[Dr. Erin Newcomb completed her Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State
University; she now teaches literature and composition courses at The State
University of New York at New Paltz. Her research interests focus primarily on
religion, feminism, and literature.]
Perhaps because the theological elements of Stoker’s
tale can simultaneously be viewed as epistemological issues, the text’s
religious symbolism is largely ignored by critics; I contend that Dracula’s
religiosity is neither arbitrary nor simply a plot device to forward different
social messages. Indeed, the religious images are critical fodder for analysis
precisely because they signify characters’ shifting ideologies about knowledge
and the know-ability of the world. The “Englishness” re-established at the
text’s conclusion is not the same “Englishness” from the beginning of Dracula;
the reversion to the ordinary is possible only because of the crusaders’
acceptance of and extraordinary action against the evil spiritual forces that
seek to destroy everyday life. The collective knowledge, memory, and activity
of the select group that vanquishes Dracula allow the population at large to
remain ignorant about the real conditions of the spiritual world. As Harker
states in his final “Note,” “[w]e were struck with the fact, that in all the
mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic
document.” Based on this lack of textual support, Harker admits, “[w]e could
hardly ask any one, even did we wish to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a
story.” Yet it is Van Helsing, that master of superstitious lore, who gains the
final word: “[w]e want no proofs; we ask none to believe us!” (Stoker 380).
Dismissing textual evidence in lieu of the embodied evidence of the Harkers’
son, Van Helsing adeptly summarizes the epistemological dilemma of Dracula—that
there are ways of knowing essential to the preservation of an orderly world,
even if those epistemologies cannot be contained within a text, but are
incorporated in sacramental imagery and embodied by the crusaders’ offspring.
Only turning to the religious elements exemplifies the extent to which Stoker’s
text relies on readers’ acceptance (if only within the narrative world he
creates) of supernatural epistemologies as valid meaning-making strategies. And
only those supernatural epistemologies ultimately explain why the anxiety
persists even when the status quo seems to be reestablished.
Anxiety is the one
thread that seems to run through critics’ analyses of Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula.
This trend is unsurprising given the text’s late-Victorian context, and other
readers have thoroughly and eloquently examined the many manifestations of that
anxiety. Several critics (Craft, Prescott and Giorgio, Kuzmanovic, Petersen)
grapple with Stoker’s treatment of gender and sexuality, particularly with
regard to the “New Woman” construct and its attendant upheaval of sex roles.
Other readers, like Malchow, illustrate Dracula’s expressions of xenophobia and
anti-Semitism; others still, such as Stevenson, combine the two anxieties to
discuss the work “in terms of interracial sexual competition” (139,
original emphasis). While each of these articles offers a unique stance on
Stoker’s text, all of these critics, along with Armstrong (who argues that
Dracula affirms the modern family in the face of its cultural challengers)
reach a similar conclusion to Rowena Mohr, who writes: “whatever is at stake in
Stoker’s novel—Englishness, class stability, gender and sexual
identifications—it is a text that anxiously defends the social, political, and
sexual ideals of conservative, middle-class, masculinist ideology” (80).
Although Mohr aptly summarizes the majority of responses to Dracula,
(that the conclusion reaffirms the social system) religious elements of the
text remain largely ignored by critics, yet religion is precisely where the
status quo breaks down in the text. In terms of religion, there is no return to
“Englishness” in Dracula; there is, instead, an infusion of the
sacramental and the supernatural that elevates superstition over the reasoned
and ordinary religious focus most of Stoker’s characters initially hold. By
validating the mysterious theological elements in his story, Stoker challenges
the completeness of logical epistemologies and cautions readers that, however
static the status quo may be, all knowledge is limited and all stories must,
ultimately, be taken on faith. The necessity of faith pinpoints the underlying
anxiety that the world in its entirety is fundamentally unsafe, uncertain, and
unknowable.
