1

INTRODUCTION

When exploring the Gothic, it is difficult to isolate psychologicalfactors from social
issues.In a form which focuses soclosely on complex models of identity it is not surprising
that arange of different issues are addressed. However, arguably one of the most telling
characteristics of the Gothic from the 1790s to the 1890s concerns the progressive
internalization of evil.
It would bedangerous to generalize about this trend, but it would neverthelessbe true
to say that a new focus on psychology indicates that a predominantlysecularized version of
monstrosity began to appear.Monsters are not, as they were with Walpoles animated giants,
orLewiss demons, externally manifested sources of danger. Instead,by the mid-nineteenth
century such horrors had largely been internalized.
The roots of this can be discerned in Frankenstein in thedoubling between Victor and
his creature, but it is given freshimpetus in the mid-nineteenth century Gothic, as indicated by
theemergence of the ghost story as a popular form from the 1840sonwards. Typically in the
ghost story the monster lives with you,invading your domestic spaces, so that evil acquires
a proximity tothe self which it did not necessarily have in the earlier Gothic. Thisnew
departure is a matter of emphasis rather than a revolutionary break.The roots of this
internalization of evil are to be found inmuch of the Romantic Gothic, whilst their mature
development can be observed within the later Victorian Gothic.
On a formal level the Gothic typically transgresses models of realism by dwelling on
fantastical experiences.On a more sophisticated level it also transgresses notions of
conventional values, whether social, cultural, or sexual. However, often the transgressor
(monster, vampire, ghost, and so on) is associated with evil, which renders the moment
ambivalent because of a hesitation between the pleasures of transgression and a demonizing
language of evil.
The Gothics use of doubling is a clear indication of the internalization of evil.
Indeed in the new, predominantly secularized context of the mid- to late nineteenth-century
Gothic, evil seems a misnomer because such inner narratives can be explained in
psychological and social, rather than strictly theological, terms.A post-Romantic
2

conceptualization of unease which has played a significant role in the critical analysis of the
Gothic was the Uncanny. Sigmund Freuds essay The Uncanny (1919) examined feelings
of unease as they appear within seemingly commonplace experience.
Feelings of uncanniness (the unheimlich) are initially contrasted with ideas of the
home (the heimlich) and the domestic security that it represents. However, the Oedipus
complex suggests that the home is where sexual secrets are propagated, so that the home
becomes traumatic, or uncanny, as a result. Freud initiallyregarded the double as indicating
the emergence of our adult conscience.However, this conscience, which has a positive role
in regulatingbehavior, turns into a dangerously powerful form ofcensorship that, for Freud,
stifles the development of the self sothat the double becomes the uncanny harbinger of
deathbecause it psychologically kills (or represses) the self.This trauma is manifested as a
repetition compulsion, and Freud explores how a culture repeats the past in tales of the dead in
which the past comes back to life (or is repeated).
This conclusion has relevance for a consideration of the ghost story and the images of the
double (the living and the dead) in the Gothic. Gothic so often focuses on issues of gender and
identity it meansthat sexuality and politics are frequently foregrounded.Preeminent features of
Gothic fiction include terror(both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural,
ghosts, haunted houses and Gothicarchitecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles,
madness, secrets, and hereditary curses. The characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants,
villains, bandits, maniac, persecuted maidens, madwomen, demons, fallen angels, and the
Devil himself.Gothic literature has a long history behind it, and there are many books today
still being written in that style.









3

CHAPTER I

GOTHIC LITERATURE


The Gothic was considered a predominantly prose form.However, the roots of the Gothic are
to be found in earlier theatrical and poetic traditions. Radcliffe, for example, is heavily
indebted to Shakespearean tragedy and in The Italian often begins her chapters with a
quotation from his plays. However, her interrogation of Romantic concepts, such as the
sublime and the role of nature, is firmly rooted in the poetry of the period. In addition the
Gothic more generally owes some debt to the Graveyard Poetry of the 1740s and 1750s.
Edwards Youngs Night Thoughts (1750-55), Robert Blairs The Grave (1743), James
Herveys Meditations amongthe Tombs (1745-47), Thomas WartonsOn the Pleasures
ofMelancholy (1747), and Thomas Grays Elegy written in a CountryChurchyard (1751) all
made a significant contribution to developing a Gothic ambience (by dwelling on feelings of
loss), and provided an investigation into life and death that constituted a peculiarly Gothic
metaphysic. The Gothic novels link to Romantic poetry was noted by Sir Walter Scott when
he proclaimed Radcliffe the first poetess of romantic fiction
1
. The Romantic interest in
exploring non-rational (anti-Enlightenment) states led many of the Romantic poets to write in
the Gothic mode. This explores how a Romantic Gothic tradition of poetry developed themes
(concerning sexuality, art, and the imagination) which influenced a later poetic tradition here
represented by Christina Rossettis Goblin Market (1862). It is important to note that after the
Gothic heydayof the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Gothicdoes not
disappear but subversively infiltrates other forms ofwriting, including poetry, and the realist
Victorian novel.






1
Sir Walter Scott on Novelists and Fiction, ed. Ioan Williams (London: Routledge, 1968), p. 103.
4



1.1 Hidden Identities: Ghosts

The Gothic culture has drawn attention in terms of various aspects related to the
same.Amongst the many facets, Gothic literature is known the world over due to the particular
distinct qualities associated with this form of writing.This literature has even influenced other
different genres of writing styles. There are certain prominent traits about Gothic literature
that set it apart from the rest. In Burkes Philosophical Enquiry he developed, as we also saw
inthe discussion of Frankenstein, a theory of sublime terror which is stimulated by our more
dangerous encounters with the world.Burke attempts to explain this within a philosophical
language which is dogged by an empiricist view of the world, which is why he is so
systematic in his itemization of causes and effects. However, we can also say that Burke is
addressing psychological issues within a philosophical approach which cannot properly
account for theorigins of terror as an emotion. As discussed in the Introduction, Burke does
not have a language of psychology with which to explore unconscious or subconscious factors
because, historically speaking, this language was unavailable to him.If Burkes Philosophical
Enquiry represents an attempt to account for new types of emotional experience, then Freud
provides a more person-centered, critically nuanced account of the selfwhich helps us to
explore such changes as they appear in the Gothic tradition. This may seem like a historically
perverse claim (that the Victorian Gothic which pre-dated Freud can be historically explained
in Freudian terms), but it relates to an essentialquality of the Gothic which has been addressed
throughout: that it is an interrogative rather than intellectually or culturally passive form. As
the Romantic Gothic treated Burkean ideas with skepticism, so that skepticism generated a
new version of the self which was more complex than Burkes empiricism would allow.
Indeed it developed a version of the self which appears to be strangely Freudian before Freud.
This relationship is not a tenuous one, as evidenced by the fact that Freuds essay The
Uncanny
2
gains most of its conclusions from a reading of E.T. A. Hoffmanns short story The
Sand Man (1816).

2
Is a Freudian concept of instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time resulting in a
feeling of it being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar
5



For Freud, the key terms of the uncanny relate to the home. The home is a place of family,
domesticity, and therefore safety. However, Freud famously notes that linguistically the two
terms of his argument heimlich(homely) and unheimlich(unhomely, or uncanny) merge,
leading him to conclude that unheimlich
3
is in some way or other a subspecies of heimlich.
This is not just because of some lexical slippage between the terms; it is because for Freud the
home is a sinister place. In keepingwith his theory of the Oedipus complex (which underpins
hisreading of The Sand Man), the home becomes a dangerous placebecause it is the site
where sexual secrets are harbored and propagated.The childs feelings about their parents
influence infantilesexual development, meaning that the home is not a safe, or innocent,place
to be.Because the home can become the place which generates sexualanxieties it is therefore
no surprise that the Gothic of the late nineteenthcentury also suggests, in the ghost story, that
the home is adangerous place. Trauma, however, should not be solely seen inpsychological
terms because, as we shall see, the ghost story also referencesan anxiety about the wealth
invested in the home andmiddle-class concerns about who really owns such
places.Dickenss A Christmas Carol (1843), J. H. Riddells The UninhabitedHouse (1875),
and Henry Jamess The Turn of the Screw (1898) helpto clarify these issues.Dickens wrote a
number of long ghost stories which he referredto as my little Christmas Books, indicating
that he saw them as seasonalwinters tales intended as light entertainment. However,these
Christmas Books often contain quite sinister narratives concerningloneliness, anxiety,
despair, and poverty. The best-knownof these books is A Christmas Carol, and although it was
written in1843 it nevertheless gives a good sense of the kinds of issues whichtypified the
ghost story (and by extension the Gothic) during themiddle of the nineteenth century and
onwards.Scrooges lodgings can be read in terms of the uncanny. This isapparent by how he
lives in his chambers a wealthy man living inself-imposed poverty (in which he is not
properly homed) andin the more obvious sense that his home is subject to ghostly
visitations.The invasion of Scrooges chambers by ghosts represents a direct invasion into his
life. The ghost of Jacob Marley illustrates not only what he could become (a soul tormented)

3
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny in Art and Literature: Jensens Gradiva, Leonardo Da Vinci and Other Works,
trans. James
6

but also what he is (a spectral inhuman figure). The point is to make Scrooge realize that in
order to change his fate he has to change who he is, and this is effected by bringing Scrooge
back to life (or back to the present). The three ghosts which confront Scrooge all illustrate
certain points of his history, past, present, and future, and thus the ghosts have an inherent
connection to Scrooge, rather than appear as external manifestations of evil (indeed they are
there to help him).A Christmas Carol relies on the uncanny in its representation of ghosts and
in how the ghosts are used to illustrate the workings of Scrooges inner life. Whilst this effects
a psychological transformation in Scrooge, this psychological factor should not be separated
from social issues. Uncanniness might appear to be a purely psychological phenomenon but it
represents a model of anxiety whichneeds to be seen within the social context that gives rise to
it. InScrooges case the context clearly concerns anxieties over money.The tale was written in
the 1840s during a period of economicdepression known as the hungry forties. Scrooge is a
miser whocontributes to the presence of poverty because he hoards his wealth.At the end of
the tale he buys Christmas presents and this suggeststhat he is putting money back into
circulation. The conclusiontherefore contains a paradox, because it implies that Scrooge
needsto become a better capitalist, one who uses money when, arguably,it was capitalism
which caused the problem in the first place.The issue of money is important because ghost
stories often foregroundconcerns about class and wealth. However, given that theyare also
about invaded domestic spaces (which are also economicspaces) it is understandable that
many women writers producedmajor collections of ghost stories, novellas, and novels in the
period.Amelia B. Edwards published many significant ghost stories in the1860s and wrote the
important long tale Monsieur Maurice in 1873.Mary E. Braddon in the 1870s and 1880s
produced many influentialtales, as did E. Nesbit in the 1890s and onwards. Vernon Lee(real
name Violet Paget) wrote the novella A Phantom Lover (1886), addresses the conjunctions
between gender and various forms ofsocial and economic power.One prominent ghost-story
writer of the time, although one nowsomewhat neglected, is J. H. Riddell (or Charlotte
Riddell). Likeother women writers in the ghost-story tradition she examined therelationship
between class and gender (a theme that is implicit inDickenss account of money). She also
wrote several non-Gothictexts which testify to her interest in financial matters. Her best
knownnovels set in the financial sector are City and Suburb (1861),Mitre Court (1885), and
The Head of the Firm (1892). She alsoproduced a series of Gothic novellas, Fairy Water
7

(1873), TheUninhabited House (1875), The Haunted River (1877), and TheDisappearance of
Mr. Jeremiah Redworth(1878), as well as thecollection of tales Weird Stories (1884), which
includes many ghoststories.The Uninhabited House initially seems to lampoon the kind
ofmaterialism that we find in Dickens as it focuses on the legal practicalitiesof letting out
River House, which is reputedly haunted.The owner of the house loses her case against her
tenants who claimthat they had not been informed about the ghost when they rentedthe
property. A clerk who is involved in the letting of the house, andwho narrates the story, stays
in the house in hope of explaining themystery. It transpires that it is haunted by the previous
owner, Mr.Elmsdale, a wealthy but unscrupulous money-lender who, for avariety of reasons,
wished to financially ruin a Mr.Harringford, whoowed him money and who subsequently
murdered him. The novellamoves beyond the largely psychological issues later suggested
byFreud in The Uncanny by implying that money is uncannybecause it appears to possess a
vitality (a life) which either enhancesor destroys the people it touches. The ghost of
Mr.Elmsdale is likea version of Scrooge. One witness recounts seeing a
manseatedcounting over bank-notes. He had a pile of them before him, and Idistinctly saw
that he wetted his fingers in order to separate them.
4
The ghost of Mr.Elmsdale is, like Jacob
Marleys, still attached tothe business world. When Mr.Harringford murders the
wealthyElmsdale the curse of financial success is passed on to him, as henotes From the hour
I left him lying dead in the library every devil. His wife and children die and he becomes
lame andprematurely aged. The moral appears to be simple enough moneycomes by
dishonestly makes you inhuman. Money, like the ghost, isboth present and absent because it
represents both a material realityand a moral emptiness. As in A Christmas Carol, the solution
appearsto lie in the proper redistribution of wealth, which occurs whenHarringford dies and
bequeaths his wealth to Elmsdales daughter,who then marries the narrator.This seemingly
bizarre tale of ghosts and ill-begotten wealthillustrates again the essentially middle-class
anxieties of the form.The anxiety is that a class could, under certain circumstances, gainand
lose everything within a generation
5
.In addition Riddellsadoption of a male narrator does not
disguise the fact that thepoverty with which he is threatened, unless he makes a

4
J. H. Riddell, The Uninhabited House, in Five Victorian Ghost Novels, ed. E. F. Bleiler (New York: Dover,
1971), pp. 1118,p. 31. All subsequent references in the text are to this edition.
5
Henry James, The Friends of the Friends, in The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, ed., Michael Cox and
R. A. Gilbert(Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1986] 2002), pp. 15071.
8

financiallyadvantageous marriage, in reality captures the experience of manywomen at the
time.
Both Dickens and Riddell therefore address issues about moneyand class, and in Riddells
case gender. Their narratives indicatethat ghosts are not quite so otherworldly after all, indeed
they seemto be more heimlichthan unheimlichin the prosaic class-bound anxietiesthat they
articulate. Suggest that all such stories are focused on money and power.However, Riddells
love plot is intimately related to financial concernsbecause they govern the expectations that
characters haveabout their chances of marrying.Love, money, ghosts, and suggestions of
insanity are centralissues in Henry Jamess The Turn of the Screw (1898), which can beread
as a fin de sicle version of Jane Eyre, centered upon a governesss feelings for her employer.
Jamess novella made an importantcontribution to the ghost story because it casts doubt
onwhether the ghosts are real or merely projections of the governessssomewhat
overwrought imagination.The novella begins in a kind of ghost story competition in
whichDouglas, the narrator, presents the governesss story. If love inRiddells novella is in
part conditioned by certain financial expectations,in James it is associated with a possible
delusion that controls the governess, Yes, she was in love. That is, she had been. That
cameout she couldnt tell her story without its coming out. Douglasalso goes on to note,
The story wont tell not in any literal, vulgarway. Jamess syntactically complex novella
bears stylistic testimonyto this oblique approach in which the governesss perceptionof the
ghosts of Quint and Jessel is central because their very existenceis open to question. Whilst
Dickenss and Riddells ghostsfulfill a purpose because their presence is meant to create a
better life(for Scrooge) or because they result in economic advancement (forRiddells
narrator), Jamess ghosts appear to represent the projectionsof the love-struck and anxious
governess.The governesss unrequited feelings for her employer becomedramatized in the
relations between the spectral Quint and MissJessel, who also appear to have been involved in
a doomed relationship.In addition, the governesss perception of the children,Flora and Miles,
is influenced by her anxiety that Quint and Jesselcould represent an immoral influence over
them. This means thatall the characters, real and spectral, are forced into a series of
relationshipsforged by the governess. Miles, for example, because ofsome undisclosed
problems at school, appears to the governess asa potential Quint, and so she attempts to
protect him from Quintsinfluence. However, Mrs.Grose, the pragmatic
9

housekeeper,undermines the governesss claims about the presence of theghosts. In one scene
the governess points at Jessel, but Mrs.Groseresponds with Where on earth do you see
anything?Aview supported by Flora: I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. The
governess rationalizes away such claims (at least toher own, if not necessarily the readers,
satisfaction), but thismeans that the novella operates at two levels: as a tale about ghostsand as
a tale about the governesss projection of her feelings aboutpossible rejection.The narrative
develops some of the aspects of the uncanny whichrelate to doubling. The problem is that the
governess is necessarilyunable to see that the ghosts are (or at least can be read as)
projectionsof herself. The Turn of the Screw thus dramatizes the interior(emotional,
psychological) origins of the types of horror that anearlier, less secular, Gothic tradition
located externally. These three stories of ghosts are quite different in emphasis andin their
development of uncanniness. It is important to note that theghost story has often posed
problems for critics because their verystructure, in which a survivor tells or focalizes the tale,
signals inadvance that any horrors are likely to be overcome. However, inJamess complex
tale of psychological influence and spectrally (atheme he also developed in the short story
The Friends of theFriends,1896), the surviving governess arguably does not overcomethe
trauma of what happens because she is the principal agentin its generation. However, when
reading ghost stories it is alsoimportant to consider how they express class-bound issues,
becauseghost stories, with their accounts of haunted middle-class houses,are also articulating
class anxieties which obliquely touch upon theperils of home ownership.Jamess novella
explores issues about projection and doublingwhich appear in other Gothic tales. How the
other functions as ameans of awakening is, as we shall see, a central aspect of RobertLouis
Stevensons tale of doubling, The Strange Case of Dr Jekylland Mr. Hyde (1886), and is a
feature of many mid-nineteenth centuryGothic tales which touch upon sexuality.







