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THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Horrible Shadow: Otherness in Nineteenth-Century Gothic
and Speculative Fiction
by
Kati:-»rine Harse
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
CALGARY, ALBERTA
SEPTEMBER. 1995
c
Katherine Harse 1995
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
^?he undersigned certify that they have read, and reco-xmiend

to the Faculty of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis
entitled "Horrible Shadow: Otherness in Nineteenth-Century
Gothic and Speculative Fiction" submitted by Katherine Harse
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Haster of Arts-
X)h^ \(<ÛM
Supervisor, D.L. Kacdoiiald, English
S. Stona-Blackburn, English
P- Srebrnxfc, English
/ / ^ / '
E. Dfinsersau*; French, I t a l i a n and Spanish
^fl^ffiS
Ejate
ii
ABSTRACT
Horrible Shadow: Otherness in Nineteenth-Century Gothic
and Speculative Fiction
Katherine Harse
This thesis examines the presentation of. and response
to, the other, in five representative texts: three Gothic
vampire tales and two works of speculative fiction.
Polidori's The Vampyre (1S19>, Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872),
Stoker's Dracula (1897). Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and
Lytton's The Coming Race (1871). all portray the undeniably
other: the vampire, the constructed creature, and the
technologically advanced alien.
Although there can be no doubt that the perceived
hierarchical opposition between self and other serves to
marginalize those designated as other, close analysis of
these texts reveals not only conservative cultural
anxieties, but potential sites for subversion. Often texts
that present the other also depict the othering process, and
sometimes critique that process, particularly by
destabilizing the arbitrary boundary between the other and
the self. The extent to which such dcstabilization occurs
in these texts reveals the degree to which they challenge
the dominant ideology.
:ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express ray utmost appreciation to my

supervisor. L o m e Macdonald. for his support, encouragement,
and above all. remarkable patience, as well as for his
suggestions and th.e space to work with thcra. Thanks also
for making me aware of the First Wcrld Dracula Congress, at
which part of th's tresis was presented, in a slightly
different form, as "High Duty and Savage Delight: The
Ambiguous Nature of Violence in Dracula. ** Thanks to
Elizabeth Miller for furrhcr information and inspiration
regarding this Congress, to Nicolae I'aduraru and the other
conference organizers for inviting me to participate, and to
all Congress participants for folklore and food for thought
— especially to Eileen Barker for invoking Mary Douglas,
and to Stephanie Moss for confirming my belief that Stoker
is not nearly as conservative as some people think. Thanks
also to Susan St*>ne-BlacScburn and Janis Sviipis for
sxmultaneousiy suggesting that 1 Look at The Coming Hace.
Finally. I would like to express my gratitude to the
University of Calgary. Faculty of Graduate Studies and
Department of English. for the opportunity to complete this
thesis, and for their financial support.
DEDICATION
To my parents, for their love and support, and with all

ainc.
Table of Contents
Approval Page ii
Abstract .. . . . . iii
Acknowledgements iv
Dedication v
Table of Contents vi-vii
Epigraph viii
INTRODUCTION
"He is Very. Very Like Me":
An Introduction to Otherness 1
C IAPTER ONE: "A Fiend Amongst TiieeT :
Gtherness in The Vampvre. 16
CHAPTER TZO: "Ambiguous Alternation*;":
Otherness in Camilla 30
CHAPTER THREE: "Of Wolves aad Poison and Blood":
Otherness in Dracula. 60
"Leaving the West and Entering the East":
Otherness of Time and Place 63
"Devil in Callous": Religious Otherness....67
"Dark Stranger": Imperial Anxiety
and the Racial Other. , 7]
"Dual Life": The Fcaale Other as Angel
and Demon - 83
"Stalwart Manhood": Failed Masculinity
and Hososocial Desire 99
"High Duty" and "Savage Delight":
Asbiguous Violence and the
Response to Otherness 119
CIIAPTET FOL'R: "My Form i s a F i l t h y Type of Vour's":
Otherness in Frankenstein ...136
"She Appeared the Most Fragile Creature":
Gender Construction and the
Feminine Other 145
vi
"Affection and Duty": Frankenstein
and the Bourgeois Family 180
"Misery Has Made Me a Fiend":
The Revolutionary Monster 188
"No Money, No Friends. No Kind of Property":
Class and Otherness 206
"A Race of Devils": Colonialism,
Slavery, Racial Otherness 216
"The Monster Whom I Had Created":
The Gthering Process and
Text' s Response 228
CHAPTER FIVE: 'We . . . Appear So Strange to You and
You to Us": Otherness in
The Coming Race 237
"To Perfect Our Condition": Evolution
and Otherness 244
"Great Trouble and Affliction":
Equality of Rank and
Inequality of Wealth 252
"Immemorial Custom": Change.
Democracy. Ideology 257
"All the Rights of Equality": Sender
Roles and Reversals 269
"The Children . . . Would Adulterate
the Race": Miscegenation and
Other Threats 280
"Strange Reversal": The Treatment
of Otherness 284
CONCLUSION
"The Very Painting of Your Fears": Society, Genre
Canon and the Subversive Nature of Shadows 292
WORKS CITED 319
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER ONE
"Unhappy Ruthven!*": Planche's Theatrical
Domestication of Polidori's The Vamovre 332
Hence, horrible shadow!
Unreal mock'ry. henceI
- Macbeth (111.iv.129-30)
viii
1
INTRODUCTION
"He is Very, Very Like Me": An Introduction to Otherness
Romanian folklore holds that, if one lacks the chicken
required as a builder's sacrifice, one can obtain an even
more effective substitute through the sxraple but sinister
method of stealing another's shadow. One has only to
measure the shadow surreptitiously with a length of string,
and throw the string into the foundation of the building to
be protected. Within a year, the owner of the shadow v/ill
die, but the shadow will remain, ghostlike, as the
structure's guardian. This disturbing folk tradition
seems to me an apt metaphor for the process of "othering"
which occurs not only in the texts I will examine here, but
in culture as well; the other is measured, defined, fixed
into place by the self, the real human from which it springs
is destroyed, and. like the shadow of the Romanian
unfortunate, it protects the very institutions of the
culture which creates it for that purpose.
In the words of Fredric Jameson, the figure of the
other in literature "has only too clearly the function of
drawing the boundaries of a given social o*~der and providing
a powerful internal deterrent against deviancy or
subversion" ("Romance" 140). The effectiveness of such a
Thanks to Nicolae Paduraru for the folklore, which he

shared with me and other participants in the First World
Dracula Congress, on a bus travelling through Curtea de
Arges. Romania.
•>
deterrent, however, may not always be so powerful, and the
nature of texts concerned with otherness so conservative. as
Jameson suggests. While othering docs indeed serve as a
strategy of containment, the other itself is not so easily
controlled. Not only the watchdog of the dominant class.
the other is capable of haunting its creator as well.
revealing the anxieties of the culture which produces it.
and, depending on how it is presented, acting to subvert the
values of that dominant culture- In short, it can no more
be contained than Macbeth can truly banish Banquo's ghost.
that "horrible shadow" he has created through the murder of
Banquo's self (III-iv.129-30) }
Jameson notes that "the concept of good and evil is a
positional one which coincides with categories of Otherness"
(Political Unconscious 115), and defines evil, and thus the
other, as follows:
evil . . . characterize^J whatever is radically

different from m e , whatever by virtue of precisely
that difference seems to constitute a very real
and urgent threat to my existence. So from the
earliest times, the stranger from another tribe,
the 'barbarian* who speaks an incomprehensible
language and follows 'outlandish* customs, but
also the woman, whose biological difference
stimulates fantasies of castration and dcvoration.
'Of course, the process of othering which I am about to

discuss does not literally kill the human being designated
as other. It does, however, destroy the selfhood -- the
subjectivity — of that person, because, by definition, self
and other are mutually exclusive. As created and perceived
by the self, the other cannot be a self- It is possible,
then, to read the construction of the other as the
figurative death of those oppressed by the othering process.
3
or in our own time, the avenger of cumulated
resentments from some oppressed class, or else
that alien being . . . behind whose apparently
human features an intelligence of a malignant and
preternatural superiority is thought to lurk:
these are some of the archetypal figures of the
Other, about whom the essential point to be made
is not so much that he is feared because he is
evil; rather, he is evil because he is Other,
alien, different, strange, unclean, and
unfamiliar. (Political Unconscious 115)
Nowhere is the figure of the other, as Jameson defines it,
more apparent than in that mode of literature generally
described as the fantastic, which allows, in the words of
Rosemary Jackson, "troublesome social elements [to] be
destroyed in the name of exorcizing the demonic. . . . In
the name of defeating the 'inhuman,* such fantasies attempt
to dismiss foes inimical to bourgeois ideology" (Fantasy
122). Interestingly. Jackson describes these disturbing
elements as "the shadow on the edges of bourgeois culture
{which] is variously identified as black, mad. primitive.
criminal, socially deprived, deviant, crippled or (when
sexually assertive) female" (Fantasy 121. emphasis added).
In fact, the other is whatever the self, as a member of
Jackson's "bourgeois culture." requires it to be; it is the
self's opposite, needed to establish the self's privileged
identity as male, white, English. Christian (or more
specifically. Anglican), heterosexual, bourgeois, western,
progressive, and so on. If any of these characteristics, or
a combination of them, defines the dominant self, then the
marginalized other against which that self is defined will

4
be. for example, female, non-white, foreign (non-English),
heathen or demon (non-Christian), homosexual, aristocratic
or proletarian, and originating in the East and/or the past.
The self and the other define and redefine each other, and
the number of single and combi:«v.d characteristics which
establish degrees of selfhood and otherness make a complete
catalogue of otherness impossible to create. All of the
types listed above, however, will be discussed here.
Indeed, all these embodiments of the other can converge
in tne figure which R. E. Foust calls "the fantasy-
antagonist" (441). There is no more obvious other than the
vampire, the monster, or the alien. The dominant ideology,
as David Punter notes, presents itself as "natural, eternal,
unchangeable" and "the major way in which that which is for
social reasons designated as 'unnatural' can make its
presence felt is precisely in the guise of the
'supernatural'" (419).
I am particularly interested in the figure of the
vampire as a site of overdetermincd otherness. According to
Bram Stoker's vampire hunter. Professor Van Hclsing. not
only is it impossible to sec a vampire's reflection in a
mirror, but vampires cast no shadow (289); perhaps this is
because they themselves represent precisely the "horrible
shadow' of the dominant culture -- the other. Burton Hat 1en
in particular has noted the fluidity of Dracula*s otherness,
and his observations can be applied to the vampire more

5
generally. S/he is "sexually other." promoting excessive,
often violent sexuality (Hatlen. "Return" 122-25). as well
as being connected with homoerotic desire, which Hatlen does
not address. The vampire is also "culturally other,"
originating in an isolated foreign land characterized by
superstition and magic (Hatlen, "Return" 125-27). As well,
s/he is "socially other," being "a racial outsider . . . who
threatens the purity of . . . English blood" (Hatlen,
"Return" 129-29). In this context, Hatlen also considers
the vampire as a threat to bourgeois society ("Return" 130-
31). I shall examine three representative nineteenth-
century vampire narratives regarding their treatment of
these types of otherness, and their relationships to the
self: John William Polidori's The Vamovre (1819), Sheridan
Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872). and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).
Veronica Hollinger explicitly connects the vampire and
the alien of science fiction as "variations on the outsider"
(145). and James Rieder also believes that the "alien is
first of all a projection of the Other" (36). With this
connection in mind I have selected two works of nineteenth-
century speculative fiction which explore the relationship
of self to other: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), which
Rieder sees as "the most influential of all the Iscience
fiction] alien's precursors" (37), and Edward Bulwer
Lytton's Tl„e Coming Race (1871). which Darko Suvin's study
of Victorian science fiction refers to as having "generally

6
synthesizing as well as historically seminal Isic]
significance" (327). Frankenstein. of course, is a
definitive exploration of self and other, creator and
creature, while Lytton's novel places the human protagonist
in the midst of the alien culture that often plays the role
of other in the twentieth-century science fiction which
Hoilinger and Rieder discuss.
Because my texts cover a broad range both
chronologically and canonically. they will. I hope, reveal a
cross-section of cultural responses to otherness. William
Patrick Day writes that the Gothic "is created and defined
by the collective fears and desires of nineteenth-century
culture, the culture that called the Gothic into being and
sustained it" (41): I would say that the same is true of the
speculative texts I am discussing. Two of my texts
(Polidori's and Shelley's) originate in the early years of
the century, by contrast with the "High Victorian" works of
Le Fanu and Lytton. and the later effort of Stoker, which
still reflects cultural attitudes present at the height of
the British Empire- Similarly, the texts vary in their
relation to established literary and popular canons: both
Dracula and Frankenstein are the focus of much literary
study, as well as being icons of popular culture. Camilla
is now accepted as a part of the Gothic canon, while The
Vampyre is not yet a canonical text despite its status as
the origin of the modern literary vampire. The Coming Race

I
is also obscure in terms of the literary canon, although its

author is not. and the text itself is highly influential
within the genre of Victorian science fiction- These
issues, as well as those of genre itself, may affect the
texts* presentation of the relationship between the self and
the other, a relationship which depends upon the culture
that produced these texts, both in terms of social anxieties
present at the time, and regarding the texts" intended
audience.
If the "most important of . . . organizational
categories is the conceptual opposition between good and
evil, under which all the other types of attributes and
images arc clearly subsumed" (Jameson. "Romance" 140), and.
as Foust claims, "the fantasy conflict is structured upon an
implicit assumption of the binary" (445). then it is not
surprising that, if the self is obviously good, the other
must be by definition evil, at least as the self constructs
it. What is less obvious is why the other is viewed as
other. Culturally defined difference, of course, marks the
other, but why does the dominant society find it necessary
to exaggerate this difference to create figures of otherness
which are. as Jameson writes, radically unlike the self?
Jameson provides some clues in the long passage quoted
above. As well as being defined as different, the other
presents a threat to the self, or (more likely) the self
perceives the other as such a threat. This threat may
8
originate in the fact of oppression, in the belief that the
weaker other w='ill finally rebel against his or her
oppressors, or. more powerfully, in the belief in that
hidden superiority which Jameson appropriately calls
"preternatural" and which is a more obvious threat to the
dominant society than is the weaker, oppressed other. The
self also relies on its opposite for purposes of definition;
in the words of Elisabeth Bronfen. "the Other serves as the
limit against which the self can be defined and as the realm
on to which it can project what lies within" (190). In
other words, it is not only the embodiment of a culture's
greatest fears, the "not-I" which defines the "I." but a
projection of illicit desires, which "exonerates the self"
(Garnett 3 2 ) .
While Bronfen finds the function of the other as "both
mirror . . . and limit" to be "fundamentally contradictory"
(190). Day identifies the seemingly conflicting responses of
fear and desire as equally intrinsic to the Gothic genre, in
which "the protagonists find themselves in a world created
by the circle of their own fears and desires" (4)- The
experience of the protagonist mirrors that of the reader:
just as the "protagonist's identity is redefined by the
unbounded possibilities of fear and desxre" -- that is. by
his or her response to otherness — "the reader is aLle to
explore their limits" (Day 6 3 ) . Rieder describes a similar
effect occurring in speculative fiction which concerns

9
itself with the alien other: "the alien - . . tends to
become both the agent of the heroes* imprisonment or loss of
power and an even more compelling, although macabre,
realization of the original fantasy" (36). In both cases,
then, the other is a site of socio-cultural anxiety, and the
source of illicit desire which is directly opposed to social
convention.
Hatlen refers to Dracula. again in terms that apply to
the other generally, as the "repressed and the oppressed:
the psychically repressed and tSie socially oppressed." the
return of which provokes an ambivalent response from the
self, so that "we shudder with horror and with hunger"
("Return" 8 2 ) . Although it Is tempting to see the repressed
other as psychological, the product of illicit desire, and
to align the social other with a real-life threat to the
dominant society, and thus with the oppressed, such
distinctions are not so easily made. The social other is
similarly a figment of the self's psyche, not because
sexual, racial and class differences, for example, do not
exist, but because, as Punter has remarked, those marked by
such differences "naturally" occupy the othered position in
which the self places them (419)_ Nor are they necessarily
a "real" threat to the self's society. Similarly, culture
affects psychology by determining what its members repress
and do not repress. Finally illicit desire is often itself
a source of fear; thus the other which is the source of the

19
self's fear and desire must be oppressed, while the self's
feelings towards it must be repressed. Accordingly, "fear
and desire incessantly overturn into one another. They are
indivisible" (Moretti 791.
The self's potential response to the other, then, is
highly complex. Jackson claims that, as well as exorcising
the demonic source of fear, fantastic texts "express
desire," by which she means they both "tell of. manifest or
show desire" and "expel desire, when this desire is a
disturbing element which threatens cultural order" (Fantasy
3). Because of the attraction present in the first part of
Jackson's equation — the depiction of forbidden desire --
the latter type of "expression" is not always co»pietely
successful. Tne response to the others presented in the
texts varies according to a cocraon pattern of increased
violence in response to increased threat, so that the self
treats an unthreatening other only with condescension, or.
in a cainor variation, as an object of study, while the other
that the self perceives as a threat to order can only be
violently oppressed/repressed, especially if that other is
also a source of desire. The texts' own responses to the
other are more complicated; their presentation of the other
and of the self's reaction to it nay betray a desire which
outweighs more socially acceptable fear. In this case, the
distinction between the self and the other, unstable at
best, begins ~o collapse.

11
Hoilinger, like Hatlen. acknowledges the persistence of
the other, which she calls "a source of fear and loathing
whose return threatens to overcome the forces of
Consciousness and Culture (the forces in wliose interests it
has been repressed in the first place)" (148). Although
this statement cakes no eaention of desire, and invokes only
repression, rather than oppression, the idea that the other
cannot be contained by the self which creates It — both
psychologically and socially — is significant, for the
other and the self are. in fact, as intimately connected as
fear and desire: "everything contains and becomes Its
opposite, the self is found In the Other, and the Other is
in fact a face of the self" (Day 2 2 ) .
It seems more than a coincidence that Robert Louis
Stevenson, author of the famous fantastic text The Strange
Case of Dr. Jekvll and Mr. Hyde, in which self and other
are literally one and the same, also wrote the children's
poem from which the title of this introduction is taken:
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with ne.

And what may be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like sac from his heels tip to his head:
And I see hisa jump before eae. when I jump into ssiy bed.
The speaker's e-rphasis on the shadow's benign uselessness
may be concealing the anxiety surrounding the other as the
shadow of the self. While the shadow in this poea seems
Although ay analysis of the self and the other is

applicable to this text. I do not have the space to discuss
it here.
innocent enough, it possesses traits similar to those of
that threatening other: its dependence on the self, its
resemblance to the self, and its sheer persistence. Like a
shadow, the other is a reflection of the substance which is
the self, and cannot exist without it. It may be a
distorted iesage of that which creates it. but it is never a
simple negation: rather, in the words of Gregory A. Waller,
it is "outside human society, yet still bearIsJ an important
resesblance to human society" (350). The two are
interdependent: the self relies on the other for its
identity, and the other on the self for its very existence.
The process is. of course, one of construction, and both
positions in the hierarchical binary which opposes good to
evil and self to other arc ultimately artificial; "such an
opposition." as Jameson notes, is "an ideological formation.
. . . historical and . . . humanly constructed" ("Romance*'
140). The difference between self and other is often merely
one of perception; oeabers of the dominant society tend so
create themselves in the image of the self, a privileged
position which only appears autonomous. In fact, self and
other arc csutually dependent, and. although the opposition
is ostensibly absolute — hence the exaggeration of
difference and denial ol resemblance -- the self and its
shadow are. as in Stevenson's poea, very much alike.
Perhaps this is why the other elicits fear and desire:

13
because the self secretl/ recognizes its affinity for the
other, an affinity which it cannot, of course, admit.
Certainly this resemblance is evident in the texts I
will be discussing, all of which present an ambiguous
relationship between self and other, with equally ambiguous
results. My interest hinges on their subversive potential,
on the ambivalent portrayal of otherness reflected in the
often-contradictory criticism of these texts, which
interprets them as alternately reactionary and radical.
Even in those texts. C a m i l l a and Dracula. where the other
is ostensibly destroyed, s/he. like the ghost that haunts
Macbeth or Stevenson's stubbornly clinging shadow, is never
completely contained, but remains in the reader's memory as
a powerful and often perversely attractive figure whose
presence calls attention to the characteristics of the self.
Shadows are not all that vampires lack; Carol A- Senf
writes:
according to tradition, varapires have no mirror

reflection. Thus they are incapable of seeing
themselves. and we are equally Incapable of seeing
these clearly. Nonetheless, their hidden
countenance is always there — a reflection of our
deepest fears and desires. Therefore, as we hold
the mirror up to our unnatural counterparts....we
see in the vampire something...that we often fear,
sosseti&es desire- (Vamoire 16)
John Allen Stevenson expands on Senf"s point: "when we say
the vaspire is absent from the mirror, perhaps what we are
saying is that we are afraid to see a reflection — however
uneasy and strange — of ourselves" (147). The speculative

14
texts show a similar connection between self and other;
Rieder calls the figure of the alien a "distorted mirror"
(26). in contrast to what Hollinger calls "that longstanding
[science fiction] tradition of representing the alien as the
threat from the outside, the other who must be driven from
human territory if humankind is to rest secure" (150).
Any text about the other, then, is also about the self,
and "stories about the self are also stories about the world
in which the self exists" (Day 8 6 ) . Regarding "escapist"
fantasies. Eric Rabkin notes, "if we know the world to which
a reader escapes, then we know the world from which he
comes" (73); similarly, society's definition of the abnormal
reveals assumptions about what is considered normal as well.
Indeed, the texts 1 have chosen to discuss reveal a lack of
differentiation, the otherness present within the self- The
Gothic novels, with their ambivalent portrayal of the
ostensibly evil other, and the speculative ones which
question the distinction between that other and the ordinary
are potentially critiques of the societies of their writers
and readers. Examining the texts* presentation of other and
the self's response to it reveals the cultural anxieties
that exist to create the social boundaries Jameson mentions;
the ways in which the texts themselves respond to otherness,
particularly the extent to which they challenge the beliefs
responsible for those same anxieties by destabilizing the
distinctions between self and other, reveals the degree to

15
which they subvert or reinforce the ideological limits that
the dominant society establishes.

16
CHAPTER ONE
"A Fiend Amongst Them": Otherness in The Vampvre
Lord Ruthven. the title character of John Polidori*s
The Vampyre. represents several types of otherness which
threaten the dominant social order: he is associated with
the distant past, a wanderer with no national affiliation,
an aristocrat, and excessively sexual. These aspects of the
vampire give Polidori the opportunity to comment on the
social structures Ruthven challenges, thus, in Senf's words,
using this Gothic figure "to probe the realistic social
problems that plague the lives of ordinary human beings"
("Vampyre" 206).
Polidori establishes Ruthven"s otherness from the
outset; although he appears at social events, he is
literally outside society in that he "gaze]s] upon the mirth
around him. as if he could not participate therein" (108).
Ruthven is not of this world, and is later referred to as
having "nothing in common with other men" (110). Although
Aubrey views him here as a paragon, "the hero of a romance"
(110). a characterization which is far from the truth, there
can be no doubt that Ruthven stands apart from those around
him. This fact is made even more explicit, as is the
initial assumption of his virtue, in Polidori*s holograph
This is the name given to him in the original (1819)

version of Polidori*s text, from which all my references,
unless otherwise specified, are taken- Polidori*s holograph
revision renames the vampire Lord Strongmore.
17
revision, where Strongmore ironically appears to be "above
human feelings and sympathies, the fashionable names for
frailties and sins" (33). Indeed, the nobleman's actual
sins are, at this point, beyond the comprehension of Aubrey
and of London society; they only know that he is different,
while his true nature remains mysterious-
Ruthven*s otherness also manifests itself physically, a
fact which is significant in view both of contemporary
cultural anxiety, and of the vampire folklore invoked In the
anonymous "Introduction," which accompanied The Vampyre when
it appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1819. Indeed,
the two are related, as, traditionally, the physically
different were thought to be doomed to vampirisni
(Leatherdale 27-28). This belief illustrates the pervasive
fear of. and intolerance towards, the visibly different,
such as women, people of colour, and people with physical
disabilities. Clive Leatherdale notes that, in folklore,
this prejudice extended even to those whose eye colour
differed from regional norms (28). and indeed Ruthven*s most
notable feature is his "dead grey eye" (108). The
suggestive adjective recurs in the description of his face,
which is, like those of his literary descendants, of a
"deadly hue" (108): despite its colour, however, his
countenance is also described as beautiful, just as his
stare produces a "sensation of awe" (108). On the first
page. then. Polidori establishes his vampire as unmistakably

18
other, but also invites an ambiguous response to that
otherness.
Despite what are initially described as his
"peculiarities" (108). Ruthven is. as D.L. Macdonald and
Kathleen Scherf note, not the monster of folklore, but a
"real, though monstrous, human being" (3). His physical
differences are not so great that he cannot move within
fashionable circles, and his ability to do so perhaps
addresses a deep-seated cultural fear that we cannot
recognize the other, that s/he is not. after all. so
different from us. Later works of Gothic and speculative
fiction, from the vampire novels inspired by Polidori to
Invasion of the Body Snatellers, have similarly taken
advantage of the fear of the other who can pass as human -
Although he is not a folkloric vampire as such. Ruthven
remains largely a mystery, and therefore the object of both
fascination and fear. This characteristic, and the response
to it. are associated with the folklore to which both the
"Introduction" and Ianthe's tales refer. While the vampiric
condition in folklore has definite causes, however arbitrary
they may seem. Ruthven*s nature remains enigmatic. It is
not clear whether his physical. social and emotional
difference preceded, or possibly caused, his vampirism, or
if he looks and acts this way because he is a vampire.
Rather, he is simply presented as if he has always been this
way. and this mystery contributes greatly to his otherncs.

19
and to his attraction. Jackson cites "unknowingness" on the
part of protagonist and reader as "a recurrent feature of
nineteenth-century fantasy" and notes the consequences —
including the madness eventually suffered by Aubrey — of
the "inability to define . . - to know" the other (Fantasy
29). Admittedly, Jackson focuses on this "epistemological
uncertainty" as structural, on Tzvetan Todorov*s definition
of the fantastic as the "hesitation . . . between a natural
and supernatural explanation of the events described"
(Todorov 3 3 ) . but it seems to me that Ruthven*s consistently
undefinable nature serves a similar purpose on a thematic
level, and eventually produces similar anxiety. Aubrey
cannot accept his lack of knowledge, and the fact that
Ruthven is a man without a past is both the source of
Aubrey's curiosity, and the reason the young man's Romantic
imagination is free "to picture every thing that flatterls]
its propensity for extravagant ideas" (110). Initially, at
least, Ruthven is what his admirers perceive him to be.
As a vampire, however. Ruthven is. as lanthe and the
tale's introduction suggest, a creature from another time,
literally immortal, and also from a faraway place, for, as
the "Introduction" states: "the superstition upon which this
talc is founded is very general in the East" (183. emphasis
added). Even in terms of his possible origins in western
culture, Ruthven. whose name is Scottish, would be seen by
English readers as coming from a foreign land, and one which

20
had its own share of primitive associations. In "The Four
Ages of Poetry," published two years after The Vampyre.
Thomas Love Peacock compares the favourite settings of Byron
and Scott, viewing the East and the North, respectively, as

i
equally uncivilized." He accuses both writers of
"wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance, and raking
up the ashes of dead savages" (15). Polidori may be
engaging in something similar in The Vampyre: although the
tale's relationship to the introduction is far irss simple,
and while Ruthven is clearly not the vampire of folklore,
its associations cling to him. directly opposing the self-
perceived progressiveness of western culture which Aubrey,
and presumably Polidori*s readers, represent. Such a
culture views itself in opposition to the primitive other of
its own past, and of regions seen as backward, as Greece is
here. That Aubrey views Greece in this way is made obvious
when he realizes the absurdity of "a young man of English
habits, marrying an uneducated Greek girl" (114) and by his
very romanticizing of that exotic and innocent (because
"The view of Scotland as a site of primitive

superstition persists in J.R. Planche's melodrama The
Vampire, or The Bride of the isles (1820). an adaptation of
Polidori's tale. The play's Scottish setting, although
chosen "because Planche's company had a stock of kilts it
wanted to get some use out of" (Macdonald 191). adds to the
vampire's primitive mystique, as do the superstitious
Scottish peasants who take the place of the Greek lanthe and
her parents as sources of folklore which turns out to be
true. See my appendix for a discussion of Planche's play
and the ways in which it differs from Polidori's talc.
21
"uncivilized") woman, partly because of her nationality, and
partly because of her gender.
Indeed, lanthe herself is othered throughout, a fact
which can be connected to Ruthven"s otherness, in that she
speaks for the "primitive" time and place which is the
origin of the vampire, whose history Aubrey ridicules as
"idle and horrible fantasly]" (114). Yet. of course, the
fantasy becomes reality, seemingly because of the setting.
"a country in which . . . all apparently conspired to
heighten that superstitious melancholy" to which Aubrey
becomes subject (119). and indeed, to make his condition
literal. Elizabeth MacAndrcw notes that "what appears as
ordinary debauchery when dressed up in the trappings of
civilization looks different under the revealing sunlight of
a primitive landscape. Split off from the "civilized* man.
Ruthven"s sexuality is revealed as predatory and ruthless"
(166). In London Ruthven is merely a rake: in Greece he is
a vampire.
The two are, however. related; while one effect of the

novel's two settings is a subtle anxiety concerning invasion
by the powerful and seemingly civilized other, another is to
suggest that London may not be so civilized after all. As
Waller writes:
Like Aubrey. London society possesses 'great
wealth.9 but it lacks responsible 'guardians."
Polidori*s villain can 'disappear' not because he
has supernatural powers, but because he knows the
rules of the game and is so completely assimilated
12
into a corrupt 'fashionable world" that thrives on

"violent excitements." 1501
While Waller overstates the extent to which Ruthven the
outsider is assimilated into London society, which views him
at best as a curiosity (108). he is correct in citing the
vampire's ability to manipulate both this society and those
who are vulnerable in their positions outside it (Waller 50-
5 1 ) . such as lanthe. Miss Aubrey, and Aubrey himself. He
plays the part of the traditional rake, rather than the
folkloric monster (Senf. "Vampyre" 201). Waller's
assessment of London society is also astute, and
demonstrates how failures in the self are often projected
onto the other, in that, while Ruthven is described as being
"dangerous to society" (112). that very society, as Senf
observes, is "thoroughly corrupt." so that "the wealthy.
plagued by ennui, seek to stimulate themselves by flirting
with vice" ("Vampyre" 205). The "tour." an established
tradition long before the arrival of Ruthven. is described
as "necessary to enable the young to take some rapid steps
in the career of vice . . . and not allowing them to appear
as if fallen from the skies, wherever scandalous intrigues
are mentioned" (110). The vampire's innocenr victims arc
obviously exceptions to the rule of London society, and in
their cases, the "guardians." as Waller notes, arc
ineffectual; they appear only when it is too late (124).
The way in which Polidori has altered the vampire of
folklore to create Ruthven, then, downplays many of that

23
creature's repulsive qualities to create an other who is
ultimately more frightening precisely because of his
resemblance to a component of humanity which young gentlemen
such as Aubrey are reluctant, if not unable, to acknowledge.
Aubrey himself "believels] all to sympathize with virtue,
and fthinks] that vice {is] thrown in by providence merely
for the picturesque effect of the scene" (109). His oath of
silence, and ~he fact that his fears are taken for "the
ravings of a maniac." and his letter of explanation never
delivered to Miss Aubrey (125). literalize the unspeakable
nature of Ruthven"s otherness, which simply cannot be
believed, even by those who are less naive than Aubrey.
Unlike folkloric vampires, which "typically prey on their
own families and neighbours" (Macdonald/Scherf 4 ) . Ruthven
is a traveller who can seek his victims whenever he desires.
This increased mobility makes him more threatening, because
it suggests that he has no tics to a particular nation, and
thus that he is invading English society. As well as being
a luxury available to the rich and the titled. Ruthven*s
zcndcncy to travel may also indicate the otherness of
traditionally unlanded groups, such as gypsies or, in anti-
Semitic discourse. Jews (Halberstam 343}. which manifests
itself in English fiction both before and after The Vamovre:
excessive mobility was a cause for fear, both because of its
invasive potential and because of the respectability of
land-ownership. Despite his social position, Ruthven does
24
not seem to have an ancestral home; he simply appears in
London. Indeed, he threatens the very values of "marriage,
monogamy, and community" with which Judith Halberstam
connects the concept of "home" (343).
Ruthven*s lack of a fixed address, then, is not
entirely in keeping with his aristocratic position, although
it is possible that his extensive travelling can also be
read as a critique of the upper classes who shirked their
social responsibilities in order to partake of the pleasures
in which Ruthven indulges, among them travelling, gambling
and sexual promiscuity. He is an inversion of the
idealized, paternalistic aristocrat, giving charity not to
the needy, but to the corrupt "to allow him to wallow in his
lust, or to sink him still deeper in his iniquity" (110),
He is the stereotypical evil nobleman, obsessed with his own
gain (110) and literally parasitic.
Despite this anxiety regarding the aristocracy,
however. Ruthven"s very power and freedom also make him the
object of envy and desire. He is admired in social circles,
sought after by "female hunters of notoriety." initially
worshipped by Aubrey, and ultimately charms the young man's
sister into marrying him. This is not all the result of the
vampyre's "winning tongue" (109): the victims are. in part.
It is also worth noting that the irresponsible use of

his presumably inherited finances is what necessitates his
leaving England (110). and that these circumstances parallel
those surrounding Byron's departure from England in 1816, as
Macdonaid and Scherf note (152).
25
complicit (Senf, "Vampyre" 2G5)- They want his power as
Polidori -- especially given his relationship with Byron —
and his audience might have coveted that of the aristocracy
at the time, and it is this aristocratic power which makes
Ruthven so seductive. The response to him is one of both
attraction and repulsion, each heightening the other.
Ruthven*s excessive sexuality, his most dangerous
characteristic, is directly related to his class, which
allows him to practice "a kind of droit de seigneur, that
kind of absolute sexual privilege which is a concomitant of
absolute power" (Punter 119). He glories in ruining "fraxl"
(125) young women such as Miss Aubrey, both sexually and
through his vampiric assaults, which are explicitly
sexualizedr as when lanthc's parents refer to the vampire's
"nocturnal orgies* (115). It is worth noting that
Polidori*s new name for the vampire. Lord Strongoore. "has
connotations of phallic potency and size" (Macdonald/Scherf
152 n35).
Ruthven clearly seduces Miss Aubrey, who, he says, will

be "dishonoured" if she does not marry hia (125). The
description of the lower-class lanthe after his attack,
however, suggests the more violent penetration of rape:
"upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat
were the marks of teeth having opened the vein" (116). By
figuring the vampire's "feeding upon the life of a lovely
female" (114) in these ways. Polidori*s tale invites the
26
reader to condemn the excessive and often violent sexuality
of the rakes of his time, as well as. paradoxically,
increasing the attraction his vampire holds both for the
young women in the story, and for the reader. Punter
suggests that Ruthven"s absolute sexual power is "a
predictable object of middle-class fantasies" (119). and his
erotic nature is. as Macdonald and Scherf note, "infectious"
(5). in that the formerly virtuous women whoa he corrupts do
not hesitate, afterwards, "to expose the whole deformity of
their vices to the public gaze" (112). This. too.
illustrates cultural anxieties about the other and about the
fine line which separates "them" fro-a "us." given the cosaaon
fear that the other will somehow convert or contaminate
"normal" -seabcrs of society. This fear is heightened when
the other threatens not only our society, but our women, and
when they, like Miss Aubrey, willingly comply -
Certainly this is the cost obvious way in which Ruthven
represents the threatening other; he attacks the two women
Aubrey most loves. It is worth noticing the parallels
between them, which, when combined with Aubrey's response to
the saarrlage of his sister, suggest incest, another foraa of
perverse sexuality; both wosen are young and beautiful, and.
more i-sportantly. they arc as innocent as Aubrey, if not
oorc so. Both have been protected from the "dissipations"
(108) of society life; the Greek lanthe possesses
"innocence, youth and beauty, unaffected by crowded drawing-
27
rooms and stifling balls" (113). while the eighteen-year-old
Miss Aubrey "halsj not been presented to the world" (121).
her debut being deliberately delayed "until her brother's
return from the continent, when he might be her protector"
(121).
The wos?en"s innocence makes then, at the same time.
attractive and susceptible to the vampire, and.
significantly. Aubrey is unable to protect either of thea;
he is presented throughout as incoherent and impotent. If
Ruthven is the ultimate representative of male sexual power.
Aubrey is explicitly feminized; he is compared to a
"milliner's apprentice" (109). and his penchant for romance
novels, then considered suitable only for women or children,
is often invoked. By seducing Miss Aubrey. Ruthven
threatens her brother's masculinity. Indeed, although he
only literally attacks vosaen. the vampire symbolically
drains Aubrey, who suffers a burst blood vessel in response
to his own helplessness. In this way. the va-rpire proves
himself a threat not only to women but to naive young men.
to the family as an institution, and indeed to the entire
society on whose young blood he lives-
However, the response to the other is once again

aabivalent. in that Polidori does not seem to make Ruthven
entirely responsible for the destruction of Aubrey's world.
The narrator mocks the naive protagonist and, by extension,
the society that produced him, and reveals his complicity in
28
his own demise. Although Aubrey represents another extreme,
in many ways he is no better than Ruthven. Aubrey has no
knowledge of the world or its problems, believing that "the
misery of a cottage merely consist[s] in the vesting of
clothes, which Tare] as warm, but which (are] better adapted
to the painter's eye by their irregular folds and various
coloured patches" (109). Ruthven does riot care for the
plight of the lower classes; Aubrey seems totally unaware of
it. Ruthven ignores social constraints: Aubrey's socially
constructed honour results in the oath that silences him.
and thus makes him a victim of "his own devouring thoughts"
(123). Consequently, as Senf writes, "his high ideals and
poor judgement are indirectly responsible for his own death
and for the death of his only sister" 2"Vampyre" 205).
Polidori"s tale. then, addresses the socially relevant
issues that Senf calls "the horrors of everyday life: the
corruption of the innocent, the destruction of the ignorant,
and the exploitation of the young" ("Vampyre" 205). It does
so, however, not only through the figure of the vampire, but
through those of his victisss as well. The innocents play a
part in vheir own destruction, just as the vampire, as Senf
describes him is "a kind of extreme metaphor of ordinary
human traits" ("Vampyre" 203. emphasis added). Thus
Polidori begins a two-hundred year-old tradition of literary
29
vampirism* which not only establishes the vampire's
otherness, but destabilizes it. breaking down the
distinctions between the monster and the human, the other
and the self.
"While Polidori was far from the first writer — even

the first English writer — to use the figure of the vampire
in his work, he originated enduring variations on the
folkloric vampire, and can thus be said to have created the
"modern*5 literary vampire (see Macdonald/Scherf 3-5).
30
CHAPTER TWO
"Ambiguous Alternations": Otherness in Carmilla
Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) expresses, and
intensifies, many of the types of otherness present in The
Vampyre, and again uses them for political and social
purposes, for. as Robert Tracy writes in his introduction to
the novella, "myth often represents social anxieties" (xx).
Tracy believes that much of Le Fanu's uneasiness stems from
his Anglo-Irish origins, and notes that the various guises
of the other — political, religious, racial and sexual --
"were abundantly present in nineteenth-century Ireland, to
be encoded in Carmilla's pursuit of Laura" (xx).
However, even if. as Tracy suggests. "Le Fanu turns his
anxieties into myth" (xx). his vampire is much more
sympathetic than Ruthven. even when her true nature becomes
apparent to the reader, and to Le Fanu's naive narrator.
Laura. Also, while Tracy's connection of the vampire to
Anglo-Irish anxieties is valid, there is another issue here,
one which he only briefly mentions, and then largely in the
context of the Irish myth of the ban si or banshee -- the
potentially dangerous fairy-woman who is again associated
D.L. Macdonald's biography of the Anglo-Italian

Polidori suggests that he may have been in a similar
position. In an 1813 letter to his father, Polidori writes
"I. although born in England, am not an Englishman"
(Macdonald 20). Although not actually a Britis'i colony as
Ireland was, Italy in the early nineteenth century was under
the control of empires whose power England had helped to
restore.
31
with Le Fanu's position as an Anglo-Irishman. Aside from
this folkloric association, Carmilla's gender also allows
for a more in-depth examination of woman—as-other than is
possible in Polidori*s tale, where women, while definitely
othered, are hardly the focus of the narrative, which
centres on Aubrey's relationship with Ruthven. in which the
exoticized lanthe and the frail Miss Aubrey exist only as
mediators. Carmilla. by contrast, depicts both a female
vampire and her female victim, in such a way as to present a
social critique of the ways in which patriarchal society
constructs women. While it does seem that, as Senf
believes. "LeFanu [sic] uses the vampire motif primarily to
focus on the condition of women's lives during the time that
he wrote" ("Women and Power" 2 5 ) , Carmilla, like Ruthven.
potentially represents many types of otherness- As with
Polidori and later authors of vampire fiction. Le Fanu's
attitude towards the other is complex and often ambivalent-
Like Ruthven. Carmilla is an enigma. The circumstances
of her arrival at Laura's father's schloss are strange, to
say the least; but for Carmilla's presence, they seem "an
illusion of the moment" (255). Her origins remain
mysterious; Laura finds that "she exercisefsj with respect
to herself, her mother, her history, everything in fact
connected with her life, plans, and people, an ever wakeful
«*eserve" (262) . revealing only her name, the age and
nobility of her family, and that her home lies "in the
32
direction of the west" (263). Similarly, her earlier
appearance to General Spielsdorf at the masked ball seems to
signify her mysterious nature and changing identity, which
her mother shares. The latter is also masked, known to the
General only as "Madame la Comtesse," will not reveal her
nationality (299), and invokes "secresy" when discussing
their ider.tities (302). Her presence is never explained,
nor is that of the "hideous black woman" who travels with
them (257).
Carmilla herself lacks a stable identity: she is
literally a shape changer, able to appear as something like
"a monstrous cat" (278). as well as in her aspects of
"beautiful girl" and "writhing fiend" (319). Laura also
refers to the vampire's "amphibious existence" (317)
Carmilla*s variable nature is interesting because tbe other
is usually defined as an unchanging position against which
the changing self is defined, a phenomenon described both by
Edward Said, in terms of Orientalism (230). and by Simonc de
Beauvoir, in terms of the female other, who must remain the
same in order for the male self to be "transcendent" (1087).
Carmilla*s identity, because it is not fixed, is threatening
in itself, and allows for the equally contradictory
responses to her in the text- Laura describes her arrival
in terms of the spectators* "curiosity and horror" (252);
certainly her air of ancient mystery makes her both a source
of fear and an object of fascination.

33
The sense of mystery and ambiguity which surrounds
Carmilla is related to her position as a creature from
another time, another aspect of her otherness. She is
associated with the primitive, and with memories of the
past. As Walter Kendrick notes in reference to Polidori,
"there [isJ something scary about the past itself,
especially the distant past" (xxi). This fear of the past
is even more evident in Carmilla. While Ruthven*s
ancientness is largely a matter of association, implied by
his resemblance to the folkloric vampires which lanthe
describes (114). and by his ability to rise from the dead,
Carmilla is literally a figure from the past. Laura
identifies her with her own childhood nightmares (246-47).
but Carmilla is. of course, over a century old; the portrait
of her as Mircalla Karnstein is dated 1698 (272-73). She is
associated with the ruined village with its "mouldering
tombs" and "equally desolate chateau," and Laura refers to
her family as "extinct" (245).
As the last of the "proud family of Karnstein, now
[presumed] extinct" (245). and in that she holds the views
of a feudal aristocracy famous for its "atrocious lusts"
(305). Carmilla is also a member of the "old order." She
is, indeed, one of "the great and titled dead" with whom
Laura associates General Spielsdorf's vampire tale (311).
If she will reveal nothing else about her identity, she is
careful to state that her family is "very ancient and noble"

34
(263); she defines herself by her lineage, the nobility of
which is inherently connected with its venerable age. She
scorns the lower classes, declaring "I don't trouble my head
about peasants" (266). and on one occasion displays a
tyrannical streak that British audiences in 1872 were likely
to associate with the aristocracy of the past, at least in
its degree. There is some indication that Carmilla herself
sees the absolute power of the upper classes as
characteristic of the glorious and longed-for past when,
perceiving herself insulted by the hunchback, she exclaims:
"my father would have had the wretch tied up to the pump,
and flogged with a cart-whip, and burnt to the bones with
the castle brand" (269).
As a vampire. Carmilla feeds on peasants, making
literal the concept of a parasitic aristocracy that drains
the lower classes dry. in a manner which Polidori only
barely suggests, given that Ruthven selects his victims
based on their gender and then on their connection with
Aubrey- He does however, take his pleasure in different
ways: he claims the lower-class lanthe by simple violence,
whereas hxs conquest of Miss Aubrey involves a lengthy
courtship and even marriage. Similarly, while all
Carmilla's victims are of a lower rank than she. it is those
closer to her station, the middle classes represented by
Laura and by Bertha Rhcinfcldt, who provide her with
emotional and sexual sustenance, rather than merely with

35
blood; as Waller writes, "nourishment is not always
synonymous with pleasure" (52). As with Ruthven. it seems
less likely that the aristocratic seductress would waste the
effort on peasant girls.
Carmilla's class also invites a mixed response from the
bourgeoisie; while it obviously renders her different from
them, it is to be admired. General Spielsdorf's
predilection for fawning over the aristocracy is made clear
in his assessment of Count Carlsfield's entertainment —
•Princely! . . . He has Aladdin's lamp" — and guests — "It
was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the
only "nobody* present" (296). He is also obviously
impressed by "Madaoe la Coatcsse." who instills a similar
"conviction that she (is] a person of consequence" (254) in
Laura. Laura feels "flattered" by Canailla's attentions
(261). and occasionally thinks herself "ill—bred" by
comparison, significantly while she tries to learn more of
the details concerning Camilla's family: "their anmori-sl
bearings. . . . the name of their estate. . . . the country
they lived in" (263). Laura and her associates envy the
aristocratic Carmilla. then, and often feel themselves
inferior to her. These feelings too may lead to an
ambivalent response on their part, because she threatens
them even as they want to be like her.
Indeed, they are not as different froa. her as they

might think. For example, when Laura discusses the
36
inhabitants of the schloss. she admits that she disregards
servants and their dependents, who. despite the size of the
building, and the small number of people who live there,
apparently must "occupy rooms in the buildings attached to
the schloss." rather than live in the castle proper (245).
Alok Bhalla suggests that Laura's father, living as he docs
in the "solitude of a country mansion which is protected
from the intrusion of other men by miles of picturesquely
planted woods." is "oblivious of the actual relation between
his artistically landscaped property with its extravagantly
large house and the tangible world of labour on lana" (27).
This bourgeois oblivion extends to Laura as well. for.
although she mentions her father's "small income'1 and that
they are "by no means magnificent people" (244). she docs
not seem overly concerned about their lack of funds or
grandeur. Rather, she takes comfort in the fact that, in
Styria. "everything is so marvellously cheap," which relates
to Bhalla"s theory of an oblivious bourgeoisie in that, not
only is she unaware of her economic dependence on the lower
classes, but she does not realize that her father, when he
"purchased this feudal residence . . . a bargain." also took
advantage of the financial condition of "this lonely and
primitive place" (244)_
Place is another location for the other in C a m i l l a .
Although Le Fanu sets his tale entirely in remote Styria.
Laura's father's schloss appears as a little piece of

37
"civilized" England, the inhabitants of which speak English,
"partly to prevent its becoming a lost language among
[them], and partly from patriotic motives" (245). drink tea.
and read Shakespeare "by way of keeping up [their] English"
(251). By entering the schloss. then, the Styrian Carmilla
can be seen as invading British territory, even if it exists
within her native land. This land is in the "primitive"
East. with which its vampire is associated. much as is
Ruthven. who preys on the people of London in more-or-less
socially acceptable ways, that is, sexually and
economically, but does not become truly and visibly
dangerous until he travels to Greece, the source of the
vampire myth. Similarly, Laura writes of the vampire
legend's origins in eastern locations such as "Upper and
Lower Styria, in Moravia. Silesia, in Turkish Servia, in
Poland. <?ven in Russia" (315).
Carmilla's association with the East, especially as it
is presented as wild, primitive, or degenerate, also has
racial connotations. Indeed, Carmilla herself is associated
with a negative racial stereotype in the form of the
"hideous black woman, with a sort of coloured turban on her
head . . . with gleaming eyes and large white eye-balls, and
her teeth set as if In fury" (257). When Joseph Andriano
states that "she plays no other part in the story but to
complete the Unholy Trinity [with Carmilla and her mother]"
(102). he ignores the racial implications of this figure who

38
is. as he does notice, a form of "the demonic feminine"
(102). While Tracy's notes state that "Matska" is "a
feminine diminutive, suggesting a Czech or Polish servant"
(345). Andriano translates it as "mud." and applies it
explicitly to the black voman (102). If Andriano's theory
is correct, it seems to indicate degeneracy and regression
to a primal, animal state associated both with Carmilla in
her beast-form, and with the threat of the racially other,
rather than being "associated with . . . earth" in the
capacity of Nature-Goddess, as Andriano believes (102).
That "Matska." who exists only to present the reader with a
physical description of negative racial stereotypes, may be
an aspect of Carmilla. as Andriano suggests, implies the
possibility of racial, as well as national, invasion.
Tracy's introduction connects these themes of foreign
and racial otherness with the idea that "the past survives
to torment the present" (Tracy xxviii) to suggest that
Carmilla's invasion of this island of Englishness represents
a more specific anxiety to its Anglo-Irish author. Tracy
writes: "(t]his insistent Englishness. their isolation,
strongly suggest the lives of many Anglo-Irish landowners"
(xx). Le Fanu's portrayal of Carmilla's origins -- time,
place, and class — as other may relate to the anxiety the
colonized Irish caused such landowners. In Tracy's words.
"[s]he is one of the ancient lords of the land, whose
descendants, reduced to peasant/tenant status, often haunted

39
the Anglo-Irish estates confiscated from their ancestors,
which they considered rightfully their own" (xxvii). This
theory works well to explain why. when Laura's English
family has been imported to Carmilla's native land, it is
Carmilla who is portrayed as the perpetrator of an alien
invasion. It seems likely that English landowners in
Ireland would fear the natives of the land they had invaded
as a threat to their own security, the very role Carmilla
plays. The determined efforts of Laura's family to maintain
its "Englishness" imply a fear of losing it which is
consistent with the threat of being consumed or converted by
the vampiric other, of "individual regression or going
native" (Brantlinger 2 3 0 ) . Patrick Brantlinger lists such
regression or conversion along with "an invasion of
civilization by the forces of barbarism or demonism" as two
of the "principal themes of imperial Gothic" (230). a
category in which it seems reasonable to place Carmilla.
Anglo-Irish guilt at this invasion of the other's
homeland, however, may manifest itself not only as vicious
repression of the other — Carmilla's eventual fate — but.
potentially, as sympathy, which Laura does feel for the
vampire, and which Le Fanu hicaself displays in his depiction
of her. Bhalla comments on Le Fanu's "known nationalist
sympathies" (26). which help to explain why Carmilla "is not
a demonic intruder into Arcadian space, but the very spirit
of the place. The evil that she manifests is an inherent

40
part of a hierarchical and coercive social order" (30). By
creating a vampire who can herself claim "*I was all but
assassinated in my bed. wounded here.* she touched her
breast, 'and never was the sarse since"" (276). Le Fanu
appears to be critiquing that social order, whether it is
based on class, nationality, race or. as will be established
later, gender.
It is possible that the Anglo-Irish felt thesssclves
inferior to. and excluded from the society of. the English
in England, another possible motivation for sympathy with
the Irish other. Like Laura, who is neither Styrian nor
English, the Anglo-Irish are trapped between cultures, a
position which may contribute to an ambivalent response to
both the othercd Irish and dominant English culture. If
nothing else. Laura's family lives in Styria. and despite
its valiant attempts to remain "English" is associated with
the foreign other; the family schloss. for instance,
possesses a "Gothic chapel" and a "Gothic bridge" (244).
examples of the architecture which "vendrick connects with
the fear of the past here represented by Canailla (xx«).
whose resting place, the ruined church, is later described
in the sane terns (306). Siailarly, the family is saved by
the arcane lore of Baron Vordenburg who Is. like Carmilla.
Styrian. an aristocrat, and connected to an old and
significant family.
41
The fact, that Laura and her family are implicated in.
and indeed, in many ways compile!t with. Carrailla's attacks
suggests the potential for social critique on Le Fanu's
part. They invite the vampire into their English home, and
it takes Laura's father an inordinate amount of time to
discover the truth about her. Even when he does so. Laura
is unable to condemn her utterly, but remembers her in her
"ambiguous alternations" (319). The text ends on a note
that suggests the exorcism has not been entirely successful,
as Laura concludes with the words "often from a reverie I
have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at
the drawing—room door" (319). Clearly, she continues to be
haunted by the vampire, who is not portrayed as a simple
representation of the evil other.
Carrailla's origins in the past and. concurrently, in
the priaitive East of the English imagination, establish her
as an outsider, and a potential invader of the nest of
bourgeois British civility that exists in the Styrian
seountains. These possibilities, and Carailla's degeneracy,
whether connected to foreignness. racial otherness, or class
distinctions, evoke a response of fear as soon as they are
realized by Laura's father. General Spielsdorf and Baron
Vordenburg. who among theaa represent all the institutions of
a patriarchal social order: "doctor, father. General,
scholar. Baron, priest" (Waller 5 3 ) . As women are excluded
from all these authoritative roles, so Laura must be

42
excluded from the plans to destroy the female vampire (314).
As far as she is concerned. Carmilla's nature is
unspeakable, "a secret which [her] father for the present
determine[sJ to keep from [her]" (314). While her father's
secrecy in part indicates that he wants to protect his
innocent daughter, it also seems to suggest that he cannot
trust her. because she. like Carmilla. is a woman, and
therefore potentially dangerous. Suspicion or fear and
chivalric condescension are the two stock patriarchal
responses to women, and correspond to two masculine
constructions of femininity: the angelic woman who requires
masculine protection, and the demonic woman who inspires
masculine fear. Both are present in Carmilla. and the
vampire, before she is revealed as a threat to patriarchal
institutions, plays the other role, that of the ideal
Victorian woman, who is less threatening, but equally
othered.
Whereas Ruthven. although human, is physically, morally
and emotionally different from the London social circles
through which he moves. Carmilla personifies the even
greater anxiety concerning the monster who can move among us
unnoticed. Despite her dramatic arrival at the schloss.
Carmilla soon fits in easily with the society there, and is
even welcomed as a companion for Laura. William Veeder
notes that she does not resemble "the traditional,
cadaverous vampire." but rather, embodies "the physical

43
traits conventional with Victorian True Womanhood"
("Carmilla" 213). Laura describes her thus: "slender, and
wonderfully graceful. . . . Her complexion was rich and
brilliant; her features were small and beautifully formed:
her eyes large, dark, and lustrous; her hair was quite
wonderful" (262). In sum, she is "the most beautiful
creature" Laura has ever seen (261).
Carol Senf notes that women are. like vampires,
"defined primarily by their physiology" ("Women and Power"
30). and that the languid, passive Carmilla is no exception.
Her very languor suggests helplessness, and a need to be
protected, characteristics highly prized in Victorian women.
Senf writes: "[h]aving learned that such useless and
ornamental behaviour is desirable for women. Laura's father,
the general, and Laura herself see this languor as
attractive" ("Women and Power" 3 0 ) . Certainly such passive
women are hardly to be feared; rather, they are largely
ignored. Hence Laura's father does not suspect Carmilla.
but even believes her to be another victim, rather than the
cause, of his daughter's "disease" (290). Although she
apparently has "the sharpest tooth — long. thin, pointed,
like an awl. like a needle" (269). all the better to inflict
Laura's mysterious puncture wounds, none but the hunchback
notices this, and Laura's father does not think to suspect
the beautiful young lady. Such disbelief is a common

44
response to a non-threatening other such as women are often
perceived to be.
Indeed. Laura's father demonstrates the same attitude
towards his daughter. His opinion first becomes apparent
when he dismisses her childhood encounter with the vampire
as "nothing but a dream." while she remains certain that
"the visit of the strange woman was not a dream" and is
"awfully frightened" (247). In Senf's words "such
patronizing treatment of a six-year-old child is perhaps
understandable, but the same kind of condescension is more
disturbing when she is a grown woman, for it reveals her
father's inability to see her as a person" ("Women and
Power" 2 7 ) . He continues to t.*eat her as the non-human
other throughout; she does not tell him of her symptoms,
because she is afraid he will laugh at them (279). and
later, when she asks about the doctor's diagnosis, his reply
is "you are not to trouble your head about it" (291). In so
saying, he "fails to give her information that might enable
her to protect herself" (Senf. "Women and Power" 2 8 ) .
Waller uses this lapse in judgement as proof that Carmi11a
"offers a veiled commentary on the status of the family and
on the failure of parental responsibility" (52). He
compares this commentary to Polidori"s indictment of
Aubrey's guardians; I would elaborate somewhat on this
argument, and suggest that Carinilla more specifically

45
addresses a society which creates vulnerable and easily
victimized women.
Senf offers a valuable analysis of this feminine
position, and how it is perpetuated, by claiming that the
vampire "is a metaphor . . . for certain aspects of women's
lives" ("Women and Power" 2 9 ) . She compares women and
vampires on the basis of their status as "dead" beings —
the vampire literally, the woman legally ("Women and Power"
29) -- and as parasites- As well as signifying her
aristocracy, then, Carmilla's literal blood-sucking
represents "the economic dependence that was virtually
mandated for women during most of LeFanu's [sic] lifetime"
(29). General Spielsdorf and Laura's father invite her into
their respective homes out of chivalry (301. 2 5 4 ) , and she
lives idly on their hospitality, as Laura herself lives idly
in the schloss. Carmilla and Laura are remarkably similar
in their lack of activity, and. after each of Carmilla's
attacks. Laura grows more pale and languid (282) — more
like Carmilla. and thus like the ideal woman. It is as if.
-s Senf suggests. Carmilla acts as a surrogate mother,
"teaching Laura to be exactly like her" ("Women and Power"
30). Indeed, the two are connected through the maternal
line (273), and the vampire plays a maternal role during her
first encounter with the child Laura, who recalls: "she
caressed me with her hands . . . . I felt immediately
delightfully soothed" (246)• It does seem as if Laura comes

46
from "a long line of victims" (Senf. "Women and Power" 2 8 ) ;
her mother is dead, and warns her in a dream "to beware of
the assassin" (283). So the construction of woman as
passive, angelic victim persists, passing from woman to
woman in much the same way as the vampire's condition (318).
Still, the text can be read as a critique of this
containment of women, if one notes that Laura is relating
hei tale to another woman, the "town lady" who might not.
Laura thinks, find Carmilla's languor, late-sleeping, and
failure to eat. odd (265). This assumption suggests that
Laura's audience in her urban milieu may be even more
susceptible to fashionable constructions of femininity,
designed to produce apparently weak, slender, and passive
women such as Carmilla. Thus, "the seemingly weak Laura has
a significant kind of power — that of telling other women
about their condition" (Senf. "Women and Power" 2 9 ) . which
is certainly revealed in Le Fanu's text, although it is also
made clear that Laura, entrenched as she is in patriarchal
constructions of femininity, finds the process difficult
(264. 3 1 6 ) .
Senf refers to other types of female power as well;
however, it should be noted that these usually work within
the feminine framework which the patriarchy defines. Senf's
"powerful" women tend to victimize other women, rather than
directly challenging the patriarchy. Thus, although
Carmilla and her mother are able to manipulate Laura's

47
father and General Spielsdorf, it is Laura and Bertha
Rheinfeldt who suffer for it- According to Senf, some women
are able to use their masculine-constructed passivity to
manipulate others ("Women and Power" 3 0 ) , as, presumably,
Carmilla does when she convinces Laura's father that she is
helpless, but this seems more a function of masculine biases
than of feminine power, and, as Senf notes, "what these
women are not trained to do is to understand themselves and
the world around them, much less to attempt to change that
world" ("Women and Power" 3 D - Even if. as Senf maintains,
Carmilla presents women as something more complex than
"simply passive victims of masculine oppression" ("Women and
Power" 31-32). the powerful, victimising woman is the other
side of masculine-constructed femininity, the alternative
role for women, and just as much an other.
As the response of Carmilla's coach horses to the stone
cross (252) and her own horrified reaction to the funeral
hymn (266) suggest. Carmilla is no Victorian angel. As Nina
Auerbach, among others, has noticed, there is, in fact, a
fine line between woman as angel and woman as demon (108).
an instability which may indicate the patriarchal fear that
the repressed will return, or the oppressed revolt, as
indeed Carmilla does. In her demonic role, which is
represented both by her appearance in animal form (278) and
by Laura's vision in which she appears "bathed, from her
chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood" (283).

