Stoker's Use of Homoerotic Behavior in Dracula to Relieve Feelings of Guilt Over Oscar Wilde

Abraham, or Bram, Stoker is known for only one successful novel, Dracula, yet this one famous novel is widely considered to be one of the most famous horror novels in history. What could be at first considered a simple horror tale in fact contains subtle (and not so subtle) hints of homoeroticism. These "hints" could be subtle jabs at a stuffy, confused Victorian society, or a commentary on Stoker's friend Oscar Wilde and his legal situation at the time of the novel's composition.
These parts of the novel, when examined carefully, provide many insights into Stoker's characters, and also raise several questions as to their origins.

A question remains over Stoker's intent with the homoerotic content of the novel. Was the author merely writing a horror story to be construed as nothing more? Was he trying to make a social commentary on the misunderstanding and treatment of homosexuals? Or was he mocking the situation homosexuals had during the late 1800s in Victorian England with a confused, homosexual villain in Count Dracula? There is significant evidence to suggest that Stoker's use of homoerotic undertones in the novel were carefully placed to construe an argument for his friend Oscar Wilde, and to hold a figurative mirror up to Victorian England to show how vastly misunderstood homosexuality was. "Oscar Wilde was convicted of the crime of sodomy. Wilde's influence on Stoker has been neglected partly because much of Stoker's biographical information has disappeared" (Schaffer 381). Stoker's guilt over the treatment of his friend manifests itself in his novel, Dracula. "He writes as a man victimized by Wilde's trial, and yet as a man who sympathizes with Wilde's victimization" (Schaffer 398).

Bram Stoker was born in 1847 into a group known as Anglo-Irish. A Protestant in Dublin, his father was a civil servant, and Stoker was expected to follow in his father's profession. Stoker was often very ill as a child, and could not stand up on his own until he was seven years old. Stoker's "formal childhood education was rounded out by the services of a Dublin tutor" (Roth 2). Upon battling illness, Stoker grew up to be a strapping young man, participating in college athletics while at University. At Trinity College, he studied mathematics and eventually became president of the Philosophical Society and the Historical Society.
Between 1870 and 1877, Stoker was a civil servant at Dublin Castle. He also returned to Trinity College on several occasions to deliver speeches for the Philosophical Society. He spent a great deal of time reading the Romantic poets, and established a correspondence with Walt Whitman during his time at Dublin Castle. They maintained their friendship until Whitman's death.

Stoker also was very fond of the theater, and greatly admired the works of Henry Irving, and he wrote many praise-filled reviews of Irving's works for local newspapers. Some critics believe Irving to have been one of the inspirations for the character of Count Dracula, and that somehow Stoker's novel was some kind of unconscious revenge against the man, to whom Stoker gave so much. Due to his stature with the Historical Society at Trinity College, Stoker came into contact with Dublin's elite. He regularly attended soirees hosted by Sir William and Lady Wilde, the parents of Oscar Wilde, and Stoker was drawn into the circle of artists and literary aficionados of Lady Wilde.

Stoker competed with a young Oscar Wilde for the hand of Florence Balcombe, the young daughter of a lieutenant colonel. Bram won the hand of Florence, and they were married in 1878, the same year Stoker moved to London and earned a job as a business manager of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre. "He is not entirely clear how long Stoker had known Florence when he married her...they simply married earlier" than they originally planned" (Roth 7), which leaves several questions as to the relationship between the two.

Also in 1878, Stoker wrote The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Irleand, drawn from his work as a civil servant. Stoker continued to work for Henry Irving until his death in 1906. Stoker spent his years working for Irving sacrificing a great deal of time and attention that would have gone to his family. His only child, Noel, was born in 1879, and during his time with Irving, Stoker spent much of his time touring and doing promotional work across Europe and North America. It was during this period that Stoker wrote his greatest and most popular novel, Dracula. Upon Irving's death, Stoker was affected so much that he himself suffered a stroke. He continued writing fiction and for newspapers until he died in 1912.

Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde had "an intimate and varied history" for a period of over twenty years (Schaffer 381). While at Trinity College, Stoker spent Christmas with the Wilde family, as the two families were especially close. "Wilde sent the Stokers copies of his books, came to parties and dinners at the Lyceum, and to more private dinners at the Stoker's own house. In turn, the Stokers attended the Wilde's "At Homes" and the first night's performances of his plays" (Schaffer 394). Stoker's greatest novel, written in 1897, coined the term "undead," and sparked a great deal of interest and, while it did not make Stoker rich, it certainly brought him attention. It was especially popular in America; however, Stoker did not receive any royalties from American sales because of a technicality with his publisher.

The novel raises questions about religious fervor, social class, sexuality, and other important topics of the day. One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the aspect of homoeroticism evident in many parts of the novel, and in many of the characters and their interactions. Sexuality and specifically homosexuality were topics of interest to Victorian society during the time of the novel's conception. "Modern critical accounts of Dracula, for instance, almost universally agree that vampirism both expresses and distorts an originally sexual energy" (Craft 107). Stoker seems to tackle a topic that was hotly debated in the time period and twist it in such a way that critics could not completely lambaste it for sexual content, yet the subject still remains and exists within the story. Victorians were anxious about the potential fluidity of gender roles, and had recently been subjected to various literatures written about the topic of gender and sexuality during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "The Victorian bourgeoisie, as Michel Foucault points out, defined its sexuality in contrast to that of earlier periods as being 'subjected to a regime of repression so intense as to represent a constant danger" (Davis 180).

It was during this time period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that "English writers produced their first sustained discourse about the variability of sexual desire, with a special emphasis on male homoerotic love" (Craft 112). This topic had been indirectly addressed by Tennyson in "In Memoriam," and by Whitman in the "Calamus" poems. Stoker's correspondence with Whitman could have easily influenced the author's work in Dracula, and Whitman's indirect references to homoerotic love could have inspired Stoker to mask his own exploration of the topic in his novel.

During Stoker's time, the term homosexuality was not the term used. It was not commonly used until the late 1920s to early 1930s. The term "sexual inversion," meaning "a classificatory term involving a complex negotiation between socially encoded gender norms and a sexual mobility that would seem at first unconstrained by those norms," was used (Craft 112). The behavior of those who suffered from sexual inversion was considered sinful, and legally considered a crime. Early texts attempting to enlighten society to the tenets of sexual inversion, such as Symonds' A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883), and his A Problem in Modern Ethics (1891), as well as Havelock Ellis' Sexual Inversion, and Edward Carpenter's Homogenic Love, were ill-guided extremists works, however, they represented a society's first attempt to address the topic of homosexuality, and to give such an unknown entity a name and something to identify it with.
Victorian England considered the phrase "sexual inversion" to be a term "which does not prejudice the matter under consideration," and "provided a neutral nomenclature with which the investigator has good reason to be satisfied" (Craft 113). While Victorian England was being exposed to ideas about homosexuality, they were not anywhere near a position of understanding or acceptance of it. The Labouchère Amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 made same-gender sexual relations illegal. This was the law that Oscar Wilde was convicted of violating.

Another idea popularized in the 1800s was that, in a homosexual, "a female soul had become united with a male body" (Craft 113). The German writer Karl Ulrichs wrote a "'series of polemical, analytical, theoretical, and apologetic pamphlets' endorsing same sex eroticism" (Craft 113). It was believed that the "mistake" of homosexuality was something that was somehow caused by physiology, in that somehow nature made a mistake and gave a fetus with male body parts a female soul. The Victorians could not comprehend a normal man being attracted to another man. Victorians could not conceive of the idea of lesbianism. The popular ideas of phallic superiority meant that the society could not possibly think of a woman being attracted to another woman. Specifically, Stoker disagreed with society's traditional views on homosexuality, "complaining about 'an atmosphere prejudiced towards the truths you sing' and 'a conservative country" (Schaffer 383).

Stoker "borrows from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a narrative strategy characterized by a predictable, if variable, triple rhythm. Each of these texts first invites or admits a monster, then entertains and is entertained by monstrosity for some extended duration, until its closing pages it expels or repudiates the monster and all the disruption that he/she/it brings" (Craft 107). In Stoker's novel, the monster is invited by males and females craving sexual encounters, however, all erotic intercourse between two males is fulfilled between a mediating female. In many cases during the novel, that female is Lucy Westenra. This is due to the sensitive nature of the times, as Victorian England was not ready for direct sexual contact between two men, even contact that was masked by the façade of a vampire.

