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. 

Stephen Arata

Stephen D. Arata begins his essay telling us that originally Dracula was set in Styria, but that Stoker moved the location to Transylvania.  The thesis of his essay is that, "By situating Dracula in the Carpathians, and by continually blurring the lines between the Count's vampiric and warrior activities, Stoker forges seemingly "natural" links among three of his principal concerns, racial strife, the collapse of empire, and vampirism" (464-465).  Arata's argument that Dracula is a metaphor for reverse colonization is sound and well argued, however I don't think this thesis hinges on Dracula's being located in Transylvania, as Arata claims.  His first several paragraphs (before he really makes his way to a proper thesis) point out very interesting ways that Dracula's edited choice of homeland enrich his identity as a vampire, but we also have to remember as he points out that "It is easy... to forget that the "natural" association of vampires with Transylvania begins with, rather than predates, Dracula" (462).  Arata seems to also forget that Stoker invented many of the vampire's characteristics that seem to make his homeland tie in so well.  He cites Van Helsing, who tells us that vampires are a consequence of invasion, and so the choice of war-torn Transylvania seems perfect, but it is impossible to know, since this particular explanation of vampires is only in Stoker's novel, if the location fits the mythology or the mythology fits the location.  Even if it was set in Styria, I believe Stoker's anxieties about reverse colonization would still be clear, but Transylvania is definitely the richer path.  It is a very engaging essay, which seems to be the first we've read to look at the sexual symbolism in Dracula as means of procreation instead of twice or three times removed homosexual yearnings.  I also thought the imagery of Dracula as robust compared with wan Englishmen was very poignant, especially since in this way Dracula deviates from his predecessors and even his own self in later adaptations.

"The Occidental Tourist"

Stephen D. Arata’s thesis in his essay “The Occidental Tourist” is essentially, “By situating Dracula in the Carpathians, and by continually blurring the lines between the Count’s vampiric and warrior activities, Stoker forges seemingly “natural” links among three of his principal concerns: racial strife, the collapse of empire, and vampirism” (464-465). Within this essay, Arata discusses how Dracula’s arrival in London symbolizes reverse colonization, illustrating Britain’s imperialistic reign on foreign countries and the miscegenation that occurs through this, but also the “biological and political annihilation of the weaker race by the stronger” (466). What is most intriguing about Arata’s comparison of Dracula and Britain and their inverses and mirrors of one another, is the point that he makes about blood being a mark of someone’s racial identity and Dracula’s symbolical act of sucking the blood from his victims, which implies that he “deracinates his victims” (466). Arata then uses evidence from Emily Gerard, which suggests that not only is Dracula deracinating his victims due to “his vampiric nature”, but also because of his Rouomanian lineage, a group of people who were known for “[dissolving] the identities of those they came in contact with” (466). Arata also discusses the scene from Dracula where Lucy has received four blood fusions to display the act of trying to re-racinate Lucy at the same time that Dracula is deracinating her. Through the right blood, the men believed that Lucy could be saved, which emphasizes the significance of blood, meaning race in this instance, being better or of a higher grade than others, e.g. Arthur Holmwood. This point, Dracula physically and mentally draining his victims of their race, is a great example to highlight the reverse colonization that Dracula represents. It provides the audience with a different and unique interpretation of East vs. West that has not been previously read or discussed and allows for perhaps a deeper understanding of the conflict between the outsider “Dracula” and the individualistic and cultural effect that he has on the people of Britain.

Sex and Gender in Dracula

Craft’s thesis boils down to “a swooning desire for an overwhelming position and an intense aversion to the demonic potency empowered to gratify that desire compose the fundamental motivating action and emotion in Dracula” (445). He discusses extensively the relationships between Dracula and other men and how they are all mediated through women—the vampire sisters, Lucy, and Mina. What would be otherwise obviously homoerotic is made less so by the degree of separation created by the presence of a woman. The “weird sisters,” whose attack on Jonathan is overtly sexual, are all products and extensions of Dracula himself, suggesting that their desire to consume Jonathan is also Dracula’s desire. The Count himself drinks the blood of Arthur, Seward, Van Helsing, and Quincey through the common vessel of Lucy Westenra.