48
Carmilla represents the dangerous side of femininity, that
which threatens the patriarchy. Day characterizes this as
"active, assertive feminine sexuality," which is "defined
. . - as monstrous" (89). This monstrosity has much to do
with the question, as posed by Veeder. "(d]o women have
passion?" Veeder rightly maintains that Le Fanu's answer is
"a resounding yes" ("Carmilla" 198). but also that the
passionate woman represents a "cultural threat" ("Carmilla"
199)- The demonic woman whom patriarchal society fears is
aggressive, seductive, dangerous, and associated with blood.
While Carmilla. unlike the later manifestations of the
female vampire in Stoker's Dracula. for example, does not
expressly endanger men and their bodily fluids with her
monstrous desire, she does pose a threat to their
masculinity in that she has no need for them. Like the
traditional male vampire, she attacks the patriarchy through
its women, whom she corrupts.
Like Ruthven's sexual immorality. Carmilla's condition
is contagious. Baron Vordenburg explains that the bite of
the undead has the power to turn the living into vampires
(318). causing the reader to wonder about the fate of
Bertha, who dies as a result of Carmilla's attacks.
Spielsdorf also describes vampirism as "a plague" (314). and
Laura's condition is treated as a disease before its cause
becomes known. This vocabulary of infection is interesting,
given Victorian anxieties surrounding potentially deadly

49
sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, but is also
intrinsically related to otherness. There is a deep-seated
fear of coming to resemble the other, and the blame for such
a transformation is usually displaced onto that "infectious"
other, when, in fact, the results can be used to deconstruct
the categories of self and other, and ultimately, to
critique the self-
Laura. for example, does not find Carmilla's advances
entirely repulsive: rather "the sense of attraction
immensely prevail[sJ" (261). Carmilla has "interested and
won [Laura]" (261). who begins to act like her. She also
begins to describe her nocturnal encounters using Carmilla's
language of desire, rather than her earlier vocabulary of
nightmare. Again, the prevalent sensation is agreeable,
"that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel in
bathing, when we move against the current of a river" (282).
a highly sensual description that invokes nudity, moisture
and motion in a way which is undeniably sexual. Carmilla's
association with Laura does seem to trigger a sexual
awakening in the "world of [her father's] making that seeks
to exclude sexuality and maturity" (Waller 5 2 ) . Many
critics sec Carmilla as a representation of Laura's own
transgrcssive sexuality (Punter 167); the threat to her
innocence is also a threat to the "pure blood" of the
patriarchy, a threat of miscegenation, as Tracy states in
hi» inventory of Anglo-Irish anxieties (xxvii), but also, as

50
Sue-Ellen Case argues, a threat to "pure heterosexuality"
(6)- By arousing a purely pleasurable, rather than
reproductive, sexual impulse in another woman. Carmilla
poses the greatest threat of all- The fear of the
"contagion" of the other is significant in this context as
it relates to the central issue of Case's article:
homophobia.
The fear that lesbians and gay men can somehow convert
innocent heterosexuals has long been part of homophobic
discourse, whether expressed as anxiety concerning same-sex
boarding schools or in the rhetoric that sexual preference
is a "choice." That same anxiety emerges in Carmilla.
although not -ithout a counter-argument. Case writes: "|i]n
the nineteenth century, the stable notion of nature as
natural and of the natural as good made it possible to
configure same-sex desire as unnatural — thus monster --
thus vampire" (15-16). Le Fanu. however, puts these words
in Carmilla's mouth: "all things proceed from Nature --
don't they? All things in heaven, in the earth, and under
the earth, act and live as Nature ordains? 1 think so"
(270). This speech. Le Fanu's most powerful and explicit
statement regarding the acceptance of difference, seesas to
address not only Carmilla's otherness as vampire, and as
woman, but specifically, her lesbianism, about which she has
no more choice than she docs concerning her vampirism (318).
which is the arbitrary result of being attacked by another
51
vampire. She herself is not unnatural or evil, but merely
"obeyls] the irresistible law of [her] strength and
weakness" (263), which makes her a victim of social
constructions of monstrosity and otherness- Certainly the
Athenaeum's review of Carmilla refers to Laura's "unnatural
yearning and passion" (13). although whether it is her
attraction to a vampire or to another woman which disturbs
the reviewer is not clear.
Concurring with Case. Punter notes that "it is the
function of ideology to naturalise the presented world, to
make its consumers think that the cardinal features of the
world they Inhabit are natural, eternal, unchangeable"
(419). However, the equation of the natural and the good
was not necessarily as stable as Case believes, but existed
simultaneously with another, counter ideology also relevant
to C a m i l l a . The Marquis dc Sade. for example r precedes Le
Fanu's vaapiress as a defender of sexual and moral otherness
as products of nature." Tennyson's In Memoriaa perpetuates
a similar opposition between civilized culture and "Nature,
red in tooth and claw" (56.15). although it privileges the
former, unlike Sade. who celebrates violent nature. In
"Sec. for example the following argument — similar to

Carmilla's even in its sexually suggestive flesh-piercing
Imagery — from Sade's "Dialogue Entre un Pretre et un
Moribond": "Itjhere is not any single virtue which is not
necessary to nature, and conversely not a single crime which
is not necessary. . . . But can we be blamed for the side on
which she casts us? No enorc than the wasp can be blamed who
plunges his sting into your flesh" (27).
52
Memoriam values the ability to transcend "the reeling Faun.
the sensual feast: / Move upward, working out the beast. /
And let the ape and tiger die" (11&.26-28); by the end of
the poem, the counter-construction of the natural has been
absorbed into the dominant ideology, so that Nature is "no
longer half-akin to brute" (131.133). Although Le Fanu's
text appears to endorse a similar hope, given the demise of
Carmilla as representative of brute nature, its project is
not entirely successful. Despite Carmilla's physical
destruction, as I shall demonstrate later, neither the
counter-construction of nature as aligned with otherness.
nor the lesbian vampire as other, can be entirely exorcised.
It seems unlikely that Carmilla's lesbianism is
incidental, despite the fact that many critics try to make
it represent something other than the passion between two
women. For example. Bhalla claims that
for Le Fanu lesbianism is the sterile fantasy of

sexuality without responsibilities and is the
structural equivalent of the desire for property
by men without any social morality- In terms of
the economics of sexuality, lesbianism is the
expenditure of energies in seeking pleasure for
oneself alone. (31)
As well as being a misreading of lesbianism that borders on
the homophobic, this is a misreading of Canailla. Carmilla
does not simply prey on Laura for her own gain, but
represents their relationship in terms of love, rather than
mere narcissistic pleasure. Admittedly, to what extent the
reader can believe the vampire is questionable, and the

53
privileging of pleasure over reproduction, which Bhalla does
not actually mention, is also significant, and will be
discussed later. That the pleasure is often mutual has been
established; that Laura feels affection for Carmilla.
despite her knowledge of the vampire's nature, is obvious
from the last lines, and the fact that she cannot forget
her. The literal lesbian cannot be erased, despite the
efforts of critics such as Bhalla. or indeed, the efforts of
the text itself-
Laura herself wonders if perhaps Carmilla sight be "a
boyish lover [who] had found his way into the house, and
sought to prosecute his suit in masquerade" (265): she
cannot consciously conceive of lesbian desire, and. while Le
Fanu's dialogue and narration are both fairly explicit, she
refers to the difficulty of committing this "unspeakable
horror" (316) to writing. Case points out that "(t]o ask
'will the real lesbian please stand up.' when she is em-
bedded in the dominant discursive mandate to disappear, or
in the subcultural subversion to flaunt her distance from
the "real." is like asking the vazapire to appear in the
mirror" (9). Like the vampire, then, the lesbian either
docs not exist, or exists only in supernatural novels, and
her invisibility helps explain why critics seldosa address
this aspect of Carmilla in other than metaphorical terms,
and also why Carmilla's sexual preference has little bearing
on the patriarchal response to any threat she may pose.
54
It is questionable whether Carmilla's lesbianism makes
her a greater threat than the male vampire, who threatens
the hero's women, and thus ucsans him. as Ruthven docs, or
than the sexually aggressive female vampire who preys on
men. and thus similarly destroys their masculinity, a type
which appears in later fiction, notably Dracula. Indeed.
Carmilla's sexual preference does not seem to be an issue
for the male collective that sets out to destroy her; the
men do not consider it. any more than Laura can conceive of
-roaen who prefer women. Lesbianism is. for them, literally
unspeakable, so they hunt Carmilla as an unacceptably
aggressive woman, and as a threat to their daughters, but
never connect the two. Thus, in this context, the vampire
as lesbian is effectively erased, as Case suggests.
There say be a connection here, however, if Carmilla is
considered a threat not only to the individual daughters of
the patriarchy, but to the family as an institution. Case
notes "the equation of hetero=sex=life and homo=scx=unlife"
(4) which can be translated as the relation between vampiric
sexuality, which infects the "healthy" (read heterosexual)
human being, and "normal" (read heterosexual) human
sexuality. «frich produces children. Carmilla's vampire sex.
like lesbian sex. has pleasure, not reproduction, as its
end. and. as such, scans the death of the family unit.
Although I do not agree with Robin Wood's assessment

that "the heavily signified contagion of vampirism is a very
different thing" from reproduction (130). Carmilla's designs
55
and. even more importantly, of its {presumably male)
lineage, while the lesbian vampire remains immortal.
Similar anxieties surround the explicitly matrilineal
connection between Carmilla and Laura. While the fact that
Laura is related to the Karnsteins through her mother's "old
Hungarian family" (271) frees Laura's father from any taint
of vampiric otherness, it also acts as a location for
suspicion about "purity of blood," for legitimacy is a
patrilineal inheritance, so that the father can be sure the
child is really his.
In any case. Carmilla threatens the patriarchs, and the
men must thus band together to destroy her. Laura can see
both the angelic arid demonic aspects of Carmilla. her
"ambiguous alternations" (319). and is able to accept her
own response of combined fear and desire as she writes "this
I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt to
explain the feeling"" 1264). The men. however, achieve no
such balanced reading, but think in the binary terms of
do not seem to involve procreation. In her priorities she

differs from her famous descendent. Stoker's Dracula, who
plans to conquer English humanity through just such a
reproductive strategy. Carmilla's agenda, whatever it may
be. takes place on a much smaller, more personal level, as
Senf notes (Vaeoire 1471; she has no plans for legions of
vampire offspring, and her designs are not on human
civilization, but merely on specific young women. Just as
Senf differentiates between the literal and the metaphorical
(""Women and Power" 2 9 ) . so Carmilla's literally contagious
vampirism should not be confused with her figuratively
contagious lesbianism. Polidori makes a similar distinction
between vampiric and sexual contagion, in that Ruthven"s
vampirism, unlike his excessive sexuality, is not infectious
(Macdonald/Scherf 5>.
56
self/other and angel/demon. To them, the woman is either
submissive or dangerous, but never anything more than
socially othered. When Carmilla is revealed as something
other than the ideal young lady, she must be constructed as
a "monster" (294), a "fiend" (295). a "plague" on the
region, and "the horrible enemy" (314). While the father.
the general and the baron, in the company of "the good
priest" (314). protectively exclude Laura the "good" woman.
they must utterly destroy Carmilla the demon.
Thus, while Le Fanu does present a potentially positive
view of female pleasure (Day 89). and a critique of the
social construction of women. Carmilla is not as empowering
as Senf, for example, would have us believe. Even if
Carmilla "suggests that women gain power over men"' (Senf.
"Women and Power" 32 n4). they cannot safely enact this
power for their own advantage. As the other gains power.
she becomes more of a threat to the status quo. and as such.
she must be more brutally repressed. The powerless ideal
woman is patronized, but for the threatening female vampire
only the violent "ancient ritual" is sufficient:
a sharp stake was driven through the heart of the
vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the
moment, in all respects such as might escape from
a living person in the last agony. Then the head
•Bias struck off. and a torrent of blood flowed from
the severed neck. The body and head were next
placed on a pile of wood, and reduced to ashes,
which were thrown upon the river. (316)
While this account invites some sympathy for the vampire who
resembles a living person, it never mentions Carmilla's
57
name, or even her gender. By the end of the ritual, any
human features the vampire possessed have been destroyed,
literally turning her into a non-person.
If Aubrey's oath, besides literalizing the unspeakable
nature of Ruthven"s otherness, indicates a human sense of
honour that seems misguided and naive in the face of an
inhuman foe. the response of the patriarchs in Carmilla has
no such flaws- They feel perfectly justified in committing
this "pious sacrilege" (2^4). This oxymoronic response is
x,*s some ways as fraught with contradictions as is Laura's,
and it is certainly more violent than any of Carmilla's own
attacks. Nevertheless, this act "satisfies both the public
and the private sense of justice" (Waller 345) in that it
has the sanction of the Imperial Commission (316). as well
as avenging the death of Bertha and the attacks on Laura.
Carmilla's death appears to restore the patriarchal
authority she threatens, and. according to Waller, can be
justified because the text "clearly distinguish[es] between
the offensive violence of the undead and the defensive
actions of the vampire hunters, who are free of the taint of
being unjustified aggressors" (242). However, the
sympathetic portrayal of Carmilla, and the fact that the
ritual can be read as an attempt to destroy the other for no
more substantial reason than her socially constructed
otherness, makes the hunters' actions much more
questionable. The text itself reveals Carmilla's otherness

58
as a social construct, both through her argument that she is
merely acting naturally (270). and. ironically, in the words
of General Spielsdorf. who refers to such constructions as
"prejudices and illusions" (293). The similarities between
Laura, daughter of the dominant society, and Carmilla the
vampire, show that the binary opposition between self and
other is artificial and arbitrary. The sudden hostility of
the patriarchs, who admire Carmilla until they belatedly
discover her otherness, not only demonstrates a similar
arbitrariness, but reveals them as hypocrites, increasing
the reader's sympathy for the other, whom the text portrays
as much like the self.
Nevertheless. despite Laura's fond memories and the
sympathy the reader feels for Carmilla. her ultimate fate
cannot be ignored. To read Carmilla as a portrait of the
empowered woman, however tempting that may be. is to misread
General Spielsdorf*s statement to Laura's father: "you
believe in nothing but what consists with your own
prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was like you.
but I have learned better" (293). While prejudices engender
the socially constructed other, itself an illusion.
Spielsdorf speaks about the necessity of believing in the
supernatural other for the purpose of killing or containing
it- In Dracula. Professor Van llclsing makes a similar
statement concerning the desirability of an "open mind"
(230). and nowhere is the violent repression of the other by

representatives of the dominant ideology, whose violent
response is again directly proportional to the other's
power, and therefore to its threatening potential, more
apparent than in Stoker's text.
60
CHAPTER THREE
"Of Wolves and Poison and Blood": Otherness in Dracula
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is more complex than both
The Vampyre and Carmilla. and also presents a more complete
and intense version of the cultural anxiety surrounding The
other, as well as a more explicit repression of that other.
There is more blood in this novel than in any I have
considered so far. both in terms of sensational violence and
sexualized vampirism, and in terms of the cultural anxieties
associated with the preservation of "pure blood." Critics
often represent the dominant ideology which excludes the
other, whether they define dominant as English, white.
Christian, male, or heterosexual — or some combination of
these — as "pure blood" in danger of contamination. It
seems Stoker omits few of the forms this threat can take,
forms represented by vampirism, which is not just a literal
threat co the life and blood of his heroes and heroines, but
potentially contagious as well. The threat of conversion
from within is much more insidious than any direct threat of
violence. Variously figured as "corruption" (251),
"infection" (320), "pollution" (296). and "poison" (322).
this threat exemplifies the anxiety concerning the
possibility that we may become like the other, that the
categories of self and other are not stable, or that "we"
are not that different from "them" from the outset.

61
Leonard Wolf expresses confusion over the significance
of "poison" in Harker's delirious dreams, since "[h]e has no
experience of it in Castle Dracula" (131, n 3 1 ) ; however, I
would argue that Sister Agatha's description of Jonathan's
ravings "of wolves and poison and blood" (99) summarizes the
portrayal of otherness in Dracula. It is always a threat to
the pure blood of the self, and may be direct, like the
wolves which serve Dracula. and into which he can transform
himself, the "children of the night" (18), devourers of
mothers (45) and babies (140). the means by which the
vampire gains direct access x.o Lucy's bedroom, without
benefit of the traditional invitation (143). The wolf,
then, illustrates the violent destruction of the dominant
society. Alternately, the vampiric threat may be presented
as poison that does not kill its victims but corrupts them,
turning them into beings resembling Dracula. and thus
potentially positioning the other inside the society of the
self. The image of poison is not wholly separable from that
of the ravening wolf, however, for the poison works to
reveal the latent wolf in its victims: in the words of the
zookeeper. Thomas Bilder. whose Sadean view of nature is
worthy of Carmilla. "there's a deal of the same nature in us
as in them there animiles [sicJ" (136).
Although, in terms of its ultimate violent repression
of the other. Dracula is a more conservative text than those
which precede it chronologically, it also does more to blur

62
the distinctions between self and other. In his thorough
analysis of Dracula*s otherness. Hatlen describes the
vampire as "the socially other: the embodiment of all the
social forces that lurked just beyond the frontiers of
Victorian middle class [sic] consciousness" ("Return" 120).
Hatlen then offers a reason for the reader's often-
ambivalent response to Dracula. which also applies to
Stoker's own inconsistent portrayal of the relationship
between the self and the other:
Count Dracula represents, then, the repressed and

the oppressed: the psychically repressed and the
socially oppressed. It is for this reason that
our response to him is so ambivalent. When the
repressed/oppressed returns, we shudder with
horror, and with hunger. ("Return" 120)
Regarding the social oppression of the other. Rhys Garnett
locates Stoker's ambivalence in the author's culture as well
as in the individual mind. He. too. offers a Freudian
explanation in the statement "the projection of guilt and
desire onto the other exonerates the self" (32) - - a
phenomenon apparent in both The Vampyre and Carmilla — but
his association of that guilt with Victorian cultural norms
such as racism and sexism, for example, reveals that Dracula
is. as Punter notes, "one of the most important expressions
of the social and psychological dilemmas of the late
nineteenth century . . . . a powerful record of social
pressures and anxieties" (256). Thus, one can read the
novel as a critique of the status quo. as well as a
representation of the other which threatens that status quo

63
and undermines that other's defeat at the hands of the
powers of "good." While the human protagonists of The
Vampyre and Carmilla are often complicit in the other's
attempt to invade the "civilized" world, in Dracula they are
in danger of becoming other themselves. Here, the
distinctions between good and e**il blur, just as the vampire
obscures the boundary between life and death, among others.
This questioning of formerly stable categories may produce
social anxiety, for often artificial binary oppositions
serve the interests of the dominant ideology (Jameson. PI?
88).
"Leaving the West and Entering the East":

Otherness of Time and Place
Stoker, like Polidori and Le Fanu. connects his vampire
to the monster of folklore, thus making him a creature of
the past, and of the "traditions and superstitions" of the
East (2S9). Van Helsing's lecture on the origins, habits
and limitations of the vampire is much aorc detailed than
those of his predecessors. The fact that Stoker places it
in the mouth of this character with his many degrees, rather
than, like Polidori. in the words of a Greek ingenue, or.
like Le Fanu. in those of a naive young woman paraphrasing a
mysterious Styrian nobleman, allows him to "tur[s»J vampire
lore into vampire law" (Leatherdale 1 2 1 ) . Although Van
Helsing extends the vampire's range, extending it east to
China and west to Rome and France (239), he emphasizes

64
vampirism in the context of "the berserker Icelander, the
devil-begotten Hun. the Slav, the Saxon, the Magyar* (239).
all culturally different from, and presumed to be more
primitive than, the heroes of the western world, situated as
they are in the "scientific, sceptical, matter-of-fact
nineteenth century" (238).
Indeed. Stoker establishes the London world of his
heroes as distinctly different from Dracula"s origins in
Eastern Europe on the novel's first page, where Harker. en
route to Transylvania, feels he is literally "leaving the
West and entering the East" (1). The deeper Barker travels
into this "wildest and least known portion(] of Europe" (1).
the fewer amenities there are; he goes from the unpunctual
trains to a coach to Dracula*s wildly driven carriage, and
eventually to Castle Dracula. which at first appears to be
deserted except for the Count himself (27). Certainly it is
old and crumbling — a truly Gothic resonant of the past.
The first chapters, detailing Harker's journey, and his
arrival at the castle, describe a movement backward in time,
to the primitive state that was the stereotypical view of
the East in Stoker's age.
Although Harker does not yet know It. Dracula is. like
Carmilla. more closely associated with the past than even
Indeed. Harker himself notices this trend and remarks.

"it seems to sae that the further East you go the mere
unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?'
(2).
65
his decaying castle indicates. He is approximately four
hundiad years old. "a revenant from a pre-enlightenment age"
(Hatlen, "Return" 126). to which he looks back with some
fondness (28ff). scorning the present "days of dishonourable
peace" (30). He also explicitly acknowledges his own
position as what Hatlen calls "the culturally other"
("Return" 125) when he tells Harker tltat "Transylvania is
not England" (21). Indeed, the Count represents much of
what is not English, and carries his associations with a
decaying past with him to contemporary London. He expresses
his approval of Carfax Abbey, itself a relic from such a
tioe. with the words "I am glad that it is old and big. I
myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would
kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and,
after all. how few days go to make up a century" (23).
Dracula, then, represents the East and the past, both
of which are connected, as is the vaspire myth, to
superstition and magic, and thus seem directly opposed to
the rational and scientific forces of the West. Stoker
establishes this connection, too, early in the novel.
Harker writes:
I read that every known superstition in the world
is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians,
as if it were the centre of some sort of
imaginative whirlpool; if so esy stay aaay be very
interesting {Mesa.. I must ask the Count all about
thesa). 12)
66
This ironically apt statement gathers force as Harker's
Transylvanian landlady warns him of the perils of Saint
George's Eve. when "all the evil things In the world ...
have full sway." a belief which Harker finds "ridiculous"
(4-5). The superstition becomes fact, however, as Harker
witnesses strange events on the journey to Castle Dracula.
including a blue flame that Is later said to indicate the
presence of buried treasure (21). as well as the coachman's
mastery of the wolves (13). Dracula himself was in life a
practitioner of magic; he became a vampire of his own will,
through the study of magic and. presumably, a pact with the
Devil (241).
Initially, then. Dracula — in whom, in Hatlen"s words,
"the "dark ages" have literally returned to life" ("Return"
126) — is associated with the magical and the non-
scientific, while Harker and the other heroes employ and
praise up-to-date technology such as Mina's portable
typewriter. Seward's dictating machine, and Van Helsing's
medical equipment. The "resources of science."1 as Van
Helslng calls them (238). prove useful in the pursuit of
Dracula, but they are less than sufficient when it comes to
his destruction (Garnett 46). In order to defeat the
vampire, the heroes must first believe that he exists,
ironically making superstition into fact- At first Seward,
representing the general attitude "here in London in the
nineteenth century" (192), is reluctant: only the eapirical
67
evidence of Lucy's transformation causes him to begin to
believe in the remedies prescribed by Van Helsing. who has
his own brand of magic. Scientific procedures such as blood
transfusions cannot save Lucy's life; nor can they kill
Dracula. In order to defeat the supernatural, the hunters
must subscribe to it. in the form of garlic and wooden
stakes. Thus, the progressive, scientific citizens of the
Western world are not as far removed from the superstitious
practices of the priaitive East as they, or Stoker's
nineteenth-century English readers, would like to believe.
"Devil in Callous": Religious Otherness

In addition to science and folklore, the hunters employ
religious weapons, specifically, those of Catholicism.
This. too. blurs the lines between the English self and the
Transylvanian other, as can be seen in Harker's initial
response to the crucifix which his landlady gives hla: "as
an English Churchman. I have been taught to regard such
things as in some measure idolatrous" (5). He comes to
appreciate it. however, as "a comfort and a strength" (28).
although he remains aware that "it is odd that a thing which
1 have been taught to regard with disfavour and as
idolatrous should in a tiaee of loneliness and trouble be of
help" (28). That the Anglican Harker should find it so in
Dracula"s castle indicates the association between
Transylvania and Catholicism, and that particular religion's
power against the vazspire. The hunters, of whoa all save
68
Van Helsing are presumably Anglicans like Harker. make use
of this power in their battle with Dracula. Counselled by
the Catholic Van Ilelsing, whose religion associates him with
the foreign, the English heroes arm themselves not only with
stakes and garlic, but with crucifixes and the host. Again
the distinctions between the self and the other, which in
Gothic novels is so often Catholic as well as foreign, begin
to blur, as the reader Imagines
good scientists like Seward holding up crucifixes

to ward off the Prince of Darkness, and good
members of the Church of England helping Van
Helsing to purify Dracula"s boxes of earth with
holy wafers — blessed, presumably, by a Catholic
priest- (Hatlen. "Return" 126)
Hatlen finds this proof of "how profoundly the "dark."
magical, priaordial ambience of Dracula challenges the
complacent rationalism of the Victorian bourgeoisie"
("Return" 126). but it also suggests the contagious nature
of that ambience.
The issue of the host is particularly interesting, not
only because of its Catholic implications, but because the
Professor's use of "the to hisa most sacred of things" (210)
in this -gray is undoubtedly sacrilegious. Wolf footnotes the
episode as follows: "Father William Quian. of the Canon Law
Office of the Arch diocese of San Francisco, advises ise that
this procedure is. in terms of Church doctrine, absolutely
impermissible . . . no matter how exalted the end in view"
(255. n 2 ) . Wolf also notes "Stoker's misuse of the concept
of indulgences" (255. n 3 ) , which are "a remission from

69
temporal punishment for sinful behaviour which has already
been perpetrated and forgiven" (Leatherdale 181), whereas
Van Helsing refers to his as if it applies to sins not yet
committed (210). Stoker's mistake seems to allude to the
abuse of indulgences preceding the Reformation, and thus
again establishes Catholicism's link to the past, and its
inherent otherness regarding the Anglican Church- In any
case. Van Helsing is as willing to profane the host as he is
to desecrate Lucy's corpse in order to rid the world of
Satan's representative, much as the vampire hunters in
Carmilla commit "pious sacrilege" in the name of the good.
The act of "sterilizing" (242) Dracula*s earth with the
host. which works to negate the effects of the vampire"s
corruption, much as the blood transfusions are a (much less
effective) antidote to Lucy's vampire-induced anaemia, is
interesting, given Van Ilelsing*s remarks indicating that
this earth is already consecrated:
[tjherc have been from the loins of this very one

great men and good women, and their graves make
sacred the earth where alone this foulness can
dwell. For It is not the least of its terrors
that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good:
in soil barren of holy memories it cannot rest.
(241)
While Leatherdale suggests that the most likely explanation
for Dracula"s need to sleep in holy ground is that it is
"designed to highlight the sense of blasphemy." he also
admits that Stoker may be "hinting at the powerful proximity
between good and evil" (178). Certainly this passage seems

70
to represent the text's many ambiguities. i;ot least those
surrounding religion.
Indeed. Dracula himself, as Hatlen notes, "is.
paradoxically, religious in a way that the other characters.
Van Helsing excepted, are not" ("Return" 126). Garnett
describes the heroes" religious beliefs as merely "a vague
awareness that they are Christians" (48). Dracula. by
contrast, is connected with religion by his status as anti-
christ, the "devil in callous." as Van Helsing calls him
(237). Punter observes that Dracula represents "an
inversion of Christianity" (261). in that the vampire has
eternal life in body rather than in spirit. Other evidence
also supports a reading of Dracula as Christ-parody,
including Renfield's "religious mania." in which he makes
remarks such as "the Master is at hand" (100). and speeches
reminiscent of John the Baptist's when witnessing the comiisg
of Christ; Stoker emphasizes the parallel by capitalizing
Renfield's references to Dracula (Leatherdale 179). Dracula
himself calls Mina "flesh of my flesh." turning their
exchange of blood into a perverse Christian marriage
ceremony (288): Van Helsing calls it a "baptism" (322. 343).
and the fact that the touch of a communion wafer following
this experience "burnIs] into the flesh as though it had
been a piece of white-hot metal" (296) clearly signifies
that it is. rather, the inverse of the Christian sacrament.

71
m
For Dracula, Renfield's scriptural quotation tne blood
is the life" (141)" is literally true, enacting the
Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation by making the blood
more than the symbolic sacrament of the Anglican Church.
Hatlen calls the vampire a "Christian literalist" ("Return"
126). an interesting choice of words in that the other
usually literalizes a projected threat, such as that of
foreignness, race, class, or sexuality, all types of
otherness which Dracula represents. The fact that the
vampire also literalizes Christian ritual, then,
inextricably involves the Church in his otherness; there is
a fine line between parody and parallel. Thus religion is
another indication, not only of the vampires* otherness, but
of the blurred distinctions between their position and that
of the ostensible heroes.
"Dark Stranger": Imperial Anxiety and the Racial Other
In the words of Hatlen. then. Dracula is "culturally
other" ("Return" 1 2 5 ) . representative of the distant past,
of a foreign and primitive place, and of Catholic—tainted
superstition, and cnagic. All of these characteristics are
apparently directly opposed to those of his English enemies,
and thus cake the vampire all the more frightening when he
i
"Although Renfield's mantra recalls the New Testament's
references to thss drinking of Christ's blood, his words are
actually from Deuteronomy 12:23. which forbids blood
drinking: "Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the
blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the
flesh-"
72
invades their homeland. In bringing the obviously foreign
Dracula to England, Stoker goes farther than either
Polidori. whose tale does not emphasize Ruthven*s
foreignness. or Le Fanu, who. despite the Englishness
contained within the schloss. sets his entire tale in
Styria- By first establishing Dracula as culturally other.
and then having him invade England. Stoker alternately
amazed and shocked contemporary reviewers. The Saturday
Review, for example, heartily approves of this strategy:
Mr. Bram Stoker was not content with the small

honour he could have gained by having (Dracula) in
an out-of-the-way corner of Europe. That would
have been merely to revert to the Mrs. Radcliffe
style of fiction. So Count Dracula Is brought to
London . . . . (21)
The Athenaeum, however, objects to the novel's lack of
"awful remoteness" (835), perhaps referring to the presence
of the other in contemporary London, rather than safely
contained in a distant land. The mixed response reflects
cultural anxieties concerning the invasion of England by any
number of various others, from "foreign radicals" (Wcissman.
Half Savage 191) to monopoly capitalists (Morelti 74-75).
There can be no doubt that Dracula*s immigration is an
invasion, for Dracula is established early on as one of a
long line of conquerors (24ff), and later refers to his
military skill in direct relation to his plans for England.
telling Mina that he has "commanded nations, and intrigued
for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before (the
heroes] were born" (288); the simultaneous invocation of

73
intrigue and combat again calls to mind the twin images of
poison and wolves, respectively. Dracula, who Mina fears
has come to London with imperialist designs (342), later
dsclares: *"My revenge is just begun! . . . . you and others
shall yet be mine — my creatures, to do my bidding and to
be my jackals when I want to feed*' (306). He envisions
himself in control of English society, enslaving its people,
and literally living off them, thus revealing another set of
related anxieties: those surrounding imperialism and the
racial other.
Although Dracula is not himself a member of a colonized
race, but, in fact, a defender of the Christian Church and
European land from the invading Turks (240). Hatlen
speculates that he "has spent so much time guarding the
frontier against the dark, barbaric outsider that he has
become such an outsider: a metaphoric Turk" ("Return" 1 2 9 ) .
Dracula*s position as conqueror, then, is conflated with
that of the colonized, racial other, a threat to cha pure
bôod of England. Despite his "extraordinary pallor5* (18).
he is associated with darkness, in both his consistently
black clothing and his nocturnal habits (Hatlen. "Return"
129). In addition. Mina. upon first seeing him in Loudon,
refers to him as the "dark stranger" (173), and makes no
reference to the pale skin that so impressed her husband.
Dracula is also associated with "a deathly, sickly odour"
(47). which is mentioned more than once. As Hatlen and

74
others observe, the idea that the racial other smells
different, and usually unpleasant, is firmly entrenched in
racist discourse (Hatlen. "Return" 129).
Finally, Dracula exhibits the sexual and physical
prowess which this discourse so often associates with people
of colour, whom it connects with the body, rather than with
the superior intellect. which is reserved for the white
imperialist, and which justifies his colonizing of the
other Dracula"s "penchant for entering bedrooms at
midnight." combined with the traits mentioned above,
"make's] hiru an archetype of the dreaded black rapist"
(Hatlen, "Return" 129). The vampire women, too. are both
exoticized and demon!zed. as types of the "deliberate}lyI
voluptuous" I38) woman of colour. They. too. have a
distinct smell (38) and two of them are "dark" (37). The
profound significance of vampire sexuality will be discussed
later: here, it is enough t<, note the racial characteristics
which Stoker assigns to r.is vampires. Along with sexual
prowess, at least in the case of the male vampire/man of
colour, comes physical strength: although he appears an "old
man" (15) when Harker first meets him. he "sho«v[sJ an
astonishing vitality" (17) as well as a remarkably strong
handshake (15). He is also able to climb down the castle
wall "face down . . . just as a lizard moves" ( 3 A ) .
This an* -al analogy is significant in terms of the
rhetoric of - -ie other, and also occurs in Harker's account

75
of the fair vampiress, who "lick(s] her lips like an animal"
(52) . That the vampires are often presented in animal
terms, and that Dracula is able to command wolves and rats,
as well as to transform himself into a wolf 01 a bat. marks
them as non-human, and therefore other; it also connects to
the discourse of the racial other, who is often seen to have
a "primitive" connection with natural world. When Judith
Weissman posits that Dracula is a rejection of the positive.
Romantic view of nature (Half Savage 197) — a critique
which resembles, of course, the Sadean view invoked by both
Carmilla (270) and Bilder (136) — one possible implication
is that Stoker is refuting the Romantic ideal of the "noble
savage," for in his novel "the power to be one with nature
belongs to evil, not to good" (Weissman. Half Savage 1 9 7 ) .
Dracula"s association with the gypsies, whom Weissman
identifies as "tribal people, the kind of people whose
natural vigor Romantics . . . admired" (Half Savage 197)
also indicates his racial otherness. Although Weissman does
not make the connection, it seems that "(bjy reversing the
Romantic meaning of affinity with tribal people and the
natural world" (Half Savage 1 9 8 ) , Stoker is offering a
critique of the figure of the "noble savage," which others
apparently harmless people of colour through condescension,
rather than through fear, largely because these people are
T h e r e is no need similarly to anin.alize the two "dark"

vampire women, who are already explicitly associated with
the lacial other.
76
powerless to threaten the Europeans who so characterize
them.
If Dracula is a racial other, however, he is also a
racial other with power: the slave turned master, which is.
indeed. Renfield's name for him (100). Dracula thus
addresses the fear of "reverse imperialism" (Senf. "Unseen
Face" 9 7 ) . a colonial revolution in which the conquered
becomes the conqueror. In the discourse of Victorian
imperialism, colonial Africa was "a center of evil, a part
of the world possessed by a demonic darkness or barbarism,
represented above all by slavery, human sacrifice and
cannibalism" (Brantlinger 179). an accurate description of
Dracula"s Transylvania. By immigrating to London, the
vampire is bringing this colonial evil to the "civilized"
world. Further, his lament for the old "warlike days" (29-
3 0 ) . and his subsequent rejection of "a ruin [sic] tomb in a
forgotten land" (321) in favour of ner and vital London,
invoke what Brantlinger claims is the third theme of
imperial Gothic, the imperialist*s anxiety ever "the
diminution of opportunities for adventure and "-eroisra in the
modern world" (230). This parallel places Dracula once
again in the position of imperialist conqueror, as well a*-.
revolutionary colonized.
Garnett suggests that the heroes project not only their
fear of other races, but their imperialist guilt, onto
Dracula (31), so that "what has been done by imperialist

77
Britain will be done to imperialist Britain. The greatest
of nineteenth-century imperial powers is itself to be
colonised" (37). In this context, the hunters" desperate
attempts to stop the invader may be read simultaneously as
the defeat of a colonial rebellion, and as an indictment of
British imperialism, a paradox which may derive from the
fact that Stoker, like Le Fanu. was Anglo-Irish (Leatherdale
215). Brantlinger notes that "[fjor most Victorians - - -
the British were inherently, by 'blood'. a conquering - - -
'race'" (21. emphasis added), a theory which is doubly
applicable to Dracula. who not only possesses aristocratic
imperialist lineage, but literally gains his power through
blood. Dracula*s imperialist discourse, which makes England
its victim, "reads like a grim parody of the 'conquering
race" rhetoric in much imperialist writing" (Brantlinger
234). and is by no means condoned; Van Helsing even views
the vampire's emphatic declaration of his intent to conquer
as a sign of fear 1307). Brantlinger indicates the
arnbiguour and dangerous nature of this rhetoric ishich
"confound[s] racism with the mixing of races, pride in pure
blood «?ith blood-sucking cannibalism, and aristocratic
descent with witchcraft and barbarism" (233).
In general. Brantlinger"s indictment of Dracula"s
confused discourse also applies to the hunters' response to
him. Their group too. although it does not precisely mix
races, contains members who are just as foreign as Dracula:
78
the Dutch Van Helsing and the American Quincey Jlorris. Like
Dracula. these two are distinguished from the English
hunters by their language; Dracula*s English is better than
Van Helsing*s. and Morris speaks a variety of Texan slang
which amuses Lucy (58/. Van Helsing. as we have already
seen, is also connected to Dracula through his arcane
knowledge and his religion, but, since he uses this
knowledge to help Englishmen defeat the foreign threat, he
can be considered an honorary Englishman." Also. "(o]nce
Van Helsing"s knowledge has been utilized and his
enlightening functions exhausted, he is despatched to *.hc
margins of the action, allowing the Anglo-.Saxon race the
glory of the final scenes" (Leatherdale 2 1 3 ) : excluded f«*o*g
the killing of Draculsr. the Professor ETJUSI be content with
"Arthur Holmwood. later Lord Godalming, performs a

similar function as token, domesticated aristocrat. He
contributes his wealth and influence to th? campaign (294.
299, 3 5 6 ) . but is no danger to the bourgeois class at the
centre of the novel. As Morris and Van Helsing demonstrate
harmless foreignness in opposition to Dracula"s position as
threatening alien, so Arthur is the good aristocrat to
Dracula*s evil count, who hoards money and feeds
parasitically on his subjects. As "the 'tamed* aristocrat."
Arthur "accepts the Icgitissacy of saiddie-ciass hegemony."
while Dracula seeks to perpetuate "the historic struggle
between the aristocracy and the oourgcoisie"' (Leatherdsle, .
217). Although Moretti identifies the vampire with
capitalism (74). Dracula is priisarily i; bourgeois novel-
Drncul;* as fluid other, Hatlen note?, can also be identified
with the lower classes (130-31), hut actual ioner class
characters exist primarily. l|fce EilJer. the easily-bribed
Joseph Srsollct. whose phonetic spellir-g confuses Harker
(260-63). or the ship's captain whose excessive use of the
word "bloody" -<so excites Van liaising (31. 18), for comic
effect, .snd ayre thus: just as othered as. out lesa.
•threatening than, the vampire aristocrat.
79
disposing of the vampire women, and he is entirely left out
of the scene of domestic bliss which Harker describes in his
final note.
Morris also does not get the chance to marry an
Englishwoman, being prevented first by Lucy's refusal, and
then by his admittedly heroic death. The American
represents, as Garnett observes, a potential imperial rival
to Britain, as Renfield acknowledges (244). Franco Moretti
goes to great lengths, in fact, to prove that Morris is
actually In league with Dracula. in a plot to capture
British capital (74-75). However. Moretti also notes that
it would be impossible to portray "a product of Western
civilization" (75) directly as a vasapire; accordingly.
Morris is first disarmed, through the contribution of his
distinctly American weapons — Winchesters and a Bowie knife
— to the campaign- He is then killed and "incorporated (as
a valued contributor rather than potential rival) into the
restaoiXised. repurified and fortified power of the 3rltish
ruling classes, in the symbolic person of their heir"
(Garnett 3 7 ) . who is nsxcd after hid O ^ S ) .
Besides the "pride- in pure blood" which they share with
Dracula. the hunters also engage in their own "blood-
sucking." Explicitly- Seward has. as Van Helsing"s note to
hiza repeals, sucked the Professor's blood in order T O remove
the "poison of the gangrene" (112). Symbolically. Van
Helsing sucks the blood of Holrcwood, Seward, and Morris with

80
his hypodermic, although this occurs in order to save Lucy.
Finally. Lucy, initially one of the human community, is
herself transformed into a blood-sucking vampire who. like
the Transylvanian women, feeds on the blood of children.
The hunters also shed a significant amount of blood in the
process of killing Lucy. Dracula. and the vampire women,
violent acts which could constitute the same "barbarism"
Brantlinger ascribes to Dracula in his imperialist guise,
just as Van Helsing"s supernatural weapons can be read as
"witchcraft." which, in the ritual kxlling of Lucy, is
combined with Lord Godalming's "aristocratic descent." the
final ambiguous mixture to which Brantlinger refers (233).
The heroic representatives of England at the height of
its imperial glory in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond
Jubilee."* then, are not so different from the
colonized/iaperiailst threat they seek to destroy. The ways
in which Dracula implements his invasion plan further
confirm the similarities between the self and the other.
His conquest does not depend on brute force alone, although
such force is involved, in the deaths of the Demeter*s crew,
for example. Rather, along with the direct and brutal power
of the wolf. Dracula uses the subtler effects of poison; he
inserts himself into English society through stealth, and
3
1897, the year of Dracula's publication (Garnett 30}.
The various letters and journal entries in Stoker's novel
are not dated by year, so it seesas reasonable to assume a
connection, if only on the b"ssis of attitude.
81
perpetuates his otherness through infection. His knowledge
of English law, and his business acumen, which prompt Harker
to declare that "he would have made a wonderful solicitor"
(31). also allow him to enter England legitimately, and to
hire solicitors and cartage firms. Indeed, his behaviour is
in many ways more legal than that of the hunters (Senf.
"Unseen Face" 9 9 ) . who avoid an inquest into the death of
Mrs. Westenra (150), examine the dead Lucy's papers without
authority (163). break into Lucy's tomb, desecrate her body
(203ff). commit bribery (261. 263. 3 3 4 ) . break into
Dracula*s houses (249. 294-99). and finally commit what
Jonathan, in his realization that if Dracula*s body "fall[s]
Into dust . . . . there [will] be no evidence against us"
(335). actually admits would be perceived as murder.
As the heroes begin to disregard English law. so
Dracula takes all pains to erase his foreign identity,
signing himself "Count de Ville" (273). and studying
English "history, geography, politics, political economy,
botany, geology, law" (19). He recruits Harker as a source
of more information (22). and as an English-language tutor,
because he realizes that his accent distinguishes him -zxosn
the society he is about to invade: "I am content if I as
like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me. or pause
in his speaking if he hear ssy words, to say 'Ha. ha! a
stranger!'" (20). That assimilation will aid his
imperialist cause becomes clear in his next line: "I have

82
been so long master that I would be master still — or at
least that none other should be master of me" (20). It
seems that the plan succeeds, for Dracula can hire a Hansom
cab without attracting undue notice (172). and by the time
he addresses Mina and the heroes in London, his English is
much improved (287-88, 306). The Count's ability to learn
and change, which Van Helsing recognizes (320-21). makes him
an even more powerful ad\*ersary than the passive other,
especially given that his conquest docs not rely on forces
brought with him from outside England, such as his *»:my of
Szgany or the Transylvanian vampiresses. all of whom remain
at Castle Dracula.
Rather, he converts English citizens, beginning, as he
tells the men (306). with Lucy and Mina. This. then, is the
significance of Van Helsing*s remark "the circle goes on
forever widening" (214). a statement which in turn recalls
Barker's earlier expression of his fear that Dracula might
"create a new end ever widening circle of semi-demons to
batten on the helpless" (51)- Dracula's minions will not
necessarily be cultural or racial others like himself, but
like Lucy, and like RenfielsS. will be as English as Jonathan
Harker. who demonstrates his own susceptibility to Dracula's
poison when approached by the women in the castle (33). It
is also Harker who engineers the vampire's entry into
England, as he himself admits: "this was the being I was
helping to transfer to London" (51). Harker's help is. in a

83
sense, Dracula's invitation to London, a version of the
invitation necessary for the vampire to enter a house (240),
and, like that invitation, indicates that the English are
not only corruptible, but in part responsible for the
invasion of their homeland, and the possession of their
women, just as the empire's repression of its colonies was
responsible for their violent uprising- The
repressed/oppressed other, however it is defined, cannot be
that easily contained.
"Dual Life": The Female Other as Angel and Demon
No aspect of Dracula is so much analyzed as the
position of its women, whicf. is also ambiguous, to the point
that critical responses vary from celebrations of Stoker's
feminism to condemnations of his misogyny. Indeed, sexual
otherness and the anxiety that surrounds it connect all
other types of otherness in the novel. and thus make the
fluidity of Stoker's other easier to comprehend. The
sexual anxiety "expressed" in Dracula. both in the sense of
manifestation, and in that of expulsion (Jackson. Fantasy
3 ) . is overdetcrained. and connects the other types of
otherness through the overwhelming threat of violation, and
tsiscegenation. which permeates the text and which must be
Judith Halberstam's article "Technologies of

Monstrosity: Bram Stoker's Dracula" makes a convincing
argument for the "monster Jew produced by nineteenth-century
anti-Semitism" as a similarly unifying, "all-purpose" other,
in that this figure "represents fears about race, class,
gender, sexuality and empire" (337).
84
contained and violently destroyed at the end of the novel.
so as to restore the dominant social order. The women who
belong to this order — and the relationship is largely one
of possession — are its greatest treasure: Garnett calls
them "symbols of the moral, spiritual and racial
'superiority* of England's ruling classes" (30). Thus the
way in which Dracula most threatens English society is to
prey on these women, and more importantly, to corrupt them.
Stevenson suggests that Dracula's bite, figured as a "sexual
union with women like Lucy and MinaJ.J physically
deracinates them and re-creates them as members of his own
kind" (144). If the women represent the "pure blood" of
England, then Dracula. once again, not only drains but
contaminates this blood, reflecting "the ancient fear that
'they" will take away 'our" women" (Stevenson 145).
As in Carmilla. women in Dracula seem to fit into two
categories: the passive and non-threatening angel and the
aggressive and (sexually) threatening demon. The former is
othered by patriarchal underestimation and condescension,
the latter by a violent response to the threat she
represents. Often, critics present Mina as the angelic
woman, while Lucy, particularly after her conversion,
represents the demonic female most obviously embodied by the
thr<se vampire women introduced in Harker's journal (Andriano
111). In fact, these distinctions are not so absolute;
Stoker's portrayal of gender relations is nothing if not

85
complex, and often undermines itself, thus leading to the
contradictory critical responses. Both angels and demons
are, of course, present in Dracula; the boundary between
them, as between t):e self and the other, simply has a
tendency to blur.
The angelic woman Is passive, subservient to men and
requires male protection. In some ways. Mina does indeed
fit this description, being the moral centre around whom the
men literally rally, a "group of loving and devoted friends
kneeling round that stricken and sorrowing lady" (332). a
sentimental scene of Victorian chivalry if ever there was
one. Van Helsing describes Mina as a "pearl among women"
(218). suggesting that, as well as being a paragon, she is
precious and must be guarded. Accordingly, like Lucy
earlier in the novel, and like Le Fanu's Laura. Mina is
initially excluded from the men's plans, on the grounds that
vampire hunter "is no part for a woman" (235)- Although she
finds it "a bitter pill . . . to swallow." Mina has no
choice but to accept their "chivalrous care" (242).
However the fact that this protective isolation is exactly
what makes Miiia vulnerable to Dracula's attacks suggests
that the paternalistic chivalric code the men follow is. in
fact, harmful to the -tromen they would protect, leaving them
unable to face the real dangers of the world, a scenario
comparable to that present in The Vaapvre. with its naive
hero and corrupt society, and in Carmilla. where Laura is
86
similarly helpless. Indeed, the men in Dracula. when they
realize their mistake, agree with Mina's declaration that
"there must be no more concealment" (290). Their new
resolution is once again undermined, however, when they
begin to suspect that Dracula has corrupted Mina. at which
point they once again exclude her (323). and she again
supports their decision (324).
A similarly fluid analysis is possible regarding the
passive, subservient nature of the Victorian "ideal" woman,
which is also in constant need of revision. Despite her
apparent vulnerability. Mina is neither passive nor
helpless. Indeed. In some Instances she seems stronger than
her husband, and she consoles the men on various occasions,
lending them her strength, although her care for them places
her in a maternal role in keeping with the angelic
stereotype, in which women are nurturing and supportive of
their men. So Mina is wife to Jonathan, mother acd sister
to Arthur, and daughter to Van Helsing. She is also kind to
Renfield (232-33). and even expresses pity for Dracula
(308), although it is worth noting that, while the men
admire her wosianly compassion, they really pay little
attention to it. Sympathy for the other is placed in the
mouth of a woman, where it can be expressed and
simultaneously contained, serving more to define Mina than
to affect anyone else's feelings for the vampire. Indeed.