10

1.2 Gothic Doubles


Gothic double refers to an essential duality within a single character on the further
presumption that this duality centers polarity of good and evil. In fact we could say that the
single most interesting device used by Gothic writers is that of the double. The roots of the
double can be found in Coleridges Christabel. By paying close attention to how Coleridge
and Rossetti used languageit is possible to see how it enabled them to both articulate
andconceal notions of sexual awakening. Both Christabeland GoblinMarket represent images
of lesbianism and in their different waysstruggle to both show and disguise this (perhaps more
so inRossetti, but it is there in Coleridges attempt to allegories suchdesire in Bracys dream).
It is not just the issue of lesbian desirewhich is important but also the representation of fragile,
becausepermeable, models of subjectivity. Geraldine might appear as anexternal threat but she
affects an inner awakening. Laura and Lucyare sisters but iconically lovers because the
Goblins also bring abouta (premature) sexual awakening the antidote to which transfersthe
awakening from men to women.This Gothic strand links lesbianism with sexual discovery,
andsexual discovery in a wider sense is an issue in the Gothic duringthe period, as well as
being central to Freuds account of subject formation.Le FanusCarmillais a good example of
a text from theperiod which explores lesbianism, sexual awakening, and nationalidentity, all
within an account of the self and its vampire desires.Le Fanu, an Irish writer of mixed
Protestant and Catholicdescent (although a graduate of the Protestant Trinity College,Dublin),
was a well-known novelist famous for Uncle Silas (1864),Wylders Hand (1864), and Guy
Deverell(1865), as well as an influentialGothic short-story writer. Carmillawas published in
the collectionIn a Glass Darkly (1872), which contained a number ofGothic short stories,
including Green Tea, The Familiar andMr. Justice Harbottle. The prologue to
Carmillaclaims that thetale has been subject to some scientific scrutiny by Doctor Hesselius
(Le Fanus investigator into paranormal activity), who had concludedthat the case
represented some of the profoundest arcane of our dual existence.Laura, who lives with her
English father in Styria, narrates thetale. Her mother has died, and this, typically a feature of
theFemale Gothic, leaves her peculiarly vulnerable. Their world istransformed when they are
asked to look after Carmilla, a youngwoman who has been involved in a carriage accident on
11

their estate.Laura seems to recollect Carmilla from a childhood dream, adream that Carmilla
also recalls and which establishes an apparentpsychic link between them. The two are drawn
to each other, whilstin the neighborhood there are a number of mysterious deaths ofyoung
women (who seem to have died from vampire bites). Lauraalso appears to become a victim of
these assaults, but then Carmilladisappears. A General Spielsdorf, who some time before had
seeminglylost his daughter to a vampire that resembled Carmilla,arrives and helps track
Carmilla to her tomb, where she is stakedand decapitated. In the Gothic tradition evil is
often defined by the threat it poses to civilization. Jekyll and Hyde, like Carmilla,
problematizesthis by raising questions about the origins of evil within civilization.The
novella can easily be caricatured as merely being aboutwarring factions within Dr Jekyll, but a
closer examination revealsthat Stevenson emphasizes that any notion of conflict needs to
beseen within the context of what constitutes civilization. The novellaopens with an account
of the weekly walk taken around London byUtterson and his distant relative Enfield. Utterson
is a lawyer andtherefore ostensibly associated with a respectable bourgeois profession,
But a closer look reveals the presence of a Gothic mood. He isdescribed as a man of rugged
countenance, that was never lightedby a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse;
backward insentiment: lean, long, dusty, dreary, and although this is qualifiedwith and yet
somehow lovable, this somehow suggests that thegrounds for the claim are unclear.
6
It is
then noted of Utterson andEnfield that:It was reported by those who encountered them in
theirSunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull,and would hail with obvious
relief the appearance of a friend.For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these
excursions,counted them the chief jewel of each week. The opening of the novella thus
implies that a meaningless attachmentto middle-class rituals (here the Sunday walks) empties
experienceof pleasure and significance. It is out of this emptiness thatHyde is generated. This
specifically middle-class emptiness isapparent in the isolated and lonely lives of all the main
characterswho are successful members of bourgeois professions such asmedicine and the
law. As in some theories of degeneration, the precarious nature of social bonds indicates a
crisis within notions ofcivilization. Hyde might appear to be a Darwinian throwback withhis
ape-like tricks, but there is at least, so the novellaimplies, a vitality about him which is sadly

6
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories, ed. Jenni Calder (Harmondsworth: Penguin,1984), p. 29. All subsequent
references in the text are to this edition
12

lacking in the othercharacters, and thus Hyde becomes the double of them all.The Uncanny
with its analysis of dangerous doubles providesone critical approach to the text. Hyde, seen
within the context ofa seemingly moribund civilization, can also be interpreted as anevolving
creature. Hyde physically becomes bigger as the novelladevelops, and this coming into being
is also apparent in the languagethat Jekyll employs in his seemingly explanatory
narrative,Henry Jekylls Full Statement of the Case. Jekylls first-personaccount slips into a
third-person narrative voice Henry Jekyllstood at times aghast before the acts of Edward
Hyde which indicates a struggle for control within the narrative; later theview that Jekyll
was now my city of refuge suggests thatHyde is narrating. The final sentence claims that I
bring the life ofthat unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end , which is also ambivalentbecause we
cannot be sure if Jekyll has killed Hyde or Hyde haskilled Jekyll.Jekyll and Hyde, like
Carmilla, is ostensibly about doubledselves, but it never loses sight of the social conflict that
Jekyll andHyde represents. Jekyll and Hyde are associated with differentclasses and in this
respect dramatize the social tensions whichcharacterized London at the time. The idea of
leading a doublelife has also suggested to Elaine Showalter that the novellaincorporates a
covert narrative relating to homosexual relationsbetween Jekyll and Hyde, in which Hyde
blackmails his sociallysuperior lover
7
. Such images can also be discerned in WildesThe
Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), which plots the developmentof a secret life within an
apparently respectable society. The complexitiesof these Gothic narratives lend themselves
too manydifferent readings and theoretical approaches. Theories of degenerationhave a
predominately European flavor to them andprovide one way of looking at how these texts
generate models ofidentity. How identity was explored in the American Gothicduring the
period helps develop a critical counterpoint to thisBritish tradition. To critically read
narratives such as these it is crucial to explorethe specific cultural contexts which generated
them. They allprovide important evocations of the horrors of slavery and indicatehow the
Gothic conditions such representations. They also play animportant part in shaping later
Gothic texts which explore similarthemes, such as Toni Morrisons Beloved (1987), which
will be discussedin the following chapter. As mentioned earlier, the Gothic inBritain develops

7
Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Sicle (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1990).
See Dr. JekyllsCloset, pp. 10526.
13

ideas of racial and national otherness in quite adifferent way than in America: a reading of
Dracula helps to illustratethis.





























14

CHAPTER II

TWENTIETH CENTURY


2.1 The ghost story as the end of the gothic

The ghost stories ofDickens, Henry James, and J. H. Riddell illustrate how evil
wasinternalized in the Gothic. Their writings also address social andpolitical considerations
relating to money, class, and gender. Howto gauge the political vision of the ghost story in the
early part ofthe twentieth century appears to be more difficult. Much of thecriticism on the
form is colored by a response to the writings ofM. R. James, whose highly influential ghost
stories were publishedin collected form between 1904 and 1931. Jamess writings bearan
imprint on the ghost stories of E. F. Benson, his brotherA. C. Benson, Edmund Gill Swain, A.
N. L. Munby, and RichardMalden, who had contact with James at Cambridge
University;many of them were present there when James read out his tales inhis college rooms
at Christmas. However, other writers in theperiod, such as Algernon Blackwood and May
Sinclair, producedtales in a slightly different, less heavily stylized, and key. This
sectionexplores some selected writings of M. R. James, Blackwood, E. F.Benson, and
Sinclair. How some of these writers can be linked tomodernism provides a closing context in
which a reconsiderationof the ghost storys apparent formalism can be re-evaluated.The ghost
story has posed a problem for scholars working on theGothic in its unsettling of the
relationship between the living and metaphysical, questions about identity. However, the
structure ofthe ghost story often appears less unsettling, as its conventionalityand easy-going
fireside ambience creates, at least in the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries, a mood
which is antitheticalto grand metaphysical debate.
David Punter in The Literature ofTerror argues that during the early part of the twentieth
century theghost story entered a highly mannered phase
8
which culminatedin the shockingly
bland tones of M. R. James. Indeed, forPunter, Jamess settings are often little more than

8
David Punter, The Literature of Terror: The Modern Gothic (London and New York: Longman, 1996), vol. 2,
p. 67. All subsequent references given in the text are to this edition
15

Gothic stereotypes, and although his formulaic constructions mightpossess a certain Gothic
style, they are fundamentally devoid ofradical content: They work well, but they mean almost
nothing
(emphasis in original). For William Hughes, Jamess talesconstruct an almost idyllic late-
Victorian and Edwardian worldconsisting of the quiet College Combination Room, the
library, orthe cathedral close.
9
Even the Gothics fascination with extrememental states is
absent because, as Julia Briggs claims, in Jamesstales psychology is totally and defiantly
excluded.
10

This version of James implies that his writings are dominated bya narrative mannerism which
excludes any troubling Gothic elements,or political or cultural conflicts.This has ledClive
Bloom toargue that Jamess tales refer to a world both slower and morestable than the
modernistic period in which he was writing.
11
Thisissue of the retrospective nature of
Jamess writing and how itrelates to modernism will be returned to. However, the idea
thatJamess tales represent stable worlds is difficult to reconcile with theprevalence of death,
abduction, and demonic hauntings which sooften characterize them. The past is a dangerous
place in his tales,but, as we shall see, this is related to a response to modernism whichrelocates
its apparent amorality within the seemingly urbane narratorialvoices.M. R. James was provost
of Kings College, Cambridge, andprovost of Eton, a classical scholar and a medievalist
historian. Thisacademic background plays a crucial role in his tales, which so oftenrevolve
around scholarly discoveries which bring the past back tolife. That this background informed
his tales is clear from the titleof his first collection of ghost stories, published in 1904, Ghost
Stories of an Antiquary. Three further collections were published,A Thin Ghost and Others
(1919), A Warning to the Curious(1925), and Wailing Well (1928), before a collected edition
was publishedin 1931. Jamess tale The Mezzotint (1904) describes how a group
ofCambridge dons observe an unfolding narrative concerning theabduction of a baby from a

9
Williams Hughes, The Handbook to Gothic Literature, ed. Marie Mulvey-Roberts (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1998),
p.143.
10
Julia Briggs, The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (London: Faber & Faber, 1977), p. 135, cited at p.
85 in Punter,Literature of Terror. I am conscious that this implies that theGothic is an inherently radical form,
whereas it can often beused to conservative ends. However, the critical material onJames suggests that the Gothic
simply fails to appear as Gothicat any politically discernible level (whether radical or reactionary).
11
Clive Bloom, M. R. James and his Fiction, in Creepers: British Horror & Fantasy in the Twentieth Century,
ed. Clive Bloom(London: Pluto, 1993), pp. 6471, p. 69.
16

country house, which is recounted on amezzotint engraving being considered for purchase for
theirmuseum. Historical research reveals that the mezzotint wasengraved by Arthur Francis
and the tale illustrated by the mezzotintrelates to an incident involving his family. The tale
concernshow the ghost of a figure named Gawdy, who had been executed forkilling one of
Franciss gamekeepers, enacts his revenge by abductingand then murdering Franciss only
child. This chilling narrativeis at odds with how the dons respond to it. Theirs is a
cozy,cloistered world which is only temporarily upset by this narrative.Their conversation
revolves around middle-class sporting activities,and in one instance tea was taken to the
accompaniment of adiscussion which golfing persons can imagine for themselves
12
.Later,
over Sunday morning breakfast, Hardly a topic was leftunchallenged, from golf to lawn-
tennis. These commentsillustrate the moral vacuity of the lives of the dons who
unconsciouslyunderstand that their vacuity is, at a symbolic level,generating the horror which
is manifested in the mezzotint: as oneof them notes, it looks very much as if we were
assisting at theworking out of a tragedy somewhere . The tragedy isturned inwards because
what is really tragic, so the tale implies, istheir inability to empathize with the human drama
staged by themezzotint.M. R. James is more complex than critics have allowed, and histales
can be read as a critique of blandness, rather than as an exercisein narrative form. He was to
return to these issues in the laterThe Haunted Dolls House (1925).
13
In the tale a Mr.Dillet
purchasesan antique dolls house which is a mocked-up version ofHorace Walpoles Gothic
folly, Strawberry Hill. At one oclockevery morning it stages the murder of an old man, and
his subsequentghostly return and murder of two young children. Some research reveals that
the dolls house was made by JamesMerewether, who had murdered the old man (his father-
in-law)because he intended to exclude the family from his will; the murderedchildren were
Merewethers. Dillet suffers an emotional breakdown but such is the structure of the tale (in
which the tale isheavily mediated through the narrator) that the reader is kept at adistance
from Dillets private drama, and this curiously places thereader as a passive voyeur of his
despair and forces the reader tooccupy the same amoral position as the dons in The
Mezzotint. Both tales implicitly address a horror of an emerging amoralitywhich, as we shall

