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?
