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BY KATHLEEN L. SPENCER
But the Urban Gothic was only part, if a crucial part, of a larger
literarymovementofthe last two decades ofthe century:the romance
revival. "Romance" is anotherof those protean literarytermswhose
meaningvaries with the frameof reference,but in the contextof the
1880s, the term has a fairlystable meaning. The "romance revival"
began as a reactionagainstthe "highrealism"ofthe 1870s, whichwas,
in its turn,a reactionagainstthe "sensationnovels" ofthe 1860s. The
theoristsof high realism rejected the sensation novel's emphasis on
plot,arguingthatit demanded less ofreadersthannovels thatrequired
themto interpretthe subtletiesofhuman motives. In addition,it was
believed, too strongan emphasis on plot would interferewith the
"naturalness"of characters.
By the 1880s, these novels of"characteranalysis"themselvescame
under attack.First,being limitedto and by "gross"reality,the novels
(theircriticsargued) were dull and trivial.Second, these novelistshad
AsReneGirardtellsus inViolenceandtheSacred,whatallsacrificial
victimshavein commonis thattheymustrecognizably belongto the
community, but mustat the same timebe somehowmarginal, inca-
pable offullyparticipatingin the socialbond-slaves, criminals, the
mad,thedeformed. Theyare enoughofthecommunity to substitute
forit, but betweenthemand the community "a crucialsociallinkis
missing,so theycan be exposedto violencewithoutfearofreprisal.
Theirdeathdoes notautomatically entailan act ofvengeance."As a
themwillend communalviolenceratherthanpro-
result,sacrificing
longingit. 24
In Dracula,I argue,LucyWestenrafillsthecategory andthesocial
functionofthesurrogate victimwhois sacrificedtorestorea lostorder.
On thesurface, itwouldseemthatLucybelongstotheclassVictorians
wouldfindleast sacrificeableratherthanmost-a young,beautiful,
virtuousgirl-and that,in anycase, she is a victimnot ofher own
community but ofa monstrous outsider.However,we are givennu-
merousindications thatLucy,forallhersweetness, andbeauty,
purity,
is a marginalfigure.In the firstplace, her social connectionsare
alarmingly tenuous:her fatheris dead, and she has no brothersor
otherfamilyto protecther excepther mother,who is herselfvery
weakbothpsychologically and physically (andin factpredeceasesher
daughter).Thereis no one to protectLucyfromattack,or to revenge
herdeathat thehandsofherowncommunity.
More crucially,Lucy'scharacteris "flawed"in a waythatmakes
herfatallyvulnerableto thevampire.She is a womanwhosesexuality
is underveryimperfect control.She is loveddevotedlyby threedif-
But it has been a near thing,and the cost high: Lucy is lost to them
(thoughher soul was saved), Quincey is dead, and both Jonathanand
Mina sufferseverelybeforeDracula is defeated. Stoker'snovel, then,
reveals two complementaryperspectives on its subject. If Lucy and
Dracula demonstratethe terrifying powers of degeneracy, so threat-
ening thattheymustat all costs be expelled fromthe communityand
fromlife itself,Jonathan'sand Mina's experiences exemplifythe dif-
ficultiesand the rewardsof resistance.
Accordingto Victoriansexology,in Dracula's castle Jonathanis a
man at risk:he is engaged to Mina, but they are not yet married,so
that his sexual fantasiesare inflamedbut not yet lawfullysatisfied.
Further,he is farfromhome and isolated fromother living human
beings. For the Victorians,solitude greatlyincreased sexual danger:
the solitude of privacyallowed one to indulge in masturbation,while
the different solitudeofanonymityleftone freeto indulge in the kinds
of sexual experiences one would, as member of a family,have been
ashamed to admit desiring.3'Jonathanis both alone and anonymous.
Confrontedwith the three mysteriousand beautifulwomen in the
moonlitroom,he admits,"I feltin myhearta wicked, burningdesire
that they would kiss me with those red lips" (37). The scene that
follows,when he very nearly (and disastrously)gets his wish, is re-
corded with incandescentdetail:
The girlwenton her knees and bent over me, simplygloating.