Oscar Wilde's trial had a deep impact on Stoker. Stoker initially destroyed all mentions of Wilde from his papers, including his autobiography. While other of Wilde's friends rose to his defense, Stoker, for the most part, remained quiet. "When the court convicted Wilde of sodomy, most of these mutual friends expressed pain and rage, throwing Stoker's stubborn, strange silence into sharp relief" (Schaffer 394). Over the years, a rumor has also surfaced that in 1900, Stoker went to Paris to take Wilde some money, which would "prove that Stoker felt passionate, loyal support for Wilde at the same moment that he erased Wilde's name from his autobiography" (Schaffer 396).

Stoker wrote Dracula as a kind of relief of the inner pain he felt over the trial and subsequent social lynching Wilde endured. The date of Wilde's conviction was coincidentally the date Stoker's brother Thornley, as well as Henry Irving, were knighted. In a testimonial honoring Irving, Stoker peculiarly added a paragraph which is evidenced, "as Stoker's covert apologia for his silence regarding Wilde" (Schaffer 397). In the passage, "Stoker masks forgiveness from those who might see that his silence is a sin - to those few nameless souls who know his secret affinity with Wilde" (Schaffer 397). Dracula was written just a month after Wilde was sent to jail, "Stoker solved his guilty problem...he produced a text that spoke about Wilde in a diffused, hidden, flowing, distorted way" (Schaffer 398). Images, themes, and even phrases from Wilde's trial reappear in the book, hardly disguised at all.

The first hints of homoeroticism are apparent in the first section of the novel, the diary of Jonathan Harker. Harker is immediately intrigued by Count Dracula. At his first dinner, Jonathan describes Dracula's "charming smile," (24) and as the Count leans over him, Harker "could not repress a shudder" (25). Harker seems to be drawn to Dracula, yet the character cannot sufficiently verbalize the intense feelings and emotions he is experiencing. "I think strange things which I dare not confess to my own soul," writes Jonathan into his journal. The erotic feelings Jonathan has towards the Count are not something to be divulged in that society, and Stoker carefully constructs it so that Jonathan's statements merely hint at homosexual undertones, and more directly show premonitions of the evil that resides in the castle.

Harker's intense passion towards Dracula is also revealed when the three vampire women try to attack Harker. Jonathan displays the anxiety of Victorian society when he feels a sexual anxiety at the intense feelings he experiencing:
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 (48)

Jonathan waits for the vampire woman to penetrate his skin, "I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstacy and waited - waited with beating heart" (49). This is the closest to actual male penetration that will be found in the novel. The literal penetration is not to be found in Stoker's novel. The vampire woman is about to penetrate the male. Penetration is a male sexual act, and Stoker reverses here the normal sexual roles by having the man enjoying a "feminine passivity and awaits a delicious penetration from a woman whose demonism is figured as the power to penetrate. A swooning desire for an overwhelming penetration and an intense aversion to the demonic potency empowered to gratify that desire compose the fundamental motivating action and emotion in Dracula" (Craft 109).

Harker's imprisonment by Dracula in Castle Dracula is also similar to Wilde's imprisonment. "Harker can only write letters with Dracula's permission, letters which Dracula will examine. He spends most of his time reading in the library adjoining his bedroom" (Schaffer 405), which mirrors Wilde being unable to write except censored letters by the prison governor, and he spent a great deal of time reading in the prison library.

Count Dracula himself also displays various hints of homosexuality during the course of the novel. Dracula has a desire to "drain" Harker of his blood. Blood and semen are interchangeable in this novel. Just as the sexual roles are inverted, blood is representative of semen. The mouth of the vampires is the sexual organ, penetrating the victims. When blood is exchanged, as it often is in the novel, it is representative of bodily fluid exchange that occurs during sexual intercourse. "Dracula represents the ghoulishly inflated vision of Wilde produced by Wilde's prosecutors; the corrupting, evil, secretive, manipulative, magnetic devourer of innocent boys" (Schaffer 398).

