Imperialism And Gender In Dracula Summary

Imperial, Christine Elisa C.

Dr. Trish Ferguson

Textual Analysis of Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century

20 April, 2015

Critically Examine the Relationship Between Imperialism and Gender in Dracula and The Sign of Four.

The fin-de-siècle of the nineteenth century was a period wherein people believed that time was running out. Tracey Hill in her essay “Introduction: Decadence and Danger” writes that there was an almost tangible sense of temporality, of the reality of time (1).” During this era, the state of the British Empire started to waver with uprisings such as The Indian Mutiny was a need to reassure the country and its people of its imperial superiority (Keep, 208). In a sense time was running out for the empire. Moreover, the

emergence of the New Woman threatened the established gender roles that aided in perpetuating the superior status of men. If Imperialism was the means of sustaining the power of the Empire, the subjugation of women was a way of sustaining the power of the males. What becomes evident from this survey of anxieties is the fear of the heterosexual male being subdued by the other—the other, not just being people of colonized nations, but of women as well. The literature of the times reflected this anxiety. Two examples of fin-de-siècle literature that explore the fear of subjugation and loss of power are Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four. Through an exploration of the male characters similar attitudes towards gender and Imperialism reflects the male Victorians’ fear of subjugation.
In Dracula, the fear of subjugation by “the other” is seen in the desire to defeat Count Dracula, while in the Sign of Four it is seen in the desire to uncover “The Other” as a criminal. Both novels rely heavily on characterizing their “foreign” antagonists as evil and uncivilized based on their physical appearance. Jonathan Harker, the main protagonist of the novel, describes Dracula’s physical character as almost animal. “His eyebrows were massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seem to curl in its own profusion (24)” [Dracula’s fingers] were rather coarse—broad with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the center of the palm (25).” “Science claimed to demonstrate that the biological features of each group determined its psychological and social attributes (Loomba, 115).” European features such as white skin and angular faces were seen as superior to the features (dark skin, flat profiles, round faces) of other races (115).
In The Sign of Four, the Other’s criminality is inextricable to his physical characteristics. Holmes is certain that the person who killed Bartholomew Sholto was not of British descent. Although Jonathan Small masterminded the crime, he could not have been the one to actually commit the murder. He uses an excerpt on the Andaman Islanders to prove his theory that only someone of foreign descent was capable of the crime. “[Andaman Islanders] are naturally hideous […] So intractable and fierce are they, that all the efforts of British officials have failed to win them over in any degree (72).” It is later on revealed that Small did not want cause harm to Sholto; thus, showing that even the white criminal has rationality and benevolence while Tonga, the foreign accomplice, is motivated by irrational impulses. Jonathan Harker’s startled reaction of Dracula’s features and Holmes insistence that a foreigner committed the crime reflects the Victorian conflation of the barbaric and the Other.
During the fin-de-siècle, Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species provoked a fear of atavism into Victorian people—if evolution was possible then devolution was possible as well (Arata, 624). Darwin’s radical theory purported that man is not the permanent center of the world, but is rather an animal, though a highly developed one (Diniejko, “Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the Intellectual Ferment of the Mid- and Late Victorian Periods”). Since man evolved from ape, anxiety over the possibility of the animal within the human resurfacing emerged. In Dracula, the aforementioned anxiety is evident in Harker’s suppressing his experience of almost succumbing to Dracula’s whims through amnesia (Howes, 106-107). Harker is terrified by the idea that he can be seduced by vampires, a species he believes is lesser than him. His seduction shows that he is not a completely rational human being, but someone who is able to give into primal desires that should be repressed. Not only is he giving into the animal within, but to the female within him. Like the primitive being, someone closer to animal than human, the woman was seen as physically inferior “European women are distinguished from European men, and allied with primitive peoples, through the phenomenon of arrested development. Around the age of twenty […] a woman’s body, nervous system, and brain cease to develop, while the man continues in his growth (Frank, 67).”
To be a proper woman in the Victorian era meant being subservient and demure (Howes, 109). The woman’s main role was as child bearer (Dowling, 444-445), therefore, her strongest desire was assumed to be finding a man who could grant her with a child. In the sexual act, the woman is passive—the man penetrates, she lays still. In the scene with the three female vampires, Harker lays completely still as the women touch him. If Harker were to completely give into his animal and feminine desires, then he would lose the privilege of being a British, heterosexual, white man.
Christopher Keep and Don Randall in their essay “Addiction, Empire, and Narrative in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four” argue that the Holmes’ injection of cocaine symbolizes the detective’s addiction to the empire, since cocaine is a colonial product synthesized by the empire (209-210). Holmes is injecting the ideology of British Imperialists into his body. Holmes’ addiction to cocaine shows how imbedded ideas about race and gender were in Victorian society. Holmes’ is an addicted to the status quo, because he has no idea of what life is like outside of it, just as the woman and the foreigner remain passive to the rule of male Imperialists due to their perception that their position as inferior beings is fixed. Holmes is addicted to the privilege that the patriarchal and imperialist system has granted him. Like the colonized person and the woman, Holmes is subject to the systems that dominate. By injecting cocaine, Holmes forces it into his body; therefore, symbolizing how the ideas propagated by the dominant system are forced into the world; they are not natural states of being. The inferiority of foreigners and women is not an absolute truth, but a construct promulgated by the dominant, in this case British, heterosexual, white males (145, Said).
To usurp the position of dominant male and overthrowing his empire would be to regress as a society.