Missing Religion in Dracula
In response to Dracula, two authors who do deal
with religion come away with radically different readings. Herbert’s “Vampire
Religion” sees Dracula as struggling to maintain the integrity of religion
against primitive superstition, yet he ultimately concludes that “for all its
putative devotion to the cause of true religion, the two supposedly
antithetical categories of religion and superstition reveal an uncontrollable
tendency to collapse into one another” (104). Herbert calls it an apologetic
Christian text where “[t]he crux of the theological argument of Dracula lies in
this persistent suggestion that vampirism is not so much an alien invasion
after all as it is a dark mutation of Christian forms” (111). There are, of
course, numerous parallels between Christian practices and vampirism, not least
of which are blood drinking and an emphasis on the afterlife. But where
Christians drink (literally or symbolically, depending on the theological
frame) the blood that Christ willingly sacrifices as atonement for sin,
vampires forcibly take victims’ blood to satiate their own lust. Where Christ’s
blood leads to a peaceful life after death, the vampire’s blood perpetuates an
“undead” state of agony, a parody lacking the fullness of life or the
tranquility of true death. Herbert ultimately sees these parallels as
symptomatic of Dracula’s “confusion of magic and religion” where Stoker
uses “sacred devices like the crucifixes and communion wafers” and asks “his
reader to regard these things as precious adjuncts of Christian piety” (108). I
would argue instead that Stoker relies on sacramental symbols within the
definition of sacramentalism—as objects set apart to make tangible the
spiritual truth of grace. That the body of Christ (in both crucifix and wafer
form) stands against vampirism can recall the doctrine of substitutionary
atonement, where the innocent Christ willingly takes the place of the would-be
victims. What Herbert sees as a conflation of religion and superstition, which
he evaluates negatively, should instead be interpreted as an epistemological
commentary in which Stoker asks his characters and readers alike to suspend
teleology and rationality to explain a world that resists total know-ability.
As the concluding “Note” reminds us, textual proof is unavailable and would
seem beyond belief, even if the original documents were carefully preserved.
On the other hand, Edward O’Brien calls Stoker’s text “a
Christian allegory” (75) and asserts that “liberal, secular critics will not
accept the reality of such virtues as charity and faith; they equate these
qualities to superstition and prudery, the quaint ‘conventions’ of Victorian
religion as expressed by the trappings or habitual responses of popular
Christianity” (77). O’Brien discusses “Christian morality as if it were real
and binding,” though what O’Brien dismisses as attempts to “relativize”
universal morality, might more accurately be called contextualizing morality.
While I concur with O’Brien that Dracula is a novel about grace (79),
reading Stoker’s text within that theological framework requires the suspension
of logic that forms the novel’s foundation. To call both grace and Dracula
irrational, to my mind, is not an insult but an epistemological observation,
that grace—divine, unmerited favor—is theologically compelling precisely
because it counters humans’ logical impulses. Rather than reading Dracula
as an allegory, I propose it be read as a conversion narrative where
protagonist Jonathan Harker’s Christian worldview is shaken to its foundations.
Yet Harker’s transformation, while a significant religious experience, is also
fundamentally epistemological. Though he begins the narrative with courteous
pity towards the “superstitious” villagers he meets in the Carpathians, Harker
himself is quickly schooled in the ways of the world where evil is not an
intellectual concept but an active, tangible force in the universe. Harker
begins and ends claiming to be a Christian (indeed, his faith seems bolstered
by his vampiric quest), yet he cannot rightly claim to be the same kind of Christian,
nor can he regard the world with the same intellectual detachment possible
before his encounters with the Count. Dracula may be a text about many
things, but at its core, it asks readers to wrestle with issues of knowing,
through reason and faith comingled. Neither Stoker nor his protagonist reaches
an easy conclusion, and readers likewise are left with a vision of an altered
spiritual world that infringes upon the status-quo so desperately maintained in
other areas of the text. Social order, manifested in a clear preservation of
insiders and outsiders, and “pure Englishness” elide the menacing spiritual
forces that any worldly semblance of safety is purely superficial.
Not Just Superstition
Early in Harker’s
journal, he writes, “I read that every known superstition in the world is
gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of
some sort of imaginative whirlpool” (Stoker 2). Harker’s statement derives its
authority from text—something he has read and something he subsequently
recorded in his travel diary—and he differentiates the “imaginative” qualities
of superstition from the assumedly factual attributes of his own religion. The
tone of Harker’s writing begins objectively, with some measure of observational
distance, yet his separation from the Carpathian villagers breaks down as he
begins to interact with them. Upon being offered a crucifix from a pleading
woman, Harker reflects, “I did not know what to do, for, as an English
Churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure
idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so
well and in such a state of mind” (5). Here Harker’s initial response focuses
on theology, but soon the emotional situation and its unuttered expectations of
hospitality press him to disregard his church’s teachings on idolatry in favor
of pleasing a stranger. As his journey continues, Harker continues to accept
gifts from his fellow travelers; he neither understands nor fully appreciates
the tokens, but comments “they pressed [the gifts] upon me with an earnestness
which would take no denial; these were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but
each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and
that strange mixture of fear-meaning movements, which I had seen outside the
hotel at Bistritz—the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye”
(9). Even as he takes the strangers’ offerings, he subtly distinguishes himself
from the “others.” Their faith is simple and good, strange and founded on fear,
whereas, readers seem intended to infer that Harker’s faith is good but in a
loftier, more complex and mindful manner based on reason and thoughtfulness,
faith instead of fear. Harker does not, of course, explicitly state these
differences, but his tone suggests them, and it almost seems as if the
Englishman does not just receive the gifts but provides an opportunity for
others to be generous—thereby almost gifting the villagers himself. Harker
accepts these gifts with the air of doing the givers a kindness and of politely
partaking in some foreign ritual, though the boundaries of his well-ordered,
intellectual faith are slowly slipping away. After freely entering Count
Dracula’s home, Harker starts to surmise that the villagers’ superstitions may
be based in fear, but a fear that is, if not rational, still real. Thrown into
a frenzied state even on his first night, Harker exclaims, “I am all in a sea
of wonders, I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess
to my own soul” (19). Instead of the meticulous record-keeping at the onset of
his journey, Harker’s writing at this juncture sounds more like the ravings of
a madman; he is not able to record, nor even to whisper to himself the strange
tidings that pass through his mind; both his writing and his theology are
turned topsy-turvy by the actualization (or the assumption of their reality) of
the creatures and forces Harker once relegated to the realm of superstition.
An encounter with the Count himself further prompts
Harker to question everything he sees and believes:
What mean the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of
the wild rose, of the mountain ash? Bless that good, good woman who hung the
crucifix round my neck! For it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch
it. It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavor and
as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that
there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium,
a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort? (29)
Acknowledging the limits of his Anglican theology (where the meaning
of the communion elements is not universal), Harker contemplates the
significance of the objects’ power. Harker’s thoughts waver close to typical
interdenominational theological doctrines about the communion elements—whether
they are purely symbolic, transformed into the physical blood and flesh, or
some combination. The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation,
established at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, says, “while the substances
of bread and wine become the substance of Christ, the accidents remain
unchanged” (Kilgour 81). Maggie Kilgour explains this phenomenon as
“uphold[ing] the reality of the rite without offending sense perception, at the
cost, however, of formally codifying a separation between the inner and outer
terms of the sacrament” (81). This duality within the doctrine unifies
theological interpretations (Kilgour 80), but divides the physical and spiritual
worlds, as well as the body of believers from unbelievers; the inside and
outside, the substance and the surface, are fundamentally at odds with one
another. Harker seems to sense that same tension with regard to the crucifix,
whose exterior repulses him as idolatrous even while he discerns some
intangible emotional and spiritual response to the object. Yet at the end this
passage, Harker shies away from imbuing the crucifix with the same kind of
sacramental potency as the Catholic Eucharist, opting for “memories of sympathy
and comfort” but not supernatural strength. While not a complete theological or
epistemological transition, already Harker’s experience validates the
“superstition” as powerful beyond simple hospitality; he resists the
sacramental interpretation of the crucifix, but acknowledges that logic, even
accompanied by his reasonable version of Anglicanism, is not enough to explain
his circumstances, and he is afraid. The barrier between the
superstitious and the religious, the physical and the spiritual, the mundane
and the mysterious breaks down along with Harker’s orderly worldview.
Whereas Harker
hesitates to invest natural objects with any kind of supernatural power,
attaching them instead to pleasing recollections of human kindness, Dr. Seward’s
patient Renfield acts out a perversion of sacramental imagery in an attempt to
deify himself. Renfield is the primary player in a Eucharistic parody, but he
does not seem to recognize the warped characteristics (or the impotency) of
what Dr. Seward terms “life eating mania” (Stoker 73). When Dr. Seward cuts his
wrist, Renfield falls to the floor, “lying on his belly…licking it up, like a
dog…simply repeating over and over again: ‘The blood is the life! The blood is
the life!’” (142). Notably, Dr. Seward’s injury mirrors the location of
Christ’s stigmata, which is indeed the lifeblood of Christian theology, as well
as Christ’s language; yet this scene presents a reversal of the Christian
Passion. Dr. Seward’s injury is not a purposeful sacrifice (as Christ’s was),
but an accident, and the injury offers insight into Renfield’s insanity, not
atonement for his transgressions. Indeed, where the blood of Christ
memorializes a feast and unites consumers both with their deity and within a
community, Renfield’s meal illustrates the bloodlust of a lone maniac.
Reflecting on Renfield’s attempts to consume as many lives and as much blood as
possible, Dr. Seward writes, “[h]e is a selfish old beggar anyhow. He thinks of
the loaves and fishes even when he believes he is in a Real Presence” (104).
Alluding to the Biblical miracle in which Christ feeds thousands of people with
only a few baskets of bread and fish, Dr. Seward points to the irony of caring
only about filling one’s stomach when the Son of God stands in one’s midst.
Again, the theology of transubstantiation and incarnation enter in; the
Catholic Eucharist begins as earthly elements and becomes supernatural, just as
Christ embodies both divinity and humanity. Renfield, in his grotesque
approximation of the sacrament of communion, cannot see past the purely
physical elements and misses the transcendent elevation to the spiritual realm.
Whereas Harker’s worldview is limited to his mind and its logic, Renfield’s is
limited to his body and its appetites—and both initially miss the spiritual and
transcendent significance of the story they find themselves in.
In his diary, Dr. Seward records: “[h]ow these madmen
give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall but the God
created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow.
Oh, if men only knew!” (103). Again, this statement indicates Renfield’s many
perversions of Christian theology. The Christian God looks to care for even the
smallest creatures, but Renfield merely uses the smallest creatures to
accumulate more lives so as “to absorb as many lives as he can” (73). In
addition, Christ takes on flesh and blood as a regenerative act, to restore
lives so that no more sacrifices (and thus no more bloodshed) are necessary.
Further, the Crucifixion remains theologically incomplete without the
perspective of the Resurrection; Christ offers blood that conquers death, but
Renfield, in his and his diabolical master’s infinite degenerateness, can only
destroy, only kill, only provide a parasitic, peace-less death. As Kilgour
explains, “[v]ampirism is the gothic definition of symbiosis and communion,”
but “the reciprocity of exchange is thus shown to be an illusion, for [Dracula]
is an alien who possesses those who have let him into their bodies” (173). We
see here how Renfield highlights the double meaning of the term “host.”
Vampiric lore requires the victim to invite the vampire in, thus the victim
serves as the host that houses and permits the parasitical relationship where
only the vampire gains. On the contrary, the Eucharistic host is the body of
Christ, where Christ invites, serves, and sacrifices—to the benefit of the
guest who is not defined as a parasite or alien but as a heir or subject. The
vampiric communion is no communion at all; it fixates on gluttony of blood as
opposed to a sacrificial offering and reduces life to the most basic physical
component: blood. As O’Brien summarizes, Dracula “is a book of flesh and
blood, and of the grace of God” (79). Though in different ways and for
different reasons, both Harker and Renfield focus on the physical—the
superficial or the carnal—to the exclusion of the grace that can transform and
transcend the profane. According to Eucharistic scholar, Enrico Mazza, what
sets apart slaughter from sacrifice and common meals from sacred ones is
“liturgical action” (13). Mazza states that the ritualized prayers and
blessings performed by Jesus in the upper room and imitated in subsequent
communion rites by Christ’s disciples “establish a clear connection of identity
between the bread and the Body of Christ: The bread which Jesus gives his
disciples to eat is his Body” (20, 27). The formal elements of liturgy,
signified in this case by supplication and thanksgiving, distinguish Christ’s
body and blood from all others, just as grace sets sacrificial blood apart from
bloodlust.
To understand the
distinction between the physical bread and the transubstantiated Host (since
the accidents themselves retain their earthly appearances), requires an
epistemological act, a proverbial leap of faith that Harker ultimately accepts
and Renfield never comprehends. Van Helsing guides Harker and highlights the
epistemological difference between reason and faith when he asserts “[y]ou do
not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily
life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you
cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others
cannot?” (Stoker 191). Mimicking the language of Christ in the initial part of
this speech, Van Helsing goes on to define faith and the role of the
supernatural. Indeed, Van Helsing questions Harker’s entire worldview—a
perspective based on the mundane practices inspired by an intellectualized
theology; given Harker’s experience with Count Dracula preceding this moment in
the text, it is not surprising that Harker trusts Van Helsing as one who can
see what others cannot. The entire expedition to restore Lucy and Mina, and to
vanquish Count Dracula, relies on the supernatural knowledge of Van Helsing.
Practices that could easily be dismissed as charlatanism (and are disregarded
by some of the novel’s minor characters, always to the detriment of the
anti-Dracula mission), are all that sustain and deliver the English characters
from the evil influences that infiltrate their once-ordinary daily lives. Van
Helsing even defines faith, via an American, as “that faculty which enables us
to believe things which we know to be untrue” (Stoker 192). Untrue, perhaps,
but nonetheless impactful within the paradigm of Dracula. The workings
of the sacramental elements (the crucifixes, the garlic, the Host) are
inexplicable and illogical, but all of the crusaders acknowledge Van Helsing’s
authority and trust his methods. The Dutchman stakes not only his own life but
also the lives (temporal and eternal) of Lucy and Mina on what is untrue—and
the quest succeeds. It seems that both the text generally, and this scene
particularly, work to undermine the illusions of stability of the characters
and the readers alike. Suspending a logical worldview is a critical component
of the crusade against Dracula, and the anxiety barely kept at bay by a veneer
of respectability (which even the Count presents to the world) is conquered
only by superior spiritual forces.
The Lifeblood of Dracula
That Victorian gothic anxiety surfaces in the
realization of a vibrant, potent, and malicious supernatural world lurking in
the margins of everyday existence. To combat that evil influence requires an
equally dynamic and powerful, though benevolent, force—thus leading to the
characters’ and the texts’ overall affirmation of the Christian God. That
affirmation is not without anxiety; perhaps Renfield represents a grotesque,
perverted Eucharist to normalize a rite that might seem strange to Stoker’s
readers. Scholars document the persistent accusations against Christians, and
Catholics in particular, as cannibals—a claim fueled by misperceptions about
Eucharistic theology. Priscilla Walton contends “Dracula is one of the
last cannibalistic texts of its type, illustratively drawing to a close the
nineteenth century’s fascination with and fear of anthropophagy in its many
forms” (27). While the nineteenth century may have paid unique attention to
charges of cannibalism, Kilgour, Mark Morton, Shirley Lindenbaum, Merrall
Llewelyn Price, and Andrew McGowan all discuss the relationship between
cannibals and Christians through the centuries. McGowan asserts that these
accusations of cannibalism are less about literally eating people and more
about “concern for purity and maintenance of order and boundaries” (427).
Fundamentally, labeling a group as cannibal is an act of social exclusion, of
boundary formation, that may have little if anything to do with eating
practices. In Stoker’s text, both Harker’s crusaders and Renfield operate
outside of mainstream society (which remains blissfully unaware of the
spiritual and physical evils lurking on its perimeters). Renfield’s immoderate
appetite, his carnality, and his monomania invoke the reader’s disgust, while
Harker’s hesitation to trust the sacraments invites the reader to judge
Renfield the cannibal and Harker—the uncertain initiate asked, just as the
readers are, to trust Van Helsing’s strange, supernatural advice. Given the alternatives
of cannibal and Christian, where Renfield’s ignorance of grace highlights
Harker’s submission to spiritual virtues, Stoker asks readers to consent to the
real presence of evil as well as the Real Presence.
In no sense is that
presence more clear and critical than in the characters’ employment of the
Eucharist, which establishes a boundary between the crusaders operating for
society’s protection just as Dracula’s vampiric cannibalism sets him against
the social body. More serious even than accepting an “idolatrous” crucifix is
Harker’s acceptance of the Host provided by Van Helsing. Though the Dutchman
assures his audience “I have an indulgence” for using the Host, Harker reflects
“[i]t was an answer that appalled the most skeptical of us, and we felt
individually that in the presence of such earnest purpose as the Professor’s, a
purpose which could thus use the to him most sacred of things, it was
impossible to distrust” (Stoker 210). While Harker carefully differentiates
that the “most sacred of things” refers to Van Helsing’s point of view, he also
indicates that his faith in Van Helsing triumphs over any skepticism. To trust
Van Helsing in this instance may mean to acknowledge that the Real Presence
abides in the Eucharist, not as a symbol as in some forms of Anglicanism (where
practices and theology are not wholly unified on this tenet), but as a tangible
divinity to counter the evil that is not theoretically but physically present
in the world. That presence literally marks Mina, setting before the crusaders
another physical representation of the spiritual danger drawing ever nearer.
Van Helsing places the Host on Mina’s forehead, where “it had seared it—had
burned into the flesh as though it had been a piece of white-hot metal,” prompting
Mina to exclaim, “Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh!
I must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgment Day” (297).
The same bread that bears the body of Christ and repels the Count and his
agents alienates Mina from her friends, strangers who shun her, and God
Himself. Yet critical even to Mina’s understanding of her scarring is that
while God rejects her “polluted flesh,” her soul remains in ambiguity, its
final fate deferred until the Judgment Day. Mina’s flesh wound manifests the
tension between the physical and the spiritual that permeates the text and
culminates in the group’s employment of the Host. The wafer itself is first
bread and then divine body; its physical presence serves as the cohort’s most
potent spiritual weapon; it marks Mina’s body, but perhaps not her soul. Like
the wordplay with “host,” Stoker’s sacramental imagery illustrates the
instability of boundaries between physical and spiritual, outward appearance
and inner reality, saved and condemned, reason and faith. The anxiety that
permeates interpretations of Dracula hangs on this anxiety—that in
Victorian England, categories of difference are inherently unstable, and all is
not as it seems. Reason alone remains insufficient to render comprehensible the
fluidity of boundaries in Dracula; the individual, social, and spiritual
bodies are not autonomous or safe but are subject to hosts, divine and
parasitical. Meaning-making within this narrative paradigm requires the
suspension of boundaries between the physical and spiritual worlds in order to
more firmly establish the borders between good and evil. Thus in the text, the
Eucharistic Host expels the vampire by summoning Christ as medium.
Endings, Afterlives, and In Betweens
Van Helsing’s
extensive use of the wafer but never the wine pits the body of Christ against
the blood of Count Dracula. References to “baptism of blood” (Stoker 323, 345,
367), the inclusion of the character Renfield as Dracula’s disciple, and the
“un-dead” fate of Dracula’s victims all indicate vampirism as an unholy
perversion of Christian theology. Where Christ, innocent human and incarnate
deity, offers his body and blood as atonement for sinners, Dracula fuels his
diabolical aims with the bodies and lifeblood of his victims. Where Christian
baptism purifies and cleanses, Dracula’s baptism stains and pollutes. Where
Christ’s followers enjoy an afterlife of peace, Dracula’s victims endure a
ceaseless cannibal feast while trapped in a state that mocks true death. Dracula
and his fellow vampires can kill and torment, but unlike the God whom they
scorn, they cannot create, cannot redeem, and can only live a half-life in the
darkness. The horror of the vampire’s position becomes clear to Mina while she
serves as the intermediary and representation of all that hangs in the balance
between good and evil, God and vampire, as she reflects: “[j]ust think what
will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser part that his better
part may have spiritual immortality” (310). Even for Dracula, Mina holds onto
the hope of salvation, that with the relinquishment of the flesh, his spirit
might rest in peace. In light of their religious beliefs, even Mina’s polluted
flesh comes to be interpreted as a trial that will lead them closer to God and
to the destruction of evil. Van Helsing, that persistent spiritual advisor of
the group, comforts Mina that “so surely as we live, that scar shall pass away
when God sees right to lift the burden that is hard upon us. Till then we bear
our Cross, as His Son did in obedience to His Will” (298). Further, Van Helsing
exhorts his troops—“as the old knights of the Cross” as crusaders, “ministers
of God’s own wish: that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be
given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him” (321). These
trials, then, are an opportunity to glorify God, without whom vanquishing
Dracula would be impossible.
In spite of her affinity with Dracula, manifested by the
scar as well as the gruesome “nursing” scene where Dracula force-feeds Mina at
his breast (283), Mina separates her own and Dracula’s physical fate from their
spiritual destiny. Though their bodies suffer, their souls maintain hope. Thus
Stoker demonstrates the tension between profane and sacred worlds and
epistemologies. The incarnate Christ, sacramentalized in the transubstantiated
Eucharistic Host, defies the boundaries between human and divine in order to
sever the ties of blood between Mina and Dracula; the Host as medium intercedes
to reestablish the limits of the physical world against the unfettered
spiritual world. Stoker’s story, so focused on the divide between sacred and
profane, spiritual and physical, ultimately returns to issues of epistemology.
