The Cultural Parasite: Sucking the Blood from Social Conventions in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Nineteenth-century England was undoubtedly a time that signified great conflict towards the rise of the individual; in the wake of modernity (manifested in the industrial revolution), people were forced into compromising positions simply to survive. Unfortunately, many aspects of individuals' lives were sacrificed in order to conform to capitalist society, including the attainment of a virtuous (by religious definition) identity. Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was published in 1897 still stands as one of the most telling novels of that century, the virtue of the individual prevails as a major theme.

While each of the novel's characters must deal with his or her own virtue within the confines of English modernity, real conflict arises with the introduction of a terrible Other, a monster-a vampire by the name of Count Dracula. Being a bloodsucker, Dracula must convert his victims to drones of his own; once his victims are 'undead,' they must feed on the living, preying on the fears they hold closest, namely sexuality. Stoker utilizes the fear of sexuality to evoke paranoia of this monstrous Other. Therefore, it is necessary to examine Dracula's role as an encroacher and evaluate his effects on nineteen-century England's idyllic virtue.

First, one must consider the primary role of a monster. Judith Halberstam, in her book Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, writes,

The body that scares and appalls changes over time, as do the individual characteristics that add up to monstrosity. Within the traits that make a body monstrous-that is, frightening or ugly, abnormal or disgusting-we may read the difference between [O]ther and a self, a pervert and a normal person, a foreigner and a native. (Halberstam 11)

Like the shifting social landscape of nineteenth-century England, Dracula promotes a mode of change, regardless of whether or not that change signifies something that is socially right or wrong. He merely represents an ideal: outside influence will shake the foundation of all that is culturally conservative. Until Stoker's adaptation of the gothic monster, the resolution was fairly simple; kill the terrifying fiend and order shall be restored. Yet, in Dracula, the horror operates on a much more clever level. Dracula refuses to be identified as the outsider, the invader. Rather, he chooses to shift shape-in accordance with a convenient and quite-necessary power possessed by vampires-and proceeds to blend into the population in a manner that could be characterized as diplomatic, something far from monstrous.

Upon the introduction of Dracula, readers are immediately presented with his cultural ambiguity (despite his residence in Transylvania. Although he is of Eastern European descent, the Count has taken it upon himself to pursue all that is known to be English. Jonathan Harker, an English lawyer who has been hired in a deal to sell English real estate to Dracula, notes in his diary that Dracula's library contains [...] A vast number of English books [...] The books were of the most varied kind-history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law-all relating to England and English life and customs and manners." (Stoker 30)

By consuming various models of English culture, not only does Dracula invade England to threaten the lives of commoners, he threatens England itself. Through his assimilation, Dracula signifies the perversion of a homogenous body that is otherwise represented as pure. In her essay "Racialization, Capitalism, and Aesthetics in Stoker's Dracula," Patricia McKee writes, "Dracula has been understood to respond to the fears of late Victorians, due in part to Darwinian thought, that degeneration threatened both the British "race" and the British Empire" (McKee 1).

Therefore, it is impossible to ignore the comparisons that resonate between the invasion/colonization that Dracula brings and that which the British Empire has brought in the past. Through this impedance, Dracula menaces the power that England has brutally attained; the colonizer may become the colonized. Dracula himself is extremely familiar with the process of conquering foreign lands, but not because of his English history books. He recounts the bloody history of his ancestors to Harker, saying, "We Szekelys have a right to be proud [emphasis added], for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship" (Stoker 40).

It is with great disappointment, however, that he adds "The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are a tale that is told" (Stoker 41). Here, Dracula verbalizes an aspect of the vampire's reverse-virtue: blood should not be spilled when it could be drunk; armies should not be dead when they could be undead. Therefore, he is not only forced to reject the capitalist philosophy of the British Empire because of dwindling and dissipated relatives, but because he does not wish to mesh with English society. He only wishes to mimic it in order to exploit it.
Dracula plans to attack England in a way that will sever the most vital of its attributes as a cohesive 'great race,' and taint its virtuous body. Just as he will invade England culturally, he will invade its citizens sexually.

It is no doubt that sexuality, particularly among females, was a paradox strictly dictated nineteenth-century England; women either remained virgins (and thus remained pure) or they were married and became mothers. So when Mina Murray, Harker's fiancée, and her friend Lucy Westenra enter the novel, of course they are introduced in ways that depict them as sexual beings. They write letters regarding their romances and prospective marriages, particularly the seductive Lucy who writes, "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!" (Stoker 73). Certainly it will be Lucy who becomes entranced by the spell of the vampire.

Still, Stoker conveys no sexual power amongst the women because both are imprisoned by the norms of society; Lucy will not marry three men, let alone have sex with them. This is why Stoker must write Dracula's attack-in a churchyard nonetheless-with overtly sexual tones and, afterwards, why Lucy must worry about her reputation. The ways in which a vampire attacks its victims can also be seen as a sexual occurrence: the vampire penetrates the unbroken skin, drawing blood in a manner that emulates the loss of a woman's virginity. As Lucy slowly transforms into a vampire herself, she is finally changed into a sexualized individual. "The monster is the product of and the symbol for the transformation of identity into sexual identity through the mechanism of failed repression" (Halberstam 9).