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100
Renfield represents the often feminized state of insanity.
Madness often simply translates as an unwillingness to
87
Harker's response to her pity is the wish to send Dracula's
soul "for ever and ever to burning hell" (309).
Even as Mina fulfils the conventional criteria for
"good" woman in being maternal, supportive, and
compassionate, her strength remains an anomaly- Unlike
Lucy, who seems to have few practical skills. Mina. who is
"an assistant schoolmistress" prior to her marriage (53).
can type and write in shorthand, has a remarkable knowledge
of train schedules, and demonstrates considerable Jeductive
ability. George Stade believes that these are the product
of the "unwomanly" part of her (47): the "man's brain" Van
Helsing identifies (234). Thus Mina is not entirely a
woman, but. in some ways, she is superior to the seemingly
perfect woman embodied by the passive Lucy, who is unable to
resist Dracula. Indeed, the Count himself complains of
Mina's lack of submission, and vows to subdue her:

you, like the others, wculd play your brains
against mine. You would help these men to hunt me
and frustrate me in my designs! . . . . You have
aided in thwarting ma; now you shall come to my
call. When ray brain says "Come!* to you. you
shall cross land or sea to do my bidding. (287-
88)
Despite her strength, however. Mina has "a woman's
heart" (234), and is. therefore, not dangerous; unlike the
Transylvanian vampiresses and the vampiric Lucy, she never
usurps the male role. From the start, Mina integrates
traditional femininity and potential female power. She uses
her talents almost exclusively in the service of men (Stade

88
4 6 ) . a tendency which reinscribes her feminine role and
prevents these skills from defining her as a proto-feminist
or even a VictoxIan "New Woman," although, as Senf notes,
"Mina's intelligence, her ability to function on her own.
and her economic independence before marriage" are
characteristics of the latter ("New Woman" 4 8 ) , traits which
directly oppose the ideal of Victorian femininity Senf
discusses in relation to Carmilla ("Women and Power" 3 0 ) .
Mina herself jokingly suggests that she and Lucy could
"shock!] the "New Woman' with [thcirj appetites" (88), but
her wit regarding the forwardness of these women takes on a
disapproving tone as she continues in reference to Lucy's
engagement to Arthur:
some of the "New Woman" writers will some day start an

idea that men and women should be allowed to see each
other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I
suppose the New Woman won't condescend in future to
accept: she will do the proposing herself- And a nice
job she will make of it, too! (120)
^s Senf observes. Mina "adhere[sj to the traditional view
that sives should defer to their husbands [and] . . . also
ue".--ves xn woman's traditional role as a mother" (Senf.
"New irf~ " < 1 . a -view not necessarily endorsed by the New
Woman, who "felt £*>»e to initiate sexual relationships, to
explore alternativs-*. to ausCla-it. and motherhood, and to
discuss sexual matters" vC-nf, "S£ew fnaan" 3 5 ) . ' Mina.
"Senf notes elsewhere, however. That "nineteenth-

century feminists . . . argued that wctsv-n should carry their
maternal virtues outside the home to the wider public
sphere" (Vampire 159). a project in which, it could be
89
then, remains "a modern woman" rather than a New Woman
(Senf. "New Woman" 45). Her foremost wish is "to be useful
to Jonathan" (53). and she uses all her talents to help the
men in their hunt for Dracula. although the result is that
she. too. is once again contained, and any threat she may
have posed is negated. She gains very little by her
efforts, and. by the novel's end. has been silenced --
Harker has the last word — and reinscribed in the role of
mother. To quote Weissman: "to be saved she must leave most
of her modernity and all of her independence behind, and be
reborn as a good Victorian angel-in-the-house" (Half Savage
205).
Lucy. by contrast, appears to be just such an angel
from the beginning. While Mina's active independence
directly opposes the languorous passivity of the Victorian
ideal. Lucy represents this ideal in cany ways prior to her
encounter with Dracula. and at certain points during her
conversion. She is certainly the more helpless of the twe
women: "virginal, inexperienced, sweet, defenseless, a
damsel in distress" (Stade 39). and as such is the object of
masculine admiration to the degree that she receives, as she
exclaims ecstatically. "THREE proposals in one day!" (56).
Thomas B. Byers notes that men are attracted to passive.
argued. Mina is participating by becoming "a mother-figure

to all the other characters in the novel" (Senf, "New Woman"
46). If. on the other hand, one considers these other
characters as part of an extended family. Mina's traditional
position remains unaltered.
90
dependent women partly because they "can more easily believe
in their own superior strength of character if the women
play the role of "weaker" vessels" (154). As well as
demonstrating how the other functions to define the self.
Byers's assessment expx-iins why the heroes are so
overwhelmingly attracted to Lucy, -vho Is nowhere more
beautiful than in death, the ultimate passive, silent state.
Auerbach notes that "Victorian culture abounds in icons of
beautiful corpselike women and In women . . . who arc
transfigured in trance, sleep, lifelike death or embalmed
life" (41). Like the languorous Laura. Lucy grows more
beautiful as her mysterious illness progresses and her
beauty culminates in her death. Seward remarks that "death
had given back part of her beauty" (162), and "even the
woman who performed the last offices for the dead" tells him
that "'she makes a very beautiful corpse"" (162). A similar
phenomenon occurs when Arthur kills the vampire Lucy, whose
face then takes on an appearance of "unequalled sweetness
and purity" (216—17). Weak or dead women are non-
threatening, and therefore beautiful, although it is.
paradoxically, this ideal feminine weakness that coakes them
susceptible to Dracula's poison; "weakness makes women
lovcable. innocent, protectable, while at the same time it
is the quality which permits evils such as Satan — or
Dracula — to attack mankind" (Griffin 144).

91
Nevsrtheless. Dracula's men prefer to keep their women
weak. Quincey Morris summarizes the attitude with which the
heroes regard such women in his reference to Lucy, and then
to Mina. as "little girl" (59. 231); they are children to b«
protected, because they are unafcle to care for themselves
(Griffin 146). This position is much at odds with that of
the powerful and demonic vampire-woman, who needs no one's
care, and victimizes the children to whom the angelic woman
is related, in her capacity both as mother, and as "little
girl." It is not surprising that Lucy, who is more
contained within the role of Victorian angel even than Mina.
is irreversibly converted, and can be redeemed only in death
(Garnett 3 9 ) . Lucy's resurrection is truly the return of
the repressed/oppressed in force, to use Hatlen's terms.
Alan P. Johnson contends that female rebellion in Dracula
is justified and has been provoked by the undue

constraints and condescension which have been
inflicted on her by ner society, chiefly by the
men around her and chiefly because the thinking of
the society is dominated by anachronistic notions
of social class and chivalry. (21)
Johnson's argument for a reading of Dracula as a novel of
feminine rebellion and liberation is flawed in that the
women still need the male vampixê If they are to gain any
kind of liberation, as Auerbach implies with speculations on
the potential power an "army of [vampirej women" could
possess "had Dracula survived" (24). Similarly, Dracula's
speech to Mina. quoted above, docs not seem to promise any
kind of radical liberation — Harker has already noted that

the King Vampire tends to command hxs women as he does hxs
wolves (39) — and Lucy appears to achieve her greatest
sexual pleasure while being ritually murdered with a phallic
stake iStade 4 3 ) . Nonetheless, Johnson, who eventually
admits that "Stoker is ultimately conservative" (23), is
correct in noticing the feminine response to oppression, and
it is significant that Lucy, who has been the most confined
— for, as Auerbach puts it "heaven is woman's prison as
well as her sphere" (72) — undergoes the most violent
transformation.
Dracula's greatest effect on women, it seems, is to
convert them into something like himself, not only a
vampire, but a sexual presence, and therefore an even
greater threat. This is the novel's clearest indication of
the fear of otherness, not only that the other will breed
with "our" women, but that he will somehow coxxrupt them;
"there is always the possibility that the chaste Victorian
wife will become the kind of woman her husband both desires
and fears" (Weissman. "Women and Vampires" 4 0 1 ) .
The women Dracula preys on are, then, the victims not only
of wolves who will leap through bedroom windows to ravish
them and take their blood, but of slow poison, which
literally drains them of life, but also converts them into
something manifestly other, and threatening, in the
imagination of Victorian men. Bilder declares that neither
women nor wolves are to be trusted (137). and Dracula's

93
poisonous influence has the effect of turning women into
wolves (Bentley 144). If Mina's practicality is the
positive side of the New Woman, this sexual liberation,
which turns women into the aggressors, is the negative side.
Such women, according to Garnett. are "not merely unwomanly
but un-human" (42). that is. unequivocally other. These
women threatex men directly. They also threaten the
patriarchal family, 1 because "female sexuality is
In all three vampire texts, the vampire poses a threat

to the family as an institution, although there are subtle
differences as to the form this threat takes. Ruthven*s
violent sexuality appears to be sterile, and by killing
Aubrey's beloved, his sister and, indirectly, Aubrey
himself, he effectively prevents the perpetuation of
Aubrey's family line, of which Miss Aubrey and her brother
are the last. Carmilla presents the same sterility, but
here it is coupled with homosexuality, typically viewed by
the homophobic as a threat to the traditional family.
Because she does not need men. either for sexual pleasure or
for procreation. Carmilla is an obvious threat to such a
patriarchal institution. Dracula. too. privileges sexual
pleasure over reproduction, a view which obviously threatens
an institution which ostensibly exists for the purpose of
perpetuating itself through the bearing of children.
Similarly. Stoker's Count, like his counterparts in Polidori
and Le Fanu. not only preys on the dominant society's women,
but manages to feminize its men, rendering them impotent and
ineffectual to the degree that Harker is unable to have a
child until the vampire is dead. Weak, feminized men and
sexually aggressive women, present in all three texts, upset
the male-dominated power dynamic of the traditional family,
thus undermining this family as a dominant institution.
Thus all three portrayals of the vampire other threaten the
family as sacred to the self, although there is one notable
difference in Dracula: Stoker's concept of contagious
vampirism is more easily connected, not only to infectious
sexuality, but to reproduction. Dracula represents above
all the threat of miscegenation not directly apparent in The
Vampyre or Carmilla. This particular threat makes Stoker's
vaispire even more frightening than his predecessors, because
he is more likely to contaminate the pure blood of the
dominant culture, and to make it harder to distinguish
between the other and the self he asy have converted, or
94
insatiable and selfish, indifferent to the decent self-
restraint , the self-sacrifice and suppression of appetite
upon which the survival of the family depends. It is the
very antithesis of Motherhood" (Stade 42-43). Both the
Transylvanlan vamplresses and the undead Lucy prey not only
on men, but on children (39. 211). again threatening the
male line, which is apparentl>' restored with the birth of
Jonathan Harker's son (378), "a baby which is named for all
the men who had participated in the quest to destroy Dracula
. . . almost as though . . . the child is the product of an
asexual social union rather than . . . a sexual union
between one man and one woman" (Senf. "New Woman" 4 6 ) .
Thus, the experience of motherhood paradoxically negates
Mina's sexuality even further.
Lucy's conversion, and, even more so. Mina's partial
transformation, indicate that the greatest angels, for so
both the women seea to be. can potentially become demons.
To return to the hazardous ideal Gail B. Griffin discusses,
"if woman's capacity for virtue Iher perceived weakness]
indeed, fathered.
9Provided, of course, that further negation of the
sexuality of a woman who believes it "very Improper" for her
husband to take her arm in public (171). is possible.
Stephanie Deaetrakopoulos believes that the married Mina's
sexual knowledge protects her from complete seduction by
Dracula: however. I tend to agree with Mary K. Patterson
Thornburg. who maintains that, because of Harker's illness
following his Transylvanlan ordeal, followed by her own
"unclean" state after Dracula's attack. Mina's marriage
remains "unconsusrnated until after the major events of the
novel have taken place" (24).
95
contains her capacity for vice, she is always suspect,
dangerous" (144). Harker believes "there is naught in
common" between the Castle Dracula's female "devils of the
Pit" (53) and Mina, but even she suggests that "some of the
taste of the original apple . . . remains still in our
mouths" (183). although the fact that she thinks this is
oi»ly o.:c among many Indications that she is "an accomplice
in her own continued repression" (Wood 183). Still, there
is a fine line between angels and demons, and Lucy in
particular crosses it repeatedly — first fluctuating
between sleep and waking, "undying* and dying (152-53)
during her conversion, then transforming from a beautiful
dead woman to a demonic undead one. yet still recognizable
as "a devilish mockery of Lucy's sweet purity" (214).
Seward describes her appearance in the cemetery: "we
recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra.
but yet how changed. The sweetr-ess was turned to
adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous
wantonness" (211). After Arthur hasxac* *• the stake through
her heart, of course. Lucy reverts once more to her
"unequalled sweetness and purity" (216-17).
This fluctuation, however, is only an extreme version
of the latent duality of Lucy's own nature. Traditionally,
as Senf notes, the vampire cannot enter without an
invitation; he "cannot influence a human being without that
oerson's consent" J"*"nsecn Face" 98). Senf's observation

96
that "although perfectly capable of using superior strength
when he must . . - (DraculaJ usually employs seduction,
relying on the others' desires to emulate his freedom from
external constraints" ("Unseen Face" 98) illustrates the
privileging of corrupting poison over wolfish violence when
it comes to his female victims. By compelling the wolf.
Bersicker, to break through Lucy's window, Dracula is able
to enter her room without being literally invited (143):
however, Lucy, as many critics have noticed, shows demonic
potential, which can be read as a figurative invitation to
further corruption, early in the novel- In her second
letter, for example, she writes of telling Morris she is not
"broken to harness at all yet" (58); she also speculates on
what she would do if she were a man (57). foreshadowing her
later usurpation of aggressive masculine sexuality.
Finally, she calls herself a "horrid flirt" (58) and
expresses the "heretical" idea of marrying three men (59).
suggesting a sexual promiscuity unacceptable in Victorian
angels. The blood transfusions reinforce this notion,
because they both clearly establish the connection between
blood exchange and sexual intercourse, and explicitly make
Lucy a "polyandrist" (176). Lucy's somnambulism is also
suspect, further indicating what Day calls "erotic
That the transfusions also render Van Helsing a

"bigamist" is less relevant, since the sexual conduct of men
is under less scrutiny, and because his own wife is
presumably, and significantly, insane.
97
restlessness" (146). She initially goes *o Dracula more-or-
less voluntarily, although literally unconsciously, as she
sleepwalks to the suicide seat: Mina is significantly
concerned "for her reputation in case the story should get
wind" (92). Mina. by contrast, is attacked in the perceived
safety of her own bedroom, and in the company of her
husband.
Lucy also appears to enjoy her nocturnal trysts: after
rescuing her from the cemetery. Mina says she "seems more
restful than she has been for some time" 192). While Lucy
is refreshed by Dracula's visits. Mina. by contrast, becomes
more passive, and more dependent on her "good brave men"
(311). Lucy remembers only that her experience was "very
sweet and very bitter" (98). while Mina. when she realizes
what has happened, refers to herself as "unclean." and
essentially accepts blame for something that could be
correctly figured as rape (284). She is also obviously
worried that she will infect or poison Jonathan: hence her
exclamation "I must touch him or kiss him no more" (284).
Finally, Mina requests that, should she die while still
"unclean." the men should "drive a stake through [her] and
cut off [her] head" (331). actions which, when performed on
Lucy earlier, also suggest rape (Bentley 30)- The text
approves Mina's feelings of guilt by presenting an "injured"
Jonathan (287). and through the host's caustic effect,
which, as Griffin notes, resembles not only the scar her
98
husband has left on Dracula's forehead, but also the scarlet
letter of adultery (146).
The brand on Mina's forehead implies that she is at
fault; however, although she "IdoesJ not want to hinder
iDraculaJ" (287), she also acknowledges that her lack of
resistance is the result of the vampire's power- Mina's
speculation that "it is part of the curse that this happens
when his touch is on his victim" (287) indicates xhzx issues
of consent are complex here. Men can choose to be vampires,
but women are what men make them, whether it is through a
vampire bite that converts the angel into a demon, or
through the condescending patriarchal chivalry that both
creates that angel and leaves her vulnerable, and thus non-
threatening- In fact, the vampire's attack may serve as a
form of wish-fulfilment for mortal men faced with strong
women like Mina. Although Weissman argues that Mina's
"liberty is her undoing, for Dracula gets to her when she is
unprotected. From then on she becomes weaker, more passive,
more listless — more a conventional Victorian woman" (Half
Savage 205). it seems more likely that Mina's undoing is the
result of negligence on the part of the men who fail to
protect her. Whether their ignorance is deliberate is
doubtful: however. Mina's victimization serves their
purposes by rendering her more in need of protection, and by
giving them an endangered icon around which to rally.
Women, it seems, are currency, the prize in the game between
self and other. As Hollinger observes: "in their passive
receptivity, women are at once the susceptible mediators
through which the Other may penetrate into human territory
and the spoils of war which fall to the victor in this
battle between Good and Evil" (152).
Apparently, then, it is the novel's women who are most
easily corrupted, most easily poisoned, as it were. The
crew of the Demeter is killed outright, as is Mr. Swales,
who dies of a broken neck. Even Quincey Morris dies
relatively cleanly. The men seem to be the victims of the
direct attack that results in death, which I have connected
to the solves of Harker's delusions, the animals that kill
brutally but quickly, as opposed to the poison that
gradually corrupts. However, the men in Dracula are far
from incorruptible.
"Stalwart Manhood": Failed Masculinity and Homosocial Desire
The most obvious example here is Renfield, whose mind,
already alienated, is enslaved by Dracula. to whom he refers
as hxs "Master." Renfield is Dracula's disciple; because of
his habit of eating flies and other animals. Seward calls
him a "zoophagous (life-eating) maniac" (70). a term that
accurately describes the vampire as well. Renfield is also
connected to animals, and to blood-drinking (141). Despite
his gender, however. Renfield is more a representative of
the condition of madness in general, rather than of
masculinity: if Dracula represents male power gone mad.

100
Renfield represents the often feminized state of insanity.
Madness often simply translates as an unwillingness to
conform to social codes — as does evil. Hence, the
feminine demon, the madman, and the vampire. Insane even
before he encounters Dracula, Renfield is susceptible to
Dracula's influence, as are the women, who are already
"othered," defined as vulnerable, and as much contained by
these definitions as is Renfield by his straight-waistcoat
and his cell in Seward's madhouse.
Consequently, it is more interesting to note the
poisonous effects of the vampire on the novel's heroes, who
appear at first to represent various social norms, forming
what Waller calls a "moral community" (343), composed of the
aristocrat, the doctor, the middle-class solicitor, the
American man of action, and Van Helsing. the "Renaissance
man" (Waller 34) who plays the roles of priest, magician and
father, among others. Despite their apparent, and often
tedious, normality, or perhaps because of it — in many ways
Stoker's men are as naive as Polidori"s Aubrey — the heroes
are very much susceptible, for example, to the same illicit
desires that characterize the female response to the male
vampire. Twice Van Helsing must step between Arthur and his
newly amorous fiancee, who is clearly trying to convert him
into an other like herself: "leave these others and come to
me . . . . Come, and we can rest together" (211). she urges-

101
Male vulnerability is even more obvious in Jonathan
Harker's response to the vampire women in Castle Dracula.
Deliberately ignoring the Count's warning. Harker wanders
through the castle and "determineIs 1 not to return . . . to
the gloom-haunted rooms" f.?7) but to sleep instead in "the
portion of the castle occupied in bygone days" (35). This
decision again alludes to the tradition that vampires must
be invited into the homes of their victims, and thus again
makes Harker complicit. He describes the scene as follows:
in the moonlight opposite me were three young

women. . . . 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. . . . I lay quiet,
looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of
delightful anticipation . . . . There was a
deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling
and repulsive. . . . IT]he skin of my throat began
to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that
is to tickle it approaches nearer — nearer. I
could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips
on the supersensitive 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 a beating heart.
(37-38)
Nowhere else in the novel is there such a clear description
of a vampire attack and the ambivalent response it provokes-
From his opening description, in which the vampires* deadly
teeth are "pearls," later a positive metaphor used by Van
Helsing to describe Mina, the very thought of whom here
inspires guilt in her husband, Harker alternates between
fear and desire, attraction and repulsion in a manner

102
reminiscent of Laura's relationship with Carmilla. In this
case, the desire is even more frightening than the fear;
wolves can be defeated with Winchesters, and rats with
terriers, even women with phallic stakes, but how does one
cope with the enemy within oneself?
Even more significant is the fact that Harker's role
here is decidedly feminine- Like the naive young women who
fall prey to Ruthven, and like Laura. Harker lies back upon
the couch, "peering out from under the eyelashes las] . . .
one has popularly come to expect from any coy female who
docs not wish to 'encourage* her lover" (Leatherdale 148)
and prepares to be ravished, to be penetrated by those "two
sharp teeth" (38). The situation's allusion to another
culturally significant tale, that of Bluebeard's wife,
establishes the reversal of gender roles from the outset,
casting Harker as the foolish woman who ignores the warnings
of her (male) superiors, only to be horribly punished
(Schechter 244-46). In this case, though. Harker is, like a
fairy-tale princess, rescued by a man: Dracula. who storms
into the room with the anger of a father discovering his
Although Harker is grappling with his own desire —

the other in himself — his experiences are not exactly
comparable to the effect I have termed poisonous, because
there is no element of conversion. Unlike Dracula in his
attacks on women, the vampiresses do not appear to transform
their victims into vampires. Like Carmilla. they are more
interested in pleasure than in reproduction. By contrast,
Dracula's attack on Mina. while wolfisL in its violence, is
poisonous in that it corrupts her. rendering her "unclean."
The distinction between wolves and poison is never entirely
clear, however; both appear wherever there is blood.
103
daughter's virtue is about to be compromised. "'How dare
you touch him. any of you?*" he thunders: "'Beware how you
meddle with him. or you'll have to deal with me*" (39).
Lucy suggests that "women are such cowards (theyJ think a
man will save Ithem] from fears, and ltheyJ marry him" (57).
and indeed, after the incident with the vampiresses. Harker
himself looks to the Count for protection, much as a woman
might look to her father or husband (36). He also
recognizes his position in the castle as a feminine one.
when he resolves to risk death by trying to scale the castle
wall rather than staying with "those awful women" because
"God's mercy is better than that of these monsters, and the
precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep --
as a man" (53). Dracula not only complicates the rigid
distinctions between the angelic and demcnic feminine, then,
but the very boundaries between self and other, as culture
defines them as masculine and feminine, respectively
Although encounters with the vampires, particularly
those aggressive female ones with masculine traits, most
'Stade not.;s that the scene parallels that in which

Van Helsing similarly interrupts Lucy's seduction of Arthur
(38).
As Christopher Craft notes, this gender instability

is characteristic of vampires; "the vampire mouth
equivocates, giving the lie to the easy separation of the
masculine and the feminine. . . . (It] fuses and confuses .
. . the gender-based categories of the penetrating and the
receptive" (169). Perhaps confusion about gender
boundaries, like the vampire's excessive sexuality, is
contagious.
104
explicitly reveal the feminine side of Stoker's heroes,
their masculinity is questionable in other situations.
Indeed, the novel struggles as hard to define and control
manhood as it does to restrict women to the ciasculinist
roles of angel and demon, and with the same limited success.
The self needs the other in order to define itself, and
masculinity is. for the heroes, defined in relation to
femininity. Stoker's men, then, establish their own
identities in response to women, whether that response is
chivalric care, (repressed) desire, or outright fear.
Unfortunately, the definition of femininity, itself
constructed, is. as I have noted above, fluid, particularly
under the destabilizing influence of the vampire. Thus, any
attempt to establish a fixed definition of masculinity is
likely to be undermined, a consequence which necessarily
produces considerable anxiety in the heroes. There may be
more at stake for them than the welfare of humanity or even
the purity of Mina: their own self-definition — as men.
Thus it is that Godalming loses much of his masculinity
over Lucy's death. Seward observes that "even his stalwart
manhood seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of
his much-tried emotions" (168). and this speculation is
confirmed when Godalming breaks down In his presence, even
to the extent of throwing his arms around the doctor, and
"la[yingj his head upon [Seward's] breast" (168). Early
remarks regarding the "laconic" Quincey Morris (204, 238),

105
the epitome of the strong, silent male stereotype who "even
manages to die in manly silence" (Howes 111), indicate that
Arthur's behaviour is unbefitting a real man. Also grief-
stricken as Lucy's unexplained illness worsens. Morris is
able to use "all the manhood of him — and there was a royal
lot of it. too — to keep . . . from breaking down" (151).
only shortly after Van Helsing has described him as "a man.
I*
and no mistake " (149).
If control of the emotions defines masculinity, and
Godalming*s shrinking manhood suggests impotence. Harker's
"brain fever" has the same connotations. After his escape
from Castle Dracula. Jonathan is raving (99). apparently
irrationally, and again madness is connected to helpless
femininity- Here it is Mina who nurses him back to health.
She Is able to restore her husband's lost manhood, a fact he
all but admits when he reveals that her showing him Van
Helsing*s letter, which she has obtained by giving copies of
his diary to the professor, has "made a new man of [him]"
(187). whereas before he "felt impotent" (188). Mina's
efforts not only establish her as the stronger partner, but
Seward seems particularly interested in the size of

the other protagonists' "manhood-" In addition to the two
remarks made above, both of which are in his journal, the
doctor refers to the "strong young manhood which seemed to
emanate from [Arthur]" (121), and looks forward to meeting
Harker from whose Transylvanlan journal he has received the
impression of "a good specimen of manhood" (225). Whether
Seward's preoccupation is the result of latent homoerotic
desire — to be discussed later — or simply of insecurity
regarding his own masculinity, is open to debate.
106
somehow justify Jonathan's breakdown. In much the same way
that her care makes Arthur's second outburst more socially
acceptable.
If "in such cases men do not need much expression"
(168). as Seward says when trying to comfort his distraught
friend in a way that does not threaten his own masculinity,
a man can safely express his emotions in the presence of a
woman, whose stereotypical role involves caring for him. as
much as his involves protecting her. Consequently. Arthur's
second breakdown, which takes place in Mina's presence.
Morris having left the room "with instinctive delicacy."
does less to unman him: as she says, "there is something in
woman's nature that makes a man free to break down before
her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side
without feeling it derogatory to his manhood" (229)- Once
again, the stereotypically nurturing woman determines what
is acceptable masculine behaviour. Mina describes Arthur's
conduct as "hysterical" (230). a tera Seward uses earlier to
describe Van Helsing*s uncontrollable laughter: "he gave way
to a regular fit of hysterics . . . and laughed and cried
together, just as a wozsan does" (174). However, srhile
Seward's use of the term — significantly associated with
the feminine — is derogatory. Arthur's hysterics are
transferred through Mina. who comforts both him and her
husband not as a strong man protects his wife — indeed,
Seward suggests the correct response to female hysteria
107
involves "sternness" (174) -- but in a maternal fashion.
Arthur cries "like a wearied child." and Mina feels "this
big sorrowing man's head resting on [her], as though it were
that of the baby that some day may lie on [her] bosom, and
. . . strokeis] his hair as though he were [her] own child"
(230). Just when it seems that this infantilization poses
another threat to Arthur's masculinity, given that women
often play the child's role, the context shifts again: he
and Mina become brother and sister (230). However. Mina's
remark. "I never thought at the time how strange it all was"
(230). confirms the reader's belief that the heroes, despite
all efforts to the contrary, cannot quite fulfil traditional
masculine roles. Given Arthur's frequent breakdowns. Van
Helsing*s hysterical outbursts. Seward's constant
questioning of his sanity. Harker's actual descent into
cental instability. Morris's bad aim not to mention his
death, and their combined failure to notice Dracula's
attacks on Mina. the escn In Dracula are strangely
ineffectual if one judges them by the traditional masculine
criteria Stoker sceas to be establishing.
While some critics suggest that the sexual threat in
Dracula is a purely heterosexual one (Deesetrakopoulos 103;
Leatherdale 156). this sceas simplistic given the feminizing
of the male heroes. Christopher Craft notes that Victorian
conceptions of homosexuality defined it as "sexual
inversion" (172). explained as "a congenital abnorsality by
108
which a female soul had beco=e united with a male body"
(173) so that "a male's desire for another male, for
Instance, is from the beginning assumed to be a feminine
desire referable not to the gender of the body . - . but
rather to another invisible sexual self composed of the
opposite gender" (174-75). Because such a definition
"understands homoerotic desire as misplaced heterosexuality"
(Craft 175). it is entirely possible for a text such as
Dracula to represent the threat of homoeroticissi from within
a "sexual framework [that] is rigidly heterosexual"
(Leatherdale 156). According to Craft, Dracula "does not
dismiss homoerotic desire and threat: rather it simply
continues to diffuse and displace it" (171).
Although Dracula hiisself appears to feed on. seduce and

convert women by preference, while his male victiess are
dispatched by direct violence, as with Swales and Renfield.
and. indirectly. Morris, none of whom loses any blood to
hisa. and none of whom becoaes a vampire, hoaoeroticism is
present in a disguised forsa. Craft writes: "all erotic
contacts between esales. whether directly libidinal or
thoroughly sublimated, are fulfilled through a saedlatisig
female, through the surrogateon of the other, "correct"
Rather. Dracula docs not dismiss male hossoerotic

desire and threat: lesbianism, it seems, is too unthinkable
even for a text which, beside male homosexuality, manages to
represent, according to Leatherd2le"s inventory, "seduction,
rape, necrophilia, paedophilia, incest, adultery, oral sex.
group ;-x. senstruation. venereal disease, [and] voyeurism"
(146).
109
gender" (176). thus maintaining the rigid heterosexual
framework which, from the critical response, appears to be
an effective mask. Once again. Dracula appears to be the
focus of this anxiety concerning the homosexual other, the
most obvious examples occurring during Harker's imprisonment
in his castle, with Its "dark passageways, locked rooms, and
taboo areas . . . suggestive of the anal-exotic [sic]"
(Hanson 337). The only time Dracula directly threatens one
of the heroes with the scxualized loss of blood that is
vampirism is when Harker cuts himself while shaving: "when
the Count saw oy face, his eyes blazed with a sort of
demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at ay throat"
(26). Only the crucifix Harker wears saves him here- The
same critics who see Dracula as exclusively heterosexual try
to downplay this scene as either a casual Interest, which
the vocabulary clearly contradicts, or as a momentary loss
of control on Dracula's part (Roth 62). However, there are
other indications of Dracula's desire for Harker. The scene
with the worsen those same critics often call his "brides" or
"daughters." although there is no indication that this is
their position. also puts Harker in the position of
potential prey for, and thus lover of, the Count, whose
The relationship of these wossen to Dracula also

relates to sexual taboos and unstable boundaries; if. as
Dost critics assume. Dracula has turned them into vampires,
they are both his brides and his daughters, because, as
Stevenson realizes, varapiric sexuality "collapse[sj the
distinction between sexual partners and offspring" (143).
110
interruption of the scene takes the tone not only of
protective father but of jealous lover- The line most
quoted by those who subscribe to homoerotic readings of
Dracula confirms such an interpretation: "This man belongs
to me!" (39). Harker himself recognizes his position when
he writes "to him alone I can look for safety, even though
this be only whilst I can serve his purpose" (36), but what
is not acknowledged is that the purpose Harker may serve for
Dracula may not be entirely in the capacity of solicitor-
Rather, it may be a sexual one, signified, again, by the
scene with the vampire women, in which "the Count turn[sJ.
after looking at [Harker's] face attentively, and sa[ys] in
a soft whisper: — "Yes. I too can love*" (39). The
castle's threat to Harker's masculinity is not only embodied
in its female vampires, it seems, and Dracula threatens not
only his position as a man. but as a heterosexual man.
Freud's theory that a paranoid "sense of persecution
represents the fearful, phantasaic rejection by recasting of
an original homosexual (or even merely homosoclal) desire"
(Sedgwick. Between Men 91-92). so that attraction to another
can is recast as hatred which is projected onto the desired
17Howes notes that the log entry of the Demeter * s

captain — "the mate was right to jump overboard. It is
better to die like a man" (85, emphasis added) — parallels
Harker's decision to brave the cliffs rather than the
inhabitants of Castle Dracula, and indicates the same
anxiety concerning same-sex penetration, "and therefore [the
deaths of the sailors] are admitted but suppressed by the
narrative, which implies but does not describe them" (107).
Ill
man, creating the fantasy of persecution, is also relevant
to Dracula. While Harker's hatred of Dracula is obviously
motivated by either protectiveness of Mina. or jealousy of
Dracula's relationship with her. its vehemence outdoes even
that of Lucy's suitors, whose love-interest the vampire has
actually killed. He exclaims: "I care for nothing now - . .
except to wipe out this brute from the face of creation. I
would sell my soul to do it!" (303). Harker's particular
hatred, then, may be fuelled by more than love for his wife.
Indeed the most explicit assault on her again places him in
a feminized position, not only unable to rescue his wife,
but specifically lying on the bed "his face flushed, and
breathing heavily as though in a stupor." as Seward
describes it (281). Harker seems to be in a state of post-
coital exhaustion, which again suggests his potential
relationship with Dracula. and that his hatred of the Count
is either a mask for his desire or the result of the need to
be revenged, not only for the violation of his wife, but for
the threat to his own masculinity-
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's application of Freud to Gothic
novels of same-sex persecution may also explain Van
Helsing's seemingly unmotivated pursuit of the vampire, for
it is clear that the Professor admires Dracula, referring to
him as "in life a most wonderful man" (302), with multiple
talents reminiscent of. though different from. Van Helsing's
own credentials of "M.D., D.Ph.. D. Litt., etc., etc."
112
(112), for Dracula in life was "soldier, statesman and
alchemist — which latter was the highest development of the
science-knowledge of his time" (302). Despite this affinity
for Dracula, whom he resembles in his scientific knowledge
as well as his "mighty brain, learning beyond compare, and a
heart that knew no fear and no remorse" (302). Van Helsing,
like Harker. expresses the "necessity to utterly stamp him
out" (301-02). Indeed he protests too much, telling Mina
that his pursuit of Dracula is> "necessary — necessary —
necessary!" which the repetition surely is not (319).
Van Helsing also resembles the Count in terms of his
age, certain aspects of his physical appearance and his
occult knowledge. Sedgwick notes that the paranoid Gothic
generally involves "neatly demarcated pairs of doubles"
(Between Men 113), and that another possible form for the
recasting of the sentiment "I (a man) love him (a man)"
(Epistcmology 161) is "I do not love him, I am him"
(Episteroologv 162); Van Helsing's relationship to Dracula
may fall into this category. Harker, of course, is also
Dracula's double, but his relationship is defined by an
exchange of powerJ as the Count gets younger and stronger
(51), Jonathan gets older and weaker, as his changing hair
colour indicates (301). It is almost as if. as Leatherdale
suggests, "his energy is transferred, via his wife, to the
Count" (114. emphasis added).
113
The fact that the exchange of energies occurs through
Mina is significant; Dracula may actually attack men
directly, but he is more likely, like Ruthven. to attack
them through their women. IS the greatest fear of this group
of chivalric heroes- Besides the connotations of
miscegenation, the men's anxiety concerns another kind of
contamination by the other, one which is also homosocial. if
not homosexual, and is. as Sedgwick and others have noted,
mediated by women in the creation of an erotic triangle.
Besides "I do not love him — I hate him." "I love him"
becomes "I do not love him. I love her" or "T do not love
him, she loves him" (Epistemology 161). If the portrayal of
a male vampire attacking a male victim would have been too
transgressive in 1897, especially given the recent
incarceration of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality (Schaffer
381), such a relationship, mediated by a woman, is less so.
The words of Dracula himself confirm this theory: "your
girls that you all love are mine already, and through them
you and others shall yet be mine" (306, emphasis added).
Certainly Dracula has access to the blood of the heroes, if
not directly, through Lucy's bloodstream, to which they have
all contributed.
ISCarmilla
s too, attacks patriarchal society through
its women, but this is, of course, complicated by her own
orientation. There is no evidence, however, of
'heterosociality' in that Carmilla does not seem xo desire
the men with whom her relationship is mediated by Laura,
although they may desire her. as Spielsdorf seems to desire
her mother.
114
Sedgwick also mentions the use of homophobia, in
conjunction with certain expected relationships between men,
as a tool of social control, "the prescription of the most
intimate male bonding and the proscription of - - .
homosexuality," perpetuating masculinity as an institution
(Epistemology 186), one which DracuJ a consistently threatens
or destabilizes. Once again the male self is defined in
relation to the female other, for, as Craft writes, "only
through women may men touch" (171).
As with the "gender inversion" mentioned earlier, the
potential for homosocial relations among the "little band of
ii;en" (378) is apparent at the outset, before the vampire
appears, and also blurs the distinctions between
heterosexual friendship and homosexuality. Van Helsing's
first memo to Seward establishes their relationship as one
which once involved the exchange of bodily fluids so heavily
coded in this novel <112). The Professor also frequently
declares his love for the younger men in ways that seem too
extreme to be merely paternal (150, 175); similarly,
Scw&rd's affection for him seems more than hero-worship.
Once again, as well as outright expressions of
affection, the male heroes engage in homosocial bonding
through the presence of women, as in the striking image of
Mina at the centre of the quasi-religious tableau (332)
which erases any sexuality even in her relationship to the
men. By contrast, the suitors' respective relationships
115
wxth Lucy unite them in an explicitly sexual context, first
through their proposals, then through the transfusions, then
through her death, with each incident becoming more sexual
than the lar.t. Van Helsing is acutely i»ware of the sexual
nature of the blood exchange when he warns the others not to
mention their contributions to Arthur (128). a concern which
Morris echoes when he urgently asks. "Arthur was the first:
is that not so?" (151). Finally. Van Helsing's reference to
Lucy's polyandry (176) absolutely confirms that "beneath
this screen or mask of authorized fraternity a more
libidiiial bonding occurs as male fluids find a protected
pooling place in the body of a woman" (Craft 188). Dracula
may not vampirize men. but Van Helsing's hypodermic
penetrates each in turn, and then the vampire drinks from
Lucy.
If the transfusions are a metaphor for marriage, as
Godalming, Morris, and Van Helsing variously suggest, then
the killing of the vampire Lucy with a phallic stake is a
violent consummation. Although Arthur, as Lucy's fianc6.
actually performs the act (215ff), the other men play the
part of voyeurs, vicariously participating in what Senf
describes as a gang rape ("Unseen Face" 100). Thus, while
outwardly redeeming his shrunken masculinity by sexually
victimizing a woman, Arthur participates in an intense
homosocial experience- However, this experience, like
Arthur's feminized hysteria, is immediately recontextualizcd

116
as Van Helsing suggests he kiss Lucy's "dead lips" (217).
This heteros-jxualizing of the homosocial experience is also
reminiscent of Barker's immediate shift of focub Xo the
demonic women after his morning—after speculation that "it
was the Count that carried me here [to his bedroom] and
undressed me" (40), and is undermined by the fact that Lucy
is, in fact, dead, however beautiful she may be. and thus
not a really valid sex object- In the staking scene, then,
the male heroes, minus the happily married, and at this
point impotent. Harker, bond with each other, literally over
Lucy's dead body, turning Sedgwick's erotic triangle into an
erotic pentagon with a coffin in the centre-
Although he does not participate in either the
transfusions or the staking of Lucy, Harker has his own
opportunities to reaffirm his masculinity, and they too are
ambiguous. Dracula's death, in which decapitation or
symbolic castration figures more prominently than
penetration (Bentley 30), should be Harker's "ultimate
sexual revenge" (Leatherdale 155). However, because of
Harker's own Intimate relationship with the Count — he is
the only one of the heroes who has actually met the vampire,
and he is the most prominent target of Dracula's direct and
displaced homoerotic desire — the use of his "great Kukri
knife" (376). the phallic equivalent of Arthur's stake, is
more noticeably a homosexual act than a restoration of
Jonathan's manhood. Ultimately. "Harker tears a throat
117
until it bleeds, which is precisely what Dracula did"
(Schaffer 4 1 5 ) . If anything this scene is more homosexually
intimate than the ritualized staking of Lucy; it involves
"personal objects and practical tools" — the Kukri and the
Bowie — as opposed to the generic stake (Waller 347). and
it blurs the distinction between social duty and personal
revenge (Waller 3 4 6 ) . Finally, the scene ends with Morris
dying "with his head on [Harker's] shoulder" (444). which is
significant in that, as Talia Schaffer notes, "while Quincey
rejoices in Mina's snowy stainlessncss. his own body must be
soaking Harker's lap into a sticky pool of blood" (419).
Morris's death not only mars Harker's moment of masculine
triumph, but adds further connotations of same-sex blood
exchange to a scene which already Involves homosexual
penetration. Given the text's homoerotic anxiety, the
understated presentation of Dracula's death is not
surprising.
Harker's final note regarding the birth of his son is
as unsatisfying as his participation in the death of the
King Vampire, being another, not entirely successful,
attempt to restore Harker's masculinity. Although he has
obviously physically recovered sufficiently to father a
child, that child's "bundle of names" (378) proves
problematic. Senf believes that his birth, far from
reestablishing Harker's virility, results from "an asexual
social union" ("New Woman" 4 6 ) ; more specifically, I would

118
suggest. Quincey Harker is the product of a homosocial
union, once again safely mediated through the body of a
woman. Harker writes that his son's "bundle of names links
all [the] little band of men together" (378). and thus, as
Craft notes, "suggests an alternative paternity- . . . This
is the fantasy child of those sexualized transfusions, son
of an illicit and nearly invisible homosexual union" (189).
Indeed. Mina "holds . . . the secret belief that some of
[Quincey Morris's] spirit has passed into him" (378). and
Morris's blood has "soaked into Harker" (Schaffer 419) even
as the two men came together over the homosexual penetration
of Dracula. The vampire's blood exchange with Mina, of
course, complicates Quincey Barker's paternity still
further, because it is through him that she received the
blood of the "little band of men." mediated in turn through
Lucy. In any case. Dracula's blood, as well as that of the
heroes and the surviving good woman, flows symbolically
through the boy's veins. With this consanguinity in mind,
Schaffer believes that "little Quincey Harker can be read as
the child of Dracula's and Harker's mutual desire" (419);
certainly his questionable lineage disturbs an otherwise
closed ending. It seems the line between self and other
remains unstable, despite the ostensiole return to order-
119
"High Duty" and "Savage Delight":
Ambiguous Violence and the Response to Otherness
Indeed, if the vampire represents the bestial other,
whatever determines his or her otherness, s/he also reveals
the other in the self, the potential for self-generated
corruption in the blood of white. Protestant, heterosexual,
bourgeois, male England. The self's potential to commit
unspeakable acts is double, and this is the real anxiety at
the heart of Dracula: whether it is adultery, as when
Jonathan fears to write of his experience with the
vampiresses (57), or the insistence that Godalming must
never know about the other transfusions (128): unspeakable
sex acts, as in Mina's incomplete statement. "I must cither
suffocate or swallow some of the — Oh my God!" (288): or
other crimes still more unimaginable, again alluded to In
Sister Agatha's reference to Harker's dreams. "1 fear to say
of what" (99). The other, then, threatens not only to drain
or destroy the self, but to convert or possess It.
Dracula's bite, like Carmilla's love. Is always figured as
possession; his victims become his, but also become like
him, the most powerful threat of all.
Desire in Dracula is worse than fear, and the correct
response is the immediate projection of that illicit desire
onto the other, who must then be destroyed (Garnett 32) in
order to absolve the self- Jackson refers to the
"expression" of desire in the Gothic novel where "express"
is both the depiction, and the expulsion of "a disturbing

120
element which threatens cultural order" (Fantasy 3 ) . Hence
the need for the violent destruction of the vampire other.
As the examination of the response to women as angels
and as demons shows, however, the greatest threats merit the
most violent response. The fact that the Destruction of
Lucy, followed closely by that of the Transylvanlan vampire
women, is far more dramatic, and far Bso**e violent, than the
death of Dracula suggests that these sexually aggressive
women are a greater threat to the heroes thai* the Count
himself, perhaps because, in the words of Stade. "female
sexuality _ - - arouses men. who are weak" (39). Certainly
Dracula's greatest anxiety concerns the threat of the sexual
other, whether s/he is an aggressive vosan or- an excessively
potent man. both of whom threaten the heroes" stable,
masculine identities. The presentation of this threatening
other, and of the protagonists" response to the threat. Is
ultimately more Important than either the death of the King
Vampire, or the scene of domestic harmony which follows it-
The most memorable scenes in Dracula are either those
which depict the vasnpires" violent sexuality — such as
Harker's encounter with the three vampiresses or Mina's with
Dracula — or those illustrating the huaans* capability for
scxualized violence, most notably the ssuch-analyzcd and
sensationally violent description of Lucy's second death.
While apparently morally justifiable, the hasssering of a
stake through Lucy's heart actually suggests that the circle
121
of righteous vampire hunters is capable, not only of
committing its own atrocities, but of enjoying them. I hope
xo explain this ambivalent depiction of violence, as both a
coral necessity and a source of pleasure, by examining it in
the context of the contemporary response to the violence
reported In Victorian newspapers, and to show how Dracula's
sensationalism undermines its apparently conservative coral
stance.
Icxsediately before entering Lucy's tosb. Van Helsing
and Arthur have a conversation that explicitly puts the act
they are about to corrait in the context of "duty." a concept
that is intrinsic to the vaspire hunters" violent practice.
Arthur at first opposes Van Helsing's request to cut off
Lucy's head, with the words: "I have a duty 10 do in
protecting her grave £roa outrage; and. by God. J shall do
it!" (206). Van Helsing's similarly-phrased response
introduces another, contradictory duty which nonetheless
takes precedence here, and will continue to do so throughout
the novel: "I. too. have a duty to do. a duty to others, a
duty to you. a duty to the dead; and. by God. I shall do
itl" (206-07)- This rhetoric convinces Arthur, and the two
cea, together with Morris and Seward, who narrates the
incident, break into Lucy's tocsb. an act which,
significantly. Seward has earlier believed "as emch an
affront to the dead as it would hav#» been to have stripped
off her clothing in her sleep whilst living" (197). This
122
comparison establishes the persistent connection between
sexuality and violence, which is most apparent in the scene
which follows:
Arthur took the stake and the hazxser. . . . placed
the point over the heart, and as X looked I could
see its dint In the white flesh. Then he struck
with all his might.
The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous,
blood-curdling screech came from the opened red
lips. The body shook, and quivered and twisted in
wild contortions: the sharp white teeth champed
together till the lips were cut and the south was
smeared with a crissson foam. But Arthur never
faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his
untrcsbling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and
deeper the cercy-bearlng stake, whilst the blood
from her pierced heart welled and spurted up
around it- His face was set. and high duty seemed
xo shine through it; the sight of it gave us
courage. . . .
And then the writhing and quivering of the bedy
becasae less, and the teeth ceased to chaszp, and
the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The
terrible task was over.
The hammer fell froa Arthur's hand. He reeled
and would have fallen had we not caught ham.
Great drops of sweat sprang out on his forehead,
and his breath case in broken gasps. It had
indeed been an awful strain on hiea; and had he not
been forced to his task by enorc than human
considerations he could never have gone through
with it. (216)
Senf notes that this scene, "despite Seward's elevated
eaoral language!.] . . . resembles nothing so ssuch as the
. . . group rape and carder of an unconscious woman"*
("Unseen Face" 1001. The morally justifiable destruction of
the vaaspirc, the "high duty," is at odds with the icaagery of
sexual pleasure, apparent not least in the very fact of
Seward's voyeuristic description, with its excruciating
attention xo detail.- Arthur is not the only one under
123
tremendous strain here; the whole scene barely contains a
terrific tension between coral duty and pleasure in
sexualized violence for its own sake, coupled with a need to
keep that pleasure firmly disguised as duty at all times.
This tension is. perhaps, why Arthur Is so affected: he can
barely keep the "high duty" in his face from becoming an
expression of "savage delight." The latter is Seward's
terra, and if Arthur is not enjoying the act. the doctor is
alcost certainly taking pleasure In the spectacle. Not only
does he present us with the graphic description, but
earlier, upon seeing Lucy In her va=plre state, he admits to
feelings not in keeping with the ostensible morality of the
hunters" cause: "had she then to be killed. I could have
done it with savage delight" (211).
Seward"s response suggests there Is oore at stake here
than coral justification, despite the rhetoric Van Helsing
and his disciples consistently employ. Lake Van Helsing's
hierarchy of duties. Seward's response to the suggestion
that they cut off Lucy's head icoediatoly after her first
death establishes a binary opposition between necessary and
gratuitous evils: "why eautilatc her poor body wi thout need?
The dehumanizing of the varspire. who In this scene is

referred to only as ""the Thing." m the body," and "it" is an
Important elessent of both sides of the duty/delight
dichotomy. It obviously reinforces the morality -- this
thing sust be destroyed because it is not human, and
therefore they are justified in destroying I t — but also
emphasizes the sexuality of the violent act, such sexual
violence being based on a dchussanzzing process; Lucy Is.
after all, reduced to fcer body and its component parts.
124
And if there is no necessity . . . and nothing xo gain by it
— no good to her, to us. xo science, to human knowledge —
why do it? Without such it is monstrous" (165, emphasis
added). This is the fundamental distinction, as the hunters
see it, between their own violent deeds, and those of the
vampires; their enemies comait what Waller calls "offensive
violence" (342). while they act. as Van Helsing claims, "for
the safety of one [they] love — for the good of mankind.
and for the honour and glory of God" (321).
However, the distinction is far more blurry, and
nothing, as Waller notes,
better expresses the paradoxical and potentially
troubling relationship between offensive and
defensive violence than the premeditated
transfixion of a sleeping, completely passive (and
for the moment) defenseless female vampire. (342)
For the protagonists, the vampires* violent sexuality.
characterized by Lucy in her seductive and child-devouring
"bloofcr lady" persona. Is truly monstrous, and can thus be
used to justify their own suppression of it. which is
ironically equally sexual, and more explicitly violent- Any
difference between the conduct of the heroes and that of the
villains is, as Waller notes, one "of degree and not of
kind* (353). To quote Senf regarding Lucy's death, "this
kind of attack on a helpless victim is precisely the kind of
behavior which condemns Dracula in the narrators* eyes"
("Unseen Face" 100). However, such hypocrisy had its place
in culture, in the Victorian age as now. Beth Kalikoff
125
notes the increasingly popular belief that "detectives must
use illegal or criminal methods to fight crime" (135). and
cites the fervent support of capital punishment in certain
periodicals, the belief that "violence . . . must be met and
answered by legal violence . . . rough and brural measures
to curtail rough and brutal crimes" (Kalikoff 136). as proof
that "the difference between good people and criminals
shrinks until it is minimal or arbitrary" (Kalikoff 169).
Similarly, Stoker's heroes* use of brutal but morally
sanctioned violence explicitly indicates the instability of
the distinction between good and evil. Admittedly, some
characters seem more conscious of this than others: "1 care
for nothing now . . . except to wipe out this brute from the
face of creation. I would sell my soul to do it!" exclaims
Harker (303). Given that, according to Van Helsing. the
vampire has achieved Immortality through just such a pact
(241), this declaration is remarkably ironic. Harker's
animosity towards the Count parallels that of Seward towards
the undead Lucy, and he anticipates Dracula's destruction
with the same kind of savage delight: "May God give him into
my hand just for long enough to destroy that earthly life of
him which we are aiming at. If beyond it I could send his
soul for ever and ever to burning hell I would do it!"
(309). His sentiments cause Mina to respond in "fear and
horror" (309), as she is aware that, although the violent
destruction of the vampires is necessary, it cannot
126
acceptably be an overt source of pleasure- Harker's
response is hardly in keeping with Van Helsing's rational
justification, and the professor also realizes the tenuous
nature of the distinction between the hunters and their
prey, and the danger they face even in committing morally
sanctioned atrocities: "if we fail here. . . we become as
him; . . . we henceforward become foul things of the night
like l«im — without heart or conscience, preying on the
bodies and the souls of those we love best" (237).
Presumably Van Helsing is afraid of the hunters* being
converted by Dracula if they fail, but the statement has
other implications: of course, it is ironic too. given that
they have only just brutally disposed of Lucy, who was loved
by at least three of them.
Even as the hunters become more like those they would

destroy, however, they "never come to the realization that
their commitment to social values merely masks their
violence and their sexuality," a fact Senf takes as evidence
of hypocrisy on their part ("Unseen Face" 100). In fact,
this process of moral disguise is a cultural phenomenon, as
the Victorian response to sensational newspaper articles
Indicates. Richard D. Altick notes that, during the
Victorian age. "murder was above all a popular
entertainment" (Victorian Studies in Scarlet 302) and that
the typical response was "a delicious frisson rather than a
shudder" (VSS 10). Further, to quote Altick:
127
[i]f one seeks abundant illustration cf the
hypocrisy which has so long been assumed to be
among the unlovelier attributes of Victorianism.
he can do no better than examine a file of a daily
or weekly newspaper which saw no incongruity in
describing the minutiae of the latest murder on
one page and censuring the prurience of the press
on another — a close relative of the technique of
leading off a crime report with the usual
deploring cliches and then getting down to the
real business of the gory details. The moralizing
hand did not want to know how the reportorial hand
offended, nor did it care. |B]oth. . . sought to
give the public what it wanted, an initial brief
surge of decent outrage and then a wholesome
wallow in blood. (VSS 299-300)
This is presumably the characteristic response of the
Victorian reading public to novels such as Dracula. and
again parallels the ambiguous nature of the acts oi. and
responses to. violence within the text itself.
Thomas Boyle, whose memorably titled study Black Swine
in the Sewers of Hampstead discusses Victorian newspapers in
relation to the sensation novel as a force opposing what is
commonly thought of as the "Victorian cult of
respectability" (37), explains the contradictory psychology
at work." By morally dissociating itself from sensational
violence, the Victorian {public could enjoy graphic
journalistic accounts without compromising its
respectability; the insistence on that respectability
actually grew stronger in opposition to the violence
" Although Boyle focuses on the rise of sensation in

the 1860s. his analysis seems remarkably applicable to
Dracula. which The Spectator compares to the works of
sensation novelists such as Wilkie Collins and Sheridan Le
Fanu (150-51).
128
described in contemporary newspapers, which, although
overtly denounced, like the offensive violence of the
vampire, could still be enjoyed, like the moral violence
perpetuated by the heroes, or indeed, like Dracula Itself.
Boyle's description of this "divided consciousness" (196)
not only describes the possible attitude of Dracula * s
readers, but helps explain the text's own contradictions as
well:
Publicly respectable and authoritarian, devoted to

'moderation,* the age was at the same time
obsessed with the unspeakable and unrestrained
excitations of the human organism . . . [Sjociety
in these accounts often appears to be teetering,
privately, on the brink of madness, while
presenting to the outside world .in image of
buttoned-up respectability. (Black Swine 34}
It is necessary, then, to condemn the violence
committed by the obviously other, such as the lower classes
in reality, and the vampire in Stoker. In this way, one's
own violent acts are masked, as Senf suggests, under the
guise of moral justification. Dissociated from the violence
of thr» other, the self can safely enjoy not only accounts of
that violence, but its own violent response.
Such a thought process occurs throughout Dracula, and
does not only implicate the male protagonists. Although
Mina's description of Dracula's death is now.iere near as
sensational — or as sexualized — as Seward's account of
Lucy's demise, she makes one remark that demonstrates not
only this "Victorian double-think," but the very ease and
indeed unconsciousness with which such mental contortions

129
occur. Mina says that she Is tempted to feel pity for the
vampire, but cannot, because "this Thing is not human -- not-
even beast. To read Dr. Seward's account of poor Lucy*s
death, and what followed, is enough to dry up the springs of
pity in one's heart" (228). Here. Mina projects the men's
violence towards Lucy, disguised by the euphemism "what
followed," onto Dracula, thus justifying further violence
against him. and erasing the humans* complicity-
The difficulty of maintaining the necessary degree of
detachment — whether thrcigh distancing oneself from
criminal violence or justifying the violent means used to
oppose it — is readily apparent in Van Helsing's
destruction of the three vampire women at Castle Dracula.
His account not only shifts between the familiar poles of
high duty and savage delight, but occasionally approaches

- - 'I
the guxlt crxtxcs claim the hunters never expeixence."
"Actually, despite occupying a position of authority

within the text's dominant order. Van Helsing is
surprisingly (indeed, suspiciously) aware of issues of
otherness. When he observes, the morning after Dracula's
attack on Mina. that the vampire has "banqueted heavily, and
will sleep late" (351), Wood reads the remark as a Freudian
slip (182). suggesting his "vicarious en-foyment of what
Dracula has done" (183). However, although the smile with
which Van Helsing speaks these tactless words supports
Wood's argument, it is also possible to read them as a
simple willingness to speak the unspeakable. The famous
"King Laugh" speech has much the same effect, for the
professor suggests his loss of control is the result of the
strain his awareness of forbidden themes causes when he
tells Seward "if you could have looked into my very heart
then when I want to laugh . . . maybe you would perhaps pity
me the most of all" (176). Seward asks why, and Van Helsing
responds simply, "because I know" (176).
130
His description of the first woman — "so full of life and
voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do
murder" (369) — suggests with the words "as though" that he
is surprised by his feelings, because the act is, after all,
justifiable. However, he does raise the question of murder,
and it persists throughout his account as he refers to the
ritual staking and beheading variously as a "horrid task," a
"terrible task." to be "dreaded." a "deed of horror."
"butcher work," and "butchery" (369-71).
The connection of the women's voluptuous beauty with
these feeixngs of remorse complicates the scene even
further, re-emphasizing the sexual nature of the hunters*
violence. Van Helsing is able to use the women's appearance
to blame his victims both for his guilt, which he sees as an
effect of vampiric "fascination" (369—70), and for his own
violent sexual feelings, which he euphemistically calls "the
very Instinct of man in me" (370). Thus he overcomes his
remorse, satisfies his desires, and is never, in his own
mind, morally suspect.
The contradictory nature of Van Helsing's feelings is
clearest in the following passage, which abandons any
questioning of his actions for the more standard model of
overt duty and covert pleasure:
had I not seen the repose in the first face, and

the gladness that stole over it just ere the final
dissolution came . . . I could not have endured
the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the
plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody
foam. I should have fled in terror and left my
131
work undone. But it is over! And the poor souls.
I can pity them now and weep. (371)
The last remark, regarding the possibility of pity, is in
keeping with the mechanism of moral distancing which Boyle
describes, and which is even more explicit in Mary K.
Patterson Thornburg*s model of the sentimental/Gothic myth.
Regarding the just punishment of villains in the sentimental
tradition. Thornburg writes:
it allows [the victims and the reader] the same

sort of sadistic pleasure the villain has probably
enjoyed, while freeing them from moral
culpability. For of course it is God or the
Universe or fate punishing the offender, rather
than the offended person, who may now be forgiving
and properly sympathetic. (23)
This last is Van Helsing's explicit response to his
"butchery" of the vampire women, and is implied in Arthur's
kissing of the dead Lucy, "not any more a foul Thing." but a
tragic victim, albeit of the vampire, not. according to the
heroes, of themselves (217).
Contemporary reviews of Dracula demonstrate the same
contradictory consciousness as Stoker's characters, and may
be taken as representative of the Victorian reader Boyle
profiles. Reviewers appreciate the novel's horrid moments;
even The Bookman's, who claims that "a summary of the book
would shock and disgust." admits to reading "nearly the
whole with rapt attention." thus demonstrating a suitable
distance from the morally questionable source of pleasure,
which becomes acceptable because "human skill and courage
pitted against inhuman wrong and super-human strength.

132
rise[] always to the top" (129). Other reviews similarly
celebrate Dracula's ultimate morality, characterized by the
victory of its heroes. Despite the horrors, the reader can
issue a "sigh of relief" after Dracula's death, when he or
she knows "that so dangerous and literally blood-thirsty a
person ha[s] ceased to exist" (Saturday Review 21), and feel
equally comforted when the undead Lucy is "released from
[her] unpleasant position and restored to a peaceful post-
mortem existence" (151).
This last remark, from a review in The Spectator,
strikingly shows that, even if the nineteenth-century reader
was aware of the problematic nature of the heroes'
"justified" violence, to mention it explicitly would be
Impossible, given that reader's own (conscious or
unconscious) need for the same moral disguise; thus, in the
reviewers' minds, at least, the happy domestic ending
regains uppermost, as it may not for the twentieth-century
critic- However, the Pall Mall Gazette's unusually frank,
but slightly defensive, admission of Dracula's appeal
implies a certain anxiety regarding the tenuously safe
appreciation of sensational violence within a moral
framework: "this is a book to revel in. We did it
ourselves, and are not ashamed to say so" (11).
Readers are attracted to Dracula, I believe, not
because of its orthodox morality, but because of the horror
that morality disguises. Because it is not the moral, but
133
the violent sensationalism, that remi.ins with the reader.
Dracula can be read as a critique of Victorian society and
its own psychology of outward morality and unspoken pleasure
in violence. Certainly Senf believes this is the case. and.
moreover, that Stoker consciously exposes "the contrast
between the narrators' rigorous moral arguments and their
all-too-pragmatic methods" ("Unseen Face" 96): while "the
will of the majority enables them to conceal their violence
and their sexual desires from each other and even from
thetrselves [, ] Stoker . . . reveals that these
characteristics are merely masked by social convention"
(Senf. "Unseen Face" 101).
That the text is consciously more subversive than is
usually believed is possible considering Van Helsing's brief
misgivings about killing the vampire women, as well as the
irony produced at the expense of those characters who do not
share even the professor's short-lived awareness. In an
essay which predates his full-length study, Boyle suggests
that "by the 1860s . . . awareness of the retreat from
orthodoxy had become general" ("Morbid Depression" 230),
although he says nothing of widespread participation In such
a retreat. Nonetheless, the knowledge that, during the later
years of the nineteenth century, the double-consciousness
became more difficult to maintain, adds to the evidence for
a radical reading of Dracula. Whatever its conscious
intent, the novel does, through its ambiguous depiction of
134
violence, and the heroes' attitude towards that violence,
blur the distinctions between the self and the other- In
scenes such as those which portray the destruction of the
female vampires, the brutality of seemingly justifiable
violence overwhelms even the conservative effort to contain
the other, causing the reader to question the self Instead.
In the light of the "gross reality" of violent crime in
the Victorian age. Boyle suggests, "one can see the [age'sJ
"hypocrisy* and 'prudery* . . . as justifiable acts of
defensive self-preservation" (Black Swine 37. emphasis
added). This seems an appropriate note on which to
conclude, because the phrase applies as much to the working
of ambiguous violence within Dracula as it does to the
response of the novel's potential readers. Just as the
heroes lsust violently destroy tne vaspire in order to
preserve humanity, so the Victorian reading public needed to
distance itself from increasingly horrific current events,
as well as to erase its own Interest in those events, an
interest which, it could be argued, saade the respectable
Victorian as guilty as the criminal about which he or she
delighted in reading, in terms of taking pleasure in. if not
actually cceoalttlng. violent acts.
The violent repression of otherness in Dracula. then.
Is just as ambivalent :.s the presentation of the other, and
just as open to deconstruction. While the response to
otherness within the text "reinforces social, class, racial
135
and sexual prejudices" (Jackson. Fantasy 121). the text's
own relation to otherness is not nearly so conservative.
While it is true that Dracula "concludes . . . with a
restoration of the "right order'" (Waller 335). Its
memorable scenes, subversive in the very fact of their
depiction, cause the reader to question that order, to
"acknowledge that [it] is. in fact, a specific form of
social and cultural order" (Waller 336). Dracula repeatedly
blurs the distinction between self and other; ulticsately. it
"revolves, not around the conquest of Evil by Good, but on
the similarities between the two" (Senf. "Unseen Face" 93).
136
CHAPTER FOUR
"My Form is a Filthy Type of Tour's":
Otherness in Frankenstein
Unlike the vampire, whose Independent and mysterious
existence is part of the fear he or she inspires, the other
in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is literally a
creation of the self. The reader witnesses the assembly and
animation of Frankenstein's creature." whose orxgxns are
thus never in question. Like all figures of the other,
Unless otherwise specified, all references are to this

edition.
j
"I have chosen this term not only because xt calls
attention to Frankenstein's socially significant act of
creating the other, but because, as well as being a term the
creature himself frequently uses (128. 161). it is less
prejudicial than the equally common "monster." which
Frankenstein hissself employs. Citations where the creature
is referred to in this Banner will, however, be left Intact.
jTfce interpretation upon which I am about to embark
works. I believe, whether one considers the creature to be a
separate entity or a projection of Frankenstein's psyche —
that is. as a manifestation of madness, so that he and
Victor are. in fact, the same person. Textual evidence for
either argument notwithstanding. I tend toward the former.
because it facilitates a reading of the creature as an other
defined by gender, race, class, or political difference.
The fragmented-personality theory seems more Halted to a
psychoanalytic approach with its focus on Frankenstein
hissself. an argument which can be just as easily explored by
interpreting the creature as representative cf
Frankenstein's repressed desires, while still possessing an
existence outside his creator's own mind. For an
interesting, if slightly questionable, discussion of the
possibility that Frankenstein and the creature are literally
one and the same, compared with the approach I plan to take
here, and placed in the context of gender construction, see
Mary K. Patterson Thornburg. "Victor's Divided Personality:
A Case Study.™ pages 81-92 in her The Monster in the Mirror:
Gender and the Sentisaental/Gothic Myth In Frankenstein.
Admittedly. Thornburg"s analysis requires a certain amount
137
the creature is the product of the dominant imagination, in
this case, the mind of Victor Frankenstein, who. from the
first sentence of his tale, establishes himself as the
apparently normal self against which his monstrous other
will be defined. He is the eldest son of a "distinguished"
bourgeois family (63). educated, both at home (64) and later
at the university at Ingolstadt (73ffI. and destined to
marry a woman who is more conventionally perfect, by period
standards, than either of the two in Dracula (65).
demonstrating neither Mina's New Womanly Independence, nor
Lucy's sexual appetite. His rescuer and audience. Robert
Walton, frequently confirms Frankenstein's status,
commenting on his "conciliating and gentle" manners,
"cultivated" mind, and "unparalleled eloquence" (60).
although he realizes that the man he meets is but a shadow
of his former self (60-61>-
Indeed, the definition of Frankenstein's normality is

never unquestionable, and deteriorates drastically as he
of Imagination regarding details not present in the text --

for example, the possibility of an illicit rendcz-vous
between Victor and Justine, which leads to her murder (86).
Thornburg explains the most obvious evidence for the
creature's independent existence -- Walton's sighting the
creature both before he meets Frankenstein and after
Frankenstein's death — as follows: in the first instance.
"Walton saw the Monster at a distance" C89); in the second:
"the cabin was darkened and <as TSalton covered his eyes to
avoid having to look at the Monster, it may also be evidence
that Victor's death was really the termination of the
conscious personality or its final submergence in that of
the Monster" (90). Even Thornburg admits that this reading,
although "tenable." and useful for explaining certain
textual ambiguities, is "limited" (90).
<
138
proceeds with, and confronts the consequence of, his
creative experiment- However, despite Frankenstein's
increasing alienation from the dominant society which has
created him in its own image, there can be no doubt that his
creature is more obviously other to that society, having
been so from the very moment he is brought into existence-
Initially1, anyway. Frankenstein chooses his isolation, while
the human community rejects the creature, who "longs for
society and sympathy" (Claridge 2 3 ) . because he is other-
It is. as I have mentioned, the dominant society which
Frankenstein represents that literally creates the other,
whether its otherness is defined by gender, class, race,
political difference, or, like the creature"sr, by all of\
these. The self is "driven to create by the wil
exercise authority over his Other." in the words of Burton
Hatlen ("Patriarchy" 3 5 ) . and Frankenstein is no exception,
although, In a process that is significant throughout the
novel, he disguises his dreams of power with the rhetoric of
benevolent paternalism: "a new species would bless me as its
creator and source" (82). Anticipating a dependent, passive
creature, then. Frankenstein is startled by his creation's
autonomy, even if the creature expresses that autonomy in so
minor a way as opening his eyes, breathing, and moving his
limbs (85). Although Frankenstein uses the creature's
bldeousness as an excuse for his fear and revulsion, the
fact that he first offers a description of the creature only

139
after its animation (85) indicates that, as Paula R. Feldman
suggests, "what is frightening is not how the Creature looks
but that he looks . . . . Victor . . . can no longer control
it as he did when it lay lifeless on the table" (67).
Indeed, after the death of William. Victor remarks that he
has "endowed [the creature] with the will and power to
effect purposes of horror" (105), implicitly connecting
"will and power" as evidence of the creature's autonomy with
his violent deeds, thus confirming Feldman*s argument.
Certainly, this reasoning provides a possible answer to
the obvious question of why Victor, who has. after all. had
months to become accustomed to the grotesque appearance of
his creature (83), should suddenly find its ugliness so
disturbing. He himself tells Walton "I had gazed on him
while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles
and joints were rendered capable of motion. It became a
thing such as even Dante could not have conceived" (87). If
the creature's "look" is particularly significant in an
analysis of the relationship between the self and the other,
it is in terms of his eyes, rather than his appearance.
This kind of look explicitly turns Frankenstein, previously
absolutely defined as subject in his role of creator, into
the object of the other's gaze. The significance of the
gaze is amplified in its recurrence when Victor later sees
the creature at his bedside, and notes that "his eyes. If
eyes they may be called, were fixed upon me" (87). and in
140
his later hallucinations regarding "the glimmer of two eyes
that glare!] upon [him]," sometimes Clerval's, sometimes
"the watery clouded eyes of the monster, as [he] first saw
them in [his] chamber at Ingolstadt" (208). The look, then,
is significant as a symbol of control; Victor's perceived
loss of control corresponds with visions in which he is the
object of the creature's gaze. During their first
conversation, the creature himself responds to
Frankenstein's exclamation "relieve me from the sight of
your detested form!" by covering his creator's eyes (129).
thus further reducing Frankenstein's control, and
demonstrating his own power, as well as the same relation
between look-gaze and look—appearance present in the
laboratory during the animation scene.'' Frankenstein
reciprocates, reasserting his control by destroying the
creature's unfinished mate when, once again, he notices the
creature at the window. "gaz[ing] on [him]" (193).
George E. Haggerty notes that "Frankenstein feels that
to grant the creature subjective presence would be to accept
his own final isolation and despair" (60), that is, that his
own subjectivity would be at risk if he were tj acknowledge
that of the creature. The shifting balance of power within
the novel confirms Frankenstein's belief that the
De Lacey's blindness also relates to the connection

between the other and the object of the gaze; because the
old man cannot look upon the creature, he literally cannot
see him as other, or make him other by looking at him (160-
62) .
141
subjectivity of the self and that of the other are mutuallj'
exclusive, although the absolute shift of power from
Frankenstein to the creature occurs largely as a result of
Frankenstein's complete refusal to recognize the creature as
subject- Frankenstein sees the creature only as a
"monster." or. to us2 the most obviously objectifying of his
terms, a "thing"; the creature responds violently to his
creator's rejection of him. asserting his own subjectivity
by suppressirg Victor's, so that Frankenstein becomes his
creature's creature. This self-perpetuating cycle is most-
apparent in the creature's demand for a mate, and in the
violent incidents which follow Frankenstein's ultimate
refusal to create a female creature- It is possible to see
the creature's demand as a request for an other against
which to define the self he does not yet have; by denying
the creature "an Other of his own" (Hatlen. "Patriarchy"
42). Frankenstein denies him the possibility of selfhood,
and. consequently, the creature destroys his creator's
family and friends, and in so doing gains control over him.
As the creature gains power, then. Frankenstein grows
weaker, as if "the emotional energy Victor has lost . . . is
transferred, out of Victor's control, to the Monster"
(Thornburg 115). Given this depletion of his energy, it is
appropriate that Frankenstein refers to the creature as "my
own vampire" (105): indeed it appears that the creature is
142
draining him. much as Ruthven drains Aubrey, and Dracula
Harker, without the literal transfer of blood.
An intimate bond exists, then, between creature and
creator, so that any question of autonomous subjectivity
becomes problematic. It is appropriate that Walton speaks
of Frankenstein's "double existence" (61) because he and hxs
creature are indeed doubles, both parallel and negative
images of each other. Both are ultimately isolated,
although for different reasons: both are eloquent and
capable of rational argument, but both experience radical,
often sudden, changes in mood; each loses a prospective mate
to the ether: both are eventually orphaned. This list of
comparisons could go on indefinitely; even in their
vocabularies and habits such as the gnashing of teeth, the
two are alike. Frankenstein refers to the creature as "my
own spirit let loose from the grave" (105. emphasis added),
and, even more significantly, the creature confronts
Frankenstein with the exclamation: "my form is a filthy type
of your's. more horrid from its very resemblance" (158).
This statement, indicating as it does both the parallel
between creature and creator, and the imperfect nature of
that parallel, calls attention to the most important
difference between the two: their relationship is one of
self and other. Despite the resemblance, the creature is a
negative image of Frankenstein, if only because both he and
his creator believe this to be so.

143
Still, the resemblance creates further anxiety, in the
familiar form of the possibility that the distinction
between the other and the self is neither fixed nor easily
defined. Moretti notes that the creature is "described by
negation: man is well proportioned, the monster is not; man
is beautiful, the monster ugly: man is good, the monster
evil" (70-71). Although this is indeed the case, the
creature is never so far from the human as to be
unrecognizable. Walton describes him as "a being which had
the shape of a man . . . " (57). and Frankenstein himself
speaks of his decision to create "a being lxke [him*self"
(82). The creature reminds the humans who violently reject
him of the close relationship between the other and the
self, and their response is, in the words of Anne McWhir, "a
revulsion based on something sufficiently like one's self to
be disturbing" (80).
The most obvious evidence of the creature's otherness
is what makes him a "filthy type" of the human: his
grotesque appearance, which ostensibly causes humanity —
even apparently benevolent humanity, such as the De Lacey
family, to reject him. Frankenstein describes the creature
as follows:
His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected

his features as beautiful- Beautiful! - Great-
God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of
muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a
lustrous black, and flowing: his teeth of a pearly
whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a
horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed
almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets
144
in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion,
and straight black lips. (86)
Although the description never recurs, the creature's
horrific appearance, and its effect on the humans around
him. are reiterated throughout the novel. Such a focus on
the creature's appearance would suggest an essentialist view
of othernesc as somehow natural or biological, if not for
the emphasis on the process of creation, a process which
Frankenstein conveniently and unbelievably forgets when he
immediately casts the creature as his "enemy" (90).
Shelley's text, on the other hand, recognizes that the
creature is literally a collection of bits and pieces, and
thus obviously a construction, rather than a "natural"
phenomenon. As the other created in order to place the self
in a dominant position, the creature faces a characteristic
dilemma: the features which his creator determines such as
his immense size — a deliberate choice on Frankenstein's
part (82). and part of what makes him hideous — that same
creator defines as negative, as grounds for the condemnation
of the other. The dominant society which Frankenstein
represents not only creates binary oppositions, but assigns
a hierarchy of values to them.
An important example of such a binary Is the opposition
between mind and body, in which the former is valued over
the latter. This pairing generally corresponds to the
self/other dichotomy; thus, the self is associated with the
higher or rational mind, and the other with the lower

145
material body. So, for example, women are denied intellect
and defined by either reproductive bodies or seductive ones:
the racial other is associated with the animal, rather than
the human, which is defined, again, by reason: and the
working class is defined by manual labour rather than by
mental activity- The creature's obviously material body
thus connects him to multiple types of otherness. As a
racial other, he is visibly different: as a class other, a
reminder of the materiality of production (Michie 9 6 ) . His
body can also be read in a revolutionary context. as "a
variant of that venerable clichd of political discourse, the
'body politic*" (Baldick 14). In the context of gender, his
hideous body represents, among other things, the fear of
that very sexuality — or maternality — which the male sell
uses to define the female other.
"She Appeared the Most Fragile Creature":

Gender Construction and the Feminine Other
Otherness as it relates to gender is perhaps the most
commonly discussed element in criticism of Frankenstein, for
various reasons. The author's own gender is obviously
significant, as is the fact that her mother. Mary
Wollstonecraft. was the author of A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman, a text which obviously influenced Shelley's
novel- Moving from the author to the text, the novel's
theme of creation is also obviously linked to an exploration
of gender roles- Gender Issues in Frankenstein manifest

146
themselves in various ways, including the position of the
mother, the presentation of the actual women in the text,
the possibility that the creature represents the woman
other, and Victor Frankenstein's avn unstable gender
position.
Vanessa D. Dlckerson suggests that Frankenstein * s women
are "present but absent, morally animate angels, but
physically and politically inanimate mortals" (80)- This is
especially true of mothers in the text, which "provides us
with a series of family units in which every mother figure
is absent" (Marder 68-69). Walton mentions his late father,
and his uncle, but not his mother, whose absence he does not
explain (50-51). Frankenstein's mother, Caroline, is also
an orphan by virtue of the death of her father: her mother,
like Walton's, is never mentioned (64). The Frankensteins
adopt Elizabeth upon the death of her mother, whom the novel
mentions only In the context of her marriage "to an Italian
gentleman." and her death (65). Justine Moritz. who also
comes to live with the Frankensteins. has a mother who
"[can]not endure her" (93). much as Victor Frankenstein is
"unable to endure" the sight of his creature (86)- The
creature's model family, the De Laceys, also lack a mother,
so that the creature, who learns to speak by observing them,
significantly lacks the word for mother, which they do not
use (140). Felix De Lacey's beloved. Safie, had an
influential mother, but she too has died, leaving her

147
daughter under the control of a tyrannical father (151).
Victor's own mother dies just before he leaves for
Ingolstadt to embark upon his monstrous act of creation
(72)- Because the pattern of the motherless family is so
consistent and so insistent, all these absent mothers call
attention to themselves.
Victor's creative act is monstrous, in part, because
it. too. excludes the woman; the creature literally has no
mother, unlike the other characters, who are at least born
of women. Critics have speculated that Frankenstein's act
of creation is an attempt to resurrect his dead mother,
whether he is motivated by grief (Brennan 36) or by an
Oedipal desire (Sherwin 885). While the dream in which the
living Elizabeth transforms into the dead and decaying
Caroline (86) may. in fact, signify that Frankenstein
desires his mother, it also shows the ultimate sterility, if
not monstrosity, of such a desire, and may also demonstrate
Frankenstein's fatal effect on mothers and potential
mothers. That is. rather than the dream-Elizabeth becoming
Caroline in response to Victor's desire, she. who in reality
"dctermlne[s] to take over [Caroline's] duties" (73). dies
in response to the negative aspect of Victor's ambivalence
toward maternality. Despite his obvious attachment to
Caroline. Victor is not as permanently affected by her
death as Matthew C. Brennan, for example, would have une
think. "The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an
148
indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon
the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege. Is not
banished. My mother was dead, but we still had duties which
we ought to perform . . . " (73). he says, philosophically.
Caroline's death also completely severs Frankenstein's ties
with the home, allowing him to enter the masculine sphere of
the university, which, significantly, his father has
determined he should attend (72).
Here too. Frankenstein demonstrates his ambivalence.
His initial "invincible repugnance* for this environment, as
compared to his "hitherto . . . remarkably secluded and
domestic" life, proves conquerable after all. "I had often,
when at home, thought It hard to remain during my >outh
cooped up In one place, and had longed to enter the world,,
and take my station among other human beings.*" he muses
(74). doubtless meaning other men. for the university
community is entirely masculine, and is directly opposed to
the feminine sphere that is the Frankenstein home, for which
Alphonse Frankenstein has "relinquished many of his public
duties" (64). Consequently. Frankenstein severs his
connections with feminine domesticity, and further, begins
an experiment which also enacts his negative feelings
towards maternality by excluding the mother even from
reproduction, one sphere where women have traditionally had
some power, if only as the mothers of male heirs (Bewell
1151.
149
Frankenstein's ambivalence towards the mother is
frequently explained in terms of Shelley's biography,
specifically regarding the death of her own mother in
childbirth, as well as the dcatSa of her infant daughter the
year before she began writing xhe novel SMocrs 95-96).
Certainly the maternal legacy appears lo be one of death.
The self-sacrificing Caroline dies nursing Elizabeth when
her adopted daughter catches scarlet fever, because she
cannot keep herself from playing a maternal role: "many
arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain
from attending upon [Elizabeth1 . . . but when she heard
that her favourite was recovering, she could no longer debar
herself from her society, and entered 5ber chamber long
before the danger of infection was past" 1721. This
compulsive, but unnecessary, maternal concern -- Elizabeth
has "quickly recovered" after all (72) -- proves deadly.
Caroline also Imparts to Elizabeth "everything she had:
a bourgeois father, a mother who dies young, a Prince
Charming, and a view of the female role as one of constant,
self-sacrificing devotion to others" (Ellis 131). and.
having inherited the mother's values, the daughter is
doomed. She almost immediately takes over Caroline's role,
"entirely forgetful of herself" (73). Later, she tells
Victor "I would sacrifice my life for your peace" (122).* a
3
Ironically, Frankenstein himself claims he "would die
to make her happy." shortly before she is murdered by the
cresture (214).
150
statement which comes partially true- Elizabeth does die
for, or because of, Victor, but. just as Caroline died for
no reason. Elizabeth's death in no way contributes to her
husband's "peace." Caroline's influence works indirectly as
well; even her portrait is a legacy of death. It is the
miniature which Elizabeth gives to William, and which the
creature takes from him. that leads to the death of Justine,
who is another "coplyj of the dead mother" (Favret 6 0 ) .
However. the miniature, like the larger portrait
commissioned by Alphonse Frankenstein. Is merely a
representation of the woman as men would see her. The
portrait depicts "Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair,
kneeling by the coffin of her dead father" (106). -rhich
"celebrates both her martyred suffering and her husband's
triumph, as though her pain were the continuing guarantee of
his power. Her death merely gives that paradigm permanent
inscription" (Goodwin 101). as if the painting which places
the woman forever on her knees were not permanent enough.
Of the portrait, under which hangs another miniature, this
one of the dead William. Paul Youngqulst writes: "motherhood
creates a lineage of death that art recreates by idealizing"
(3555.
Despite Mary Shelley's own disastrous experiences of
motherhood, stany of the negative and fatal aspects of
maternality In Frankenstcin say be seen, lake the portraits,
as products of male-dominated society, rather than as

151
biologically inherent evils. Frankenstein's critique of
motherhood, then, is social as well as personal. If nothing
else, the position of mother precludes political power, and
the families in Frankenstein are devoted to the rigid
separation of the public and private spheres corresponding
to masculine and feminine gender roles, respectively. Women
like Caroline Frankenstein devote themselves to caring for
children, even unto death, which leaves their male
counterparts free to attend universities, to travel, and to
hold political office. Finally, motherhood is the most
obvious evidence of women being defined and confined by
their own bodies, which In turn are controlled by men. The
ways In which the novel's male characters view women, as
much as the idea of an inevitable maternal legacy of death,
determine the negative fates of Frankenstein * s women.
The attitude of Frankenstein's men towards women is
most obvious in Victor's creative set. which usurps the
female prerogative. Certainly Frankenstein's project is an
entirely masculine one. with male-oriented science, as Anne
K. Mellor notes, opposed to a traditionally feminine nature
("Feminist Critique" 2 8 7 ) . Mcllor notes that, while
nature's gender remains consistent, in the eyes of men such
as Frankenstein and his mentor. M. Waldman. "she" has ceased
to be "Dame Kind. Mother Earth." a nurturing construction of
the feminine, and has become instead "the passive female
whose sole function Is to satisfy male desires" ("FC" 307).

152
M. Waldman reveals this most strongly with the sexual
imagery in his lecture on modern scientists, who. he claims,
"penetrate Into the recesses of nature, and shew how she
works in her hiding places" (76). Waldman's pupil takes his
words to heart, eliminating the mother, and submitting
nature to an exclusively male view of creation, one Walton's
voyage of discovery re-enacts- Walton too seeks the glory
that comes of inscribing masculine power on virginal,
feminine nature; he wants to "tread a land never Imprinted
by the foot of man" (50). Of the principal male characters,
it is the creature who best relates to nature, which may
account for his resemblance to the woman other.
Mellor suggests that female nature revenges herself
upon Frankenstein ("FC" 309); however, although it is true
that "Frankenstein's desire to penetrate and usurp the
female [Is] monstrous, unattainable, and finally self
destructive" (Mellor, "FC" 309). nature often serves the
Isolated Frankenstein as a restorative, nurturing force,
which, like the women in his life (and the feminized Henry
Clerval). nurses him back to health. The trip to Geneva via
Lausanne has such a restorative effect (102). although this
docs not last long. Certainly Clerval. who prefers pastoral
scenes, like those met along the Rhine, to the "majestic and
strange" mountains of Switzerland (183), is happier in
nature because he does not try xo conquer It, but loves It
153
instead (183). Similarly, nature embraces the creature,
who is better equipped than any of the humans to survive in
an all-natural world (Kranzler 44). He Is charmed by
blrdsong (132). and by the moon (131). a feminine, natural
image which denotes power, not passivity.
To return to Victor's act of reproductive
appropriation, then: it reveals much about his views of
women, but also about the female other's social position.
It is worth noting that Victor's motherless creation merely
makes literal the form of legal reproduction at the time of
writing: descent through the male line. From a political
standpoint, the mother contributed little to the position of
her child. Little, that is. but care and nurturing, which
are significantly lacking in the experience of
Frankenstein's creature.*
ihcse scenes present a feminine image, as opposed to

the powerful, sublime nature Frankenstein favours, which
"afford[s] [him] the greatest consolation that [he is|
capable of receiving" (124). despite the potential threat it
poses, and its relation to the creature, who tends to appear
in awe-inspiring, often mountainous, places. Clerval's
nature, productive rather than destructive, especially in
the text's emphasis on the vintage, inspires "tranquillity"
even in Frankenstein (182), and is Itself serene and
passive. Clerval's static description of the "charm in the
banks of this divine river" (183). for example, contrasts
with the more menacing, dynamic isiage of "the la!<e agitated
by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water . .
. and the waves dash[ed] with fury the base of the mountain,
where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an
avalanche" (182).
Regarding the position of mothers, Alan Bewcll also

discusses the "scientific and medical takeover of the sphere
of human reproduction" by the early nineteenth century
(124), so that Victor's exclusion of the mother from his
154
The position of the woman other is also the result of
an act of creation; male-dominated societj' defines how women
should look and behave, thus constructing these women as
surely as Victor Frankenstein assembles his creature's
component parts. Frankenstein views women either as pets to
be cared for, or as possessions. The fact that, in his
childhood, he "love[s] to tend on [Elizabeth] as . . . on a
favourite animal" (66) belies the immediately preceding
claim that he "admirejs] her understanding and fancy" (65).
Frankensteln does not see his future bride as a person, but
only as an object which exists only in relation to himself-
That he thinks the same way as an adult is evident, for
example, in his statement: "in my Elizabeth I possessed such
a treasure" (214). Frankenstein is not alone in this
conception of women, however: his entire family perpetuates
it. and women are passed from man to man like property.
Victor's uncle gives Elizabeth to Alphonse Frankenstein upon
the death of her mother, and includes a monetary incentive.
carefully Inserted Into a speech which otherwise focuses on
family obligations:
It is my wish . . . that you should consider her
as your own daughter, and educate her thus. Her
mother's fortune is secured to her, the documents
of which I will commit to your keeping. Reflect
upon this proposition: and decide whether you
would prefer educating your niece yourself to her
experiment gains yet another social significance, as does

the view that "Mary Shelley's experience of pregnancy and
loss was not simply a biological matter, but also a social
and discursive event" (Beweil 106).
155
being brought up by a stepmother. (65. emphasis
added)*
When Caroline, who has similarly been passed between men --
from her father to his best friend Alphonse Frankenstein
(64) — dies. Elizabeth takes over her role and is doomed.
because Victor proves as ineffectual a protector as his
father, who comes to Caroline "like a protecting spirit"
(64) after her father's death, but can do nothing against
the fever that kills her.9 Female roles are
Indistinguishable — Caroline, in essence, goes from being
her father's wife to being her husband's daughter -- as long
as they involve a certain relationship with men.
Caroline, Elizabeth, Agatha and Safic are all defined
in relation to the men around them. They are primarily
caregivers, whether as daughters, wives, mothers, sisters or
nurse?, and their perfection consists in their self-
sacrifice, and in their apparent passivity. Both of these
Elizabeth's status as gift is even more explicit in

the 1831 edition, in which she is no longer Victor's cousin,
but the orphaned daughter of "a Milanese nobleman" (35),
brought home by Caroline Frankenstein and presented to her
son as "her promised gift" (35). Because Caroline
introduces Elizabeth to Victor as "a pretty present." he
also sees her as a possession, rather than a pet. In this
edition: "I . . . looked upon Elizabeth as mine -- mine to
protect and cherish. All praises bestowed on her, I
received as made to a possession of ray own" (36).
9Victor's inability to act as self-appointed protector
for his beloved, because he is preoccupied with the creature
and the threat he believes it poses to him, and because he
falls to tell his bride about the creature, parallels the
situation in Dracula. where the men's exclusion of Mina. iar
from protecting her, actually puts her at greater risk.
156
traits perpetuate themselves as each generation adopts and
trains another "to be the sweet, beneficent, self-
sacrificing helpmeet" that Elizabeth, for example, becomes
immediately upon the death of Caroline (Davis 317). Victor
describes Elizabeth at length, establishing her as the
ideal, passive, aêlic woman, even in childhood:
She was docile and good tempered, yet gay and
playful as a summer insect. Although she was
lively and animated, her feelings were strong and
deep, and her disposition uncommonly affectionate.
No one could better enjoy liberty, yet no one
could submit with more grace than she did to
constraint and caprice. . . . Her person was the
image of her mind; her hazel eyes, although as
lively as a bird's, possessed an attractive
softness, her figure was light and airy; and,
though capable of enduring great fatigue, she
appeared the most fragile creature in the world.
(65)
Elizabeth, with her "light and airy" figure, is almost
literally angelic, and, while she is animated enough to be
attractive, her lively spirit is — unlike Victor's own —
always balanced by a willingness to be controlled. The fact
that "her person" reflects her mind is highly significant.
because it suggests that her body and her Intellect are
closely related. Both are equally insubstantial, or, at
least, her mind is occupied with the fanciful, the "aerial
creations of the poets" (66), rather than the practical
scientific studies with which Victor occupies himself, and
which he shares with her. only to find that "she d[oes] not
interest herself in the subject" (69). Finally, Elizabeth
157
presents an appearance of fragility, the impression that she
needs to be protected, presumably by a man.
In fact, the Frankenstein women are not as fragile as
they seem. Thornburg itemizes the ways in which these ideal
women demonstrate their strength without losing their
exemplary status, but also points out the futility of their
actions. Caroline is "far more resilient than her own
father" (Thornburg 6 8 ) , or. as Victor puts it "her courage
rose to support her in her adversity"; she not only cares
for her father, but sews and plaits straw in order to
support him financially (64). Justine Moritz leaves her
unloving mother, "a remarkably Independent act for a young
woman of her time" (Thornburg 6 8 ) . Elizabeth, according to
Thornburg*s reading of her letters to Victor, manipulates
him into a marriage which he may or may not desire (68).
The first of these letters includes a section of local
gossip, all of which pertains to marriage, followed by
Elizabeth's declaration that she has "written [her]self into
good spirits" (95). The second letter demonstrates more
anxiety, asking Victor if he loves another, if she is too
much a sister to him to make a wife. In this letter she
confesses her love for him. but. once again, is prepared to
sacrifice her happiness for his own (213).
Nonetheless, this letter does express concern for her
own position, for, as James P. Davis notes, it
establishes that while men have free choice, women

are constrained by economic circumstances.
158
obligations, and guilt- Victor might feel that
marriage would shrink the scope of his pursuits,
but Shelley makes it clear that, to women,
marriage represents a desperate last hope for
security, one that eventually wears away at their
energy and strength- (318)
Elizabeth's own precarious position may explain why she,
like the novel's other women, ne/er makes explicit the
nature or extent of masculine dependence on her. Despite
her care for Victor, who gives her little in return, she
weeps when he departs with Clerval, because, as she tells
him. "we all . . . depend upon you; and if you are
miserable, what must be our feelings?" (181).
Finally, one must consider the position of Margaret
Saville. Walton's sister and the ultimate reader of all
these accounts. As Thornburg notes, she demonstrates her
own strength by caring for her brother (68): like Elizabeth,
she is left at home to worry while her brother embarks on a
dangerous quest, about which she has (not entirely
unfounded) "evil forebodings" (49). More significant than
her role as Walton's sister, however, is Margaret's role in
the text, or rather outside the text- She exists, of
course, only through Walton, whose letters she never
answers- Nevertheless, she "serves a high tribunal"
(Dickerson 83), and has a certain amount of power as keeper
of the text (Dickerson 84), which could not. after all.
exist without her as its recipient (Spivak 259)- Gayatri
Chakaravorty Spivak defines Margaret as "the feminine
subject" (259). who exists beyond the text. Joyce Zonana
159
believes that Safie's physically present but textually
absent letters "resist[] the voyeuristic, culturally
masculine appropriation . . . that the reader, along with
the narrators, is engaged in" (181); her remarks arc even
more applicable to Margaret, whose voice is. unlike those of
the other women in the text, never mediated by men. because
it is never heard. Nor can Margaret be contained (Spivak
259), in that she exists outside the text proper. Margaret
functions, then, much as the reader does: in establishing
the position of woman reader, however, she defines woaien as
readers, rather than actors or agents (Dickerson 83).
The most empowered of the women in Frankenstc in is
Safie. whom. Johanna M. Smith claims, we may place "against
this dreary record of dead women" (283). Before she dies.
Safie's mother teaches her daughter "to aspire to higher
powers of intellect" (151), and thus Inspires her to escape
from her tyrannical father, to travel a great distance —
attended only by another woman, "unacquainted with the
language of the country" in which she finds herself, and
"utterly Ignorant of the customs of the world" (154) -- and
to join the man she loves by choice- Certainly, "both her
maternal Inspiration and her active adventurousness contrast
with Caroline's influence on her passive 'daughters*
Elizabeth and Justine" (Smith 283); Safie appears to have
escaped the maternal legacy of passivity and death which
plagues the other female characters. In her Vindication of
160
the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraf*: uses the image of the
harem to "represent the philosophical foundation for the
misogyny and the gendered assignment of power that she sees
operating in the West as much as if not more so than in the
East" (Zonana 173). According to Zonana. who explores
Safie's position in the context of Wollstonecraft's
orientalist metaphor, the basis of this misogyny is "the
refusal to grant women full membership as rational beings in
the human race" (173). By fleeing her father and the fate
of "being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only
to occupy herself with puerile amusements . . . " (151*.
Safie escapes a more general patriarchal system, one which
similarly infantilizes its women and defines them in
relation to their bodies, rather than their minds.
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar observe that
Frankenstein's creature, in Shelley's revised myth of
creation, takes the part of the absent Eve (235). that is,
the position of the female other. Not only his connection
to feminine nature, but the inescapable fact of his bodily
existence, which overwhelms his "Ideas and emotions"
(Tillotson 172). Rakes the creature socially, if not
biologically, feminine. Nowhere is this more apparent than
in his association with Safie. which suggests, but
ultimately defeats, the possibility that the woman will
escape her marginalized position.
161
The similarity between the creature and the othercd
woman is cost obvious in their respecti\"e relations to
language. Women, confined as they are to a domestic
setting, cannot function in the masculine, public sphere,
largely because they lack the language to do so.
Consequently. Justine cannot defend herself In court, and
Elizabeth cannot help her. As Beth Newman notes, both women
rely on the personal Issue of "character" (149) as opposed
to the evidence against Justine. Feminine feeling, in the
form of Elizabeth's affection for Justine (112). opposes the
empirical, albeit circumstantial, evidence that is a feature
of the masculine, public sphere.
Similarly, the creature has no chance to defend himself
from the assumptions of his creator; Ironically, he recalls
the trial when he reminds Victor that "the guilty arc
allowed, by human laws . . . to speak in their own defense
before they are condemned" (129). The creature is eloquent,
but Victor does not trust his use of language, and warns
Walton to act accordingly: "trust him not. . . . Hear him
not" (233). Before he learns to speak, of course, the
creature Is more helpless, and thus more feminine, but also
less threatening to Frankenstein; if the look is a means of
asserting subjectivity and the power that accospanics it.
The strength of character Thornburg finds in

Caroline. Justine and Elizabeth, for example, exists only
within the domestic sphere, relating as It does to caring
for the father, running from the oppressive mother to the
nurturing one. and securing a marriage, respectively.
162
the voice serves this purpose even core obviousl>». because
it gives the creature the power to define himself.
The process by which the creature learns language makes
his relation to Safie most explicit, for his education
occurs simultaneously with hers, although he proudly notices
that his is the faster (146).11 Together they learn
French; however, this is not as liberating as it might seem.
Annette Kolodny makes an observation which applies equally
to Safie and to the creature: "[t]hough rasters need not
learn the language of their slaves, the reverse is never the
case: for survival's sake, oppressed or subdominant groups
always study the nuances of meaning and gesture in those who
control them" (1136). Certainly Felix makes no attempt to
learn the language of "his Arabian." Similarly, the
creature has no language of his own — Frankenstein makes no
attempt to interpret his initial "inarticulate sounds" (87)
— but quickly realizes the Importance of learning the De
Laccys*. Ellssa Marder makes the interesting observation
that the creature learns "about translation — about the
foreignness of language — before he acquires a "mother
tongue'" (72-73). Indeed, he recognizes that Safie speaks
11The creature's superior linguistic proficiency may

result from the fact that he is biologically male and in
that context allowed more ready access to language, while
the woman "understlands] very little, and converselsj in
broken accents" (146). On a more realistic level, of
course, it may simply be that Safie is replacing one tongue
with another — significant in terms of her position as
foreigner — while the creature is learning a first
language.
163
"a language of her oa-n." prior to determining to join her in
learning that of the De Laceys (145). Thus, for the
creature "language is. originally, foreign language. Bereft
of a mother as well as a mother tongue, the monster learns
first that language is foreign, that it expresses primally
that which cannot be said" (Marder 73). In keeping with
Xolodny's observation, however, he also realizes the
necessity of learning what he refers to as *a godlike
science31 (140), that is. the dozzinant language — "their
language" (141. emphasis added). He hopes that the use of
language "might enable [him] to make [the De Laceys]
overlook the deformity of [his] figure" (141).
Unfortunately, he can no more disguise his bodily otherness
than can a woman.
Gilbert and Gubar claim that Eve's and by extension,
any woman's — "femininity seems merely a defective
masculinity, a deformity like the monster's Inhuman body"
(244); the creature's appearance aligns him with the aroaan
other in a marginalized position he cannot escape.
Youngqulst contends that Shelley's "emphasis on the body"
(341) resists Wollstonecraft's "commitment to the
universality of reason" (340). that is. the idea that the
fact of women's physical difference can be overcome if men
acknowledge their rational capabilities. Wollstonecraft
addresses the ideal of beauty which men create and which
women are expected to achieve, and how this ideology, to
164
quote Youngqulst, "allows women to endure, and even
encourage their oppression by men" (342). Wollstonecraft"s
statement regarding feminine beauty recalls Frankenstein"s
connection of Elizabeth's mind with her body: "taught from
their infancy that beauty is a woman's sceptre, the mind
shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage,
only seeks to adorn its prison" (Vindication 132).
Youngqulst argues that the creature's ugliness "confounds
Wollstonecraft*s critique of enculturated beauty." because,
"if such qualities were social constructs, the monster, as a
male In a male dominated social order, should be able to
overcome them" (342). Youngqulst's insistence on a rigid
parallelism is reductive, however: the creature is
profoundly othered. largely because of the ugliness which
his biological masculinity cannot overcome. His monstrous
body does. Indeed, parallel the female body as the source of
otherness: that one is hideous and one is beautiful is less
significant, as is the fact that the process of othering
differs. The hideous creature is feared, while the
beautiful woman is not taken seriously, but both are equally
oppressed.
p
"Alan Richardson compares the creature to the woman in
terms of physical strength, the lack of which was
traditionally used to justify "woman's subordinate position
in society, and thus the unequal education that facilitates
her subordination" (151). He also observes the different.
but equally oppressive response that greets the creature's
superior strength as opposed to the woman's weakness: "both
the monster and woman within patriarchy crucially differ
from man in point of strength, the monster's difference
165
Like Milton's Eve. the creature views his reflection in
a pool. His response, however, differs drastically from her
"vain desire" for her own image (Paradise Lost IV, 466):
"when I became fully convinced that 1 was in reality the
monster that I am. I was filled with the bitterest
sensations of despondence and mortification" (142). Eve's
beauty is intended for Adam's pleasure, however, and
Frankenstein's creature's similar experience connects him to
the original woman other by "demonstrating the moral
equivalence of being judged ugly or beautiful and commenting
on the power of the gaze as an objcctificaiion of the body.
. . . Because he Is regarded as pure flesh, the monster's
fate is comparable to that of women in patriarchal society"
(Zonana 176). Youngqulst uses this scene as evidence that
Shelley's approach to the monstrous body Is more
essentializing than Wollstonccraft's. because she "Is
careful to situate the monster's revulsion prior to his
acquisition of language, diminishing the possibility that xt
originates in purely cultural assumptions" (343)- However,
the creature's reasoning here works by contrast; he has
"admired the perfect forms" of the De Laceys (142), which he
accepts as normative. Rather than demonstrating the
impossibility of transcending bodily imperatives, as
being produced wholly, woman's largely, by male

intervention; ironically, the monster's greater strength
entails . . . his subordination no less than the woman's
relative weakness . . . since the monster is potentially
dangerous and must be contained" (155).
166
Youngqulst argues, it seems that Shelley is simply aware of
the difficulty of overcoming social constraints- As Hatlen
notes, Shelley reveals the facts of oppression, rather than
suggesting alternatives, emphasizing "protest against
tyranny - - - rather than . . . the hope of liberation"
("Patriarchy" 43).
Even Safie cannot completely escape the cultural
significance of her feminine body. Although she
demonstrates a much greater degree of independence than any
of the novel's other women, she does so for the purposes of
marriage, and. upon reaching the De Laceys, is once again
limited to the same domestic role as the other female
characters. She has also lost her unique voice; she "ends
by subordinating. If not rejecting, her language for that of
her lover and her new family" (Dickerson 90). Additionally,
she "is educated by her lover" which "keeps her in a
subordinate situation" (Richardson 153). Although Safie's
education Is radical in its content. Felix uses Volney's
Ruins of Empires primarily to teach Safie his own language.
In the Vindication. Mary Wollstonecraft observes that,
while "a little learning Is required to support the
character of a gentleman; and boys are obliged to submit to
a few years of discipline." in the case of women, "having no
serious scientific study, if they have natural sagacity it
is turned too soon on life and manners" (105). The
Frankenstein family is a model of such gender-specific
167
education; Victor embarks for Ingolstadt while Elizabeth
remains in Geneva to attend to more practical domestic
matters. When Victor and Henry leave for England. Elizabeth
"only regrets that she ha[s] not the same opportunities of
enlarging her experience and cultivating her understanding"
(180-81). Although Safie's education seems more rational
than Elizabeth's — she is at least learning about politics,
traditionally a masculine discipline — the pedagogical
process is in itself oppressive- Just as Alphonsc
Frankenstein "direct[s] [his children's] studies." while
Caroline "partlakes] of [their] enjoyments" (71). Safie
depends upon Felix's masculine knowledge for her own
education. Alan Richardson observes that "the line between
pedagogy and tyranny is an uncomfortably fine and unstable
one, particularly given the agenda for perpetuating male
domination built Into most of the period's programs for
female education" (148); any process of education Is
necessarily hierarchical, and Felix's instruction of Safie,
who is already doubly othered by reason of her race and
Admittedly, the categorization of pedagogy based on

gender is not entirely rigid; the male characters, too.
occasionally suffer from the "desultory" education that
Wollstonecraft condemns (104). As Lee E. Heller observes.
Frankenstein's discovery of Cornelius Agrippa takes place
outside any systematic programme of instruction (333). The
creature, of course, colncidentally discovers the texts that
influence him in the wood, and reads them independently and
uncritically (Frankenstein 155). and Richardson notes that
Walton's claim to being "self-educated," and thus "in
reality more illiterate than many school-boys of fifteen"
(Frankenstein 53) reflects the experience of a woman of the
period (Richardson 149).
168
gender, thus further subjugates her. The connection between
education and otherness becomes clear in Richardson's
conclusion that othered groups such as
women, colonized peoples, the nascent proletariat

