Gender Inversion in Dracula

     In the twenty-first century, people should have already veered away from the traditional gender roles that were put in place hundreds of years ago, but they have not. Even though some people have come out and are confident in their sexual orientation, whatever it may be, society as a whole is still not very accepting of anyone who is not ‘normal’. We have created a heteronormative culture that people are now forced to live in. Monsters are created to embody the traits of humans and society that people do not necessarily want to see. In the novel, the character Dracula is “immobilized by the competing imperatives of ‘wicked desire’ and deadly fear’”; he has to choose between doing what he wants to do and what society has told him he should do (Stoker 444). In his society, Dracula was not only shamed for being a vampire, but he was also told that his sexual desires were wrong. Dracula longed for penetration more than anything else, but he was constrained by the society he lived in. Although Dracula came close to fulfilling his hopes of penetration multiple times, he never let himself fully indulge for fear of what the society he lived in would do to him. Not only was Dracula afraid of people knowing of his desire for penetration, but he was also terrified of what would happen to him if he let himself indulge in penetration. As much as we would like to think that our society has evolved since Dracula was written, it has not; this exact same thing still happens today. If people’s beliefs or desires are anything outside of what society considers normal, they are terrified to express them out of fear of what people will say or do. Even if people live seemingly completely normal lives, if they have sexual desires that are not widely accepted, like Dracula’s, they will get shamed, judged, and even punished. The heteronormative culture that was created before Dracula was written still runs through our society today, and there is little to nothing that any one person can do to change it. Dracula shows how when people’s “ungratified desire” for any one thing is not fulfilled, they channel their desire into something else (Stoker 446). For Dracula, his desire for penetration is fulfilled by his three vampiric daughters whose anatomy permits them to be penetrated. For people in today’s society, their desire, whether it be sexual or otherwise, is projected onto something else, such as a sport or hobby where they can relieve some of that desire. According to the nineteenth-century psychologist Sigmund Freud, in order for a person to protect their EGO, they use a defense mechanism called sublimation. This simply means that they divert their sexual or aggressive energy into acceptable behavior. For Dracula, he diverts his need for penetration to his daughters. At the time women were supposed to be available and want to have sex whenever their husband desired and therefore, it was perfectly normal for Dracula to live vicariously through the penetration of his daughters. People in today’s society are forced to go through this exact same process in order for them to repress their desires. As much as people want to think that today’s society is changing, it is not, and much like Dracula, people today have to find ways to repress their desires and divert them to something that society sees as acceptable.