Setting up superstition and faith as separate, and yet both reliable,
epistemologies (particularly with the absence of textual evidence in the
conclusion) provides final support for the claim that Dracula, intent on
restoring order in so many arenas of English life, simultaneously ushers in
spiritual disquiet. No quantity of records could persuade an audience of this
far-fetched tale’s veracity, even if meticulous texts were provided; the texts’
absence underscores the mystery that lingers on the edges of even the most
“civilized” societies. Between the anxieties that surface with Dracula
and other critics’ claims that order is restored (in order to reduce or
eliminate anxiety), my argument stands in between by showing how religion in
the text mediates between the rampant evils of vampirism and the orderly,
unspiritual world that wants to deny the existence of the supernatural.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Nancy. "Feminism,
Fiction, and the Utopian
Promise of Dracula." Differences: A Journal
of Feminist Cultural Studies 16.1 (2005):
1-23. MLA International Bibliography.
EBSCO. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
Brennan, Matthew C.
"Repression, Knowledge, and Saving
Souls: The Role of the 'New Woman' in
Stoker's Dracula and Murnau's Nosferatu."
Studies in the Humanities 19.1 (1992):
1-10. MLA International Bibliography.
EBSCO. Web. 4 Mar. 2010.
Case, Alison. "Tasting the
Original Apple: Gender and the
Struggle for Narrative Authority in Dracula."
Narrative 1.3 (1993): 223-243. MLA
International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web.
24 Mar. 2010.
Craft, Christopher. "'Kiss Me
with Those Red Lips': Gender and
Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula."
Representations 8. (1984): 107- 133.
MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO.
Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
Hendershot, Cyndy. "Vampire and
Replicant: The One-Sex Body in a
Two-Sex World."
Science
Fiction Studies 22.3 (1995): 373-398. MLA
International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
Herbert, Christopher. "Vampire
Religion." Representations
79. (2002): 100-121. MLA
International
Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
Kilgour, Maggie. From
Communion to Cannibalism: An
Anatomy of Metaphors of
Incorporation.
Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Print.
Kuzmanovic, Dejan. "Vampiric
Seduction and Vicissitudes of
Masculine Identity in
Bram
Stoker's Dracula." Victorian Literature and Culture 37.2 (2009):
411-425. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
Lindenbaum,
Shirley. "Thinking About Cannibalism."
Annual Review of Anthropology
(2004): 475-98. Web.
Malchow, H.L. Gothic
Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century
Britain. Stanford, CA:
Stanford
University Press, 1996. Print.
Mazza, Enrico. The Celebration of
the Eucharist: The Origin of the Rite
and the
Development
of Its Interpretation. Trans. Matthew J. O’Connell.
Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999. Print.
McGowan, Andrew. ”Eating
People: Accusations of Cannibalism
Against Christians in
the
Second Century.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2.3 (1994): 413-442.
Web.
Mohr, Rowena. "The Vampire's
Kiss: Gender, Desire and Power
in Dracula and The
Penance
of Portia James." Australasian Victorian Studies Journal 4. (1998):
80-87. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 8 Mar. 2010.
Morton, Mark. “Eat Your Words.” Gastronomica:
The Journal of Food and Culture. 4
(2004):
8-9. Web.
O'Brien, Edward W., Jr. "Bram
Stoker's Dracula: Eros or
Agapé?." Fantasy
Commentator 8.1-2 [45-46] (1993): 75-83. MLA International Bibliography.
EBSCO. Web. 4 Mar. 2010.
Petersen, Per Serritslev.
"Vampirizing the New Woman:
Masculine Anxiety and
Romance
in Bram Stoker's Dracula." B. A. S.: British and American
Studies/Revista de Studii Britanice si Americane 6. (2000): 31-39. MLA
International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 8 Mar. 2010.
Prescott, Charles E., and Grace A.
Giorgio. "Vampiric Affinities:
Mina Harker and the
Paradox
of Femininity in Bram Stoker's Dracula." Victorian Literature and
Culture 33.2 (2005): 487-515. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO.
Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
Price, Merrall
Llewelyn. Consuming Passions: The Uses
of Cannibalism in Late Medieval
and Early Modern Europe. Ed. Francis. G. Gentry. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Print.
Stevenson,
John Allen. "A Vampire in the Mirror: The
Sexuality of Dracula." PMLA:
Publications
of the Modern Language Association of America 103.2 (1988): 139-149. MLA
International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
Stoker, Bram.
Dracula. New York, NY: Signet Classic,
1992. Print.
Walton,
Priscilla. Our Cannibals, Ourselves. Urbana,
IL: University of Illinois Press,
2004.
Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment