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What's Supposed to be Frightening About Dracula ?.
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‘Mr. Bram Stoker should have labelled his book “For Strong Men Only,” or words to that effect. Left lying carelessly around, it might get into the hands of your maiden aunt who believes devoutly in the man under the bed, or of the new parlourmaid with unsuspected hysterical tendencies. “Dracula” to such would be manslaughter. It is for the man with a sound conscience and digestion, who can turn out the gas and go to bed without having to look over his shoulder more than half a dozen times as he goes upstairs, or more than mildly wishing that he had a crucifix and some garlic handy to keep the vampires from getting at him’. Pall Mall Gazette (1897).
“The explanation for these fantasies is surely not hard. A nightly visit from a beautiful or frightening being who first exhausts the sleeper with passionate embraces and then withdraws from him a vital fluid; all this can point only to a natural and common process, namely to nocturnal emissions accompanied by dreams of a more or less erotic nature. In the unconscious mind blood is commonly an equivalent for semen.” Ernest Jones, ‘On the Nightmare’ (1931).
“From a Freudian standpoint – and from no other does the story make any sense – it is seen as a kind of incestuous, necrophilious, oral-anal-sadistic all-in wrestling match…. [Dracula is] a vast polymorph perverse bisexual oral-anal-genital sadomasochistic timeless orgy.” Maurice Richardson, ‘The Psychoanalysis of Count Dracula.’ (1959)
Dracula ‘squirms with [...] primordial, dark or forbidden news from the abyss’, with its ‘configuration of sex, blood and death’, as well as a ‘spectrum of incest possibilities, marriage, homosexuality, immortality’ and morbidity, all bound together by blood.
"Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it."
‘All three had brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips’
While trying to make love to his wife, Jonathan discovered through a slip of his wife’s tongue that it was Dracula who had taken Mina’s virginity. Dracula, with centuries of experience, first introduced her to passion. He’d left such a profound impression on her that Jonathan, no matter how hard he tried, could never match it.
Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered [...]. [He] placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might. The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut. And the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it [...]. And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The terrible task was over.
‘the dream of horror is in itself an out-letting and a lancing…and it may well be that the mass-media dream of horror can sometimes become a nationwide analyst’s couch’
‘the linkage of Gothic to the unconscious has entailed the assumption that the business of Gothic fiction is to explore the taboo areas of a particular culture, and to express – and sometimes recontain – the anxieties and crises produced when the walls around these taboo areas begin to crumble’. Nicholas Daly, Modernism,romance and the fin de siécle: popular fiction and British culture, 1880-1914 (Cambridge, 1999), 15.
“Crab, when viewed horoscopically [...] is that sign of the Zodiac that covers the period between June 23 and July 23. George, Stoker’s youngest brother, was born under the sign of the crab on July 20th. Eating the dressed crab meant, unconsciously, eating up and killing baby George”
With his left hand he held both Mrs.Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.
The bloodletting would have been experienced by him first as being eaten up, and then as a castration threat. This would set the stage for increased castration anxiety and fixation for regression to oral fantasies especially with the long period of time (if only in his fantasies) of being the dependent child unable to stand on his own two feet, or to stand erect in the physical and/or phallic sense. He would have experienced the birth of four brothers before he was seven, thus being afforded ample opportunity for seeing his mother pregnant and his brothers nursing, and shaping his rivalrous and angry feelings about the babies at the breast
“[Jonathan Harker’s terror and helplessness at Castle Dracula is like the terror felt by [the child who has been left by his mother in a hospital to undergo surgery and/or bloodletting”
‘What does all this perpetual discussion of sex mean? Wherefore this constant analysis of the passions? How comes it that the novels of today are filled with nothing but sex, sex, sex? Influenza is not the only new disease that has come to reside among us. Another more terrible and potent plague has seized control of the nation – sex mania.’ Reynold’sNews (1895).
‘Dracula is a horror story about vampires; the scene in the crypt depicts a vampire-slaying; the stake is a stake; and Lucy is a vampire who is being destroyed according to the method prescribed by folklore’ Robert Mighall, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s Nightmares (1999)
“Thus are we ministers of God's own wish that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one soul already [Lucy Westenra's, redeemed by her being put to death with a stake driven through her body], and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more”
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. 3 Now the tempter came to Him… 8The devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ” Matthew 4: 1-10 ‘All these lives I will give you, ay, and many more and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!
Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. ‘Dover Beach’ The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
