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Note: the following article on gender and sexuality in Dracula is a modified excerpt (pp. 102-107) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see the list on the main website.

Productive and Non-Productive Sexuality in Dracula

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a text replete with sexual innuendos. More importantly, it is filled with hints at a non-normative sexuality.

Count Dracula makes it almost explicit, when he warns the three female vampires that are about to attack Jonathan to stay back, stating “[t]his man belongs to me!” (Stoker 2003, 46). Hindle notes that Stoker’s earlier drafts were even more revealing, as Dracula’s full warning originally was “[t]his man belongs to me I want him” (Hindle 2003, xxxiv).

In this regard, it is pertinent to underline that this kind of sexuality implied here is non-productive. Not only is it contrary to the normative heterosexual monogamy encouraged by Victorian society, but through this very lack of procreation it also becomes atemporal; by denying the children, it essentially denies the future.

In terms of homoeroticism and temporality, it is also worth noting that Baudelaire considered the lesbian as “the heroine of modernism because she combines with a historical ideal the greatness of the ancient world” (Benjamin 1983, 90).

Perhaps tapping into Stoker’s only-unconscious writings, Coppola’s film adaptation includes a fleeting scene where Mina and Lucy kiss in the garden during the storm.

Sexuality in Dracula: The New Woman Issue

In terms of gender and sexuality in Dracula one soon discovers the New Woman debate. Just before the attack on Lucy, she and Mina have a day that forces the latter to admit that their appetites “should have shocked the ‘New Woman’” (Stoker 2003, 99).

The implication presented to the reader is that Dracula’s attack is a sort of punishment for a woman’s progressive thoughts.

Lucy Westenra and the “Impressive Phallic Instrument”

Sellers argues (2001, 80) that the killing of Lucy is an act against female emancipation and the New Woman ideal. As such, it portrays a reversal of the temporary transformation and a restoration to her earlier sweet and pure essence.

Importantly, it is fitting for the situation that Lucy’s death occurs in a highly sexualized manner. In more detail, in a scene Elaine Showalter describes as akin to a gang-rape with an “impressive phallic instrument” (1992, 181), Arthur, Lucy’s fiancé, strikes into her body a stake, using “all his might”. He penetrates “deeper and deeper”, as the men around him observe in voyeuristic pleasure (Stoker 2003, 230).

Mina’s “Purification Process”

Furthermore, Sellers also claims that Mina undergoes a similar purification process:

The vanishing of Dracula’s mark from her forehead once he is dead and the final portrait of her as a loving mother underscore her resumption of traditional female values and roles. Despite Stoker’s efforts at authenticity and the undeniable power of his creation, the unequivocal return to the status quo at the end of the narrative relegates Dracula to the comparative safety of nightmare fantasy. (2001, 80)

Although the conclusion of the novel hints at a return to the status quo, I do not agree that it actually embraces this suggestion. The end of Dracula appears naively simplistic, and perhaps outright ironic. In the center of this ambiguity, lies Mina.

In many ways, she is the most important character of the novel: she expresses its underlined ambiguity, echoing the feelings of confusion associated with the fin de siècle.

Moreover, she offers stability by organizing the characters’ thoughts and texts. In this way, she offers temporal linearity and normativity. Yet she also destabilizes the situation by displaying mixed allegiances, both to the Crew of Light and to Count Dracula, after his bite renders her a half-vampire.

Eventually, Mina returns to Jonathan to become a good wife according to Victorian expectations, despite  effectively being a latent vampire. Ultimately, however, there is something ironic about such a reintegration, as it “appears to reinforce precisely the domestic ideology which, throughout the narrative, is suggested to be the cause of all [the heroine’s] problems and sufferings” (Punter and Byron 2004, 281).

Works Cited:

Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Translated by Harry Zohn. London: Verso, 1983.
Hindle, Maurice. Introduction. Dracula. By Bram Stoker. London: Penguin, 2003.
Punter, David, and Glennis Byron. The Gothic. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Sellers, Susan. Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Gordonsville: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.
Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle. London: Virago Press, 1992.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London: Penguin, 2003.

Read more: Angelis, Christos. “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic. Doctoral Dissertation. Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press, 2017. Available from here (Tampere University Press repository).