Rochel Bergman
Prior to writing Dracula, Bram Stoker wrote The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland in an attempt to develop “a great and effective system of procedure which must sooner or later be adopted for the whole British Empire” (qtd. Stoker 6). Stoker recognized almost fifty years prior the importance and power of immigrant voices in reshaping the conventions of the English nation. During the 19th century, there were major social shifts occurring throughout Britain. There were simultaneously fears of attack from abroad and within the country. Patrick Parrinder writes about the debates within literature, noting that there were two distinct ways of writing about England. One way bleakly examines England and recognizes its power as an empire is a sham, and the other which believes that a “too rapid effacement of those national traditions and customs…would lead to the moral degradation of society” (237). In other words, there was an idea that your national identity was linked to specific characteristics or qualities, and that foreign elements are capable of corrupting and ultimately destroying the English people. This form of identity excludes identity being dictated by documentation or even birth place. In many novels, the British would go to other places and have children there, but their children were still considered wholly British. As such, many novelists would write in a way which would spurn forth a reification of the British identity to prevent a corruption or re-imagining of their identity. Writers such as Charlotte Bronte would present old-world British families, where class structures and qualities such as English reserve would be put forward to preserve and honor classic English sentiments. With such fear being placed around the immigrant, immigrant writers were placed into a distinct category in which they would have to contend with both the imperialism and otherness that they face as well as their own feelings towards the British empire. This struggle is one which many immigrant writers would tackle in various ways.
The immigrant writer operated in a space in which they were simultaneously British and not, a participant in the empire as well as a victim of its imperialism. Simon Featherstone writes upon the issue of identity in England during the 20th century in which he defines “identity in a period of postcolonial transition to be negotiated and re-made, not maintained, imposed or restricted by the imperatives of essentialist nationhood” (106). In essence, the immigrant writer is not constrained to the traditional notions of the British character, nor are they not British simply because of their background and Englishness was now being defined away from personality or qualities of character, and instead was re-imagined as a more cosmopolitan way of being, in which bringing your own sense of being into the space becomes a way of being British. It became understood that “the migrant will change the social formation in which he or she is participating, just as he or she is changed in turn by that place” (106). English identity becomes an intersection of both personhood and their spatial reality. I argue that Stoker follows this through, using his text of Dracula to explore a potential for a “new Englishness as yet unknown to England” (106). Stoker contends with what it means to be British during his historical moment, which on the surface, appears to be a celebration of British culture against immigrant invasion. However, as pointed out by Robert Ready, Stoker crafts a narrative which defies readability, allowing for, perhaps, a glimpse of the immigrant within the cracks and boundaries of the text itself. The bloating, interruption, and distention of the novel points at something other than British, something which hints at a potential new Britain which is currently being incubated.
The initial setup of Dracula appears to be modeling itself off of the novels which re-enforce British cultures. Stoker demonstrates this in two different ways; one way is through the overt construction of the text by Mina and the second is through the broad narrative arc. I will start by examining Mina and identify her as a British symbol. There appears to be at first a paradox with emblemizing Mina as being a figure of Britain. Mina appears to be part of the force of change coming to England, a shift in values and figures. Specifically, she embodies the New Woman trope. This figure, while often read by literary critics as primarily a trope, embodying ideas such as sexual aggression and a change to traditional ideas of femininity, I feel that there is a lack of scholarship surveying how the New Woman was seen and represented during Stoker’s time. The New Woman was debated at the time when Stoker was writing Dracula, and the novel is firmly placed in a British issue, the rights for British women to be able to vote. According to research done by Michelle Elizabeth Tusan on the periodicals written by actual “New Women”, some of the ways the New Woman was represented was as “a reasonable and thoughtful woman who had only the best interests of the British state at heart” (170). Mina embodies this mode of New Woman in which she desires to “do what…lady journalists do” (Stoker 78). In this way, Stoker places Mina in the position of being a bearer of British interests, for she is grounded not in difference but in a new way continuing a traditional British identity. As such, Mina becomes the organizer and crafter of the documents.
