Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

She is second-class, is treated as second-class, recognizes it,and accepts it, all for the first time. Socially defined as female,she is vulnerable as a female.The irony, of course, is delicious as Jonathan Harker gazes onhis sleeping wife and congratulates himself on protecting her:I came tiptoe into our own room , and found Mina asleep,breathing so softly that I had to put my ear down to hear it. Shelooks paler than u su a l.. . . I am truly thankful that she is to beleft out o f our future work, and even o f our deliberations. It istoo great a strain for a woman to bear. 113Looking paler than usual in this book advances the plot.She has been made female and Dracula is already drinkingher blood. Later he will taunt the men: “ ‘Your girls that youlove are all mine already. . . ” ’114He especially wants Mina becauseshe is ‘“ their best-beloved one’” ; she will be his ‘“ bountifulwine-press for a while; and shall be later on mycompanion and my helper. ’” 115 She, unlike Lucy, is able to be apartner: to Dracula as well as to Jonathan. It is an early renderingof feminist as sex object as long as the sex is predicated onthe complete destruction of her integrity.Dracula is a new narrative of intercourse and the phenomenaassociated with it: lust, seduction, penetration, possession,decadence and decay, death. With the creation of a newdimension of carnality for intercourse in literal cannibalism,virginity too takes on a new aspect. Being untouched by carnalitynow means any earthly existence in which sex is notpredation and violence. Sex and slow murder become synonyms:a prescient heralding of the twentieth century threeyears before it began.