depicted as passive, fevered, backward, and feminine. Unlike the paralyzed vampire victims displaying symptoms of fever, fatigue, and hallucination, the medical heroes are the quintessence of health, determination, pluck, and intelligence. Body politics as seen in the doctor-patient relationship are based on the prerequisite of master versus slave, hero versus victim, and health versus contagions. For the Victorians, either at the national level or the individual level, they require an other in defining culture in this way; for the empire, colonial possessions and continental rivals were required; for the doctors, it is illnessin patients’bodies; for intellectual heroes, it is deformed monsters and degenerated moralities; for Dr. Van Helsing, it is Lucy and Mina. The interaction between the self and other demonstrates a tricky ambivalence: the legitimacy of the subject requires the counter-definition of the object. While the
empire and the hero demand dominance over racial and moral others, their supremacy creates a possibility for trans-class and trans-culture circulation. The circulation route potentially breaks down the barriers of secure demarcation between upper and lower classes, British and foreign, colonizer and colonized, and healthy and contaminated.
As the supremacy of the subject depends on the precarious hierarchy over the object, the defining mechanism that seemingly situates them on two sides of the scale is subject to all forms of uncertainty. The route of circulation, as embodied in clinical terms in Dracula, is embedded in a bundle of medical terms and corruptions which are subject to transformation and subversion. As soon as female victims are
transformed into vampires, the dominance of their master starts to wane. The circuit of contagions suggests dominance and deprivation, yet it draws open the curtain for resistance and subversion.
This chapter explores the sensational experience of biting and licking blood in
Dracula and its contribution to the anxiety of the loss of a purebred London and a
genuine masculinity. The invasion of vampirism provides an opportunity for the male authority to prevail in examining and taming of female bodies and in excluding and eradicating other male opponents. An ideal type of male dominance is embodied in the detailed procedure of examining the body and its desire. By contextualizing my discussion of vampirism within the medical history of syphilis contagions in the late Victorian period, this chapter attempts to read the penetrating dominance of medical discourse of contagions over all levels of social discourse and, thus, read itsconsolidation of medical surveillance in the domestic space. Knowledge of medicine is now practiced not only in the clinic, but also in the realm of the household,
forecasting a stronghold advantage of male over female, senior over junior, asexual over sexual, and normal over abnormal. A medical governmentality is secured in domestic space, with its compulsory regulation, rehabilitation, and punishment over
diseased sexuality that culminates in a language of disciplining the pathological and ethical other. I examine the social and cultural significance of victimized female bodies and the interaction of syphilis medical discourse as presented in Bran Stoker’s
Dracula roughly at three levels. At the first level, I seek to understand why Dracula’
s essential formula of invasion represents a collective fear of contagions and how repeated physical examinations of Lucy and Mina suggest a repressed male desire to control. At the second level, I seek to answer why both the docile body of Lucy and the independent body of Mina subscribe to victimization under male gaze. Therefore, I seek to answer why the ambivalent status of Lucy’s body and the untamable body of Mina both present a subversive power in radicalizing physical purity and the sanctity of family and social order. Lastly, I try to respond to the notion that medicalknowledge is aligned with male bodily politics in carrying on the mission of normalcy within domestic space.
This chapter also examines the discursive formation of a surveillance mentality embodied in social reform and medical research as exemplified, respectively, in the Contagious Disease Acts and the medical investigation of suspected syphilis carriers.
An interdisciplinary study on social reform and medical history explains why the desire and fear of examining Lucy and Mina can be associated with the
nineteenth-century fear of syphilis. Both the imaginary signifier of syphilis and its material reality lead to a clear breakdown of values ascribed to promiscuity and prostitution. Attractive female bodies are projections of desire and possession, while the treacherous contagions of syphilis reveal a fear of corruption and disorder. Such a collective fear is projected onto the contagions of vampirism and the desire to put unclean female bodies under surveillance and control; nevertheless, failed attempts in taming female bodies and eradicating syphilis potentially subvert the submission process. The recurring symptoms of contagions in the dead (but not quite body) of
Lucy and the untamed and undefined body of Mina paradoxically imply an opportunity for subversion through the prevalence of taming female sexuality, regulating domestic sanitation, and disciplining household order. Imagining taming syphilis comes mostly from the ideal projection of taming female bodies and purifying their sexuality in order to create and control a genuine female body. The necessary economy of domestic regulation is essential to the maintenance of male authority. However, in the process of surveillance and governance, the invisible, invincible, and immortal virus ridicule both the open and the enclosed circuit of contagions.
The Normalized Body
Steven G. Herbert rightly argues that “Count Dracula is the quintessence of the evil creatures we meet in everyday life”and thus “can help us understand the monsters we meet in everyday life disguised as everyday people”(62). It is true that Dracula represents great evil in a philosophical and moral sense. Stephen D. Arata famously bringsoutthenotion ofan “anxiety ofreversecolonization”to illustratethe collective sentiment in late Victorian society (“Occidental”463). Victorians were both confronted with invasion from immigrants of overseas colonies while suffering greatly from myriad symptoms of degeneration. In explaining the collective anxiety revealed in gothic genres,Patrick Brantlingercoinstheterm “imperialgothic”(227), a unique blend of adventures and the gothic popularly received in late Victorian
society, to indicate the collective anxiety shown in the interaction between the British Empire and her colonies. As a result, the sense of superiority maintained in the pure blood of the race was now endangered and polluted by the barbaric and decadent culture of overseas colonies. The whole empire was now imperiled by the intrusion of
barbarians, with its civilization liable to corruption and degeneration.
What Arata and Brantlinger have in common is their apprehension of the venomous flashback of colonization. This anxiety was embedded in the imagination of intrusive forces shown in the botanical and zoological studies of the colonies and the knowledgeable understanding of the empire sought by the colonized people.
BeforeHarker’svisit,Draculahaslearned from hisown hugecollection ofbooks, magazines,and newspapersin hisprivatelibrary.On top oftheCount’s knowledge of England, there is only one thing he lacks, one thing that ultimately distinguishes a native and an alien speaker. For this purpose, Harker is imprisoned and kept alive to tutor him in his English accent.
Said argued that western imperialism is a conglomeration of enterprises
consisting of“awholeseriesof‘interest’which,by such meansasscholarly discovery, philosophical reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological
description”isaltogethermotivated “acertain
will or intention to understand, in some
casesto control,manipulate,even to incorporate”(Orientalism 12, emphasis original).
Colonialism, according to Said, is not just based on military and political forces, but is also a systematic and intellectual understanding of all cultural aspects, ranging from literature, geography, and science to religion and customs. This pursuit of dominance in knowledge of foreign lands and in devotion to classification to establish a
knowledge system, even if not directly sponsored by the imperial bureaucracy, was highly enflamed by the fervent beliefs commonly shared on the domestic lands of the empire. In this sense, Dracula was the worst nightmare embodied in the process of colonization: he who used to be studied now turns out to be the one who studies.
Arata’snotion ofthe“anxiety ofreversecolonization”and Brantlinger’snotion of“imperialgothic”touch upon acommon concern of“deracination.” With the importation of cheap hard laborers and household maids came the undeniable chance
for“miscegenation.”Dueto thefactthatimmigrantsaredistinguished by their
“robusthealth”and “theirequally robustfertility,” vampiricintrudersserveto mark thealarming declineamong theBritish,becausetheundead are“both ‘healthier’and more‘fertile’than theliving”(Arrata,“Occidental”466).In thissense,theintrusion of Dracula signifies a mode of dominance through racial health in which the superior spreads out their seed and the inferior is plagued by bereavement and eradication.
Dracula,being immuneto theallformsofcontagion,isofcoursethe“healthier,”the
“fertile,”and the“conquering race”(Stoker34).
