Dracula’s Appearance: Race & Otherness

Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897. The novel is about a monstrous vampire from Transylvania that plans on colonizing England, and has some implications about race and sexuality that are reflective of the time period Stoker was writing in. Though Stoker may have crafted Dracula’s frightening physical characteristics consciously, it seems that he was majorly influenced by Victorian societal fears subconsciously.

Dracula’s appearance is described cartoonishly: He’s a tall, pale man with white hair, a long mustache, pointed ears and teeth, and hairy palms. This description paints Dracula to be animalistic. Many of the physical characteristics can also be interpreted as Eastern European or Jewish coded. Dracula lives in Transylvania and is clearly written to be a figure from the East wanting to colonize the West. He tells Jonathan Harker at the beginning of the novel that he is eager to be a part of London. Once Dracula moves to London, he starts draining Lucy of her blood, already attacking a part of the West. This was a big fear in Victorian society with so much social change occurring.

Hairy Palms & Connection with Animals

Photo by Riizz on Unsplash

In Victorian society, it was believed that a person who had masturbated would sprout hair in the center of their palms. Victorians were very strict about sexuality and desire — Jonathan, for example, feels horrified at his lust over the Weird Sisters. Dracula is a rather sexual kind of villain in the novel. Dracula’s sexuality closely ties with him being “othered” from the human English characters. Not only is he foreign to London, he appears more like an animal than a well-mannered Englishman. His hairy palms indicate he gives into “animal” desires whenever he wants to.

After all, Dracula is not human, he’s a vampire, which appears to be the most evolved animal separate from humans. Dracula has command over wolves, not just dogs. When Jonathan is first being driven to Dracula’s castle (by Dracula himself), dogs are barking outside the carriage. The barks change to howls as Jonathan realizes wolves are chasing the carriage. Dracula is the only one able to tame the wolves. Whether the wolves came under Dracula’s order as the “alpha," or if they came to feast on Jonathan, this scene represents Dracula’s ability to be the ultimate predator over a man.

Stoker writes Dracula’s crossing to England in a similar way that he wrote Dracula’s introduction from Jonathan’s perspective in that the reader doesn’t know at first that Dracula is on the ship to England. A captain details an account of how his ship was terrorized until they made it to England, and a black dog leaps from the boat, never to be seen again. The captain had never seen this dog, and actually felt some sadness at the dog’s disappearance because, after all of his men dying, the dog could be seen as a comfort.

In this way, Dracula’s command over wolves isn’t the most sinister thing about him. His ability to transform himself into a regular dog makes his disguise more sinister than his appearance: he can appear as a companion to humans, if he wants to. It is only for his own gain. Dracula kept the captain alive because he needed the ship to get to England. In a different manner, he kept Jonathan alive for his own special reasons.

The most notable animal attached to Dracula and vampire lore is the bat. Bats are nocturnal animals, and nighttime is Dracula’s favorite time to haunt his first victims in London. Stoker did not make Dracula allergic to sunlight. Rather, Dracula is nocturnal because that’s the kind of animal he is. When Lucy writes to Mina about having a hard time sleeping, she mentions a bat angrily flapping around her window, as if trying to get in. Though bats are not particularly well-loved creatures, Lucy felt relatively safe inside at night, with a window separating her from the creature. Dracula in his regular form must be invited inside a home, and based on his appearance, this seems unlikely. However, in his bat form, he can very easily get in.

“Aquiline Nose” & Jewish Immigrants

Much of how Stoker describes Dracula’s physical appearance is mostly used to terrify — his pale skin, intense eyes, and sharp nails and teeth — and to depict his connection to aggressive or “creepy” animals (Ray 6). However, a feature that Jonathan takes note of when he first meets Dracula is his “aquiline nose.” An aquiline nose gives a slightly beak-like appearance with a prominent bridge. Seeing as how Dracula’s animal connections are not bird related, is Dracula’s distinctive nose meant to terrify Jonathan? Some people think that Stoker was referring to the Jewish race.

When Stoker published Dracula, there was a mass emigration of Eastern European Jews into England. Much like modern day’s American border crisis, at the time the novel was published, there were many dissenters against the immigration in England. For some critics, there is concern over whether Stoker’s creation of a wealthy, blood-sucking, Transylvanian monster is meant to be a commentary on the Jewish race (Ivry).

There is a long-standing myth amongst antisemites that Jewish people drink the blood of Christian children for religious ceremonies. The connection between this myth and the legend of vampirism raises eyebrows for the author’s intentions at such a tense time period for Jewish people. The aquiline nose description could be read into as trying to depict either Jewish or non-Western European races, especially as Dracula is canonically foreign to England.

A Jewish stereotype is directly mentioned in the text when Dracula has boxes of soil transported to London. The subtext is obvious already: Dracula is already bringing pieces of his homeland with him, invading the London soil with his own. When one of the cargo transporters describes it, the worker says that the soil smelled of “ole Jerusalem.” J. Jack Halberstam, a literary historian, said about the passage, “Like the diseases attributed to the Jews as a race, bodily odors, people assumed, clung to them and marked them out as different and indeed repugnant objects of pollution” (Ivry). The soil is effectively part of Dracula’s grave from his estate. The cargo is essentially his home, and his home is a part of him. It’s not hard to see the parallels between antisemites’ fears and Dracula.

Regardless of whether or not Count Dracula himself was supposed to represent the Jewish race, the undertones in Stoker’s descriptions of Dracula clearly depict a villainous foreign character that reflects Victorian fears of immigration and foreign invasion. When writing an obituary for Bram Stoker, Stoker’s friend Hall Caine wrote that Stoker only wrote stories “to sell” for entertainment, and he never inserted his own agenda into his writing (Ivry). This is widely reported on Stoker as an author, but if this is the case, Dracula’s physical appearance and characteristics are clearly influenced by the time period Stoker was writing in, regardless of the authorial intent.

Works Cited

Hollingsworth, Alexis. “Fear of Progress:” Medium, Medium, 9 Jan. 2019, medium.com/@lexiloulee/fear-of-progress-b42fc00c023a.

Ivry, Benjamin. “125 Years Later, Is Dracula Antisemitic - or Is He Just Another Vampire?” The Forward, 31 Oct. 2022, forward.com/culture/503182/dracula-bram-stoker-antisemitic-jewish-125th-anniversary-transylvania-vampire/.

Ray, Mary. “Animals and the Predator Motif in Dracula - Scholars Crossing.” Liberty.Edu, digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&context=montview. Accessed 25 Apr. 2024.

Stoker, Bram. “DRACULA.” The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dracula, by Bram Stoker, 1995, www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm.

Dracula’s Fangs: Penetration & Sexuality

As we covered in the previous blog post, Bram Stoker crafted Count Dracula’s physical appearance and attributes to represent the different collective fears of Victorian society. The Count’s appearance ties him to his connection with wild animals, and his dubious ethnicity helps depict him as foreigner invading England. However, his most notable features within the vampire mythos are his fangs.

Victorian society was very strict about repressing sexual desires, and Stoker captures this unease with sexuality well throughout the novel. Before diving into Dracula’s fangs specifically, we should talk about the first fangs that Jonathan describes in the novel.

Women In Sexual Power

The first time a vampire’s fangs are truly described in the novel is when Jonathan is attacked by three female vampires in Dracula’s estate in Chapter 3. Though Jonathan is about to be bitten and drained of blood, when he describes the attack of the “Weird Sisters,” the emotions he feels are sexually arousing. When describing it, he is clearly horrified by the encounter, but also horrified at what he felt.

I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips (Stoker).

From this passage alone, it is clear that Jonathan feels guilty even for feeling lust for women other than his fiancee, Mina. When Jonathan says, “I seemed to somehow know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear,” Stoker seems to be describing Jonathan’s wet dreams. Seeing the Weird Sisters brings up a fear that Jonathan tries to keep his distance with as much as possible: sexual temptation. The feeling is admittedly not foreign to him. Jonathan experiences “a wicked, burning desire” for the women to kiss him. However, it doesn’t read like Jonathan is just ashamed because he has a fiancee. The scene reads as Jonathan being transfixed and horrified by sexuality. The Weird Sisters have “voluptuous red lips” and “brilliant white teeth” that he keeps referring to. Women having red lips would be considered immodest because the color red draws too much attention. Jonathan secretly likes a somewhat more overt display of female sexuality than he could ever admit.

The scene becomes more intense, as one of the Weird Sisters is about to drink his blood. “I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart” (Stoker). In this instance, Jonathan is longing for something that no Victorian man was allowed to long for: penetration. The reversal of the gender roles, with a woman being the one to sexually “dominate,” was shocking, mostly because a man wanting to experiment with being penetrated would echo too close to homosexuality.

“This Man Belongs to Me!”

Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash

Just before the Weird Sister drinks from Jonathan, Dracula enters the room and throws the female vampire from him. Furious, Dracula declares one of the most infamous lines from the novel, “How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me!” (Stoker)

The infamous line, “This man belongs to me,” clearly depicts homo-eroticism. Based on the interactions between Dracula and the Weird Sisters, the Count has chosen Jonathan as his own special play thing, potentially in more ways than one. The Weird Sisters protest against Dracula’s claim by making a statement about how Dracula has never “loved” in the past, and still doesn’t love. The Count, however, looks into Jonathan’s face as he whispers, “Yes, I too can love” (Stoker).

Is Dracula talking about sexual love? Or romantic love? The Weird Sisters all wanted to share Jonathan as a snack, representing a polyamorous sexual indulgence. However, if drinking human blood is a metaphor for sex, then it’s clear throughout the novel that Dracula has “loved” in the past and continues to. So if the vampires aren’t referring to sexual love, what are they referring to?

The rest of the novel keeps Dracula much of a mystery. Stoker invented him to be a monster, not a character. The most that the reader ever gets to know Dracula is the first four chapters when Jonathan is in his company. At first, Jonathan even respects and is intrigued by the Count. It’s clear from the almost-feeding scene in Chapter 3 that Dracula feels similar feelings for Jonathan, at least in his own vampire way. He tells the Weird Sisters that after he’s “done with him” that they can “kiss” Jonathan as much as they want. So is Dracula referring to Dracula wanting to feed on Jonathan first? Or is he wanting to be a different kind of first encounter with his captive?

Dracula taking a special interest in his victim, Jonathan, makes Jonathan’s stay with him more frightening because it’s clear that what Dracula wants to do to him is different than what the Weird Sisters were about to do. As far as the readers know, Jonathan is a virgin for Mina. Though Jonathan was horrified by his close encounter with the Weird Sisters, he was honest about how much he wanted to be bitten by the women. This seems to be the natural allure of a vampire to make the victim think they are willing to be fed from. If Dracula was looking to penetrate Jonathan with his fangs first, would Jonathan be terrified? Or would the vampire charms influence him to feel differently?

Whether Bram Stoker meant for Dracula to have homo-erotic undertones, it’s hard not to read that subtext into these first four chapters of the novel. However, the text is consistent with its portrayals of sexuality and allusions to sexuality. Jonathan is spared from Dracula doing his worst to him, but he is mentally scarred for the rest of the novel after facing the implications of what could have happened to him. This sets Count Dracula, a pansexual vampire, up to be one of the most hateable and feared monsters a Victorian could imagine.

Works Cited

Hollingsworth, Alexis. “Fear of Progress:” Medium, Medium, 9 Jan. 2019, medium.com/@lexiloulee/fear-of-progress-b42fc00c023a.

Stoker, Bram. “DRACULA.” The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dracula, by Bram Stoker, 1995, www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm.

Dracula’s Blood: (Sexual) Morality

Photo by Cassi Josh on Unsplash

Blood is obviously a really prevalent and important symbol in Dracula. Not only is blood a staple for vampire novels, blood in Victorian society held a lot of meaning. In the late 19th century, there were scientific breakthroughs that linked blood to genetics. If blood could determine your genetic code, then it could theoretically determine everything: race, sexuality, morality, and sanity (Hollingsworth). When Bram Stoker created Dracula as a vampire, this monster was the pinnacle of every Victorian fear imaginable. Dracula needs human blood to survive. As he drains the other characters, he grows more powerful while they slowly start to lose their minds. However, Dracula also does have his own blood inside his body. If blood determines everything about a person, Dracula’s blood signals that he is inherently a villain with no hint of redemption. When other characters are forced to drink his blood, something within them changes that can only be undone by killing Dracula for good.

The Problem of Lucy

Photo by Alexandre Boucey on Unsplash

If blood was so essential that it determined everything about a person, then a person being drained of blood would change everything about that person — not just their living status. Victorians believed that if a person lost blood, they were also losing their morality and sanity (Hollingsworth). This shows up with every point of view character that has been fed on, but none more so than Lucy.

Lucy is first introduced through her letters to Mina. Lucy has just been offered three marriage proposals by three separate men. She laments to Mina over how she wishes she could just choose all of the men under the guise of not wanting to insult any of them. However, based on how Lucy expresses affection for each of the men, it’s hard to believe that Lucy isn’t expressing a type of fantasy she has. Like Jonathan’s diary and letters to Mina show a formal restraint, Lucy’s descriptions of the men don’t delve into physical attraction. As Stoker continues to write Lucy, though, there are parallels between her initial sexual fantasies and the physical changes she undergoes throughout the story.

We’ve talked a lot in previous posts about how Victorian society viewed all forms of sexuality as evil. This actually has to do with the blood-as-genetics theory. Geared toward a male-dominated society, part of the theory was that a decrease in sperm led to a decrease in blood. This made all forms of sexuality, from masturbation to intercourse, immoral because in essence it depleted a person’s moral compass and sanity (Hollingsworth). When Lucy undergoes not one, not two, but four blood transfusions in the story, even the men who volunteered to save her have judgments reserved for the status of her morality.

Lucy is the first of Dracula’s prey in the main cast. She starts off as a kind, gentle woman who is clearly charming and attractive enough to get three men to propose to her. Though she does enjoy the attention, she ultimately decides to accept Arthur Holmwood’s proposal. As she is celebrating her engagement, she starts to feel like she can’t get enough sleep, and gradually deteriorates physically. By the time Dr. Seward and Van Helsing try giving her a blood transfusion, the damage has already been done.