The organization of the documents themselves abet Stoker’s grand narrative. It has been noted by several literary critics that the text itself operates as disjunctive, but the way in which Stoker has the characters organize disparate texts together fashions a narrative that is traditionally British in its scope. Specifically, he takes several subjective accounts and pastes them together to become what Johnathan Harker decrees the text to be “a simple fact” (28). These texts placed together encompass an objective truth, in which subjective accounts from journal entries, stenographs, and personal letters are placed into direct conversation and held to the same reliability as newspaper clippings. As pointed out by Butler, the characters “private writing gradually loses its subjective coloration as Mina transforms it into typewriting” (22). Specifically, transforming the text is an attempt to remove the emotional weight and add back a form of “emotional reserve and self-suppression back into the text (Parrinder 241). The characters recognize the power of the subjective accounts. At one point, Mina remarks that “[Johnathan’s] journal gets hold of my imagination and tinges everything with something of its own colour” (Stoker 193). During the Victorian period there was generally a disavowal of the subjective in favor of empiricism and science. Specifically, the senses were considered enemies of reason. The idea of empiricism, to doubt the senses, became an important aspect of Victorian life. As such the subjective accounts stand for unreliability, the letters make everything have “a hue of unreality” and leads to mistrust and doubt (200). Transforming the text into an objective account now allows the characters to be able to look at the events at a distance. Now that I have identified how Stoker has set up the form of the account to be re-affirming to British values, I will briefly explore the overarching plot and show how it follows the conventions of a pro-Britain narrative.
There is a ton of scholarship done on interpreting and reading Dracula, and they all follow a common thread. Specifically, Dracula is read as a foreign threat of some nature, in which he represents the lower classes, as an anti-bourgeois figure, or as a figure of the unconsciousness which refuses to be repressed[1]. As noted by David Seed in his examination of the narrative structure of Dracula, there are many attempts from characters to “normalize the strange into the discourse of the nineteenth-century” (64). Stoker crafts a narrative which takes these threats and places them into the common discourse. By normalizing attitudes to various ideas, such as the New Woman which I have discussed above, he is able to use metaphor to craft an England that is becoming. Specifically, he points to a “collaborative, even national, enterprise” (72). Seed argues that each character within the story represents various establishments of Britain, and these characters by defeating Dracula, represent a strengthening of the country as a whole. I argue, however, that this reading overshadows what lurks in the “fissures and cracks in the personal writing systems” of these characters (qtd. Ready 277). Specifically, Stoker has permeated and crafted a much more complex picture of the immigrant as not just victim or aggressor, but rather as a being capable of affecting change on the larger social level.
Erik Butler, in his works, notes how writing within the text acts as a conduit for the vampire to enact control over the characters. Specifically, he highlights a moment of writing by a character and marks the completed journals as “a divide between the writer and himself, a fissure in his consciousness” (16). I argue that, similarly, Stoker himself experiences this divide. As he himself writes Dracula, he is faced with his own experiences as an immigrant. This is where the subversion occurs, unconsciously. As such, Dracula comes to embody immigrant experience and Stoker as author. Dracula embodies many of the traits of the immigrant, specifically mirroring the experience of actual immigrant writers who “knew best the British way of life, not merely in historical facts but in the instinctive responses” (qtd. Featherstone 106). Dracula himself expresses this desire, this ability to understand Britishness on a level beyond what a “natural” British person would know. This desire is simultaneously a harmful and positive aspect. I will proceed to break down the different ways in which Dracula simultaneously becomes British and retains elements of being a figure of the Other as well. Specifically, I will examine the overt ways in which he is placed between these two conditions as well as how his (lack of) representation in the narrative structure speaks to his ability to transform the text.
The first part of Dracula best represents the ways in which Dracula takes to heart his way of understanding Britain in an instinctual way, to the point in which he internalizes the paradigm of knowing “something about the country you are living in now” and to simultaneously “be able to report the state of the colonial territory you come from” (qtd. Featherstone 106). When Harker first interacts with the Count, he is surprised to see how well-read he is noting his “vast number of books” which all relate to “England and English life and customs and manners” (Stoker 46). Dracula has epistemologically attempted to shift into that of a British citizen and attempts to use Harker as a partner to both learn and test his ability to imitate the British in their totality. In the beginning, Harker is receptive to his plight, seeing him as more English than any other English person he has met. Even his English is perfect, as Harker exclaims to the count. However, the count recognizes that regardless of his actions and his ability to understand intimately the British way of life, he will always be recognized as a stranger due to his appearance. As such, Dracula at this stage only mimics, in which he does not fully achieve the ability to become a naturalized British citizen. As Homi Bhabha states, this level of integration is allowable, as the imperial power wants a recognizable Other which is “a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (153). While this idea of mimicry and Dracula as subaltern has been explored, the second aspect in which mimicry turns to “menace,” in which there is a “hidden threat of the partial gaze” of the Other, is often ignored as being a dual part of the way in which the immigrant faces their life (156).