Therewasa deliberatevoluptuousness whichwasboththrillingand
repulsive,and as she archedher neckshe actuallylickedherlips
themoisture
likean animal,tillI couldsee in themoonlight shining
on the scarletlips and on the red tongueas it lapped the white
sharpteeth.Lowerandlowerwentherheadas thelipswentbelow
therangeofmymouthand seemedto fastenon mythroat.... I
couldfeelthesoft,shivering touchofthelipson thesuper-sensitive
skinof my throat,and the hard dentsof two sharpteeth,just
touching andpausingthere.I closedmyeyesin languorous ecstasy
and waited-waitedwithbeatingheart.(38)
The erotic charge of the scene is quite remarkable,as is Jonathan's
fascinatedpassivityin surrenderingto his sexual fantasies,even while
admittingthe wickedness of what he desires. What we see and he
does not, at thismoment,is thathe is riskingnot the "littledeath" of
orgasm, but the real thing. Ironically,Jonathanis saved fromthe
women not by his own virtue, but by Count Dracula's opportune
arrival. However, he is rescued fromthe evils of femininesexuality
Notes and Reviews (Cambridge: Dunster House, 1921), 110. Jane Austen makes a
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal (New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghagan,
1976), and Colin Simpson et al., The Cleveland StreetAffair(Boston: Little, Brown,
1976).
19For a discussion of the way the Wilde trial helped turn "homosexual" froman
adjective describingcertainkinds ofbehaviors into a noun indicatinga kind of person
and the significanceof this change forthe subsequent historyof homosexuality,see
Jeffrey
Weeks,Sex,Politics,and Society:TheRegulation Since1800(Lon-
ofSexuality
don: Longman, 1981). To give one small example of the trial's effecton the general
culturalatmosphere (beyond the terrorit struckin the hearts of homosexuals): in the
late 1880s and early'90s, therehad been an explosionofnovels treatingsympathetically
such previouslyuntouchable subjects as female sexuality,freelove, and fallenwomen.
Thomas Hardy's Tess ofthe D'Urbervilles (1891), forexample, was received notwithout
controversy,certainly,but witha good bit ofsupportforHardy's sympathetictreatment
of Tess. But Jude the Obscure, published in 1896 afterWilde's public disgrace, was
greetedwithsuch a firestorm ofdisapprovalthatHardy swore offwritingfictionforever
(forthis argument, see Eric Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalenes: The Origins and
of VictorianSexualAttitudes,
Development [London:Heinemann,1976]). Dracula,
published in 1897, reached the public at the heightofthisantisexualhysteria;it should
not surprise us to findreflectionsof this mood in such a popular text-meaning both
one thatwas addressed to a less sophisticatedaudience and one that was very widely
read at the time.
20 In this same decade, the "unnaturalness"of homosexualitywas also being chal-
lenged by Havelock Ellis, along with several prominentapologists like Edward Car-
penter and JohnAddingtonSymonds who in the 1890s published books arguingthat
homosexualswere not"failed"or "unnatural"men or women but were insteadmembers
of a thirdor "intermediate"sex (Ellis, who was married to a lesbian, was the firstto
writesympathetically about lesbianism). In the earlyeditionsofPsychopathiaSexualis,
Richard von Krafft-Ebingargued that all homosexual behavior was degenerate, but
afterthe turnofthe centuryhe softensthisjudgment,concludingthatsome homosexuals
indeed seemed to be "born" not"made ,"-in his words,"congenital."See, forexample,
the lengthydiscussion of "Homosexual Feeling as an AbnormalCongenital Manifes-
tation"(356-90). He explores the available explanationsof"sexual inversion"fromthe
traditional"vice" to the more "scientific"cause, excessive and/orearly masturbation,
and finallyconcludes thatin some cases an explanationbased on physiologicalfactors-
somethingin the structureof the brain, somethingthereforenot subject to the will of
the "invert"-rather than the old medico-moralexplanationof "willfulindulgence in
depravity,"is the only logical conclusion. He does not altogetherabandon degeneracy
as an explanation even in these cases, arguing that "In fact, in all cases of sexual
inversion,a taint of a hereditarycharacter may be established"; but he admits that
"What causes produce this factorof taint and its activityis a question which cannot
be well answered by science in its present stage" (370; emphasis added). By allowing
forthe possibilityof inheritedtendencies to degeneracy, Krafft-Ebing simultaneously
takes back and lets stand his uneasy conclusion that some homosexuals do not seem
to be morallyresponsible fortheirsexual orientation.(Richardvon Krafft-Ebing, Psy-