The three vampire women who live in Castle Dracula fulfill Count Dracula's desire to vamp Jonathan Harker, the women fulfill the "homoerotic embrace between Harker and the Count" (Craft 110). The women are permitted by society to engage in intercourse with a man, it is considered normal, so Stoker has Dracula fulfill his desires through the female intermediary, as will be mentioned again and again throughout the novel. Homoerotic desire is represented as a "monstrous heterosexuality, as a demonic inversion of normal gender relations. Dracula's daughters offer Harker a feminine form but a masculine penetration" (Craft 110). It is safer for Stoker to write the novel this way, and for Victorian England to accept a monstrous, warped, sexual desire instead of a normal, however homosexual desire.

When Dracula stumbles upon his daughters attempting to feed upon Harker, he exclaims, "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" (50). Dracula is full of "wrath and fury...his eyes were positively blazing" (49). Instead of fulfilling his erotic passion toward Harker, Dracula insists of getting all possible knowledge about England and English customs from Harker. Dracula exclaims to the three sisters, "Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! Go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done" (50). It is almost as if Dracula almost became caught up in his own desires of Harker, but decides that instead of fulfilling his desires directly upon Harker, he must learn about England so that he may conquer the entire country. "Hereafter Dracula will never represent so directly a male's desire to be penetrated" (Craft 111). In England, Dracula vamps women only, specifically Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker; however, the novel does not dismiss homoerotic passions and the threat of fulfillment of those desires. The desires are merely mellowed and transferred through the exchange of blood between the men and women of the novel.

"The conditions of secrecy necessary for nineteenth-century homosexual life...become ominous emblems of Count Dracula's evil" (Schaffer 406). Once in England, it is almost as if Dracula is embittered because he cannot fully express his sexual desires. Dracula tells of an averted homoeroticism to the Crew of Light when he says, "My revenge is just begun! I spread it over the centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine" (361). It is as if Dracula is vamping the women of England as a revenge for his usurped feelings of homosexuality that he cannot freely express due to the constraints of society. The "girls" Dracula speaks of are the substitution for the men Dracula cannot love, and the connection between Dracula and the women replaces the penetration he cannot experience with another male. "Everywhere in this text such desire seeks a strangely deflected heterosexual distribution; only through women may men touch" (Craft 111).

The mixture of desire for sexual penetration and fear of discovery is evident throughout the novel. "Desire's excursive mobility is always filtered in Dracula through the mask of a monstrous or demonic heterosexuality. Indeed, Dracula's mission in England is the creation of a race of monstrous women, feminine demons equipped with masculine devices" (Craft 111). It's almost as if to punish society for not letting him express himself sexually, Dracula is going to "ruin" their females, and give to them the masculine traits they define themselves by. "Dracula has a spirit's freedom and mobility, but that mobility is chained to the most mechanical of appetites" (Craft 117). The freedom to roam that Dracula enjoys is not the freedom he really craves in society, to express his own sexual desires freely.

Does Stoker deliberately deflect the homosexual undertones in the novel? The examples of such homoerotic tendencies and desires are deliberate, yet very careful in its delivery. The manner in which Dracula taunts the Crew of Light could almost be compared to Stoker seemingly taunting Victorian England, throwing in the faces of the English people the very treatment they give their own, such as Stoker's friend, Oscar Wilde, who was on trial for sodomy at the very time Dracula was written. The idea of punishment for sexually "deviant" behavior is also more directly apparent in the novel, as the vampire Lucy Westenra must be subjected to a "corrective penetration" from her husband, Arthur. The sexually deviant behavior Lucy acquired by becoming a vampire must be extinguished "in order to justify the fatal correction of Lucy's dangerous wandering, her insolent disregard for the sexual and semiotic constraint encoded in Van Helsing's exegesis of 'God's women'" (Craft 118).

The thought of homosexuality "so terrified and fascinated late Victorian culture" (Craft 112). The suppressed homoerotic desires of Dracula and the rest of the male figures in the novel could be Stoker's way of inflicting fear of homosexuality into the men of Victorian England, a way to show them how ridiculous their ideas about homosexuality really were. Stoker also creates outrageously sexual beings out of the vampire women in the novel, causing a possibly deliberate uncomfortable feeling into men in Victorian England, as to what their women are capable of.

The transfusions of blood to Lucy Westenra to thwart the attacks of Dracula are also representative of sexual intercourse in the novel. There are four men who give their blood for transfusions to aid Lucy. Arthur, Lucy's husband, Dr. Seward, Quincey Morris, and Van Helsing all give blood to Lucy. Upon giving this blood to help try and save her, the blood is then drained from her body that night. This is Stoker's way of indirectly implying intercourse between men in the novel. The men are willingly giving their blood to Lucy, even after Van Helsing suspects the blood is being drained by Dracula. It is almost as if the men want Dracula to have their blood, which is representative of semen in the novel.

The men also use the penetration of the needle into Lucy to represent a kind of phallic superiority over Lucy. After Arthur's blood is successfully transfused into Lucy, "Arthur feels as if he and Lucy 'had been really married and that she was his wife in the sight of God'" (Craft 121). The consummation of their marriage is the penetration that occurs through the transfusion of blood, which throughout the novel has been representative of sexual intercourse. After receiving the blood, "Lucy wakes after her fiancé's donation declaring: 'Arthur feels very, very close to me. I seem to feel his presence warm about me" (Davis 184). Even the characters admit the sexual nature of the transfusion. "Van Helsing, after his donation, calls himself a 'bigamist' and Lucy "this so sweet maid...a polyandrist'" (Craft 121). What is also interesting about the feelings of guilt in Van Helsing is that the guilt he feels over the intercourse he has with Lucy may also stem from feelings of guilt over betraying the desiring male, Dracula. Van Helsing, in order to have intercourse with another man, Dracula, must first experience intercourse through the intermediary woman (as has been mentioned before). Van Helsing specifically addresses the need for masculinity when he "tells Arthur before the first transfusion 'You are a man and it is a man we want'" (Craft 121). Not only is Van Helsing stating that he wants a man, he uses the word "we" to imply the entire male sex. We want a man. It is explicit in its content, yet again, Stoker is careful to mask the homoerotic undertones in the context of the novel. The men consider Lucy Westenra sexually deviant after her escapades escalate during her nighttime romps. Her sexual deviance is initially subdued by the penetration of the doctor's needle into the woman's arm. It is like the men are subduing her from the sexual behavior she has been engaging in so that they might in turn experience it through the blood transfusion.

The final penetration to bring about an end to Lucy's deviance occurs after she has killed several people, namely children. Stoker carefully inverts typical female roles in the novel, just as he reverses the typically masculine roles, for example when Harker is willingly submitting to the vampire daughters. The maternal function typical in Victorian society is grossly inverted in the character of Lucy Westenra. "Stoker emphasizes the monstrosity implicit in such abrogation of gender codes by inverting a favorite Victorian maternal function. His New Lady Vampires feed at first only on small children, working their way up...a demonic pleasure thermometer until they may feed at last on full-blooded males. Lucy's dietary indiscretions evoke the deepest disgust from the Crew of Light" (Craft 120).

Of course Lucy must be punished for such a gross infraction against the decency standards of the day. Arthur plunges a stake into the heart of Lucy, in a passage that is obviously punishing Lucy for her transgressions of the gender ideals of the day. "This enthusiastic correction of Lucy's monstrosity provides the Crew of Light with a double reassurance: it effectively exorcises the threat of a mobile and hungering feminine sexuality, and it counters the homoeroticism latent in the vampire threat by reinscribing...the line dividing the male who penetrates and the woman who receives" (Craft 122). The violent phallic exchange between Arthur and Lucy as Arthur kills the vampire is the closest Stoker can come to showing a phallic interchange between two men. Lucy is representative of masculine tendencies, and Arthur and the Crew of Light put an end to her deviances, however, this could not happen between the Crew of Light and Count Dracula. "Lucy receives the phallic correction that Dracula deserves" (Craft 124). Instead of "curing" Dracula's homosexuality, they put Lucy to rest, and therefore cure her of her ailment. This also, interestingly enough, leads one to believe that homosexuality may be cured. Perhaps Stoker was affected by the ideas of the day and felt that through some sort of remedy, homosexuality could indeed be cured. "As the prototypical victim of the 'between men' scenario, she (Lucy) gets sacrificed to promote the homosocial bonding" (Schaffer 410).

The scene in which Dracula attacks Mina Harker while Jonathan Harker lays helplessly in the room is also very important within the ideas of sexual inversion. Mina is forced to drink blood (semen) from Dracula's breast, and inversion on a typical nourishing scene between mother and child. By Mina being forced to draw liquid from Dracula's breast, sexual confusion is inferred, as the masculine function of bodily exchange and feminine functions of nourishment from the breast are both implied here, making Dracula seem confused about his identity. Dracula actually becomes not a mother offering milk, but blood from an open wound. The open wound may also be representative of another sexual object, as there is a suggestion of a bleeding vagina. "The image of red and voluptuous lips, with their slow trickle of blood, has, of course, always harbored this potential" (Craft 125). After this encounter with Mina Harker, Dracula seems to limp off the page, as there are no more attacks upon the women of England, and there is no dramatic death scene for Dracula to offer any savage fight or tearful soliloquy. The scene is also the as of yet unfulfilled erotic scene between Jonathan Harker and Dracula. "What appears to be the scene of Mina's guilty sex with Dracula can actually be read as the scene of Jonathan's union with Dracula" (Schaffer 413). Harker vicariously comes in contact with Dracula's bodily fluids when Mina brings them to him in the soiled clothing.

Another direct reference to a sort of male bonding occurs within the Crew of Light. There is a "blaring theme of heroic or chivalric male bonding" in the novel (Craft 128). These men, who are united in their protection of a false representation of women, work with action, fighting the good fight, showing a proud ethic, and earning a great victory. The men "combine fraternally to fulfill the collective "high duty" that motivates their "great quest" (Craft 128).
The male bonding that is portrayed has a "more libidinal bonding" underneath it, as "male fluids find a protected pooling place in the body of a woman" (Craft 128). The only way the men's blood (semen) can mix is through Lucy's body, however, through the transfusions the men do receive some sort of bodily unity that they could not normally have sexually. "Men touching women touch each other, and desire discovers itself to be more than the Crew of Light would consciously allow" (Craft 128).

The son of Jonathan and Mina Harker mentioned at the end of the novel encapsulates the sexual relationship between the Crew of Light. While there is no doubt about the paternity of the child, "Stoker's prose quietly suggests an alternative paternity: 'His bundle of names links all our little band of men together.' This is the fantasy child of those sexualized transfusions, son of an illicit and nearly invisible homosexual union" (Craft 129). This hint of an illicit homosexual union between the Crew of Light is the last suggestion of homoerotic tendencies in the novel. When the Crew of Light kills Dracula, "Stoker kills the media-produced homosexual monster" the Victorians made of Oscar Wilde" (Schaffer 415).

The anxiety evident in Victorian culture contributes to the repetition and predictable displacement of homoerotic aspects of the novel. Bram Stoker's clever subtlety of phallic imagery and homosexual intercourse invoke clear messages while staying vague enough to abstain from directly attacking the Victorian's about a sensitive issue. Stoker sympathizes with homosexual culture, as "the text itself, in its imagistic identification of Dracula and the Crew of Light, in its ambivalent propensity to subvert its own fundamental differences, sympathizes with and finally domesticates vampire desire" (Craft 127). Stoker's sympathy for homosexuals and their situation, seemingly arising from feelings of anxiety over the persecution of Stoker's friend Oscar Wilde, settles itself in sympathy towards Dracula and his situation in the novel. Stoker masterfully weaves subverted sexuality with homoerotic phallic imagery to present a viable argument against persecution of homosexuals and for acceptance and tolerance of their way of life.

Works Cited

Craft, Christopher. ""Kiss Me With Those Red Lips" : Gender Inversion in Bram Stoker's

Dracula." Representations. 8(1984): 107-133.

Davis, Lloyd ed. Virginal Sexuality and Textuality in Victorian Literature. Albany: State

University of New York Press. 1993.

Roth, Phyllis A. Bram Stoker. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1982.

Schaffer, Talia. ""A Wilde Desire Took Me": The Homoerotic History of Dracula." ELH.

61.2(1994): 381-425.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics. 2003.