Gender and sexuality
Academic analyses of Dracula as sexually charged have become so frequent that a cottage industry has developed around the topic.[56] Sexuality and seduction are two of the novel's most frequently discussed themes, especially as it relates to the corruption of English womanhood.[57] Modern critical writings about vampirism widely acknowledge its link to sex and sexuality.[58] Bram Stoker himself was possibly homosexual; Talia Schaffer points to intensely homoerotic letters sent by him to the American poet Walt Whitman.[59] Stoker began writing the novel one month following the imprisonment of his friend Oscar Wilde for homosexuality.[60]
The novel's characters are often said to represent transgressive sexuality through the performance of their genders. The primary sexual threat posed by Count Dracula is, Christopher Craft writes, that he will "seduce, penetrate, [and] drain another male",[61] with Jonathan Harker's excitement about being penetrated by three vampire women serving as a mask and proxy for his homosexual desire.[61] His excitement also inverts standard Victorian gender roles; in succumbing to the vampire women, Harker assumes the traditionally feminine role of sexual passivity while the vampire women assume the masculinised role of acting.[62] Sexual depravity and aggression were understood by the Victorians as the exclusive domain of Victorian men, while women were expected to submit to their husband's sexual wishes. Harker's desire to submit, and the scene's origin as a dream Stoker had, highlights the divide between societal expectations and lived realities of men who wanted more freedom in their sexual lives.[63] In the British version of the text, Harker hears the three vampire women whispering at his door, and Dracula tells them they can feed on him tomorrow night. In the American version, Dracula insinuates that he will be feeding on Harker that night: "To-night is mine! To-morrow is yours!" Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, in the Norton Critical Edition of the text, posit that Stoker thought the line would render the novel unpublishable in 1897 England, and that "the America that produced his hero Walt Whitman would have been more tolerant of men feeding on men".[64]
The novel's depiction of women continues to divide critics. Elaine Showalter writes that Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker represent different aspects of the New Woman.[g] According to Showalter, Lucy represents the "sexual daring" of the New Woman, evidenced by how she wonders why a woman cannot marry three men if they all desire her.[66] Mina, meanwhile, represents the New Woman's "intellectual ambitions", citing her occupation as a schoolmaster, her keen mind, and her knowledge of shorthand.[66] Carol A. Senf writes that Stoker was ambivalent about the New Woman phenomenon. Of the novel's five vampires, four are women, and all are aggressive, "wildly erotic", and driven only by their thirst for blood. Mina Harker, meanwhile, serves as the antithesis of the other female characters, and plays a singularly important role in Dracula's defeat.[31] On the other hand, Judith Wasserman argues that the fight to defeat Dracula is really a battle for control over women's bodies.[67] Senf points out that Lucy's sexual awakening, and her reversal of gender-based sexual roles, is what Abraham Van Helsing considers a threat.[68]
Race
Dracula, and specifically the Count's migration to Victorian England, is frequently read as emblematic of invasion literature,[69] and a projection of fears about racial pollution.[70] A number of scholars have indicated that Dracula's version of the vampire myth participates in antisemitic stereotyping. Jules Zanger links the novel's portrayal of the vampire to the immigration of Eastern European Jews to fin de siècle England.[71][h] Between 1881 and 1900, the number of Jews living in England had increased sixfold because of pogroms and antisemitic laws elsewhere.[73] Jack Halberstam provides a list of Dracula's associations with antisemitic conceptions of Jewish people: his appearance, wealth, parasitic bloodlust, and "lack of allegiance" to one country.[74][i] In terms of his appearance, Halberstam notes Dracula's resemblance to other fictional Jews; for example, his long, sharp nails are compared to those of Fagin in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838), and Svengali of George du Maurier's Trilby (1895), who is depicted as animalistic and thin.[76]
The novel's depiction of Slovaks and Romani people has attracted some, albeit limited, scholarly attention.[77][j] Peter Arnds wrote that the Count's control over the Romani and his abduction of young children evokes real folk superstitions about Romani people stealing children, and that his ability to transform into a wolf is likewise related to xenophobic beliefs about the Romani as animalistic.[79] Although vagrants of all kinds were associated with animals, the Romani were victims of persecution in Europe due to a belief that they enjoyed "unclean meat" and lived among animals.[80] Stoker's description of the Slovaks draws heavily from a travel memoir by a British major. Unlike the major's description, Harker's description is overtly imperialistic, labelling the people as "barbarians" and their boats as "primitive", emphasising their perceived cultural inferiority.[81]
Stephen Arata describes the novel as a case of "reverse colonisation"; that is, a fear of the non-white invading England and weakening its racial purity.[82] Arata describes the novel's cultural context of mounting anxiety in Britain over the decline of the British Empire, the rise of other world powers, and a "growing domestic unease" over the morality of imperial colonisation.[83] Manifesting also in other works aside from Stoker's novel, narratives of reverse colonisation indicate a fear of the "civilised" world being invaded by the "primitive".[84][k] What Dracula does to human bodies is not horrifying simply because he kills them, but because he transforms them into the racial Other.[85] Monika Tomaszewska associates Dracula's status as the racial Other with his characterisation as a degenerate criminal. She explains that, at the time of the novel's composition and publication, the "threatening degenerate was commonly identified as the racial Other, the alien intruder who invades the country to disrupt the domestic order and enfeeble the host race".[86]
Disease
The novel's representation of vampirism has been discussed as symbolising Victorian anxieties about disease. The theme is discussed with far less frequency than others because it is discussed alongside other topics rather than as the central object of discussion.[87] For example, some connect its depiction of disease with race. Jack Halberstam points to one scene in which an English worker says that the repugnant odour of Count Dracula's London home smells like Jerusalem, making it a "Jewish smell".[88] Jewish people were frequently described, in Victorian literature, as parasites; Halberstam highlights one particular fear that Jews would spread diseases of the blood, and one journalist's description of Jews as "Yiddish bloodsuckers".[89] In contrast, Mathias Clasen writes parallels between vampirism and sexually-transmitted diseases, specifically syphilis.[90][l] Martin Willis, a researcher focused on the intersection of literature and disease, argues that the novel's characterisation of vampirism makes it both the initial infection and resulting illness.[92]