While the vampire as threat has been noted, many scholars ignore that Dracula is recognized as a threat due to his ability to pass successfully as a British citizen. Through the various accounts and portrayals of Dracula throughout the novel, there is this sense of him visually being different. When Harker first meets Dracula, he notes his appearance as being sickly and bestial, accounting that he had an “extraordinary pallor” and a “lofty domed forehead” (Stoker 44). This difference actually helps Dracula’s reception. As long as Harker is able to distinguish him as an Other, he feels more secure in the unnatural circumstances he finds himself in. However, we find that as the novel progresses, Dracula becomes a figure of fear. This fear correlates to the moment they realize that he can pass as a British citizen. To keep Harker from being able to leave, the Count puts on Harker’s clothes and goes around town to cause trouble. What ends up being most alarming for Harker isn’t that he steals his clothes, but that the townspeople believe the person they are seeing is Harker himself. Dracula is able to successfully represent the figure of a British citizen. At this moment, there is an equal representation of both Other and British, a blurring of what was assumed to be a naturalized and conditioned boundary the Other could not cross. This blurring of boundaries does not just occur in appearances and overt representations, but in the textual and structural elements of the narrative itself.
As noted earlier on, the narrative structure holds British or Pro-British voices and sentimentalities. However, this is not strictly true. Stoker hides within the narrative the voice and influence of Dracula. Between the cracks of the narrative, there is space for Dracula to command and control the circulation of information and the actions the characters take. I am going to specifically highlight the two different ways he is inserted in the text. The first way is through his control of literature and the second way are the ways his subjectivity affects the tellings of the other characters. As I mentioned earlier, there is a phenomenon noted with writing in which when something has been written, there is a divide created in the writer’s consciousness. This form of double-consciousness is portrayed when Dracula has Harker write fake letters. Dracula compels Harker to write, articulating a form of writing which, while it is from Harker’s hand, is truly coming from Dracula. His literature is being added into the account through Harker. In other words, the account is being subtly affected by an outside voice, interrupting what is supposed to be an honest, total account of the events. As well, while Dracula has him write his letters, he himself writes notes and afterwards combines the letters and notes together: “Then he took up my two and placed them with his own, and put by his writing materials…” (Stoker 59). Through their writing, the differences between Harker and Dracula minimize. Their writing materials are indistinguishable. In this way, Stoker comments on how the objective account which should be the representative of the British qualities can be imitated and blurred with accounts of difference. Their writing system becomes tools against themselves, opening them up to the subjective difference of the Count rather than isolate him. This aspect becomes apparent as well in the individual accounts as well.
Dracula has been noted as having an ephemeral, ghost-like presence. This is accounted for by his ability to come in and out of the narrative as he pleases. Specifically, Dracula usually takes action which affects the characters between the time they are sleeping and awake. When Dracula commands Harker to sleep, he sleeps and when he wakes there are always changes to his person[2]. There is one moment, where Harker sits down to write he is immediately interrupted by the Count’s entering. In that way, Dracula is not just participating in the writing system, but is created out of writing. He is born out of writing, from between the cracks and becomes a representative of an unconscious British subjectivity. He represents the fear of what is becoming of the British subjectivity, one which is being inundated and invaded by foreign influences both at home and abroad. By being summoned through writing, the Count shows that the immigrant influence is already there, within the unconscious of the British themselves.
With all of this being said, it is also important to not ignore the form of erasure which occurs during this process. This process of creating a new subjective experience requires a sacrifice on both parties, however, Dracula as a colonized person is forced to suffer a loss of his entire cultural heritage. The new conception of a British person primarily operates within the framework of British understanding; there is still a predominate use of English and British history and texts are used. In other words, Harker and crew are not made to accept or internalize the other beyond his presence, while the Other is forced to fully absorb and mimic the British. Dracula is forced to disavow his own language, attempting to master English to an extent in which his sense of difference is not noticeable. As well, he no longer is able to articulate a cohesive history of his people or his own family. Similarly, Stoker and other immigrants are forced to adopt English customs and manners, often leading to the death of their cultural language. It is important to note this intricacy of cultural loss in this transitioning of a new Britain. As much as the immigrant holds the power of creating a new Britain or a new subjectivity, it requires notice of the circumstances which lead to this state in the first place.
As Jamil Khader points out in his work on the relation between the Self and the Other, there is a “reimagining of a new type of subjectivity… that will forever implicate the Self and the Other in a recognition of the inauthenticity of origins and subjectivity” (90). As we can see from the above examples, Dracula has already been established as a threat due to both his ability to pass as a British citizen, which dismantles the idea of there being a natural British identity, and his ability to insert himself into the subjectivities of the British intimately. In other words, the British assault and perceive Dracula’s evil as him operating as a mirror which reflects back a British subject which the characters cannot allow to exist. There comes a refusal to accept the Other and the implication that by destroying the symbol and representative of this new Britain, they are able to dismantle the threat. However, it becomes clear that Stoker believes that there is no way to truly destroy the new Britain. In the ending Note, Stoker writes that “some of [their] brave friend’s spirit” has become part of Mina and Harker’s child (371). While this is in reference to another character, Quincey, there is the implication that it is also Dracula’s spirit which has passed into the child due to their deaths occurring simultaneously. On Dracula’s death, his eyes changed from a “look of hate” to triumph (369). Perhaps his look is that of which he is finally being recognized, fully represented. He will transform into a person in which coexists the Other and the Self in a way which he is no longer marginalized by difference. Like how Stoker, endeavored to find a new method which would be adopted by Britain, Dracula has found a way for Britain to have to accept and recognize his difference. There is a recognition that, on an individual level Dracula or Stoker can only do much, it’s through the various generations that change is, and will occur. They both represent one voice in a crowd of voices which blur and recreate the British identity to include a multitude of difference.
Notes
[1] See Robert Ready’s Textula for a brief overview of these various figures.
[2] See pp. 62, 67, and 68 for various examples of the Count’s interruptions.
Bibliography
Arata, Stephen D. “The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.” University of Chicago, Summer 1990, pp. 621-645.
Bhabha, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, edited by Frederick Cooper et al., University of California Press, 1997, pp.152-160.
Brown, Creighton N. “Dracula’s Colonized Tongue Speaks Through Fanged Teeth.” Journal of Dracula Studies, vol. 15, no.1, 2013, pp. 7-22.
Butler, Erik. “Writing and Vampire Contagion in Dracula.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2002, pp. 13-32.
Camlot, Jason. “The Victorian Critic as Naturalizing Agent.” The John Hopkins University Press, vol. 73, no. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 489-518.
Featherstone, Simon. “Race.” Englishness: Twentieth-Century Popular Culture and the Forming of English Identity, Edinburgh University Press, 2009, pp. 103-120.
Khader, Jamil “Un/Speakability and Radical Otherness: The Ethics of Trauma in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” College Literature, vol. 39, no.2, Spring 2012, pp. 73-97.
Parrinder, Patrick. “At Home and Abroad in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction: From Vanity Fair to The Secret Agent.”Nation and Novel: The English Novel from Its Origins to the Present Day, Oxford University Press USA, 2006, pp. 232-257.
Ready, Robert. “Textula.” JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 40, no. 3, Fall 2010, pp. 275-296.
Seed, David. “The Narrative Method of Dracula.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 40, no.1, Jun. 1985, pp. 61-75.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2016.
Tusan, Michelle E. “Inventing the New Woman: Print Culture and Identity Politics during the Fin-de-Siecle.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 31, no. 2, Summer 1998, pp. 169-182.
Viragh, Attila. “Can the Vampire Speak? Dracula as Discourse on Cultural Extinction.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, vol.56, no.2, 2013, pp. 231-245
Biography
Rochel Bergman is currently a first-year graduate student at California State University, Fullerton. Her areas of interest are in theory of mind and the nature in which people shape their identity.
Comments