Ziggy Ghassemi
During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the British Empire expanded nearly across the entire globe. It was not for nothing that the saying the sun never sets in the British Empire came about. At the tail end of the Eighteenth century, England, the heart of the empire, began to undergo dramatic changes in landscape as the Industrial Revolution kicked off. The beautiful and lush country was brutally transformed into a dirty, industrialized landscape. In the onset of the Industrial Revolution, standardization became vastly important. With standardization in industry, came a standardization in life. People developed the routine of getting up, going to work and coming back home, repeated ad infinitum. The systemization of life began and grew, especially as the scientific method gained popularity; not only was life systematized, but so was thought. The rise of industry and the scientific method did away with anything that attempted to stand outside of reason, such as anything sublime. Therefore, when Bram Stoker introduced Dracula, to London at the turn of the century, it seemed to be a novel that wholly countered this notion. Stoker’s novel however works to illuminate gaps in the knowledge of his audience, getting them to believe again in the sublime. Through the aid of Abraham and Torok’s unique method of psychoanalysis, the Transgenerational Phantom, the trauma that the population suffered through the loss of the sublime is revealed, and Dracula, the vampire, becomes the unsung hero of the novel.
In their book The Shell and the Kernel, Maria Torok and Nicholas Abraham revise and renew the psychoanalytic methods employed by Freud, in addition to Klein and Ferenczi. One of their specific innovations, proposed by Nicholas Abraham, introduces the concept of cryptonymy, and an emphasis on the "transgenerational phantom" as a model for understanding inherited trauma and secrets. This form of analysis shifts the foci of psychoanalytic investigation from the personal to a broader scope. It is through this form of analysis, that traumas constituted by gaps in knowledge may be investigated. Translator and editor of the Shell and the Kernel Nicolas Rand states that “Abraham seeks to … [introduce] elements of irrational imagination… into the realm of rational understanding”-- and only by this means can the "phantom" be discovered (166). Using Abraham and Torok's cryptonymic lens, Dracula can be analyzed using the concept of the phantom. As the characters of the novel can only contemplate Dracula’s existence by means of introducing irrational knowledge to their rational understanding. Dracula’s motive can also be uncovered through this scope as Rand states that similar to ancient Roman or Old-Norse beliefs the phantom fits in with the categories of those old devils that return to haunt the living, spirits akin to those who died abnormally. Thus, Victorian London becomes a birthing ground for the phantom as by the hands of mankind, the sublime was wrenched from human thought. Dracula’s existence calls for a recognition of phantasmal elements which may then be used to systematically illuminate that which haunts Victorian society.
In a Philosophical Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke describes the Sublime as “whatever is in any sort terrible … or operates in a manner analogous to terror” (36). Without even needing to open Stoker’s novel, the average reader of fin-de-siecle London would realize that this novel operates in the realm of horror. A majority of Stoker’s audience would have been religious and would couple the word Dracula with the Latin root word Draco, meaning “a kind of snake or devil” (Cassell’s Latin Dictionary, 202). As the word Dracula is itself the diminutive of the word Draco, thus meaning little Devil. Abraham’s method of “introducing elements of irrational or nonrational imagination” is first seen at play here as the religious would recoil from such a novel, and those of scientific backgrounds might scoff at the idea of such an irrational monster (166). However, there are still those that would be interested in such a thing, and thus the notion of the sublime roots its first seeds.
Stoker’s readers would quickly observe how the irrational gets a foothold as the first setting of the novel is in a place that was more or less unknown at the time, Transylvania. In Fictions of Loss, in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle: Identity and Empire, Stephen Arata states in a footnote that “critics who do address the travel motifs in Dracula generally emphasize travel’s connection to psychology … ‘Transylvania is Europe’s unconscious,’ asserts Geoffrey Wall … Alan Johnson quotes approvingly and argues that Harker’s journey to Transylvania is a ‘symbolic journey into his own mind’” (215). It makes sense then for Stoker to use such a place as Transylvania, as the English word, which also derives from Latin, literally means the land across the forest. The readers cross the forest of their minds into an unknown land, a land where anything, be it fantastic or terrible, might be possible.
In likening Harker’s to a voyage into England’s unconscious Stoker is able to reveal one of Victorian societies greatest fears -- the loss of individuality. Stoker highlights this with end of the novel with Harker saying “I took the papers from the safe… We were struck with the fact that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is not one authentic document; nothing but a mass of typewriting” (371). Professor Raj Shah states in his essay “Counterfeit Castles: the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” that “authenticity … is exclusive to the original object” (430). With the original documents having been lost, the authenticity of the tale and that of the story-teller becomes lost within its mechanical reproduction. The attempted re-penetration of the sublime into London and the minds of her people is thwarted as Dracula is made out to be feared and hated. Dracula’s attempt at reigniting the sublime within society fails. The loss of individuality is one of the gaps in knowledge that the wrenching of the sublime renders.
