Most of what Craft and Schaffer wrote seemed pretty straightforward and coherent. Here are a few questions that came to me as I read the articles.
How does Craft’s discussion of desire relate to the “New Woman,” or at least, the characters’ view of it? Does Dracula reflect a fear of a woman who is masculinized? or simply one liberated?
To what extent is the apparent anxiety over homosexual desire also anxiety over nonreproductive sex? Vampirism involved reproduction in a nonsexual/nonreproductive way. Dracula reproduces to increase his kind, yet in a sense there is no unique offspring. Instead of creating a new life, the vampire transforms an existing one. Is the vampire’s rejection of any maternal role related? Rather than birth children, the vampire women in the novel devour them.
Craft identifies some specific dualisms—“life and death, spirit and flesh, male and female” (116)—for which the text shows ambivalence. What of science and religion? Is there any possibility of a rapprochement for any of these dualisms?
Craft notes that “Van Helsing exhausts his store of ‘brave men,’ whose generous gifts of blood, however efficacious, fail finally to save Lucy from the mobilization of desire” (121). Are the men in Dracula anxious about virility, consumed by fears or doubts about sexual performance? If so, how does that relate to the (ambivalent?) attitude toward gender roles that develops in the novel?
If male relationships are mediated by women (e.g., the vampire women mediate the homosexual moments between Dracula and Harker), how really does that represent women and their sexuality? Are the women simply beards for the men in their lives? It strikes me that their role is more than that.
Schaffer’s discussion of imprisonment was interesting but seemed underdeveloped, perhaps relying to heavily on comparison’s with Wilde’s suffering in prison. I wonder if its metaphoric weight bears further discussion, in terms of desire, repressions, etc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Bloodlines
ReplyDeleteJonathan Harker’s closing “Note” seems to indicate a hopeful future. Both Craft and Schaffer read this differently. Craft says Quincey Harker is:
a fantasy child of those sexualized transfusions, son of an illicit and nearly invisible homosexual union…a child whose conception is curiously immaculate, yet disturbingly lurid: child of his fathers’ violations. Little Quincey, fulfilling Van Helsing's prophecy of "the children that are to be," may be the text's emblem of a restored natural order, but his paternity has its unofficial aspect too. He is the unacknowledged son of the Crew of Light's displaced homoerotic union, and his name, linking the "little band of men together," quietly remembers that secret genesis. (129-130)
Schaffer indicates that Quincey Morris and Jonathan Harker “have a son” from the former’s bleeding on the latter (419). Given this and Craft’s calling the conception “immaculate,” it seems that both imply there is no mother. It’s easier for me to accept Arata’s thinking (sorry—skipping ahead a little) that Quincey is the child of all five men and Mina (632). Though that has its own complications and “ick” factors.
Donald mentions that "Dracula reproduces to increase his kind, yet in a sense there is no unique offspring. Instead of creating a new life, the vampire transforms an existing one." I think that Schaffer indicates that Dracula is literally the father of Quincey: "The boy is actually the rehabilitation of Dracula's and Harker's love, for he is Dracula's son" (419). Which complicates Schaffer's other statement that the child is that of Morris and Harker. How are others reading this?
Coffins, soil, and filth
I’m interested in Schaffer’s discussion of coffins, soil, and filth. Given Stoker’s apparent “closetedness,” the coffin--and its claustrophobic lack of space--takes on new meaning. That Dracula’s coffins contain soil (and that is seen as filthy), or an “inversion” of nature, adds another layer.
Donald mentions that he finds "Schaffer’s discussion of imprisonment was interesting but seemed underdeveloped, perhaps relying to heavily on comparison’s with Wilde’s suffering in prison." I wonder if we could link coffins and soil to the idea of imprisonment in Dracula.
Tasty bites
A footnote states: “Not until Dracula were these neck pricks evidence of a vampire visit; earlier vampire writers, such as Coleridge and Sheridan Le Fanu, make the bosom the site of the bite” (89). With all of the sexualizing going on, I would have thought some critics would have discussed this. (Or did I miss it?) Thoughts/findings?
Question
I’m not sure I understand this passage:
Unable or unwilling to deconstruct the heterosexual norm, English accounts of sexual inversion instead repeat it; desire remains, despite appearances, essentially and irrevocably heterosexual. A male's desire for another male, for instance, is from the beginning assumed to be a feminine desire referable not to the gender of the body (corpore virili ) but rather to another invisible sexual self composed of the opposite gender (anima muliebris). Desire, according to this explanation, is always already constituted under the regime of gender—to want a male cannot not be a feminine desire, and vice versa—and the body, having become an unreliable signifier, ceases to represent adequately the invisible truth of desire, which itself never deviates from respectable heterosexuality. Thus the confusion that threatens conventional definitions of gender when confronted by same sex eroticism becomes merely illusory. The body, quite simply, is mistaken. (Craft 114)
In particular, I’m having trouble with the phrase “to want a male cannot not be a feminine desire, and vice versa.” I would think the term here would be “masculine,” not “feminine,” so I think I might not understand what Craft is saying here. Any thoughts?
Juliette, I like that you raise the question ("Tasty bites") re the bite and the breast versus the neck; it's something that struck me as well. I do not have any especially enlightening comments, yet it occurred to me that the neck might be construed as more erotic, or at least more solely erotic. The site of the breast mixes the erotic with the maternal and gives a more complicated image of the vampire feeding. So, I wonder if the intent might be to elicit an eroticism without the added psychosexual implications of nursing. It also makes it possible to eroticize the subject (victim) without regard to gender (assuming the male breast is less erotic than than the female).
ReplyDeleteRegarding the coffins and soil, I think this is an interesting question, too. Although I think I know how Schaffer might respond (closets and anal intercourse), I can't help but see this less in relation to sexual issues than to national/racial anxieties, carrying the soil of one's homeland into a foreign land.
Juliette, in response to your question about this quote, "to want a male cannot not be a feminine desire, and vice versa"--I read this as the idea that any desire for a male sex object (ie a desire to be penetrated) must be inherently female--to be masculine would mean not wanting to enact a female (penetrable) role. (BTW, this is right in line with the Chauncey reading from Benji's class last week, for those of you who are also Sexual Etiologists--I love it when classes cross-pollinate.)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Juliette, I read this as sexuality still being filtered through gender--it is feminine to want to be on the proverbial "bottom," and masculine to want to be on "top." Thus the actual sex of the people in question matters less than their gender--so a homosexual relationship between two men is still essentially a relationship between a masculine and feminine identity.
Donald, you ask, "Are the women simply beards for the men in their lives?" No, of course not--they are also the keepers of the womb! These are the roles we see Mina and Lucy ultimately fulfill--go-betweens for sex between men and bearers of children. We could perhaps compliment this a little by Mina's contributions to solving the "mystery," I suppose . . . (ie her involvement with transcribing Seward's journal, etc.)
Finally, to weigh in on the question of paternity--I think, just for the sake of fun, I will say that I think Quincey Harker is the child of all the Crew of Light--and the text lends at least some superficial credence to this, when Lucy at one point comments, "Why can't a woman marry three men?" Why, indeed.
Donald and Stephanie, thanks for your insights. I am looking forward to the continued discussion tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteOne comment that I do have for Stephanie: Thank you for addressing that last question I had. I definitely appreciate that you provide a concrete explanation. It's especially useful to me since I'm not in the Sexual Etiologies class. Some of the critics do discuss the bite/penetration issue, but this gives me some more to think about. And regarding the specific phrase that I had the question about ("to want a male cannot not be a feminine desire, and vice versa"): I've realized that I was not reading the double negative, that is, I was eliding the second "not," and that's why it wasn't making sense. I don't know how I did that, but I must have done it half a dozen times and was troubled enough to write about it. I'm glad I "see" it now. Thanks!
Donald--I have been thinking more about Schaffer's ideas about imprisonment, and I think I agree with you that more could have been said. After all, Renfield seems a logical choice to discuss regarding imprisonment--mentally by Dracula, physically by Seward--and, like Wilde not being allowed to write, so Renfield is not allowed to speak (because Dracula controls him). It seems like that connection should have been mentioned, right?
ReplyDeleteStephanie, yes, you've hit on one of the things I'd had in mind. Renfield is the most explicit case of imprisonment. Yet, Schaffer spends so much time talking about Harker. More important, it made me realize how much the image of imprisonment becomes a motif in the novel. There are also the attempts to keep Lucy confined to her room when she is "sleepwalking." But I also thought that Schaffer might have written more about imprisonment in less literal senses. Schaffer seemed so focused on demonstrating Wilde's presence in the novel that there was some failure to elucidate its significance for us. Is it too obvious to allow more comment? The senses in which the characters are confined or imprisoned by their desires, by social mores, by the conflict between the two, or their anxieties over all of that? At any rate, I think your point about Renfield "not allowed to speak" is very interesting and warrants consideration. It's all the more interesting given that Renfield has no formal voice in the novel—there's no Renfield journal entry or any letter by him. In fact, you've made an observation that really makes us think about what Renfield's role really is in the novel.
ReplyDeleteTo continue Juliette and Stephanie’s discussion on Craft’s point that according to those writing about sexual inversion, “to want a male cannot not be a feminine desire, and vice versa”: this idea that there is only heterosexual desire becomes almost immediately problematic because of the supposed passivity of women, and the congruent fear of the “New Woman.” To say that nature simply did not finish the job, and that a man’s desire of another man stems from a feminine “soul” and desire within a male body, implies: 1. That there is a proactive, aggressive feminine sexual desire, that is not simply stimulated by male desire and 2. This logic quickly enters a quagmire, where it is possible for two “feminine souls” in two male bodies to desire each other, and therefore maintaining a homosexual element—that is unless homosexual males only desire heterosexual males, a major logical fallacy in its own right. Craft notes that “a submerged fear of the feminization of desire precluded these polemicists from fully developing their own argumentative assumption of an already sexualized feminine soul” (115). To follow the construct through leads the polemicist to the logical conclusion that two female souls could display desire for each other; both the feminine desire, and the possibility of sexual desire between two females, were either rejected outright or not even considered a possibility.