The men in Dracula are fearful of Dracula’s ability to colonize them, vamp their women, and invade their progressive world (Arata, 626). Dracula values the old and traditional. He speaks of his family’s lineage and boasts of the power they possessed. When he says that “Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonorable peace, he is saying that the contemporary world is a chaotic world and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told (37).” Dracula says this right after he speaks of the glory his people once had, giving the phrase a sense of foreboding and condescension. He believes his race and the ways of his race are superior, and the status they once possessed must be

reinstated.
Dracula’s invasion connotes regression while British invasions of other lands connotes progression and civilization. The male protagonists use science to defeat Dracula, while Dracula uses the supernatural to defeat Harker and his companions. Ironically, Dracula, Arata writes, is the most “Western” character of the novel (Arata, 637). Dracula is the most punctual and the most knowledgeable individual in the novel. The "Westerness" and increasing power of Dracula symbolizes the Victorian fear of reverse colonization, of the other taking away the status and power of the Empire. Dracula’s most potent weapon and threat to the empire is his ability to turn others into vampires, more specifically his ability to vamp women. The vamped woman is a sexual woman that expresses her desires freely. The men are as afraid of Dracula as they are of the vamped woman; therefore being afraid of the foreign invader as much as the uninhibited woman.
Before they are vamped Lucy and Mina, for the most part, adhere to the established ideal of the proper woman (Howes, 109) The vamped woman is a metaphor for the New Woman. In the Victorian era, the main role of a woman was the bearer of children (New Woman and Decadence). She was meant to serve her husband and her family; any desires beyond that were regulated or suppressed. The New Woman was a threat to Victorians, because she no longer saw herself as a child bearer, a producer of the empire’s new defenders. The animalistic characterization of vamped Lucy illustrates the dangers of allowing women to express their selves freely. In The Sign of Four, the threat of the New Woman is portrayed through the inherited wealth of Mary Morstan. Watson is emasculated by the idea that the woman he is attracted to would have a higher position in society than him and more opportunities than the average Victorian woman (Frank, 64). Watson writes. on his first encounter with Mary, “ In an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature (10).” Watson is attracted to the softness of Mary, to her adherence to the conventions of what it means to be a proper Victorian woman, a woman who can be understood and controlled. Mary fits Watson’s ideal of what a woman should be, instead of her own ideal of what she should be. The empire cannot sustain and defend itself without women supplying it with its men.
In both novels, both the feminine and the other are associated with the expressive and uninhibited.

Dracula is upfront about his desires. Conforming to the masculine ideal of stoicism does not restrict him. Lucy is much stronger than the individual male. It takes four men to subdue her and ultimately kill her. This monstrous representation of the physically superior, vamped woman represents how the feminine must be controlled. By injecting their blood into Lucy, they are trying to inculcate the patriarchal culture of Victorian society back into her. The only way to bring her back to civilization is to turn her back into a “proper woman” born to raise a family and to serve a man. A transfusion is forced. The image of a needle puncturing into the skin and pushing a fluid into one’s conjures the image of invasion, of foreign forces reconfiguring the natural way of life. The transfusion of blood is of many men, while Dracula’s invasion, in this case, the puncturing of his culture and draining of British culture is done solely by him, showing how the strength of the “primitive” foreigner emasculates the male

characters.
Lucy’s liberation as a vamped woman is still done by a man, who can, as stated earlier be considered Western. The fact that Dracula needed to vamp Lucy to allow her to express herself completely shows how women do not posses their own agency unless a man provides them with the permission to do so. The helplessness of women parallels the belief that colonized people could not think for themselves or progress as a society without the help of Western imperialists. The men’s praise of Mina as a brave woman, is due to the fact that she has secured her body for Harker and remained a “pure woman”(Howes, 114). She is not defying the status quo, but fighting to maintain it. The men perceive themselves as saviors just as colonizers perceive themselves of saviors of the barbaric. Both the primitive and woman would not progress without a dominant male’s help.
Mary Morstan is a character dependent on men, because the people with the tools to help her are men, the people who have had the opportunity to be in positions of power are men. Like in Dracula, the “proper woman” is the woman who is need of male saviors just as primitive people are in need of colonizers as saviors. When Watson is asked to surmise who the small footprints belongs to he says they are either a child or a woman’s. He is equating the footprints of the primitive to the footprints of a woman, showing both his lack of knowledge on both people and his perception that they are of equal inferiority. Laurence Frank, in his essay Dreaming the Medusa, writes It is at once an observation that provides a glimpse into Watson’s own anxieties and a curious echoing of the anthropological and sexual speculations that can be found in the pages of Havelock Ellis’s Man and Woman 1894) in which fears of primitive peoples and women merge (66).”
The Sign of Four and Dracula illustrate how women and “the other” were controlled through very similar means. The novels show how the attitudes towards these people are constructed and perpetuated to maintain privilege and combat anxieties of regression.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula.

Loomba, Ania. ‘Race Class and Colonialism.’ Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London: Routledge. 1998. Print. 123-132.

Diniejko, Andrzej. “Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the Intellectual Ferment of the Mid- and Late Victorian Periods.” The Victorian Web. George Landow. 11 May, 2010. Web. 15 Apr 2015.