Dracula as the personification of the phantom is especially evidenced when the vampire begins his ill-fated invasion of London. When Dracula almost literally swoops down in London and claims his first victim, the machine-like nature of the city starts working immediately. The group of heroes -- commonly referred to as the Crew of Light -- systematically go about discovering and destroying each of Dracula’s lairs, making it impossible for the monster to reside in the city, forcing him back out to Transylvania. The very concept of a being such as Dracula is inconceivable to the populace as Dracula stands outside of science and reason. Stoker’s vampire works to interrupt the “rhythms created by the machine” to suppress the phantom (Sussman 4). The city churns out those it thinks best to handle the situation. The first person that comes to attempt to cure the disease of vampirism is Doctor John Seward. When the woman he loves is bitten by Dracula, he attempts to diagnose and cure the disease, but cannot. It is only when he reaches out to his old mentor, Doctor Van Helsing that they can diagnose Dracula. Dracula here has succeeded in interrupting the “rhythms created by the machine” since someone outside of the machine was called into help (Sussman 4). Van Helsing further interrupts the recurring motions that the city has created by forcing Seward to think outside of the box in order to realize Dracula. When doing so, however, Seward doubts his old mentor by thinking that his mind may have “become in anyway unhinged” (Stoker 214-215). Seward represents the patient who attempts to block the analysts attempt at getting at the core of the problem through any means necessary. It is only through a forceful injection of “irrational imagination” can they finally begin to work to defeat the vampire (Abraham and Torok 166). It is only because Van Helsing still believes in the superstitions of religious lore, in beings that could stand outside of scientific reasoning, that Dracula is discovered. It is because Van Helsing still has a sense of the sublime, can that which haunts England be faced.
The phantom cannot be diagnosed from within, as it is unknown to its subject. Thus expands Maria Torok on Abraham’s phantom, “the phantom is alien to the subject who harbors it” (Abraham and Torok, 181). With this definition of the phantom, it is then seen that Seward was destined to fail since he is part of the subject, as he is a subject of England, the penultimate “subject [which] harbors it” (Abraham and Torok, 181). It is only through Van Helsing, an alien to England, in which the phantom can be discovered. Because as stated earlier, Van Helsing has not been forced to conform to solely scientific reasoning, he still holds on to a sense of the sublime, he can still accept the sublime. Though he still utilizes the scientific method in his research, Van Helsing couples it with his belief in religious lore, therefore allowing him to uncover such a monstrous being. Helsing explains this to Doctor Seward to try and get him to realize his error when he says “it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all’ and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain” (Stoker 203). It is only through his emphasis on this that Seward even begins to doubt there could be something that exists outside of what science can explain. However, in doing so, he causes Seward later on to momentarily doubt his sanity. Every other character as well, when confronted with the concept of Dracula doubts their sanity in some way as Doctor Seward says, “I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats” (Stoker 278). Seward highlights the gaps in knowledge that are left through his solely focusing on panning out scientific and reasonable explanations. In following along with Van Helsing, he attempts to raise the wall of thinking that “we must be all mad” (Stoker 278). The patient again attempts to reject the diagnosis of the phantom, he attempts to block it off and remain oblivious to the notion of the sublime haunting.
With the questions of sanity, comes the questioning of the entire narrative of Stoker’s novel. The narrator’s support for Dracula being nigh evil as the devil himself becomes at best dubious, when taken into account each narrator of this story is a subject of England. Carol Senf states in her essay “Dracula: the Unseen Face in the Mirror,” that “the question of sanity… is so important in Dracula” (62). In questioning the narrative of the novel through the sanity of the characters, Dracula’s role as sole villain then becomes rather obscure. The vampire is the only main character in the novel that is not given his own voice. In not having his own voice, the reader is only shown what the patient believes Dracula to be, a being of evil which must be eradicated. The journal diaries and entries that the reader is presented with are those that have been translated from short hand and mechanically reproduced. They are those that have none of the original authenticity of the author behind them. The patient, if not fully recovered and accepting of the phantom, may have destroyed any document that was found belonging to Dracula himself. Thus, rendering the text unreliable as only the patient’s points of view are seen. Leah Richards essays “Mass Production and the Spread of Information in Dracula” seems to support this as she states that “there is no doubt that the group is willing to sacrifice authenticity for success” (443). Even Harker states his despair at there being not one original document left. “I took the papers from the safe…[was] struck with the fact that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is not one authentic document; nothing but a mass of typewriting” (371). Dracula and Van Helsing’s attempt at forcing “irrational imagination” on the characters of the novel are all but extinguished as they go back to living their normal lives (Abraham and Torok 166). Ergo the diagnosis of Dracula by the patient who is reliant on technology and science that he is wicked and a disease that must be cured and eradicated. Only then will sanity be restored.
Thus, it is then seen how through using Abraham’s sui generis method of the Transgenerational Phantom, the rise of the scientific method and the machine affected Victorian thought. In shifting the psychoanalytic gaze from the individual to the society, the traumatic effect of wrenching the sublime from thought becomes revealed. The repressed trauma is personified through Dracula, as he forces each character to question their beliefs and subsequently their sanity. It is only through this, that the characters can cast off their preconceived notions of what is rational and explain the irrational; it is only through the forceful injection of irrational thought that the characters can realize Dracula’s existence. Dracula’s motive then becomes clear as he works to restore their sense of the sublime, to make un-dead their ability to think outside of logic and reason. In this way, Dracula then becomes the unsung hero of Stoker’s brilliant novel. Hence, Stoker’s claim for a balance between logical reasoning and the sublime, that in order to progress, humanity requires a harmony between the two. Dracula penetrates the cold Victorian shell and re-injects belief of the fantastic into the kernel of the human psyche.
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Biography
Ziggy received an AA in English from Santiago Canyon College in 2015, BA in Comparative Literature with an emphasis in World Literature in June 2018 from the University of California, Irvine. He plans on graduating with my Masters in English from CSUF next year. His research interests lie in science studies, Sterne studies and 18th-century literature.
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