Effeminate Dracula

Categories: Gender

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Perhaps the most striking quality of Dracula is his striking and handsome appearance which deviates from the ‘ugly’ vampires of Eastern European folklore: [Dracula's] face was a strong - a very strong - aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.

The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years.

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For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor. The general effect of Dracula is a Byronic ideology of ‘handsome’ man.

Beauty is not just a female concept but for the male Dracula as well with the perfection of his features which are highly popular during the Victorian times.

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The allusion of having ‘red’ lips and ‘long’ pointed nails are physical attributes or endowments of female genre. Additionally, Dracula’s innate effeminate characteristics extends to his housekeeping capacities---maintaining Jonathan Harker’s bed and readying of his meals. Dracula is representation of the ‘beautiful ‘morphological male, not necessarily masculine but neither does it approach the feminine standards.

C. Unmasking the Monstrosity of Dracula through Queer Theory As Sedwick puts it, to gain a better understanding of the third gender, it is necessary that a thorough study must be conducted that transcends the barriers the standard binary oppositions that limit understanding on sexuality. A careful examination of the psychological constructs of Dracula reveals the ‘heteroerotic’ chasm behinds his monstrosity and vampiric qualities. One of the major proponents behind a true understanding of individuality and motivation is Sigmund Freud.

Freud posits that unconscious portion of the mind, the submerged ‘thoughts’ as one puts it, is the major motivating force behind an individual’s actions and thoughts. What is essential is not the actual conscious thoughts but the unconscious thoughts. Could it be that behind the monstrosity of Dracula lay a barrage of confused emotions on gender position and preference, which, is poured into his ‘vampiric tendencies? Dracula is portrayed as an infernal monster by Dr. Van Helsing: The Nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger, and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil.

This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command, he is brute, and more than brute, he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not, he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder, he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small, and he can at times vanish and come unknown.

The hyperbolic portrayal of the monstrous proportions of Dracula’s supernatural capacities denotes a deeper meaning behind the literaty texts. An important venue to consider is the role of speech acts which is use as labels for the gay ‘lingo. ’ Beyond morphology and monstrous appearance and punctuated by speech acts and behavior, covers an ambiguity, a sexual inversion that characterizes the hidden and anonymous desires of the third gender minority in the Victorian Period. The dissolution of the boundaries of the self and the thorough subversion of the conventional Victorian gender codes, constrains the mobility of sexual desire of Dracula. Dracula exhibits erratic behavior and sexual excesses that denotes the male activity or supremacy of the old times.

Dracula secretely covets Jonathan Harker during his address to his brides---He is mine! Such statement defies the normative concept of heterosexual relations; Dracula, in this single statement of truth exposes once his secrets and his homosexual side. The repeating element of the story---Dracula is a highly sexed creature which spews the wickedness and vagaries on sexual enjoyment. The annotation of the Vampiric mouth is corollary to an orifice that denotes the hidden soul of the count: “There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive…I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth”.

The eroticism of the vampiric mouth presents the dis-ambiguity between males and females. Dracula constantly victimizes local individual with no ‘gender preferences’ sinking his sharp teeth into an erogenous spot on the neck. On the whole scale, such vampiric qualities reveal lurid representations on the binary subversion of gender. Woman is not just ‘receptors’ or ‘vessels’ [sunk with Dracula fangs] and neither are men simply the ‘penetrator’. The role of Draconian mouth extends beyond hyperbole into an equivocation of gender roles. Such is the power of the mouth! The Brides of Dracula have the equal capacity to ‘sink’ their sharp teeth, an allusion to females’ position in ‘sexual’ proclivities.

The transfusion of blood and any bloodily fluids across humans is not just about sucking the life force but on the whole this pertains to the unity and social equity beyond gender categorization. Dracula being a homosexual extremist ‘transfers’ blood when sucking; an equivocation of gender roles and a unwitting question of the association of the gay minority into the bilaterally determined society. Blood ties and acceptance. Blood. This is what ties humans together and the rejection of Dracula’s blood coupled with the fear and anxiety that characterizes the society during vampire hunts presents a parallelization of the misunderstood and an unaccepted presence of gay roles. The Dracula is a ‘monster’, and ‘a new order’ of humanity that is not understood by the old Victorian society.

The monster presents un-comfort, distention, and somewhat weird and curiously entrancing but otherwise shunned away because it is not normal. Heterosexual association of Dracula with ‘women’, his imminent victimization of them presents Dracula as not simply just the ‘un-choosey’ attacker; within the psychological premise, the deliberate choice of Dracula for women is a ‘displacement method’ for his unfulfilled sexual ambition with Jonathan Harker. Dracula’s desire with a male Harker and his victimization is always postponed by a series of events. In the end, to alleviate his sexual frustration for the male species, Dracula poured his frustrations in extreme proportions in the female genre.

Dracula’s homoerotic desires is gratified by his three Brides; Dracula’s daughters offer masculine version for penetration with Harker as the recipient: Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and the chin and seemed to fasten on my throat…I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of the two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited---waited with a beating heart. This is the final and most pronounced text wherein there is a direct representation of male ‘penetration’ vis-a-vis the female anatomy (from the mouth down anyway) and the referral to languor state ‘ecstasy’ prior to penetration.

Harker anticipated the penetrated ‘waited—waited with a beating heart but the act was not bound to happen since Dracula barges in and shouts, “How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back I tell you! This man belongs to me. ” The interruption suggests, more so the line, ‘This man belongs to me’, denotes homoeroticism on the part of Dracula, but such libidinous desires will never be realized its focal recipient Harker but instead will be displaced with other women. There are actually no male-to-male aggressions on the narrative but rather suggestive implications covered under sexual undertones and motivation inset under the Draco’s language.