The following essay is a critical analysis of “Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s Dracula” by Jack Halberstam, published in Victorian Studies 36:3 (Spring 1992), pages 333-52 (inserted below as PDF document).
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab Introduction
What makes horror frightening is the way in which it capitalizes on existing human fears, giving palpable and enticing form to what otherwise would lay unrealized or consciously avoided within the mind. There exists a certain deep, existential fear is that we—that is, us and our surrounding society—are monstrous; indeed, there is something unsettling and daunting about our own capacity for exacting harm. Paradoxically, there also exists the fear that we are not monstrous; this renders us vulnerable to a monstrous other’s capacity for exacting harm. It is this latter notion of otherness in monstrosity that Jack Halberstam explores in his critical essay, “Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
Halberstam prefaces the essay with his original speculation that Stoker’s Dracula was a manifestation of modern anti-Semitic sentiment. Dracula’s physical appearance, parasitism, aversion to Christian symbols, blood-sucking, and pecuniary greed parallel anti-Semitic stereotypes from the 19th century. However, after ruminating on the relationship between Jew and vampire more thoroughly, Halberstam concludes that his linear fixation on the two revealed more about his own projections than Stoker’s actual depiction of monstrosity. Halberstam subsequently revises his speculation, broadening his analysis to the nature of monstrosity in general, which he links to the notion of otherness. Halberstam then explores this notion of otherness through the distinct facets of deviant sexuality, pathology, class, and race—all of which are epitomized by the vampire.
For the purposes of this essay, I will focus on sexuality, which, in both Halberstam’s paper and my own, encompasses sexual orientation, identity, and the general quality of being sexual. While Halberstam’s main claims pertaining to sexuality are compelling and sophisticated, he makes tenuous sub-claims in developing those main points, raising questions and occasionally erring on self-contradiction. I agree with Halberstam’s three main claims—namely, that foreign sexuality threatens many aspects of the status quo, that the novel’s multi-faceted structure parallels the multi-faceted construction of Gothic monstrosity, and that Dracula is feminine—and thus seek to fortify those main points. To this end, I will confute their tenuous sub-claims respectively—namely, that Mina surrenders to Dracula’s sexuality, that fragmented reading and writing are necessarily sexual, and that Dracula’s feminization stems from his lack of phallus—in order to streamline Halberstam’s otherwise strong arguments.
I. Yes, Dracula’s Sexual Corruption of Women Synecdochally Corrupts Other Pillars of 19th Century English Society (No, Mina Is Not One of Those Women)
The first tenuous sub-claim that I would like to confront is Halberstam’s suggestion that both Lucy and Mina, as opposed to just Lucy, are seduced by Dracula and willingly engage in vampiric activities thereafter. Halberstam makes this overgeneralization early in his essay: “Dracula…threatens the stability and the naturalness of this equation between middle-class womanhood and national pride by seducing both women [Lucy and Mina]” (Halberstam, 335). While I strongly agree with Halberstam’s main claim that a deviant sexual being, Dracula, seducing a bourgeois woman both literally and symbolically threatens the status quo of English nationality, class boundaries, and womanhood, Mina is not seduced in the same way that Lucy is and thus should not be described as such. There are two necessary stages which must be traversed in order for seduction to take place: first, the seducer entices or engages with the target, then, the target gives into that temptation. While both women undergo the first stage, having been bitten by Dracula, they differ in that Lucy engages in the second, while Mina never does.
In making this sub-claim, Halberstam overlooks the symbolic significance of Mina and Lucy’s dissimilarities in the primary text, namely that they represent disjoint moral pathways. Lucy, due to her promiscuity, follows a pathway slightly tainted and is therefore more susceptible to seduction, sexually and vampirically. Stoker hints at this tainted moral character with Van Helsing’s clever but uncouth remark, “‘this so sweet maid is a polyandrist’” (187) then officiates Lucy’s corruption with the revelation, “‘[The bites] were made by Miss Lucy!’” (206). On the other hand, Mina is overwhelmingly described as a “‘sweet, sweet, good, good woman [with] goodness and purity and faith’” (328). In accordance with this goodness, Mina even requests that “‘before the greater evil is entirely wrought…you will kill me’” (351-352). Stoker thus makes it clear that Mina has not and never will complete that second phase of seduction. Therefore, she is not seduced in the same fashion as Lucy like Halberstam claims. This haphazard grouping peripheralizes the quality which Mina’s character most exemplifies: good intent, specifically unwavering good intent.
Halberstam attempts to recall this sub-claim later on as well, going so far as to equate Mina with Lucy and the three brides of Dracula. Halberstam declares, “[Dracula] transforms pure and virginal women into seductresses, produces sexuality through their willing bodies. The transformations of Lucy and Mina stress an urgent sexual appetite; the three women who ambush Harker in Castle Dracula display similar voracity” (Halbsterstam, 344). As I’ve previously shown, Mina is no “seductress,” nor is she “willing” in any way; she literally would rather die than complete her transformation and prey on other humans (Halberstam, 344). Thus, the collective noun “transformations,” meant in this case to encompass both Lucy and Mina, is improper, since Mina neither completes her transition to nor perpetuates vampirism, while Lucy clearly does both. To her transition, Lucy develops a “bloodstained, voluptuous mouth,” and her “whole carnal and unspiritual appearance [seems] like a devilish mockery of [her] sweet purity” (228). To her perpetuation, Van Helsing remarks that Lucy would have “‘add[ed] new victims and multi[plied] the evils of the world’” if they had not killed her (229). As for the three women, Stoker describes their encounter with Harker as such: “she actually licked her lips like an animal…scarlet lips[,] red tongue…the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin…I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips…I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips” (45). Given Stoker’s lengthy, borderline-graphic emphasis on the vampire bride’s mouth, Halberstam’s characterization of the vampire’s corruption as both gluttonous and sexually voracious is indeed accurate. There exists no remotely similar description of Mina Harker in this novel. All this to say, there is no “similar voracity” to be spoken of (Halberstam, 344).
I suspect Halberstam extends his argument to include more than just Lucy because this greater relevance could make his argument appear more substantial and applicable to the novel as a whole. However, this generalization in his sub-claim actually weakens his argument because, in sacrificing precision for scale, Halberstam stretches evidence beyond its reasonable limits, clouds his main argument, and weakens his ethos. Had Halberstam only argued for Lucy’s case, his argument would be more logically cohesive, since Lucy is actually (as opposed to ostensibly) corrupted. Likening Mina to the three brides involves an even greater stretch in logic.
II. A Lot of Things Are Sexual…But Not That
The next sub-claim of Halberstam’s that I would like to address is his misdirected insistence on the sexualization of fragmented reading and writing, which he proposes in order to supplement his main claim that the multi-faceted structure of the novel parallels the multi-faceted nature of monstrosity. This sub-claim about sexualization, though interesting, is not adequately supported by the novel itself. I agree with Halberstam’s main claim, but in centering that claim about the sub-claim on sexualization, Halberstam hinders himself from developing other, probably stronger sub-claim. In doing so, he disappoints a strong argument with faulty execution. “There is a marked sexual energy,” Halberstam asserts, “to the reading and writing of all the contributions to the narrative [as] the men and Mina [are united] in a safe and mutual bond of disclosure and confidence” (Halberstam, 335). I disagree with the point that shared confidence is necessarily sexual. If it were, then that would render the bond between the upstanding English men necessarily sexual after Mina tells them to, effectively, keep their secrets from her: “‘Promise me that you will not tell me anything of the plans’” (346). Given that Jonathan is Mina’s husband and that homosexuality is a foreign and therefore monstrous quality (using Halberstam’s definition of foreign sexuality as anything “in opposition to ‘normal’ sexual functions”), it is very unlikely that the English men—who epitomize normalcy and goodness—would share a “sexual” homoerotic “bond of disclosure and confidence” (Halberstam, 335).
Additionally, the “marked sexual energy” that Halberstam describes seems to point toward a kind of sexual tension or desperation, but the sub-claim that that urgency is sexual ignores the practical aspects of the situation illustrated in the primary text (Halberstam, 335). As Van Helsing notes, “‘Our task is…more difficult than ever, and this…trouble makes every hour of the direst importance’” (343). He makes no sly, suggestive remarks, suggesting that even Van Helsing, who had previously pounced on the opportunity to joke about Lucy’s polyandry (in front of her widower, no less), does not see any potential for innuendo or remotely sexual humor here. There is merit to Halberstam’s main claim that a novel comprised of segments resembles monstrosity in that both are aggregates of distinct components, but the sub-claim about sexualization specifically is not warranted by the primary source, given the un-sexual nature of the characters’ communications. In focusing on sexualization, Halberstam ignores the gravity of the literal situations taking place.
