Christopher Craft "Kiss Me with Those Red Lips"

     

     Craft discusses in his criticism of Dracula that the gender norms set in place by Victorian society have been inverted. Also, homosexuality and homo-erotic undertones are prevalent throughout the novel, and are emphasized by Craft. Not only are the gender roles and identities inverted, Craft seems to make the case in some instances that gender, being male or female, is almost indistinguishable. For instance, the three female vampires Jonathon encounters. They are described as having voluptuous lips, and the intensity of the passage is quite sensual. Jonathon wishes with a "burning passion" that they would kiss him with their red lips. However, even though the three vampires are described as seductive women, their penetrating fangs are lurking behind the voluptuous ruby lips. 

     Christopher also poses the thought that Stoker is trying to breach the boundaries of homo-eroticism and cross over into homosexuality. Dracula first preys on Jonathon, but indirectly. The three female vampires were created by Dracula, and therefore are an extension of himself. Dracula is able to "live vicariously", so to speak, and penetrate Jonathon through the female vampires. This is accepted in the novel because, as Craft states, being female masks the fact that they are penetrating Jonathon, that he expects and wants this embrace. However, it's not truly the female's embrace, it's Dracula's. 

     As stated later in the article, craft quotes a passage from the novel, "Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine...." (267, 447). He is using this passage to back up the claim that Dracula is using the women to be the go-between for himself and the men. Also, Craft states that Van Helsing tried to correct Lucy's strayed sexuality with penetration, through blood transfusions, here we see the association between blood and semen. However, this "correction by penetration" backfired, because it was just another way for Dracula to consume and/or embrace the men. This is evidenced by this quote from the novel, "Even we four who gave our strength to Miss Lucy it also is all to him" (181, 448). 

     Christopher seems to suggest that Stoker is trying to make homo-eroticism and homosexuality acceptable to the people of the Victorian age, because he states that "only through women may men touch" (448). This suggests that, like other passages discussed above, Dracula is able to express his homosexuality through women. And that because men are using women  to facilitate their sexual desires, they aren't actually tarnishing their reputation.

     Lastly, Craft goes back to his statement that genders are almost indistinguishable. He uses the passage where Dracula is seducing Mina, and almost forcing her to do what he wants. Craft discusses how when Dracula opened one of his veins, the blood "spurted", making reference to semen and ejaculation. However, later on Craft states that Dracula's sexual identity is contradicted and masculine and feminine are intermingled. Craft states that when Dracula takes Mina's neck and presses her mouth to the wound on his breast, "Dracula here becomes a lurid mother offering not a breast but an open and bleeding wound" (458).

     Looking at the novel from Craft's perspective, it seems as though Stoker is trying to rival the idea of the "new woman" with new sexuality, or new gender norms. This is certainly an interesting thought. Craft poses some very good statements, and uses quotes from the novel that seem to back his claim. 

"The Occidental Tourist"

In his thesis statement of his essay “The Occidental Tourist”, Stephen D. Arata introduces Dracula to be an original work that breaks with the established views of vampires in the Gothic genre. In a first step, he examines the settings introduced in the novel. Hereby, he states that the significance of Transylvania does not lie in its mystic charm, but in its “political turbulence and racial strive (463).” This links the superstitious vampire to a conqueror, a military leader. However, the same metonymy – the imagery of the British Empire – is also mirrored in the vampire theme itself. The death of the human being shows the conquest and domination of an invading party – here the British – and the revival shows the upheaval of the colonized party. And it is the upheaval – according to Arata – that frightens Victorian society – it causes anxieties of a ‘Reverse Colonization’. In fact, it is the vampire attack that “designates a kind of colonization of the body (465)”. Moreover, the vampire’s strong and robust health stands in direct contrast to the condition of the Empire, which is also shown in the development of the physical conditions of Jonathan Harker and Count Dracula. Furthermore, he also suggests that the boundaries between good and evil are blurred throughout the novel since they are shown as highly subjective. Here, he poses the question of who was the right to colonize whom; which culture has the right to dominate and which does not? In a last step, he adds Stoker’s Irish roots to the vampire tale. However, his last argument – which is supposed to be his strongest regarding the established form of the hour glass essay – is not very convincing, since he does not provide any proof for the thesis of his paragraph. Arata hereby takes a wild guess of what Stoker’s beliefs were or might have been. As a result, he falls victim to the intentional fallacy – it is not significant of what the author wanted to say, but the core meaning of the text matters.