ReplyDeleteI’m also glad that the topic of imprisonment came up. (I also cannot wait to argue over exactly who is responsible for Quincy Harker’s existence. I seriously had a problem with Schaffer reading blood splatter and smudging as fluid transfer and symbolic intercourse, but I digress.) I agree with Stephanie and Donald that Schaffer’s imprisonment reading is a bit simplistic. Not only does she virtually ignore Renfield’s imprisonment, and completely omit the attempt to imprison Lucy, but she also skips over the equal amount of antonymic effort to keep things out. Dracula’s extended efforts to gain access to Lucy and Renfield, and the repeated descriptions of his beating against the window are the examples that first jumped out at me. There is also the attempt to guard Mina’s door and repel Dracula’s entrance, which inverts the Lucy imprisonment. How does Dracula’s inability to enter without invitation work with the imprisonment concern? It seems that the motif expands to one concerned with a transgression of spaces, (domestic, virginal, scientific, sterile, matrimonial and religious (the old chapel)), a theme Donald briefly mentioned in relation to the soil in the coffin. The odor of the coffin could also be an underlying repulsion to the different smells of poor immigrants from “less civilized” places and the filth and seeming unhygienic practices these populations brought. I’m also wondering how a strict reading of imprisonment works with a novel so obsessed with technology of communication and movement, which grants the characters, and the represented populations, more freedom and ability to “escape” in one form or another, than ever before.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAs for imprisonment, what about Mina confined out in the open, although at night, within a circle of wafers? Is Stoker bringing in the sexually repressive church? (On the other hand, what about those priests within the Catholic church that Joyce will write about?) I first read the cross and wafers as the standard vampire repellents; I am not sure what to think about Schaffer's assertion that the cross Wilde gave to Stoker's wife appears in the book. Mina's calm, seeming unaware comment in her journal, "and I can't abide by garlic"(312) is less anxiety producing.
ReplyDeleteWhen Schaffer began to substitute Wilde’s name for Dracula, I really started to wonder; “The first part of the book swings wildly between utter hatred of Wilde and utter sorrow for Wilde” (401). Her argument in the essay is convincing, but sometimes it felt like she was carrying out a similar role that British society played during Wilde’s trial in the 1890s, outing Stoker the homosexual.
Donald, I also am interested in exploring other aspects of the novel, but I wonder if it is possible to do that given the persuasiveness of the criticism so far!
The argument about imprisonment going here is really interesting, because it seems to suggest that how Schaffer’s argument, apparently very coherent in discussing the centrality of the repressed homoerotic desire, fails to treat properly one of homosexuality’s key metaphors for “closet.” Both Craft and Schaffer’s argument are, as Donald says, “straightforward and coherent,” but I think their straightforwardness is somewhat problematic. Of course, it is unavoidable that the argument (in its nature) seeks its inner coherence and as a result becomes somewhat reductive and fails to explain all the details of the text. But in these two arguments their reductiveness becomes especially problematic because they seek to subvert the “heterosexual paradigm,” yet, in trying to demonstrate the centrality of homoerotic desire, they ultimately reinforce the homo/hetero binary.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Craft’s reading of how Dracula functions as an androgynous figure (his mouth being both at the same time female and male genitalia, his “vamping” of Mena being simultaneously enforced fellatio, nursing, and defloration), and I agree with his point that Dracula enacts the mobility of desire. Absolutely, “the reader of Dracula must be as mobile as the Count himself” (Craft 125). But I doubt how “mobile” Craft is when he tries to centralize (the Count’s) homoerotic desire as the origin of the text’s desire—in his reading, the Count with his homoerotic desire is the original, and other figures are reduced to the reproduction/copies of his desire. Personally, I feel that sexual desires operating in Dracula are more fluid, not exactly genital-penetration oriented (for example, Stoker’s “discovery” of the neck as “supersensitive” erogenous zone in place of the breast), even though homoeroticism is doubtlessly one of those desires. And I think that’s why this novel have functioned as an ur-fantasy for the readers of both sexes.
I suppose a lot of the points I wanted to make have already been made, but that's the price I pay for procrastination. I'd like to piggy back onto the conversation about Craft's argument as it relates to Freud, who certainly influenced and was influenced by Stoker. I should note, though, that I think Freud wrote about sexual inversion in "Three Essays," which was not published until 1905 (eight years after Stoker published Dracula). While this is really reductive, Freud essentially pathologized homosexuality as a presentation of (mostly male) narcissism—even going as far as writing about 'conversion' later on (although he ultimately viewed 'conversion' as problematic). All of this is to say, I was confused by what Craft wrote about 'Victorian ideas' about homosexuality (specifically the passage on 114 that Juliette pointed to), in part because those ideas seem to be in conflict with what Freud would argue in the next decade.
ReplyDelete