ambivalence is felt toward their

mother as they are as threatened by her particularily Lucy as they are as scared of her as they are attracted to her.

The desire to destroy Mina is just as strong as it is to kill Lucy for the Helsing men, eventhough she is  seen as the saint and mother. However it is when she is seduced from her saintly path by dracula that she becomes “unclean”. Helsing is disgusted by her intercourse with dracula. Evenso the sons can identify with Dracula’s attack on Mina, and evn have some part in causeing it. It is partly their fault as they left her unattended in the hospital asylum. It is almost asthough they want Dracula to get her, and yet their ambivalence toward their mother also makes them want to save her.

  In Dracula there is a regression to both orality and anality and sexual scenes are percieved in terms of nursing. The primal scene of Dracula forcing Mina to drink the blood from his chest is what Roth calls “an expression of the nature of sexual intercourse”. In it Mina is the active partner, rather than Dracula as scenes with vampire sexuality are only seen with the female in the active role. And so it is understandable why there is the dread of the devouring woman throughout the novel.

     

   In the scene of Harkers seduction by the three female vampires, Harker has previously disobeyed the counts instructions to stay in his room. At Dracula’s discovery of Harkers violation he becomes like a jealous husband and irate father.

 Johnathon’s role becomes that of child in both the way he is replaced by a child and how he awaits the embrase of a female vampire he sees as particularly fair – who we should translate as the face of the mother,one he desires yet fears.

  Harker describes how Mina has nothing in common with these seductive vimpiresses, when clearly she does as she is no better than them when she draws out the blood from dracula which is necissary for life. Johnathon sees this as an act of castration in his exclaimation,

“At least God’s mercy is better than that of these monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep – as a man.”

     Phyllis Roth declares,

“the fantasy of incest and matricide evokes the mythic image of the vagina dentata evident in so many folk tales in which the mouth and the vagina are identified with one another by the primitive mind and pose the threat of castration to all men untill the teeth are extracted by the hero.”

 The saving of Mina therefore, becomes equivalent to that extraction.

The theme of the need to destroy the threatening yet desirable mother prevails throughout the text. The novel ends in a moral tone, with dracula and lucy destroyed and Helsing and mina saved. Harker finishes on with an ironic note;

“This boy will someday know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later on he will understand how some men so loved her , that they dare so much for her sake.”