Context in The Occidental Tourist

The thesis for The Occidental Tourist can be found as this: "Late-Victorian Gothic in general, and Dracula in particular, continually calls to out attention to our cultural context surrounding and informing the text, and insists that we take that context into account." This not only summarizes the points made in this article, but also many of the things we take into account in our class discussions. In our class we often talk about gender issues and technological advancements of the time and how the book relates to them. The article mentions historic elements like colonization and how Dracula takes the idea and utilizes it. Stoker takes into account reverse colonization. The Late-Victorian Gothic area takes into account the dominance The British Empire had on the world. In Dracula, we see a force from Eastern Europe take over Western Europe. This is reverse colonization. The article also mentions the prominence of travel novels of the time. At the beginning of Dracula, we think this might be a travel novel. As mentioned in the article, Dracula becomes a novel set on pushing the boundaries of travel novels. When you look at the context the book was written in, the symbolism of the book takes a whole other meaning, which is what The Occidental Tourist takes into account. When taking this and putting it with the discussions we have in class, we see that the Victorian context changes the meaning of many things, whether it be Mina's or Lucy's characteristics or the relationship between the four men. Context is everything.

Arata "The Occidental Tourist"

In the essay “The Occidental Tourist” written by Stephen D. Arata the main points are location, race mixing, and all the characters status’ in the novel. The opening sentence in the essay is a good candidate for a thesis, “In many respects, Dracula represents a break from the Gothic tradition of vampires” (462). This statement is simple, but it gets to the point. It says that Dracula is different in what the world expected of a vampire at the time. This makes sense with the title of “Occidental” because Dracula is a more modern, western vampire. He departs from the typical eastern myth of a vampire. Another sentence later in the essay also captured the main points, “His (Dracula) activities after death carry on his activities in life; in both cases he has successfully engaged in forms of conquest and domination” (464).  This sentence discusses how Dracula’s new life is a continuation of his old life. The article talks about how Dracula would have been a warrior and in death he continues his war but now on the civilized people of London. His quoting of Emily Gerard is a very interesting in that it discusses how vampires are similar to Roumanians. It dehumanizes the Roumanians but it also humanizes the vampire.

The essay was persuasive in showing why Bram Stoker chose Transylvania as the location for his novel. He talks about how Transylvania is the “Eastern Question” (462), and was an obsession of Britain at this time. The essay is less persuasive in his deracinating of the victims. He has some strong evidence with the blood transfusions and the order they are done in but it’s all conjecture. Lucy was given Arthur’s blood first because he was her fiancé, nothing to do with him being aristocratic. Quincy gives his blood last because he shows up to Lucy’s after everyone else. The last thing that made the essay unpersuasive was his ranting at the end of the essay about Ireland. Stoker being Irish but living in London doesn't seem to be an important detail and it didn't pertain to anything the rest of the essay discussed.

Gender Displacements in Dracula

In Christopher Craft’s “‘Kiss Me with Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” he speaks to Victorian society’s assignment of gender roles to men and women, and the novel’s displacement of those notions. Craft’s thesis can be found in the first sentence of the first paragraph: “Bram Stoker’s particular articulation of the vampire metaphor in Dracula, a book whose fundamental anxiety, an equivocation about the relationship between desire and gender, repeats, with a monstrous difference, a pivotal anxiety of late Victorian culture” (444).

I found Craft’s depiction of Dracula’s “heterosexual displacements” (446) to be the most interesting, and also most surprising, point of the reading. While most audiences focus on Dracula’s seduction of Lucy and Mina, Craft chooses to focus on the vampire’s relationship with Jonathan, instead. “This should remind us that the novel’s opening anxiety, its first articulation of the vampiric threat, derives from Dracula’s hovering interest in Jonathan Harker; the sexual threat this novel first evokes, manipulates, sustains, but never finally represents is that Dracula will seduce, penetrate, drain another male” (446). While we’ve talked extensively in class about the gender inversion of the male and female characters (the women exhibiting overly sexualized behaviors, while the men become submissive), which Craft does defend later in the reading, I’d never considered a homosexual aspect to Stoker’s argument. “Here, in a displacement typical both of this text and the gender-anxious culture from which it arose, an implicitly homoerotic desire achieves representation as a monstrous heterosexuality, as a demonic inversion of normal gender relations” (446). “The novel, nonetheless, does not dismiss homoerotic desire and threat; rather it simply continues to diffuse and displace it” (447). Craft provides evidence of this assertion, citing Dracula’s reaction to Jonathan cutting himself while shaving – “Dracula’s desire to fuse with a male, most explicitly evolved when Harker cuts himself shaving, subtly and dangerously suffuses this text” (446) – as well as his interruption and reprimand of the three female vampires who attempt to drink Jonathan’s blood – “‘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!’” (447). Though Dracula never physically penetrates Jonathan (though an argument could be made for mental penetration), Stoker emphasizes the idea that “only through women may men touch” (448). We see this in the parallel Craft draws between Lucy’s blood and that of the human party. “Dracula drains from Lucy’s veins not her blood, but rather the blood transferred from the veins of the Crew of Light” (447), which includes Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Arthur and Quincey. I had never considered the argument on homosexuality in the Victorian period before reading this essay. The evidence Craft cites throughout the review, though, I found to be fairly convincing of his argument. This reading also emphasizes the subtlety of the argument to readers; this underlying theme of accepted, yet unspoken of, homosexuality found throughout the novel could also reflect society’s feelings toward and about the subject: benevolent, yet decidedly ignorant.

