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34
Bram Stoker
of castration to all men until the teeth are extracted by the hero. The
conclusion of Dracula, the “salvation” of Mina, is equivalent to such
an “extraction”: Mina will not remain the vagina dentata to threaten
them all.
Central to the structure and unconscious theme of Dracula is,
then, primarily the desire to destroy the threatening mother, she
who threatens by being desirable. Otto Rank best explains why it is
Dracula whom the novel seems to portray as the threat when he says,
in a study which is pertinent to ours:
through the displacement of anxiety on to the father, the
renunciation of the mother, necessary for the sake of life is
assured. For this feared father prevents the return to the mother
and thereby the releasing of the much more painful primary
anxiety, which is related to the mother’s genitals as the place
of birth and later transferred to objects taking the place of the
genitals [such as the mouth]. 26
Finally, the novel has it both ways: Dracula is destroyed 27 and Van
Helsing saved; Lucy is destroyed and Mina saved. The novel ends on a
rather ironic note, given our understanding here, as Harker concludes
with a quote from the good father, Van Helsing:
“We want no proofs; we ask none to believe us! This boy will
some day 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 did dare so
much for her sake” (416).
NOTES
1. Royce MacGillwray, “Dracula: Bram Stoker’s Spoiled
Masterpiece,” Queen’s Quarterly, LXXIX, 518.
2. See Norman N. Holland, The Dynamics of Literary Response
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1975).
3. Maurice Richardson, “The Psychoanalysis of Ghost Stories,”
Twentieth Century, CLXVI (December 1959), 427.
4. Victorian Newsletter, XLII.