Craft also goes on to discuss the way that the text implies some conflation of various bodily fluids, including blood, semen, and breast milk, and as a result some blurring of gender and sexual function. Dracula functions in many ways as a mother, able to create new life, while he effectively feminizes Jonathan and turns good Victorian women into sexually voracious penetrators of men. The author of this article effectively backs up his claims with quotes from both the novel and texts which provide relevant historical context. By incorporating information about Victorian sexuality and sexual anxieties, Craft establishes that his analysis is based in something more than an overenthusiastically Freudian reading of the text.  

Christopher Craft

Thesis: 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.

This essay asks us to think about the male’s desire to be penetrated and the relationship between the vampires, blood, milk, semen, and bodily fluids. Craft suggests thinking of the other vampires as extensions of Dracula since Dracula is their master and probable creator. Craft gives the example of Jonathan’s anticipation and desire to wait to be penetrated by the three vampire sisters, but Dracula interrupts this, which causes a build-up of inner sexual tension according to Craft. Craft suggests that the male’s desire to be penetrated and feelings of homoeroticism are diffused and displaced throughout the rest of the novel. He gives the example of Dracula saying, “Your girls that you all love are mine already, and through them you and others shall yet be mine…” The crew of men is all penetrated when they give blood to Lucy. Craft notes how their strength and blood are given to Lucy who has been taken by the vampire suggesting they are also being taken over by the vampire. I never thought about the connection Craft makes between Dracula’s words and the transfusion, but it seems that they could coincide to support Craft’s ideas. Craft goes on to suggest that Dracula’s abilities to transform into dust or a bat shows that restrictions are limitless which may be applied to gender roles being limitless in the sense of sexual desires. Craft points out the symbolism of Mina as being crafted by God’s hand and how she may represent the perfect woman in some ways. He also points out Lucy as being “Voluptuous” and notes how her progressive sexual views about her suitors make her susceptible to Dracula, which is very similar to ideas discussed about Lucy in class. Craft continues talking about Lucy and the transfusions suggesting that the blood may have been suggestive of semen: penetration, withdrawal, penetration, infusion. He also notes the book’s mentioning of Lucy being a polyandrist. He also talks about the scene where Mina is being attacked and how her being forced to nurse Dracula breaks all expectations of gender because he is in the feminine role. I think Craft’s ideas are all very similar to things we have discussed as a class about gender inversions, but Craft takes it further by noting the male’s desires to be penetrated and scenes of sexual tensions and desires being acted out. I think it might not be fair to look at the novel as being all sexual in its entirety, but knowing Stoker’s personal background and the hesitations about homoeroticism in Victorian society at the time, Craft gives a very interesting outlook on vampires, gender, and sexual curiosity and anxiety. 

Blog due Monday, Oct. 20, 2pm: Scholarship on Dracula (250 words, 3 pts)

Analyze  one of the two readings for Tuesday, Oct. 21: Christopher Craft, "'Kiss Me with Those Red Lips'" or Stephen D. Arata, "The Occidental Tourist." What is its main point or thesis statement (there will be several candidates)? What are the most interesting,  important, or surprising  points? What kind of evidence does the author use, and how persuasive or unpersuasive is it? Are any points weak or unconvincing? How does it relate to the other articles we've read?

Except for the first question -- what is the main point? -- you don't have to answer all of these questions or answer them in order. They're intended to guide you in (1) understanding the claims of the essay (2) assessing the essay.

