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Symbolism of blood
The role of the nineteenth-century female in literature
The role of the nineteenth-century female in literature
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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
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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 …show more content…
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.
In order to discuss the decline in masculinity (or manhood) and moral values, synonym of religious values in both books, it becomes necessary to define what Late-Victorian society considered them to be. In Dracula, masculinity is defined almost exclusively by contrasting it with femininity. The men in the book are praised when they show the opposite qualities that women are described as possessing. While women are shown as obedient and complacent, men are stern and in command of themselves and situations. Men are expected to protect women while women expect and cherish the protection of men. While men are expected to face the unpleasant facts of life, the darkness and the evil, with integrity and courage, women are to be sheltered from danger to avoid the breakdown of their fragile characters. When the group headed by Van Helsing starts their mission of vanishing the Count and all the dangers he brings for England, the men unanimously decide to hide all the unpleasant facts f...
The presence of racial stereotypes and commentary on the interaction of different races is a cornerstone of the Dracula narrative. In Stoker’s novel, Count Dracula is representative of the growing European culture of xenophobia and anti-Semitism which would rise to near hysteria in the coming decades. The concept of race was not limited to skin color or nationality in the nineteenth century, and was a means of categorizing people by “cultural as well as physical attributes” (Warren 127). Dracula is described as being covetous of ancient gold and jewels, childlike and simple in his malice, and more animalistic than human, traits frequently attributed to the Jewish people by Christian society (Newman). His material appearance is distinguished by extremely pale skin, dark features, a nose with a “high bridge…and peculiarly arched nostrils,” and “bushy hair that seemed to curl of its own profusion.” Stoker’s audience would have recognized...
Lucy poses a threat to the Victorian ideology by exposing herself as a danger to sexual propriety. She remarks about wanting to have more than one husband, which displays promiscuity, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men or as many as want her?” this statement works as a threat which comes to fruition after Lucy is bitten. Once infected by Dracula, Lucy becomes sexually overt and aggressive; and is portrayed as a monster and a social outcast. She transforms into a fiend and feeds on children making her the maternal antithesis as well as a child molester.
This fictional character was soon to be famous, and modified for years to come into movie characters or even into cereal commercials. But the original will never be forgotten: a story of a group of friends all with the same mission, to destroy Dracula. The Count has scared many people, from critics to mere children, but if one reads between the lines, Stoker’s true message can be revealed. His personal experiences and the time period in which he lived, influenced him to write Dracula in which he communicated the universal truth that good always prevails over evil. Religion was a big part of people’s lives back in Stoker’s time.
Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” came to print in 1897, at the height of Nineteenth century Victorian life in Europe, a progressively modern era that saw much medical and technological advancement. This era brought with it the contentious idea of an empowered woman, the “New Woman,” a woman who aspires to be educated as well as sexually and economically independent. Stoker gives a contrasting view of this notion in “Dracula.” While the main characters, Lucy and Mina, are clearly opposite in personality, they are both portrayed as unequal, defenseless objects that are to be protected and desired. However, one woman’s fate is determined by her weakness, while the other is determined by her strength.
In Dracula, Bram Stoker explores the fantastic image of a sexually dominant woman within a patriarchal society. The battle between good and evil within the novel very much hinges upon feminine sexuality: Lucy and Nina are embodiments of the Victorian virtues, which Dracula threatens to corrupt,
The late nineteenth century Irish novelist, Bram Stoker is most famous for creating Dracula, one of the most popular and well-known vampire stories ever written. Dracula is a gothic, “horror novel about a vampire named Count Dracula who is looking to move from his native country of Transylvania to England” (Shmoop Editorial Team). Unbeknownst of Dracula’s plans, Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, traveled to Castle Dracula to help the count with his plans and talk to him about all his options. At first Jonathan was surprised by the Count’s knowledge, politeness, and overall hospitality. However, the longer Jonathan remained in the castle the more uneasy and suspicious he became as he began to realize just how strange and different Dracula was. As the story unfolded, Jonathan realized he is not just a guest, but a prisoner as well. The horror in the novel not only focuses on the “vampiric nature” (Soyokaze), but also on the fear and threat of female sexual expression and aggression in such a conservative Victorian society.
