The Pleasures in Death: Dracula, Fear and Desire
And I desperate now approve | Desire is death, which physic did except. | Past cure I am, now reason is past care, | And frantic-mad with evermore unrest - Sonnet 147
When I was about five years old, I had a book – hardcover, with bright blue edges and at the centre an illustration of a red-roofed cottage – titled “Old Grandma's Stories: Folktales Passed Down from Parents to Children”, that I begged my mum to read to me every day. The stories were all scary: evil relatives, demonic animals, children being buried alive, kidnapping, etc. But oh how I loved them. I remember loving the tingling sensation of that harmless fear.
My favourite story was about a little orphan girl living with her stepmother, and every night they were visited by a shadow of a man with bright yellow eyes. The shadow (in cahoots with the stepmother) called the girl’s name, inviting her to come out of the house. But she had a little dog to protect her because when it started barking the shadow would go away. And so it went on and on until the stepmother murdered the dog. That night, terrified of the shadow without her faithful pet to defend her, the girl cried for her life. At the last moment, her guardian angel appeared like a light and killed the shadow – revealing to her that he was the dog all along, disguising himself only to watch over her. I read it so many times, I never forgot it.
Nowadays I think the story was pretty gruesome for a kid, nonetheless, this book played a part in the development of my current tastes. If today I love mystery and horror movies, dark themes, melancholic tragedies, and gothic tales, it’s due to such experiences. Not to sound like Freud, but if you take a moment to investigate the first cultural content you consumed, you’ll find some interesting inklings about your present ways.
That said, I recently stumbled upon a book that takes this investigation to a broader stage called La Peur en Occident (1978) by Jean Delumeau, in which he tells the story of Fear in the West, tracing the origins of it and current cultural practices derived from immemorial dread. The iconic figure of the Vampire is a constant presence, but I have to acknowledge that this monster never inspired fear in me. On the contrary, my feelings are closer to desire – and I reckon that’s the case with many readers nowadays.
But how can something that for so long has caused real panic – so real as to provoke a wave of exhumation of “suspicious” corpses – be transformed into a sex symbol? Perhaps because fear and desire are two sides of the same feeling of curiosity. Ever since the Greek myths, human beings have been attracted to what they should avoid, and I would go so far as to say that this dread is what guarantees the allure. No other figure personifies this duality so well as the Vampire.
Perhaps if the stories of my book were wholesome and blissful they would not have caused the lasting impression it did. Perhaps I wanted to read them over and over because they were mysterious and uncanny, and because of that I felt some kind of “forbidness” – it wasn’t appropriate for me, and that’s why I wanted it. In a way, it was a childish guilty pleasure. As we grow older, our pleasures increase as much as our guilt, and so do the dangers.
While reading Dracula, I found myself going against Stoker’s premise and kind of rooting for the Vampire. As I paused to reflect on why is this (and I swear is not because of my Damon Salvatore bias), I noticed a parallel created by the author, either intentionally or not. The heroes of Dracula are desperately boring, flat, and tiresome. Jonathan's weakness and impotence, without the advantage of a Byronic sensibility or brooding qualities, is what prevents me from rooting for him. On the other hand, the puzzling mixture of chivalry and repulsion of the Count, alongside his portentous backstory, makes him an attractive anti-hero. The author gave his villain – as is usually the case – much more flavour. I wouldn’t mind watching him implode the proper Victorian society… I wish Stoker had put in scenes of him interacting with English aristocrats. Overall I did not find the story scary or the Vampire repulsive, it was all very silly and odd at best.
Our fears, despite our individual traumas and particularities, are influenced by the contemporary zeitgeist. In the Victorian era, the fear of monsters like Dracula and Mr Hyde said a lot about the spirit of that society. For me, it is hard to grasp what is the current scare — as always, it’s almost impossible to get the historical big picture while living it — and when that happens, the best method is to turn to the past to understand something about the present (classic History teacher saying). So what is our heritage of trepidations? How much of yesterday’s panics still linger today?
The Various Meanings of Dracula
In his book, Jean Delumeau says that: “The fear of vampires continued to exist in 19th century Romania – the country of Dracula. An English traveller observed in 1828: “When a man has ended his days in a violent manner, a cross is erected on the spot where he perished, so that the dead man will not become a vampire’” (p. 129). Belief in a material afterlife was widespread, and not just peasant superstition. It was only with the advance of science (and the consequent weakening of religion) and capitalism (and with it all the individualistic and self-centred morality and philosophy) that this belief lost its strength as a plausible fear – and, conversely, grew stronger in pop culture.