. . . are, within the frankly hegemonic social
discourses of Shelley's time, infantilized; all.
like children in the period . . - had become
increasingly subject to programs of schooling or
'civilization* designed to discipline them for an
increasingly regulated and normatized world.
(157) U
Richardson's point is also relevant, of course, to xfrf
creature, who receives his education simultaneously with
Safie, and "represents, before all else, a child"
(Richardson 157). He too learns dependence from the De
Laceys. absorbing the "belief that he needs society" (McWhir
76). He comes to this conclusion based not only on the
texts he reads, but. prior to their discovery, on his
observations of the domestic bliss of the De Laceys:
Wollstonccraft also cites learning "by sheer observations on
real life" as a characteristic of women's inadequate
education (Vindication 104-05). Further, the creature's
"sorrow only Increase[s] with knowledge" because he knows he
cannot "becom[e] one among [his] fellows" (148). McWhir
reads the formerly self-suffxcient creature as Rousseau's
"natural man." and notes that "to teach him to read Is
either to destroy him by making him aware of his alienation.
Heller's article on the cultural anxiety surrounding

the rise of these groups to literacy, and the public concern
with what, exactly, they should be allowed to read, is also
pertinent here.
169
or to undertake to accept him as a member of civil society,
a subject whose rights can be asserted" (78). The latter is
never possible for the creature, who is left "dependent and
horrific" (McWhir 8 0 ) . valuing a society which will never
accept him. He tells Frankenstein: "1 am alone and
miserable: man will not associate with sic: but one as
deformed and horrible as myself would not deny htrself to
me" (171). It is for this reason that he asks Frankenstein
to "create a female for [him], with whom [hej can live in
the interchange of those sympathies necessary for [his]
being" (171).
The request for. and aborted creation of. the female
creature is perhaps the most significant revelation of the
attitudes the novel's men hold regarding its women. The
creature's request is merely an ertenslon of the "traffic in
women" (Smith 283) which begins with Beaufort's fcequesJt of
Caroline to Alphonse Frankenstein, and is perpetuated in the
presentation of Elizabeth to the Frankenstein family. Even
the more liberated Safie is conrsodif led in this way.
because, although Felix is "too delicate" to accept her
father's offer of marriage to her in return for Felix's aid,
he still "look[s] forward to the probability of that event''
(151). and he does help Safie's father escape, providing
another Instance where "a woman Is offered to a man as a
reward without her being consulted: and once again, a

170
genuinely caring man falls into behaviour that discounts the
will of a woman" (Davis 3 2 0 ) .
The creature's attitudes towards women are as dangerous
as Frankenstein's, and. indeed, are often read as the
projection of Victor's most sinister fantasies regarding the
violent control of women, whom the creature violates much as
his creator does female nature. Recalling the dream in
which Elizabeth literally becomes a corpse. Rieder suggests
thet the creature "becomes the agent of Frankenstein's own
negative fantasy" (28). William Veeder interprets the dream
even more bluntly: "Victor . . . kills women" ("Negative
Oedipus" 179). Indirectly, Veeder's statement is true;
Frankenstein creates the creature, who may represent, as
Laura Kranzler believes, "a projection o_* Victor's hostility
towards, and rejection of. the female sphere," so that "the
monster's violence can be seen as both an exterior
realization of Victor's repressed 'masculine* aggressivity.
and as a negation of Victor's 'feminine* self" (43).
Elizabeth's death on their wedding night shows that, like
the men in Dracula. Frankenstein finds dead women more
attractive than live ones. While he has shown no particular
passion towards Elizabeth up to this point, immediately
after her death, he "rushe[s] towards her. and embracefs]
her with ardour" (220). Absolute feminine passivity — and
lack of desire — can only be found in death, with which
Frankenstein has always associated feminine sexuality, most

171
notably in his "obscenely sexual" (Gilbert/Gubar 232)
workshop, where he undertakes his solitary act of "filthy
creation" (83).
Despite the obvious connections between creation, or
motherhood, and decay, as Frankenstein assembles his
creature out of materials garnered from "the dissecting room
and thw slaughterhouse" (83). however, feminine death can
also be idealized, as it is in the case of Elizabeth, or
indeed, in the various portraits of Caroline. Idealized
dead vomen are both beautiful and no'n-threatening, then,
particularly if, like Elizabeth, whose marriage is never
consummated, they die free of sexual taint. Of course, even
the novel's living women are strikingly sexless: "Caroline
Beaufort is a devoted daughter and chaste wife while
Elizabeth Lavenza's relationship with Victor is that of a
sister" (Mellor. "Possessing Nature" 2 2 5 ) . Nonetheless,
the fear of sexua'-ty remains, and Frankenstein describes
his impending wedding night as "dreadful, very dreadful"
Because she Is Syoth unmarried and not related to

Felix, even through "Frankensteinian" adoption, Safie offers
ax least the potential for sexual desire, although I do not
completely agree with Dickerson, who believes that she
differs from Elizabeth in that "her angelic ability to
diffuse happiness is reconstituted by sexual oassion" (88)
as there fs no evidence of such passion In the text itself.
Anca Vlasooolos discusses the possibility that Victor's fear
of sexuality is actually a fear of the Frankenstein family
tradition of incest as a tool for class selection, and how
his use of "what must be the 19th-century version of
cloning" ...* actually a failed attempt to avoid the
consummation of his incestuous relationship with Elizabeth
(128).
172
(219), a statement which both refers to the creature's
literal threat, and further reveals Frankenstein's own
sexual anxiety.
Frankenstein's response to that fear is typical of the
self's to the threatening other, and may thus lead to
violence such as his penetration of nature, or the
destruction of the female creature, which, like the
destruction of Lucy and the other female vampires in
Dracula. can also be read In terms of rape and murder
(Mellor. "PN" 224). Here, as with the dead Elizabeth.
Frankenstein experiences "passion" (193), which is "revealed
as a fusion of fear. lust, and hostility, a desire to
control and even destroy female sexuality" (Mellor. "PN"
224-35). Frankenstein's own graphic description of "the
remains of the half-finished creature [which] lay scattered
on the floor" (196-97). is worthy of John Seward, and he
admits to "almost feelfing] as if [he] ha[s] mangled the
living flesh of a human being" (196-97), much as Van Helsing
briefly entertains misgivings about killing the three
Transylvanlan vampiresses.
While Frankenstein demonstrates hostility towards women
whose sexuality threatens him, his creature resents the
women who do not return his desire. Being more overtly
masculine than his creator, the creature fantasizes about
women, but his desire turns to violence as he realizes that
rejection is inevitable. Brennan reads his decision to
173
frame Justine for William's murder as an impossible desire
for the mother, represented by Caroline's portrait (38). but
the text suggests an interpretation based neither on grief
over the absent mother, nor on Oedipal desire. Rather, the
creature describes another kind of passion, and under his
eyes the miniature becomes a sexual object: "I gazed with
delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her
lovely lips; but presently my rage returned: I remembered
that I was for ever deprived of the delights that such
beautiful creatures could bestow" (170). To the creature,
Justine also represents "one of those whose smiles are
bestowed on all but [him]" (170); he condemns her. In
essence, for being desired (Jacobus 133). The sexual nature
of the creature's gaze is even more apparent In the 1831
edition: "I bent over her and whispered 'Awake, fairest, thy
lover is near — he would give his life but to obtain one
look of affection from thine eyes; my beloved, awake!"
(143). This passage, which both anticipates and parodies
the offers of Frankenstein and Elizabeth to die for each
other, is not entirely threatening, but also shows that the
creature Is more capable of desire than Is Frankenstein; as
the De Laceys have no word for "mother" or "daughter." so.
Marder notes, "the name of "lover* or "beloved" does not
exist in the Frankenstein family lexicon" (75). The
creature can employ both these terms, while Frankenstein
tends to refer to Elizabeth as "cousin."
174
The creature's request for a mate is also explicitly
sexual; he wants female affection, but also to be "linked to
the chain of existence" (174). presumably through
reproduction. Although the creature demands "an equal"
(174), the novel shows that any relationship between the
sexes necessarily assumes a hierarchy; the female creature
could no more have occupied a position of equality than
could Eve. The woman must necessarily be subordinate to the
man who precedes her. Essentially, the creature demands
that Frankenstein create an other In relation to whom he can
at last occupy the position of self- He offers his
prospective bride no choice regarding her mate, or indeed,
hex" very existence. "Cursed creatorI Why did you form a
monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?"
(158); the creature protests against Frankenstein's
unthinking act. then petitions him to repeat it. not
thinking that the female creature may not only share her
mate's feelings of otherness and self-loathing, but be
doubly affected because of her sex.
Frankenstein's concerns regarding the potential dangers
of creating her as a mate for the creature are thus, in some
ways, valid, although they nlso betray his anxiety
concerning women. It Is quite possible that the female
creature will be revolted by the appearance of her mate, and
that she will "refuse to comply with a contact tnadc before
her creation" (192). without hex consent The idea of a

175
woman "who is sexually liberated, free to choose her own
life, her o»n sexual partner" (Mellor. "PN" 224) is
completely at odds with Frankenstein's experience, given the
compliance of Caroline and Elizabeth, for example, to just
such bargains made between men. Such a woman would,
according to his ideology, naturally be 'ten thousand times
more malignant than her mate" (192), those own autonomy is
such a cause for anxiety. Frankenstein's fears, however,
are even more deeply connected to his fear of the female,
and particularly, of female sexuality: the female creature
"might turn with disgust from [her mate] to the sup*rlor
beauty of man" (192). "Implicit here Is Frankenstein's
horror that, given the gigantic strength of this female, she
would have the power '© seize and even rape the male she
might choose." as Mellor suggests ("PN" 2 2 4 ) . As the
response to the threatening other has ever been violent
repression, so Frankenstein preemptively destroys the
unfinished woman, thus "violently reassertling] a male
control over the female body" (Mellor. "PN" 224). much as he
has done with his initial, entirely masculine, act of
creation- Frankenstein fears female reproductive power, as
well as sexuality, as his fear that the two c**ca tores may
reproduce indicates (J92).
Victor's fear of female sexuality ca> relate to h^s own
urv« rafale gender position. In usurping the female right of
giving birth Frankenstein nisself occupies a feminine

176
position- The text often feminizes Frankenstein, who is
prone to uncontrollable emotions that are stereotypically
feminine, and in direct opposition to his masculine
rationality- He shares hysterical mood swings with his
creature, but otherwise, as the creature grows more an
aggressive masculine force, so his creator becomes more
feminine. Dickerson notes that the creature ceases to be a
passive victim after his encounter with the 'liberated*
Safie (89). a change which, given the novel's portrayal of
traditional gender roles. Indicates that he no longer
identifies with the feminine. In fact, his gender
definition swings wildly the other way as he becomes the
vengeful, excessively masculine figure (Thornburg 8 8 ) .
Frankenstein, en the other hand, loses power as his creation
gains it. and the text presents his weakening in
specifically gendered terms. Upon the creature's awakening,
Frankenstein succumbs to what he describes as a "nervous
fever." 9 0 ) . reminiscent cf Jonathan Harker's 'brain fever."
which is associated witji impetsnee as well as with feminized
sindness.
' Richariison suggests that the creature in his

aggressive form is in fact a personification of the equally
x"ei»r_cd figure of the dangerously demonic woman, whoa the
dfasestic angel could so easily become (152). Similarly,
Coodwin offersfcfecinteresting theory that, rather than
depicting Frankenstein's repressed fsasculine sexuality, the
creature "represent? . . . a repressed femininity"* (IOC);
such an interpretation lentls itself to a reading of
Frankenstein as 3 warding of the dangers of containing women
in a position of oppressive domesticity.
177
Frankenstein's relationship to the creature recalls his
use of the phrase "my own vampire" (105). as it parallels
that of Harker to Dracula. As the vampire grows stronger.
Harker weakens, even to the point of having his hair turn
white, while Dracula appears progressively younger: every
time the creature asserts his power. Frankenstein responds
in a stereotypically feminine manner. He "weep[s] with
bitterness" upon the death of William 1101). and must be
consoled by Clerval. who initially invokes the masculine
tenets of the Stoics against excessive pity, only to reject
them, in keeping with his frequently feminized position
(102). Justine's execution causes a similar episode of
near-madness and "excessive sorrow." to which Frankenstein's
father also responds by remarking un how such emotions
"prevent!] . . . even the discharge of daily usefulness,
without which no man Is fit for society" (120. emphasis
added). Immediate^ after discovering the body of
Elizabeth. Frankenstein faints. Finally, when Walton
rescues him in the midst of his pursuit of the creature, who
is clearly in control despite his flight from Frankenstein,
the fact that It is two days before he can speak (58)
reinforces the connection between Frankenstein and the
silent woman.1 which exists throughout the novel in his
The scene of his rescue also demonstrates the

shifting balance of power between Frankenstein and the
creature, for here it is the creator who must be * r e s t o r e d .
. . xo animation" by the sailors" brandy (58). Haggerty
£lso reads the scene in w*sicl> the creature stands over
178
helpless inability to tell anyone about the existence of the
creature. Like the predicament of Polidori's Aubrey, whom
he also resembles. Frankenstein's speech impediment
demonstrates the unspeakable nature of the other, but It
also contributes to the reader's impression of him as
ineffectual and therefore feminized.
Frankenstein's violent feelings toward women, then,
whether projected in the form of the creature, or literal in
the destruction of his female counterpart, may be an attempt
to reassert his own masculinity. Frankenstein consistently
responds aggressively to the possibility of being
objectified, and being placed in a feminine position
certainly qualifies as objectification. In addition, such
violently masculine acts may serve, as they de in Dracula.
to mitigate the possibility of unspeakable homoerotic
attachments. As Mellor notes "Frankenstein's most
passionate relationships are with men rather than with
women" ("PN" 225); he may admire Caroline and grow up with
Elizabeth, but Clerval, Walton, and even the creature are
closer to him than these women, with whom he cannot
ccmmunlcate. Clerval. too, is feminized, significantly, by
Frankenstein himself, who reveals him in the role of nurse
(90). associates him with both benevolent nature and
domestic society represented by "the cheerful faces of
Frankenstein's lifeless body as a, reversal of xbe creation

scene (63),
179
children" (98), and contrasts his interest in the
"orientalists." whose writings make life "appear]] to
consist in a warm sun and garden of roses." with the "manly
and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome" (97). Even so.
their relationship seems mere equal (Hatlen. "Patriarchy**
40) and more passionate than that of Frankenstein with
Elizabeth, who worries that he sees her too much as a sister
(212). In response to his father's similar concerns.
Frankenstein can only make the formal response that
Elizabeth deserves his "warmest admiration and affection"
and that his "future hopes and prospects are entirely oound
up in the expectation of [their] union" (178).
Frankenstein alludes to Clerval when discussing the
nobility of male friendship with Walton (61). who
specifically seeks "the company of a man who could
sympathize with [him]; whose eyes would reply to [his own]"
(53). That Frankenstein fulfils these suggestive criteria
is evident in Walton's descriptions of him: "what a glorious
creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity,
when he is thus noble and godlike in his ruin" (234).
Walton's response to Frankenstein's tale also seems
excessive, even if he does love the scientist "as a brother"
(60). although, given the conflation of familial and erotic
relationships throughout the text, perhaps it is not *hat
m
surprising: tay thoughts, and every feeling of my soul, have
been drunk up by the Interest for my guest . . . " (234).
180
Even Frankenstein's relationship with his despised
creation is more intimate than that with Elizabeth, whom he
rivals as the focus of Frankenstein's attention- The
creature seems to return these feelings, although with a
similar ambivalence; his affection is most evident after
Frankenstein's death- The creature declares "in his murder
my crimes are consummated" (243), and indeed, the patterns
of doubling and persecution in Frankenstein. even more than
in Dracula. fit Sedgwick's analysis of "the fearful,
phantasmlc rejection by recasting of an original homosexual
. - . desire" (Between Men 91-92)- Also in keeping with
Sedgwick's theory is the way in which women mediate between
men; the creature kills Elizabeth after Frankenstein
destroys the female creature, and both violent acts can be
read as sexual. Kranzler suggests that -Vhis violence
towards women "can be seen partly as ai. expression of . . .
jealousy at female interference in a homoerotic bond" (43).
but In fact, the destruction of the female strengthens such
a bond, for "[ojnly when the two females . . . have
cancelled each other out Is the way clear for the scene of
passionate mourning in which the monster hangs, loveriike.
over Frankenstein's deathbed" (Jacobus 132).
"Affection and Duty": Frankenstein and the Bourgeois Family
Thornburg believes that the sentimental and the Gothic,
as two sides of one myth, are largely defined by their
respective portrayals ox gender. Extreme or inverted gender

181
positions, such as the creature's excessive masculinity.
Victor's exclusion of femi*.inity. or his unstable sexuality,
lead to Gothic tragedy, as in Frankenstein (32). By
contrast, the sentimental, which is also present, although
defeated, in Shelley's novel, is characterized by a balance
between genders, so that the excessively masculine hero
allows himself to be tamed by the heroine, thus entering the
domestic sphere and becoming a productive member of society
without jeopardizing his own masculinity (Thornburg 3 1 ) . As
long as Elizabeth is alive, there is the possibility, then,
that Frankenstein can be redeemed; she serves the same
purpose for him. presuraablj'. as Margaret Saville does for
Walton, although her attempts to turn Frankenstein into a
family man do not have even the ambiguous success that
Walton's absent sister presents.
Thus it would seem Frankenstein. according to
Thornburg"s model, is a Gothic tragedy illustrating the
failure of the sentimental and the disastrous implications
thereof; however, this= failure may itself constitute a
critique of the sentimental myth, with its fixed gender
roles and domestic women, as well 2S of the excessive
masculinity which Frankenstein demonstrates through his
solitary act of creation, and which the creature embodies.
The sentimental is not. for Shelley, an entirely redeeming
force, largely because of tha position of women within the
bourgeois family. Such a family, as Smith analyzes it.

182
depends on notions of obligation which create an Inevitable
hierarchy (279).
The Frankensteins are the most obvious example of such
a family, which is in many ways as artificial as
Frankenstein's creature, being based not on affection so
much as on various constructions of gratitude, which are
intrinsically linked to the creation of a family by adoption
rather than blood (Paulson 548). Children are expected to
fee grateful to their parents for creating them, as
Frankenstein suggests with his vision of a race of grateful
creatures: however, those rescued from Intolerable
situations, such as Caroline. Elizabeth and Justine, are
more aware of their obligation to their rescuers. Of
course, this constrains the other even further: the dominant
party defines or creates it. controls it. and. furthermore,
it is expected to be grateful. Family relations, then, are
as much based on hierarchy as is the relationship between
Victor's creature and his creator, which merely amplifies
them. These hierarchical relations function ideologically,
however; that is to say, they are disguised by a rhetoric of
filial duty and parental obligation, which masks the power
issues more obviously at work In Victor's relationship with
the creature.
Regarding his own family, Frankenstein appears unaware
of the hierarchical power structure, emphasizing instead his
idyllic childhood (66ff) and viewing the family as a

183
collection of equals, which, of course, it is not: "neither
of us possessed the slightest pre-eminence over the other:
the voice of command was never heard amongst us; but mutual
affection engaged us all to comply with and obey the
slightest desire of each other" (71). Victor, as Laura P.
Claridge notes, protests too much (15). and there is an
indication that he finds the family oppressive, or its
affections inadequate. His attempt to blame his father, who
merely dismisses Agrippa. rather than explaining his
reasoning to his son (68). for his later transgressions, is
in part an attempt to evade responsibility {Veeder,
"Negative Oedipus" 374). but also reveals Victor's hestiiii>
towards the very family he takes pains to describe as ideal.
His later transgressions may be read as a rebellion against
oppressive domesticity, which is how he himself sees theai:
had his father reacted differently to his reading of
Agrippa, "it is . . . possible that the train of [Victor'sJ
ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led
xo [his] ruin" (68).
Such rebellion, however, is apparently in vain. Smith
notes the pattern of "endless repetition" regarding domestic
relations, filial duty, and gratitude (279). Alphonse saves
Caroline and educates her as his wife-. Caroline in turn
grooms Elizabeth as her replacement, and Elizabeth twice
describes the same process at work in the creation of
Justine Moritz. Victor, of course, echoes the rhetoric of
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197
Justine's confessor advises her to admit to the crime she
has not coi.-mittcd {114), although this anti-Catholicism is
184
gratitude in his initial dreams of creation, which will
prove equally oppressive for all involved. Similarly.
Frankenstein commits his other errors either in response to.
or in perpetuation of. his parents" ovn. Caroline and
Alphonse. in essence, control their son's sexuality by
assuming he will marry Elizabeth — given the importance of
family obligations, the expectation is as good as a command.
Frankenstein responds with his own. albeit asexual, creative
act. and then proceeds to limit his creature's reproductive
possibilities.
Hatlen defines patriarchy as "a social and
psychological structure that defines the creature as Other,
as object. inherently inferior to and therefore the rightful
possession of the creating male subject" ("Patriarchy" 41,
his italics). Under such a system, Hatlen continues, "the
act of creation is the exclusive prerogative of the male of
the species, and it entails rights of ownership both over
the 'means* of production (that is, the female) and over the
end result of this act" ("Patriarchy" 2 0 ) . Thus, the
patriarchal family depends on hierarchies based on gender
and age. and can never be the ideal domestic setting the
creature, for example, imagines: oppression and othering,
rather, are the norm, and are similarly perpetuated through
generations. The most obvious manifestation of the
perpetuation of the male/female and self/other hierarchies
involves Frankenstein's youngest brother, William. That he

185
participates in the same gender role production as do the
Frankenstein adults is frighteningly apparent in Elizabeth's
first letter to Victor, which points out that William "has
already had one or two little wives, but Louisa Blron is his
favourite, a pretty little girl of five years of age" (95).
Even at the age of five, children perpetuate the
Frankensteinian view of gender relations as if none other
were possible. William and Louisa cannot possibly, even at
such a young age, be anything but prospective marriage
partners: were it not for William's premature death, no
doubt he and his little "wife" would have become another
Victor and Elizabeth. William also does his part to uphold
the self/other hierarchy implicit in Frankensteinian family
relations, when he meets his brother's creation, for the
creature's assumption that "this little creature [is]
unprejudiced, and ha[s] lived too short a time to have
imbibed a horror of deformity" (169) proves patently false.
William has already been socialized to recognize the other
and to respond with fear and contempt; as Margo V. Perkins
notes, he has been "corrupted by the context in which [he]
live[s]" (38).
By contrast, the creature is largely self—educated. and
experiences idyllic family life only vicariously, by
observing the De Laceys. particularly after the arrival of
Safie. He is aware of the contrast between their situation
and his own; "[n]o father had watched my infant days, no

186
mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses" (149).
Mellor suggests that the De Laceys represent an alternative
to the Frankensteins. that they are the ideal family
Frankenstein would claim for himself (Mary Shelley 118).
Although they are ultimately less unfortunate than the
Frankensteins in terms of their survival. the De Laceys
suffer from many of the same flaws, which may be universal
to the bourgeois family, based as ix is on hierarchy. There
is less evidence of patriarchal control among the De Laceys.
but the children still "performI] towards I their father]
every little office of affection and duty with gentleness"
(138). Although the creature sees in their family the same
equality Frankenstein claims exists in his own. the De
Laceys" labours are very specifically divided along gender
lines: Felix chops wood, and Agatha cooks, for example.
Added to this is the position of Safie. whose relationship
with Felix is suspect, and who escapes from her tyrannical
father just to become wife, mother and pupil to this male-
dominated family. Agatha, significantly, never escapes the
unspeakable role of daughter, for which there Is no word
(140)- Finally, the De Laceys are no more nurturing than
the Frankensteins in terms of accepting otherness; they will
adopt only those who meet their standards — which are
largely based on beauty (Vlasopolos 126). Thus they too
reject the creature. Perkins argues that this response is
the result of a socialization process that resembles that
187
affecting William (38). David Soyka confirms Perkins's
belief:
Felix's response is ail-too human in equating the
grotesque, or even the merely different, with
evil. This simplistic reasoning, based on
visceral reaction grounded in social conditioning
rather than logical consideration, overrides any
need to determine the Monster's origins or
motivations. (172)
Mellor suggests that Frankenstein celebrates the
private, domestic sphere — the family — as an alternative
to the public arena frequented by the isolated,
revolutionary man (Mary Shelley 8 6 ) . Weissman agrees,
although she sees this alternative as far less positive.
believing that "Shelley does not cover up the fact that
governments and legal systems . . . are unjust: she simply
suggests . . . that it is hopeless to try to change them.
Every man who tries makes victims of the women in his own
family, frail, beautiful, helpless angels" (Half Savage
136). In fact, it seems more likely that Frankenstein's
women are the victims of the very family Weissman believes
Shelley to be championing. Rather than privileging the
family over political revolution. Frankenstein crxtiques the
oppressive family and extends its critique into the public
sphere. Rather than opposing the domestic, then, the
political reflects it. Even Mellor admits that "the father
who neglects his children can be seen as the archetype of
the irresponsible political leader who puts his own
interests aheao of those of his fellow citizens" (Mary

188
Shelley 70). When the creature seizes him. William
Frankenstein invokes the power of the father, but he also
makes it clear that his father represents civic authority:
"[mjy papa is a Syndic — he is M. Frankenstein -- he would
punish you" (170). William's remark demonstrates a parallel
between the family and the state, a connection tliat persists
throughout Frankenstein and contributes to a political
reading which is inseparable from the novel's preoccupation
with the family.
"Misery Has Made Me a Fiend": The Revolutionary Monster

State authority corresponds to patriarchal authority
within the family, and bad parents, accordingly, mirror
unjust rulers who are at best negligent, and at worst
violently oppressive. The novel suggests that filial duty
is not the given that Alphonse Frankenstein would have it
be. but rather a privilege accorded parents In return for
theix- protection and cure. That "parental affection
produces filial duty" is one of Wollstonecraft*s tenets
(273. emphasis added), and It necessarily applies to rulers
as well. Frankenstein expects a new species to adore him as
its creator, and for no other reason, then abandons his
creature. The creature accepts the familial/state
hierarchy, but also Insists on his own rights as subject of
Frankenstein's rule: "I will not be tempted to set my self
in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be
even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou
189
wxlt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me" (123).
If the creature is sincere, his words here seem to suggest,
as Perkins notes, that hierarchy is acceptable when coupled
with benevolent paternalism (36). and also raise the
question of justifiable revolution.
In its attention to this theme, Frankenstein echoes the
work of Shelley's father William Godwin, to whom it is
dedicated. Godwin's influence on Shelley Is often ignored
by critics who would rather concentrate on her mother's role
in her intellectual development. In fact, both of Shelley's
parents critique the politics both of the family and of
society at large- Wollstonecraft, although in favour of
domestic affection, opposed the separation of private and
public spheres, suggesting that women should pursue
"business of various kinds" and study politics (266); she
herself wrote an analysis of the French Revolution.
Similarly. Godwin Includes an appendix entitled "Of
Cooperation. Cohabitation and Marriage" in his An Enquiry
Concerning Political Justice. Here, he argues for the
abolition of marriage as an institution, advocating instead
a union based on choice, equality, and friendship (2:508—
511). Such a union would be a great Improvement, he
believes, to a marriage "in which there is no room for
repentance, and to which liberty and hope are strangers"
(2:510) — the kind of oppressive marriage with which
Frankenstein abounds. Although to ignore Shelley's

190
awareness of Issues beyond the rights of women is to do her
a disservice, it is not easy to establish a clear picture of
her political views. Her relationship to her father and his
work — a real-life connection between family and politics -
- was decidedly ambivalent, because for her he represented
not only "the radical philosopher, enemy of oppression and
tyranny,* but also, in his role as disapproving father, "the
oppressive personal tyrant" (McWhir 85-86). Frankenstein's
portrayal of Romantic revolution reflects this ambivalence,
and the position of the revolutionary other, like that of
the woman, is never fixed.
Regarding the often-remarked opposition between the
domestic and the political, there can be no doubt that the
three (male) revolutionary figures in the novel do Indeed
neglect or directly oppose the family. Robert Walton
abandons the private world represented by his sister in
favour of isolated exploration, where his own will becomes
more important than the desires, or even the lives, of his
crew. Frankenstein rebels against nature, isolates himself
In his laboratory, and fails even to communicate with his
parents and Elizabeth. He often chooses solitude, and
foresakes his responsibility, not only to his family, but to
his creature. He focuses on the outcome of his experiment,
rather than the means by which it comes about; overcome by
the magnitude of his discovery, he fails to note the process
that leads to it. and "behjolds] only the result" (81). His
191
creation represents the awful consequences of a revolution

which merely gathers momentum without design. The creature
himself, of course, is fatal to the Frankenstein family, IS
and creates havoc among the De Laceys.19
While Frankenstein and Walton are able to rebel largely
because their women are engaged in domestic affairs — with
the exception of Felix and Safie, who reverse the paradigm,
men engage in rebellion against the patriarchal family.
while women maintain the standards of filial duty — there
With the exception of Ernest. regarding whose

survival I can only echo William Veeder, and ask "Why of all
the Frankensteins is Ernest . . . left alive at the end?
Why is Ernest in the novel at all?" ("Gender and Pedagogy"
47).
ISAlthough the creature is himself antxthetxcal to the
Idea of family, in that his creation is both a mockery —
much like vampiric contagion — of the reproductive process
so central to that family's existence, and the cause of
Frankenstein's own neglect of his relatives, the creature.
unlike the vampires, threatens only the Frankensteins,
rather than the family as an institution. In his desire
literally to eliminate the Frankenstein line. Shelley's
creature most resembles that of her contemporary, Polidori.
The threat of miscegenation present in Dracula is also
implied, but contained, in Frankenstein; Elizabeth's murder
can be read as rape but the fact that she is safely dead
prevents the possibility of contamination. If the creature
is not a threat to the family — as opposed to
Frankenstein's family — however, the text itself remains a
critique of that institution, and of the notion of 'true*
womanhood Wollstonecraft criticizes in the Vindication (117—
118). Frankenstein * s women are as helpless as the vampires"
victims, but lacking their demonic counterparts, with the
potential exception of the female creature, who is never
given the chance to express the sexual aggression
Frankenstein projects onto her. Although the creature does
not turn women into demons, he, like the vampire, reveals
the weaknesses of men who love angels. These men who create
women in need of protection cannot adequately protect them;
the traditional family fails in Frankenstein as in the
vampire texts-
192
is no indication that Shelley is completely against
revolution under certain circumstances; rather than
deploring Romantic masculine revolution. Frankenstein seems
to suggest that those who are truly oppressed and othered --
such as women — may be justified in rebellion against
oppressive authority. The fact that the domestic
confinement of women makes male revolution possible makes it
more difficult to align Shelley with Edmund Burke, as Mellor
does regarding what she calls their "conservative vision of
gradual evolutionary reform." (Mary Shelley 86)- Burke's
Image of Marie Antoinette, "glittering like the nvorning
star* (91), before she falls victim to the Revolution
against which he rails, is reminiscent of Elizabeth and
Caroline. Shelley's perfect, and equally doomed, feminine
icons. While Burke uses the deposed Queen as evidence of
the barbarity of the revolution, and the failure of "a
nation of gallant men" to protect her (91). Shelley's novel
reveals the need to rebel against s» system in which women
are kept in a state of "lovely weakness" (Wollstonccraft
124) so that they require laasculine protection. As Pamela
Clesiit notes. Shelley is "deeply sceptical about the
integrity of the patriarchal faaily. the basis of Burke's
hierarchical order" (165), and thus would probably not have
echoed his lament, "the age of chivalry is gone" (Burke 91).
Critics who read Frankenstein in. opposition to Godwin's
F-olitical Justice cite the latter"s insistence on reason.
193
and often suggest that Shelley, by contrast, champions
domestic affection. Certainly, Shelley appears to be
against the absolute rationalism which Mellor associates,
for example, with masculine science, but she is also opposed
to any kind of rigid absolutism. It is a mistake, then, to
create a binary opposition between thinking creator and
feeling creature, then; Frankenstein is easily as capable of
irrational ravings as the creature, who, especially when
arguing for his rights, often speaks very rationally indeed.
David Seed notes the "reversals in speech-style" that occur
in the central exchange between ci'eature and creator:
"submission will reverse into threat: a feeling of power
Into helpless horror; and so on" (334-35). This ambiguity
regarding the position of reason extends also to
Frankenstein * s relationship to Godwin's work.
One area in which Shelley emphatically agrees with
Godwin, and in direct opposition to Burke, is the position
of "prejudice." Godwin refers to "unsocial and immoral
prejudices" (1:243), which he associates directly with
'8 "there will be oppressors, as long as there
oppression:'
are Individuals inclined, either from perverseness, or
rooted and obstinate prejudice, to take party with the
oppressor" (1:269). Political Justice explicitly opposes
Wollstonecraft also takes this position, writing of

"women who are restrained by principle or prejudice" (111);
once again, then, issues of gender and politics converge in
the figure of the creature.
194
reason and prejudice, stating in its "Summary of Principles"
that "soundness of understanding is inconsistent with
prejudice" (1:xxvii). By contrast, Burke upholds prejudice
as
of ready application in the emergency; it
previously engages the mind in a steady course of
wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man
hesitating in the moment of decision . . .
Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit. . . .
Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of
his nature. (105-06)
Frankenstein opposes this view, as the creature shares
Godwin's opinion of the injustice of prejudice- In his
exchange with De Lacey the term occurs four times. De Lacey
introduces it. claiming that "the hearts of men, when
unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of
brotherly love and charity" (161). a position that is still
in keeping with the primacy of affection. The creature
perceptively notes that the De Laceys, who have never seen
him, are already "prejudiced against [him]" (161). Despite
their kindness and his own "good dispositions." he tells the
old man. "a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where
they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold
only a detestable monster" (161). Finally, the creature
e-presses a desire to overcome that prejudice, specifically,
the belief "that [hej wish[es] to injure them*' (161). These
words, of course, prove prophetic when Felix returns and
reacts violently to what he perceives as a threat; the
reader, however, realizes that his response is not rational.

195
but based on prejudice — just the opposition Godwin
establishes. However, because it is just those preconceived
notions that stand between the creature and the affection he
seeks. one cannot exclude the rational argument against
prejudice, also presented in Political Justice, from the
sphere of the emotions. Similarly, although Burke's
argument in favour of prejudice is not notable for its
rationality, its logic is internally consistent; prejudice
is, as Burke is aware, useful for upholding the traditions
and institutions which he believes necessary to prevent
revolution, and can thus characterize as wisdom and virtue.
The creature's argument against prejudice, paralleling
Godwin's as it does, helps to justify his own violent acts
of rebellion, for if "all human kind [has] sinned against
[him]" \245), his retaliation might be understood, if not
entirely condoned. To return to Shelley's position
regarding revolution, then, it is necessary to recognize a
distinction between the revolutionary acts of Frankenstein
and Walton and that of the creature. First, the two men
choose their radical Isolation while the creature is
forcibly isolated because he is other, and seeks society
rather than avoiding it (Baldick 52). Perhaps even more
significantly, the forces against which the creature revolts
are more oppressive than any with which Walton or
Frankenstein contends, although perhaps only in degree, as
196
both men are also constrained by their relations to their
families, and by preconceived social norms.
The creature's search for a community which will accept
him indicates that the novel does privilege society over the
individual's rebellion. Such a position is partially
Godwinian in that Shelley's father admits that "the most
desirable condition of the human species, is a state of
society" (l:xxiv); however. Godwin favours minimal
government interference in individual affairs (1:215-16).
This distinction exists in the novel as well. That the
novel criticizes the rebellious impulse represented by
Frankenstein, and to a lesser degree by Walton, suggests a
negative view of the egocentric Promethean revolutionary.
However, it displays a more posicive outlook regarding the
revolution against an oppressive authority which excludes
the other from society, thus confirming a belief in both
community and justifiable rebellion, which are — presumably
because of the justification — not, then, mutually
exclusive.
Frankenstein reveals the often-arbitrary nature of
authority, illustrated not only in the treatment and words
of the creature, but in even more direct instances. The
first of these is the trial of Justine. Alphonse tells
Elizabeth and Victor that he trusts the court (108); they do
the same and Justine is hanged in a "wretched mockery of
justice" (109). To further emphasize corrupt authority.

197
Justine's confessor advises her to admix xo the crime she
has not coi.^mitted (114), although this anti-Catholicism is
an instance of unambiguous othering, one v/hich Shelley,
whose husband publicly and notoriously advocated atheism,
may have seen as progressive, especially in the context of
promoting reason versus Catholic "superstition." In the
face of the priest's threats, the ironically-named Justine
almost believes she is the "monster 1 (114) — and the term
is obviously significant — he believes her to be. He
defines her. then compels her to believe his definition, a
model of the othering process. Even if Justine still
believes herself innocent. the dominant society not only
arbitrarily condemns the other, but maintains the view that
this is "justice." Justine's "resignation" (115) and
Elizabeth's belief that she, not the court, is "unjust"
because she perceptively views men "as monsters thirsting
for each other's blood" (121)"'1 — a belief she voices just
after her eloquent and perceptive speech distinguishing true
justice from retribution (115) — indicate the power of this
ideology.
" Elizabeth's views may initially appear to confirm the

belief that the masculine public sphere is excessively
violent compared to what she obviously perceives as the
safety of domesticity; her response to this corrupt and
brutal system is the desire to return home to her family
(115). However, as Goodwin notes, "violence is at the heart
of every home in the novel" (100), and the fact that
Elizabeth is murdered on the eve of her marriage, and indeed
because of it. hardly supports any claim for the domestic
sphere as sanctuary from a dangerous world.
198
The novel's revelation of the arbitrary nature of
justice within the social hierarchy suggests a critique of
that hierarchy, which can never be other than corrupt- The
novel makes a similar point with the unjust exile of the De
Laceys by a government which is again characterized by its
arbitrary exercise of power (153). both here and in Its
treatment of Safie's father: "the injustice of his sentence
was very flagrant . . . [IJt was judged that his religion
and wealth, rather than the crime alleged against him, had
been the cause of his condemnation" (150). The legal system
fails again when Victor finally approaches a legal authority
in the form of the magistrate, who not only refuses to
believe him. but who cannot help him (223-25). From this
point on. what little official authority exists in the novel
fades, foregrounding the relationship between Frankenstein
and his creature, which serves as a complex representation
of the connection between tyrants and those they oppress.
This relationship too. is highly ambiguous, and
suggests the dehumanizing effects of political hierarchy on
both the oppressor and the oppressed, whose positions are
not fixed; George Levine notes that "each of [the novel's]
major figures is at once victimizer and victim" (12). If
Frankenstein starts out as a Promethean rebel, imparting a
"spark" (85) of life to dead matter, he becomes a tyrant
when he first rejects the creature, and emphasizes his
tyranny when he destroys the female creature, and again when
199
the pursued becomes the pursuer. He views the creature as
other froes the beginning, as Is evident in his language.
From the outset, Frankenstein uses such terms as "wretch"
(86), "monster" (87), "thing" (87), and "devil" (104) to
refer to the creature, a type of linguistic othering which
also exists in both Polidori and Stoker, where the vampires
seem xo lose their names as the narrative progresses, so
Dracula becomes at best "the Count" and at worst "fiend" and
"devil." while nuthven becomes "fiend" and "monster." The
creature is aware of the extent of his otherness, as his
speech to Frankenstein reveals: "[y]ou, ;ny creator would
tear me to pieces, and triumph. . . . You would not call It
murder, if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-
rifts, and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands"
(171-72). The creature's belief that Frankenstein could
kill him without thinking of the act as murder Is
perceptive for, as I have discussed regarding Dracula, the
life of the other is never as valuable as that of the self,
for the other is by definition not human and can thus be
killed without remorse, an act of literal self-defense which
Is easy enough to justify.
The creature's position, however, is as unstable as
Frankenstein's; he begins as victim of oppression, which he
rebels against, then amplifies this justifiable revolution
into violence against the innocent, his own kind of tyranny.
In this the creature's actions reflect cultural anxiety

200
surroundxng the French Revolution. Even those who could
justify revolutionary violence against tyrants could hardly
condone the Terror, the ultimate nineteenth-century image of
violent revolution out of control. Frankenstein, claims
Ronald Paulson, presents many "familiar image patterns of
the Revolution" (549). images which illustrate the dual
nature of events in France, with their potential for
liberation and their actual "collapsle] into tyranny and
chaos" (Montag 3 0 1 ) . Among these images is that of
lightning, both awe-inspiring and utterly destructive as it
strikes the oak tree and excites Frankenstein's scientific
curiosity- According to Paulson, "this image leads into the
Promethean associations of light and fire, benevolence and
destruction" (5501 - A particularly good example of this
ambiguous image is the creature's destruction of the De
Laceys* domestic happiness with the very fire that, in the
hearth, has such positive associations with household
prosperity (165).
The creature himself can be seen as an image of
revolution, one commonly used by Burke, who described
"military democracy." for example, as "a species of
political monster, which has always ended by devouring those
"It is not accidental that the De Laceys are French;

David Marshall suggests their nationality establishes
Frankenstein * s connection with Rousseau (183). which is
arguable, but it seems more likely that they are meant to be
refugees from the Revolution. In any case, a reference to
corrupt French government is highly suggestive in 1818,
whatever one's views of the events in France-
201
who have produced it" (262). As Chris Baldick notes,
Burke's image of the revolution, which he saw as unnatural
(58). is indeed a variant on that of the "body politic,"
which he also frequently employs (255. 282). Baldick
writes: "when political discord and rebellion appear, this
'body* is said to be not just diseased, but misshapen.
abortive, monstrous" (14). Hence the following passage from
Burke:
. . . vice assumes a new body. The spirit
transmigrates; and. far from losing its principle
of life by the change of Its appearance. It Is
renovated in its new organs with the fresh vigour
of a juvenile activity- It walks abroad; it
continues its ravages; whilst you are gibbeting
the carcass, or demolishing the tomb. . . - (174)
The similarity of this reanimated body to Frankenstein's
creature is striking: associated with the tombs and
scaffolds that must have been the sources of Frankenstein's
raw materials, it wreaks havoc far and wide. Given the
anxiety surrounding monstrous figures of revolution, best
characterized in Burke, it is not unfair to suggest that
"Shelley seems xo be offering a Burkean critique of
revolutionary aspirations, and a subversive rejoinder to
Godwin's early rational views" (Clemlt 164). Certainly the
novel makes no attempt to disguise or erase the violence
associated with revolution: unlike her husband's Prometheus.
Shelley's revolutionary creature has no Demogorgon — if
anything, he plays this role for Frankenstexn. whose
violent, revolutionary desires he may embody, for all he
202
professes his admiration for "peaceable law-givers" (156).
However, as Cleanit goes on to say. "the complexity of Mary
Shelley's response to Godwin's thought should be emphasized"
(164).
Burke was not alone in deploring the terrifying
violence of revolution: Godwin himself believed that,
although "Revolution is instigated by a horror against
tyranny . . . its own tyranny is not without peculiar
aggravations" (1:263). Godwin's assessment of the effects
of revolutionary violence on Individuals is also strikingly
relevant to the relationship between Frankenstein and his

m
creator: the perpetrators, and the witnesses of saurders.
become obdurate, unrelenting and inhuman. Those who sustain
the loss of relations or friends by a catastrophe of this
sort, are filled with indignation and revenge" 11:272).
Nevertheless. Godwin could understand. If not condone,
revolution against tyrannical ruûrs: "the eaen who grow
angry with corruption, and impatient at injustice, and
through those sentiments favour the abettors of revolution,
have an obvious apology to palliate their error." he writes
(1:284).
Wollstonccraft agrees both with this assessment and
with Burke's, in that, in her Historical View of the Origin
and Progress of the French Revolution, she "does not deny
that elements of the Parisian crowd deserve to be regarded
as monstrous" (Baldick 2 2 ) . but also believes that their

203
monstrosity is socially constructed. Like the creature, who
tells Frankenstein "misery has made me a fiend" (128), these
revolutionary monsters "show . . . the reflected evils of
government tyranny" (Baldick 2 2 ) . It was to such a
tyrannical government that Godwin himself applied the image
of monstrosity (Baldick 24-25). adding a third revolutionary
context xo any possible interpretation of the creature's
monstrous body.
Lee Sterrenburg notes that "Shelley does not always
escape from the stereotypes of the revolutionary age. but
she does conflate and mix them in new and subversive
combinations" (161): the source of the creature's
monstrosity, then, remains fluid and undefined. However,
the sympathy the novel generates for its monstrous
revolutionary suggests that Shelley, like her parents before
her. is turning Burke's imagery against its creator (Clemit
149). The result is. indeed, a "hybrid." as Sterrenburg
calls it (165); the creature Is
derived from the lurid imagery of Burke's counter-

revolutionary polemics, but manages at the same
time to voice the opposing views of Mary
Wollstonccraft and others, indicting the
prevailing system from the standpoint of the
oppressed and outcast. . . . Read from the Burkean
position . . . the novel seems to warn against
the recklessness of the radical ohilosoohe who
tries to construct a new body politic. But read
from the position of Paine. Wollstonccraft, or
Godwin, it seems to suggest that the violence of
the oppressed springs from frustration with the
neglect and Injustice of their social 'parent.*
(54-55)
2C4
The theme of the negligent parent is perhaps the best-
evidence for connecting Shelley's creature to the republican
tradition, rather than to Burke. If the novel condemns
Frankenstein as a negligent parent -- a fact of which there
can be little doubt — and serves as a critique of the
bourgeois family in general, it can hardly be aligned with
Burke, whose idea of the state, as noted above, parallels
that of the patriarchal family. The very statement Mellor
makes equating the bad father with the bad ruler also
negates her argument for Shelley's Burkean tendencies, for
the metaphor of the bad parent is a typically republican
one. Sterrenburg writes: "Especially for republican
historiographers, parricidal monsters serve as emblems of
the consequences of misrule" (162). In other words
parricidal revolution results from the actions of tyrannical
parents or rulers. While Burke also employs the image of
the parricide, his emphasis is not on the unjust parent, but
on the ungrateful child, whom he also depicts as monstrous.
If subjects should "approach to the faults of the state as
to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling
solicitude" (Burke 116). then the revolutionary who actually
overthrows the head of state must be condemned because
by this wise prejudice we are taught to look with

horror on those children of their country who are
prompt rashly to hack that aged parent In pieces,
and put him Into the kettle of magicians. In hopes
that by their poisonous weeds, and wild
Incantations, they may regenerate the paternal
205
constitution, and renovate their father's life.
(116-17)"3
Finally, Eurke pictures the revolutionary as an illegitimate
and monstrous child, like Shelley's creature, although he
obviously shows none of her sympathy towards this figure.
Burke speaks of "power, which has derived its birth from no
law and no necessity; but which on the contrary has had its
origin in those vices and sinister practices by which the
social union is often disturbed and sometimes destroyed"
(204). and, even more explicitly, he warns the French people
as follows:
your new commonwealth Is born, and bred, and fed.
in those corruptions which mark degenerated and
worn out republics. Your child comes into the
world with the symptoms of death. (227)
Rather than a fearful plea for the status quo. then.
Frankenstein can be read as a dreadful warning, and the
monstrous creature as an "eobleaU of the consequences of
misrule" (Sterrenburg 162): those who are othered will rise
against their oppressors, as the French did. as the creature
does, and the best way to prevent this is to end their
oppression, ideally through the dissolution of authoritative
and arbitrary hierarchies, rather than through benevolent
By alluding to Medea, the stereotypically demonic

woman — sexual aggressor, murderess, witch and bad mother —
- Burke implies that the parricidal revolutionary is
feminine as well - His imagery here both lends credence xo
an Interpretation of Frankenstein's rebellious creature as
the female other, and again demonstrates how easily issues
of politics and gendex can become entangled.
206
treatment of the still-othered other. The creature, after
all. desires an equal.
Clearly. Frankenstein values community and equality
over Isolation and hierarchy; this is what the creature
seeks, and what the De Laceys. at their best, represent. As
well as the potential gender dichotomy, with feminine
community opposed to masculine individualism, the novel's
egalitarianism also comments on class structures and
economic systems, and can be read as a critique of
capitalism, an exploration of otherness based on class.
"Xo Money. No Friends. No Kind of Property":

Class and Otherness
While with the De Laceys. the creature discovers class
distinctions, and also realizes that he has no place In such
a system;
1 learned that the possessions most esteemed by
your fellow-creatures were, high and unsullied
descent united with riches. A man might be
respected with only one of these acquisitionsi but
without either he was considered, except in very
rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed
to waste his power for the profit of the chosen
few. And what was I? . . . I knew that I
possessed no money. no friends, no kind ox
property. I was besides, endowed with a figure
hideously deformed and loathsome. . . . 1148)
The De Laceys will not turn away the poor (159). but reject
the creature who is even lower on the social scale, having
neither money, nor rank, nor family. Indeed, he literally
lacks a name, and Is in this sense, classless — "without a
past, without identity." as Arlene Young suggests (3311. It
207
is interesting that the creature initially defines his
otherness as class-based, and only then associates this
marginallzatlon with his appearance. Anca Vlasooolos
connects appearance to class, noting that the degree to
which each of the three women associated with Frankenstein
can move up in social rank is directly related to her
beauty. Justine, for example, is "presumably beautiful
enough to warrant an education superior to the position of
servant for which she has been rescued, but not enough to
become an adopted daughter" (127). Although the three
Frankenstein women are allowed some degree of social
mobility based on physical appearance, beauty and
"distinction of bearing." In the case of men (Vlasopolos
126), also seem related to Inborn class.
Although the creature claims to learn about class
inequality from Felix's reading of Volney. there are
indications that he is instinctively aware of such
distinctions even before he arrives at the So Lacey cottage.
He notices, for example, the "gentle manners" of the De
Laceys. which he contrasts with the conduct of the
"barbarous villagers" C139), and also remarks that Agatha
possesses a "gentle demeanour," although this may Indeed be
retrospective — he claims Agatha is "unlike what I have
since found cottagers and farm-house servants to be" (135).
The creature also notices that Agatha's demeanour contrasts

208
with her coarse clothing, which indicates some knowledge of
class Issues even upon his first sight of her (135).
The suggestion that class is innate and visible relates
to Perkins's observation that, in the novel.
sympathy seems to be more with the dispossessed

than with those who are born into the lower class.
The implication, then, is that there are both
worthy and unworthy poor. If the latter are
defined as those characters who would otherwise be
ruling class (that is. if not for fate) and the
former as those with neither financial means nor
noble heritage, then Shelley's scheme becomes
somewhat problematic because of elitist overtones.
(33)
The text becomes even more problematic if one includes the
creature among the dispossessed, as Vlasopolos does, given
"his unnatural origin and consequent detachment from
existing social structures" (130): once again the creature
resists definition- His exclusion from the class system may
be a result, as Lee Heller suggests, of the "violent
potential of social instability" (337). Heller notes that
the De Laceys are "examples of appropriate lower-class
virtue — because they are not really lower class, but good
bourgeoisie whe preserve domestic virtues despite their
reduced circumstances" (335). Similarly, the three examples
of "female upward mobility" — Caroline. Elizabeth and
Justine — represent no threat to the dominant class because
they are given "a foundation In a good education consisting
of models of bourgeois domestic virtue. Thus educated.
women fulfil and are fulfilled by their social roles, and so
pose little danger of disrupting the culture and its values"

209
(Heller 330-31). The creature, by contrast, cannot be
assimilated into this system, but remains a threat to it.
Heller claims he "represents the criminal potential of the
uncontrolled, perhaps uncontrollable lower classes" (337).
In fact, the creature merely faces the dilemma generated by
his otherness; because he is other, those who represent the
self see him as an outsider and force him to remain outside
their society. Because he is outside their society, he must
be unredeemable, and therefore must remain outside their
society, and so on. There is no concrete indication that
the creature could not uphold bourgeois values, but the
fearful dominant class will never give him that chance, and
part of this prejudice is based on his appearance, for if
the dispossessed Agatha is beautiful, and the beautiful
social-climbers are invited into the *-anks of the
bourgeoisie, the hideous creature remains doubly lower
class.
Just as he resembles Frankenstein in his attitudes

towards women, the creature in his admiration for the De
Laceys as a dispossessed "good family" (150) resembles his
creator in matters of class bias. He sincerely believes
that the bourgeois exiles are his superiors, and in that
sense accepts his own otherness, thus perpetuating the
submission of the lower classes to the bourgeoisie which
Frankenstein represents-
210
Frankenstein's attitude towards the lower classes
extends beyond the creature. as can be seen in his accounts
both of the Orkneys and of Ireland. He describes the Irish
nurse in negative terms explicitly relating to her economic
position: "her countenance expressed all those bad qualities
which often characterize that class" (203). Similarly, he
describes the conditions of Orkney peasants, "whose gaunt
and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare"
(190), then makes the telling remark: "I lived ungazcd at
and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and
clothes which I gave" (190). Vlasopoios points out the
irony inherent in "Mary Shelley's fine choice of "pittance.*
for which Victor expects lavish thanks" (130).
Frankenstein's relationship with these representatives of
the lower classes parallel his connection to the creature,
whom he treats. Elsie B. Mlchie maintains, as the
bourgeoisie treats the proletariat (94).
Victor's treatment of the creature reflects factory-
owners* attitudes towards their workers, who are. as Moretti
notes, a class created by the capitalist (69). Perkins
finds a similarity in the fact that "while the privileged
class . . . both supports and benefits from a socio-economic
system that gives rise to a dispossessed class . . . it has
no desire to confront (or be confronted by) the ugliness of
its workings" (36). Thus Frankenstein creates the creature,
upon whose existence the success of his experiment depends.
211
but at the same time, he cannot stand even to look upon his
creation. According to Moretti (69) and Warren Montag
(303), the creature represents the proletariat in his
migrancy, his artificiality, and the fact that "he lack Is]
the unity of a natural organism," being rather **a factitious
totality assembled from (the parts of) a multitude of
different individuals, in particular the 'poor," the urban
mass that. because it is a multitude rather than an
individual, is itself as nameless as Frankenstein's
creation" (Montag 3 0 3 ) . He is allowed no individuality, no
selfhood (Moretti 6 9 ) ; as Perkins notes, Frankenstein's
persistent egoism, his tendency to "collapse[] everything
into himself, denying space for others to express their
difference from him," resembles the actitude of the
bourgeois individualist (32). Frankenstein interprets the
creature's warning — "I shall be with you on your wedding
night" (195) — as a threat to his own safety, and then,
when the creature kills Elizabeth. Frankenstein again
becomes absorbed in his c«/n grief, dramatically exclaiming:
"Great God! why did I not then expire!" (220). Perhaps
most significant is Frankenstein's response to Justine's
arrest for the murder of William: "the tortures of the
accused did not equal mine" (113).
Justine's own class position is also significant. Her
adopts ori by the Frankensteins suggests that class structures
are not rigid; indeed, in her letter to Victor, Elizabeth

212
explains at length how "the republican institutions of
[their] country" are much more liberal, in this regard, than
those of "the great monarchies that surround it" (93).
Given the status of Shelley and her readers as subjects of a
highly class-conscious monarchy, the relevance of
Elizabeth's letter to the novel's political position is
obvious. Conspicuously Intended for the reader, as Victor
is presumably aware of his country's class system.
Elizabeth's explanation calls attention to the issue of
class:
there is less distinction between the several

classes of . . . inhabitants; and the lower orders
being neither so poor nor so despised, their
manners are more refined and moral. A servant in
Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant
in France and England. Justine, thus received in
our family, learned the duties of a servant: a
condition which, in our fortunate country, does
not include the Idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice
of the dignity of a human being- (93-94)
As well as reiterating Shelley's support for the Godwinian
principle that "the actions and dispositions of mankind are
the offspring of circumstances and events, and not of any
original determination" (Godwin 1:26) — specifically,
that the poor and despised will become ill-mannered and
Immoral — this passage is an implicit critique of class
Such a view, although it occurs throughout the novel,

directly contradicts the use of beauty and bearing as a sign
of inherent class superiority, and may thus be used, in
combination with Vlasopolos's argument that beauty permits
social mobility, to counter such an essentialist reading.
Again, characters in the text, particularly Frankenstein
himself, see otherness as inherent, while the text itself
realizes such distinctions are artificial.
213
hierarchy in Shelley's own country. If servants in
Switzerland are not degraded, and their position does not
involve ignorance and indignity, that of servants in "France
and England" by implication does. Finally, the letter
exonerates the Frankensteins from any charge of outright
class-based exploitation, firmly situating them on the side
of what Perkins calls "a kind of paternalistic compromise:
that is, the abuses of the privileged class can be rectified
through charitable obligation to those less fortunate" (36).
Elizabeth's apparent awareness of class issues is made to
seem naive, however, when Justine is accused of William's
murder.
Elizabeth's defense of Justine only strengthens the
case against her, for now she can also be accused of
"ingratitude" (112). a crime which may be worse than murder
in its effect on social hierarchies. "Ingratitude"
signifies not only a transgression against the bourgeois
standards of filial duty, proving Hatlen"s point that
"bourgeois society has ended by recreating patriarchy"
("Patriarchy" 4 2 ) , but the actions of a disloyal servant.
Justine now becomes a "aonstor" (114) guilty of offenses
against what is. even in republican Geneva, perceived as the
natural order of things. Despite Elizabeth's earlier
optimism, then, Justine can never truly escape her position
as lower-class other. The difference between Justine's
trial and Victor's Irish experience is also worth noting;
214
the Genevan public condemns the female servant, while the
eldest son of the respectable Frankenstein family never
faces the same danger from the Irish, whom he sees as other
(Vlasopolos 131).
The creature is similarly fixed in a lower class
position; he literally embodies the class other, his
difference being inscribed on his monstrous form. To the
list of proletarian characteristics compiled from Montag and
Moretti. I would add his association with the body. The
creature is the ultimate "representation of materiality"
(Michie 96), of labour, both in being the product of
Frankenstein's work and in his own hideously oversized
bodily existence. Hatlen claims that the creature "leaps
fi=ll-grown.- -from the mind . . . of his creator — like
Athena from the head of Zeus, like Sin from the mind of
Satan, like the Son from the mind of God. like Eve from the
side of Adam" ("Patriarchy" 3 3 ) . while in fact, the opposite
is true- Victor literally assembles the creature from his
component parts, and he emphasizes what he sees as the
disgustingly material nature of the task, completed in his
"workshop of filthy creation," and supplied with materials
from "the dissecting room and the slaughter-house" (83)- As
a member of the bourgeoisie, Frankenstein recoils from
labour that seems to him obscene, indeed, unthinkable: "who
slhall conceive the horrors of my secret toll, as I dabbled
among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the
215
living animal to animate the lifeless clay?" (83). Often.
Frankenstein himself "turn[s] with loathing from [his]
occupation" (83), from, as Montag observes, "material
activity associated with the workshop, the work of
manufacture" (309)-
Victor shows a similar disgust, of course, for the
product of his transgressive material labour, referring to
the creature as a "filthy mass that moved and talked" (174).
The creature is an undeniably physical entity, a "massive
material object [who] does not present a smooth surface but
is clearly fissured, showing the sutures that join it
together as an assemblage of heterogenous parts" (Mlchle
96). He confirms Frankenstein's view of his bodily nature
when he refers to "that series of disgusting circumstances"
which led to his creation (157). References to his "odious
and loathsome person" (157) and "hideously deformed" figure
(14S) indicate that the creature accepts Frankenstein's
othering of the materiality associated with labour, although
he does not claim the human class system as his own, citing
rather "the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-
creatures" (148. emphasis added).
The creature's frightening size, his strength, and his
focus on material things such as food, clothing and sheXter
differ from Frankenstein's intellectual pursuits, his
domesticity, and his physical weakness- The reader seldom
sees Frankenstein engaged in the physical aspects of daily

,216
life, while they are the creature's primary concerns. This
is not to say. of course, that the creature does not think
in the abstract, or desire snore than his simple subsistence,
just that he Is denied such less material pleasures.
"A Race of Devils'": Colonialism. Slavery. Racial Otherness
Associating the creature with the physical, and
portraying him as stronger, faster, and more sexually
aggressive than his human creator also associates him with
the racial other. The most obvious evidence for such a
reading is. of course, the creature's physical difference.
which is highly visible and significantly associated with
colour; he has yellow skin and black lips, both of which
contrast with exotic dark hair and pearly white teeth ( 8 6 ) .
The creature describes himself in terms which, as H- L.
Malchow notes, fit the "standard description of the black
man" (102):
I was not even of the same nature as man. I was

more agile than they, and could subsist upon
coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold
with less injury to my frame; my stature far
exceeded theirs. (148)
Malcnow compares the creature's attributes with the
nineteenth century's
general image of the Xegro body in which repulsive

features, brute-like strength and size of limbs
featured prominently- . . . The Xcgro. it was
said, had more brute strength than the white asan
and could stand the heat of the tropics which
would enervate, perhaps kill, a European. . . .
Moreover some apologists for slavery defended a
subsistence slave diet of maize and water with the
217
claim that the Negro race did not require the
white man's luxuries of meat and drink. (103-05)
The final part of this description relates to another.
perhaps less negative, image of the racial other, but one
which, nevertheless, "was not . . . a validation of other.
alternative, cultures" (Malchow 93): the Image of the
"natural man.*"3 Frankenstein's creature, before he is
corrupted by abuse, also resembles this figure of "pre-
civillzed innocence" (Malchow 93). Malchow realizes that
Shelley's novel, which "dr[aws] upon contemporary attitudes
towards non-whites. In particular on fears and hopes of the
abolition of slavery in the West Indies" (90). presents the
creature as a "compound of both sides of the slavery debate"
(105). Thus Frankenstein conflates the image of the natural
man with that of "the black as a destructive force" (Malchow
108}. seen in the burning of the De Laceys" cottage, for
example, fire being associated not only with political
revolution but with slave revolts (Malchow 1083. The
creature at his most oppressed also represents the
""This image is in keeping with the view of virtuous

nature discussed in reference to Carmilla. In fact.
Shelley's text offers a much less problematic presentation
of this view than Le Fanu's. The creature see? himself as
"naturally" good but corrupted by society, while
Frankenstein, rather than contesting the virtues of nature,
chooses instead to view the creature as unnatural, a view
not necessarily supported by the text as a whole. However,
as Malchow mentions, the spectre of brute cruelty is also
present in the image of the violent creature, who remains
associated with nature, once again suggesting — however
tenuously — saorc than one view of the natural.
218
abolitionists' "image of the Other, a special kind of
childlike, suffering and degraded being" (Malchow 9 9 ) .
It Is readily apparent to which of these views of the
creature as racial other Frankenstein subscribes. The fact
that he calls himself a slave to his experiment, again
resentful of his loss of autonomy (85), is interesting
because his is an imperialist project. Frankenstein creates
the creature as the first of another race he dreams of
commanding (82) and expresses many of his anxieties
concerning the creature in racial terms. Ills excessive and
unspeakable guilt is typical of the imperialist, and his
fear of "a race of devils" (192) Indicates not only a fear
of sexuality, but of the reproducing, and racially stronger
other who may colonize the colonizers, a fear similar to
that present in Dracula- With the anxiety of reverse
colonization in mind. Kranzler suggests that "Victor's
refusal to build a reproductive mate for his monster [is] a
primitive (though effective) form of practical eugenics"
(-46). Indeed, part of the anxiety Frankenstein feels
regarding the creature's future family plans relates to the
nineteenth-century racist image of "blacks free from the
discipline of the white master, in an environment where
nature provided unlimited sustenance, breeding like animals
at a rate unrestrained by decency" (Malchow 1 1 3 ) .
Similarly. Frankenstein's dread that the female
creature may choose human men for her mates represents a

219
characteristic fear of miscegenation, less obvious but still
present in the creature's own sexualized threat to
Elizabeth, who in the 1831 edition is notably "very fair" in
contrast to the "dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants" with whom
she is raised (34). Malchow notes that "the threat that
white women might be brutalized by over-sexed black men of
great strength and size became a cliche of racist writing"
(112). The fact that Elizabeth is killed on her wedding
night makes her murder an Image of rape as well, and
Frankenstein admits to having made his creature
"proportionably large" (82) in keeping with the contemporary
view that "the Negro was both particularly libidinous and
possessed of unusually large genitalia" (Malchow 111).
If Frankenstein's anxiety regarding the creature as
racial other marks him as a colonizer, his male counterparts
are similarly imperialistic- Clerval studies the
Orientalists, and ir- the 1831 edition plans
to visit India, in the belief that he had in his

knowledge of its various languages, and in the
views he had taken of its society, the means of
materially assisting the progress of European
colonisation and trade. In Britain only could he
further the execution of his plan. (158)
That last sentence associates Shelley's England with
oppressive colonialism, a connection that is more subtly
presented through Walton, the English explorer. Walton
believes he Is travelling through "a land never before
Imprinted by the foot of man" (50). and Is surprised that
Frankenstein is a European, rather than "a savage inhabitant

220
of some undiscovered island" (57) -- a description that
better suits "the other traveller" (57). the creature, who
generally plays the role of the colonized, racial other.
Despite this position, and the fact that he apparently
shares Safie's sympathy for the plight of North American
natives (147). the creature too has a colonial dream, which
he couches In terms of Utopia when he vows to take his mate
to "uninhabited" South America, to settle there, arid
presumably to reproduce (173).
Safie. of course, is the most obvious site of racial
otherness in the novel, and it is here that the treatment of
this otherness becomes decidedly less radical than it may
seem if the creature is placed In the position of racial
other. Shelley echoes her nother's expression of liberal
feminism in blatantly orientalist terms in portraying
Safie's father, the Turk, as a sexual tyrant. Her mother is
"a Christian Arab" (151) and therefore acceptable,
representing, as does her daughter, a safe, domesticated
racial other. Safie's "complexion lis] wondrously fair,
each cheek tinged with a lovely pink" (144), and she blends
in well with the De Laceys, learning their language and a
very western view of history; even the "explicitly radical1"
Volney (McWhir 813 refers to "slothful Asiatics"
(Frankenstein 1 4 7 ) . Surely anyone truly perceived as
racially other would not be so easily assimilated; Indeed,

221
the creature, who receives the same education as Safie. is
not.
The education of slaves is another issue which Malchow
discusses: "knowledge is power, and the withholding of
instruction was a highly symbolic entrenchment of the
master-slave relationship" (116—17)- The creature's
incomplete education "[teaches] him self-contempt just as
the little education given the plantation black or freed
slave served merely to reinforce his own awareness of
inferiority'" (113). Because the creature believes himself
inferior, he "continues to look beyond himself for an
identity and therefore remains dependent upon his creator.
[He] demands that his creator either give him the self he
lacks or give him an Other of his own so that he can become
autonomous" (Hatlen. "Patriarchy" 42-43). The creature
confirms Hatlen"s view when he addresses Frankenstein thus:
"from you only could I hope for succour . . . fO]n you only
had I any claim for pity" (167, emphasis added).
The creature's lack of an independent identity is
relevant in the context of Hegel's master—slave dialectic.
Hegel refers to master and slave, respectively, as follows:
"the one is independent, and its essential nature is to be
for itself; the other is dependent, and its essence is life
or existence for another" (234). Perkins notes that the
parallel with Frankenstein is not absolute, however:
although the creature depends on his creator for existence
222
and identity. Frankenstein "neither depends upon the
monster's labour r.or is beneficiary of anything the monster
produces," although "he might be seen as dependent upon and
a beneficiary of class oppression (in which the monster
represents the oppressed classes)" (41nl). Frankenstein
also depends on the creature as an other against which to
define himself, and one cannot ignore that the original
experiment was to have brought the scientist glory and
personal satisfaction (69). both dependent on the creature's
existence.
The master-slave dialectic is an othering process,
predicated on the fact that the master's subjectivity and
the slave's subjectivity are mutually exclusive. The slave
is by definition other, existing only as proof of the
master's independent identity, the freedom which defines
him; the slave "is, for the master, the object which
embodies the truth of his certainty of himself" (Hegel 236).
The need for self-definition through the other means that,
paradoxically, the master is then dependent on the slave, as
is the self uprn the other. Howard P. Kainz refers to the
master-slave relationship as "a temporary symbiotic
relationship which is continually tending towards its own
reversal" (89). as the slave achieves self-consciousness.
This process is apparent in Frankenstein. The creature

initially participates in his own othering. identifying
himself with the "slave, doomed to waste his powers for the
223
profit of the chosen few" (148). Later, however, he
declares: "mine shall not be the submission of abject
slavery" (172). This vow "signifies the reversal ef the
roaster-slave relationship" (Rieder 28}; the creature becomes
the master and Frankenstein the slave. The creature, as
Perkins notes, has "nothing to lose" (30). a condition which
recalls the master's lack of fear, and willingness to die,
in Hegel (233). and thus "constitutes the source of his
power" (Perkins 30). At this point, Hegel's dialectic is
truly realized, because the creature is now "in a position
to demand Victor's labour (as in his request for a
companion) and then to punish him for his refusal to comply"
(Perkins 41nl). Frankenstein realizes the nature of his
position, calling himself "the slave of [his] creature"
(194), but It is the creature who best articulates the now-
reversed relationship between them:
slave . . . remember that I have power; you
believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so
wretched that the light of day will be hateful to
you. You are my creator, but I am your master; —
obey! (194)
When It becomes apparent that Frankenstein will not do as he
commands, the creature swears to be revenged:
You can blast my other passions: but revenge
remains — revenge, henceforth dearer than light
or food! I may die; but first you, my tyrant and
tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your
misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore
powerful. (195)
These words again recall Hegel's definition of the master,
as well as the fact that Frankenstein has previously
224
occupied the position he will again take when he begins his
own vengeful pursuit of the creature after the deaths of
Clerval, Elizabeth and Alphonse.
Malchow notes that "a manic preoccupation with avenging
grievances" is also a "supposed characteristic[] of the
primitive," or racial other (111). Here, then, both
creature and creator assume the "the character of the
savage" (Malchow 111), as they alternate in the roles of
pursuer and pursued, illustrating "that both the oppressor
and the oppressed are dehumanized in their respective
roles." a fact which Perkins calls "a salient feature of the
master-slave dialectic" (37). According to Malchow. the
counterpart to this "thirst for revenge." seen as
characteristic of the racial other, is the "capacity for
loving gratitude" (106). Although "xn contemporary
abolitionist rhetoric it is possible to find positive images
of the black as a powerful force for justifiable vengeance
rather than a mere supplicating child, . . . this
perspective remained somewhat exceptional" (Malchow 108) In
favour of the "projection of gratitude" (119). The creature
confirms this image of the racial other in his entreaty to
Frankenstein: "let me feel gratitude towards you for one
benefit" (172). He also promises "tears of gratitude" in
return for humankind's acceptance (172).
Unfortunately, as Malchow notes, this image of the
grateful freed slave, although not a source of fear to be

225
met with violent oppression, similarly "invokes the classic

colonizer mentality" (119). Malchow writes:
The recipients of liberation, protection or

education in the Christian virtues of patience and
forbearance are expected to return benevolent
condescension with self-abasing thankfulness and
loyalty. . . . [Wjhile the gift of liberation
transforms the slave into a free man, it does so
only through the good offices of white, middle-
and upper-class patrons, rather than by self-help.
In this relationship the idealized black, though a
'man and a brother,"is inevitably sti^l on his
knees as a grateful man and a younger brother.
(119) 2 *
In his dependence on Frankenstein, the creature indeed
relies on benevolent paternalism rather than "self-help,"
but the text itself reveals this abject dependence,
encouraged by the self, as one of "the reasons why the
struggles of the Other toward liberation here end in
failure" (Hatlen. "Patriarchy" 4 2 ) . There is no Indication
that Shelley supports either the image of the destructive
racial other or of the grateful freed slave, although both
occur in her text, which, as Malchow argues, "reflects
contemporary ambiguity or confusion about the racial Other"
(127).
Malchow also believes, however, that because
Frankenstein "entered popular culture at a time of shiftxng
racial and ethnocentric attitudes . . . in this context [it]
inevitably lent its weight to the construction of
" This image of the other kneeling gratefully to the

benevolent self also bears an eerie resemblance to the
portrait of Caroline Frankenstein.
226
sensational (and more firmly pejorative) aspects of 'race*
in the popular nineteenth-century mind" (127). I would
argue, however, that Shelley's text challenges the Idea of
racial otherness in a number of ways. Hegel's master-slave
dialectic is itself subversive in its very reversibility; as
Frankenstein's relationship with the creature shows, the
fluid roles of self and other become "interchangeable - - .
and . . . mutually self-destructive" (Rieder 2 8 ) . The
dialectic indicates the interdependence of self and other.
so that creature and creator become indistfnguishable. In
addition, the reader is clearly expected t o sympathize with
the creature in his various capacities as other, rather than
with Frankenstein; even Malchow admits that
Shelley's monster is no mere ape-man. He has an

innate desire for knowledge, a capacity to learn,
and feelings of right and wrong. Notwithstanding
his hideous appearance, he is a man dreadfully
wronged by a society which cannot see the Inner
man for the outer form. Here one might argue
quite plausibly for an abolitionist rendering of
the image of the monster. (105)
Later in his article, however, Malchow states that
the depth of [the creature's] rage and

destructlveness seems to stem from niore than
environment and frustration: it suggests an
inherent bestiality lurking somewhere. How much
the monster's excitable character is the result of
his unique physiology, and how much of his
environment, is an ambiguity which exactly
parallels the central conundrum of the anti-
slavery debates. (105)
In fact the text itself presents no such ambiguity. Victor
may believe that the creature is innately destructive, but

the reader literally wxtnesses hxs creation, first by the
scientist, and then by culture- Vlasopolos writes:
That the monster commits atrocities of his own is
undeniable, and hence Victor at the end has a
measure of justification for seeking to destroy
him. But the attempts on the monster's life and
the desire to punish, expel, and kill him do not
begin as a consequence of his crimes . . . but as
a result of his appearance. (132)
Humankind declares the creature other on the basis of his
biological traits, which can be read as racial, but it is
that declaration, and his consequent exclusion from society,
which lead to his crimes. The creature tells Walton that
"[his] heart was . . . wrenched by misery to vice and
hatred" (243); such was Godwin's view, and also, I think,
that of his daughter, or at least, of Frankenstein.
Finally, Malchow seems to suggest that all representations
of the racial other, whether in Shelley's novel or in
contemporary propaganda, are negative because they
perpetuate the idea of racial difference. Post-colonial
critic Spivak offers an interesting argument to the
contrary: "No perspective critical of imperialism can turn
the Other into a self, because the project of imperialism
has always already historically refracted what might have
been the absolutely Other into a domesticated Other that
consolidates the Imperialist self" (253)- Better the
creature, then, than the easily—accepted Safie.
228
"The Monster Whom I Had Created":
The Othering Process and the Text's Response
Malchow*s belief that Frankenstein can be used to
uphold a conservative position regarding the racial other
illustrates a theme which is more common in criticism of the
novel than one might think. Because, as Paul Sherwin puts
it, "nothing is simple or single" (883), and the creature
represents so many aspects of so many types of otherness, it
is difficult to establish the novel's own position regarding
the other. Some interpretations, for example, argue that
the text's tragedy is intended as a warning against
challenges to the status quo. It is a text populated with
dead women and failed revolutionaries, and, as such
"suggests that no matter how well-intentioned the makers of
revolutionary dreams are, these ideas will create only
horror when they are put Into practice" (Weissman. Half
Savage 1 3 Q ) . In a similar vein. Judith A- Spector writes:
"Deeply conservative. Frankenstein warns the reader that
Victor Frankenstein's unnatural attempt to create life is an
act of arrogance punishable by the deaths of Frankenstein's
beloved family and friends, and by his own eternal guilt"
(21).
Such negative Interpretations, as well as the positive
but equally conservative one Mellor offers, in which she
states that "Shelley has grounded her alternative political
ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois
family . . . [and] thereby implicitly endorsed a

229
conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform" (Mary
Shelley 8 3 ) , are based on the fact that "the struggle of the
Other . . . is futile" (Hatlen, "Patriarchy" 4 2 ) . While
this may be the case, critics who cite the text's lack of
solution as proof of its conservatism fail to notice that
Shelley, unlike her protagonist, is more interested in
process than in product. Frankenstein consistently reveals
the working of the otherxng process and how it damages both
other and self, a revelation which in itself serves as a
social critique. Hatlen*s analysis of how Shelley
"dramatizes . . . the operations of [the master—slave]
dialectic" is but one example:
Shelley gives us, in Victor Frankenstein, an

inflexible, impacable [sic] image of the master,
who can see his creature only as a slave, as
Other, as object. But she has also here given
voice to the Other itself, as w e follow the
Monster's groping movements into consciousness,
into language, into selfhood. And in working
through to its disastrous end the struggle between
the two. she has also at least implicitly pointed
beyond the sterile struggle of master and slave
toward an alternative world of equality and
cooperation. ("Patriarchy" 42)
Through Frankenstein's construction and animation of the
creature, Shelley literalizes the mechanism by which the
dominant society creates the other, revealing that, as
Vlasopolos puts it "monsters can be manufactured as easiXy
by social systems as by men In laboratories" (130).
The Issues of social responsibility raised by the text
are even more significant when the other is revealed as the
product of the self's demand for power and autonomy.

230
Malchow asks: "Can any parent, slave-master, patron or
employer escape, without retribution, the moral obligation
of providing for the welfare and education of those who are
dependent upon him and who have, in some sense at least,
been called into being, shaped and perhaps deformed to serve
his needs?" (114. emphasis added). Frankenstein, of course,
cannot, although he implicitly acknowledges his role In the
creature's development by consistently modifying his
obviously othering references to "the wretch" <86). the
"demoniacal corpse" (87), and "the monster" (91). for
example, with phrases such as "whom with such infinite pains
and care I had endeavoured to form" (86). "to which I had so
miserably given life" (87). and "on whom I had bestowed
existence" (91). for example, as well as the more succinct
"whom I had created" (87). which occurs even more
frequently. Shelley's text demonstrates the disastrous
effects of "the denial of responsibility for onc'si actions.
. . . of the shadow-self locked within consciousness" COatcs
553), in other vords. of the other within the self, as well
as the other created by the self.
The number of relationships based on "doubling" makes
the relationship between the self and the other apparent,
but hard to define, because these relationships blur these
distinctions, even eoorc so than in the other texts I have
considered. Certainly Frankenstein *s creature is the most
sympathetic other portrayed in any of these texts, perhaps
231
because of its author's own otherness. Polidori, Le Fanu
and Stoker may have experienced anxiety about their own
positions as an Anglo—Italian Catholic and Anglo-Irishmen
respectively, but Wary Shelley, because a woman, the
daughter of two famous radicals, and the unwed mother of the
child of a third, was more profoundly othered than any of
them. and. consequently, more able, and more likely, to
create a sympathetic other, to whom she gives "an angry,
eloquent voice" (Rieder 2 8 ) .
Admittedly, this voice does not always speak the
truth; the discrepancy between words and action is also a
major theme of Frankenstein. manifest both In plot
Incidents, such as Justine's failed defense, and in the
structure of the novel itself. Newman characterizes the
text in terms of broken promises (154). The creature has
Frankenstein promise to make a mate for him. and
Frankenstein fails to do so. Similarly. Frankenstein exacts
Walton's promise to kill the creature, yet the captain not
only allows him to live, but permits him to attempt an
explanation of his actions. Walton's behaviour leads us. of
course, to what is perhaps the most important unfulfilled
declaration, which Newman does not mention: the creature's
announcement that he will immolate himself (246).
Surprisingly, many critics take this at face value (Moretti
71. for example), when in fact, the reader does not witness
the creature's suicide, and, given the pattern Newman
232
observes, it is entirely possible that this too. is a false
promise. In any case, the novel's open ending, like that of
The Vampyre. is proof of its radicality."1
Shelley offers no solutions, as Hatlen notes. Unlike
critics who read Frankenstein as a critique of
transgression. I agree with his assessment that "Shelley's
refusal to proclaim the freedom of the Other is in fact one
of the strengths of her book" ("Patriarchy" 4 3 ) . The
radical element of the novel's unwillingness to present a
solution Is Its refusal, as Hatlen notes, to disguise or
erase the social problems inherent in any kind of othering
process, whether based on gender, class or race. Shelley
demonstrates how a hierarchial system destroys those It
designates as other. Some feminist critics, for example.
may protest the lack of power in Frankenstein * s doomed
women, but their fates call attention to gender-based
" That any refusal of closure Is radical is indicated

by the nervous response such ambiguity produces in members
of the dominant class, particularly when it occurs in
popular entertainment. Richard Brinsley Peake's 1823
melodrama adaptation of Shelley's novel, entitled
Presumption, or The Fate of Frankenstein, eliminates many of
the original ambiguities, not least the open ending. Jn
Peake's version, both Frankenstein and the creature arc
killed in an avalanche (425)„ thus unequivocally
reestablishing order. Despite its penchant for sequels,
Hollywood, too. has a tendency to kill the creature in the
end. whether Frankenstein survives or not. My appendix to
chapter one discusses "domesticating" changes to Polidori's
radically open-ended text in Planch6"s melodrama adaptation
The Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles; many Issues
discussed, there also apply to the similar domestication of
Frankenstein on stage and screen — and indeed, in critical
essays which fail to accept the final note of irresolution -
- in order to defuse its subversive potential.
233
oppression which is figuratively if not literally fatal.
Bronfen notes the significance of the high mortality rate of
fictional heroines:
over her dead body, cultural norms are reconfirmed

or secured, whether because the sacrifice of the
virtuous, innocent woman serves a social critique
. . . or because the sacrifice of the dangerous
woman reestablishes an order that was momentarily
suspended due to her presence. (181)
The death of stereotypically perfect women such as Elizabeth
Lavcnza. then, may function to critique the society which,
like that in Frankenstein. puts them at risk. Although such
a reading makes Elizabeth dead more interesting than
Elizabeth alive. Frankenstein's fiancee may. In this way. be
more radical than Dracula's more assertive, "dangerous"
women, whose deaths truly signify a return to the
patriarchal status quo.
Frankenstein does more to reveal the violent nature of
arbitrary power and hierarchical relations than to suggest
solutions: its emphasis, as Hatlen observes, is "on protest
against tyranny . . . rather than on the hope of liberation"
("Patriarchy" 43) . In this way. Frankenstein may be a more
socially relevant, because more realistic, "critique of the
total cultural and psychological system that in our society
sustains relations of inequality" (Hatlen. "Patriarchy" 2 5 ) ,
than Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, which suggests the
spontaneous, non-violent overthrow of tyranny, followed by a
u t o p a n state. Frankenstein is not critical of
revolutionary intent, however, but

234
nowhere . . . do we find that tendency, common
among many writers (Percy Shelley not least), to
assume that a verbal declaration ef freedom
suffices to break the bonds of tyranny. Mary
Shelley recognizes that a premature declaration of
the end of tyranny can blind us xo the ways in
which traditional institutions and habits of
thought control our lives, and therefore she
devotes herself to unmasking the effects of such
social Institutions and mental habits on our
action rather than to proclaiming a new order.
(Hatlen. "Patriarchy" 43)
Admittedly, the result initially appears to be a "profoundly
pessimistic view of man. The reversals and contrasts which
make up Its structure always work in a negative direction.
Creation suddenly reverses into destruction, the desire to
procreate into the desire to murder, and so on" (Seed 3 4 0 ) .
The fact that the novel, as Seed notes, "swings from high
ideals. . . and moral excellence to brutal vengeance and
evil" (Seed 340) suggests the Instability of all culturally-
established boundaries, including those between self and
other.
Many critics argue that Walton Is the novel's hope for
redemption (Zonana 78-79; Mclnerney 470; Brennan 4 1 - 4 2 ) . a
"resolution of the conflict between ambition and the need
for intieracy1" (Clarldge 2 3 ) . a conclusion which would
suggest an antircvolutionary return to the safety of the
status quo. While this is certainly one — more
conservative — aspect of Shelley's ending, it Is an
incomplete interpretation. Firstly, the original edition
does not finish on such a clearly moral note, having
Frankenstein himself demonstrate a certain ambivalence

235
towart-s his project, which he does not see as a complete
waste. Just before his death, he tells Walton to "seek
happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition, even it be
only the apparently Innocent one of distinguishing yourself
in science and discoveries" (241—42). This remark would
suggest a conservative, anti-revolutionary moral, except
that Frankenstein immediately recants it with the view that
"fhej ha[s] [harajself been blasted in these hopes, yet
another might succeed" (242). For his part. Walton seems
less to have reformed than to have capitulated, and
obviously regards his failure with bitter disappointment
(235). Generally, a sense of uncertainty pervades the
novel's ending. If there is any hope, particularly for the
other, with whom we are intended. I think, to sympathize, it
lies not with Walton's eventual conformity to a domestic
Ideal, nor with Victor's revolutionary project, but with the
creature's possible survival.
The persistence of otherness in the form of the
creature suggests both that no resolution is possible and
that the other need not be assimilated, killed or
domesticated (Spivak 258). As "a figure of disruption, like
the novel itself, [the creature] is never fully contained"
(•lodges 15S)- The death of the creator finally allows the
creature to be autonomous; If the creature Is necessarily
other to Frankenstein's self, then it is possible that, upon
Frankenstein's death, he becosaes a self in his own right.
236
To this point, "the creature [could] not take responsibility
for his own actions or destiny" (McWhir 7 9 ) ; with his
declaration of suicidal Intent, whatever its sincerity, he
also declares his autonomy, thus forsaking what McWhir
refers to as his previous "whining dependence" (79). as well
as his tendency to blame his creator, and all of humankind.
for his actions. The text, in its response to the other --
not to be confused, as it often is. with the characters'
responses to otherness — challenges many assumptions about.
and questions the traditional responses to. otherness as a
social construct. Vlasopolos writes:
challenges to societal norms arc absorbed (Safie)

. . . or eliminated (Justine); In the monster's
case his irrepressible existence raises a specter
of unrest which demands the most oppressive
response. The abhorrence and cruelty he Inspires
illustrate society's desire to destroy its
pariahs, and his plan to emigrate suggests the
pariahs" hopes of life through voluntary expulsion
from civilization. . . . mankind will make no room
for a deformed, impoverished, gigantic foundling.
(132)
This assessment of the creature's function as other, as well
as of the typical responses to otherness, in which the
degree of its violent suppression is directly proportional
to the degree to which the dominant society views it as
threatening is accurate. What it docs not mention is the
tact that these typical responses, in the end, have no
effect upon the creature, who is neither absorbed nor
eliminated, but persists somewhere in the shadows, in the
"darkness and distance" at the edge of culture.

237
CHAPTER FIVE
"We . . . Appear so Strange to You and You to Us":
Otherness in The Coming Race
Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871) relates
the experiences of "a native of . . . the United States of
America" with "a somewhat high social position . . - the
eldest of three sons" (1) who enters a subterranean world
where he encounters the Vril-ya, a scientifically advanced
society in which the use of the mysterious force called
"Vril" has apparently solved all the social problems of
Lytton's own age. The novel's Immense popularity — it
sold four thousand copies in its first two years of
publication and "was reprinted constantly to 1875, and again
in and after 1886" (Suvln 349) — is evidence of its
cultural relevance. Examining issues such as evolution and
the rights of women, as well as more general political
theory. The Coming Race, as Suvln suggests, "articulate[s]
the social discourse of the Victorian upper classes . . . In
the form of an alternative history" (347). For Lytton. the
centre of the earth becomes "an alternative locus where the
hidden problems of the social system would be incarnated
. . . and thus subjected to costless public scrutiny.
explained or explained away" (Suvin 347): another case.
There is some confusion as to the standa**.* version of

the author's name; he is referred to variously as "Bulwer,"
"Bulwer-Lytton" and "Lytton." Given that he was created
Lord Lytton in 1866, before the publication of The Coming
Race, and that I believe his peerage significant to the
politics of the novel. I have chosen the latter-
238
then, of using the figure of the other to explore the
concerns of the self.
However, besides being more overtly political in its
intention, The Coming Race differs from the other texts 1
have considered in the degree to which its human protagonist
is himself othered. If Jonathan Harker is out of place in
Dracula's Transylvania, Lytton*s nameless narrator is much
more so among the Vril-ya. His only companion, "the
engineer." dies in a fall immediately upon descending the
chasm that connects the world of the Vril-ya to the mine
shaft in his own (6). The engineer's body is subsequently
carried off by a giant reptile native to the centre of the
earth and the narrator, in his own words, is left "alone in
this strange world" (7). He has no way of returning to the
surface, as "the rope and grappling hooks still l[iej where
they ha£ve] fallen" and "it [is] impossible to re-attach
them to the rock above" (17). The narrator's isolation and
helplessness in the midst of the technologically superior
Vril-ya, whose science also makes them dangerous, are clear
evidence of his otherness to which he constantly calls
attention.
Similarly, the fact that the reader never discovers his
human name signifies this otherness much as the namelessness
of Frankenstein's creature, also a narrator, marks him as
other. The narrator's lack of a name reinforces the Vril-
ya "s view of him as a non-person, and also grants them the

239
additional power of naming hlra in their own language, as
Frankenstein can choose his terms for the creature-
Paradoxically, however, the narrator's namelessness allows
the reader to view him as an "everyman" with whom s/he can
identify, an identification strengthened by the first-pexson
narrative. Thus the narrator simultaneously represents
"normality" in relation to the audience, and explicit
otherness among the Vril-ya- This "double othering" has
interesting effects, because it allows the audience to
sympathize with a figure who is othered, and might, by
extension, subversively encourage identification with those
whom Lytton's own society considered other.
The narrator's otherness among the Vril—ya, whom he
himself considers to be other, destabilizes the binary
opposition between self and other, complicating what is, on
the surface, a conservative satire of contemporary Utopian
thought (Campbell 126). Even as the reader sympathizes with
the first-person narrator. Lytton mocks and satirizes him.
as well as the society of the Vril—ya. with its quasi-
communist organization and apparent social egalltarianism.
As William C. Rubinstein observes, The Coming Race is
"sometimes - . . openly satirical. . . . Sometimes the
satire is masked. . . . At other times the characters are
simply mouthpieces for the author's ideas" (418). The
result is a text in which the position of the other is
highly unstable, as is the blurred line distinguishing that
240
other from the normal self. The Coming Race, then, is far
more complex than those who term it merely a "conservative
dystopia" (Campbell 133) would believe- Close analysis
reveals both that the Vril-ya are far less radical than they
initially seem, and that, although the novel's treatment of
its alternative society is conservative, its portrayal of
the narrator's interaction with the Vril-ya subverts
orthodox values, rather than endorsing a return to them
through his escape.
From the moment the narrator enters the world of the
Vril—ya, its otherness is apparent. He first describes the
landscape, with its "strange vegetation" (8). and sees a
"curious animal about the size and shape of a deer [but]
. . . not like any species of deer now extant above the
earth" (9). This uncertainty, illustrated by the narrator's
descriptions of this world's features as familiar but not,
extends to the distant "forms that appear - - - human" (9,
emphasis added). and relates to Jackson's definition of the
2
fantastic. In his methodical description of the
landscape, which initially presents the other as object, the
narrator proceeds to the buildings, which are explicitly
foreign in that they most closely resemble "Egyptian
Jackson writes: "[fantastic literature] does not

introduce novelty, so much as uncover all that needs to
emain hidden if the world is to be comfortably "known*"
(Fantasy 65)- This definition of the fantastic is connected
not only to the genre's subversive potential, but, as I hope
will become clear, to Lytton"s use of otherness as a vehicle
to reveal and explore Victorian social issues.
241
architecture," the first of many comparisons between Vril—ya
society and the Oriental.
The gradual narrative journey, in which the narrator's
increasing proximity to the Vril—ya community corresponds to
his increasing awareness of the place's otherness,
culminates in his first encounter with a Vril-ya man, or An.
to use the Vril-ya term. Again the narrator's first
response is the characteristic uncertainty, as from one of
the buildings emerges "a form — human — was it human?"
(10). He describes the An as follows: "it reminded me of
symbolical images of Genius or Demon that are seen on
Etruscan vases or limmed [sic] on the walls of Eastern
sepulchres — Images that borrow the outlines of man. yet
are of another race" (10). This description, besides
repeating the orientalist comparison that makes of the Vril-
ya a beautiful and exotic people, demonstrates the
ambivalent attitude towards otherness that persists
throughout Lytton*s novel, ilXustrated by the narrator's
inability to decide whether this creature is "Genius or
Demon," a benevolent entity or a dangerous one. The fact
•Vhile, in terms of classical mythology, the two terms

are synonymous, denoting inspirational or protective
spirits, the latter, when spelt "demon" rather than "daemon"
can also signify a specifically evil spirit, and I do not
think it unreasonable to assume this may be the case here.
Because there are so few accessible editions of The Coming
Race, however. I have not been able to satisfactorily
determine Lytton"s original spelling. Clymer's 1971 edition
of Lytton*s novel, admittedly unreliable, certainly omits
the "a"; more convincing is the fact that the CIHM microform
edition, filmed from a copy of the original 1871 American
242
that the An resembles a human being, yet is definitely not
human, reflects anxieties comparable to those present in the
other texts I have discussed, concerning a possible blurring
of the distinction between the self and the other.
Similarly, the narrator's response to the An. following a
more prolonged description, characterizes the various, and
often contradictory, responses to the other, again
establishing what will prove to be a recurrent pattern. To
illustrate. I shall quote at length from the passage in
which the narrator describes his initial encounter with the
An:
It was tall, not gigantic, but tall as
the tallest men below the height of
giants - - - But the F'.cc! It was THAT
which inspired my awe and my terror- It
was the face of malt, but yet of a type
of man distinct from our known extant
races- The nearest approach to it in
outline and expression is the face of
the sculptured sphinx — so regular In
its calm, intellectual, mysterious
beauty. Its color was peculiar, more
like that of the red man than any other
variety of our species and yet different
from it — a richer and a softer hue.
edition, does the same. In addition. Lytton*s earlier

career as a Gothic novelist clearly demonstrates an interest
in the demonic as a manifestation of evil, although not
without its attractive side (Christensen 64-65). Indeed.
The Coming Race contains a reference to "be[ingj brought
into bodily contact with demons." and again, the word seems
to indicate evil spirits, akin to "fiends and witches," and
inspiring both "terror and wild excitement" (21). It is
also worth noting that Frankenstein frequently refers to his
creature as a "daemon"; despite the spelling, it seems he
intends it as a synonym for "monster" and "devil." although
the ironic connotation of an attendant spirit with
connections to its mortal companion's Inner self Is obvious
to the reader-
243
with large, black eyes, deep and
brilliant and brows arched as a semi-
circle. The face was beardless. But a
nameless something In the aspect,
tranquil though the expression and
beauteous though the features, roused
that instinct of danger, which the sight
of a tiger or serpent arouses. I felt
that this manlike image was endowed with
forces INIMICAL to man. I fell on my
knees and covered my face with my hands.
(10-11)
This passage can be read as a microcosm of the
presentation of otherness, and the response to it. in The
Coming Race; it introduces, or alludes to, many of the
relevant issues the novel will address- The reference to
"the red man" is interesting in terms of the frequency with
which the novel contrasts "civilization" and "barbarism" or
"savagery," deliberately in the context of the racial other.
Also, besides being typically mysterious, the figure is
exotic, almost feminized, which will be significant in view
of the novel's consideration of gender, its most obvious
form of otherness. The superhuman nature of the An evokes
the narrator's "awe." and fascination, but at the same time.
he is in "terror." immediately demonstrating the ambivalence
he will display towards this other throughout the novel, one
which reflects both cultural anxieties and forbidden desire.
Even as he falls to his knees in supplication to this
superior being, the narrator describes the same being in
animal terms. While the tiger is, admittedly, an
appropriate image of simultaneous beauty and danger, the
serpent reference has more sinister connotations, which
244
arouse suspicion in the reader, as does the response of the
narrator, whose heretofore analytical, objective
description of what he sees — indeed, this description
starts out by placing the An in the position of art object
— gives way to an extreme surrender to his emotions. In
fact, he stops observing altogether, covering his eyes In
fear. In reference to Frankenstein * s model of the looking
subject and the looked-at object, when the narrator ceases
to look at the A n and becomes merely the object of that
being's gaze, he takes the position of other, much as
Frankenstein does when the creature covers his eyes In the
field of ice.
"To Perfect Our Condition": Evolution and Otherness
The physical difference between the narrator and the
Vril—ya. besides being an obvious sign of otherness, also
allows Lytton to comment on a contemporary source of
cultural anxiety: Darwin's theory of evolution. Although
T h e Origin of Species cakes reference to "progress towards
perfection" {459). "perfection" is not defined. A s Altick
notes, "a close, candid reading of Darwin's account made it
obvious that evolution did not necessarily imply progress"
(People and Ideas 2 2 8 ) . in the sense that Darwin's "fitness"
Darwin does place a high value on beauty, which he

frequently implies is the end of the evolutionary process:
this privileging of the aesthetic also exists in T h e Coming
Race, which deliberately presents the Vril-ya as uniformly
beautiful people.
245
has no moral component. Rather, in the case of natural
selection, "the victory [goes] not to the most deserving,
the most virtuous, the most intelligent; it [goes] to the
most ruthless fighter — or, conceivably, the luckiest"
(Altick, People and Ideas 230). For Victorian society, this
theory undermined the progressive ideal that, as they saw
it, culminated in humankind, and destabilized a sense of
order based on this ideal, because natural selection is
largely a matter of chance (Knepper 24). Thus Darwinism
separated the "natural" from the "good." once again
revealing Tennyson's "Nature, red in tooth and claw," and
significantly affecting the definition of the other in
opposition to the normal, because such distinctions are no
longer natural or inherent. Thus the other may be. as
Carmilla suggests, just as much a part of nature as the
self. and. in an evolutionary sense, not necessarily lower
In the hierarchy-
Lytton addresses cultural anxiety concerning Darwinism
in two ways. The first is an overt satire in the
presentation of the "ancestors" of the highly-sophisticated
Vril-ya. The narrator describes "thrêe portraits belonging
to the pre-historlcal age" and housed in the College of
Sages (88): the oldest of these, the great-grandfather of a
fabled philosopher. Is "a magnificent specimen of the
Batrachian genus, a Giant Frog, pur et simple" (88). Xn
response to the narrator's scepticism regarding the idea of
246
the frog as origin of the human species, his host. Aph-Lin.
gives a logical and convincing scientific lecture on the
similarities between his people and frogs, and on the
process of evolution that produced the Vril-ya. His
daughter Zee refers to past debates as to whether they
developed from frogs, or whether "the frog was clearly the
improved development of the A n " ( 9 0 ) . These arguments, and
the ensuing political strife, are vaguely analogous t« the
controversy surrounding evolution in Lytton"s England — the
famous 1860 debate between Darwin's disciple Thomas Huxley,
and Bishop Samuel Wllberforce. for example. Zee dismisses
these disputes as an irrelevant feature of the "dark ages."
and claims that they "now only serve for the amusement of
Infants'" (92—93) . thus effectively containing Darwinism,
here seen as socially irrelevant, although later events In
the novel will contradict this view, specifically combining
evolution with social organization.
More significant than, but related to, the outright
satire of Darwin is Lytton's reintroduction of morality to
the sphere of evolution, so that humanity could. In essence,
defeat Sadean nature and thus recover the progressive Ideal
and hierarchical order, to the benefit of those in power.
Aph-Lin asks: "what, after all. can be the profit of
civilization, if superiority in moral conduct be not the aim
for which it strives and the test by which its progress
should be judged?" ( 9 1 ) . This statement expresses a pivotal

247
Victorian objection to Darwin's theory of evolution as
separate from morality- Vril-ya evolution, by contrast,
includes a process of conscious will. which Allan Conrad
Christensen suggests is the etymological root of Lytton*s
Vril (217)- Zee relates to the narrator the following
"legend." to which the novel's title alludes:
we were driven from a region that seems to denote
the world you come from, in order to perfect our
condition and attain to the purest elimination of
our species by the severity of the stiijgales our
forefathers underwent and that, when our education
shall become finally completed, we are destined to
return to the upper world and supplant all the
inferior races now existing therein- (78. emphasis
added)
Although this passage makes direct reference to the
"struggle" of competitive natural selection, it also, as
B-G- Knepper notes, "affirms the operation of will and
direction, not blind chance. Natural selection is converted
from a process of accident to one of education" (24).
Indeed, the Vril—ya appear to have affected their own
evolution. That "Bulwer-Lytton's master-race developed by
plan, not accident, and . . . the mode of development
Included Individual will and racial will plus an implied.
divine will as well" (Knepper 24), Is also apparent in the
development of the nerve that facilitates the control of
Vril. the force upon which Vril—ya civilization depends.
According to Zee. this nerva "slowly developed in the course
of generations, commencing in the early achievements and
increasing with the continuous exercise of Vril power" (85)-
248
T h e nerve is the product, then, of both heredity and
practice, suggesting that acquired traits can be Inherited,
and thus aligning Lytton*s text not with Darwin, but with
his predecessor Lamarck (Chrlstensen 177-78). and also with
the social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, whose 1S51 Social
Statics supports the idea of conscious evolution to a
political end.
S anccr. too. associated evolution with progress, and
"fitness" with perfection, writing in Social Statics: "all
imperfection is unfitness to the conditions of existence"
(64). Perfection, then, is the end of evolution, and moral
falling is associated with biological unfitness. According
to Spencer, "all evil results from the non-adaptation of
constitution to conditions" ( 5 9 ) . and. in the most highly-
evolved society, "so surely must the human faculties be
moulded into complete fitness for the social state; so
surely must the things we call evil and Immorality
disappear: so surely must man become perfect" ( 6 5 ) . The
addition of consciousness to evolution, which w a s then
connected to sociology, as was biology to morality, could
easily be used to justify the exploitation o>f the poor, for
example, as those who lacked the will to "evolve"' out of
their poverty. 3 and of the racial other as "inferior," a
T o this end. Social Statics, in which Spencer argues

against the existence of poor—laws, contains the following
passage: ""The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that
come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and
those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong . . . are
249
belief which proves to be even more significant in The
Coming Race.
Certainly the Vril-ya. and the narrator, believe that
morality is biological. This view is most clear in the
narrator's analysis of the phrenology of the Vril-ya; "their
conformation of skull . . . . is far less pronounced in the
hinder cranial hemisphere where phrenologists place the
animal organs. . . . Those which are called the moral
organs, such as conscientiousness and benevolence, are
amazingly full. Amativeness and combativeness are both
small" (76). Thus, the Vril—ya are biologically disposed
towards benevolence and morality. The narrator also
suggests that physical beauty is a product of social
position and moral development, explicitly revealing the
rationalization for cultural anxiety regarding the
the decrees of a large far-seeing benevolence" (323). It is

also Interesting to note that during the debates over the
Second Reform Bill, which preceded the publication of
Lytton"s novel by four years, there were strenuous
objections to the potential inclusion of the "hopelessly
dependent poor* in the franchise (Hicmelfarb 375-77). Such
objections imply a similar indictment of those so classified
as lacking the will to help themselves.
Darwin's description of "the migration of the more
dominant forms of life from one region into another" (347)
could be used to support an evolutionary argument for
imperialism, just as racial conflicts could be put in the
context of interspecies competition, with the superior race
triumphing. Such arguments, however, tend to confuse cause
and effect; one species" victory over another proves its
greater fitness, but that assumption does not necessarily
imply the right of conquest.
250
physically other.' The narrator's attitude to the beauty
of his hosts, however, remains as ambivalent as upon his
first meeting with the An; it inspires "a sentiment of
humiliation, of awe. of dread" (77).
Thus, for the Vril-ya, physical traits are
intrinsically linked to morality and "civilization"; it is
the body, as well as the mind, that allows for control of
the Vril staff which defines one as civilized, and which the
narrator does not have the means to use (85). The
connection of the moral and the physical renders otherness
inherent and essential, even if there is the hope of
evolution, as presumably the Vril-ya have evolved from a
less "civilized" race. Such an association of morality with
physical characteristics allows for easier othering of the
physically different and thus works much like Van HeIs. ng's
invocation of Lombroso's theories regarding the criminal
mind in Dracula. where criminality as an Immoral state Is
explicitly linked with brain development as a medical
phenomenon (Stoker 402ff). This biological essentialism
works to place the potential other in the fixed position
against which the self can be defined, once again rendering
The narrator's connection of beauty with social status

is not. however, as conservative as it secas, because the
narrator also associates physical deformity with oppression,
as if the latter were a cause of the former: "I never met
with one person deformed or misshapen. . . . There Is also a
serene sweetness of expression, combined with that majesty
which seems to come from consciousness of power and the
freedom of all terror isic]. physical or moral" (77) — a
passage which seems applicable to Frankenstein.
251
the definitions of the normal and the abnormal in
natural/biological, rather than social/cultural terms.
While Darwin's evolutionary theory permits a changing or
evolving other — if indeed, the concept of otherness
continues to exist in a purely Darwinian framework —
connecting Darwinism to morality allows the moral self to
develop, while the other seems Incapable of evolving.
Although Zee concedes that the human race may develop the
Vril nerve, "in the course of one or two thousand years"
(85). Aph-Lin roaintains that "there is no hope that this
people [without Vril power], which evidently resembles your
own, can improve, because all their notions tend to further
deterioration" (81). once again placing evolution in the
context of morality, and withholding the possibility of
HThe social implications of the popularity of

phrenology are probably more apparent in Dracula, where Van
Helsing refers to the connection between brain structure and
criminality: "the true criminal who seems predestinate to
crime . . . has not full man-brain . . . [sic]" (402). The
idea that criminality is inherent, of course, renders those
whcs9 Mina calls "of criminal type" (403) absolutely other,
because they are seen to be. like the dependent poor, beyond
help. This belief In turn precludes reforms intended to
address the social causes of criminality, although Cesare
Lorabroso. whose ground-breaking work on "natural
criminality" (Pick 126) applied phrenology to "a
specifically evolutionary theory of racial development"
(Pick 113). and to whom Mina alludes, was in favour of such
reforms (Pick 113)- The Coming Race predates the English
translations of both Lombroso's The Criminal Man (1876) and
Degeneration (1895). by Max Nordau, the other source Mina
cites (Pick 176)- While the debate on criminal degeneracy
peaked in the 1890s (Pick 8 ) , Daniel Pick notes that "a
specific bio-medical concept of degeneration was already to
be seen in the 1850s and the 1860s" (178). Thus Lytton
would have been aware of this theory before the publication
of The Coming Race, in which he employs it in reverse.
252
change from the other. Maintaining the evolutionary
framework, however, means that those who support the
dominant ideology can use evolution as an excuse to oppress
those they see as less "fit" than themselves, as Indeed the
Vril-ya regard the "barbarians": those races, including the
narrator, who lack the capacity to use Vril. which, in their
language signifies "civilization" (40).
"Great Trouble and Affliction":

Equality of Rank and Inequality of Wealth
Richard Gerber observes that The Coming Race "is
saturated with the evolutionary concept" (18); certainly the
political organization of Vril-ya society is described as
the end of a progressive process of evolution, having
developed out of a primitive state of war. class struggle
and "the democracy to which the most enlightened European
politicians look forward as the extreme goal of political
advancement." but which the Vril-ya regard as "one of the
crude and Ignorant experiments which belong to the Infancy
of political science" (38)- The political sysxcm of the
Vril—ya 1.-5 one of "benevolent autocracy," headed by "a
single supreme magistrate styled Tur" (41). The Tur is
elected, in theory, for life, but in practice, he can
"seldom be Induced to retain office after the first approach
of old age" (41). Indeed, among the Vril-ya. political
office is not an honour, but an obligation to the state;
there are no incentives to serve. However, the duties of
253
the Tur are "marvellously light and easy," for this state
practically runs itself with the near-magical power of Vril
(41). There are no wars, no crime, and indeed, "their laws
[are] but amicable conventions" (41). The Tur's chief
responsibility is "to communicate with certain active
departments charged with the admit xstration of special
details," such as providing light to the underground
community, liaising with neighbouring states, usually for
scientific purposes, and testing new inventions (43).
Adults are not required to work, but enjoy "absolute leisure
. . . for following their own pursuits" (119); the narrator
refers to them as the "aristocracy" among the Vril—ya — the
children forming a "democracy," in keeping with the pattern
of political evolution established earlier — and to the
state itself as "an aristocratic republic" (119). There is
no working class as such, because Vril. and the automata it
animates, make manual labour unnecessary, and any operation
of machinery is undertaken by children who are not yet of
marriageable age. Their tasks include handicrafts,
agriculture, household work and the protection of the
community from natural climactic changes and from predatory
animals (45). The state pays them for their labour, and
well enough that "every child, male or female, on attaining
the marriageable age and there terminating the period of
labor, should have acquired enough for an independent
competence during life" (118). Children also serve as
254
clerks in the few retail shops owned by those adults who
"ha[ve] taken to that business from special liking to it"
(74).
Indeed, "some of the richest citizens in the community
ke[ep] such shops" for "1*0 difference of rank is
recognizable, and, therefore, all occupations hold the same
equal social status" (74). However, this classless society,
although politically collective, is economically
individualistic, maintaining inequality of wealth, a fact
which Suvln finds both "puzzling" and "totally unnecessary"
(345). Great wealth is. however, considered "a great
tiûble and affliction" (142) because of the responsibility
that accompanies it. As Aph-Lin remarks. "Ana like myself,
who are very rich, are obliged to buy a great many things
they do not require and live on a very large scale, when
they might prefer to live on a small one" (143). The rich
are appointed to entertain visitors from other communities,
for example, and to hold public office, as well as to
support those who are less wealthy.
Because of this support system, which Aph-Lin
summarizes in the proverb "the poor man's need is the rich
man's shcsne," poverty as such is unknown in this society
(142). unless it is voluntary. Destitution as the narrator
is familiar with the term is only possible, according to
Aph-Lin, if "an An has by some extraordinary process, got
rid of all his means, cannot — or will not — emigrate and
255
has either tired out the affectionate aid of his relations
or personal friends or refuses xo accept it" (143). The
social implications of this theory In Lytton*s own society.
lacking as it did the Utopian benevolence and sophisticated
social support system depicted here, are again connected to
certain social Darwinist justifications for class-based
oppression; it makes poverty the responsibility of the poor,
as if they had simply failed to "adapt," and should thus be
left to their own resources, or lack thereof- Of course.
this is not the response of the socially conscious Vril-ya,
who deem the voluntarily destitute An "an unfortunate person
of unsound reason and place him — at the expense of the
State, in a public building, where every comfort and every
luxury that can mitigate his affliction are lavished upon
him" in order xo return him to his senses, if only by sheer
embarrassment (143). This association of poverty with
insanity is similarly disturbing, however kindly those in
power treat these unfortunates.
Indeed, despite its apparent liberalism, the generosity
of the rich towards the poor among the Vril—ya in general is
problematic. A contemporary review of The Coming Race in
the highly reactionary Blackwood's Magazine suggests that
the mischief begins when we think to realize [the
hope of progressj by some sudden change in the
organization of society; or when we impart into
our programme some absurd idea about equality of
possessions . . . . we must do the thing that lies
near us — that is. in fact, doable, and which may
not be invested with any charm of romance or
256
novelty; not utterly new constitutions of society,
but a good poor—law wisely administered. (56)
This statement, with its anxious, bourgeois resistance to
sudden social change, characterizes the socio-economic
system of tbc- Vril-ya. who have not eliminated a hierarchy
of wealth, but merely removed the shame of poverty and
replaced it with "a good poor-law" in the form of the
monetary support the rich are required to give the poor.
This strategy avoids the "absurd" monetary equality
mentioned In the review, but introduces the humanitarianism
simultaneously upheld by the reviewer, through a series of
"safe steps" (Blackwood's 56) that cannot possibly lead to
revolution. The obligations of the rich Vril-ya. and the
equality of rank that prevents not only contempt for the
poor, but resentment towards the rich, parallel the
reviewer's declaration that "Christianity ought to teach the
poor patience and humility . . . the rich moderation and
self-denial" (57). The narrator notes that "when you take
away from a human being the incentives to action which are
found in cupidity or ambition. It seems to m e no wonder that
he rests quiet" (74); with the right changes in attitude (as
it pertains to social rank), everyone can be happy with his
or her place in an unchanging economic hierarchy. The Vril-
ya. then, are not as radical as they would seem.

257
"Immemorial Custom": Change. Democracy, Ideology
Indeed, the entire Vril-ya society resists change in
the same way the Blackwood's reviewer suggests, and thus
retains the power structures of the status quo. Aph-Lin
explicitly tells the narrator that "everything goes on as if
each and all governed themselves according to Immemorial
custom" (139). The narrator himself claims that Vril—ya
laws are analogous to "custom and regulations with which,
for several ages, the people had tacitly habituated
themselves" ( 4 1 ) . T h e unquestioned acceptance of Vril—ya
law, which causes Aph-Lin t o answer the narrator's question
as to how he would respond to an "unjust or unwise" request
from the Tur with the statement "we do not allow ourselves
to think [it] so" (139). is. then, the result of an
evolutionary process, as the word "habituated" and t h e
conditional nature of Aph-Lin"s original statement suggest.
However, these statements also imply that the process has
been long forgotten. Thus the narrator notes, in his
analysis of the voluntary collectivism of the Vril-ya,
another of whose proverbs translates "'No happiness 'without
order, no order without authority, no authority without
unity" ( 2 ) . that "obedience of the rule adopted by the
community has become as much an instinct as if it were
Implanted by nature" (42). He is. however, disposed t o
question the perfection of their system, being an outsider.

258
while, for them, as Suvln notes, "deviance is Impossible"
( 1 4 ) . even unthinkable.
Although the narrator's own views are often satirized,
causing both James L. Campbell and Geoffrey Wagner to
emphasize t h e novel's anti-Americanism (Campbell 127; Wagner
3 8 1 - 8 2 ) . there is n o indication that the reader is Intended
to take the completely uniform Vril-ya at face v a l u e , a s the
ideal society, or even a s a viable alternative to t h e
narrator's enthusiastic democracy. However, despite the
text's failure entirely to endorse t h e collective social
organization of the Vril-ya. t h e Blackwood*s review is
correct in noticing that, even at his most ambiguous, the
then—anonymous author of T h e Coming Race is "no lover of
democracy" ( 5 2 ) . an interpretation which other reviews, and
the text itself, tend t o support. T h e Vril-ya vord for
Given that T h e Coming Race w a s written near the end of

Lytton"s life, and that h i s political views had becosoe
increasingly conservative, t h e anti—democratic sentiments in
T h e Coming Race are not surprising. A political radical and
friend of Godwin's in t h e 1830s. Lytton retired from his
position a s a Liberal member of Parliament in 1841. only xo
return to political life as a Conservative in 1852. Oddly,
t h e reasons f o r his break w i t h the Whigs included his
objections to the repeal of the C o r n Laws and to laissez-
faire economics in general. Still far from a right—wing
thinker, t h e n . Lytton supported t h e 1859 Reform Bill
introduced by his friend D i s r a e l i , only to have it fail. H e
retired from the Commons with his elevation to the peerage
in 1S66, and from then on participated less in politics.
His views, however, appear to have become much snore
conservative after this t i m e {Campbell 1 4 — 2 0 ) . and h e
apparently "dreaded the consequences of Disraeli's Reform
Bill of 1867" (Chrlstensen 1 7 3 ) . Lytton's fluctuating
political affiliations and beliefs, however, m a y account for
t h e degree of ambiguity in T h e Coming R a c e .
259
democracy is "Koom-Posh," "Koom," meaning "a profound
hollow." and "Posh" "an almost untranslatable Idiom,
implying . . . cor tempt" (58): thus democracy is "their name
for the government of the many or the ascendancy of the most
ignorant and hollow" (58). According to Tae. son of the Tur
and the narrator's closest friend (and. at the age of
eleven, his nearest equal among the Vril-ya), Koom-Posh
inevitably deteriorates into "Glek-Nas" (111), the
"universal strife—rot" of anarchy (59). Although the Vril-
ya themselves evolved from democratic society, this hope
10
apparently no longer exists. Only the "barbarians" who

lack Vril power persist in the practice of democracy, with
no chance of progressing to the enlightened state of the
Vril—3»a. Aph-Lin despairs of such societies, in which, he
says.
they pretend to be all equals. The more they have
struggled to be so by removing old distinctions
and starting afresh, the more glaring and
intolerable the disparity becomes, because nothing
in hereditary affections and associations is left
to soften the one naked distinction between the
many who have nothing and the few who have much.
Of course, the cany hate the few. but without the
few they couli not live. The many are always
assailing the few. Sometimes they exterminate the
few. But as soon as they have done so. a new few
starts out of the many and is harder to deal with
than the old few. (104)
Of course. Vril—ya evolution was made possible by the

discovery of Vril; the implied withholding of which from the
people they term "barbarians." is only one example of the
Imperialist repression practised by the "civilized" races-
260
This satirical analysis of democracy, which demonstrates the
characteristic fear of rapid social change, and seems to
allude t o t h e French Revolution, which the narrator has
already invoked as an example of Glek-Nas ( 5 9 ) . suggests
that, as Wagner believes. Lytton is attempting to
"terroriz[eJ h i s public with fantasies of social equality"
(383). This would have been a particular source of anxiety
to someone in Lytton"s position when the novel was written,
right after the Franco-Prussian W a r . "when iaeas of social
emancipation w e r e consonant in some quarters with ideas of
national threat for the British* (Wagner 3 8 1 ) - The
narrator's enthusiastic championing of American democracy
reinforces t h e satire, with a note of foreboding. His
description of "the antiquated and decaying institutions of
Europe" as opposed to the "present grandeur and prospective
pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which
Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees
its doom" (29) is pompous enough to be laughable, but also
reveals t h e United States as a source of English anxiety
that can be seen, according to Wagner, as analogous to the
threatening "coming race" (381). In this situation, the
Vril—ya represent both the perfect aristocratic society, and
the threatening democratic other, for which the narrator
also, and paradoxically, stands.
However, even Vrii—ya society in its aristocratic
republican guise is not entirely Utopian. In his

261
interaction with Vril-ya society, even the most anti-
democratic contemporary reviews begin to perceive the
narrator as a representative of all humanity rathtr than of
the United States. Of the interaction between humanity and
the Vril-ya. the narrator writes:
If you would take a thousand of the best and most
philosophical of human beings you could find in
London. Paris. Berlin. New York, or even Boston
and place them as citizens In this beatified
community. I believe that in less than a year they
would either die of boredom or attempt some
revolution by which they would militate
against the good of the community and. of course,
be burnt into cinders at the request of the Tur.
(172)
The narrator may be commenting on humanity: as Zee says of
their subterranean analogues, "minds accustomed to place
happiness In things so much the reverse of godlike, would
find the happiness of gods exceedingly dull and would long
to get back to a world in which they could quarrel with each
other" (81). However, it is also, obviously, a comment on
the Vril-ya. whose society the narrator eventually finds
unbearably dull. This attitude reveals a class bias; while
the removal of strife from society may doom literature and
the arts as overly passionate (100). it seems that those
actually struggling with poverty might consider this a fair
exchange, as the narrator as heir to the family fortune, and
Lytton as a member of the House of Lords, do not. Xt often
seems as if the narrator longs for social conflict simply to
interrupt the monotony, but would probably not feel the same
way if such a conflict involved him personally.
262
More sinister, and implied by the narrator's remark
about "the good of the community." is that ingrained Vril-ya
unity, which precludes not only class struggle, but the
merest Intellectual argument regarding philosophy er
theology (Blackwood's 51-52). This has implications beyond
boring uniformity; although, overtly, "no force is put upon
individual inclination" (46). Vril-ya thought is literally
decreed by the state. Such repressive collectivism is as
threatening as anarchy, in that, as Suvin suggests,
"bourgeois collectivism" paradoxically exists to protect the
rights of the individual (346). whereas, among the Vril-ya.
the community is paramount. It never occurs to the Vri 1 -ya
to question that overwhelming force of custom or tradition,
identified by Raymond Williams as "in practice the most
evident expression of . . . dominant and hegemonic
pressures" (115). The narrator, who is not familiar with.
and thus habituated to. the customs of the Vril-ya. exposes
them as other than universal, because they do not. for
example, resemble those of his own society. By extension,
this revelation applies to many of society's institutions
and modes of thought outside the text, which arc also
similarly regarded as natural — the absolute division
between self and other, for example.
Regarding "ideology and ideological state apparatuses."
Louis Althusser writes: "those who arc in ideology believe
themselves by definition outside ideology" (175). The
263
ideological subject, formed to function within a specific
society to the benefit of that society, does not realize its
own constructed nature, but sees itself as autonomous.
Ideological subjects ""willingly* adopt the subject-
positions necessary to their participation in the social
formation" (Belsey 6 1 ) . This is exactly what the Vril—ya,
with their "voluntary"* acceptance of custom and the
collective will of the state, are doing. The Coming Race,
then, can be read as a revelation of the interpellation of
the ideological subject, which the narrator, being outside
of Vril-ya ideology, although, as the navel makes obvious,
not of that of his own culture, can see and expose to the
reader. Because he is a figure with whom the audience can
identify, and because he is other among the Vril—ya. the
uniformity of Vril—ya society — or indeed any society —
becomes suspect, revealed as constructed rather than
"natural." Despite the apparently conservative politics of
she novel, then, its insight into the ideological process.
and the ways in which that process is disguised, is
surprisingly radical.
Catherine Belsey writes:

the work of ideology is to present the position of
the subject as fixed and unchangeable, an element
in a given sysxesa of differences which is human
nature and the world of human experience, and to
show possible action as an endless repetition of
'normal,' familiar action. (90)
The way in which such an ideological process works can be
seten in Vril-ya society's relentless adherence to its
264
customs, and its resistance to change, while identification
with the first-person narrator places the reader outside
this society, effectively revealing that its Ideology is not
absolute, through the eyes of the other. A s the Blackwood's
review notes, there is very little hint of the process by
which Vril-ya society developed. Rather, it seems to be the
product of a "natural" process of moral evolution, to return
to the concern with Darwin. For example. Knepper believes
that Vril—ya society can exist with minimal law. because
"the habit of restraint is presented as transmissible
hereditarily. . . . While the habit is being formed,
restraint saist be enforced by rigid custom" ( 2 7 ) . The
erasure of initial causes persists throughout the novel.
for. despite the information they give the narrator, the
Vril—ya are very much divorced from their history. Suvln
suggests that the incongruous marriage of political
collectivism and economic individualism grows out of a
bourgeois principle which "subsisted even after its reason
and cause — commodity production — had been abolished by a
wave of the magic wand of Vril" (346). and 1 have already
discussed the way in which the violent competition of
natural selection has been conveniently forgotten in favour
of t h e conscious use of will for biological and moral
Improvement. In fact, this seemingly peaceful society is
built on something far more sinister, again obvious to the

265
narrator and through him to the reader: the threat of deadly
violence.
The discovery of Vril, which can annihilate entire
armies, consequently put an end to war. just as it later
resulted In the amicable legal relations between people who
could so easily destroy each other (39-41). This latent
violence, on which the advanced civilization depends
entirely, does not go unnoticed by the narrator, who,
lacking the "protective" power of Vril. justifiably feels
threatened. For the Vril-ya. however, there is little
consideration of the violence in their past; the cause has
effectively been erased in favour of the effect. Many
twentieth-century critics believe that the simultaneously
beneficial and highly destructive nature of Vril, and its
use. however long ago. as a deterrent to violence,
anticipate the equally double-edged sword of nuclear
power; however, few note its implications.
Xt is appropriate that Vril is synonymous with
civilization, for the Vril-ya both gain their "civility"
from this outside force (Vril and its effects are all that
separate them from "barbarians" like the narrator). and are
as morally ambiguous as it is- For all their apparently
In fact. Lytton*s conception of vril itself more

closely resembles an electrical force (see Knejiper 25-26)-
Similarly, the Idea of deterrent force does not originate
with nuclear weapons; the Blackwood's review mentions, and
questions the legitimacy of. the theory of deterrence
regarding "the rifle, and all our improved artillery" (51).
266
advanced morality, they do not hesitate to destroy any
threat to their society; in this the novel resembles
Dracula. in that **he dominant community either justifies or
ignores any violence towards the other that threatens its
stability. The most overt example of this rationale,
chilling in its matter-of-fact tone, is Tae's statement: "it
is no crime to slay those who threaten the good of the
community" (179)- Because this statement applies to him
personally, it is here that the narrator becomes truly aware
of the potentially violent nature of the Vril-ya. and the
danger they pose to those, like himself, whon. they perceive
as threateningly other.
Nowhere is this danger more clear than in Vril-ya
policy regarding races lacking Vril power. With the
rhetoric of true imperialists, the Vril-ya refer to such
cultures as "barbarians" and "savages" and take a ruthless
but completely dispassionate view of destroying theasff even
when, not possessing the secrets of Vril. they ?£se no
direct threat to Vril-ya society (105). Although Aph-Lin
teils the narrator that the Vril—ya oppose imperialist
expansion (81). they do encourage emigration for the
purposes of population control. and. if the land desired
by the emigrants is already occupied by barbarians, the
'One of Lytton*s own policies as colonial secretary in

1858-59 (Campbell 9 8 ) . and thus one of the few instances
where his beliefs correspond unproblematically with those of
the Vril—ya.
267
Vril-ya have no compunction about their complete
extermination. Tae explains this to the narrator in coldly
logical terms not entirely related to self-defense:
it is our rule, never to destroy except where
necessary to our wellbeing. Of course, we cannot
settle in lands already occupied by the Vril—ya.
If we take the cultivated lands of the other races
of Ana. we must utterly destroy the previous
inhabitants. Sometimes. as it is, we take waste
spots and find that s troublesome, quarrelsome
race of Ana, especially if under the
adminis Oration of Koom-Posh or of course. ?.s
menacing our welfare, we destroy it [sic]. (110)
This attempt to blame the other for its own
destruction, whether because the reason is figured as "they
started it" or "xhey are less evolved," is a typical
imperialist strategy for racial repression (Brantlinger
186). Meedless to say, the narrator finds this casual
attitude towards violence frigh'fcening, particularly given
hxs own position as other among the Vril—ya: "I felt a
thrill of horror, recognizing much more affinity with 'the
savages," than I did with the Vril-ya and remembering ail I
had said in praise of the glorious American institutions.
which Aph-Lin stigmatized as Koom-Posh" (105). The reader's
identification with the first-person narrator also places
him %>r her in the position of the threatened other, which
permits a reading of the narrator's response as a critique
of imperialism. In such a reading, the Vril—ya represent
the colonizing nations — including England — thus blurring
the distinction between êlf and other, the constructed
nature of which is made explicit by the narrator's use of
268
quotation marks around "'the savages'* and by his own
identification with them. By placing the reader, via the
narrator, in the position of racial other. The Coming Race
implicitly questions the dominant society's oppression of
that other, as weil as the absolute distinction between that
other and the "civilized" self, whose Utopian "civility"
merely disguises its soundation upon the very savagery and
violence It abhors in the other, which it then paradoxically
destroys.
In discussing the political system of the Vril-ya. the
narrator remarks: "ail members of t h e community considered
theaiselves as brothers of one affectionate and united
family" (43)- Certainly tre family is connected t o the
state; Darko Suvln notes that the two primary issues in the
novel's genre of "alternative history" are the "overall
polltico—economic organization (crucially: the role of labor
and t h e working class) and erotics (the role of sex and
women)," and that these respectivelv ""public" and "private"
issues are considered in (often allegorical) relation to
each other (357). Savin claims that "their radically
subversive solutions w e r e communism end erotic freedom, both
of which [The Coming Race] characteristically brought out
and neutralized" (357)- X have discussed how the seemingly
radical "communist" politics of t h e Vril-ya are in fact mora
conservative than they first appear; I now propose t o

269
analyze Vril—ya gender roles in the same way, and, I think,
with similar results.
"All the Rights of Equality": Gender Roles and Reversals
The narrator discusses the role of women in Vril-ya
society at length, devoting almost as much of his account to
this as to politics, although initially it seems that women
will be the subject only of one, significantly separate,
chapter, in which their social position is outlined. In
this chapter, the narrator explains that "the Gy-ei [women]
are in the fullest enjoyment of all the rights of equality
with males, for which certain philosophers above ground
contend" (47). Girl children perform the same tasks as
boys, and, in adult life, "al"* arts and vocations allotted
to the one sex are open to the other" (47). Even more
significantly, "the Gy-ei are usually superior to the Ana in
physical strength." which, the narrator perceptively notes.
Is "an important element in the consideration and
maintenance of female rights" (48). They also *#ave more
control over Vril power: "thus they can not only defend
themselves against all aggressions from the males, but
could, at any momenx when he least suspected his danger,
terminate the existence of an offending spouse" (48). Once
again, it appears that true equality can only be based on
violence, rather than on the ostensible moral evolution.
This remark, which occurs in the middle of a
dispassionate discourse on Vril—ya custom, demonstrates the

270
anxiety the narrator feels about the rights of the Gy-ei-
This anxiety grows as the text, and the narrator's
relationship with Vril-ya society, progress, and focuses on
the fact that the Gy-ei traditionally have "one privilege"
over the Ana: the right "of being the wooing party rather
than the wooed" (50)- T h e fact that the narrator believes
that the right ox "proclaiming their love and urging their
suit" may be "the desire which, perhaps, forms the secret
motive of most lady asserters of woman's rights above
ground" (50) suggests that the purpose of this gender-role
reversal is. as both nineteenth- and twentieth-century
critics believe, to satirize the woman who usurps masculine
privilege, rather than to advance this system as ideal.
Indeed, the amount of freedom granted to the Gy—ei is
much less than it seems, so even without the effects of
satire, there is. once again, no real danger to the human
status quo. Similarly, most female privileges among the
Vril—ya are based on the same biological essentialism that
characterizes the distinction between the Vril—ya and the
"barbarians." T h u s , the binary opposition between self and
other, or here, male and female, remains; even If the Vril-
ya reverse the roles, they do not challenge the notion oi
otherness itself. Hence the rationale for the Gy-ei*s one
iruc privilege, and the narrator's approval thereof:
their argument for the reversal of that

relationship of the sexes which the blind tyranny
of man has established on the surface of the earth
appears cogent . . . They say. that of the two.
271
the female is by nature of a more loving
disposition than the male, that love occupies a
larger space In her thoughts and is more essential
to her happiness, and that, therefore, she ought
to be the wooing party. (50)
Just as Gy—ei privilege is based on biological
essentialism rather than enlightened social mores, the
equality between the sexes is not as complete as It purports
to be. Even the narrator's "objective" profile of the role
of the Gy—ei is full of contradictions. For example.
Immediately following the statement regarding the equality
of male and female children, the narrator remarks that "in
the earlier age appropriated to the destruction of animals
irreclaimably hostile, the girls are frequently preferred as
being by constitution more ruthless under the influence of
fear or hate" (47). thus introducing the biological
essentialism that continues to determine gender roles, and
reinscribing gender difference as well, a difference, here,
as with the Gy-ei"s courting privileges, based on the
conventional assumption that women are more emotional than
men. The pattern continues; just after the narrator
comments on adult equality of occupation, w e find that "the
Gy—ei arrogate to themselves a superiority in all those
abstruse and mystical branches of reasoning, for which they
say the Ana are unfitted by a duller sobriety of
understanding, or the routine of their matter-of—fact
occupations 0 {47). Once again, the genders are
differentiated, and. significantly, the wozaen are assigned.

272
or "voluntarily" adopt, roles more concerned with the
abstract, rather than with the practical duties of running
the state. Blackwood's perceptively defines the powers of
the Gy—ei as "purely of a theoretical character" (52). and
the word "theoretical" is appropriate given its two
meanings: the Gy—ei have power over theory alone, and their
power can be reduced to exist only in theory, the t-ourtship
customs excepted.
That the Gy-ei wield only "theoretical" power is made
explicit by the narrator's comparison of their choice of
fields to his own society's division of expertise, "as young
ladles in our own world constitute themselves authorities in
the subtlest points of theological doctrine, for which few
men. actively engaged in worldly business, have sufficient
learning or refinement of intellect" (47. emphasis added).
Intellectual exercise, then, gives the Gy-ei the semblance
of power, while safely containing them, and excluding then*
from the sphere of actual government. Indeed, there is no
mention in the novel of women assuming civil office; rather,
they — especially the "young unmarried females" — along
witn men who are widowed or chiXdless. and therefore past
use to the state, are nsember.s of the College of Sages which,
although it is connected with the department for testing new
inventions, is chiefly devoted xo "those studies, which arc
i&ecmed cf least use in practical l/»fe" i-43-44). Tfeat This
is satire of such academic oursuits seems envious whi.i the
273
narrator speaks of Zee. "whose mind, active as Aristotle's,
equally embraced the largest domains and the minutest
details ox thought (and who] had written two volumes on the
parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs of a tiger's paw,
which work was considered the best authority on that
interesting subject" (44).
The novel continually undermines gender equality, even
as the Gy—ei appear xo have power. Women can hold property,
yet Aph-l-in makes no mention of his daughter inheriting any
of his own (142). Women take the initiative in courtship,
yet they are marriageable at an earlier age — sixteen,
rather than twenty (45) — and it is men. not women, who are
eligible to have snore than one spouse, although polygyny
rarely occurs in practice (49—50). Finally, women are
expected, after marriage, to put aside the wings the Vril—ya
habitually ssar (122). another indication that the power the
Gy—ei do have functions only to contain them, to prevent
them from assuming farther power: another Instance of a
weXX-acministored poor law in lieu of real constitutional —
or in this case, social — change- The narrator further
As weXX as being relevant to the novel's treatment of

gender. Zee's absurd field of research continues the satire
of Darwinism. It may refer to Darwin's own lengthy and
time-consuming study of the barnacle, and it certainly
alludes to The Origin of Species, which mentions just such a
parasite in order to illustrate that "the structure of every
organism is related
. . . to that of all other organic beings" (127).
274
reveals this containment of the sexual other, regarding the
"privilege" of marital choice:
above ground, we should not unreasonably apprehend
that a female, thus potent and thus privileged,
when she had fairly hunted us down and married us.
would be very imperious and tyrannical- Not so
with the Gy—ei. Once married, the wings are
suspended. And more amiable, complacent, docile
mates, more sympathetic, sinking their loftier
capacities into the study of their husband's
comparatively frivolous tastes and whims, no poet
could conceive in his visions of conjugal bliss.
(171)
The representation of courtship as being "hunted down."

reveals more of the narrator's own feelings about this
custom of the Vril—ya. and produces the novel's most obvious
satire, which has the "New woman" as its object (Wolff 3 2 ) .
Certainly contemporary reviews, which note the ambiguity
that characterizes the novel, tend to dismiss the gender-
role reversal as "burlesque" (Blackwood's 52) rather than an
ideal or Utopian condition. Indeed, even if one ignores the
lack of concrete power held by the Gy-ei, the role reversal
still suggests an attack on (educated) women who usurp male
privilege- For the osae power the fesjale-dcminated College
of Ssiges truly possesses is -that over tfca study of Vril.,
just as the Gy-ei possess a greater control aver that energy
which literally defines their civilization (44), although
"wives 2nd mothers'" use a Vrit staff in ^?hich tfce healing,
rather than the destructive, poorer is dominant (83). In the
context of Christensfln's derivation of *Vr;5" from ""-virile"
(178), and Robert Leer Wolff's observations regarding the
275
phallic nature of the Vril staff (333). it seems reasonable
to assume that the Gy-ei are invading the male sphere — a
view which complements the narrator's depiction of the A n a
as exotic and feminized — and that Vril energy can be read
as a metaphor for sexual energy, as Suvin sees it (347).
Such a reading definitely renders the Gy-ei an erotic
threat -
Certainly this is hew the narrator views them. Like
the issue of Vril—ya imperialism, the gender—role reversal
becomes much more interesting than mere satire on the rights
— such as they are — of the other when t h e narrator
becomes personally Involved. H e r e . t o o . the novel
emphasizes the narrator's position as other, which is
further complicated by the fact that the gender roles are
themselves reversed, which, of course, affects the
narrator's response to the otherness of this society, and to
his own. now doubled — in that h e is outside Vril—ya
society and. as far as courtship is concerned, a member of
the gender which is not in control — otherness. Thus,
although t h e position of women within Vril—ya society is
not, despite xhe. occasional gender—role reversal, a s radical
as it sceas. that same role reversal becomes subversive when
the narrator — a s both self to the reader and other to t h e
Vril-ya — becomes ini*elved, largely because h e
unintentionally calls attention t o the process of otherxng
which h e . in his ovm world, takes for granted.

276
Always wary of the powerful Gy—ei. whom he perceives as
directly threatening, the narrator reveals his position with
remarks such as "if a Gy bride were but a little less
formidably armed, not only with the rights of women, but
with the powers of man!" (138). which indicates not only
that he does not consider rights and powers to be identical.
but that he is afraid of these powerful women, and considers
the situation, if not the women themselves. profoundly
unnatural.
ills dilemma Is further compounded by the amorous
attentions of two Gy-ei: Zee. who inspires "awe" and "dread"
in him (127). and Tae's sister, who Is not named, and of
whom he is less afraid because she is smaller than the
average Gy. and "look[sJ less bold, less conscious of female
rights" (154). His new position as a member of the
submissive gender increases his confusion, for the
aggressive woman's advances are to be met by a "coy and
reluctant" man (152). One of the narrator's companions at
the party where this role reversal is most apparent.
explains in terms of the characteristic incontrovertible
custom when the narrator asks him "docs x.o An ever say to a
Gy: *X love you." till she says it first to hi«a?" (153).
Such action would be "un-Anly" — as in the New woman it was
"unwomanly" — and thus "unnatural":
X can't say that no An has ever done so. But if
he ever does, he is disgraced in the eyes of the
Ana and secretly despised by the Gy-ei- No Gy,
well brought up. would listen to him. She would
277
consider that he audaciously infringed on the
rights of her sex. while outraging the modesty
which dignifies his own. (153)
Reverse the pronouns, and the result Is an account of
attitudes towards the actions of sexually aggressive women
in Victorian England. Once again, the novel reveals social
norms to be constructed, rather than absolute, for It is
obvious that the Vril—ya would not think of challenging this
tradition, and find the narrator's description of his own
custocs "a strange reversal of the laws of nature" (159).
while he clearly believes the same of theirs.
Throughout the novel, the narrator attempts to cling to
his own culture's definition of gender roles, revealing both
his own anxiety and the power of social conditioning. He
believes that Zee's first direct expression of concern for
his welfare is unseemly, and expects Aph-Lin to "Indignantly
reprove his daughter for expressions of anxiety and
affection which, above ground, would be considered immodest
from the lips of a young female addressed to a male not
affianced to her" (145). Of course, his host fails to meet
his expectations, for. to use the narrator's unintentionally
ironic words "in that country, tradition . . . is all and
all" (145). The narrator also refuses to travel with Zee as
his only companion because he believes sne will require more
protection than he can afford (133); although this is
clearly an excuse for avoiding the Gy"s exclusive company,
given the power of the Gy-ei to defend themselves, it is
278
poorly chosen, as Aph-Lin*s subsequent mirth demonstrates
(133). Later, the narrator frankly admits that he cannot be
dependent on a woman (166).
Although he does analyze the chivalric treatment of the
Ana, as prospective mates, by the Gy-ei, and becomes
uncomfortable with it. the narrator never truly seems aware
of the degree to which his unease may simply be the result
of his being placed 5n the position of the sexual other.
The Gy-ei, he notes, act much like "high-bred men in the
gallant societies of the upper classes towards ladies whom
they respect but do not woo; deferential, complimentary,
exquisitely polished. We call it chivalrous" (175-76).
This description, then, indicates a true gender—role
reversal, rather than a stereotypical portrayal of the
sexually aggressive woman.
Despite the chivalry of the Gy—ei, however, the Ana
still have no power in such matters, just as women do not in
the narrator's own society, and the unaccustomed lack of

control causes the narrator to be "a little put out" (176).
At least, the words "in the world I came from" in the same
passage suggest it is the cultural difference which disturbs
him. However, his remarks xo the reader as he attempts to
respond as befits an A n . "smil[ing] and "try[ingj to look
handsome in bashfully disclaiming the compliments showered
on thiml"5 {176). suggest that the treatment of the sexual
other may fee the issue. The narrator is very much: aware of
279
the parallel between the Ana here and the women In his own
culture, and compares himself to "a high-bred young lady,
above earth, habituated to such compliments, [who] feels
that she cannot, without impropriety, return them, nor
evince any great satisfaction at receiving them" (176).
This moment almost Implies a critique of the position of the
Victorian woman; however, the narrator never extends it to
the logical conclusion. He makes no suggestion concerning a
change In the rights of either the Ana or the woman in his
own society, but seem<= content to let the binary opposition
remain. 14
For an interesting contrast. see Man's Rights, or How

Would You Like It? by Annie Denton Cridge. partially
reprinted, with a brief analysis, in the revised and
expanded edition of H. Bruce Franklin's F-„ture Perfect:
American Science Fiction of the iNineteenth Century (312-
3 3 6 ) . This novel, published one year before Lytton's.
relates several "dreams" in which the female narrator
travels to Mars, where men are much more oppressed than they
are in Vril-ya society, paralleling nineteenth—century women
in ways as specific as being prevented from going outdoors,
wearing attractive but impractical clothing, caring for
children, cooking, and doing housework. They long for the
machines that make Vril—ya life so convenient; although
Lytton never directly expresses t h e value of technology in
sexual liberation. Wagner discusses it in terms of satire
(384). Cridge's women actually do have political power, and
deny men the vote. Her narrator, like Lytton's, explains
the baffling reversal of gender roles on Earth, and states
explicitly the socially constructed nature of gender roles
implied in T h e Coming Race. However, unlike Lytton, Cridge
uses her role reversals to critique this construction, as
her Martian men mobilize to assert their rights, which the
Ana never do. T h e implications for the oppressed women for
which the alien men stand are obvious. Even Blackwood's. in
its review of Lytton. suggested that the maintenance of
binary gender roles w a s "absurd. . . . though the woman may
drop what she considers an unnecessary bashfulness or
affectation, this is no reason for the man picking up her
cast-off manners. Both sexes could be equally frank, and
280
Perhaps this reluctance to comment on the treatment of
the sexual other stems from the narrator's inability to
identify truly with that other. While he easily identifies
with the "savage" other in opposition to the Vril-ya. he
cannot identify with the submissive An. who is equivalent to
the Victorian woman. The narrator cannot admit to being in
a submissive, and thus feminine, position, and clings to his
identity as an outsider to prevent any reduction in his
manhood. Nevertheless. Zee continues to pursue him. almost
as if attracted to his inappropriate masculinity (Saturday
Review 6 7 4 ) . and her eventual suggestion of a celibate
marriage is "humiliating" (164) because of its threat to hii>
masculinity, even if he is not remotely sexually attracted
to her. Indeed, his fear unmans him long before this point,
not only because Zee herself has the power to destroy him if
spurned, but because, in being the object of her affections,
he becomes a threat to Vril—ya society and to the purity of
her race.
"The Children . - - Would Adulterate the Race":

Miscegenation and Other Threats
Vril—ya civilization is at least as much a product of
deliberate, selective breeding as it is of "natural"
evolution, in small details such as the elimination of
facial hair in men (90-91), and the more general "present
excellence of breed" (78)- Consequently, those in power
equally modest" (52).

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294
view of events into question. Indeed, were it not for his
death and resurrection, which the reader only sees through
2^1
cannot officially sanction Zee's marriage to, and. more

significantly, her breeding with, one of an inferior race,
such as the narrator. The fear of racial contamination, as
I have discussed in Dracula particularly, is a typical part
of the othering process, characterized by fear not only that
the other will reproduce, but that difference will
contaminate the dominant society. The narrator's teeth,
which reveal him to be carnivorous, and thus, according to
the Vril-ya in yet another conflation of biology with
morality, "of dangerous and savage nature" (132). are a case
in point. Regarding his potential union with Zee, Aph-Lin
tells him outright that "the children of such a marriage
would adulterate the race. They might even come into the
world with the teeth of carnivorous animals'* (135). Hence
Zee's offer of the celibate marriage. Although the narrator
has to this point not been a threat to the Vril-ya,
precisely because of his race's inferiority. Zee's interest
in him makes him threatening, again because of that very
inferiority, which, Chrlstensen argues, has been a threat to
the Vril-ya from his first encounter with them.
Chrlstensen, too. uses the metaphor of contagion that most
commonly characterizes the fear of miscegenation, claiming
that the Vril-ya "must destroy whatever threatens like (the
narratorj to reinfect their stable welfare state with
egoism, dissatisfaction, biological inferiority — or
idealism" (181, emphasis added). While the rhetoric is
282
interesting, I would suggest that Zee's love for the
narrator, with its concomitant threat of miscegenation, is
the pivotal issue, because it prompts a change in the Vril-
ya *s treatment of the othered narrator-
The characteristic response to the non—threatening
other, such as the passive woman or the subservient slave,
is condescension, while the threatening other, such as the
sexually ag£;i essive woman or the revolutionary racial or
class other, warrants violent repression. Before his
involvement with Zee, the Vril-ya treat the narrator as they
would treat his namesake, for they refer to him as "Tish."
which, in their language, is "a polite and Indeed a pet
name, metaphorically signifying a small barbarian, literally
a Froglet. The children apply it endearingly to the tame
species of Frog which they keep in their gardens" (113).
While the narrator fears the Vril-ya even as they fascinate
him. they Initially see him as a pet. a harmless and
endearing animal. Indeed, he admits that Tae In particular,
"felt that sort of pleasure in my society as a boy . . . in
the upper world has in the company of a pet dog or monkey"
(120). and initially mistakes Zee's affections for a similar
phf";.--.x*non (124).
After her love for him, and, perhaps more
significantly, the similar feelings of the Tar's daughter,
become clear, however, the narrator changes trom pet to
threat, and must therefore be destroyed (178-79). He is

283
helpless in the face of this decision, because, being
othered, he has no official power, and can be blamed for the
women's transgressions as members of the dominant society.
Just as the "barbarians" can be blamed for their own
extermination at the hands of the expansionist Vril-ya; as
Aph-Lin tells him. "Zee. as a Gy. cannot be controlled. *Jut
you as a Tish, can be destroyed" (135). As other, he is
expendable- The Coming Race offers a perceptive account of
how the d-»ns.».nant society's attitude towards the other varies
from tolerant condescension towards the passive other, to
violent action in response to any threat perceived to
originate in the other, who is thus never completely safe.
However, the novel adds a significant element in its
recognition that the violent response of the dominant
society is dependent on the power that is the source of its
dominance. Aph-Lin recognizes that the narrator's initial
"fright and bewilderment fare] occasioned by the difference
of form and movement between (the human and the Vril-ya1"
(22) — that is, to obvious otherness. The narrator's
initial reaction so his fear of what he clearly perceives as
a threatening other is violence: "as extreme fright often
The idea that Zee cannot be controlled adds another

clement to the narrator's sexual anxiety; her physical power
and threatening sexuality combine to suggest the possibility
of rape, and. despite her chivalry, there is evidence that
the narrator feels violated when she physically removes him
— without his consent — from the party and the attentions
of Tae's sister, and compels him to sleep through the use of
Vril (163).
284
shows itself by extreme daring, I sprang at his throat like
a wild beast" (22). However, the narrator has no power to
respond to the threat with violence, but is helpless from
the moment that hxs first assault on Aph-Lin is repelled by
the power of Vrxl (22).
Thus, a violent response to the other is only available
to those **:th the power to succeed with such a response,
which is what firmly and completely establishes the narrator
of The Coming Race in the position of other. Although he
may regard the Vril-ya as other from himself, they are
without question the dominant society here, while the
narrator is marginalized and relegated first to the position
of curiosity and then to that of easily-destroyed threat.
His position, like that of so many others, is literally
unspeakable, for Aph-Lin forbids him to speak of his origins
(30). and. like Carmilla and Dracula. he Is Isolated In
opposition to the community of the dominant culture.
"Strange Reversal": The Treatment oi Otherness

If the narrator illustrates the position of otherness
in the text, which is by no means stable, it is also worth
considering the treatment of otherness by_ the xczx — that
is. its attitude towards the ether — which is similarly
ambivalent. The Coming Race is ambiguous to the degree that
even nineteenth-century reviews, notorious for wilfully
Ignoring, or displaying deep anxiety regarding, ambiguity,
emphasize this aspect of the novel, often in a positive
285
light. Certainly Lytton's satire cuts both ways, in part
because of the situation of the narrator, othered by the
Vril-ya as a human being, and by Lytton's implied audience
as an American. That Lytton locates his narrator in the
midst of a culture that is itself profoundly other further
confuses the effect on the reader. Despite the firs*.-person
point of view, the narrator seems objective enough in his
portrayal of Vril-ya culture that its institutions could be
a plausible alternative to those of Lytton's England, yet
there is also the possibi'ity that this society is not a
Utopia but a dystopia, especially given its -- albeit
disguised — foundation In violence, as well as the fact
that it literalizes certain social ideals to which the
conservative Lytton was opposed (Campbell 126). Certain
aspects of Vril-ya civilization, such as its claim to
descend from giant frogs, or. more seriously, its attitude
towards gender construction, are presented satirically,
while the narrator himself is mocked, especially for his
enthusiastic support of American republican ideals. The
novel then, hovers between the Utopian and the dystopian,
but ultimately seems to pxace little faith in any of its
figures. Gerber calls it "an evolutionary Utopia, but
antiprogressive in spirit" (20). which succinctly captures
the critical contradictions and confusion that The Coming
Race has produced since its publication.
286
Regarding the novel's seemingly ambivalent attitude
towards the other, particularly in the areas of politics and
gender, Suvin contends that The Coming Race evokes these
others only to neutralize them (357). Suvln writes:
it is radically new and shocking to present a
social or family organization of full equals: but
it is tranquillizing to find first that this can
happen only with the Vril-ya (i.e.. nowhere), and
second that social equality has not abolished
riches or autocracy, while emancipated females are
in practice prevented from using their superiority
and. once having married, become 'the most
amiable, conciliatory, and submissive wives I have
ever seen . . ."! (347}
Suvin's description of Lytton's "helpless hesitation between

the ideal and awful warning" (348). then, applies to the
events surrounding the narrator's escape from the Vril-ya,
with the help of Zee. who offers — like a devoted woman —
to "renounce (her] country and IherJ people" for his sake
(164). He is "deeply affected" by her offer (165), but
cannot bring himself to perform a similar sacrifice and
remain underground. He considers asking her to help him
return to the surface, then realizes "how dishonorable and
base a return for such devotion it would be to allure her
away from her people. . . . To her. our world would be
abhorrent" (165). Just when the narrator finally seems to
overcome his fsar of the other — although he still believes
the Vril-ya a danger to humanity — he realizes they can
never be reconciled; cultural norms are fixed and
incontrovertible. With that in mind, however, the text
undermines itself once again, allowing Zee to do the
287
unthinkable and disregard the orders of the Tur, saving the
narrator from certain death (182). Now, of course, she is
sacrificing her love for his happiness, but the novel
recasts her in the masculine role of saviour, and the
narrator allows her to re.scue him. Once again he thinks:
"would that thou wert of ray race or I of Thine then I should
never say *I need thee n<- roo.e'" (183), expressing both a
wish for the union of self and other and the recognition
that this is impossible. He describes Zee, just before she
returns him to the surface, as "an angel." an acceptable
role for a woman; however, she bears more resemblance to an
older tradition of masculine angelic power, as she expands
her "vast wings," shoots a "starry light" from her forehead,
and soars upward "brightly, swiftly, steadfastly" (184).
When they part, the narrator says she "kissed (him] on (his]
forehead passionately, but with a mother's passion" (184),
and it seems the maternal element is an afterthought, a
disguise for the female sexuality which inspired only fear
in the narrator prior to this point, and which he still
cannot mention unproblematically. Even disguised, however.
Zee's protection of the narrator seems less nurturing than
chivalric. in keeping with Vril-ya gender role reversal. In
the end. of course, the self and the other must part
forever, as even Zee recognizes (184), thus neutralizing
otherness as Suvin suggests: the reader is still left with a

288
sense of the radical, or ax least of ambivalence regarding
the other.
While Suvin emphasizes the ways in which The Coming
Race works to negate its potential radicality concerning the
other so that "all that remains of the radical novum is the
contained titillation ox Platonic republicanism or of some
gender-role reversals" (347, emphasis added), he also notes
Lytton's apparent, although anxious attraction to the very
otherness he attempts to tranquillize, to use Suvin's term.
To quote Suvin:
he is. in fact, uneasily fascinated by the potent
energies of political and sexual communism at the
same time as he is deeply horrified by such a
principle of Evil. Bulwer's deep commitment to
the discourse of power is matched by his constant
attraction to the discourse of freedom. (347-48)
Thus the text is ambivalent, "hesitat[ing] between superior
Utopian girls and submissive women (and] between elitist
collectivism and possessive individualism." to give only two
examples (Suvln 4 1 2 ) . I would suggest that, is in the other
texts 1 have considered, otherness Is not easily contained.
in any sense. Like Carmilla and Dracula. The Coming Race
contains radical scenes whose impact on both the narrator
and the reader cannot be erased: like The Vamovre and
Frankenstein. Lytton's novel literalizes the persistence of
the other in its open ending.
Although the narictor escapes from the subterranean
world of the Vril-ya, that world continues to exist as a
largely unspeakable threat. Only when the narrator is

289
ostensibly dying can he write of his experiences there, to
be published "posthumously." and, like Lytton's novel,
anonymously. The novel ends with the ominous warning: "i
have thought my duty to my fellow-men to place on record
these forewarnings of THE COMING RACE" (186). Ending thus,
with the sinister capitals similarly employed by Polidori.
the novel suggests that humanity's confrontation with the
other, the position the Vril-ya occupy now that the narrator
is safely back In the human world, cannot be avoided.
Although Suvin observes that a foreign invasion can
represent a domestic revolution (14). presumably to be
defeated, there is no indication that the human/self will
triumph in the inevitable conflict. Similarly, while the
ending of The Coming Race may not be particularly radical.
In that it once again establishes an unproblematically
threatening other reminiscent of paranoid anti-communist
science fiction films such as The Thing (1951) with its
famous closing line "Keep watching the skies" (Waller 264),
It does permit the continued existence of that other.
Otherness persists in another way as well. The
position of the other within the novel is by no means fixed;
the narrator is other among the Vril-ya, and also other to
Lytton's English audience. However, as the reviews
demonstrate, his position shifts between that of American
other to be mocked and that of human being -- the "normal"
290
— with whom to identify. It is also possible, according to
Blackwood's to identify with the Vril-ya as "simply our
present humanity modified, and gradually growing into some
better humanity" (46). The narrator, of course, views the
Vril-ya as profoundly other, yet consistently proves their
own views of his otherness. His fantasy of having married
the Tur's daughter, holding his father-in-law's position,
which he sees as that of "absolute Monarch whose autocracy
they so idly seek to disguise by the republican title of
chief magistrate," and instituting reforms — such as the
abolition of Vril — "calculated to bestow on the people of
the nether world the blessings of a civilization known to
the races of the upper" (160-62) exemplifies his otherness
among the Vril-ya. who would not dream of such things- It
also establishes Him as other in relation to Lytton's
implied reader, "dramatlz(ing] . , . the inconsistency in
the American national character — a fondness for social
rank and a penchant for democratic leveling" (Campbell 127).
The narrator's vision seems partly a response to his own
powerless, othered position, partly a confirmation of the
Vril-ya view of the nature of barbarians, and partly a
revelation of cultural difference, which the novel
cons* i.-axly reveals as constructed rather than universal. but
also as inevitable and impossible to resolve. While
otherness shifts location, it is never eliminated, both In
the sense of assimilation or destruction and in that of

291
resolution- Once again, the reader is left with Suvin's
"hesitation" or a general textual ambivalence.
It is possible, however, to use this ambivalence for
deconstructive purposes, to turn the contradictions within
the text against the text. Pierre Macherey observes that
such contradictions reveal a conflict of meanings, which "is
not the sign of an imperfection: it reveals the inscription
ol otherness in the work, through which it maintains a
relationship with that which it is not. that which happens
at its margins" (79). Reading The Corning Race through its
ambiguities reveals a text more complex than either a purely
Utopian, or — more commonly — a purely dystopian analysis
produces. With reference to the text's "presentation of
sexual, political and biological Others." Suvin writes:
"Bulwer managed cleverly to fuse the showing and the
avoidance" (361-62). This statement suggests. I think
correctly, that Lytton's novel alternately reveals and
conceals both cultural anxieties related to the author's
admittedly conservative politics, and radical desire- Like
the other texts discussed here. The Coming Race is
significant in that it blurs the distinction between the
self and the other.
292
CONCLUSION
"The Very Painting of Your Fear":
Society, Genre. Canon and the Subversive Nature of Shadows
Unable to see the "horrible shadow" that is Banquo's
ghost. Lady Macbeth dismisses it by telling her husband, **it
is the very painting of your fear" (lll.iv.76) — that is, a
manifestation of his own anxieties. If the other is a
manifestation of the fears and desires of the self, and, by
extension, those of the dominant society the self
represents, then texts which focus on otherness could be
described in the same way. The preceding chapters have
examined the ways in which the figure of the other
encompasses cultural anxieties concerning gender, sexuality,
class, race, religion, nationality, and so on. That these
texts reveal such anxieties is not in question: what remains
is to examine the degree to which they subvert the dominant
beliefs of an anxious society.
Jameson believes that

generic affiliations . . . provide clues which
lead us back to the concrete historical situation
of the individual text itself, and allow us to
read its structure as ideology, as a socially
symbolic act, as a protopolltlcal response to a
historical dilemma. ("Romance" 157)
Consequently, to determine the degree to which the Gothic
and speculative fictions examined here are radical, it may
be useful to consider Jackson's assessment of fantasy, which
she calls "the literature of subversion." Jackson takes her
definition of the fantastic from Todorov, who explains it as
293
"that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the
laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural
event" (25). According to Jackson, literature which
produces this effect is necessarily subversive, because it
"raises questions of the nature of the real and the unreal,
foregrounding the relationship between them as its central
concern" (Fantasy 3 7 ) . By introducing unreal elements,
then, the fantastic calls the category of the 'real* into
question (Jackson. Fantasy 3 6 ) . "Such a violation of
dominant assumptions threatens to subvert . . . rules and
conventions taken to be normative" (Jackson. Fantasy 1 4 ) ;
because ideology is presented as natural or real (Punter
419). this function of the fantastic is politically radical.
All the texts I have analyzed here fit the
Jackson/Todorov model of the fantastic to a certain extent-
As well as the juxtaposition of the real and the unreal
resulting from the presence of vampires in London or in
anglicized Styria, the intrusion of Frankenstein's monstrous
creation into the novel's domestic setting, and the position
of Lytton's narrator as a stranger in a strange land, this
collection of Gothic and speculative fiction demonstrates
what Jackson calls "epistemological confusion" (Fantasy 9 7 ) .
This state of uncertainty is most profound for the novels *
respective protagonists, but also affects their readers-
Ruthven in The Vampyre is very subtly unreal (Senf,
"Vampyre" 2 0 2 ) , and Aubrey's weakened mental state calls his

294
view of events into question. Indeed, were it not for his
death and resurrection, which the reader only sees through
Aubrey's eyes, the fact of Ruthven"s vampirism could be
dismissed as a product of Aubrey's imagination, which the
reader knows to have been influenced by tales of the
supernatural. Carmilla demonstrates a similarly dreamlike
rendition of reality; Laura's perspective, too, is suspect,
and the reader is given only a mediated version of the
truth, particularly as it concerns proof of Carmilla's
vampirism and of her destruction, which Laura does not
witness (Carter, Specter 9 1 ) . Stoker's protagonists are
similarly unreliable, and their collection of narratives is
not entirely seamless, although they serve to corroborate
each other, especially in terms of their attitudes towards
the undead. Harker's final note, which admits "we could
hardly ask any one . . . to accept these [documents] as
proofs of so wild a story" (444-445). serves, as Senf
remarks, to "reinforce the subjective nature of their tale
and cast doubts on everything that ha(s] preceded" ("Unseen
Face" 9 4 ) . Margaret L. Carter notes that such fantastic
"doubt — of oneself, one's sanity, and the objective
universe — is the dominant motif of Dracula" (Specter 1 0 2 ) ;
Carter also lists the narrative frame and subjective
documents, in which "many of the critical events are not
presented directly to the reader but are told by one
character to another" (Specter 104), as well as various

295
instances of mental instability (real or perceived) among
the protagonists, as evidence of the novel's status as an
instance of Todorov*s fantastic. Frankenstein generates
uncertainty even if one does not subscribe to Thornburg*s
theory that the creature lacks an independent existence: the
real world recedes, but continues to exist, as the novel
focuses on the conflict between creature and creator.
Despite the evidence of the creature's reality,
"Frankenstein constantly reminds us of the possibility thai
he is mad; again and again he repeats the unbelievability of
his tale" (Haggerty 5 5 ) . lit effect, says llaggerty. Shelley
"leads us into a world beyond our own. both seducing us with
the familiarity and alarming us with the hidcousness of what
she finds there" (38). Finally. The Coming Race, another
first-person narrative, supplies only the narrator's account
of his experiences among the Vril-ya. Like Carmilla it is a
posthumous tale., and emphasizes "the considerable lapse
. . . between the events and [the] recording of them"
(Carter. Specter 9 1 ) , thus inviting the reader's disbelief.
Jackson associates the distinction between the real and
the unreal with that between the self and the other. She
writes: "fantastic literature has always been concerned with
revealing and exploring the interrelations of the * I * and
the 'not-I.* of self and other - . - (Oltherness is
designated as otherwordly, supernatural" (Fantasy 5 3 ) . My
texts also examine the relationship of, and the instability

296
of the boundary between, the self and the other, in ways
other than their compliance with Jackson's structural
criteria, and it is in these ways that they demonstrate
-heir subversive potential. Day identifies "the true terror
. . . in the possibility - - - that the conventional and
stable division between self and Other will disappear
forever" (30), and notes that Gothic fiction "calls into
question the lines between reality and fantasy, fear and
desire, self and Other that exist in our society" (68). as
well as those within the texts themselves. This is
extremely significant in a system based upon the
hierarchical opposition between self and other: in such a
system, the assumption that self and other are different,
and that the self is superior to the other, is necessary for
the definition of the self and the society in which it
operates- Even to suggest the possibility of what I call
"the blur" — a condition in which the sacred division
between self and other becomes indistinct — reveals that
this boundary is constructed and arbitrary.
Consequently, any text in which the blur occurs Is
potentially dangerous to the dominant Ideology. Such texts
challenge cultural taboos which establish "certain bounding
lines and divisions which enable society to function without
disruption" (Punter 262). Indeed, anthropologist Mary
Douglas, in her study Purity and Danger: An Analysis of
Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, discusses the crossing of

297
culturally-defined boundaries as highly transgress!ve.
Those who establish the boundaries possess power, Douglas
maintains: consequently, those who cross, or worse, work to
collapse, those boundaries must necessarily undermine that
power (96-98). In their presentation of the other, and of
the response to otherness, all the texts I am considering
deconstruct, to some degree, the notion of a conerete
division between self and other, and therefore can be read
as subversive.
One of the most obvious ways to blur the distinction
between self and other is to grant the other a voice. A
speaking other indicates an other which is independent of
the self to the degree that it functions as subject, "the
subject of (its] own story rather than the object of
another's" (Hollinger 151). The speaking other also tends
to elicit more sympathy from the reader than one whose voice
is excluded from the narrative. The most conventional of my
texts, by this standard. Is Dracula. in which, as Hollinger
notes "the Other has no voice, no point of view; he merely
is" (149). In fact. Stoker's narrative technique is even
more manipulative than Its exclusion of Dracula's voice
suggests: the amount each character Is allowed to write
almost directly correlates with his or her degree of social
acceptability- Hence, the narrative totally excludes the
ancient vampires, and silences Lucy Immediately after her
transformation begins: Mina's letters to her during her

298
Illness remain unopened. Indeed, Lucy, as the corruptible
woman, writes few letters even before she encounters the
vampire, and these do not form part of the narrative per se.
but are mereiy personal communications to Mina. and largely
on trivial subjects- Similarly, but less obviously, the
Dutch Catholic Van Helsing is allowed only the occasional
memorandum in Transylvania, when the plot is proceeding in a
straightforward manner, and the foreign and aristocratic
heroes. Quincey and Arthur, are not allowed to speak —
short of brief notes to each other and to Seward — despite
being domesticated- Thus, not only does Quincey"s death not
really disrupt the notion of a happy ending for the reader
who barely knows him. but the main narrative remains firmly
in the hands of the English, bourgeois protagonists: Harker.
Mina and Seward. The other vampire texts fare slightly
better: Macdonald and Scherf note that 'a small part of
(Polidori's] tale is told from (Ruthven*s] point of view"
(3), and Carmilla speaks more often than Dracula. although
the reader has to depend on Laura's memory and transcription
of her words, further mediated by the book's fictional
editor. The Coming Race also takes this middle ground, with
the narrator mediating between the reader and the Vril—ya as
Mina's narrative might be considered subversive

because she Is a woman, but she is. as my analysis notes, an
almost completely safe version of the female other, and one
who is not likely to become, like Lucy, truly demonic.
299
Laura does for Carmilla. although he often paraphrases their
words rather than reporting them directly.
The most obviously subversive of my texts, in terms of
the speaking other, is Frankenstein. The extent to which
Shelley gives her creature a voice is unique among these
narratives- Although his voice, like those of the Vril-ya.
and that of Carmilla, is mediated through, and literally
contained by the narratives of Frankenstein and Walton, he
is allowed to tell his own story, which lies significantly
at the centre of the novel's frame narratives. The
positioning of the creature's tale calls attention to Its
significance, and the raore-or-less uninterrupted narrative
permits him to gain the reader's sympathy- He eventually
breaks out of one frame, speaking directly to Walton, rather
than through his creator, and thus qualifying the impression
Walton has gained from Frankenstein, to the extent that the
Englishman does not hinder the- creature's escape."
Another, unrelated way In which these texts break down
the boundaries between self and other is through the use of
the double, whereby self and other become. If not
indistinguishable, then noticeably alike. Jackson notes
that doubling is a technique of the subversive fantastic
(Fantasy 45), and Day explicitly claims that "the figure of
the double transforms the self-Other relationship into a
"The creature's eloquence, of course, is a factor here,

as is his sincerity; if Walton truly believes the creature
will destroy himself, then he has no reason to detain him.
300
self-self relationship. . . - The other resolves itself into
a version of the self" (20). Instances of doubling in the
examined texts include, as I have mentioned, the
relationship between the vampire and her victim in Carmilla.
and the resemblance between Dracula and Van Helsing, as well
as the fact that the Harker becomes the mirror-image of the
vampire, as he grows weaker while Dracula gains strength. A
similar energy transfer occurs in The Vampyre. and of
course, in Frankenstein. which once again proves itself core
directly subversive by highlighting the resemblance between
creature and creator to the degree that Frankenstein blames
himself for the creature's crimes. Only The Coming Race
shows no evidence of doubling.
Related to the double, and also recognized by Jackson
(Fantasy 49). is the theme of transformation, in which the
self. rather than resembling the other, actually becomes
that other. This is most obvious in the vampire texts which
represent the condition of vampiric otherness as a contagion
or poison, thus revealing the ease with which the self can
cross the boundary into otherness. Although Ruthven does
not actually transform his victims into vampires, he does
corrupt them so that they become more like him. Both
Carmilla and Dracula literalize the transformation, which
becomes most significant in the latter, when Lucy and. more
significantly. Mina. fall under the vampire's influence.
That Mina can be even partially transformed emphasizes the
301
pervasiveness of otherness, and, perhaps, the existence of
the other within the self. Dracula. after all. was human
once. as. presumably were his three consorts, but the fact
that their otherness is not necessarily innate does not
become clear until put in the context of the metamorphoses
of Lucy and Mina. While Frankenstein does not represent
such a literal change. Joyce Carol Oates argues that "the
Inhuman creation becomes increasingly human while his
creator becomes increasingly inhuman" (545). Once again.
Lytton's text, which in such a comparative analysis appears
more and more conservative, contains no direct instances of
transformation.
The Coming Race does, however, show that otherness is
relative, rather than Innate, with its complex portrayal of
the American narrator, perceived as other by both the Vril-
ya and by Lytton's intended (English) audience, among the
Vril-ya whom he perceives as other. The portrayal of
otherness as fluid rather than static is subversive because
It belies the traditional function of the other as a fixed
entity against which the self can be defined. All the
others in these texts are fluid to some degree, whether
literally, as in the case of Dracula. who has more than one
form, or figuratively, as with Carmilla's "ambiguous
alternations." or Lucy's transformation from angel to demon.
Not only is the fantasy antagonist the site of multiple
types of otherness, bit the site of otherness itself is also

302
multiple; the fenale other can be both angel and demon, for
example. The position of the other in relation to the self
is also complicated by the fact that these texts destabilize
the traditional definition of the self as well, cost notably
in terms of gender construction; feminizing the male self
locates otherness within, which necessarily alters the
reader's view of the external other, and the self's relation
to it-
The self's response to the other is usually as fluid as
the position of the other itself, and usually fits Day's
model of fear and desire. The vampire simultaneously
attracts and terrifies or disgusts his or her victim, and
Lytton's narrator feels much the same way about the
Amazonian Zee. Frankenstein and his creature have a
relationship which alternates between potential gratitude
and actual hatred on the part of the creature, and disgust,
short-lived compassion and equally intense hate on the part
of the creator. Dependence characterizes their
relationship, although Frankenstein originally constructs
the creature to assert his own subjectivity, and the
creature longs for an autonomy which he feels,
paradoxically, that only his creator can give him. Their
association, like that between Dracula's men. Is further
complicated by homosociality mediated through •somen. The
clear-cut distinction between self and other, like that
between fear and desire, threatens to collapse completely.
303
The ways in which each text represents the response to
otherness are perhaps their most significant means of
subverting the hierarchical self/other binary- It is
particularly important, however to distinguish the texts*
respective responses to otherness from their characters*
responses to the other portrayed in the text. Shelley does
not necessarily support Frankenstein's view of the creature,
for example, and Stoker frequently Indulges in irony at the
expense of his heroes, as does Polidori with the hopelessly
naive Aubrey. Le Fanu presumably Intends the reader to
sympathize with Laura, and perhaps to share her ambivalent
feelings towards Carmilla, rather than to align him or
herself with the patriarchs who see the vampire only as a
threat to be destroyed. Lytton's text is particularly
complex In this context, because the author's view of the
perfect society does not correspond entirely with that of
the Vril-ya or with that of the narrator, but lies
somewhere, undefined, between the two.
Indeed, texts concerned with the relationship between
the self and the other will often use their characters"
reactions to the other to reveal the nature of the othering
process, and. implicitly, to critique it- Again, this
radical strategy is most obvious In Frankenstei n. as Victor
first constructs, then alienates, his obviously othered
creature. Oddly, such a revelation occurs in The Coming
Race as well; the narrator, as an outsider to Vril-ya
304
culture. Is aware of the socially constructed nature of the
customs the Vril-ya would not think to question. The
vampire texts do not so overtly expose the way in which
otherness is created, but their use of images of contagion
reveals that it is created, rather than being innate. These
texts address this possibility more subtly, however, than
the speculative ones, which use their portrayal of the
relationship between self and other for more deliberately
political purposes. Whether this is a function of genre
distinctions, or of the individual political Interests of
Shelley and Lytton. is unclear. Shelley, of course, was
Influenced by the political thought of her parents, and
moved In circles concerned with expressing radical views,
while Lytton lived In an even more political milieu., being a
member, first of the House of Commons, and then of the House
of Lords- It may be that these two writers, both of whom
appear to have had deliberate political agendas for which
their books were vehicles, were drawn to speculative
fiction, which was perhaps, at the time, less constrained by
genre expectations than the older Gothic form, and thus
allowed them better to articulate their own views,
unhampered by the Gothic's political and social
associations.
It is tempting to suggest that the Gothic is more
concerned with the repressed psychological other, and the
speculative with the oppressed social other, but of course

305
the relations between genre and politics are not so simple.
The Gothic is also inherently political, particularly given
its historical connection with the French Revolution
(Paulson 534-43), and speculative texts such as Lytton's
also address more "personal" issues such as gender
construction and desire, which are. of course, both social
and political, as well as psychological (Hatlen. "Return"
120). Finally, neither Shelley's text nor Lytton's is
easily classifiable by genre. Frankenstein has obvious
Gothic connections, and even The Coming Race is not
completely free of such associations, as its author was
better known as a writer of Gothic novels than of
speculative fiction. Indeed, one accessible edition of
Lytton's text is published by the Rosicrucian Brotherhood as
"the KEY to the Occult Mysteries which Lord Lytton could
only hint" (Clymer 187); this fact could tentatively be used
as evidence that the text illustrates the "quest for the
numinous" which Devendra Varma notably associates with the
Gothic (Varna 211).
In any case, the way In which the response to otherness
portrayed in the text often serves to disguise that
manifested by the text, and the fact that any discrepancies
should be closely examined, are probably most apparent In
considering the ultimate fate of the other In any given
text. In The Vampyre. the other unambiguously triumphs and
in Frankenstein he survives to defeat his creator, however

306
miserable his victory makes him; these two texts accordingly
refuse closure. The same open-endedness exists in The
Coming Race, which ends in a sort of armed truce, with both
self and other surviving. Carmilla and Dracula have
emphatically closed endings in which the other is violently
destroyed, which would seem to place them on the
conservative end of the spectrum, given the ultimate triumph
of the dominant culture, and the elimination of the
transgress!ve other. At first glance, as Leatherdale says
of Dracula,
these texts are unabashedly * conservative.*

firstly, in that s.11 those who die show qualities
of rebelliousness or independence; secondly, in
having the bourgeois characters at the conclusion
revert back to the bliss of the opening without
benefitting from any social, as opposed to
spiritual, advancement in any form, and thirdly,
in a more ideological sense. (207)
The sense which Leatherdale means is the ability to "writlej
an ostensibly unpolitical novel, yet still . . . manag[e] to
create a work which reinforces the prevailing establishment
beliefs of the ruling class" (207). The interpretation of
these texts as absolutely conservative, which Is a common
one. is overly simplistic, given the perversely attractive
nature of vampirism, which is at the same time clearly set
in threatening opposition to the social order restored by
Its destruction.
Jackson's remark that "by imaginatively protesting
against and even fantasizing the destruction of social
codes, only to renew and confirm their validity, literary

307
fantasies can dramatically articulate social tensions A'ithin
themselves" ("Narcissism" 43) applies to both Carmilla and
Dracula. both texts in which, it seems to me. the
imaginative protest outweighs the reinscription of social
norms. The reader's most striking memory of Carmilla is the
image of the attractive female vampire who likewise persists
in Laura's dreams, rather than that of her destruction,
which we. like Le Fanu's heroine, witness only second hand.
In addition, the violent destruction of the vampire in
Carmilla as in Dracula is an act which calls the self into
question, particularly when, as In Stoker, the ritual murder
is portrayed as a source of socially sanctioned, but
unacknowledged, pleasure.
Just as actions speak louder than words in the
presentation of these texts* powerfully compelling, yet
unspeaking vampires, so do the memorable actions which
precede the final description of restored order outweigh
that description. Both the transgressive acts of the
vampires and the questionable acts of the protagonists serve
xo challenge the distinction between the demonic other and
the heroic self, especially since the final order is itself
not absolute in either text: Laura's dreams persist, and
Quincey Harker's parentage is dubious- Despite the final
fate of the other in Carmilla and Dracula then, these two
texts demonstrate an ambivalent attitude towards otherness,
and are tnus no less radical than texts in which the other
308
is not physically destroyed- They simply employ an
effective strategy of disguise.
Like Jameson. Moretti believes that the concept of
otherness is a tool of those in power, and that the "monster
(as] metaphor" (83) serves the dominant class, as it
functions "to displace the antagonisms and horrors evidenced
within society to outside society itself" (68). Moretti
takes a similar view regarding the fantasy antagonist as the
other whose repression is made necessary by that culture:
"one need not fear one's own repressions, the splitting of
one's own psyche. No, one should be afraid of the monster,
of something material, something external" (81). Byers
applies this view to Dracula when he writes that its
"mission is not to propound the existence of literal
vampires, but to conceal the existence of figurative ones"
(155). Even if this is the case, it should be possible to
reverse the process, to analyze a particular literal monster
and thus reveal, sometimes in a critical light, the actual
social anxieties it conceals, as I have attempted to do in
the preceding chapters. Indeed, sometimes the texts
themselves reverse this ideological masquerade, and conceal
radical intent behind the mask of fantasy.
Regarding the subversive social function of the
supernatural, Todorov writes: "sexual excesses will be more
rc-adily accepted by any censor if they are attributed to the
devil" (159). Having caught the reader's attention, he

309
makes the more explicit point that "the function of the
supernatural is to exempt the text from the action of th*
law, and thereby to transgress that law" (159)- Such a
strategy is even more effective in the case of fiction
written for mass consumption- In the words of Garnett:
the use of the supernatural in popular middle-

class . . . fiction does allow the writer more
freedom than is otherwise normally available.
This is because it automatically causes tlie text
in which it appears to be marginalised into a
cluster of categories of insignificance (popular,
sensational, "mere" fantasy, un-realistic. and so
on) — a process which defuses through its
reception any transgressive charge the text may be
capable of providing- This can take place,
however, only if the text itself conceals what it
reveals, ensuring that its transgressions,
'presupposing the laws or norms or taboos against
which they function,* at least appear to 'end up
precisely reconfirming such laws.* (33)
Garnett*s final quotation is an adaptation of Jameson (PU
6 8 ) , whose original statement fails to recognize that the
subversive can merely be disguised as conservative. Rather.
Jameson believes in an interesting reversal of the other as
the opposite of self: transgression "must always have a
repressive norm or law through which to burst and against
which to define itself" (PU 6 8 ) . Because it presupposes
this law. transgression is ultimately futile- The belief
that any transgressive impulse merely ends up strengthening
the dominant order is akin to the 'safety valve* theory of
the fantastic, which states that "readers can enjoy what
they know ought to be feared and rejected without the danger
and stigma that would come from actually acting out such
310
desire" (Day 69). Better to limit transgression to the
pages of popular fiction, then, than to censor such fiction
and contend with riots in the streets. Alluding to Bartles,
Byers refers to this containment strategy as ""inoculation*
. . . whereby a small dose of the exotic is admitted to the
body politic so that it can be used to manufacture an
immunity to larger doses of the same threat" (155)- There
is always a risk, however: "if the process is not carefully
controlled it can result in the very 'infection* it is
designed to prevent" (Byers 156). In the subversive texts I
am addressing, otherness cannot be contained, but persists
even after the vampire has been staked, the family restored,
the hero returned home, and indeed, the book closed. The
question remains, however: Is the disguise successful, or
are the dangerous other and the even more dangerous blur
apparent to those in power?
By examining contemporary reviews, one can establish
the degree to which the texts were perceived as subversive.
Generally, both positive and negative reviews of all texts
exist; I propose to examine only the most negative, on the
theory that, if the texts caused outrage, it was because
they challenged the authority of the status quo. Regarding
Dracula, Christopher Bentley finds that "reviewers . - -
while they may find artistic flaws In the novel, detect
nothing that is morally objectionable" (32), and thus
assumes that Stoker's projection of transgression onto the
311
vampire, who could then be expelled, was successful.
"Stoker's work." Bentley maintains, "in spite of its modern
setting is a fantasy using the materials of folklore, and
its chief character is therefore permitted to force his way
into the bedrooms of respectable young women and to exercise
freedoms that would be surprising even in the avowedly
'fast* novelists of the day" (32-33). Bentley is right in
claiming that reviewers do not identify Dracula as immoral;
indeed, the only text which inspires a moral objection is
Frankenstein. which The Quarterly Review condemns for its
lack of any "lesson of conduct, manners, or morality" (57).
More common are the aesthetic criticisms Bentley mentions,
most notably in the Athenaeum*s review of Dracula. which the
reviewer believes is "wanting in the constructive art as
well as in the higher literary sense" (835).
Like the Edinburgh Monthly Review's, who not only
condemns The Vampyre as "void of all merit as to style." but
also calls it "odious" and "disgusting" (620). reviewers
also often object to texts on the ground of taste. The
Quarterly Review finds "something tremendous" in
Frankenstein's use of language, but the reviewer's "taste
and - - - judgement alike revolt" at the book's content.
Similarly, The Bookman's review of Stoker, which is
otherwise positive, claims that "a summary of the book would
shock and disgust" (129). The Saturday Review is even more
emphatic regarding Carmilla. which it labels "the most
312
offensive of all (Le Fanu's] tales" (223). This reviewer
expresses the belief that the author "has miscalculated the
taste of the subscribers to the seaside lending libraries,
for whom he probably writes" (223, emphasis added).
The recurring emphasis on taste is significant because,
as Suvin notes, the "dominant taste" was "the taste of the
dominant social classes and groups, understandably anxious
about the survival of their interests and values" (275).
Thls fact, as well as the tendency to convert political
objections to aesthetic ones, indicates that the reviewers
were themselves engaging in a process of disguise; by
condemning texts on the grounds of style and "taste." they
could safely avoid raising questions of political and social
transgression, and yet still express a negative opinion.
Texts which inspired the wrath of reviewers in these ways
then, might be considered transgressive. but. because of the
masquerades in which both authors and reviewers engaged, no
precise correlation can be made between negative reviews and
subversive novels- Lytton's text, for example, is the only
one for which I could not find a negative review, which
would suggest that The Coming Race supported dominant
political views. Still, it is hard to imagine any obviously
political text not offending someone, and 1 am Inclined to
believe that the ambiguity of Lytton's text, which many
reviewers actually mention, simply worked as an extremely
See appendix.
313
effective disguise. Depending on their political views,
reviewers could read it as straight satire, or as Utopian
fantasy, when, strictly speaking, it is neither-
Contemporary reviews often object to the supernatural
in fiction, as the Saturdav Review's assessment of Le Fanu's
fantastic stories as "hopelessly absurd" shows. A common
bias against "popular" novels also existed; hence the same
review's contempt for Le Fanu's audience. Issues of canon
and intended audience also have political Implications,
because the popular audience may itself be othered. As well
as "express(ingl the anxieties of its culture" (Spencer 9 4 ) ,
then, popular fiction may have excited the anxieties of the
dominant class, and subverted the dominant order. Popular
appeal then, may Indicate a text's subversive tendencies,
and all the texts I have examined had such appeal. As
Stephanie Demetrakopoulos. regarding Dracula's "backlash
against Victorian sexual mores" (108). writes, "the
popularity of the novel shows that (StokerJ shared with his
fellow Victorians many of the same images and shadow
figures" (108).
Demetrakopoulos accounts for the continuing popularity
of Stoker's text in much the same way. claiming that it "may
be ascribed to our wish to allow our most deeply repressed
psychic and societal desires to surface" (111).
Transgressive impulses, then, can explain a text's
popularity, in the nineteenth century and now, but what

314
explains its acceptance as literature? Or. to reverse the
question, what prevents a text from being accepted as
literature? The answer may perhaps lie in the reversal of
the previous assumptions; if transgressive texts appeal to
an othered population, then the elites who determine the
canon may exclude texts which subvert the dominant Ideology.
Applying this principle to my texts is problematic
because more than one definition of canon is relevant.
Polidori*s is not canonical, perhaps because of its open-
ended ambiguity, which confounds contemporary readers such
as Ronald E. McFarland. If ambiguity is subversive, then
The Vampyre's marginalized position confirms the above
hypothesis. Carmilla and Dracula are both canonical Gothic
texts, which would be in keeping with their ostensibly
conservative endings. However. Carmilla is hardly
classified as a well—known work of ninetcenth-centtary
literature, but Is obscure once one leaves the shadow—realm
of the Gothic. A surprising number of critics, such a?
Demetrakopoulos. find It necessary to apologize for their
interest in Stoker; their defensive attitude indicates that
Dracula. too. is not yet entirely accepted by what one might
call a mainstream canon. The continuing obscurity of -what
are arguably the two most representative and influential
nineteenth-century vampire narratives seems to suggest that,
as a sub-genre, such texts are still considered too
See appendix.
315
"popular" — or perhaps, given how Stoker and Le Fanu
undermine their own apparent conservatism, too subversive --
to be adopted into the literary canon. Dracula's status,
like that of Frankenstein. is further complicated by the
fact that it remains an icon of popular culture, a position
which perhaps speaks to its transgressive appeal. Shelley's
novel is an anomaly: more obviously radical than the other
texts according to the criteria considered here, it is also
the most canonical text among them, thus calling the idea of
a parallel between canonicity and conservatism into
question. The Coming Race, however, may reestablish that
parallel: this novel, although highly Influential as a work
of Victorian science fiction, is seldom analyzed, even by
critics of speculative fiction. The literary canon likewise
excludes it. although Lytton himself is a canonical
nineteenth-century author. Once again, the relative
obscurity of the text may be the result of its ambiguity,
its open ending, or a subversive streak that belies its
facade of conventional conservative satire.
The degree to which texts focusing on the relationship
between the self and the other are subversive, then, is
largely a matter of the degree to which they attempt to
collapse the boundary between those two concepts. An
analysis of the presentation of otherness, and the response
to it. shows that self and other are seldom completely
separate entities- This fact is even more relevant in the

316
context of certain twentieth-century speculative texts, to
which the same approach could conceivably be applied. The
tendency of certain nineteenth-century texts to blur the
distinction between self and other has been translated. In
the twentieth century, into a new tradition of focusing on
the other. In twentieth-century vampire texts such as those
of Anne Rice. — perhaps this century's closest thing to
Gothic proper — Jody Scott and Angela Carter, the other has
become the self. First-person narratives from the vampire's
point of view transform this figure from threatening oosster
to. if not a completely admirable entity, then at least a
complex one with whosa the reader can Identify. These texts
explore socially relevant themes similar to those presenx in
their nineteenth-century counterparts, but from the "other's
side." as it were.
Certain works of twentieth-century speculative fiction
without vaspiric connections elicit similar identification
with the other, and thus call the constructed categories of
the foreign and the normal into question, such as do Shelley
and Lytton. Robert lielnleln's science fiction classic
Stranger in a Strange Land, for example, follows in the
footsteps of Frankenstein in that it presents the view of a
sympathetic other — a human raised by aliens — confronted
by the prejudices of the dominant society which perceives
ham as a threat. A relevant text less commonly thought of
as science fiction is Margaret Atvood's The Handmaid's Tale.
317
which, like The Coming Race, has a deliberately political
purpose, and similarly places a protagonist with whom the
reader can identify in a society which oppresses her as
other, but which both she and the reader perceive as
profoundly alien in itself. Together these twentieth-
century texts, and others like them, "might be said to
constitute a new literary canon developed aroraad the figure
of the Outsider." to use Hollinger's words (155).
This is not to say, however, that that figure will be
domesticated, turned so completely into the self as to lose
its subversive appeal. The number of books and films which
continue to present the alien invader or scary monster as a
threat to human home and family is evidence enough thas no
such danger exists. Cultural anxieties are intrinsic to the
idea of culture, and the figure of the other will always be
the convenient repository for those common fears.
Similarly, the appeal of the other as a source of
transgressive desire also persists, if the popularity of the
above-mentioned books and films is any indication; such
spectacle attracts an audience based as much on the
attraction of the alien or monster as on that of the heroes
who Inevitably destroy it in an impressive pyrotechnic
display at the tale's conclusion. Even after that
conclusion, the other remains as a shadow in the shadows,
never quite contained by the frame of safe representation —
the painting of our fears. The other embodies "the fears
and desires created, but unacknowledged by conventional
culture" (Day 117). and our affinity for it persists,
although we can no more admit that than Lady Macbeth can
acknowledge Banquo's ubiquitous ghost.
319
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Wagner. Geoffrey. "A Forgotten Satire: Bulwer-Lytton"s The

Coming Race. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 19 (March
1965): 379-85.
Waller. Gregory A. The Living and the Undead: From Stoker's

Dracula to Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Chicago: U of
Illinois P. 1986.
Weissman. Judith. Half Savage and Hardy and Free: Women and
Rural Radicalism In the Nineteenth-Century Novel.
Middletown. CT: Wesleyan UP. 1987.
. "Women and Vampires: Dracula as Victorian Novel."

Carter. Dracula 69—77.
Williams. Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford
UP. 1977.
Wolf. Leonard, ed. The Essential Dracula. By Bram Stoker.

New York: Plume-Penguin. 1993.
Wolff. Robert Lee. Strange Stories and Other Explorations

in Victorian Fiction- Boston: Gambit. 1971.
Wollstonecraft. Mary- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Ed. Miriam Brody. London: Penguin. 1985.
Wood. Robin. "Burying the Undead: The Use and Obsolescence

of Count Dracula." Mosaic 16.1-2 (Winter-Spring 1983):
175-87.
331
Young. Arlene. "The Monster Within: The Alien Self in Jane
Eyre and Frankenstein." Studies in the Novel 23
(1991): 325-38-
Youngquist. Paul. "Frankenstein: The Mother, the Daughter,

and the Monster." Philological Quarterly 70 (1991):
339-59.
Zonana. Joyce. "'They Will Prove the Truth of My Tale";

Safie's Letters as the Feminist Core of Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein." Journal of Narrative Technique 21
(1991): 170-84.
332
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER ONE
"Unhappy Ruthven!":
Planche's Theatrical Domestication of Polidori"s The Vampyre
In The Living and the Undead: From Stoker's Dracula to
Romero"s Dawn of the Dead. Waller refers to "the notion of
an ongoing transformation of options" (9) in the long
tradition of vampire narratives which began with the 1819
publication of Polidori"s The Vampyre. the source for J.R.
Planche's melodrama. The Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles
(1820). Waller believes these texts form a pattern of
"repetition and difference" (8). and this belief informs his
study and much of my own interest in the vampire tradition-
Just what is repeated, and whai altered, from text to text.
Is often ideologically significant. To put it another way.
"it is . . . down among the rip-offs. that culture decides
what to let live and what to embalm" (104). as Walter
Kendrlck claims in his analysis of "two hundred and fifty
years of scary entertainment." which includes eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century melodrama and twentieth-century film.
Consequently. I propose te examine Planche's vampire play in
the context of its source in Polidori.
This strategy is indeed used by the few critics -«ho
consider Planche's adaptation of Polidori*s tale, via the
French melodrama by Pierre Caraaouche. Achille Jouffrey, and
Charles Nodier. Ronald E. McFarland, In just such an
analysis, writes: "isajelodrama is a theater of externals, of

333
spectacle. Insisting upon sensational, rapid action,
colorful sets, and Imaginative special effects. . . . In
short, the stage was quite ready for the advent of the
vampire" (25). In terms of its popular appeal and
spectacular potential, this may have been the case; however.
Polidori*s work, according to McFarland. consists more in
"promising hints" than in "a vivid setting or - - - a
conventional Gothic atmosphere." It Is. as he notes,
"remarkably devoid of (theJ special effects" that he seems
to consider an Integral part of the vampire's suitability
for the stage (24). In other words. Polidori operates on
levels other than the external and the obvious. His vampire
tale contains many gaps and ambiguities which McFarland
figures variously as "example(s] of his amateur status as a
writer of fiction" (22), lack of credibility In his
characters (24). "problems of motivation" (26). and
"obscurity" (28). Noting that the melodrama "avoid(si
ambiguity or ambivalence at all costs" (25). McFarland
suggests that Planche's play, like Nodier's. essentially
fills in the gaps in Polidori's tale, resulting in what
McFarland implies Is a clearer, more aesthetically sound
version of the story.
Jeffrey ?*- Cox's introductory essay in Seven Gothic
Dramas. 1789—1825 concludes with a discussion of the
"domestication" of the stage, which Cox sees as "a cultural
reaction against the extremism and radicalism of the Gothic"

334
(71), remarks which also apply to the relationship between
Planche's play and Polidori's tale. While the latter
contains elements of the domestic, both in its view of
"those who threaten order as monsters" (70), and in the
"realism" which McFarland notes, it is much less sure of
this social order, and much less optimistic about its
eventual triumph over the forces of evil, than is the stage
adaptation. «nile discussing the rise of the domestic
melodrama over the Gothic, Cox notes the tendency of
"dramatic and theatrical histories" to view this as "an
aesthetic matter," rather than a moral one. "as a question
of 'better* (read realistic] stage practices winning out
over a hackneyed dramaturgy" (70).
I would suggest that McFarland. and other critics who
see the ambiguities in Polidori as stylistic flaws, are. in
fact, disguising a culturally-ingrained unease regarding
ambiguity. Thus. I am less interested in judging Planche's
version for its fidelity, or lack thereof, than in uîng the
changes the playwright has made, in the context of Cox's
statement, to reveal just how subversive Polidori"s text is-
The Vampyre is too often dismissed as merely the forerunner
of Dracula and other more-analyzed vampire narratives, while
in fact it is in itself worthy of critical attention-
Whatever the reason for their existence, the gaps in The
Vampyre offer space for deconstruction, for a subversive
335
reading that McFarland ignores and which the play does not.
for the most part. offer.
The first significant change occurs in Planch6*s
opening scene, the "introductory vision" in which the
spirits of earth and air reveal Ruthvcn's vampirism to the
audience (15-16). Not present in the original, this
sequence has a reassuring effect, largely because of this
very revelation. The Polidori text requires the reader to
learn of the vampire's nature gradually, as Aubrey, its
human protagonist, does. Polidori immediately establishes
Ruthven as a stranger to London society, "remarkable for his
singularities." (108). and as morally questionable (112).
but not as a vampire; tne very question of vampirism is
literally unthinkable until Aubrey travels to Greece, where
the tradition is common knowledge. By contrast, the play
demystifies the vampire for the audience, if not for the
other characters, by preceding the action with an
explanation of Ruthven"s nature, its cause in "his crimes"
(16). and the possible manner of his demise: "total
annihilation" if he does not, before the moon is full (16).
"wed some fair and virtuous maiden" and afterwards drink her
blood (15).
The result is irony rather than suspense -- the kind of
security that comes of knowing that we have knowledge those
on stage do not. as well as that the vampire Is not
invulnerable, and that the good spirits arc available, p/en

336
if their "power is limited" (16). For Planche's characters,
the action fits into Todorov*s category of the fantastic,
that is, "that hesitation experienced by a person who knows
only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently
supernatural event" (25). Their limited information comes
to them in the form of visions, partial facts and the words
of the drunken servant M*Swill, and it is important to note
the atmosphere of disorientation on stage — the characters
themselves remark upon it at length. Margaret's complaint
of "a strange confusion, a wild emotion (that] overpowers
(her]" (26) is one of many; she also attempts to explain her
overwhelming attraction to the vampire in terms of a "spell"
(26). Lack of knowledge, or at least incomplete knowledge,
marks her experience ar.d that of the other characters. Thus
Margaret has only the vague information from her dream
vision (23). Her father, Ronald, believes he has seen
Ruthven die, but does not know of his "resurrection." while
his daughter knows Ruthven is alive, but not that he has
"died" (35). When Ronald does discover the fact of
Ruthven"s survival, he likens this realization to the
clearing of "a mist . . . from [his] sight" (36), but still
addresses the vampire with the words: "I know not what thou
art" (36). Even when the human characters believe they have
knowledge, the "truth" eludes them. Conversely, M'Swill,
the one character who is aware of the tradition to the point
of reiterating the 'ampire lore which the spirits introduce

337
(19). does not think to apply this knowledge to Ruthven. and
appropriately summarizes the feelings the audience is
spared: "it appears there is something wrong, but I can't
positively pretend to say what it is" (39-40). The
audience, with the benefit of the complete prologue, as well
as numerous revelatory asides directed to the viewer,
experiences no such instability. Knowledge of Ruthven*s
nature maintains a sense of order for the audience; the
defined supernatural is somehow contained, and what is known
is not a threat. Generally, Planche shows the audience what
Polidori merely "hints" at. as McFarland's article notes
(24).
In Polidori's tale, most of the vampire's victims are
in some way complicit in their victimization; some even
enjoy it. The ways in which humans respond to the vampire
is. for the most part, gender-specific; because both
Polidori's and Planche's vampires require a steady diet of
young maidens. I shall start by discussing the female
victims* response to Ruthven. In the corrupt London society
Polidori describes, vice is attractive, and even the
innocents Ruthven destroys do not hesitate, after the fact.
The degree to which the use of this device corresponds

to the revelation of the truth to which audience members,
but not characters, have access, is most obviously apparent
in Ruthven*s reply to the invitation to the wedding of
Robert and Effie: "I will be there" (27). This doubly-
significant statement, which has a different meaning for the
audience than for the happy couple, is appropriately
labelled a "half aside" In the stage directions.
338
"to expose the whole deformity of their vices to the public
gaze" (112). In the play, however, consummation is never
achieved, so this infectious sexuality is never an issue.
Nor is the possibility that human corruption precedes the
arrival of the vampire; while Margaret is willing to marry
Ruthven, Planche emphasizes the vampire's seductive powers,
taking the responsibility away from the women he attracts-
For example. Margaret feels an unavoidable physical effect,
a "strange thrill" (26). when she is near him. Despite this
phenomenon, however, the play sanitizes the aggressive
sexual presence of Polidori's Ruthven; the vampire must
marry the women on whom he preys, perhaps, speculates Senf,
as "a concession to his bourgeois viewers, who may have
already felt guilty about attending the theatre" (Vampire
41)- Also. Margaret is able to resist Ruthven throughout
the play, while the suggestion in Polidori is that her
analogue. Aubrey's sister, has not been so steadfast; before
the wedding, Ruthven remarks to Aubrey "if not my bride
today your sister is dishonoured. Women are frail!" (125).
Planche's Effie. too. rejects the vampire's advances,
declaring, for example, "I shall never love any one but
Robert" (30): she appears to be weakening as Ruthven bears
her off, but this is the effect of force rather than of
seduction.
The same distinction exists in Polidori, where
Ruthven*s successful attack on Aubrey's love, the Greek
339
peasant girl lanthe, involves no courtship and explicitly
resembles rape. McFarland believes the attacks on Effie and
her counterpart in the French melodrama serve merely to show
the extent of Ruthven*s mesmeric power (28). thus ignoring
issues of class, which are actually raised more strongly
here than in Polidori's tale, possibly for the benefit of
the bourgeois audience Senf invokes. McFarland himself
suggests that Planche is "investing the slight hero's role
in the person of the working class attendant [Robert] rather
than the aristocrat [Ronald]. a change that no doubt was

»
calculated to appeal to the proletarian audience" (32)."
However, it is also worth noting that the play often raises
issues of class only to crass *,i-«ea; the final scene, in
which all the characters, regardless of social status, stand
together and surround the vampire as he descends through the
stage (42), suggests a reactionary celebration of solidarity
between classes. That both of Planche's women resist the
vampire, while Polidori more subversively depicts the upper-
class woman being seduced as her lower-class counterpart
resists, can be read as similarly celebrating such
solidarity, or as a sentimental tribute to womanly virtues
in general.
The play does amplify the vampire's varying responses
to vomen of different classes, which exist to a lesser
i
niowever, it is also worth noticing Robert's
nationality; the attendant is English, which might be more
significant for a London audience than his rank.
340
degree In the tale. Effle and Robert Invite the vampire to
their wedding specifically as an aristocratic patron (27).
thus figuring his attack on Effie as the exercise of the
droit du seigneur, the feudal right of an aristocrat to the
brides of his vassals on their wedding nights. Although
Ruthven provokes audience sympathy when he claims to
"shrin[k] from the appalling act of planting misery In the
bosom of this veteran chieftain," Ronald (26-27), his
attempt to preserve Margaret by substituting the blood of
Effie for her own denotes not morality, but a class bias on
his Lordship's part. Ronald demonstrates a similar
inclination when he falls to believe Robert's accusation of
the aristocratic Ruthven (34). and also in his concern for
Ruthven*s marriage to Margaret, which only appears to be
based upon affection for them both, but is actually
dynastic; when he believes Ruthven to have died in Greece,
he expresses equal satisfaction regarding his daughter's
marriage to the Earl's *brother" (22).
While Planche's Ronald is the social equal of Lord

Ruthven. with whom he identifies. Polidori's Aubrey is of
lower rank than his vampire, whom the young man initially
worships, in a relationship not unlike that between Polidori
and his employer Lord Byron. As well as changing the class
Although Robert is Ronald's servant, not Ruthven"s,

Effie is the daughter of the vampire's steward, Andrew, and
in any case, the two aristocrats consistently share their
feudal rights, especially those involving women.
341
dynamic. Planche alters his male characters in other ways,
which also affect their relationships with the varapire.
McFarland correctly notes that the changes in the play's
hero — whether Robert or Ronald is seen In this role --
make him much more competent than Aubrey. Polidori
explicitly feminizes his male protagonist, producing a
gender ambiguity that does not exist In the play, despite
both the love Ronald expresses for Ruthven. which is more
than that of father for surrogate son. and the suggested
relationship between Ruthven and Ronald's now-dead son.
which seems to be snore than one of brotherhood." The
relationship between Ronald and Ruthven. although
suggestive, especially in view of the former's response to
Robert's wounding of the latter, which can be read as a
lover's vengeance (34). differs from that portrayed in
Polidori's tale, where Aubrey is much more clcariy
T h e death of Ronald's son from a "sudden Illness" in

Athens, which occurs before the action of the play, creates
the most Interesting gap in this otherwise unambiguous
crelodrama: the son dies with "Lord Ruthven. witu whom he I—.d
contracted an intimacy, hanging over his sick couch, and
bestowing on him the attentions of a brother" (23)- The
image of the vampire bending over the prone young man. the
fact that family relations such as the "father—son" bond
between Ruthven and Ronald suggest more erotic connections,
and the vocabulary of contagion — the son is not only
infected with the illness, but "contracts" an intimate
relationship with Ruthven — all suggest sites for the
deconstruction of the melodrama's clear-cut categories.
Their potentially subversive nature, however, may be the
result of the fact that Planche's account of Ruthven nursing
Ronald's son seems to be based on Polidori's depiction of
the vaspire"s care for the delirious Aubrey (117).
342
victimized and feminized.3 As Robert Is able to rescue
Effie. which Aubrey can do for none of the women he loves,
so Ronald is much less constrained by the vampire's demand
that he swear to "conceal [Ruthven*s] death from every human
being" (31). while Aubrey cannot break his oath of silence
until It Is far too late- This change pleases McFarland.
who finds Aubrey's acquiescence to Ruthven*s demands
indicative of Polidori's "amateur status as a writer" (22).
While de-emphasizing the oath, the period of which is
also much shorter here ("til yonder moon has set" [Planche
31j as opposed to "a year and a day" [Polidori 119]). gives
Ronald much more power than Aubrey has. it also downplays
the unspeakable nature of vampirism, which Polidori
literalizes through the introduction of the oath which
McFarland finds "obscure" in its motive (28). Instances of
interrupted and misinterpreted speech abound in the play.
3
Part of the difference is probably a function of age:
Polidori's Aubrey is younger than the glamorous and worldly
aristocrat he idolizes, while here Ronald actually refers to
Ruthven as "young man" (31) — rather Ironic considering the
vampire's advanced age. suggested by the spirits, who speak
of his mortal life as if it were history (15).
T h e most obvious instance of failed cosssunication
occurs when Ronald tries to tell iiargarex about Ruthven"s
demise, but cannot (only in part because of the oath), while
she knows that the Earl is alive, but is unaware of his
apparent death (35). This page alone contains six unfinished
statements. The play Itself features at least thirt3»-four
instances of interruption or lack of completion: core than
one p"r page. Some of these exist for comic effect, like
those which occur when K"Swill relates a vampire tale to the
housekeeper. Bridget, who keeps interrupting (18-19)-
Others. such as those cited above, however, or the numerous
cases where the vampire Interrupts Ronald to prevent him
343
suggesting a concern with issues of silence and speech;
however, when it matters. Ronald is aTtwally able to declare
that Ruthven has died and been resurrected (361. and
eventually. Margaret believes him and postpones the marriage
just long enough to prevent the vampire-"s drinking her blood
before the crucial full moon (42).
Planche's Ruthven does have power over language, and
the ability to silence his victims and adversaries, by
exacting and enforcing the oath, declaring Ronald Insane
(41). and vowing to "seal (Ronald's] lips" by destroying
Margaret (42). However, it is. for the most part, the
rational that keeps the unspeakable unspoken, thus
maintaining social taboos concerning sexuality, for example.
The fact that Ronald "Is such an enemy to what he calls
superstition"' (22) prevents SSargaret from telling him about
her vision, and she. In turn, believes him to be mad when
he, having gathered empirical evidence of Ruthven"s
supernatural nature when he actually witnesses the vampire's
resurrection (36). tells her of his experience. The same
privileging of the rational occurs in Polidori. in that
Aubrey thinks he cannot speak, in part because no one will
believe him (122). but he Is much more helpless In the face
of this enforced silence. While others think Ronald insane,
he never doubts his own reason, declaring emphatically "I am
-•(.
from breaking the oath (see 34-35), are even snore

significant.
344
not mad" (36). Because the audience has always known that
Ruthven is a vampire, it never supposes that Ronald is
insane. Polidori's Aubrey, by contrast, actually goes
temporarily mad In response to his own helplessness, which
is defined by his inability to speak, or even to imagine the
truth of what he has witnessed. The knowledge that Aubrey
is mad in turn destabilizes his version of events.
Planche's Ronald undergoes a similar crisis, as his words
"my brain turns round" (35) and his stuttering over the word
"vampire." which he never actually says (36) — "fiend"
(36) and "barbarian" (41) are more within his frame of
reference — indicate, but he is able to speak decisively
before it is too late, and the audience does not question
him as It might the "distracted" Aubrey. Once again Planche
cancels Polidori's ambiguities; the audience, at least,
knows what is real.
This privileging of empiricism and rationality also
relates to class, as the positions of Bridget and M"Swill,
as the sites of a superstition ironically more reliable than
reason, show. Such "irrational" beliefs, of which Lord
Ronald strongly disapproves, are generally associated with
the lower classes, or with women or naive young men such as
Polidori's Aubrey, who believes In ghosts but not
necessarily in vampires (109). Initially, it seems that
Planche"s heroes are less naive than Polidori's. who are so
innocent and credulous as to invite disaster, and rely on

345
such artificial constructions of good and evil, and of
honour, for example, as those found in popular literature.*
However, society's constructions affect Ronald and Margaret
just as strongly as they influence Aubrey and his sister.
The difference lies in the social forces which construct
them. Planche's characters are vulnerable because of the
super-rationality associated with their class, and their
other weaknesses spring from the same socially dominant
source. If Ronald were not so concerned with arranging a
dynastic marriage, and with a concept of obligation to
Ruthven for saving his life in Greece. — which parallels
Aubrey's sense of honour — the vampire could not victimize
him. Likewise Margaret is too obsessed with womanly duty,
first to her father, then to her prospective husband. It is
also worth noting that these class distinctions, more
explicit in the play than they are In Polidori. are
ultimately erased with the restoration of a "good." rather
than an exploitative, aristocratic power, something which,
although it seems a theme in other melodramas (Cox 48). does
not happen in Polidori's text, where there are not only no
good aristocrats, but no happy endings.
This is the most obvious change Planch6 and Kodier make

to Polidori's tale. In the original, the reader is left
'Because of Aubrey's sense of honour, then, as well as

the unspeakable nature of the vampire's resurrection.
Polidori's Ruthven has no need to hover over Aubrey,
enforcing the oath, as Planche's vampire does with Ronald.
346
only with the knowledge that "it was too late. Lord Ruthven
had disappeared, and Aubrey's sister had glutted the thirst
of a VAMPYRE!" (125). Many critics have called this
"melodramatic": in fact it seems quite the opposite, in the
literal sense of the word. While Polidori's open ending
leaves the world in chaos, and therefore subverts the social
order, the play relnscrlbes the distinction between good and
evil, and the hierarchy of the self over the other. The
vampire is destroyed, and. although it Is neither by human
nor. strictly speaking, by Divine agency, the humans have
managed to resist the vampire, the men to protect their
women, the women to remain chaste, and everybody to stay
alive. As Senf writes "it isn't precisely virtue that
triumphs, but audiences could leave the theatre confident in
the overwhelmingly optimistic message that ordinary people
could conquer the . . . Unknown" (Vampire 41-42).
The deus. or dlabolus. ex machina that Planche employs
here, the device of having Ruthven merely "vanish[I through
the ground" (42) . presumably on his way to the
"annihilation" the spirits describe earlier (16). is also
Interesting, because It Is a fated restoration of the
"natural" order of things, associated with the those
benevolent spirits, who return briefly here. The play's
conclusion erases human agency and implies that evil will
eventually be defeated without any effort from the heroes.
347
who, after all, have nature and divine order on their side.
The ending prevents the human protagonists from becoming
involved in any kind of violent action, however justified.
Instead of the traditional, brutal stake through the heart,
or other, similar methods of disposing of the undead.
described in the anonymous introduction printed with
Polidori's tale. Planche presents, in Thornburg's words,
"God or the Universe or fate punishing the offender, rather
than the offended person" (23). Unlike the conclusions of
Carmilla and Dracula. in which the heroes actively and
brutally destroy the vampires, blurring the line between
good and evil In the process. Planche's ending allows his
heroes to maintain their happy domesticity even in disposing
of the threat to it. without any danger of their becoming
like that threatening other.
Thornburg believes that the sentimental, which she
defines as "reality as the literate middle class of the Age
of Reason wished to see it." and the Gothic, containing
"those aspects of reality that . . . those same people
rejected" (2). are two sides of one very socially
significant myth, and notes that many texts display elements
of both traditions (4). This i*r true of The Vampyre in both
its narrative and dramatic forms; however, •z-hilc in
Polidori's version. Ruthven"s Gothic excesses triumph over
sentimental naivete, in Planch6*s. the reverse occurs, in a
shift parallel to that Cox discusses regarding the aesthetic

348
and moral change in dramatic themes. Contemporary reviews
dismissed Polidori's work, on grounds of taste — read
morality — and, more significantly, of style, while the
Theatrical Inquisitor's review of Planche's melodrama
praises the play despite its source in "materials Of so
paltry a sort as those supplied by the wretched ape of Lord
Byron" (138). This review even enjoys the play's
incongruous but highly domestic songs and comic Intervals,
suggesting that, given the tendency to see the politically
objectionable as aesthetically flawed. Polidori's original
tale is more truly and radically Gothic, in Cox's sense,
than Planche's adaptation, which reacts to contain that very
radicalism. The fight against ambiguity in melodrama is as
much a political as an aesthetic issue, because it is the
blurring between self and other or real and unreal which
makes the fantastic subversive.
Kendrlck writes, "elite culture expresses, mass culture
manipulates" (19). and Indeed, certain works Intended for
mass audiences often act to counter the political anxieties
of those in power. However, elite groups such as critics
and reviewers are also responsible for the manipulation of
mass culture, especially given social anxiety regarding the
increasing popularity of the theatre at this time, and the
shift In audience demographies "from the upper-middle and
upper classes to the lower-middle and lower classes"

349
c
(McFarland 24). Certainly many late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century reviews equate the "popular" with the
revolutionary; these factors may have combined to create
the domesticated Gothic Cox addresses and McFarland. in some
ways, privileges, in order to control, or at least to
Influence, the potentially dangerous consumers of mass
culture-
Heller makes a similar observation concerning the rise

in literacy among women and the working class at the time of
writing of Frankenstein (326-28). melodrama adaptations of
which show domesticating changes similar to those in The
Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles, with which they are
contemporary. Steven Earl Forry's article. "The Hideous
Progenies of Richard Brinsley Peake: Frankenstein on the
Sate, 1823 to 1826," discusses these popular Frankenstein
melodramas, including Peake's Presumption, or The Fate of
Frankenstein (1823). which Cox also analyzes, and Milner's
Frankenstein, or The Man and the Monster (1826). in this
context.
See especially reviews of Matthew G. Lewis's popular

success The Castle Spectre (1798), and. oddly, the Critical
Review's positive review of his much less successful
Alfonso. King of Castile (1801), which speaks for the
elitist conservatism of many critics when it maintains that
"true fame consists in the approbation of the discerning
few. not in the shouts of the vulgar" (355)- Also relevant-
are reviews of C-R. Maturin's Bertram, or The Castle of
Saint Aldobrand (1816); the Monthly Review's indictment of
"the want of moral effect in many of our most popular plays"
(178) is typical-

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Horrible Shadow: Otherness in Nineteenth-Century Gothic

and Speculative Fiction

This thesis examines the presentation of. and response

to, the other, in five representative texts: three Gothic

vampire tales and two works of speculative fiction.

Polidori's The Vampyre (1S19>, Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872),

Stoker's Dracula (1897). Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and

Lytton's The Coming Race (1871). all portray the undeniably

other: the vampire, the constructed creature, and the

technologically advanced alien.

Although there can be no doubt that the perceived

hierarchical opposition between self and other serves to

marginalize those designated as other, close analysis of

these texts reveals not only conservative cultural

anxieties, but potential sites for subversion. Often texts

sometimes critique that process, particularly by

destabilizing the arbitrary boundary between the other and

the self. The extent to which such dcstabilization occurs

in these texts reveals the degree to which they challenge

the dominant ideology.

I would like to express ray utmost appreciation to my

To my parents, for their love and support, and with all

Thanks to Nicolae Paduraru for the folklore, which he

deterrent, however, may not always be so powerful, and the

nature of texts concerned with otherness so conservative. as

Jameson suggests. While othering docs indeed serve as a

strategy of containment, the other itself is not so easily

controlled. Not only the watchdog of the dominant class.

the other is capable of haunting its creator as well.

revealing the anxieties of the culture which produces it.

and, depending on how it is presented, acting to subvert the

values of that dominant culture- In short, it can no more

be contained than Macbeth can truly banish Banquo's ghost.

that "horrible shadow" he has created through the murder of

Banquo's self (III-iv.129-30) }

Jameson notes that "the concept of good and evil is a

positional one which coincides with categories of Otherness"

(Political Unconscious 115), and defines evil, and thus the

evil . . . characterize^J whatever is radically

'Of course, the process of othering which I am about to

Nowhere is the figure of the other, as Jameson defines it,

more apparent than in that mode of literature generally

described as the fantastic, which allows, in the words of

Rosemary Jackson, "troublesome social elements [to] be

destroyed in the name of exorcizing the demonic. . . . In

the name of defeating the 'inhuman,* such fantasies attempt

to dismiss foes inimical to bourgeois ideology" (Fantasy