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Dracula 31
threatening and is ultimately saved. Moreover, Mina is never described
physically and is the opposite of rejecting: all the men become her
sons, symbolized by the naming of her actual son after them all. What
remains constant is the attempt to destroy the mother. What changes
is the way the fantasies are managed. To speak of the novel in terms of
the child’s ambivalence toward the mother is not just to speak psychoanalytically.
We need only recall that Lucy, as “bloofer lady,” as well as
the other vampire women, prey on children. In the case of Lucy, the
children are as attracted to her as threatened by her.
I have already described the evidence that the Van Helsing men
themselves desire to do away with Lucy. Perhaps the story needed
to be retold because the desire was too close to the surface to be
satisfying; certainly, the reader would not be satisfied had the novel
ended with Arthur’s murder of Lucy. What is perhaps not so clear is
that the desire to destroy Mina is equally strong. Let us look first at
the defenses against this desire. I have already mentioned the great
professions of affection for Mina made by most of the male characters.
Mina indeed acts and is treated as both the saint and the mother
(ironically, this is particularly clear when she comforts Arthur for
the loss of Lucy). She is all good, all pure, all true. When, however,
she is seduced away from the straight and narrow by Dracula, she is
“unclean,” tainted and stained with a mark on her forehead immediately
occasioned by Van Helsing’s touching her forehead with the
Host. Van Helsing’s hostility toward Mina is further revealed when he
cruelly reminds her of her “intercourse” with Dracula: “ ‘Do you forget,’
he said, with actually a smile, ‘that last night he banqueted heavily and
will sleep late?’ ” (328) This hostility is so obvious that the other men
are shocked. Nevertheless, the “sons,” moreover, and the reader as well,
identify with Dracula’s attack on Mina; indeed, the men cause it, as
indicated by the events which transpire when all the characters are at
Seward’s hospital-asylum. The members of the brotherhood go out
at night to seek out Dracula’s lairs, and they leave Mina undefended
at the hospital. They claim that this insures her safety; in fact, it
insures the reverse. Furthermore, this is the real purpose in leaving
Mina out of the plans and in the hospital. They have clear indications
in Renfield’s warnings of what is to happen to her and they all,
especially her husband, observe that she is not well and seems to be
getting weaker. That they could rationalize these signs away while
looking for and finding them everywhere else further indicates that