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Dracula 25
Perhaps nowhere is the dichotomy of sensual and sexless woman
more dramatic than it is in Dracula and nowhere is the suddenly
sexual woman more violently and self-righteously persecuted than in
Stoker’s “thriller.”
The equation of vampirism with sexuality is well established in the
criticism. Richardson refers to Freud’s observation that “morbid dread
always signifies repressed sexual wishes.” 7 We must agree that Dracula
is permeated by “morbid dread.” However, another tone interrupts the
dread of impending doom throughout the novel; that note is one of
lustful anticipation, certainly anticipation of catching and destroying
forever the master vampire, Count Dracula, but additionally, lustful
anticipation of a consummation one can only describe as sexual.
One thinks, for example, of the candle’s “sperm” which “dropped in
white patches” on Lucy’s coffin as Van Helsing opens it for the first
time (220). Together the critics have enumerated the most striking
instances of this tone and its attendant imagery, but to recall: first,
the scene in which Jonathan Harker searches the Castle Dracula, in
a state of fascinated and morbid dread, for proof of his host’s nature.
Harker meets with three vampire women (whose relation to Dracula
is incestuous 8 ) whose appeal is described almost pornographically:
All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against
the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about
them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time
deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they
would kiss me with those red lips.
The three debate who has the right to feast on Jonathan first, but
they conclude, “He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all”
(47). While this discussion takes place, Jonathan is “in an agony
of delightful anticipation” (48). At the very end of the novel, Van
Helsing falls prey to the same attempted seduction by, and the same
ambivalence toward, the three vampires.
Two more scenes of relatively explicit and uninhibited sexuality
mark the novel about one-half, then two-thirds, through. First the
scene in which Lucy Westenra is laid to her final rest by her fiance,
Arthur Holmwood, later Lord Godalming, which is worth quoting
from at length: