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.