Though blood transfusions were very morally conflicting for Victorians, Van Helsing and Dr. Seward decide to try anything to save Lucy because they know her body being drained of blood will not sustain her. Dr. Seward was also one of the men who was in love with Lucy. Both of the men, with Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey, another one of Lucy’s former suitors, all give their blood to her. Arthur, her fiancee, even sees this act as a way of marrying Lucy, depicting blood donation as an act of consummating a marriage. Van Helsing, using this same line of thinking, calls Lucy a “polyandrist.”

Even though the men tried to save Lucy, her body fails and she becomes a vampire. Devoid of her normal human blood, vampire Lucy is unapologetic with her sexuality, as well as her desire for blood. When the reader sees Lucy as a vampire, she is feeding off of a child, and throws the child aside as if she has no regard for anyone’s feelings. Then she tries to seduce Arthur with what Dr. Seward calls “voluptuous wantonness.” The main male cast has to kill vampire Lucy, and they don’t feel remorse because she has been wholly changed by Dracula’s blood.

Under Dracula’s influence, Lucy loses her sense of morality and sanity. Even with the help of the good men’s blood transfusions, it was too late for her. Her friend Mina does not share the same fate, though. Before diving into that, let’s explore why Stoker didn’t give Lucy as much of a chance for redemption.

Lucy enjoys the attention of three good men, and potentially had led each of them on until she has to make her final decision. She gets sick soon after her engagement, after committing to one man. This is because Dracula arrives and starts feeding on her. However, it is interesting that Lucy is portrayed as a good woman who seemed to fall victim to temptation, rather than die defending her morals. Did Dracula choose to feed on her because he found a kinship with her? Or was she an easy target because she did not perfectly fit into the conventions of morality at the time. Even when four different men give her blood transfusions, Van Helsing’s remarks of her “polyandry” put the blame entirely on her. After all, as was hinted earlier in the novel, Lucy enjoyed being in the center of a love square.

Mina, The Perfect Victim?

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Perhaps Dracula’s blood brought out the very worst inside of Lucy. However, does his blood affect every character the same?

Mina is the only one of Dracula’s captives or victims to not have repressed sexual desires. At the start of the novel, Mina appears to be the perfect Victorian woman. She is content with her engagement, she is not lusting after other men, and she is an overall kind woman and friend. Something that distinguishes Mina from Lucy, however, is her stark independence.

Mina is a schoolteacher, able to earn money on her own. Though Mina makes a few somewhat sarcastic comments about the “New Woman,” she exemplifies many of the traits of a New Woman herself. The New Woman was the name used to describe progressive women who wanted financial independence, as well as women who wanted to break conventional stereotypes, such as through sports and, of course, sexual liberation. Mina exemplifies the New Woman when it comes to financial independence. In fact, though Mina is always very complimentary of all the virtuous male characters in the story, she does not seem to depend on men within her personal life. The male characters also commend Mina for having a “man’s brain.” Even though the New Woman posed a threat to Victorian society, Stoker did leave some room for acceptance for women being able to have the same independent freedoms as men.

What is unquestionably bad throughout the novel is sexual immorality. When Dracula targets Mina, he is found forcing Mina’s head to his chest to drink his blood. Dracula’s usual mind tricks and temptations were not enough to sway Mina, so he assaults her in her bedroom. Dracula chose Mina as his next victim to pollute the virtuous Victorian woman. Unfortunately, to everyone’s horror, Mina is burned by the Holy Wafer. Though she is not a vampire yet, and her wits appear mostly unchanged, Mina’s body specifically is no longer pure. Her blood is now mixed with Dracula’s morally insane blood.

The parallel between Dracula force-feeding his blood and sexual assault is easy to draw. In a Victorian society, even if a woman was raped, she would still be considered “tainted” in some way. Only after Dracula is killed does her body and blood return to normal. In this way, Stoker was showing that the only way to keep a Victorian society pure was to destroy any chance of invasion, whether it be from a foreign race, or new ideas of sexual freedom.

Of course, it’s also possible that Bram Stoker wrote Dracula as just an entertaining scary story. Regardless of what Stoker intended, the influences from the time period are blatant in his work. Dracula’s physical attributes covered in this blog series represent the collective fears of race, sexuality, and sexual morality in Victorian society, and that is ultimately what makes him a terrifying villain.

Works Cited

Hollingsworth, Alexis. “Fear of Progress:” Medium, Medium, 9 Jan. 2019, medium.com/@lexiloulee/fear-of-progress-b42fc00c023a.

Stoker, Bram. “DRACULA.” The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dracula, by Bram Stoker, 1995, www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm.