Dracula is a Sex Addict

In Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Dracula is portrayed as a beast who indulges is drinking people’s blood. But is this obsession with drinking blood symbolic of a common issue or taboo in European culture at the time?

Lucy’s character is also heavily associated with sex since the beginning of the film. The Count’s experience with Lucy was on a dark night, when Lucy heard and felt the count calling to her. When Mina found them, it is confusing to the audience that Dracula is supposed to be drinking Lucy’s blood, because it looks so much like a sex scene. This would have been very taboo in Europe in this time period, as outlined earlier by Mina and Lucy giggling over Mina’s book. The count is also not in his human form, but closer to a werewolf covered in in fur. This could be symbolizing the count’s impulsivity in the moment to seduce Lucy and “drink her blood”.

Dracula met Jonathan in his castle in transylvania when the count requested Jonathan to sell him some real estate. During Jonathan’s stay, the Count made a few homoerotic remarks toward him, and as he learned more and more about the castle and the count, Jonathan began to realize he was a prisoner. Jonathan’s interactions with Dracula could be representative of Dracula being bisexual, which would be very taboo in European culture at the time. It also appeared that the purpose of Jonathan’s being there was to use his body to satisfy the Count’s and the three vampiresses’ thirst for blood from the safety of his castle. The vampiresses could be representative of

Another, more unrelated point that I thought of while writing this is the difference between Mina’s relationship with the count and Jonathan’s “relationship” with the vampiresses. This is representative of the difference in views on adultery in Europe at the time. When Jonathan is cheating, he is being seduced by three beautiful women at once but does not seek them out or long from them afterwards. When Mina is cheating, she is having dinner with a mysterious man who she falls in love with and eventually leaves Jonathan for. This difference aligns with the outdated view that women are irrational and will just fall in love with whatever stranger harasses them on the streets, whereas Jonathan was portrayed as stumbling into an affair that he did not fantasize about afterwards.

The Count’s interactions with Mina were very different from Jonathan and Lucy. Mina reciprocated the count’s desires, even expressing she that wanted him to make her a vampire so she could join him. This scene is representative of a few taboos in European culture at this time. Mina was “cheating” because she was sharing such an intimate moment with the count, but the gender role reversal of drinking Dracula’s blood from his chest that was even more out of the ordinary. It is important to note that Dracula did not force Mina to continue to drink his blood, but that she forced herself to finish. This means Dracula’s character role is reversed, because it is normally him that is drinking another person’s blood.

If Dracula is not representative of a sex addict, he is certainly a sexual deviant by the standards of European culture at that time. The deeper message behind that is that sexual deviancy causes suffering and “spreading” it with sexual acts with other people can make them suffer as well.

Mina is that you? By Haley Aguilar

  In the film adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula by Francis Coppola, the relationship between Mina and Dracula is transformed from one-sided to that of a serious love interest. In the novel, Mina is a strong-minded and cunning woman but in the movie, the audience is suddenly lacking that aspect of her character and in its place is a weak, submissive damsel. There are only a few real moments that Mina is seen as strong when she is with Lucy and begins typing on her typewriter and the other when she first meets Dracula. She brushes off his attempts to speak to her, at first, and then suddenly she is apologizing for having a mind of her own.

  Mina’s romance with Dracula in the movie illustrates Hollywood’s idea that there always needs to be a great romance in a story for it to be compelling. The novel love that Dracula has for Mina is not enough for a movie audience because it is not reciprocated the way that it is in the movie. In the movie, Mina becomes enthralled with Dracula and cheats on Johnathan with him, not physically, but she surrenders her heart to Dracula, which in many ways is worse. Mina portrays the damsel very easily in the movie. Her character falls from a good representation of the new woman to a poor representation of the angel in the house. I say a poor representation because of her easy infidelity with her fiancee and her obvious sexual desires which in those times were unacceptable.

  Mina is put on a pedestal by Van Helsing in the novel because she was cunning enough to portray herself to them as the angel of the house while simultaneously showing them bits and pieces of what Van Helsing referred to as a “man brain”. However, in the movie, she is seen as nothing more than another object of lust as further proven by her first interaction with Van Helsing in the movie when he literally just looks her up and down without speaking to her then dismisses her as if nothing has just happened. It is also shown later when she is with Van Helsing as she is transitioning, she is easily able to seduce him, even though he knows of Johnathan and what Mina is becoming.

  Johnathan is missing from Mina for nearly the entire movie which is another major difference from the novel that was made to allow for Dracula and Mina’s romance to come to fruition. I do not believe that it would have survived had Mina had the constant reminder of Jonathan’s presence because, at the end of the movie, Dracula’s thrall is only lessened by the reminder of her then husband. The scene that is read as a threesome between Mina, Dracula, and Johnathan in the novel is altered to include only Dracula and Mina and I believe that in doing so, it made the moment all the more intimate. Mina completely surrenders herself to Dracula at that moment, making the decision to join him which may not have been the case if Johnathan had been there. In order to make Mina the all consumed by love woman, they had to remove the true object of her affections.

  Mina is a very complicated character in the novel who is reduced to an object of sexual desire in the film. Her great love with Dracula serves the purpose to further break it away from the novel in means of its plot. Her true intelligence is never showcased nor hinted at, leaving only her beauty as her main characteristic for the audience to recognize her by.

Dracula: Is He Bisexual? By: Imran Blackall

          In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the antagonist, Dracula, portrayed a demon that stole the blood of the innocent by biting necks to maintain his immortality. Though he sought out females such as Lucy and Wilhelmina, evidence showed his acceptance of males such as Jonathan, Arthur, Quincey, and Dr. Seward. For example, when Jonathan Harker encountered the three female vampires in Count Dracula’s castle, Dracula emerged, ridiculed the women for their actions, and said, “How dare you touch him…This man belongs to me!” (40). That comment in which Dracula claimed ownership of Jonathan could be interpreted in multiple ways. Personally, I believe it was a hint towards Dracula’s open sexuality towards men. By stating that Jonathan was “his”, it showed Dracula’s affection and acceptance towards the male gender. Later, the female vampires accused Dracula of never loving in which Dracula responded: “I too can love…when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will” (40) This implies further affection towards men specifically towards Jonathan. When Dracula stated that the female vampires can have Jonathan after he has fulfilled his needs with Jonathan, it implied that Dracula planned on sucking his blood. This blood-sucking was a sexual innuendo of the male-to-male sexual interaction. Further evidence showed Dracula’s bisexuality with the incident with Lucy. After showing a severe white complexion with symptoms of weakness and lethargy, Lucy underwent numerous blood transfusions from the blood of several men to regain her strength. One specific example was when Dr. Van Helsing spoke with Dr. Seward: “We must begin again. There is no young Arthur here now. I have to call on you yourself this time, friend John” (140). This indicated that Lucy had a previous blood transfusion from Arthur, her fiancé. Because another transfusion was performed on Lucy using Dr. Seward’s blood, it can be deduced that Dracula sucked the blood from Lucy previously; additional transfusions later occurred even with Dr. Van Helsing’s blood. These numerous transfusions implied that Dracula was fond with both Lucy’s blood and the blood of men. Continuously seeping the men’s blood from Lucy was a form of acceptance of his sexuality towards men. If Dracula was homophobic, he would have immediately stopped sucking the blood from Lucy after her first transfusion with Arthur’s blood. On the contrary, he continued his escapade until Lucy passed. Another clue towards Dracula’s bisexuality was during the men’s encounter with Dracula at his home in Carfax. The men waited for Dracula to return to his home and attacked him. The plan failed, and before escaping Dracula stated, “Your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them you and others shall yet be mine” (325). Dracula claimed ownership of both females and males; it was a form of dominance towards them. At this point Lucy died, and Mina has drunk his blood to show his ownership of her. He further comments that the men will be his property through the females. Because Dracula has sucked the men’s blood through Lucy, he already dominated over the men showing his tolerance to the male gender. Overall, I think Dracula was a bisexual monster who fed on both genders to show his openness in his sexuality.

Reference

Stoker, B. (2012). Dracula. New York, NY: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Mina vs Lucy - Angel of the House vs the New Woman

Throughout the novel Dracula women, more specifically Lucy and Mina, are portrayed in contrasting ways in order to represent two extremes in regards to Victorian Women: the “Angel in the House” and the “New Woman”.

Angel in the House	The New Woman
Women are expected to join in a monogamous relationship and have children. Mina demonstrates this ideal by marrying Jonathan Harker and later having his child. As mentioned in the last chapter, “It is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy’s birthday is the same day as that on which Quincey Morris died,” (326). Mina fulfils her role as a woman not only by having a mutually exclusive relationship with him through marriage, but also by bearing him a child, a son no less.	Lucy never formally gets married before she dies and has trouble choosing a man to marry. She writes to Mina telling her of her three proposals (57) and whines, asking, “why can’t they let a girl marry three men or as many as want her and save all this trouble,” (60). Lucy mentions little about any plans to have children and the only interaction with children that she has in the novel is when she becomes a vampire and feeds off children. As the novel states, “During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a ‘bloofer lady’, (159). Instead of having children of her own Lucy begins to prey on children, draining the life of them instead of bringing life to them. In both ways Lucy represents a direct contrast to Mina as not only does she not want to settle down with just one man and have his children, but she wants to marry more than one man and shows no apparent interest in having children. In fact, she hurts children instead of having them.
The Angel of the House of the ideal woman also spends her time exclusively in the domestic sphere. Once she is married Mina is almost always at Jonathan’s side, bound to follow him except when he and the other men go, in which case she is left alone. The one time Mina leaves the home is when she is chasing after Lucy, which she wants to keep quiet, because she writes, “not a soul did I see; I rejoiced that it was so, for I wanted no witness of Lucy’s condition” (88). This could refer to Lucy sleepwalking, or the fact that she is walking around at night in just a nightgown and without any shoes. The shock is not only that Lucy is barely dressed and sleepwalking, but also that she is out of the house and barefoot, likely to get herself into trouble. Mina does as she is supposed to and looks after her friend, only leaving the house in an extreme case, and all the while worried about the virtue and safety of her female friend Lucy.	Lucy is a lot more likely to leave the house than Mina and does so on her own quite often, even if she is sleepwalking. As mentioned in the column to the left, one night Lucy, sleepwalking, leaves the house, the domestic sphere. Although Lucy is unable to control her trips outside, she still leaves the home and in conditions that would have been shocking to any passerby and no doubt shameful, hence why Mina worries that someone will see her friend in such a state.

- Courtney Sellars