Over the years many critics have observed the homoerotic sections in Draculas narrative.

However it is often over looked that Bram Stoker began writing this novel a month after his friend Oscar Wilde was convicted of sodomy. Being written at a time of anxiety surrounding homosexuality, Bram stokers Dracula could be seen to embody the Wilde trails own interplay of disguise, half admission, defence and denial. The Secrecy and desire for self-assertion came to characterize homosexuality in this period; Oscar Wildes trial came to construct homosexual identity as a compromise between these two states. Eve Sedgwick asserts that There is radical uncertainty closeted gay people are likely to feel about who is in control of information about their sexual identityno one person can take control over all the multiple and often contradictory codes by which information about sexual identity and activity can seem to be conveyed. When examined from this viewpoint, it possible to perceive Dracula as unravelling in the ambiguous state between the known and the unknown. This marginality is reflected in the landscape on Harkers journey to Castle Dracula. Bistritz is described as being a fairly well-known place whereas Castle Dracula is described as being situated in the waste of desolation. When arriving at the castle, Draculas vampirism could be seen to be an excellent example of the identity of desire and therefore fear (Franco Moretti) Jonathan Harker articulates the anxiety caused by these unknown sexual desires. The opening anxiety of the novel derives from Draculas interest in Harker, a sexual threat that the novel evokes, manipulates and sustains but never fulfils is the representation of Dracula seducing, penetrating and draining another male. Always postponed and never realized, Draculas desire for Harker is fulfilled by his threevampric daughters. This example depicts a displacement typical of the text and the gender conscious society and an inversion of normal gender relations. The daughters offer Harker a feminine form but with a masculine penetration, representing homoerotic desire. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throatI would feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited--waited with a beating heart. 52 This moment is the texts most direct example of a males desire to be penetrated. The pause before penetration that would unsex Harker is interrupted, continuing the novels aspiration and denial of male penetration. When Dracula bursts into the room and drives the daughters away he yells How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! 53 this statement continues the threat of a homoerotic relation between Harker and Dracula. When considering the anxiety of the Oscar Wilde trials in relation to Dracula, it is possible to view Harkers imprisonment as being a representation of Wildes imprisonment. Ellen Hanson Argues that to comprehend the vampire is to recognise

that abjected space that gay men are obliged to inhabit; that space unspeakable and unnameable, itself defined as an orifice, as a dark continent men dare not penetrate Vampirism therefore becomes a metaphor for love that is voiceless and to homophobes a way of naming homosexuality as monstrous, dirty and threatening. Dracula therefore embodies sexuality as being simultaneously monstrous, threatening as well as buried and secretive. When Harker lifts the lid to Draculas coffin he feels the other mans body for a key and means of escape. After feeling Draculas body Harker muses that the count may create a new and ever widening circle of demi demons to batten on the helpless 51 this image is reminiscent of what the Judge called Wilde at his trail. He stated that Wilde was the centre of a hideous circle of corruption after the prosecutor introduced several young men who claimed that Wilde had ruined them. Furthermore, upon opening the coffin Harker describes Draculas appearance as being hideous: The cheeks were fullereven the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloatedhe lay like a filthy leech, exhausted in his repletion. I shuddered as I bent over to touch him, and every sense in me revolted at the contact. 51 This horrendous description is strikingly similar to the description of Wilde given by Stokers acquaintance Frank Harris. In 1895 Wilde became overweight and famously exausted: There was something oily and fat about him that repelled mehis hands were flabby, greasy, his skin looked bilious and dirtyhis appearance filled me with distaste. I lay stress on this physical repulsion because I think most people felt it. In conclusion, Bram Stokers Dracula reveals the tensions and anxieties surrounding homosexual activity in the late Victorian period. The novel explores both the feelings of repulsion towards homosexual activity and repressed desires, and is clearly influenced by the Wilde case. After Dracula preventing his daughters from vamping Harker, homosexual desire is not represented so directly in the remainder of the novel. However, far from dismissing homosexuality, the novel continues to explore, diffuse and displace homoerotic desire.