Lucy, however, has only become a sexualized individual by violation, i.e., she was violated and victimized. She was only shown a glimpse of the evil, sexual world Stoker sets up. Therefore, she is not a sexually empowered individual until she takes it upon herself to pursue this carnality-she is not a true vampire until she performs the unholy act of robbing another's blood.

Fortunately, there is still a way to reverse Lucy's oncoming monstrosity: it can be curtailed by the transfusion of untainted blood. With the help of three men, Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, and the American Quincey Morris, Lucy is restored to her old self again. Sexual overtones appropriately appear in this passage as well, with each man exhausted after the act of giving their individual blood to Lucy is complete. Here, Stoker shows that the exchange of bodily fluids, to be blunt, can be a beautiful thing as well. Although it is extremely taboo to be speaking of, especially to a nineteenth-century British audience, Stoker acknowledges the emotional and spiritual aspects of what can be considered love-making. Rather than subduing Lucy's moral righteousness by violation, they subdue her sexuality by means of sacrificing a bit of themselves.

The tone itself within this scene conveys a romance prevalent in this time period, where the so-called sexual mistakes of a woman could be corrected in time by an upright man of relative prominence. This is best vocalized by Dr. Seward, as he writes in his journal, "No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves" (Stoker 149).

Yet Lucy relapses, partly because Dracula continues to draw blood from her, and partly because of the shortcomings of her mother. She disappears, only to resurface as the now-notorious 'Bloofer-lady' who abducts and kills children-an act that is dreadfully un-motherly, thus negating all English perceptions of feminine potential; she has transformed from someone chaste and pure, and so very English, into something terrible and aggressively sexual. Van Helsing, Seward, and Morris recognize Lucy as a monster, who they attack with holy icons, including a crucifix and Communion wafers.

In order to put an end to her monstrosity, the men must drive a stake into her heart. Once again, Stoker utilizes a sexual tone to draw intention to an implicit theme. With Lucy trembling as she is deeply penetrated in an action whose ultimate reason is one of transcendental love, she is restored to an image of her old self, despite now being truly dead.

There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing [...] but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity. True that there were there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of care and pain and waste. But these were all dear to us, for they marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever. (Stoker 245)

In this scene, what is represented is the one true thing that may subdue any sexual encroacher: marriage. It takes what may be considered sexually alien (specifically at the time Dracula was published)-an uninhibited, unproductive sexual appetite-and tames it by means of spiritual belief. Marriage, in this case, despite being a cultural and religious inculcation of unending love, brings a quick end to the lust that should never have conquered a fine young English girl. But for Lucy, it also brings death.

It is suitable then that Dracula is not sentenced to death by a stake through the heart from a member of the opposite sex; it simply would not make any sense within the confines of either the physical or marital symbolism. Instead, the Count is exterminated (while being transported by a band of 'gypsies' no less) with the weapons of men, or what Stephen Arata, in his book Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siecle, calls "the weapons of empire" (Arata 128). Arata writes, "Harker's 'great Kukri knife,' symbol of British imperial power in India, and Morris's bowie knife, symbol of American westward expansion, simultaneously subdue the vampire" (128).

Logically, Quincey Morris must also die. Stoker makes sure to vanquish any foreigner who might be considered the Other and therefore a cause of anxiety to the British identity. Arata notes that, "He stands with his allies in Anglo-Saxon brotherhood, bue he also, as a representative of an America about to emerge as the world's foremost imperial power, threatens British superiority as surely as Dracula does" (129).

If the novel would have ended like this, Stoker would have failed to redeem the role of England as the Other to any skeptic readers-after all, the British Empire was partly built on colonialism. History shows that England was as much an invader as Count Dracula himself, if not bloodier.

Instead, Stoker attaches a note written by Harker to the end of the story. Written seven years after the ordeal with Dracula, the note describes the son Mina has delivered:

Quincey, named after the aforementioned fallen American. Harker notes that, "His mother [...] the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has passed into him" (Stoker 426). Whereas Stoker could have simply left any significant foreigners in the story for dead, he chooses to involve them in England's future, through the existence of a symbolic newborn. Not only does this further empower the English realm of thought pertaining to colonization by twisting the roles played by foreign invaders, it acts to hypothetically empower regions England has conquered. The sole reason this can work to empower the citizens of England (and England only): English virtue-a combination of religion, nationality, and industrialism.

This is why Stoker must repudiate the entire novel with the uncertainty regarding just exactly what happened; ironically, the England must be forgiven for invading lands in a missionary fashion. Already the definitive lines of virtue have been blurred by an unreal virtue!
"Bram Stoker complicates [social order by] suggesting that at the end of the century the modern citizen claimed no settled identity, but a mobility[...]" (McKee 1). Thus, in Stoker's eyes, England must only continue with its colonizing efforts despite the effects of the unsettling Other.

Works Cited

Arata, Stephen. Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siecle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
McKee, Patricia. "Racialization, Capitalism, and Aesthetics in Stoker's Dracula." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 36.1 (2002): 42-60. MLA International Bibliography. 18 December 2006. http://search.ebscohost.com.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1. New York: Back Bay Books, 2005.