12
M. R. James, The Mezzotint, in The Collected Stories of M. R. James (London: Edward Arnold, [1931]
1970), pp. 3653,p. 40. All subsequent references in the text are to this edition.I develop these arguments in M.
R. Jamess Gothic Revival ina special issue of Diegesison Horror, ed. Gina Wisker, 7(Summer 2004), 1622.
13
M. R. James, The Haunted Dolls House, in The Collected Stories of M. R. James (London: Edward Arnold,
[1931] 1970),pp. 47289.
17

see, can be linked to a somewhat conservativeview of modernism. The modernist cry
forinnovation subtly influenced the development of the ghost story.The new technical
innovations of radio and film in the period werealso to provide opportunities for the
development of the Gothic.
2.2 Gothic - postmodernism
In the twentieth century the term Gothic tends to becomereplaced with Horror, at least
where popular literature is concerned.In part such a change in nomenclature is a recognition
thatthe various associations that Gothic has with formulaic plotsinvolving aristocratic
villains amid ruined castles, set withinsublime landscapes, are not the stock-in-trade of writers
such asStephen King, James Herbert, John Saul, Dean Koontz, or ShaunHutson, amongst
many others.The post-war boom in mass-produced pulp fiction (so calledbecause of the poor
quality of paper on which they were printed inthe 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s) is not confined to
horror. The post-warera was also characterized in both text- and non-text-based mediaby other
popular modes, most notably science fiction and detectivefiction.The popularity of these
novels should not detract from the factthat, in keeping with the Gothic tradition, they still
address culturalanxieties. In America the Southern Gothic of the 1940s and 1950s,of writers
such as Carson McCullers and Flannery OConnor,reworks themes about region, murder, and
insanity which arguablyhave their roots in the Gothic of Edgar Allan Poe.
14
In
addition,Stephen Kings novels repeatedly dwell on social problems generatedwithin small
American towns where the social limitations ofsuch an environment become emblematic of
wider issues relating tosocial and moral obligations. His novel Carrie (1974), for
example,concerns the failure of family, peers, and schools to protect the vulnerable,and
consequently it takes some delight in destroying much of the small town where it is set.52A
figure of comparable standingin Britain is James Herbert, and his novel The Rats (1977) can,
atone level, be read as a tale about inner city decay.
15
Such a popularform is not without
examples of intellectual complexity. CliveBarkers work, for example, takes its place within a
horror traditionbut also explores a set of complex postmodern ideas about thenature of

14
See A. Robert Lee on Southern Gothic in The Handbook to Gothic Literature, ed. Marie Mulvey-Roberts
(Basingstoke:Macmillan, 1998), pp. 217-20, where he makes this link with Poe.
15
James Herbert, The Rats (London: New English Library, 1974).
18

representation. His collection of tales, Books of Blood,includes Son of Celluloid (1988),
which centers on an escapedprisoner, Barberio, who is suffering from cancer. He is
mortallywounded in a shoot-out with the police, and hides in a cinemabehind the screen,
where he dies of his wounds; however, the cancertakes on a life of its own as it searches for
new victims, and does soby taking on the form of various film stars such as John
Wayne,Marilyn Monroe, Peter Lorre, and Greta Garbo (thus suggestingthat an apparently
pristine Hollywood golden age was not as pureas it seemed).
16
Barkers novel
Weaveworld(1988) also, as the titleimplies, looks at how worlds are artistically constructed
through thebringing together of various forms of representation.
17
Barkers writings mentioned
here can be regarded as exercises inpostmodernism. Whilst modernism focused on the
fragmentednature of subjectivity (and so exploited the Gothic fascination withfractured
selves), postmodernism represents a skepticism about thegrand narratives (such as religion, for
example) which once providedsocial and moral norms. In a contemporary, postmodern ageone
can no longer believe in coherent, universal, claims to truthwhich, so the argument goes, are
replaced by moral relativism.Such a world is defined by the absence of absolute meaning, and
inliterature this becomes manifested through stylistic play in whichnarrative forms are run
together to create synthetic worlds whichforeground issues about representation above any
moral or metaphysicalconcerns. In other words, postmodernism seems to bepeculiarly suited
to the Gothic because it questions the notion thatone inhabits a coherent or otherwise
abstractly rational world. Aswe shall see, some authors who have written in the Gothic mode
andappear to incorporate elements of the postmodern, such as AngelaCarter and Toni
Morrison, are in fact skeptical about postmodernismor certain aspects of it. Carter and
Morrison are not horrorwriters in the way that King and Herbert are.Their self-conscious
literary qualities distance them from such writers, even thoughtheir texts discussed here do
refer back to an earlier Gothic tradition.To what extent there exists a postmodern Gothic is the
issueaddressed in this section. One writer whose work has beendescribed as a forerunner to
postmodernism, Shirley Jackson, helpsus to see how the issues of the older Gothic are
reworked within newmodels of horror that appear to anticipate the postmodern.

16
Clive Barker, Son of Celluloid, in Clive Barkers Books ofBlood, vol. 3 (London: Sphere, 1988), pp. 135.
17
Clive Barker, Weaveworld(Glasgow: Collins, 1988). SeeAndrew Smith, Worlds That Creep Up on You:
PostmodernIllusions in the Work of Clive Barker, in Creepers: BritishHorror and Fantasy in the Twentieth
Century, ed. Clive Bloom(London: Pluto, 1993), pp. 17686
19

CHAPTER III
DRACULA: BETWEEN TRADITION AND MODERNISM
3.1 Dracula, myth and history
In spite of all that we know about Vlad Dracula, he remains somewhat of an enigma.
Not only there are still some unsolved mysteries about his life and death, but there has been
much speculation about the exact nature of the connection between VladDracul and the Count
Dracula of Bram Stokers classic novel.Most assume that Bram Stoker, inspired by accounts
he had read or heard about the fifteenth-century Wallachian ruler, made a conscious decision
to base the character of Count Dracula on the historical personage VladDracul.But this
assumption is speculative.We know for certain only that Stoker borrowed the name Dracula
and a few scraps of information about Wallachian history from William Willkinsons An
Account of Wallachia and Moldavia(1820). First of all we must say that the name Dracula
has a lot to do with the Roumanian word drac(derived from the Latin draco) which can
mean both dragon and devil. Vlad adopted it as sobriquet derived from the Order of the
Dragon which had been bestowed upon his father, VladDracul, in 1431. We know that
Romanian historians have traditionally resisted referring to Vlad as Dracula for two reasons:
it was used in late fifteenth century German documents, and of course it reinforces the
connection to Stokers vampire Count. Dracula is the story of the Transylvanian Count
Dracula, a vampirewho terrorizes a group of friends, led by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, inhis
search for victims in London. The novel uses letters, journal entries,newspaper articles, and
other invented sources to structure itsnarrative; this technique heightens the sense of mystery
surroundingthe story's events.Apart from its impact as a horror novel and comparisons to
MaryShelley's Frankenstein, Dracula surprised literary critics, who hadgenerally disregarded
Stoker's abilities as an author. Like his earlynovels, his more recent works, including The
Walter's Mou'(1895) andThe Shoulder of Shasta (1895), were not very successful.The Dracula
character was based on Prince Vlad V of Wallachia, a fifteenth-century Romanian tyrant
better known as Vlad the Impaler.
20

An infamous torturer and murderer, Vlad was known as "Dracula," becausehis father
belonged to a society called the Order Draconis. Asthis made his father a "dragon," it made
Vlad "Dracula," which means"son of the dragon." Stoker learned details of Vlad's life from a
Hungarianprofessor named Arminius Vambery, who greatly influenced thenovel's central
ideas.Dracula was also influenced by Carmilla, a horror novel by Irishauthor Sheridan Le
Fanu. Although Stoker was known for writingvivid descriptions of landscapes he had seen, the
writer had never visitedRomania, and only imagined the Transylvania in which Draculalived.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) now seems to be everywhere, but itdid not come out of
nowhere. It is one of the nineteenth century's mostlasting and influential examples of the
Gothic novel, a gesture thatblends two distinct strains of fiction. One is the old-fashioned
romance,with its fondness for the supernatural and the miraculous; theother is the realistic
novel, with its painstaking detail of actual peopleliving ordinary lives. The Gothic novel
created in the eighteenth century,only to flower in the nineteenthbrings together the
fantastic elementsof the romance with the plausible psychology of real people.Bridget M.
Marshall's "Stoker's Dracula and the Vampire's LiteraryHistory," the first contribution in the
"Contexts" section of this volume, sets Stoker's most famous achievement in the context of
that developing literary genre every conceivable variety: man-eating dragons, mermaids,
zombies,gargoyles, demons. And vampires have been a recurring feature inmany of the
world's belief systems: the Un-Dead, feasting on the bloodof the living, have shown up in
ancient Persia, Greece, Babylon, Israel,and India, as well as in virtually every country in
medieval Europe. Beforethe nineteenth century, though, despite their popularity in
orallytransmitted folktales, vampires made few appearances in serious literature.The early
English novelthe form developed in the first half of theeighteenth century, most famously
by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson,and Henry Fieldingdeclared its allegiance to the
realistic depictionof everyday life. As fair as sophisticated eighteenth-century readerswere
concerned, the supernatural was fit only for the nursery. Seriousgrown-ups did not bother with
stories of giants, dragons, and devils.But the supernatural could not be excluded from serious
fiction forever.On Christmas Day, 1764, Horace Walpole published a small bookcalled The
Castle of Otranto, a tale of haunted castles, hidden dungeons maidens in distress, and
animated skeletons. He called his work"an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the
ancient and themodem. In the former all was imagination and improbability; in thelatter,
21

nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copiedwith success." This attempt
"to reconcile the two kinds" of fictionresulted in what we now call the Gothic novel, a hybrid
of the old-fashionedsupernatural tale and the new realistic novel.For several decades,
Walpole's Castle of Otranto had the Gothicgenre almost entirely to itself In the 1790s, though,
British culture rediscoveredthe attraction of the fantastic. That decade gave us dozensof
examples of the Gothic, including Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries ofUdolpho(1794) and
Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796). From ourvantage point in the twenty-first century,
though, the eighteenth century'sGothic experiments seem to be little more than warm-ups for
theVictorian masterpieces that were to follow. Some of the nineteenthcentury's monsters are
still with us: Robert Louis Stevenson's TheStrange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886),
Oscar Wilde's ThePicture of Dorian Gray (1891), H. G. Wells'sThe Invisible Man(1897), as
well as less obviously monstrous figures like Heathcliff inEmily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
(1847).Count Dracula, though, stands at the head of the list of nineteenth centurycreatures of
the night, with only a single rival. And, as it happens,the two figures, English literature's most
famous monstrosities,were conceived at the same time, at what may be the most famous
singlegathering in English literary history. In the "wet, ungenial summer"summer of 1816,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, his lover Mary WollstonecraftGodwin, and her sister Claire Clairmont
visited Lord Byron and hisfriend John Polidori in Switzerland, in the Villa Diodati on the
banks ofLake Geneva. After passing some hours with a book of German horrortales, Mary
(now Mary Shelley) recalled in 1831, "'We will each writea ghost story,' said Lord Byron; and
his proposition was acceded to"Percy, Mary, Byron, and Polidori all set to work on their
own terrifyingNarratives.Only one ofthose tales is familiar today: Mary Shelley's depictionof
the man of science who creates a living being and pays for his presumptionhas been famous
since it was published in 1818 as Frankenstein:Or, The Modern Prometheus. But another
member of the circleof friends, John Polidori, did complete his story; "The Vampire"
publishedin 1819, became the first work of vampire fiction in Englishprose. Polidori's tale,
with its portrait of the horrific Lord Ruthven, hasfew fans today, but it made the figure of the
vampire available to laterauthors. Victorian fiction made much of Polidori's vampire,
including,most famously, the anonymous Varney the Vampire: Or, The Feast ofBlood in 1847
and Sheridan Le Fanu'sCarmillain 1872. Marshall'ssurvey of the Gothic genre places Stoker's
Dracula squarely in this tradition.Marshall looks forward as well as backward from 1897,
22

glancing atthe long tradition of film versions of Stoker's storyfor most of us, ofcourse, the
conduit through which the literary creation became a culturalarchetype. The vampire and
Frankenstein's monster were conceivedtogether on the banks of Lake Geneva; it is fitting,
then, thatthey were even more famously brought together in 1931, the year inwhich Universal
Studios produced a pair of movies that have taught usto imagine our most notorious monsters.
Camille-Yvette Welsch's "A Look at the Critical Reception of Dracula"addresses not the
creative legacy of Dracula but the novel's criticalfate after its publication in 1897, including
both the immediate reactionsto it in the press and its longer life as a cultural archetype.
Thehistory of Dracula criticism, as noted in the headnote to this volume, iscomparatively
short; only in the 1960s and 1970s did literary critics beginpaying serious attention to it. But
in the last few decades it has beenthe subject of intense analysis. Welsch therefore helpingly
explains theway critics of various schoolspsychoanalysis. New Historicism,postcolonial
studieshas tried to make sense of Stoker's achievement.Monsters, it goes without saying, are
unsettling. A pair of essays Allan Johnson's "Modernity and Anxiety in Bram Stoker's
Dracula examine some of the many ways in which monsters can stand in forother things that
we find unsettling. As Bolton puts it, "Dracula is importantless for any timeless literary merit
that it may possess than forthe glimpse it offers a modem reader into the anxieties that
preoccupiedthe Victorian mind." (He adds that, since we share many of thesame anxieties
today, "the book may reveal as much about our ownculture as it does that of the Victorians.")
"Every age," Bolton observes,"gets the monster it deserves," and the late Victorians
deservedCount Dracula. Dracula is threatening because he is foreign, becausehe questions
Victorian bromides about progress and science, but aboveall because of his perverse sexuality.
Bolton calls the vampire figure "adistinctly Victorian monster in part because it represents the
dangerousreturn of repressed sexual desire," and Count Dracula in particular "anembodiment
of the repressed sexuality of the Victorian era." The novelis all about "vanquishing abnormal
sexual desire, restoring a 'normal'order." Repression, vanquishingthese were much in the
air, asBolton recalls, at the end of the nineteenth century when SigmundFreud was
formulating his theories of the subconscious. Dracula'stransmutation from literature to myth
makes it appropriate that manycritics have approached it with the same tools they would use
to decodeother mythologies. In "Recreating the World: The Sacred and the Profanein Bram
Stoker's Dracula,'' Beth E. McDonald uses the insightsof one of the twentieth century's most
23

influential theorists of religion,MirceaEliade (1907-86), to "illuminate the mythic patterns in
the textand demonstrat[e] why it is important that Dracula be destroyed."McDonald reads the
novel as a series of struggles between two varietiesof "sacred" power. On one hand is the
"numinous" vampirethe"wholly other," the uncanny figure with his connections to the
world ofspirits and devils; on the other is the strictly secular worldview of theEnglish
characters"their own established secular power, which they perceive as sacred." For
McDonald, Dracula is about the attempts topreserve Victorian English identity as it was
threatened with the numinous."Perpetuating the sacredness of their own cultural world
view,when that view is threatened," she writes, the characters "seek to fortifyits crumbling
foundations through the reestablishment of its secularsacredness, rather than through an actual
reunion with the divine."And yet it is impossible for them to forsake the numinous altogether;
inresorting to the host and the crucifix, they must "engage in mythic ritualsin order to establish
their relationship with the divine." Only by destroyingthe vampire can they avoid a
confrontation with "their ownapathetic faith in God."Eliade's brand of criticism, though it
once flourished in literaturedepartments, has in recent years fallen on hard times, but the
attentionto archetypes and universal myths of the sacred has not disappeared
entirely.Mythology today, though, is more often explored through thelens of the sciences,
especially evolutionary psychology and sociobiology.What once were universal archetypes
mysteriously rooted inour psyches have since been reconsidered as the product of
evolutionaryforces. In "The New Naturalism: Primal Screams in AbrahamStoker's Dracula,"
Carrol L. Fry and Carla Edwards apply some of the insights of these developing sciences to
the novel. Their account ofDracula explores the "primordial power ofthe story" and
emphasizesthe way it plays on our deepest fears. The authors argue that "Stoker'snovel seems
founded on four narratives: fear ofthe predator, territoriality,male bonding and cooperation,
and protection ofthe female." Allof these impulses can be explained in terms of evolutionary
advantages.We fear the dark and monsters under the bed, the socio-biologiststeach us, because
such fears served our ancestors well: those whofeared monsters were less likely to be eaten by
them, and they thereforelived to pass their genes on to us. It is no surprise that questions of
evolutionaryfitness were prominent in the 1890s; this was the era, as Fryand Edwards point
out, when "Darwin's findings caused spiritual indigestion"in the Victorian public. Dracula,
late Victorian contexts were not only technological andpersonal; they were also political. In
24

''Dracula: Righting Old Wrongsand Displacing New Fears," Jimmie E. Cain, Jr., relates
Stoker's novelto anti-Russian sentiment, which was running high in Britain in the1890s, in the
wake of the Crimean War of the 1850s. "Russia and herSlavic client states in the Balkans,"
Cain observes, "posed political, social,military, economic, and racial threats to Victorian
middle classstability," and Dracula figures England's enemy as an Eastern Europeanwith a
Slavic ancestry.




3.2 The sacredand the profane in BramStoker'sDracula

In her book Dracula: Between Tradition and Modernism (1998),Carol A. Senfcharacterizes
Victorian citizens as looking "Janus-like . . .in two opposing directions". While many people
looked forward tothe new century and to further progress, Senf writes that others
looked"nostalgically to the past, a period that they believed [my italics] containeda clear
synthesis of moral, religious, artistic, political, and socialthought". For many individuals, faith
became a secular matter ofproduction, consumption, and profit margins; and nature, once an
exampleof God's rational design for the world, seemed more of an arena"red in tooth and
claw" (Tennyson, "In Memoriam" 176) in which humanscompeted with each other for the
Darwinian glory of survival ofthe fittest. As many late-nineteenth-century individuals came to
understandhow so many other species had lived and died out during the pastmillennia, they
also had to accept their own mortality as a species; thisrealization called into question
traditional religious promises of redemptionthrough Christ, leaving many individuals in a
condition ofspiritual poverty characterized by doubt. However, the fact that menwere divided
over whether the alleged progress of the present time orthe simpler ways of the past were best
for society both morally and religiouslyseems to show that Victorian Britons were struggling
to findsome spiritual quality in their lives.During the last decades of the nineteenth century,
some Victorianssought reunion with divine mystery in study of the occult. Many turnedto
metaphysical organizations like the Hermetic Order of the GoldenDawn, a secret society
formed by William Wynn Westcott, a RosicrucianFreemason. Their mandate was to establish
25

connection betweenthe divine within man and the divine within the cosmos through
thepractice of magic, ritual, and the occult sciences.
18
The Society for Psychical Research,
whose search for a numinous connection with the divinetook place on a scientific level with
the study of occult phenomenain nineteenth-century culture, also evolved during this
period.Created in 1882 by a group of scholars fi-om Cambridge University,London, and other
nearby cities, the Society's purpose was to discover"whether some of the strange and
unacceptable eventstelepathy, clairvoyance, foreknowledgehad any basis in fact"
(SidgwickForewordv). As nearly as possible a systematic and scientific method ofcollection,
authentication, and analysis was followed; and in 1886 theinformation gathered by Edmund
Gumey, Frank Podmore, and FredericW. H. Myers was published in two volumes as
Phantasms of the Living.While Stoker would not have been aware of the numinous as
such,since Rudolf Otto had not yet coined the word when Stoker was livingand writing, his
family history seems to indicate that he would have understoodthe feeling. Charlotte Stoker,
Bram Stoker's Irish mother, regaledthe sickly child with tales of ghosts and of the Irish
banshee,whose keening cry, it was said, "presaged imminent death" (Roth 2) inthe family.
With this oral tradition as part of his early upbringing,Stoker would have been well versed in
the qualities of non-rational experience.However, as an adult Stoker also would have been
aware ofthe mystical side of pagan religious belief through his acquaintancewith several
people who practiced the art of magic.In her biography of Stoker, Barbara Belford notes the
unsubstantiatedrumor that Stoker was a member of the Hermetic Order of theGolden Dawn.
However, she also notes that he did have many fi-iendswho belonged to the organization and
might have leaded the secrets ofthe society fi-om them, despite their pledge of silence on the
subject.Further evidence of Stoker's awareness of the effect of an experienceof the numinous
might be found in his personal reaction to HenryIrving, whose reading of Thomas Hood's
"The Dream of EugeneAram" Stoker described in terms reminiscent of the hypnotic power
ofthe Ancient Mariner, saying "so great was the magnetism of his genius,so profound was the
sense of his dominancy that I sat spellbound". At the end of the reading, Stoker reportedly
collapsed inapparent hysterics in the face of Irving's spellbinding power; and it isthis power to
hypnotize that becomes an integral part ofthe vampire'sarsenal of supernatural weapons in

18
Known members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn include William Butler Yeats, Algernon
Blackwood, and Aleister Crowley, among others.
26

Stoker's novel.Published in 1897, Dracula reflects the attitudes and ideas of the late Victorian
period in regard to several important issues of the day,including the importance of
professional and social advancement, thesignificance of their own culture in the minds of
nineteenth-centuryBritons, and the concern over what the influx of foreign influencesmight do
to that culture and to the competition for place in society. Juxtaposedagainst these attitudes is
the sense that in Dracula faith hastaken second place to the professional advancement of many
of thecharacters. As the men and women ofthe novel are confronted by thenuminousness of
the vampire, the search for salvation becomes moreimportant; however, they approach their
spiritual quest more as a community,or even a committee, than as individuals. Perpetuating
thesacredness of their own cultural world view, when that view is threatened,they seek to
fortify its humbling foundations through the reestablishmentof its secular sacredness, rather
than through an actual reunionwith the divine on a higher level of spiritual awakening
thatmight be signified by a change in their world view. Transforming the epistolary style of
earlier, realistic novels, such asPamela (1740-42) and Clarissa (1747-48) by Samuel
Richardson,Stoker's work transcribes a Gothic nightmare whose multiple versionsmight raise
doubt as to the reliability of any ofthe versions, despite hisuse of realism. However, when
Jonathan Harker finally realizes whatthe women of castle Dracula and Dracula himself
represent, he feelsthe weight ofthe truth ofthe events that have transpired. Later, also,when
Mina Harker compiles all of the characters' individual storiesinto one, acceptance ofthe
situation as real must follow. Once the variousevents are put in perspective, the fears of the
individuals becomethe fears of society. If society is to be protected, the individuals mustform
a community and use their combined powers to destroy Dracula and his women. Their more
secular search and destroy mission againstthe vampires becomes a spiritual journey that
requires them to call ontheir faith, imagining themselves to be crusaders upholding the
sacrednessof British society.Instead of forming a relationship with God and remaking the
worldin a more cosmic context on an individual level, as the Ancient Marinerhas done, the
group in Dracula works in a more communal, almost corporate,fashion, forming a small
committee of dedicated men (and onewoman) banded together for the good of the larger
British community.Although Dracula is, like the Mariner, a figure of the numinous
condemnedto wander eternally, unlike the Mariner he is not allowed to tellhis story and can
take no active part in the healing of society. InStoker's novel, the human characters are in
27

power, despite Dracula'sdivine status, because they control the narrative. While the Mariner
isconstrained to serve the divine by becoming a vehicle for redirectionwith it, the humans in
Dracula make a decision to serve themselvesand their larger society as protectors of the
already established culturalsystem. For them, Dracula is not a vehicle of revelation or
transformation,but a threat to the conservative, established order of British Victoriansociety
that must be destroyed. Although the group calls on God intimes of danger, by denying the
sacred, though negative, aspects of thevampire, they deny the divine a place in their
secularized world; andwhile the Mariner answers the question of the human place in the
worldby positing the unity of all things under God, the humans who destroyDracula answer
the same question by choosing to believe in the righteousnessof their own established secular
power, which they perceiveas sacred. In Dracula, the chaos of profane space is represented in
severalways; however, writing in Our Ladies of Darkness: Feminine Demonologyin Male
Gothic Fiction, Joseph Andriano argues that the"circle is . . . the most pervasive archetypal
symbol in Dracula" (113)with the sacred circles formed by the heroes of the novel in
oppositionto the unholy circles of the vampires represented by the "whirlpools,vortices, and
circles within circles" (114). As Harker beginshis journey, he describes Transylvania in terms
of watery chaos, asthe "center of some sort of imaginative whirlpool" (Stoker 2) of
superstition;and later Dracula characterizes it as "the whirlpool of Europeanraces" (28). In
Emily Gerard's The Land Beyond the Forest,which Stoker read while researching
Transylvania, her discussionof Romanian superstition includes a reference to the whirlpool
asa place to be avoided because it is considered the residence of awater spirit, "the water-man
who lies in wait for human victims"(200).
19
Further representations ofthe circle also show up
repeatedly duringHarker's confusing journey from Borgo Pass to Dracula's castle. A"living
ring of terror" (Stoker 13) surrounds him as the wolves gatherabout the coach and menace him
while the driver is off searching forthe blue flames he and Harker have seen flickering in the
darkness.Later in the novel, the chaos ofthe vampire is juxtaposed against theorder ofthe
sacred as Professor Van Helsing and his band of men work to save Mina. When Mina has
been partially turned to a vampire byDracula and wears the circular imprint of the Sacred
Wafer on her foreheadas a sign of her profaneness. Professor Van Helsing places a"Holy

19
In Vampires: Lord Byron to Count Dracula, Christopher Frayling reproduces sections of Stoker's research
notes from Emily Gerard's book. Stoker's working and research notes for Dracula are housed at the Rosenbach
Museum in Philadelphia.
28

circle" (369) of the blessed wafers about Mina to protect herfrom the female vampires.
Furthermore, at the climax of the novel, it isa "ring of men" (376), Jonathan Harker, Quincey
Morris, ArthurHolmwood, and Dr. John Seward, who do their sacred duty by riddingthe world
of Dracula.




3.3 Vampirism, Russia, and the Slavs

Preparing to write Dracula, Stoker consulted a number of relativelycontemporaneous
documents about the geography, peoples, andcustoms of Eastern Europe.
20
Excerpts from most
of these sources areavailable in Clive Leatherdale'sThe Origins of Dracula: The Backgroundto
Bram Stokers Gothic Masterpiece. Among the books "writtenby British official servants-
soldiers, administrators, or their wives"(97) that Stoker consulted, William Wilkinson's An
Account of thePrincipalities of Wallachia and Moldavia: with various Political
ObservationsRelating to Them of 1820 gave Stoker the material for Dracula'sracial and ethnic
identity, an identity with pronounced Russianand Slavic antecedents. Thus Stoker learned that
in their inception, the Wallachians,' and by associationthe Moldavians, the predecessors of the
modem Romanians,descended from Slavic peoples immigrating to the region from Russiaand
sharing close blood relations with the Bulgarians.Dracula's genealogy reveals marked vestiges
of Wilkinson's text.But more importantly, Dracula's heritage suggests clear Russian andSlavic
antecedents.Stoker situates the castle "in the extreme east [...] just on the bordersof three
states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina" (D 3) nearthe conjunction of the Prut and Siret
rivers (D 417). This specific locationsuggests further allusions to Russia. First, it describes a
disputedarea at the border of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bessarabia,"* a territorythat Russia
won from Turkey in 1812. After the Crimean War, Englandand France forced Russia to return
the tract to Turkey. Russia subsequentlyrecovered the territory from Turkey after the war of
1878 onlyto lose it later that same year when the Congress of Berlina greatpower

20
In the interview with Jane Stoddard, Stoker singles out two of his most useful sources: "I learned a good deal
from E. Gerard's 'Essays on Rumanian Superstitions,' which first appeared in The Nineteenth Century, and were
afterwards published in a couple of volumes. I also learned something from Mr. Badn-Gould's 'Were-Wolves.
29

conference dominated by England, France, and Germanydemanded that Russia cede the
land to newly independent Romania(M. S. Anderson). Thus Castle Dracula rests not only on a
site of manyancient "battles" (D 38) but also on a source of prolonged Russo-Turkish and
Anglo-Russian hostility. As late as 1895, Vambery notesthat by mid-century from "the Isker
in Siberia to the banks of the Prut,all became Russian," a position of strength that now allows
Russia tofocus her ambitions south, toward India (4-5).Moreover, at the location of Castle
Dracula a significant event in the
career of Peter the Great occurred. Pares describes him as "a barbarianin his habits, direct and
practical in his insistence on knowing everythingthat was to be learned, and with the kind of
genius which consistsin extraordinary quickness of thought" (198). What Peter most wantedto
learn was the military and bureaucratic practices of the West. So in 1697 he began a "journey
of education to Europe" (Pares 197), takingin the secrets of the Swedish fortress at Riga and
working incognito inthe shipyards of Amsterdam and London so as to master modem
shipbuildingtheory, all the while trying to hire the best experts in the militaryand practical
sciences each country could provide (Pares 198).Equipped with this new knowledge, he
proceeded upon his return toprosecute successful wars of expansion on his neighbors to the
north,west, and south. Fortunately for Europe, Peter was not always victorious,and one of his
most famous defeats came at the hands of the Turks atthe Prut River, in the vicinity of Castle
Dracula, in 1710 (Pares 206).This defeat at the Prut is but one parallel between Dracula and
Peter,however. Dracula's reasons for sojourning to England are also verysimilar to Peter's, but
much more sinister. According to JenniferWicke Draculas journeys were as to go to "London
to modernize the terms of hisconquest, to master the new imperial forms and to learn how to
supplementhis considerable personal powers by the most contemporary understandingof the
metropolis" (487). However, Dracula visits Englandnot, as had Peter, to export innovation and
expertise, but as an invaderwho plans to conquer and stay. Stoker, who at age twenty-five was
elected auditor of the historical societyat Trinity (Ludlam 24), was much too thoughtful a
student of historyto have been unaware of Peter's exploits in England, exploits thatresonate in
his evil Eastern count.Since the 1970s, scholars have contended that in his research
forDracula, Stoker happened upon Vlad Dracula, a Wallachian prince whose cruelty in battle
earned him the sobriquet Vlad the Impaler, andmodeled Dracula after him. Although this
30

assertion is now a matter ofscholarly debate,
21
Stoker may well have drawn inspiration from
anotherinfamous impaler. In his first major study ofthe novel, Dracula:The Novel and the
Legend, A Study of Bram Stoker's Gothic Masterpiece,Clive Leatherdale suggests that Stoker
could have drawn a connectionbetween the historical Vlad Dracula and Ivan the Terrible.
Accordingto Leatherdale after reading ofVlad Dracula's penchant forimpaling his victims,
both domestic and foreign, Stoker added stakingto the list of measures for killing vampires.
Stoker's itierited antipathy to Russia combined with the links hevery possibly discovered
between Eastern vampire myths and Russiacould account for the prominent allusions to
Russia and to Slavic vampirefolklore that the author placed in or considered for what
somescholars believe to be the original opening chapter of Dracula.
22
Althougheventually
excised from the novel, the chapter was publishedseparately by his wife after his death under
the title "Dracula's Guest."The chapter contains close parallels with the vampire legends
amongthe Russians, Bulgarians, Romanians, and Serbians enumerated byOinas.











21
Elizabeth Miller, echoing Clive Leatherdale, categorically refutes the assumption,advanced most famously by
McNally and Florescu, that VladTepes (aka Vlad theImpaler) was Stoker's model for Count Dracula. In Dracula:
Sense and Nonsense, shewrites, "To state this as fact is irresponsible. All we know for certain is that Stoker
borrowedthe name 'Dracula' and a few scraps of miscellaneous information about Wallachianhistory from
William Wilkinson's An Account of Wallachia and Moldavia(1820). Out of such a mole-hill, mountains have
emerged" (180).
22
Clive Leatherdale in the introduction to his definitive annotated edition of thenovel, Dracula Unearthed,
contends that of "all the popular misconceptions surrounding Draeula, none seems more entrenched as the idea
that 'Dracula's Guest' is the excisedopening chapter" (14). He rests his argument on the differences in the styles,
narration,and characterization of Jonathan Harker between the two works. Leatherdalebelieves that "Dracula's
Guest" was originally intended to be one in a set of threescenes taking place in Munich during Harker's trip east.
Its excision from the finalpublished novel means that it "fell under the author's or editor's axe," most likely
thelater, for "whole chunks of the early part of the novel were removed at a very late stage,after the manuscript
had been submitted to the London publishers" (15).
31

3.4 Phantasmagoria: The modern vampire

Today the vampire is no longer the feared being that he oncewas. In the hundred years or so
post-Dracula the vampires transformationhas been like a star turning into a supernova; after
thegradual evolution of the vampire being over thousands of yearsthis final chapter in the
evolution has progressed rapidly. Thefear created by the vampire has dissipated, and the
vampire himselfhas become a parody of what he once was. The reason forthis is quite simple:
we no longer fear the vampire. It was societysfear of the vampire that allowed him to exist
through theages. But how did the fear subside after so long? And what doesthis mean for the
vampire in the twenty-first century?Although Dracula was the catalyst for the modern
vampiremyth it was almost uniquely the theatre, cinema and televisionexploitation of the
being that ultimately caused the shift towardsthe modern conception of the vampire. Whereas
in the superstitionsand myths of the Middle Ages or within folklore it was thelack of
knowledge that fuelled the existence of the vampire, thetechnological advancement and mass-
market productions ofmodernity eradicated the unknown and transformed the vampireinto a
household product. The vampire is used to promote everythingfrom breakfast cereals (Count
Chockula) to childrenstelevision (Mona the Vampire), to tourism, and is the subjectof endless
books, films and television programs. In fact, suchis the current widespread appeal of the
vampire that the majority of people today has not only heard of the vampire, but could
alsodescribe how he looks. And ninety-nine times out of a hundredyou can bet that the
description will include a cape, fangs, batsand a thirst for blood. Why is it, then, that this
imagery has beenadopted out of all the ones discussed? And how many people,although
instantly recognizing Count Dracula, have actually readthe book or are at least familiar with
the story? The answer tothese questions must be sought in the vampires progressionwithin
cinema, a development that undoubtedly ended our fear,but that also created an entirely new
vampire in the twenty-firstcentury.Dracula was a gruesome literary product that reflected
lateVictorian England; London had witnessed one of the mostsadistic serial killings in its
history through the infamous Jackthe Ripper murders. Although it is suggested that the
incidentwas a media hoax, the report from the Central News Agency ofa woman being
attacked by a well-dressed man who seized herby the throat again throws up parallels with
32

Stokers creation.
23
At the time some even went as far as to suggest thatit is so impossible to
account . . . for these revolting actsof blood that the mind turns as it were instinctively tosome
theory of occult force, and the myths of the DarkAges rise before the imagination. Ghouls,
vampires,bloodsuckers, and all the ghastly array of fables which have been accumulated
throughout the course of centuriestake form, and seize hold of the excited fancy.
24
The result
of Dracula was a renewed scholarly and publicinterest in the vampire. Important works on the
subject, suchas Dudley Wrights The Book of Vampires (1924) and MontagueSummerss The
Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928) and The Vampire inEurope (1929), sought to document the
vampires history in variouscultures and provided first-hand examples of the superstition It
was also during the 1920s that Dracula was adapted for the bigscreen, albeit somewhat
illegally, in the Expressionist Germanfilmmaker F. W. MurnausNosferatu: eineSymphonie
des Grauens(asymphony of horror) in 1922 starring Max Schreck: Nosferatu!Doesnt this
name sound like the very midnight call of Death?Speak it not aloud, or lifes pictures will turn
to pale shadows, andnightmares will rise up to feed on your blood, explains the
openingcaption. Although the film is considered an adaptation fromStokers novel, the
producers did not obtain copyright permissionand although the names of the characters and
places have beenaltered it clearly follows Draculas plot. As a result, the courtsordered all
copies of Nosferatuto be destroyed, although severalhad already been distributed, allowing the
film to not only survivebut also to become a vampire classic and collectors item.There are,
however, some quite striking alterations inNosferatufrom the original story, most notably the
appearance ofthe vampire Count Orlok. The first time he appears in vampireform he is
extremely sinister, has a huge form that fills the doorwayand his features are quite rat-like,
with protruding teeth,pointed ears and long, pointed fingers; here the vampire is moreakin to
the undead of folklore than the vampire of literature, inmany ways mirroring the image
evident in Varney. It is really theonly example where the traditional vampire was preferred
tothe Ruthven formula version, and may be one of the factorswhy the film proved so
popular. Count Orlok is portrayed in thesame way as Varney (lonely, desperate and
condemned), andthe viewer is encouraged to empathize with him an idea laterutilized by
Anne Rice in her Vampire Chronicles. Nosferatualsoadded its own iconography that remains

23
Delegation en Perse, a French journal of antiquities.MontagueSummers in The Vampire: His Kith and Kin
(London, 1928) adds that [the bowl is] amongst the illustrations of prehistoric utensils, p. 226.
24
Timothy Darvill, Prehistoric Britain (London, 1987).
33

associated withinvampire films: the dark and foreboding shadows, the prolongedmovements
of the vampire, the reaction shots that occur whena moment of horror occurs.Although more
like the folkloric vampire in appearance,Orlok does have some classic modern traits such as
waking at night, sleeping in a coffin and biting his victims neck. Withregards the plot, it does
follow that of Dracula in general withHutter (Harker) travelling to Transylvania, Land of
thePhantoms, to finalize the sale of some property to Count Orlok(Dracula), but in Wisborg,
Germany rather than London.Hutters employer, Knock (who takes the place of both
Harkersemployer Hawkins and Draculas minion, Renfield) suggeststhat he knows Orlok is a
Nosferatu when he tells Hutter that bytravelling to Transylvania he could make money,
although itmay cost him a bit of pain and a little blood.And so Orlok buys the house, attacks
Hutter and travels toWisborg onboard the Demeter, where he kills the crew. At this pointVan
Helsing makes a brief appearance giving a lecture on thevampire plant, the Venus Fly Trap,
but this is all we see of him.Missing too are the characters of Dr Seward, Lord
Godalming,Quincey Morris and Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker becomesEllen Hutter.
Another difference is the use of rats and the arrivalof the plague alongside the vampire, a clear
link with folkloricexamples; rats themselves are known to have introduced thebubonic plague
or Black Death in the fourteenth century. Theending of Nosferatuis also markedly different
from Dracula inthat Ellen (Mina) discovers she must entice the vampire into sunlightto
destroy him and so sacrifices her to do this. Orlok isdistracted whilst drinking Ellens blood
and misses the cockcrow,thus exploding into dust with the break of dawn, ending theplague.
This is similar to the popular myth that not only is sunlightlethal to vampires, but that the
plague and death broughtabout by them can only be stopped by destroying the vampire.Two
years later, in 1924, a theatre version of Dracula wasreleased in the form of Hamilton Deane
and John BalderstonsDracula: The Vampire Play and, although an extremely spare versionof
Dracula (set in only two locations: Dr Sewards parlourand Carfax Abbey), the play was a
great success and was instrumentalin persuading Universal Studios to create Dracula on the
big screen. It was this version, written by Tod Browning andreleased in 1931, and starring the
Hungarian actor Bela Lugosias Count Dracula that transformed the image of the
vampireforever. With the stage version, Deane realized that the operacloak would not only
have a great dramatic effect but could beused to cover hidden trap-doors as Dracula
disappeared underthe stage. Lugosi decided to carry the prop over into the screenversion and
34

the cape has now become as iconic for the vampireas fanged teeth or the stake that pierces the
heart.
It is worth noting, however, that Lugosi was not Browningsfirst choice, with popular actor
Lon Chaney the preferred candidate.Sadly Chaney succumbed to throat cancer in 1930
andLugosi, the star of the Deane / Balderston stage show, eventuallypersuaded his way into
the role (perhaps due to him agreeinga considerably lower salary than might be expected). The
production was also hit with a reduced budget due to studio financedifficulties, which in effect
meant not only were a number ofscenes cut from the final film, but that there was less money
forsalaries, a factor that may have determined Lugosis inclusion.One of the most memorable
and widely recognized features ofthe film is Lugosis rolling East European speech pattern; I
amDrrra-cul-aaa, which many attribute to the fact that he did notspeak English and therefore
had learned his lines phonetically.Lugosis portrayal of Dracula is a chilling performance; his
accent,facial expressions, threatening yet sophisticated demeanorand grandiose attire are still
widely associated with vampirestoday. The horror he brought to the role was such that on
theopening night many members of the audience fainted, a factorthat undoubtedly had the
producers sweating. They need nothave worried, for Dracula proved an instant success and
pavedthe way for further horror films by Universal includingFrankenstein (1931), The
Mummy (1932) and Draculas Daughter(1936), the sequel to Dracula. Perhaps it is fitting that
whenLugosi died in 1956 he was buried in one of his Dracula capes. JorgWaltje suggests that
[Lugosis] portrayal of Dracula as aforeign predator in the guise of aristocratic sophistication
becamethe role model for many vampires to come [within the cinema],
25
but although this may
appear the case, this role model hadalready been created in the Ruthven formula within
literature,and only the vampire image created by Murnau disrupted thistrend, albeit rather
briefly. This image was further enhanced by the number of Dracula-related films made by the
BritishHammer Horror corporation from 195874
26
, starring ChristopherLee and Peter
Cushing. The films were often praised for theirvisual style, although were rarely taken
seriously: Altogether thisis a horrific film and sometimes a crude film, but by no means
anunimpressive piece of melodramatic storytelling wrote one criticof Dracula in The Times
27
.
However, many critics of Dracula found it disgusting and vulgar,which is strange given the

25
See Miles Russell, Monuments of the British Neolithic (Stroud, 2000).
26
See Timothy Taylor, The Buried Soul (London, 2002).
27
Russell, Monuments.
35

success and popularity of the noveland the stage adaptation, and the consequent cinematic
versionsof Nosferatuand Universals Dracula. The media deemedit a singularly repulsive
piece of nonsense that was made insuch sickening bad taste,6 and the Daily Telegraph
sarcasticallycommented that a new certificate rating be created for it; s forsadistic or d for
disgusting.The making of Dracula was not without its restrictions; thecensoring board
demanded that there should be no scenesdepicting the vampires sinking their teeth into the
victimsneck and that the act of staking the vampire should be depictedout of shot. Also, they
demanded that women should beproperly clad and there be no scenes of a sexual nature. Sex
was something they believed there was no room for in a horror film.After watching a
preliminary black and white rough cut of thefilm, the Board made further requests to remove
the scenesshowing the staking of Lucy, Draculas seduction of Mina andthe closing
destruction scene of Dracula.Hammers response was to remind them that the x
certificatesuggested for Dracula would automatically prevent anyone underthe age of sixteen
from seeing the film and to argue that theaudience expected a certain amount of horror and
gore from thefilm. They also suggested that the proposed cuts would removethe excitement
and shocks that the audience was expecting.Hammers Dracula therefore relied heavily on the
sexual sideof vampirism for the first time and was the first film to show avampire baring its
teeth. Changes from the novel and previous efforts includedJonathan Harker being portrayed
as Van Helsings assistantand posing as a librarian at Draculas ancestral home. Keyscenes,
such as Draculas journey on the Demeter to Whitby, wereleft out. It is mentioned in
Hammers Dracula that vampires cannotchange themselves into bats, wolves or other such
creatures,a notion that is used heavily in other productions and is contraryto popular opinion.
This is contradicted in Hammers nextvampire film, Brides of Dracula, however.Hammers
Dracula is generally considered a worthy effort,given its budget, and, with the full use of the
Technicolor process and star performances by Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing,it remains
one of the classic vampire horror films in cinema.The success was not to last, though, and
eventually Lee becamesomewhat disillusioned by the direction in which the filmswere going.
He quit after The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), afterwhich only one more Dracula film
was released by Hammer.Once again the vampire genre in general was becoming staleand
audiences began to lose interest, but the vampire resurrecteditself and was thrown back into
the spotlight in the form of Anne Rices novel Interview with the Vampire (1976), the first
36

partof her now best-selling Vampire Chronicles. In this we hear thestory of the vampires
Louis and Lestat and how they become avampire family when they turn Claudia, a young
girl who losesher mother to the plague, into a child-vampire. The story ismarkedly different
from any other vampire narrative that camebefore it and is a deeply dark, disturbing and soul-
searchingmasterpiece that is second only to Dracula in dragging the vampireinto the modern
world. What it created was a personality forthe vampire, a kind of desperate being that was
continuallystruggling to understand its cursed existence; a theme that wasonly once hinted at
before in Varney.The 1970s revival also saw a remake of Nosferatuby theGerman filmmaker
Werner Herzog entitled Nosferatu: EinPhan -tom der Nacht(Nosferatu: The Vampyrein
English) starring Klaus Kinski as Count Orlok. The film was a fitting tribute to the original
and made its own mark on the Dracula theme. As thecopyright on Stokers novel had by then
expired, Herzog wasable to use the original character names, but he stayed true toMurnaus
film in most other respects. Notable additions sawmodern vampire imagery exploited, perhaps
due to a morewidespread understanding of vampires (courtesy of theUniversal and Hammer
offerings no doubt), such as the use ofthe bat and the cross, and rather than Orloks
(Draculas) vampirestatus being surmised for much of the film, his vampireguise is apparent
from the start. These common associations arefurther depicted when Orlok is staked by Van
Helsing (he waskilled by sunlight in the original), and when it is suggested thatChristian
symbolism is all-powerful against the vampire: thevampiricHarker is unable to leave the circle
of Communionwafers and Orlok shuns the cross after leaving the Demeter. Thefilm is not
quite sure of its logic on this point, though, as it alsoshows Orlok entering a church and
Harker ripping off the crosshe wears around his neck. The main point that can be drawnfrom
the re-make is that although it is in effect a re-release ofa world-famous classic and should
therefore be guaran teed adegree of success, Herzog still deems it necessary to
includecommon contemporary vampire themes and mythology in orderto satisfy his audience,
and this suggests that by the 1970s societyhad a firm idea of what a vampire should be,
something thatthe literary, theatrical and cinematic versions of Dracula mustbe credited
with.Due to this preconceived ideology, future vampire workshad to find that extra twist in
order to stimulate their audiences.It is likely that everyone who watches a modern vampire
filmwill be familiar with the vampire and perhaps also the vampirefilm genre as a whole.
Writers of modern vampire films use theiraudiences existing experience and knowledge, but
37

