Sexuality and Vampirism

Someone said: pain and pleasure come together in any weather. And so is the theory about Vampires. Count Dracula still remains a popular character after all these years because the fantasies of the novel strongly linked to the Oedipus complex, change horror into something pleasurable.

Dracula’s hostility to female sexuality would have been appealing to both the victorians and 20th century reader and Carrol Fry compares the vimpiressess to the fallen women of 18th and 19th century novels. The division between the dark and the fair women and the fallen and idealised is clear.

“Perhaps nowhere is the dichotomy of sensual and sexless women more dramatic than it is in Dracula and nowhere is the suddenly sexual woman more violently and self-righeously persecuted than in stoker’s thriller”.

Vampirism and sexuality are closely related, and Freud observes “morbid dread always signifies repressed sexual wishes”. Although the tone of morbid dread is evident throughout the novel, also is that of lustful anticipation; anticipation of killing Dracula himself and anticipation of a sexual consummation. One instance of morbid dread mixed with sexual desire is when Harker meets Dracula’s 3 vampire women;

Johnathon is described as being “in an agony of delightful anticipation” as the three discuss who should feast on him first and later in the novel, Van helsing experiences the same kind of seduction by these vamires.

“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.”

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

In psychoanalytic terms, vampirism conceals desired and feared fantasies, fantacies that point to the Oedipus complex. Dracula 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 Helsing 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 further strained when Helsing emphasises the sexual nature of these transfusions. Arthur feels although he is married to Lucy due to the transfusion.

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.”

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