Stevenson, John Allen. A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula. 2nd ed. Vol. 103. N.p.: Modern Language Association, 1988. JSTOR. Web. 6 Jan. 2014. .
Conclusively, while Bram Stokers novel Dracula is seen as a gothic and horror story, I argue that it is a novel that seeks to address female sexuality directly. Seen through numerous passages, Stoker confronts and battles the views between sexuality during the Victorian era though his genius of characterization of characters present within the novel. As it seems highly intentional to me, I respect the way in which he criticizes and critiques upon female sexuality by bringing into light new ideas regarding female desires. When contrasting his text upon today’s culture, the differences to how one perceived the vampire has changed significantly.
Stoker uses phenomenal imagery to produce a late nineteenth century setting, located somewhere within eastern Europe. Transylvania, the infamous home to Dracula himself, is described in great detail in Harker’s journal. There, Stoker purposely and meticulously outlines Dracula’s castle and the surrounding town. Stoker manages to do this with a very gothic tone, immediately lowering the societal status of women. In conjunction with Dracula’s gothic tone comes the understanding of male and female traditional roles of the era. The reader sees that there is no hesitation differentiating between the two, as Stoker “ cast[s] men as rational, strong, protective and decisive…[and] women as emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing and submissive.” (Tyson, 82).
Lucy is the Medusa archetype. She is physically attractive, and wins the heart of any man who comes near her (e.g. Arthur, Quincey, Jack, and Van Helsing). Her chief quality is sensual beauty, but her sexual desire is repressed and not allowed to communicate. And yet both the spiritual side and the sexual side are in her, and when the long repressed sexuality finds a vent, it explodes and takes over completely. In other words, she is transformed into the completely voluptuous female vampire precisely because her sexual side of personality had been completely buried by her Victorian education. Her repressed self needs such expression that when Dracula came along, she went out to greet him, and then invited him into the house (by opening her window to the bat). He is her vent for sexual expression.
Peters, Sarah L. "Repulsive to Romantic: The Evolution of Bram Stoker’s Dracula." Henderson State University. N.p., Mar. 2002. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
Over the course of cinematic history, many filmmakers have attempted to recreate the chilling, unprecedented world of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Arguably very few have succeeded, for the majority of directors tend to avoid the pervasive sexuality inherent in the novel. It is a difficult task to achieve, considering the blatant imagery surrounding sex and vampirism, such as the reproduction following a vampiric encounter and the phallocentric nature of the violence committed both by and against these creatures: penetration is involved in their hunting, and one must impale them with a stake in order to destroy them. Readers are thereby forced to admit that Dracula is, in fact, a highly eroticized piece of literature, though whether or not Stoker himself was aware of this suggestiveness, we cannot be sure. The most successful effort at capturing that sexual energy on film has been Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula. In fact, it has often been proposed that Coppola’s version is too carnally focused in comparison to the original work, which leads a viewer to wonder about the purpose in this overt sexualization. It can be concluded that adding copious amounts of eroticism to the film is directly related to Coppola’s strive to depict Count Dracula as more human rather than monster, and sexuality in his film serves as a balance so that the lines between good and evil are blurred. Evidence for this deduction is found in three scenes in particular: Jonathan’s seduction by Dracula’s vampiric wives, Lucy’s demonic transformation, and Mina and Van Helsing’s relationship during the climax of the story.
The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker has plentiful examples of key concepts we have examined in class including: Purity and impurity, magical thinking, strong emotions such as disgust and shame, , formalization, and myth. In this essay I will summarize events that take place within the novel when the protagonists deal with Dracula and then relate these events to the key concepts to demonstrate why the characters view him as dangerous, and therefore something to be avoided completely.
Despite popular culture today with shows like The Vampire Diaries where vampires are often continuing their daily lives as if they are human and being the heroes to their friends and/or family, Dracula is a depiction of how vampires have, for centuries, been exposed as bloodthirsty, supernatural beings with sexual appeal. The way women are portrayed in Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, is a result of the Victorian ideals. Once Dracula begins to feed on the women, they become bloodthirsty temptresses which are exactly what society fears and try to prevent. In Dracula, Stoker makes sexuality directly linked to the vampirism in the novel. This is seen through the change of Lucy’s somewhat modest behavior into a temptress, the blood-sharing between characters in the novel, and the description of the way Lucy was killed.