The Homosexual vs. Heterosexual Relationship in Dracula

The Homosexual vs. Heterosexual Relationship in Dracula

Bram Stoker emphasizes homosexuality amongst the male characters of his novel. On the other hand, when heterosexual relationships are portrayed, they are only sexual in the context of unwedded, and typically one-sidedly vampiric, couples. Stoker emphasizes sexuality outside of the confines of marriage and sometimes heteronormative conditions, testing the boundaries of Victorian expectations.

Most of the male characters in the novel show some type of homosexual impulse or allusions to homosexual acts in the past. Van Helsing, in his first letter to Dr. Seward, tells Jack that he owes him for “that time when you suck from my wound so swiftly the poison of the gangrene from that knife that our other friend, too nervous, let slip” (Stoker 106). There is a lot that can be read into simply that statement, but the novel contains much more sexuality within its pages.

When Jonathan stumbles into one of the older rooms of Dracula’s castle and the three vampiresses appear, a highly sexualized situation takes place amongst the four before Dracula steps in. Jonathan, engaged to Mina, lets this scene play out, giving himself over to a certain sense of infidelity. The vampiresses are able to seduce him easily, which seems fairly plausible considering Mina and Jonathan’s relationship appears to be essentially the only asexualized in the novel. Jonathan simply isn’t getting any, so when these vampiresses appear, engaged or not, he sits back and lets it all happen. Mina and Jonathan, the only couple that achieves the ideal of marriage in the novel and embody the Victorian heterosexual family, are also the only ones who remain chaste, at least within the context of the story while it’s narrated. The fact that they name the son they later have—hello, perfect nuclear family—after Quincey, who is killed with a phallic knife, is highly suggestive to the homoerotic elements that wound them all up in the mess of Dracula in the first place. Back to Jonathan’s seduction, though: while one of the vampiresses’ lips hover over Jonathan’s “throat,” Dracula bursts in and declares “‘This man is mine!’” (43). His claim of ownership over Jonathan is both in the way that a predator claims his prey and the way a lover will claim their partner. He disapproves of and stops this heterosexual scene that excludes him—so maybe, in reality, he was just feeling a bit jealous that the vampiresses were hogging Jonathan.

Lucy, meanwhile, receives a blood transfusion from Arthur, Jack, Van Helsing, and Quincey. She is married to none of them, and since this operation is equated to sex—as emphasized in Coppola’s Dracula, with her incessant moaning during the procedure—she, though heterosexual, essentially practices premarital relations with all four of these men. This is while she herself is turning into a vampiress, meaning all heterosexual sex in the novel remains between unwedded persons, transcending the Victorian mold of a chaste, innocent woman—well, vampiress, in this case.

So, what’s your view on these relationships? Is Stoker blatantly deconstructing the Victorian heterosexual relationship with these characters as he’s presented them? Will the world ever know how many licks/interpretations it takes to get to the center of his—uh, metaphoric—Tootsie Pop/homosexual novel?