In Dialectic of Fear (1983), Franco Moretti, applying Marxist literary criticism, claims that the fear of bourgeois civilisation is summed up in two names: Frankenstein and Dracula. According to him, both monsters represent two extremes in capitalist society: the wretched outcast and the degenerate proprietor. In different ways, both represent a collective anxiety of a monstrous future where the outcasts invade Victorian fantasies of a civilised sanctuary and the foreigners corrupt with their pagan hedonism.
Most of us are aware of what consists of Victorian morality, and with that in mind, it’s not surprising that those are the manifestations of their fears. Even less surprising is the hero chosen by the Victorians to defend their precious environment, who is, according to Moretti, a “nationalistic, stupid, superstitious, philistine, impotent, self-satisfied” man. I would use these adjectives to describe either Jonathan Harker or Victor Frankenstein. As I said earlier, I found myself rooting for the monsters because the “hero” is always a whiny hypocrite.
Contrary to what the Sensation Novel tried to accomplish by bringing monstrosity into English country houses, the horror we see in Dracula is a way of displacing fears onto something outside of society. This external threat would be easy to identify and therefore easy to oppose, and most of all, this type of monster had nothing to do with the model of a Victorian citizen. This way of antagonization serves to reconstruct social cohesion given that the British Empire was an ongoing crisis at the end of the 19th century.
Moretti sees Count Dracula as a metaphor for capital, because the vampire, like the aristocratic capitalist, is always looking forward to amplifying his domain; he is greedy for limitless consumption, aiming to “subjugate the whole of society and for this reason, one cannot coexist with the vampire. One must either succumb to him or kill him”, as Marx would say.
As for the manifestation against foreigners in Dracula, it found its expression in its narrative format (made up of diaries and letters) since we only have the English point of view, even though there are three main foreign characters, including Dracula himself (I must say I was anxious to hear his statement but, alas). Thus, the narrative exists only in the form and with the meaning shaped by British Victorian culture.
The Vampire and the Sex Scare
“A sociological analysis of Frankenstein and Dracula reveals that one of the institutions most threatened by the monsters is the family. Yet this fear cannot be explained wholly in historical and economic terms. On the contrary, it is very likely that its deepest root is to be found elsewhere: in the eros, above all in sex.” (MORETTI, p. 98)
According to David Pirie “Dracula can be seen as the great submerged force of Victorian libido breaking out to punish the repressive society which had imprisoned it; one of the most appalling things that Dracula does to the matronly women of his Victorian enemies (in the novel as in the film) is to make them sensual”. This was one of the first things I perceived in the novel, especially in the way Stoker opposes Lucy and Mina as the coquette and the wife, an aspect which dictates their endings. Lucy is in control of her sexuality and relationships when she is presented with three marriage offers (from men who would literally bleed for her); therefore the power of choice is bestowed upon her. As she questions why a woman can’t marry three men at the same time, she is challenging the whole Victorian cosmos of feminine obedience, and sentencing herself to narrative death.
Mina, on the other hand, is characterised the opposite way. She is saintly devoted to Jonathan; she deliberately gives up her agency mid-investigation so the men (who have already transposed their love from unworthy Lucy to Mina) can “protect” her, and she annoyingly repeats how good is to have brave men around to help; she decides to commit suicide before turning into a vampire. Now, let’s consider the metaphoric sexual implications of a “vampire” — when Lucy turned she was constantly described as “voluptuous” in the text:
My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westernra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. [...] by the concentrated light that fell on Lucy’s face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe. (p. 196)
This last image painted by Dr Seward reminded me of the virginal metaphors seen in Romantic and Gothic texts, as the stream of blood against the white fabric may suggest the events of a traditional Victorian wedding night. Lucy being “stained” as such implies that she is impure, and therefore deserves to be punished. The revenge of the wronged suitors comes next, in a shocking scene full of sexual innuendos in which the men have to kill again the un-dead woman:
But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted around it. (p. 201)
By preferring suicide, Mina is saying that she would rather die before becoming like Lucy, who is the only character who succumbs to the “temptations of the flesh”. Moretti sums up the subject quite clearly:
Dracula, then, liberates and exalts sexual desire. And this desire attracts but - at the same time - frightens. Lucy is beautiful, but dangerous. Fear and attraction are one and the same: and not just in Stoker. Much of nineteenth-century bourgeois high culture had already treated eros and sex as ambivalent phenomena (MORETTI, p. 99)
Vampirism, then, is the synthesis of forbidden desire, of fear mixed with lust, which today may be obvious and cliche after Twilight, Vampire Diaries, Interview with a Vampire, True Blood, and many more. But even if it’s a worn-out trope, its sexual appeal is still the same: who among us has never swooned over a brooding man saying to the mortal heroine that they can’t be together due to his dangerous supernatural nature? I can’t even tell you how many fanfics out there are based solely on this premise. Isn’t Bella Swan’s biggest desire to become a vampire ever since the first movie so she can properly be with Edward? But Stephanie Meyer is a special case for not letting the couple have sex until after the wedding, a deviation from the naturally “sinful” path of vampire stories, which I guess she tries to bend to fit her Mormon beliefs. If there are any Twilight fans in here (don't be ashamed) please correct me if I’m wrong since I’ve never read the books.