must alsostrive to provide something different and new, or else interest in the genre would
quickly wane. Audiences of the earlier filmswould have been a lot less familiar not only with
the vampire asan icon, but with the cinematic horror genre in general, and thisin itself creates
an increased capability for inducing fear. And asmentioned, it was Anne Rices offering that
was the catalyst forthe next stage in the vampires journey into the present.Interview with the
Vampire without doubt changed the courseof the vampires evolution and, as Dracula did with
the historicaland modern forms, bridged the gap between the early-modernvampire and the
present form. After re-inventing itself in the literatureof pioneering authors such as Anne Rice
and StephenKing, the vampire was born again in the world of the cinema,most notably in Joel
Schumachers The Lost Boys, which wasreleased in 1987. It made over us$32 million and
won the SaturnAward for Best Horror Film. The film tells the story of a teen ager,Michael,
who, on moving to Santa Clara with his mother andyounger brother, falls in with a gang of
vampire punks, oozing attitudeand clad in leather and riding motorcycles. From early onin the
film there is the suggestion that Star, the only girl of thegroup, is a form of psychic vampire
(discussed in detail shortly)and entrances Michael into falling in love with her. There areyet
further examples of psychic vampirism in the mind gamesplayed on Michael by the vampire
gang leader, who psychologicallyturns his rice into maggots and his noodles into worms.This
is good evidence that the cinematic vampire genre wasattempting to develop the common
vampire myth, and this isfurther supported in the creation of vampires through the
consumptionof vampiric blood in The Lost Boys, as opposed to themore traditional view of
biting the neck evident in earlier filmssuch as Nosferatuand Dracula. Once Michael drinks the
vampireblood offered to him by the gang, he starts to turn vampire himself.Here we witness
many of the common traits associated withvampires such as long fingernails, bad breath,
aversion to sunlightand lack of reflection as well as the strange ability of being able to float in
mid-air, something that is never really explainedto the viewer.With The Lost Boys we see the
common theme of darkness,indeed, much of the film is set at night. However, up until
thegangs attack on the beach, vampirism is assumed by the audiencerather than shown. There
are many vampire associations,such as the garlic, the use of mirrors, the vampire comics
andthe bat kite, but no actual vampires per se; rather than beingexplicit, it utilizes the
audiences preconceptions. The attackand the gangs vampire forms leaves no doubt on the
matter,and the scene is full of blood drinking and violence and isaccompanied by eerie church
38

organ music to heighten thetheme of horror; so now you know what we are, youll nevergrow
old and youll never die . . . but you must feed! David, theleader of the gang, informs
Michael.The Lost Boys is in many ways a strange vampire film, in thatit continually
downplays the vampire theme, almost as if it feelsit is exploiting its audiences fascination
with the subject and isslightly embarrassed by the topic. To compensate for this itadds an
element of humor and goofiness. A vampire sneers atthe Frog brothers (vampire hunters)
that garlic dont work,boys!, to which the brothers reply, Yeah, well try holy water,death
breath!. A scene involving the vampire child (whichcould have been deemed bad taste) is
made light-hearted withthe line Its the attack of Eddie Munster!. These snippets ofhumor
allow the film to be viewed as a satire and, while still ahorror film, The Lost Boys is a film in
which the horror is diluted.This is no more apparent than when the head vampire is
beingstaked and destroyed (a scene deemed too risqu for cinemajust thirty years earlier in
Hammers Dracula); The Lost Boysreduces the repulsiveness of this by showing the Frog
brothersdonning blacked out swimming goggles to protect them fromthe splattering blood,
thus bringing an element of humor tothe scene.The horror of vampirism is present alongside
the tongue in-cheek humor of it, as has become common in modern dealingswith the
vampire, despite attempts by Interview with theVampire or Bram Stokers Dracula to maintain
the fear element.The theme music to The Lost Boys is the Doors hit WhenYoure Strange
and includes the line When youre strange, no one remembers your name, a phrase that quite
poignantly sumsup the ailing vampire as the 1980s progressed into the 90s. Thesuccess of
vampire literature, which introduced us to the thinkingmans vampire, and films such as The
Lost Boys, which treatedthe vampire almost as a figure of ridicule or amusement,could not
disguise the fact that the traditional vampire wasbeginning to lose its relevance in the
technological modernworld. The answer was, rather unsurprisingly, to resurrectDracula once
more.






39

3.5 Science and faith in Dracula


"In obedience to the law as it then stood, he was buried in the centerof a quadrivium, or
conflux of four roads (in this case four streets),with a stake driven through his heart. And over
him drives forever theuproar of unresting London!"
28
No, not Dracula (1897), but the
closinglines ofa much earlier nineteenth-century work, Thomas De Quincey'sbleakly ironic
essay "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts"(1854). De Quincey is describing how
in 1812 the London populacedealt with the body of one of his prize exhibits, a particularly
grisly serialkiller who had escaped the gallows by hanging himself in his cell atdead of night.
Yet it is difficult for us to read this gleefully chilling passagetoday without thinking of Bram
Stoker's classic vampire novel.The quirky Christian symbolism, the mandatory staking down
of themonster to keep it from roaming abroad, the sense of a busily self-absorbedLondon
unaware of its proximity to a murderous presencethat haunts its most densely populated
byways: together these featuresseem virtually to define a basic iconography for the vampire
Gothic asit achieved canonical status in Dracula.In the half-century that separated Stoker from
De Quincey the punitiveassumptions behind the old suicide laws may have become littlemore
than a barbaric memory, but the subsequent attempts to view suicidemedically as mental
illness, redefining it as an instance of "moralinsanity," offered no easily civilizing consolation.
Thus what unitesthese two otherwise historically distinct writers is their menacing useof the
buried past to interrogate the present. In Stoker's work the twinpoles of past and present make
their appearance through a strangelyparadoxical and crucially modem trope that of the
spectator forced to confront a horror whose very existence seems to compromise any
possibilityof securing the line between the modem and the pre-modern.This troubling of
modernity's own historical self-consciousness is perhapsespecially marked in Dracula, which
comes replete with the latestin late-Victorian consumer goods, many of which fiction as a
meansof recording the structure of appearances and hence permit a precisememorializing
ofthe past: cameras, phonographs, and portable typewriters. "It is nineteenth century up-to-
date with a vengeance," as oneof Stoker's characters so aptly puts it {Dracula, 49).At the same

28
Thomas De Quincey, "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts", in D. Masson, ed..The Collected
Writings of Thomas De Quincey, 14 vols. (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1890), 13:124.
40

time, in Dracula the past extends across space intothose zones of arrested development which
modernity has not fullyreached, where the trains do not yet run on schedule or where the
railwaylines have come to an abrupt halt. Though no farther from homethan a rural
Hampstead churchyard, it can be profoundly "humanizing"to gaze upon the lights of London
and to hear "the muffled roar thatmarks the life of a great city," despite the knowledge that the
capital issimultaneously a site of depravity and danger. For theroutes of communication out
ofthe metropolis may also bring terrifyinglyarchaic elements back into it, as in that eerie
moment when CountDracula is seen hailing a hansom cab near Hyde Park or when, in
TheJewel of Seven Stars (1903), the presence of an ancient Egyptianmummy in a house in
Notting Hill begins to have strange effects uponeveryone who comes into contact with it. Such
frightful encounters areimagined as tests of character in Stoker's supernatural romances,
momentsof truth that will purge the self of its secret weaknesses, aspertaininga person's
intrinsic worth in the face of a plethora of social andpsychic complications and providing a
center of stability in a dangerousworld of flux. Hall Caine, the novelist and dedicatee of
Dracula,once defended the genre of romance as a type of writing that shows"what brave
things human nature is capable of at its best." But inStoker's work, the protagonists are forced
to confront their worst, beforethey can really know what their best might be.If tests of
character are endemic to modem adventure narratives, Stoker's Gothic novels mark a growing
sense of difficulty with the fictionof "character" itself, a term that was intimately linked to
late-Victorian views of modernity. At its most straightforward, "character"designated the self-
reliant private individual whose ability to take controlofhis (quintessentially his) own destiny
was the cynosure of socialand national progress. This was the brand of individualism
espousedby moralists like Samuel Smiles, for whom the display of characterwas proof that
one was living a truly dutiful life. At the same time, inthe language of politics, character
indicated the rational citizen, the individualproperty owner of classical liberalism who, by
Gladstone's era,was increasingly expected to rise above his own narrow self-interest.What
united these different emphases was the belief that character wasessentially a function of
human willpower, a disciplined effort calledinto play by the idiosyncrasies of the self and the
vagaries of one's situation. Dracula is a novel that is very much concernedwith modernity's
strengths and weaknesses, and, understandably,some of Stoker's contemporaries were uneasy
with this aspect ofthe book. In the Spectator, for example, one anonymous critic
41

dismissedDracula''
29
modem-day trappings, suggesting that the novelwould have been "all the
more effective if Stoker had chosen an earlierperiod" as his setting, particularly given the
essentially "medievalmethods" by which the vampire is laid to rest. And, of course, the
reviewerhas a point, corroborated by no less an opinion than that of JonathanHarker, the first
character to fall into Count Dracula's clutches.Harker innocently worries that "the old
centuries had, and have, powersof their own which mere 'modernity' cannot kill" (Dracula,
49).The mixture of curiosity and fear recounted by Harker at the opening ofthe novel as he
makes his journey to Count Dracula's castle in order tofinalize the mysterious aristocrat's
purchase of property in London is avery modem young Englishman's sense of shock at
slipping into apre-modern world. It is a world that is all too vivid. On his coach ridethrough
Transylvania-his first trip abroadHarker is fascinated by the sight at "every station" of
"groups of people, sometimes crowds...in all sorts of attire." "Strangest" of all are the Slovaks,
"with their bigcowboy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, andenormous
heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over withbrass nails On the stage they
would be set down at once as some oldOriental band of brigands". Harker's nervousness is
intensifiedby the "hysterical" reactions that the news of his final destinationprovokes among
the local people.This powerful historical pull back into the past becomes even strongerupon
Harker's arrival at his final destination. Thomas De Quinceyonce observed that the gift of total
recall "must be the next bad thing tobeing a vampire," but it is clear that in Dracula total recall
is partlywhat makes the Count who or what he is.
30
Once ensconced at the castle,the newly
accredited solicitor hears the Count expatiate with immensepride on his family lineage, tracing
it back to Attila the Hun andconceiving time as an endless series of battles and invasions.
Harker,records that, the Count "spoke as if he had been present at them all," hislyrical
nostalgia barely disguising the pure immediacy of the good olddays. In a sense, then, Harker
must unclear what he alreadyknows, since Dracula is essentially a tale in which
ProtestantEnglishmen and Englishwomen with a healthy respect for facts cometo see that, far
from being "idolatrous," "such things" as holy wafers,missals, wild garlic, and the rosary are a
vitally necessary means ofself-defensedespite their medieval provenance. At first glance,
thebook could be described as a kind of conversion narrative, a return toancient beliefs

29
Spectator, July 31, 1897, pp. 150-51
30
Thomas De Quincey, quoted in J. Hillis Miller, The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 64.
42

motivated by an occult, and truly ocular, dread. Fromthis perspective, Dracula can be read as a
modem novel that is largelydominated by the stories and specters of the past.Nevertheless,
Stoker's novel does insist upon a very different temporality,a continuous present that is
constituted jointly through the procedures of law and science. Jonathan Harker's detailed notes
fromhis Transylvanian journey reflect both his own recently completed legaltraining and the
ethnographic travelogues of the period. If, inpurely literary terms, Dracula draws heavily upon
the legal narrativesassociated with Wilkie Collins, whose book The Moonstone
(1868)imagined the novel as a collection of depositions. Stoker's work alsoinvokes more
practical nonfictional sources like his own exhaustivecompilation of The Duties of Clerks of
Petty Sessions in Ireland(1879). Written while the author was still employed as a civil servant
inDublin, this handbook was designed to enhance bureaucratic effectivenessthroughout "the
whole British Empire." In an ambitious attemptto rationalize the mass of "facts and theories
resulting from the operationsof the last twenty-seven years," Stoker itemized the formal
requirementsin preparing evidence for use in court proceedings in wordsthat echo those of
Dracula's prologue. Thus, "each information shouldcontain a full and simple statement of all
material facts to which thewitness can depose" and "should be taken as nearly as possible in
thewitness's own words, and in the first person.
31
Empirically, therefore,Stoker's novel
pretends to the status of "simple fact," assembling animpressive variety of sources,
predominantly journal or diary entries,but also including newspaper articles, letters, fragments
from a ship'slog book, and an alienist's case notes .But in Dracula "simple facts" are never
simple. They are a constantproblem for the various professionals who make facts their
business.The same opening chapters which depend upon a lawyer's observationsalso reveal to
us the law's fallibilities. After encountering apack of wolves on his coach ride, Harker
confesses that it "is onlywhen a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can
understandtheir true import. Yet, in truth, it takes himsome time to recognize the gravity of
his situation. Mesmerized by thevampire's business acumen and reassured by the presence of
the LawList among the other English reference books in the castle's library,Harker is
unprepared for the Count's nocturnal activities, which in elude spreading false evidence by
putting on the solicitor's own clothesas a disguise."' Harker's visit to Transylvania has placed
him beyondany legal redress, turning him into "a veritable prisoner, but withoutthat protection

31
Bram Stoker, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (Dublin: John Falconer, 1879), pp. v-vi and 27.
43

of the law which is even a criminal's right." . The behavioral sciences have long been a fertile
seed ground forliterary-critical approaches. In 1910 Ernest Jones wrote "Hamlet andOedipus,"
an article published in Journal of the American PsychologicalAssociation that applied
Sigmund Freud's writings to literary analysis,reasoning that if characters in works of literature
come alive asreal people, they can be psychoanalyzed. Generations of critics havecontinued
exploring literature through Freudian concepts. Carl Jung'sideas have also attracted a great
deal of attention among literary critics.Maude Bodkin's Archetypal Patterns in Poetry,
published in 1934, isan early approach, to be followed by many others. Today, variations
onboth approaches are legion.Sociobiology and the parallel field of psychobiology (for
brevity'ssake, we use the term sociobiology here to describe both), newer developmentsin
behavioral studies, also offer the potential to become apowerful hermeneutic methodology in
the study of literature and film.Closely related to Jung's description of the collective
unconscious,sociobiology suggests that a "whisper within" leads us to programmedresponses
that transcend reason and the conscious mind. Sociobiologydiffers from Jung's findings in
presupposing that the whisper emanatesnot from symbolic intuition but from millions of years
of adaptive behaviorand inhabits the most basic levelthe human gene. Like Freudianand
Jungian concepts, sociobiology offers a promising approach toliterary analysis. In the absence
ofa better name, we will call it primaltraitscriticism.Sociobiology focuses on visceral-level
responses rather than cerebral;thus, an application of concepts from this field to literature
seemsmost fruitful for works with powerful primal and mythic appeals.Many works could be
fruitfully analyzed with a primal-traits methodology,from ancient epics to the latest slasher
movie. But the tale of terror, a type of literature long recognized to evoke strong response at
theunconscious level, offers an excellent example for analysis throughprimal-traits criticism.
Therefore, we will apply this approach to a signaturework ofthe horror genre: Abraham
Stoker's novel Dracula. Thenovel obviously exerts a powerful pull on the popular
imagination.Dracula has not been out of print since its publication and has inspireda plethora
of vampire novels and films. This appeal, and indeed that ofmany others of the horror genre,
rests on fictional conventions thathave long endured for a very good reason. They whisper
messages toreaders at the most primordial level: instinctual responses. Stoker'snovel seems
founded on four narratives: fear ofthe predator, territoriality,male bonding and cooperation,
and protection of the female.These narratives in the novel, especially the last three, interact in
44

creatingits power over succeeding generations of readers by evoking a response,socio-
biologists might say, emanating from our genetic heritage.With his Origin of Species,
published in 1859, Charles Darwin createda revolution in the way humanity thinks of itself.
The great religionsofthe west, Judaism and Christianity as well as Islam, posit theassumption
that God gave humanity a special place in the creation,"dominion over the fish ofthe sea, and
over the fowl ofthe air, and overevery living thing that moved upon the earth" (Genesis 1:28).
Darwin,on the other hand, describes humanity as one of millions of species engagedin what he
called the great "Struggle for Life," the battle to adaptto an environment that is the true arbiter
of survival. Individual membersof the species that have some trait privileged by the
environmentare fittest to survive. They breed to pass on this adaptive trait and causethe
species to change physically through natural selection (see Originof Species, iii, 55).Darwin's
findings caused spiritual indigestion of various sorts, suggesting,as they do, not only that
humankind evolved from "a hairyquadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably
arboreal inits habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World, but that it evolved from this earlier
form through the iron laws ofevolution: adaptation to changes in the environment through
naturalselection and survival of the fittest. Christianity remained in denialthrough the
nineteenth century, and conservative Christian sects clingdoggedly to the "Genesis" version of
creation even today.Socio-biologists' interests lie in the study of animal behavior
withapplication to human behavior, and ultimately, in fact, to the study ofhuman nature itself
Chapter Nine of Carl Degler'sIn Search of HumanNature offers an excellent review of the
literature of sociobiology.However, E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
createdmuch of the controversy surrounding this field in 1975 and hasremained the standard
text.In this work, Wilson applies the successful studies of animal and insectpopulations to
human behavior. He responded to criticism of hisfindings with On Human Nature, published
three years later. In bothbooks, he begins with the Darwinian assumption that species
evolvethrough adaptation to the environment by individuals, who, as the fittest,survive and
pass on their genetic heritage. But Wilson expands the discussion fi-om the purely physical
adaptation described by Darwin toadaptive social behavior. This key issue inspired the
controversy overhis works. The environment, he posits, rewards not only species'
physicalcharacteristics but also those group behaviors most beneficial tosurvival. Cultural
practices and behavior, in other words, may becomesurvival traits if they are adaptive. Then,
45

over milletmia, these behaviorsbecome part of the species' heritage at the instinctual level.
Wilson'sinitial assumption about this approach stated in On Human Natureseems especially
interesting for the study of the arts and for aprimal-traits critical methodology. Wilson posits
that not only our beliefs and the actions based on thesebeliefs but our responses to real or
fictional situations emanate fromwhat David Barash calls "the whispers within," subtle voices
from tensof thousands of years of human evolution and located in genetic matter.Of human
behavior, Wilson writes, "Before the curtain is drawn andthe play unfolds, the stage has
already been partly set and much of thescript written. This sociobiological approach is
fascinatingly similar to Jung's conceptsand parallels them in many respects. Calvin Hall and
VemonNordby describe Jung's collective unconscious in terms similar to thefindings of
Wilson and others on instinct: "What is learned through experienceby previous generations
can be inherited by future generations,and does not need to be learned by them anew. Habits
become instincts". Jung, however, followed Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's viewson evolution: that
is, species may learn from experience and build thisexperience into their genetic heritage in a
relatively short period oftime. Darwin denied Lamarck's view in favor of natural selection
andsurvival of the fittest, a process that demanded far longer for the evolutionof a species.
Sociobiology and psychobiology assume Darwin'sapproach. But Wilson and Jung agree on a
basic principle: capacitiesfor response are built into our nature at the most primordial level-
the"germ plasma" to Jung and the human gene to Wilson.The two approaches immediately
differ in terms of application, however.Jung developed his theory of archetypes, symbols that
representthe collective experience of the species as related to myth. Socio-biologistsfocus on
patterns of animal and human behavior: aggression,territoriality, kin relationships and sexual
rituals, for instance-all qualities that gave some adaptive advantage for the species.One
fundamentally Darwinian assumption underlies socio-biologists'thinking. They find that the
drive to procreate the species subtly directsOne ofthe lessons to be drawn from Harker's
misperceptions isthe need for a thorough scrutiny of the experience of our senses if the same
facts are to be known. This gives scientific investigation a specialplace within the novel,nearly
all other patterns of behavior. In Origin of Species, Darwin wrote,"In looking at Nature, it is
most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind-never to forget that every
single organic beingmay be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers".The
"tangled bank" passage in Origin, in which the author describes amass of plants, with each
46

individual trying to choke out others so that itand its progeny can survive, states the case for
the procreation drive quite clearly. Wilson puts the matter only a little differently:"The brain
exists because it promotes the survival and multiplication ofthe genes that direct its assembly.
The human mind is a device for survivaland reproduction, and reason is just one of its various
techniques". A primal-traits critical methodology would argue that "prepared learning"leads
readers to respond to certain stories when we finally encounterthem, even though the response
may not have pre-existed the encounter.The continuing popularity of Dracula bespeaks the
potency of thenovel's hold on the popular imagination. Stage productions toured Englandand
the United States soon after the book was published, attractinglarge audiences everywhere.
Nosferatu, the first film adaptation,appeared in 1921, early in the history of cinema. Because
F. W. Murnau,the German director, had failed to get permission to use Stoker'sstory, the film
was soon withdrawn from circulation. But TodBrowning's Universal Studio's adaptation in
1930, starring Bela Lugosi, opened a floodgate of Dracula films that has extended to the new
millennium.The primordial power of the story seems beyond question.Surely fear of the
predator who would consume us is one of the mostprimal of responses. Texts that portray the
predator-prey relationshipstir the sublime shiver of vicarious fear, and Dracula is precisely
such apredator. Wilson mentions serpent aversion as a type of prepared learning.Not all
people, he asserts, fear snakes, but they can learn such fearmore easily than affection or
indifference for them. Assuming humanity'scommon ancestors were, as Darwin postulated,
"arboreal in theirhabits," such a predisposition to a predator that hunted our "hairyquadruped"
forebears in the trees seems a likely inheritance. Predatorstories abound in the literature of all
nations, from the Big Bad Wolf tothe werewolf to the popular slasher films, in which a
different type ofpredator (interestingly enough, often somehow dehumanized by maskor
disguise) stalks teenagers. But the vampire tale has the greatest currencyin the twentieth
century of any such story line. The vampire is,after all, as the Count says of the wolves
outside his castle, one of the"children of the night," a being well suited to trigger visceral fear
ofpredators that hunted our primordial ancestors in the dark.Stoker establishes the vampire's
role as a hunter-predator early inthe film. In one of the most oft-quoted scenes in the novel
(especially in Freudian analyses), Jonathan Harker strays outside his room in Dracula'scastle,
against the Count's advice, and he awakes to find himselfthe prey ofthe Count's wives.
Dracula enters the room "as lapped in astorm of fury" to save him, waving the wives away.
47

When they complain,he tosses them a bag, from which there emanates "a gasp and alow wail,
as from a half smothered child". Clearly, the Count hasbeen a-hunting and shares his prey
with the wives. But they too arepredators. Freudian analyses ofthe novel stress the sexual
suggestivenessof the wives, whose "wanton" and "voluptuous" beauty reeks ofsexuality, as
they bend over a supine Harker and place their lips on hisneck, while he waits "in a
languorous ecstasy . . . with beating heart". But the "kisses" that they anticipate are his blood.
Harker hasstrayed into the dark, and predators have found him.The predator/prey plot thickens
when Dracula stalks Lucy Westenrasuccessfully. He lures her outside her home to drink her
blood, andmanages to gain entry later to prey on her again, ultimately causing herto become a
vampire. Then she too is a hunter and preys upon childrenin London as "the bloomer lady."
The hunt then shifts to Mina Harker,who falls victim to the predator when he gains access to
her throughRenfield. The vampires' drinking of their victims' blood must resonateat the primal
and instinctual level as the action of a hunting predatorbecause, as Renfield so correctly
quotes from the Bible (Deuteronomy12:23), "the blood is the life!".A more sophisticated level
of conflict arises when a band of sturdyheroes defends its territory against this predator, who
is an "other," anoutsider and an invader. Wilson defines territory as "one ofthe variantsof
aggressive behavior" and states that a "territory" is "an area occupiedmore or less exclusively
either directly by overt defense or indirectlythrough advertisement". In The
TerritorialImperative, Robert Ardrey establishes territoriality as one of the most common
instinctual responses across species boundaries.











48

CONCLUSIONS


We have seen that the vampire has taken on many formsthroughout history before finally
adopting that which we knowso well in the present. The modern vampire sleeps in his
coffinthroughout the daylight hours, waking come sunset to stalk hisprey and drink its blood.
And yet was his path from ancientdemon to modern-day fanged fiend inevitable, given all
theexamples discussed? Was his evolutionary transformation aconstant progression through
history and culture?One must here determine whether there is a definite linkbetween each
form; for example, was it inevitable that thespirit form of the vampires early history would
one day metamorphoseinto a more solid being (in this case, the revenant)?If it is decided that
no single common attribute of vampires,such as blood-drinking, shape-shifting or rising from
the grave,is necessary, then it is reasonable to suggest that either a) thereis another conclusive
ever-present factor or b) there is in factno link and therefore no evolutionary pattern. It is the
authorsopinion that there can be seen to be no defining link in allexamples of vampirism
except for the aspect of fear, and it isthis point that the fundamental elements of any doctrine
mustbe based upon. The progression that we witness in arriving at the modernmyth, then, is
the spirit or demon form evident in the ancientworld followed by a cross-over in the
prehistoric period whereshifting funerary beliefs depict clear associations between thephysical
dead and the spiritual dead. This leads in turn to theidea of the revenant, or undead being, that
could be trapped onearth after death (caused by many factors, often area-specific)with a
progressive route apparent from this point up to the moderncreation: through the Medieval
period, the epidemics of theeighteenth century, the Gothic literature of the nineteenth
centuryand finally the fixed, modern form we are familiar with.Many people regard literary
examples as the basis of themodern vampire myth, and although this is a fair assumption
inmany respects, these themselves were influenced and basedupon much earlier foundations,
as we have seen. The earlyreports of the eighteenth-century epidemics were seen as thefirst
documentary evidence of vampires, and yet medieval writerssuch as Walter Map or William
of Newburgh (see Appendix)provided documentary examples some 500600 years
previously.In essence, it all depends on how exactly one defines theterm vampire. Many
works on vampires tend to concentrate their analysison the latter phase of vampirism, the
49

period from the early eighteen century to the end of the nineteenth, culminating inDracula and
responses and critiques of this. They do, however,acknowledge the earlier history of
vampirism but do not usually dwell on this for too long. Although the word vampire did
notenter the English language until 1736 (and so in effect prior tothis point there were no
vampires per se), it is impossible todeny that early demons and revenants are precursors of
thevampire. Thus it is equally important to consider these indetail in any vampire
history.Aside from the popular imagery and the elements that areassociated through the
varying cultures or periods we must alsoconsider what the vampire represents. If the modern
vampireimage is the culmination of a historical evolution based on fear(and fascination with
death), then once this fear began to subsidewhat we are left with is fascination with the being
andwith death, and this is evident in many cases of vampire crime.It is this factor that Ernest
Jones pointed out above; that therelationship between the living and the dead, or life and
death,can be maintained so long as desire or fear, or both, are present. Ifone replaces the other,
such is apparent in the modern examples,would it then be expected that the representation of a
vampiremay also change? This goes back to the suggestion earlier thatthe vampire is for some
the ultimate villain (or Stuart Jeffrieship, sexy, immortal teen). However, there is
something remark -ably more fundamental in societys interest with vampires, andthis is our
desire for ever-lasting life. The lure of the vampire isoften that he cannot die (so long as he
feeds on the life-force ofblood, energy, etc.) and societys attempt to emulate this is
oftenapparent. We have noted the many examples of using blood asa rejuvenator throughout
history, and in the present this act isstill evident in the extreme cases of vampires torture or
murder,where the killer consumes the victims blood in order to obtaintheir life. It would be
difficult to surmise that interest in thevampires immortality could only begin to form after
societyovercame its fear of the being, as in order to seek to emulate thevampire a person must
first hold the belief that not only is thevampire powerful and dominant but that in being these
things he must instill fear in others. It is, perhaps, a kind of catch-22:the vampire needs the
fear in order to remain dominant butwhile the fear remains we cannot expect to empathize
with himand thus become like him.The quest for immortality is by no means a
phenomenonexclusive to vampirism and examples are far-reaching withinsociety. Examples
include the miraculous healings of Jesus and,ultimately, his resurrection from death, the quest
for the HolyGrail, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, tales of revitalizing springs,and examples from
50

mythology such as Achilles or the Gorgonsfrom Greek Mythology and the mythical Phoenix
who wouldrise from the flames of its own death to live again. Interestingly,there are often
ways in which an immortal being can die. In theHighlander films this could be done by cutting
off an immortalshead, and with vampires there are numerous ways such as thestake through
the heart, or sunlight, and this tends to suggestthat although we are deeply interested in the
dream of immortalityit is tantalizingly beyond our grasp. There is no typical vampire. Perhaps
a true vampire wouldbe an amalgamation of all the forms we have seen worldwide as well as
reflecting attributes of all the historical examples. Inessence, the vampire reflects an ever-
changing being that bearsrelevance to the culture it exists in. The modern vampire is abeing
born of demons, burned as a heretic and reviled as a fiend;the Devils own creation. What the
future may hold for him isuncertain, yet it is undeniable that the image immortalized
byDracula, encapsulating over six thousand years of history, cannever be undone. Stoker's
personal library, but it is possible to form a generalidea of its scope and subject matter, as
distinct from the bookswhich he studied in reference libraries for background informationfor
his own books. The discovery of his research notes for Dracula(now in the Rosenbach
Museum & Library, Philadelphia) threw a flood oflight on the meticulous detail of his
research, and Clive Leatherdale'sstudy The Origins of Dracula (1987) lists over thirty such
titles and examinesin detail seventeen of them. These do not appear, however, to bebooks
from Stoker's personal library.However, Harry Ludlam's book A Biography of Dracula: the
LifeStory of Bram Stoker (1962), mentions that in 1910, two years beforeStoker's death, Bram
and his wife Florence moved from their house inDurham Place, Chelsea, to a smaller house in
nearby St. George's Square,and discarded hundreds of books collected over many years. These
includedauthors like Kipling, Mark Twain, and Stevenson, volumes ofEgyptology, a history of
the Ku Klux Klan, and sets of ordnance maps forthe British Isles.In the year following
Stoker's death, the rest of his library wassold up, probably by his widow Florence, and the
printed catalogue ofSotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge in 1913 listed the remainder of the
library.This was disposed of on Monday, 7th July, and ran to 317 items.The cataloguemakes
fascinating reading, and indicates the wide range of Stoker'sinterests and associations.Travel
and history were represented by books on Egypt, Asia,Canada, and America, which had
survived the sale in 1910. Predictably, a number of other books were concerned with the
theatre and theatrical history,including biographical studies of Stoker's idol Henry Irving. In
51

additionto the works of Shakespeare and other items of Shakespeare interest, there were books
on the Bacon cipher controversy. Books of poetry includedsuch authors as Shelley, Browning,
Tennyson, Eugene Field, JamesWhitcombe Riley, and Walt Whitman. Field and Riley were
personalfriends of Stoker, and Riley ("the Hoosier Poet") was also a favorite of Irving. Stoker
had been captivated by Whitman's poems from the time thathe first read Leaves of Grass
when a student at Trinity College, Dublin.Stoker later became a great friend of that poet.The
Sotheby sale included seventeen Whitman items; mostly associationcopies inscribed "Bram
Stoker, from his friend, the Author." Item136 was a unique collection of fragments of
Whitman's writings in hisown hand on scraps of paper, mounted in an album. There was also
an interesting autographed letter from Stoker describing how, with EdwarDowden, he had
defended the poet from violent criticism in a discussion atthe Fortnightly Club, Dublin.
Whitman wrote: "My physique is entirelyshattered, doubtless permanently from paralysis and
other ailments. But Iam up &dresss& get out every day a little live here quite lonesomebut
hearty & good spirits. Write to me again."There were few works of fiction in the catalogue,
but presumablythese would have been sold off in 1910 when Stoker moved house. Remaining
fiction books included the works of Stevenson, tales by H.Rider Haggard and Rudyard
Kipling, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,E.T.W. Hoffman's Weird Tales, and a volume of stories
by J. Sheridan LeFanu. Other books of folklore and occult interest included W. Silkes,British
Goblins, Elliott O'Donnell, Byways of Ghost-Land, D.MacRitchie, Fians, Fairies and Picts,
J.G. Campbell, Superstitions andWitchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of
Scotland,and a volume of Anancy Stories of the West Indies by Pamela ColmanSmith, with an
autographed letter from her. There were also copies of themagazine The Green Sheafedited by
Smith, with her hand-colored illustrations. A large part of the collection was taken up by over
sixty presentationcopies of books to Stoker and his wife. Notable individuals whoinscribed
their books to Stoker included S.L. Clemens (Mark Twain), BretHarte, Winston Churchill,
W.B. Yeats, and Hall Caine. Caine was a specialfriend of Stoker, and the presentation copy of
Caine's My Story (1908)reads "To my dear Bram, to whom this book owes much." It will
berecalled that in turn, Stoker had dedicated Dracula to "my dear friend,Hommy-Beg" (a
nickname for Caine).One unique item in the catalogue was No. 143, a Death Mask andHands,
closed, of President Abraham Lincoln. These were cast by thesculptor Augustus St. Audens in
1886 from original molds made byLeonard Wells Volk before Lincoln went to Washington
52

for his first presidency.The molds were found by Volk's son twenty-five years later,
andtwenty men subscribed to purchase the molds and present them to theAmerican nation.
Each of the twenty received bronze casts of the face andhands with his name in each case, cast
in bronze, and two of the men wereHenry Irving and Bram Stoker. Item 144 was the original
manuscript ofStoker's lecture on Lincoln.Browsing through the Sotheby catalogue one
discovers a great varietyof subjects which must have had special interest for Stoker, such as:
H.Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals (1891), Robert Benson,Sketches of Corsica
(1825), J. Baker, Imperial Guide, with PicturesquePlans of the Great Post Roads (1802), W.
Morton (translator), Collection ofProverbs, Bengali and Sanscrit(1832), J.C. Lavater, Essays
onPhysiognomy (5 vols., 1789), A. Balfour, Second, Third and Fourth Reportsof the
Wellcome Research Laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College,Khartoum (3 vols., 1906-
11), J.W. Powell, First and Second Annual Reportsof the Bureau of Ethnology, 1880-1, Nic.
de Febure, Compleat Body ofChymistry(1670), The Lightning Sea-Column or Sea-Mirrour,
discoveringall the Coasts and Islands of Europe, Africa, America and Asia (1689), SirW.
Hamilton, Collection of Vases, mostly of Pure Greek Workmanship, discoveredin Sepulchres
in the Kingdoms of the two Sicilies(3 vols.,1791-95), Statutes made and established from the
time of Kyng Henry thethird, unto the firstyear of the reign of Henry the VIII (1543),
Wm.Rastall, Collection of Statutes now in force from Magna Charta, until thereign of Queen
Elizabeth (1588), Geoffrey Chaucer, Works (1721), M.Sadeler, VestigidellaAntichita di Roma
(n.d.), Wm. Stirling, SomeApostles of Physiology, Account of their Lives and
Labors(privately printed,1902), F. Harvey, List of Portraits, Views, Autograph Letters,
andDocuments contained in an Illustrated Copy of the Princess MarieLiechtenstein's History
of Holland House (only 25 copies printed, n.d.).Of special interest was an album of Original
Pencil Sketches byWilliam Fitzgerald, who was one of the illustrators for Stoker's bookUnder
the Sunset (1882). Fitzgerald was responsible for the picture of thegloomy castle of the King
of Death, which seems like a precursor ofStoker's Castle Dracula. In the last few years, a
reckless mythology alleges that BramStoker died of syphilis. There are two sources for this
story. The mainsource is Daniel Parson, great-nephew of Stoker, in his book The ManWho
Wrote Dracula (London, 1975; New York, 1976). A secondarysource is a family tradition of
Senator David Norris, a connection of theDublin city branch of the Stoker family.Parson's
claim rests on the interpretation of the Death Certificateof Stoker, which reads:
53

"LocomotorsAtaxy 6 months, Granular ContractedKidney, Exhaustion." Parson asserts that
'LocomotorsAtaxy' is aeuphemism for TabesDorsalisor General Paralysis of the Insane, the
finalstages of syphilis.Senator Norris was under the impression that Stoker "died of thepox,"
but this belief may derive from the Death Certificate as well as gossipamongst ancestors
scandalized by the sensationalism of Stoker's novel Dracula. Dublin gossip is often hurtful and
scandalous, as well as witty.Since Bram Stoker died in London, the Death Certificate could
well havebeen the source of this gossip.Parson's surprisingly emphatic interpretation of the
DeathCertificate of his relative rests on the common medical identification
of"LocomotorAtaxy" with the final stage of syphilis, but this is by no meansinvariable. I
consulted a medical lecturer at the Wellcome Institute for theHistory of Medicine, who stated
as follows: "As for 'locomotorataxy', itusually, (one can never put it more strongly than that)
refers to the consequencesof cerebellum disease due to tertiary syphilis. There is therefore
adefinite indication that syphilis was related to cause of death, but one cannotbe certain."This
cautious statement confirms that there is no definite justificationfor assuming that syphilis
killed Stoker, and the circumstances surroundinghis later years would seem to militate against
the possibility.TabesDorsalisis usually the culmination of several years of physical
deteriorationand brain damage, expressed in disturbances of vision, palsy, and disorientationin
walking, accompanied by mental degeneration.In the case of Stoker, he did not exhibit the
mental deteriorationthat might be characteristic of General Paralysis of the Insane, since
hewas mentally alert and active with literary work almost up to his death in1912. The fact that
he had some muscular disorientation described as"locomotorataxy" is hardly surprising, since
nine years earlier he had suffereda severe stroke after the death of his friend and idol Henry
Irving. AsStoker's biographer Harry Ludlam wrote: "He suffered a stroke which laidhim
unconscious for twenty-four hours, and which began a painful illnessthat dragged on for
weeks, robbing his robust frame of much of its boundlessvitality and leaving his eyesight
impaired." In the following years,however, Stoker revised his novel The Man, corrected
proofs of his biographyof Irving, and published five other books: Lady
Athlyne(1908),Snowbound (1908), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), Famous Impostors(1910),
The Lair of the White Worm (1911), as well as a number of articlesin periodicals. None of this
is characteristic of a man in the finalstages of syphilis! Some physical difficulties were
inevitable. He hadstruggled for years with overwork. The aftermath of the stroke in late
54

life,coupled with earlier suffering from Bright's Disease and gout, could beexpected to result
in a condition of paralysis agitansor palsy, affecting hisgait.The really significant cause of
death is surely the single word"Exhaustion." Dracula advances a vision of infection not
through contact, notthrough the bite alone, but by way of a process analogous to
osmosis.Count Dracula is not merely taking sustenance from Mina; he isimplanting his own
spiritual poison within her by the same physicalchannel. His actions with respect to Mina are
an amplification andexaggeration of those which he inflicts upon Lucy. In a sense he ismore
obviously inseminating Mina, passing to her through contagiouspathology the seed of her own
vampirism and that of a future generationof vampires. The oral and the vaginal are as closely
identifiedhere as their respective fluid economies were in the case of Lucy. Withthis incident
in mind, a series of remarks regarding contamination of the blood, from Harker, as reported by
Sister Agatha of the Buda-Pesthhospital:'He has had some fearful shock - so says our doctor -
and in hisdelirium his ravings have been dreadful; of wolves and poison andblood; of ghosts
and demons; and I fear to say of what.' (D 99)from Seward, in his private journal:I suppose it
is some of that horrid poison which has got into herveins beginning to work. The Count had
his own purposes when hegave her [Mina] what Van Helsing called 'the Vampire's baptism
ofblood.' Well, there may be a poison that distils itself out of goodthings; in an age when the
existence of ptomaine is a mystery weshould not wonder at anything! (D 322)and latterly,
from Mina herself:'There is a poison in my blood, in my soul, which may destroy me;which
must destroy me, unless some relief comes to us. Oh, myfriends, you know as well as I do,
that my soul is at stake....' (D 330)become totally meaningful and obviously systematic.
InDracula,spiritual disorder is a consequence of fluid contamination, as bothSeward and Mina
acknowledge. Ptomaines are amine compounds,often toxic, in putrefying animal matter. The
Count is, in physiologicalterms, dead animal matter, his 'rank' breath (D 18) hinting ofinterior
putrefaction.80 Mina has effectively consumed the vampire'smorbid pathology, and his
corruption is multiplying, bacteria-like,within her own circulation.Though the novel draws
heavily here on the eugenic implications ofmingling bloods, and the suggestion that such
relationships invariablyresult in the decline and dilution of the healthier stock, the wholeissue
has a moral and spiritual resonance also. Minas Christian spiritfaces a progressive
undermining by that of the vampire, who has, likeChrist, purchased her through his blood.
Van Helsing's depiction ofthe incident as a 'baptism of blood' is, similarly, a point of
55

intersectionwith the religious script. It will take the shedding of Quincey Morris'sinnocent and
freely given blood to repurchase Mina adequately. Theblood clearly is not only that of earthly
life, but of the Life Everlastingalso. Subjects could engage in the exoneral activities which
form thedistinctive feature of their trance existence. Blood is as close to themesmeric Fluid in
Dracula as it ever could be.The relationship between the novel, the reader and the
culturalarchive upon which both draw is a complex one in Dracula. The textis an extended
play upon the multiple connotations of blood, literaland symbolic; it charts their economic
relations to the body, and theirpotential for exchange and coexistence with each
other.Demonstrably, the medical script is not included merely to function asa convenient
authority for occasional statements that draw onconventional therapeutics or surgery. Nor,
again, is the novel apolemic against one or more traditions in medical or
psychologicalthought: the failure, as we have seen, is that of the practitioner, notthat of the
discipline. The discipline - and under this heading wemight include physiology, diagnosis,
toxicology and surgery hasbeen itself represented as a discursive economy in the text,
subject toexchange, and with boundaries that shift in response to the ebb andflow of symptom
and hypothesis.Hence the medical script is a persistent and integral component ofthe fabric of
the novel, saturated with mythic as well as literal value, aprime motive force in the
construction and interaction of both humanand supernatural character. The medical language
does not yield at alleasily to the occult script. Rather, through its ability to reflex, to twistits
own meaning to another purpose, the medical script demonstratesan unforeseen potential with
which it may subvert the occult, forcingfurther the adherence of the supernatural to the more
mundane lawsof economics, the physiological concepts of secretion and depletion.The occult
cannot be said therefore to be the only source of instabilityin the novel: the medical content
enjoys a markedly similar functionthroughout. The rhetorical strategy of Dracula therefore is
one ofrealignment, an assertion of coexistence rather than of an Absolute.Boundaries become
blurred as the Christian and the scientific move toaccommodate the occult, and as the
demarcations between pathologicalconditions, pharmacopoeias and techniques break
down.Causes and consequences are no longer assignable with ease to eitherthe material or the
spiritual. subjects could engage in the exoneural activities which form thedistinctive feature of
their trance existence. Blood is as close to themesmeric Fluid in Dracula as it ever could
be.The relationship between the novel, the reader and the culturalarchive upon which both
56

draw is a complex one in Dracula. The textis an extended play upon the multiple connotations
of blood, literaland symbolic; it charts their economic relations to the body, and theirpotential
for exchange and coexistence with each other.Demonstrably, the medical script is not included
merely to function asa convenient authority for occasional statements that draw on
conventional therapeutics or surgery. Nor, again, is the novel apolemic against one or more
traditions in medical or psychologicalthought: the failure, as we have seen, is that of the
practitioner, notthat of the discipline. The discipline - and under this heading wemight include
physiology, diagnosis, toxicology and surgery hasbeen itself represented as a discursive
economy in the text, subject toexchange, and with boundaries that shift in response to the ebb
andflow of symptom and hypothesis.Hence the medical script is a persistent and integral
component ofthe fabric of the novel, saturated with mythic as well as literal value, aprime
motive force in the construction and interaction of both humanand supernatural character. The
medical language does not yield at alleasily to the occult script. Rather, through its ability to
reflex, to twistits own meaning to another purpose, the medical script demonstratesan
unforeseen potential with which it may subvert the occult, forcingfurther the adherence of the
supernatural to the more mundane lawsof economics, the physiological concepts of secretion
and depletion.The occult cannot be said therefore to be the only source of instabilityin the
novel: the medical content enjoys a markedly similar functionthroughout. The rhetorical
strategy of Dracula therefore is one ofrealignment, an assertion of coexistence rather than of
an Absolute.Boundaries become blurred as the Christian and the scientific move
toaccommodate the occult, and as the demarcations between pathologicalconditions,
pharmacopoeias and techniques break down.Causes and consequences are no longer
assignable with ease to eitherthe material or the spiritual. Beyond Dracula has argued that the
crude evaluative criteria whichallow Stoker's writings other than Dracula to be dismissed
merely asthe ephemera of a 'hack writer' are clearly no longer adequate.1 It isapparent that the
concerns of Dracula - be they religious, racial, socialor epistemological - are equally the
concerns of the author's otherwritings. Moreover, the manners in which these concerns are
presentedin Stoker's fiction, whether through plot, character or scenic backdrop,are again in
no respect unique to Dracula. It might be argued, inresponse to such an assertion, that the
frequent recurrence of suchdevices as the knightly vigil, the aquiline countenance or the
blushingface confirms Stoker's writings to be characterized by an unimaginativeor obsessive
57

repetitiousness. It should be evident, however, thatsuch recurrences are, in essence,
reworkingrather than simply replications.Each fresh occurrence, as it were, is modified by its
contiguity toother issues, other signifiers and other texts. Though certain featuresof Stoker's
fiction at times appear markedly reminiscent of each other,they are seldom truly congruent in
terms of their contextual effect onthe reader.
Nor are Stokers books remembered in the ways he would probablyhave wished. If people
have heard of him at all, they havealmost certainly done so as a horror writer. Stokers
interests are,however, far more diverse than this. Throughout his oeuvre, hereturns regularly
to the idea of settlements and union, both personal in the form of the marriages which so
often conclude hisnarratives and political. Alan Johnson notes thatThe concept of
internationalism, a harmony between nations, issuggested at the end of The Shoulder of Shasta
by the harmonyachieved by Reginald, Esse, and Dick. Like the idea of a scheme ofnature, the
concept of internationalism has a root in Stokers own past experience and, as it is dramatized
in The Shoulder ofShasta, it sheds interesting light on the ending of Dracula, withits final
tableau of the Dutch Dr Van Helsing, the English Seward,Holmwood, and Jonathan and Mina
Harker, and their sonQuincey, who has been named after the deceased American,Quincey
Morris.Stoker was also interested in transcending the politicized dividebetween Protestantism
and Catholicism which was proving so
destructive to Ireland, and he would have found in Freemasonry anorganization that rose
above religious schism. For all this stress onunion, however, what really energizes the best of
his fiction is thatthis drive to union is held so strongly in tension with a darklyGothic
obsession with the double which, a century after his death,has lost none of its power to
disturb.








58

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61



CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION..3
CHAPTER I
GOTHIC LITERATURE.. .5

1.1 HIDDEN IDENTITIES: GHOSTS...6
1.2 GOTHIC DOUBLES...12

CHAPTER II
TWENTIETH CENTURY.15

2.1 THE GHOST STORY AS THE END OF GOTHIC...15
2.2 GOTHIC POSTMODERNISM.18

CHAPTER IIIDRACULA: BETWEEN TRADITION AND
MODERNISM.21
3.1 DRACULA, MYTH and HISTORY...21
3.2 THE SACRED and the PROFANE in BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA...26

3.3 VAMPIRISM RUSSIA, and the SLAVS30

3.4 PHANTASMGORIA: THE MODERN VAMPIRE...33

3.5 SCIENCE and FAITH in DRACULA.41

CONCLUSIONS...50
62

BIBLIOGRAPHY.60