I also found Craft’s description and implications of the vampire mouth to be interesting, as well. “As the primary site of erotic experience in Dracula, the mouth equivocates, giving the lie to the easy separation of the masculine and the feminine” (445). According to Craft, when humans become vampires, their new identity fuses “brave men” (445) and “good women” (445) into a unisex being. “Indeed, as we have seen, the vampiric kiss excites a sexuality so mobile, so insistent, that it threatens to overwhelm the distinctions of gender” (449). While the female vampires sport long, sharp canines (also phallic in imagery), they also rely on seduction as a powerful manipulation technique (seen in the scene with Jonathan and the three female vampires, as well as Lucy calling out to Arthur after feeding on the child). “Indeed, Dracula’s mission in England is the creation of a monstrous of a race of monstrous women, female demons equipped with masculine devices” (448). The unisex depiction of the female vampire (with both male and female attributes) indicates the demonic nature behind such a creation. It also reinforces the homosexuality connection aforementioned in the reading: “This interposition of a woman between Dracula and Van Helsing should not surprise us; in England, as in Castle Dracula, a violent wrestle between males is mediated through a feminine form” (449).

Christopher Craft, "Kiss Me with Those Red Lips"

In this article, the basis for Craft’s argument is the idea that Dracula is effectively breaking down this division of gender roles by granting women the power to ‘penetrate’ and placing the men in passive roles. Granting women this supernatural strength and the ability not only to penetrate the male (via the teeth) but to hypnotize them into a state of submission, emphasizes this point as a theme of the novel.

Dracula, through his actions towards Jonathan and in creating exclusively female vampiric sycophants, (as Renfield was never actually turned), seems to be seeking to break down these gender roles and create a more equal society in which both men and women have the potential to penetrate each other. By defeating Lucy, the three vampire women, and Dracula, the ‘band of heroes’ eradicates this blurred boundary and restores the gender norms of an active male and passive female.

Craft points out that homosexuality, though never technically enacted upon within this novel, is both heavily implied and eventually performed vicariously in this novel. The relationship and veiled threats of Dracula on Jonathan Harker at the start of the novel, implies this male desire to enter into a sexually penetrative relationship with another male (though this never occurs). Later, Lucy’s body becomes a conduit from which Dracula drains the blood of Van Helsing and Lucy’s three suitors.

The fact that Dracula never explicitly enacts on this homosexuality, but displays a clear desire to exemplifies his ‘otherness’ and lack of societal constraints. When Dracula drinks the men’s blood from Lucy - via the transfusions - the violation of the men is similar to the violation of Lucy in that it is done without their knowledge or consent. Craft doesn’t mention, however, that Van Helsing is, at this point, the only person, (of Lucy, Arthur, Quincey, Dr. Seward, and Van Helsing), that is aware of what is ailing Lucy. In a way, Van Helsing is not only perpetuating this idea of vicarious homosexuality by taking transfusions from the men knowing that Dracula might drink from Lucy again, but he also gives his own blood to Lucy, willingly participating in this homoerotic act.

Stephen D. Arata on Dracula

          Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wives, and hide yo’ husbands too.  According to Stephen Arata’s The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization, Dracula is colonizing everybody out here.  Arata presents the interpretation of Dracula as a mirror of British imperialism, reflecting both the monstrosity of the ideology and the Victorian fear of foreign powers, as well as a symbol of the British Empire’s impending collapse.  He argues Stoker’s choice in Dracula’s national identity and the Transylvanian setting adds heavy political and racial implications to the story.  Stoker blurs the lines of vampires and warriors to create a monster that seeks to conquer territories and the identities of those inhabiting his conquered lands.

          Stoker’s Irish nationality is offered as one piece of evidence for Arata’s interpretation.  The author states “As a transplanted Irishman, one whose national allegiances were conspicuously split, Stoker was particularly sensitive to the issues raised by British imperial conquest and domination” (469).  This calls to mind another notable “transplanted Irishman”.  James Joyce famously painted his writings, as may be seen in Finnegans Wake, with his desire to “wipe alley english spooker, multaphoniaksically spuking, off the face of the erse”.  The height of Joyce’s career was chronologically toward the end of Stoker’s career, and both Ireland natives lived in a time of high tension and resentment between the Irish and English.  Joyce’s infamous and conspicuous resentment of British colonization adds context and validity to the idea of a nearly contemporary fellow Irishman weaving similar resentment throughout his own work. 

          While both a fascinating and highly credible interpretation, Arata’s essay exaggerates his evidence in a manner that diminishes other important themes.  The author overstates his point to an extreme by cherry-picking a superfluous cluster of details (including character hair color) that it seems Arata feels Stoker’s sole intent was to tell a tale of imperialism.  Arata reduces the classic monster and the timeless horrors of Count Dracula to little more than the personification Victorian England politics.