The end of the 19th Century is often associated with the raise of women’s voices, in order to obtain more rights and independence, in a fundamentally patriarchal society. With the Victorian way of life being deeply rooted, these changes brought about support as well as rejection, creating an ‘irrational disturbance in the smooth-running certainties of the Victorian epoch’. This turmoil can be felt in fin-de-siècle literature, being a way for authors to denounce or advocate those changes. It is in this context that Bram Stoker wrote his world famous Dracula in 1897.
If this novel is presented as a mere vampire story, one can find a deeper level of reading: Stoker’s fear of seeing the Victorian order shatter. Indeed, the more one reads between the lines, the more one can feel that Stoker alludes to his concern about Victorian Masculinity, and its possible reconsideration in the fin-de-siècle period. The first part of the essay will focus on Stoker’s critical depiction of the Victorian man’s evolution and the potential end of “Man Almighty”. Then, the essay will bring a reflection on the direct threat of women empowerment expressed in the novel.
First of all, it is important to see that what endangered Victorian masculinity and virility were men themselves insofar as they were changing just as women were.
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In order to understand why things were evolving, it might be relevant to see what it meant to be a Victorian man. In the same way women needed to follow some rules and fit into stereotypes, men also had to reach expectations, especially in upper class society. In the idea one makes of the Victorian era, men were supposed to be brave, virile, and presentable at any time to the society. More than this, he was doubtlessly superior in any way in the household, being allowed to have several lovers, whereas the wife had to take care of her husband and the house.
In a way, one can argue that a certain pressure weighed on men in the way they had to behave and look in society. Oscar Wilde illustrated this in The Importance of Being Earnest, with the women’s desire to marry only a man whose name is Ernest, as shown in the following cue, pronounced by Cecily: ‘You must not laugh at me, darling, but it has always been a girlish dream of mine to love someone whose name was Ernest’ (p.56). It shows the simple and irrelevant criteria that made a man a suitable husband.
However, the gender order is respected in the play since young women are submitted to a superior authority, and men are the ones who choose about marriage. This order was really important in the Victorian society, because people relied on their sexes to build up the person they were, because sex ‘constituted their very identities’ (Kaye, p.52), and thus the whole society was based on this statement. As a consequence, if one considers that Stoker was advocating the Victorian system, the predominance of male characters in Dracula, and the duty of care for female characters they assume, might be understood in this reading of the novel. One can argue that the whole turmoil created by the questioning of this established order is what made authors like Stoker write books like Dracula: men needed to be men, and the threat of not being as manly as they were might have scared them.
Yet, Stoker’s male characters must be deeply studied to see how they promote his argument. There are in the novel several stereotypical Victorian men who act like the society wants them to behave; for instance, both Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood can be considered archetypal Victorian gentlemen. Indeed, in their very way to conduct themselves with Lucy Westenra, they are being real gentlemen, and keep protecting her even though she has refused Quincey’s proposal. They will both commit in the fight against Dracula even after Lucy’s death.
Another main character, Abraham Van Helsing is often considered as an emblematic Victorian man, and a powerful figure of authority. Indeed, he is being really manly and conservative in his occupation as a scientist, being often ‘closely associated with manly qualities’. Moreover, in order to defeat Count Dracula, Van Helsing relies on ancient and violent methods, as if he were trying to assert his virility with violence. Yet, at some point in the novel, his actions are described by Dr. John Seward as follows: ‘[…]; and then he cried till he laughed again, and laughed and cried together, just as a woman does’ (Stoker, p.210).
Not only does he criticize women’s behaviour, but he also draws a limit in Van Helsing’s sensitiveness. Though, except for this excerpt, Van Helsing is the quintessential Victorian man. John Seward is an ambiguous character as well, insofar as he proposes to Lucy in the Victorian fashion, but his approach of science is more progressive than Van Helsing’s. Indeed, the way he deals with Renfield shows that he bears an interest in psychoanalysis, born after Freud’s research. Thus, Stoker is not showing to be against every aspect of the fin-de-siècle revolution, but seems rather to assert a declining status of men in society.
This argument is all the more clearer with the character of Jonathan Harker. The latter is the weaker male figure of the novel for he yields quite easily to Dracula’s influence, and expresses in the first part of the novel a need to be taken care of by his wife and friends. Many critics have made some comments upon Jonathan, arguing that he blurs the boundaries between the sexes, especially in the following passage:
There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive. […] I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharps teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart. (Stoker, p.45)
Christopher Craft explains that Jonathan has a feminine part that relies on a certain passivity, especially palpable in the aforementioned quotation. The vampire-women are triggering the sexual intercourse, and ‘Harker awaits an erotic fulfilment’ (Craft, p.108), represented by the possible penetration of the fangs, and thus a reversal of roles in the reproductive act. Then, the desired bite triggers a collapse of the sexual identity, as well as a twist in the traditional roles attributed to men and women in the Victorian Era (Craft, p.108). Stoker does not only write about the decline of the codified masculinity, but also describes the homosexual tendencies that Dracula expresses on Harker, through the same metaphor of the fangs.
Back to England, Harker joins the Crew of Light to defeat his predator. As a consequence, the first half of the novel might be read as the endangering of masculinity, whereas the second half appears like the recapture of lost virility. Indeed, the whole process of fighting Dracula is for Harker a way to destroy the one who jeopardized his masculinity and heterosexuality. The story ends with the symbolic birth of Quincey, who brings back the traditional order of Victorian society: women being mother, and men father and head of the household (Craft, p.129). The critic uses the word ‘rectification’ in his article, which is important for it highlights that something had changed in the course of the novel, perhaps because of women empowerment.
Masculinity is being compared to femininity throughout the novel, because the evolution of women status triggered these kind of anxieties in Victorian men’s minds.
Indeed, several “womanly” issues are shown as needed to be fought. The theme of female sexual emancipation seems to be the most observable in the novel, embodied by Count Dracula. The temptation he represents to the different female characters – and even to Harker – is proof that he incarnates such thing as sexual liberation. His three vampire-women are being undertaking to Harker, because they have yielded to Dracula’s influence. When he arrives in England, he is going to try to pervert the pure Victorian women He starts his task with Lucy, who appears like an easy prey, because of some of her ideas.
Many critics have talked about the following sentence: ‘Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?’ (Stoker, p.70). One can wonder if she is being critical about the Victorian system and its strict rules about marriage. As a consequence, Dracula might be interested in her because of her ideas, too progressive for her epoch; then, she might be easily influenced. As a matter of fact, the whole novel demonstrates how sexual liberation jeopardizes all the natural gender order.
Once Lucy becomes a prey, the whole intrigue is triggered in England: the Crew of Light is created because of her “sickness”, she is being murdered by her fiancé, Mina becomes a victim and is hurt by Dracula when trying to resist to him, and finally Quincey Morris dies in the fight to kill the vampire. These events are made by purpose of Stoker’s argument that the gender order should remain the way it has always been. It is important to recall that at this period female sexuality was associated with sexual diseases such as syphilis, creating a whole climate of fear (Kaye, pp. 58-59). Perhaps this is the reason why the sexually free women and Dracula are shown as monsters, because they can be vehicles of terrific illnesses.
Moreover, the novel is not just a ‘fight for control over women’, but at the same time, a response to the New Women (p.34). This phenomenon affected literature with both positive and negative reactions in the different plots. This is directly referred to in Dracula by Mina Harker herself:
Some of the ‘New Women’ writers will someday start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won’t condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too! (Stoker, p.108)
As a woman, she is being surprisingly ironic towards this movement, showing that it was not a consensual phenomenon. The New Woman constituted a threat to masculinity because she claimed an emancipated life, without a need for a husband, and rejected her mother role. This change in their behaviour is related for Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst to an evolution in women mentality and a raise of their claims in the public space. This woman is being physically present in the novel through the figure of the sexual predator that the vampire represents (Ledger and Luckhurst, p.75).
Stoker’s goal in presenting both types of end-of-19th-Century women, is to defend the Victorian values. He reaches such an aim by making the New Women die and the Victorian women live. Lucy and Mina are often compared in order to show Mina’s superiority because she has decided to use her intellectual abilities for Jonathan and to successfully resist Dracula’s influence. The Harkers are placed on a pedestal by all other Victorian characters to emphasize the degeneracy of such a thing as the New Woman. By the end, the birth of their child ends the novel on the traditional values of the “they lived happily ever after and had many children” (Case, p.225).
Furthermore, the presence of female characters, both Victorian and New Women, acts like a foil to masculinity and virility. Indeed, in order to reassure men towards the rise of the emancipated women, Stoker built a whole novel which constitutes a fight for male power over women (Senf, p.34). As a consequence, men’s methods to deal with the vampire issues are really brutal and violent, which appears like proof of their virility. Many details are given in the text, perhaps to shock the contemporary readers, and demonstrate that no pity must be given to these behaviours.
During Lucy’s murder scene, Stoker wrote: ‘Then he struck with all his might’ (Stoker, p.260). Many critics agree that the cruelty of men is being essentially intense because there is a need for reassertion on behalf of all men (Craft, p.122). This barbarity is reinforced by the use of old methods of eradication, in this case beheading and perforation of the chest (Kaye, p. 59). With their sexual behaviour, women are indeed a foil, because men would look all the more manly in the Victorian understanding of this word. Furthermore, one can argue that men are guardians of this order insofar as they punish people for being deviant. In another essay, Carol. A Senf expressed this idea as follows:
By the conclusion of the novel, all the characters who have been accused of expressing individual desire have been appropriately punished: Dracula, Lucy Westenra, and the three vampire women have been killed’ (Carol. A. Senf, p. 167)
Punishment is then an actual way for men to affirm their power over women in society. Lucy’s returning to her former state of purity is another example of this point: men are the ones who are in charge of women and their possible deviation from Victorian rules. If Lucy’s protection has been a failure, men succeed at avoiding Mina’s transformation into a vampire. Even though she has New Women abilities, especially as far as intellect is concerned, she still resigns to the Victorian status of women: being a wife as well as a mother.
Stoker registered his anxiety about Victorian masculinity in Dracula because he felt that things were evolving, especially in the relationship between the two sexes. Women’s voices were beginning to be heard, and even though the boundaries between men and women were still pronounced, the former started to be less manly than they used to be. The New Women movement claimed a will for independence, which threatened men’s powerful status. Through the monstrous figure of Dracula, Stoker showed the possible catastrophe that such changes could bring into the Victorian society. By the end of the novel, the gender order is restored and life flourishes again, which contrasts with the omnipresence of death in the novel.
References
- History.com – 19th Century
- National Geographic – Victorian Era
- British Library – The Victorian Woman
- The Victorian Web – Revenge vs. Empowerment in the Novels of Amy Levy and Olive Schreiner
- PLOS Computational Biology – The Finch has Landed: The Origins of Darwin’s Finch Radiation Ecology
- Boston University College of Arts & Sciences – The Hidden Truth Behind Stoker’s Dracula
