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.