The intrusion of Dracula and the contagions of vampirism restage adventures in domestic space. The adventure of Harker and Dr. Van Helsing takes place mostly in theroom wherethey try to saveeithersomeoneelse’slifeortheirown.David Punter and GeorgeGordon Byron arguethat“Victorian Gothicismarked primarily by the domestication of Gothic figures, spacesand themes”to theextentthat“horrorbecame explicitly located within theworld ofthecontemporary reader”(26).EitherArata’s
“anxiety ofreversecolonization,”Brantlinger’s“imperialgothic,”orPunterand Byron’s“domestication ofGothicfigures”opensup new approachesin reading the significance of Dracula; however, their reliance on the alien identity of the Count may risk reducing the complexity and richness of this aristocratic vampire. Dracula is not merely an embodiment, nor is he an egregious foreign invader. To interpret Dracula as the quintessence of evil does not sufficiently leave Professor Van Helsing at a
reasonable place. Since both are foreigners (one from Amsterdam, the other from Transylvania), and both are capable of provoking astonishment (Van Helsing’s bold medical treatments and ability to strike stakes through dead bodies are no less scary than Dracula’s dark power), it would be reductive to levy readings of reverse colonization.
Anxiety over Dracula does not come from his identity as a foreign invader. If
there is anything that is disturbing about his supernatural power, it is not his mighty power but more inclined to be the ambivalent state in which he is situated: the
vampire is unable to be classified in any known discipline of science. He belongs both to the dead and the alive, the animal and the human, the diseased and the healthy. The vampire does not belong to any single category of human knowledge, yet it belongs to many in the nosology: Dracula is the unclassifiable. Max Nordau, famous writer and practicing physician in the late Victorian period, revealed his anxiety in the
unclassifiable degeneration in all pathological symptoms of paralysis, hysteria,
degeneration,and egoism.Nordau’sfamousbook,
Degeneration, published in 1892 at
the height of fin-de-siècle decadence, noted the common fate of degeneration, both physically and mentally, in all walks of life in late Victorian England. Criminals, psychos, prostitutes, anarchists, and homosexuals, all contributed to the unclassifiable pathological degeneration that drove the empire to the brink of collapse (7–13).Foucault offers a rich and powerful source of inspiration for my discussion of nosology and pathology materialized in forms of surveillance and body politics.
According to his historical discussion in The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Foucault reads the Victorian era as a period characterized by the emergence of a
scientia sexualis. This science of sexuality gauged the physical and the implied moral
by categorizing sexual models, which identified “aberrant”sexual practices. For Foucault’s analysis, what was needed was a particular kind of scientific practice which could police the boundaries between the“normal”and “abnormal.”Asa consequence,“the norm”defined by medico-legal practice produced apsychologico-moral double of the dangerous individual. The danger of the diseased, ill, or psychologically unstable individual was defined by the functioning power of
“normalization.”Likewise, the same “norm”that created the concept of the “normal”
is also responsible for surveillance and control of the “abnormal.”The general aim of
normalization, in marking out dysfunction or deviation, is linked to the power and knowledge of medicine.
Potentially diseased, sick, and perverse individuals are targeted in order to maintain stability and security within the domain of normalization. Medicine, as one of the most active institutional systems and as personified in the characters of Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Sewald, is set up to investigate potentially unhealthy and therefore dangerous individuals. “Danger and perversion,”presented in thecontagions of vampirism and Lucy’shigh-pitched sexuality, constitute “the essential theoretical core of expert medico-legal opinion”(Abnormal 34). The domestic space of Dracula
providesaperfectsetting formedicineto operate“asameansofethical,physical,and sexualcontrolwithin family morality” to which sexualconduct,orexcessiveor
abnormal sexual conduct, become “an objectofcontrol,coercion,examination, judgment,and intervention”(
Abnormal 254). Accordingly, an economy of
normalization is established: it is for the knowledge of medicine to forecast the threat of dangerous and perverse individuals; additionally, medicine controls and tames the potential threat from the dangerous and perverse.
The nineteenth century witnessed a series of normalizations within domestic spheres. Foucault argues that the power of medical normalization was set in the domain of the family, as senior members (family doctors and parents) were
responsible for the “health”of minors. The relationship of governance was launched on an economy of surveillance and correction over inappropriate behavior
(masturbation, for example).In short,“themedicalized family,”aspresented in the family ofHarker,“functionsasasourceofnormalization”:
Medicine and sexuality were brought into contact through the family: by calling upon the doctor and by receiving, accepting, and when necessary applying the remedies he prescribed, the family linked sexuality with a
medicine that previously had in practice related to sexuality only in a very distant and indirect way. The family itself became an agent of the
medicalization of sexuality within its own space. Thus we see the
emergence of complex relations with a sort of division between the mute surveillanceand nondiscursiveencirclementofthechild’sbody by its parents on one side and, on the other, the extra-familial, scientific discourse, or discourse of confession, localized in medical practice, which thus
becomes heir to the techniques of Christian confession. … In short, there is an exchange in which medicine operates as a means of ethical, physical, and sexual control within family morality and in return makes the internal
problemsofthefamily body,focused on thechild’sbody,appearasmedical need. (Foucault, Abnormal 253-54)
Parental control, as represented by the patriarchal control of Dr. Van Helsing, which must be guided by medical and hygienic intervention, is designed to
subordinate minors, who are embodied in Renfield, Lucy, and Mina. They must seek external and scientific authority upon any warning sign. In claiming scientific status with medical terms for the success of control, the domestic domain is transformed into an institution. Depending on medical knowledge, the duplication of normalization targeted any potential transgression and perversion of sexuality. Sexual conduct, perverse or otherwise, became an immediate object for observation, control, and
coercion,asin Dr.Van Helsing’sperformanceofallkindsofexamination,testing,and medication. In other words, medical and enclosed domestic spaces,Lucy’sroom,for instance, start to function as sources of normalization.
In what Foucault defines as the economy of normalization, there is always a need to initiate investigation and normalization in the event of abnormality. In cases of disciplining the abnormality, medication and governance are the Janus face of
normalization. In discussing Gothic fiction, Kelly Hurley raises an argument inspired by Foucault’s notion of a normalization economy, or at least, his insights regarding anxiety and fear of the abnormal. Hurley notes that the Gothic emerges “at periods of cultural stress, to negotiate the anxieties that accompany social and epistemological transformations and crises”(5). In other words, the conjuration of the “abhuman,”
anomalies of defectives, misfits, criminals, conflict with the “fully human”subject summoned by the concept of “othering”(Hurley 94). Similarly, Stephen Arata shares a position with Hurley in stating that “historically specific”concerns are “cast into narrative, into stories a culture tells itself in order to account for its troubles and perhaps assuage its anxieties”(Fictions 1). Arata clarifies what he names as
“historically specific”concerns of the late nineteenth century, specifically anxieties derived from “the spread of urban slums, the growth of the ‘criminal’classes, and the proliferation of ‘deviant’sexualities”(Arata, Fiction 2).
Robert Mighall disagrees, suggesting that reading culture and science in the context of horror fiction negates the epistemological status of scientific discourse.
That is, such a reading strategy provides a promising result of intertextuality if a cautious awareness of reduction and distortion is at work. Mighall claims that “a fiction of monsters and supernatural threats is reduced to a covert articulation of ideology”and that “scienceappears to function principally as an arbiter or shaper of
‘fear’”(167). But he cannot deny that science is also constructed as a discourse and, even with its own “different professional and epistemological agendas and
obligations,”is itself embedded within a complicated network of interests, heritages, and interactions with other discourses. As a form of instrumental rationality, medicine servesin gothicliterature whatMighalltermsthe“arbiter’and “shaper”offear. Similarly, Andrew Smith raises a similar observation when he notes that gothic literature articulates a sense of fear which is easily manipulated and reduced to a
mechanism of medical and masculine ideology. Smith notes that “medicine has a social mission to generate normative models of masculine behavior”(7). In the process of fabricating fear into an ideological mechanism, revered medicine
pathologizes and makes illness out of the normal and the abnormal. Thus, “a language of othering”is created “in order to emphasise difference”(Smith 8).
In Dracula, the othering language and economy of normalization are revealed in perfect statements of the normal bodies of doctors. Young Dr. Seward first
exemplifies a penetrating power of normalization when he is described as“absolutely imperturbable,”to theextentthat he can even start the process of normalizing his
exemplifies a penetrating power of normalization when he is described as“absolutely imperturbable,”to theextentthat he can even start the process of normalizing his