Lucy'a Diary

17 September

I shall keep trying to write down everything as I remember it, although my hands grow weaker and writing becomes almost impossible to bear. I have been having troubles sleeping recently. The bats keep coming at night. It's as though they are trying to tell me something. I can sense that everyone is worried for me. Especially my dearest Arthur and my poor, sick mother! Dr. Seward it seems has been spending more and more time in my room. It is quite curious behavior that he should be here for me now. But, enough about that! I cannot seem to shake this cold feeling and the pain in my neck and chest as I struggle just to breathe! God, help me! The strange flowers from that strange man make me feel a little better, though.

19 September

I must write about what happened last night, or what I can recall at least. First, I remember sensing people in my room again. Then, something wet on my lips before falling into a deep sleep. When I awoke, I realized in full what had happened to my mother. She is dead! Oh, God! How can I go on without her? I wish Mina would write me. I feel I shall never be the same...

Mina: A New Type of Woman

Mina observing Jonathan going on journey’s and taking adventures longed to do the same. Through learning typewriting Mina had opened a world slightly filled with excitement, at least more than the ideal woman at the time had. Not only will she be able to help her husband with his work which would keep them close together but she would be able to break a bit from the old female norm and be a satisfactory new age woman. Within the story of the typewriter it stated how a new woman’s life was depicted by learning typewriting, as such, “Images soon abounded in the newspapers, novels, theatrical plays, and popular post cards of the period, depicting the type-writer girl as leading a life of glamour and adventure.” (Keep) Not only could she still be seen as a respectable woman but she could have a taste of freedom from the norm which is a tad bit of a thrill opposed from what typical women did during that time. Through being a typist Mina is a heroine in Dracula. If it would have not been for her the men would have no organization in documentation and if it weren't for the intelligence of Mina typing more copies of documents they would have lost their accounts completely. It is sad that when a woman bears a child she can no longer work as a typist, it gave freedom to the ladies but that was snatched away. A mother needs to have the sense of freedom; especially having to do all the work she does in the house.

Also people of the time were in awe as well as fear of the typewriter. Many accounts in Keep’s documentation suggested that people would lose intimacy that handwritten documents had given off. They feared that society would lose the individual flair that handwritten documents and letters had. Stoker explores this in Dracula and by what Mina says here it seems like self expression isn't going to be an issue from reading thoughts from typewritten documents. “but I have been more touched than I can say by your grief. That is a wonderful machine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in it’s very tones, the anguish of your heart. It was like a soul crying out to almighty God. No one must hear them spoken ever again! See, I have tried to be useful. I have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did.” (Stoker, 197) Mina’s reaction suggests that Dr. Seward’s words still had a hardy impact on her emotions. Thus this debunks some of the fears that people of the time had about losing emotion in their writing.

Lucy's diary

I feel odd at all hours of the day and night. Just the other day, I awoke so completely devoid of color that even my lips were white. Dr. Helsing came running into my room, screaming at my mother about some flower she’d removed from my room… I don’t understand what the garlic had to do with it, but I know I was inches away from death. Dr. Helsing wound up pumping his blood into mine. Ordinarily I’d find this strange, but between his obsession over the garlic, his insistence on Seward’s accompaniment of me nearly every night, and the constant check ins by Mina, Helsing, and Seward, I’m more than happy to accept Helsing’s blood. In fact, I felt vastly better only a few days later.  Helsing made mother promise not to remove a single item from my room ever again.

                I guess I’d find the matter of the blood stranger if I hadn’t been pumped full of Seward’s blood only a few days earlier. I felt better for a while, then worse. That was when this garlic showed up, which Helsing has me wearing around my neck at all times now. If only you could see it, he’s got the stuff coating my room like wallpaper. All of this, and not even a mention of the wolf, which bashed its head through my window last night. I can’t quite tell you what happened there. My mom had a heart attack and died… then the maids all passed out. I was sure I was a goner, and honestly I was sort of ready for death at this point, having already written out my final note and all before I passed out, but the next morning in comes Quincey Morris, ready to be a hero, and they pump me full of his blood…

                Oh Holmwood! All this blood in me, and still I fall ill seemingly every day.