One thing Meyer gets right from the vampire canon is Edward’s desire: you never know for sure if he wants to sleep with Bella or rip her throat apart, or even if to him both are one and the same, and that dangerous tension is what attracted readers to the same story for centuries. This very thin line can be seen in multiple ways: as hunger for the flesh (which with vampires can mean literally and metaphorically), and as a kind of reverse psychology of sin – yearning for something just because you shouldn’t have it. Even the words and imagery used to describe the horrors could also be used to describe the sensual: impulse, piercing, ripping, craving, thirst.
All I’m saying is commonplace, and if you like the horror genre like me, you are definitely aware of the connection between sex and death (the first girl to die in every horror movie is the slut; the final girl is the moralist one). Well, I cannot but think of Shakespeare's Sonnet 147, in which he declares, ‘I desperate now approve / Desire is death'.
A Cure for ‘This Mortal Coil’
I've believed for some time that all kinds of fear can be distilled down to the simple fear of the unknown, and what greater unknown is there than death? “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns”? The Vampire, being immortal, is therefore immutable in the most literal sense. No matter how foul his existence, at least he will keep existing, he who never knew what lies beyond the afterlife, received the gift (or curse?) of never decaying.
Time is the great ruler that makes life alive, yet everything that lives to seize the day must pay the highest and most democratic price. But what if something can carpe diem away and not be charged? Here is perhaps the greatest strength and magnetism of the Vampire; he is the cure for man’s dread of his own mortality and therefore is irresistible.
The frustration of not having enough time is a universal experience, and the anxiety of not enjoying life as one should is what prompts the human imagination to dream of immortality, to create stories about it: the philosopher's stone, children of Zeus, the fountain of youth, reincarnation, ghosts, Faustian pacts, and of course the Vampire. The idea of properly enjoying life is tightly knitted with the satisfaction of our desires, or rather, of the mortal inability to satisfy them. As Johnathan Dollimore said in Death, Desire, and Loss in Western Culture (1998) ‘if death both drives and frustrates desire it is also what desire may seek in order to be free of itself’(p. xx).
Philippe Ariès, the renowned historian of death (The Hour of Our Death, Western Attitudes Toward Death, Images of Man and Death), dates the unsettling relationship between Thanatos and Eros from the 16th century. From that time until the 18th century, those elements were associated with increasing degrees of intensity. He describes this as an interesting development, but with little explanation as to why it occurs. I think such a subjective phenomenon has little hope of being scientifically explained. Certainly, we can point out social contexts such as the Plague, civil wars, the rise of individuality, intellectual movements etc. as reasons, but only to a certain extent – as it happens with almost everything in the Human Sciences.
That being said, I found in Ariès the union between the sexual premise discussed in the previous topic and the theme of the present topic, namely, eroticism and violence (or repulse, death etc.) being indissociable: the first being an aspect of the second, as in the torments of the martyrs like Saint Sebastian or Teresa of Ávila. Ariès observes an unconscious expression of “that blend of love and death, pleasure and pain, that will later be called sadism”, which inspires the macabre eroticism in Dracula. A preoccupation with necrophilia arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries: “the beautiful young corpse now acquired in the aesthetic sensibility a place reminiscent of that of the young ephebe in Hellenistic culture” (ARIÈS, p. 210).
I am not a religious person, however, I think it is easier to face fear when one has faith in something inherently good to balance the intangible evils — and I wish I had such faith. Fear is a relentless aspect of the human psyche, and its object says a lot about a person or a community. As Nina Auerbach said, “What vampires are in any given generation is part of what I am and what my times have become” (AUERBACH, p. 4). We create our vampires as much as we get the vampires we deserve.
Sometimes when I study history I keep thinking of how fragile and helpless human beings can be, yet how cruel. Being a sceptic, I blame the people themselves for all the evil that exists and has ever existed. Still, it may be easier for some of us to displace that evil to supernatural entities, for how could a fellow being do inexplicably awful things? If we are the image of the creator, our wickedness must come from the outside. In a society where God is absent, we are left without a cure for the dread of the unknown, all the help we get lies within our own imagination.