In another attempt to further this main claim through the faulty lens of sexualization, Halberstam makes the sub-claim that writing and reading are a non-sexual alternative to Dracula’s deviant sexuality. If, as Halberstam proposes, “Writing and reading [are an] alternative to the sexuality of the vampire” then they are, by definition of alternative, antithetical to sexuality and therefore non-sexual. (Halberstam, 336). This contradicts his earlier point that writing and reading have a sexuality about them. Yet, at the same time, in describing writing and reading as an “alternative” to sexuality, Halberstam also suggests that writing and reading are functionally appropriate, as opposed to qualitatively similar, substitutes for sexuality. This raises (then does not answer) the question, Does Halberstam view reading and writing as sexual or not?
Given that the characters are not always in the same physical location, the letters which they send to one another are practically essential. The journal entries serve two primary purposes for the characters within the novel: accountability and preservation of information. To the first point, Mina writes, “[if Jonathan should ever think] that I kept anything from him, I still keep my journal as usual. Then if he has feared of my trust I shall show it to him” (273). To the second, Dr. Seward writes, “Jonathan Harker has asked me to note this as he says he is hardly equal to the task, and he wants an exact record kept” (350). Neither of these written accounts seems sexual or in lieu of sexuality in any way.
III. Femininity: A Technology of Monstrosity (Just Not At Masculinity’s Expense)
The third and final sub-claim that I would like to address pertaining to Halberstam’s main claim about deviant sexuality as a technology of monstrosity is Halberstam’s confounded definition of what specifically feminizes and, by extension, criminalizes Dracula’s sexuality. Halberstam lists “[Dracula’s] feminized because non-phallic sexuality” (Halberstam, 343) as a characteristic of his monstrous otherness. While the primary text supports the notion that Dracula’s sexuality is othered through feminization, and Dracula’s sexuality is indeed non-phallic, I disagree with Halberstam’s sub-claim that that feminization is necessarily a result of non-phallic sexuality. In the primary text, Dracula “force[es] [Mina’s] face down on his bosom” as an act of silencing and of power; it is not a reproductive act (300). Thus, the emphasis, in terms of Dracula’s feminization, is on his having a leaking bosom, not his lacking an active phallus. This is to say, his feminization stems from his possession of feminine qualities rather than his lack of masculine ones. Given Halberstam’s own description of Gothic as “always go[ing] both ways” (Halberstam, 339) and his assertion that vampire sexuality is “not [one sexuality]” but, rather, “all of these and more,” (Halberstam, 344), his sub-claim that Dracula’s femininity is necessarily at the expense of his masculinity seems rhetorically inconsistent.
To further refute the tenuous sub-claim, Dracula does, in fact, possess phallic-esque masculinity, though the manifestation of that masculinity is deviant and foreign (this caveat is in accordance with the main claim). In order to prove that Dracula possesses the phallic and dominating qualities essential to a male characterization and refute the sub-claim that Dracula is feminine specifically because he lacks masculinity, I will compare Halberstam’s description of the men’s attacks on Lucy to Stoker’s depiction of Dracula’s attack on Mina. Halberstam reveals his sexual logic in his description of Lucy’s death: “the group takes a certain sexual delight in staking her body, decapitating her, and stuffing her mouth with garlic” (345). His interpretation of this scene as sexual seems to stem from the fact that men penetrate a woman’s body twofold—physically staking her, then filling her by force—and assert their power over her. Given the image of penetration, one could very reasonably describe this scene as phallic. If physically penetrating and asserting dominance over a woman is phallic and therefore masculine, then Dracula’s penetration and assertion of dominance over women is also phallic and masculine. When Dracula attacks Mina, his assertion of power is clear as “his right hand grip[s] her by the back of the neck,” and “from her throat trickle[s] a thin stream of blood,” evidence of her penetration (301). Dracula does not reproduce by means of phallus, but he dominates and violates in the same masculine, penetrative ways as a literally phallic character. Thus, he is feminized and deviant but not without phallic masculinity either.
Conclusion
Ultimately, while Halberstam makes compelling and valid claims about deviant sexuality as a technology of monstrosity, his sub-claims about Mina’s surrender to Dracula’s sexuality, the sexuality of reading and writing, and Dracula’s non-phallic masculinity take away from otherwise strong main arguments. These rhetorical weaknesses stem generally from Halberstam’s neglect of symbols and context from the primary text. Still, Halberstam’s insights into Gothic monstrosity, specifically thinking in terms of aggregates and co-existing qualities (even and especially if certain qualities seem to contradict one another), are rich with nuance and nonetheless engaging.