The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

Vampurella: Darwin and Count Dracula Author(s): Charles S. Blinderman Reviewed work(s): Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer, 1980), pp. 411-428 Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25089060 . Accessed: 11/03/2012 09:16
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Charles

S. Blinderman Vampurella: and Count Dracula

Darwin
student A

of mine some years ago confessed, that Hushfully, she didn't believe in vampires, she kept a clove of though garlic on her bedroom windowsill, just in case. From at least the 4th Century has been used as protection against the powers of darkness, B.C., garlic to prevent Hecate, mother specifically, back in the time of Theophrastus, of witches, from doing mischief. Throughout both occidental and oriental medical and magical history, garlic has been used also to ward
off or cure jaundice, tumors, intestinal dropsy, worms, sunstroke, and leprosy, hysteria. smallpox, Thus, Pro plague, whooping-cough,

fessor van Helsing's

Dracula's attention

recommendation
that they surround

to the English
themselves

targets of Count
with garlic has a

therefore of vampire aspects of the novel?and long history. Other fiction in general, of plays, movies, and television shows, of the rich have their roots in the matrix progeny Bram Stoker generated?also of myth. Count Dracula himself is part Vlad Tpesh, part Elizabeth Bathory,
Superman.

part lamia, part werewolf,

and part bat?and

part Darwinian

of these first five ingredients deserves modest explication. as Darwinian is the theme of this article. Vlad Superman the historical figure from whom Stoker constructed his Count, Tpesh, was King of Wallachia and it (territory encompassing Transylvania self encompassed by Romania) the fifteenth century. sporadically during He is noteworthy for nailing people's hats to their heads, ripping unborn Each Dracula from wombs, forte? burning the poor, and, especially?his thousands of his countrymen on stakes. One historiographical impaling and thus approach asserts that he did these things to scare the Turks as a nation. It's more likely he did them be Wallachia together keep cause he liked doing
which means

children

them. This
son of

aspect
"Dracul,"

of Vlad
which

IV
means

(nicknamed
"dragon,"

"Dracula,"

since his father, Vlad III, was also a terror) enters into the Count, fond of spilling blood. Countess Bathory, an early who is a warrior

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The Massachusetts
seventeenth-century Romanian noblewoman,

Review
was equally fond of spill

herself. She deprived at least six hundred girls of their ing blood?on blood, and therefore of their lives, under the illusion that bathing in blood would keep her attractive. Jack the Ripper probably makes a similar contribution to the recipe.
And of course, there's the bat. But before we turn to that animal

as an ingredient of the Count, there are two others in the menagerie The worth mentioning. first (chronologically) is the Greek lamia; a from from corpses and travelling ghostly serpentine presence oozing to divest passersby of their vitality, the lamia in her natal graveyard times was translated into the succubus and in the Romantic medieval into the heroine of a poem by John Keats. The Count's affinity period is signalled by his being able to transform himself with the werewolf into a wolf and by his hairy palms, a suggestion that he's an onanist, to which diversion this paper will return. As for the bat, which on a test might be the first response elicited by "vampire," word-association to the vampire legend, itself that must have been a late contribution Summers three thousand years. The vampire traced back by Montague bat, in European history, can be traced back only to the sixteenth cen tury since it is indigenous to America only. The conquistadors returned to Europe with tales of El Dorado, and of the one-ounce creepy true
vampire bat, occasionally a parasite of human beings. The bat became

fused with
vampire Renaissance bat

a much
(a

larger
literature.

cousin
and

of

the order Chiroptera,

then became absorbed

the
into

false
post

mouse-eater),

vampire

is Dr. Henry alludes to the vampire A very early work which wherein the spectre is More's An Antidote Against Atheism (1653), characterized mostly by his breath, cold and "of so intolerable stinking
and malignant a scent, as is beyond all imagination and expression."

There

literature until the of the vampire in English addition to Keats' "Lamia"?John Romantic Period when?in Stagg's both enriched the and Lord Byron's "The Giauor" "The Vampyre" legend, the poems adorned with images of "jaws cadaverous," "clotted tooth," "haggard lip," and "gnashing "ghastly haunts," carnage," is a short story, the vampire "sullen grave." Polidori's "The Vampyre" is hero of which is a take-off on Lord Byron and the moral of which there is evil in this world. At to Romantic that, contrary optimism, least four other fictional pieces prior to Bram Stoker's novel which con and ducted the vampire legend through fiction, two English?Rymer Carmilla?and and Sheridan LeFanu's the Vamfire Prest's Varney

are few mentions

412

Vampurella:
two de French, Sade's The philosophical pederasty, anal de Maupassant's Justine. last is

Darwin
"La

and Count Dracula

Horla" and, to a century before that,

of relevance particular Justine is a dimensions. fellation, coprophagia, flagellation, and

this

paper of

because antic

of

its

fun-house

behavior? blasphemy, some

scatophilia, murder. The

necrophilia, Count spends

intercourse,

of

his time bleeding his wife but more of it discoursing on what such It signifies, first of all, a view of Nature. Nature signifies. blood-letting even virtue, though she prefers crime; and the permits anything,
strong are impelled by their human nature to exercise power over the

weak:
strength,

"The
that

only happiness
is to say, in

of the strong
the most absolute

lies in the exercise

oppression." "The

of their
theory

of loving one's neighbor

not human physical make who to Nature." experience sensations better reveals are victims real.

is a myth
may that Sadism than men

which

we

owe
moral

to Christianity
sensations, fallacious?only view are more are

and
but

Christianity

emphasize sensations the

moral

signifies do

proper they

of women, angelic,

because

thus more suitable for sadistic violation. lovely, noble, and majestic, the later Count The Count addresses this point in language which could well have employed: Dracula
The to or unhappy happy the satisfaction of of sole complete function state our of the victim the of our of the revel her is totally immaterial or mind is a heart of pleasure

senses,

and Women targets.

state are but

matter whose

indifference. is to provide

instruments

Both Counts
death. De

find their "supreme

Sade's vision grew more

ecstasy" dependent
comprehensive:

upon a tableau of
from the violation

of a few girls in Justine, he developed fantasies, bored with who, Saint-Fond, corrupt financier,
fountains, the designed of a plan to corner farm produce population France.

in Juliette, about a poisoning drinking

and thus starve half

To

proceed
with in

from de Sade to Dracula

some caution. All To the world-?dualism.

through Darwinism
three are some expressions of its of followers,

is a journey
the oldest and to

undertaken profession

most

of its opponents, Darwinism seemed to take or between spirit and flesh, professing Lucretian is less ambivalent materialism. Dracula Sadean) supremacy of the spirit over the flesh, though in
a courageous stand and almost achieves

sides in the conflict worse (such as de in its professing the that novel the flesh
Darwinism was

makes

victory.

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The Massachusetts
a lightning-rod
can even discover

Review
with dualism. One
such as Ten

for the Victorian

such concern

period's grappling
in pre-Darwinian

works,

but it was with and Browning's "Cleon," nyson's In Memoriam that the fight really began, and the coming of the Origin of Sfecies it is mostly through Thomas exposition of Darwinian Henry Huxley's materialism that we can discover the parallels to, and perhaps even the are a few places in of Dracula. There influences upon, the message where explicit is said about nineteenth-century something van Helsing, the very method of scientific work is a fraud. Operating within an age that is "sceptical and selfish" science attempts to explain everything, and "if it explain not," van Helsing goes on in his weird idiom, "then it says there is nothing to explain" (p. 170).1 and yet that "there are things which you cannot understand; Claiming which are; that some people see things that others cannot" (p. 172), but he goes on at stultifying length, like a voice out of the whirlwind, an itemized list of those things which petulant, to lecture at us with science cannot explain but in which we are to have faith: hypnotism, and of turtles, the immortality of the the longevity of Methusalah the resurrection of the Indian fakir, "the altogether of compara parrot, tive anatomy," and a giant aged oil-drinking Spanish spider. Although a scientist himself, van Helsing proposes that superstition is a allegedly more powerful than scientific rationality, a proposition he finds force in the midst of the validated by the appearance of Count Dracula nineteenth century" (p. 212). "scientific, sceptical, matter-of-fact comments by van Helsing, however superficial and ridiculous, These the novel science?to to the more profound implications developed by the give us a clue are several such implications, all of them novel's strategies. There to Darwinian materialism: Dracula 1) the "assimilation" connecting and the antecedent Huxley is critical in both Dracula (the concept of one being by another; 2) the essay "On the Physical Basis of Life") materialism contest of spirit versus flesh?Darwinian tending towards as count agreeing to matter, Dracula the reduction of all phenomena as novel resists it; 3) the extraction from with that while Dracula of carnal satisfaction, the condition aspired to materialism philosophical im 4) the question of by apes, vampires, and perverted gentlemen; a new meaning a condition denied by materialism, by given mortality,
1 Leonard Dracula Annotated Wolf, ed., The 1975). (N.Y.,: to the new a unsure of his commitment from clergyman For similar see

language

science,

Charles Kingsley, Water-Babies

(London:

1863), p. 161.

414

Vampurella:
the undead Darwinism
Darwinian

Darwin

and Count Dracula

in by the Christian opponents of and 5) the Social congregation;
out to be a parasitic leech, both

vampires, and believed and by the van Helsing

superman, who turns

literally and metaphorically.

THE PROTOPLASMIC MACHINE

in Dracula which most readily illustrate the dependence creatures have on other living things are not and "undead" assaults of Count Dracula those which most readily come to mind?the in the vamps gloating over Jonathan Harker and Mina, upon Lucy Castle Dracula, Lucy, as the "bootiful lady," devouring children in a of significant than these in illustrating the transmutation park. More The human flesh into flesh is the lunatic Renfield's appetite, which zoophagous includes flies, spiders, and birds, and anticipates rats and cats. Renfield,
who manages to be at the same time one of the more realistic as well

scenes

as the more
cal eaten economist. the

fantastic of the cast of characters,

To achieve the economy, consumption he eats of a animals?thus

is a transmogrified
the animals that carry cat would

politi
have it with

the life-force of several birds each of which has eaten scores of spiders each of which has eaten hundreds of flies. Implicit in the vampire act into human of human organs is the cannibalistic assimilation (or notes that flesh. Renfield's physician, Dr. Seward, warily humanoid) "it was life, strong life, and gave life to him . . . what he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can" (pp. 71, 74). Renfield's own comment
offers an interpretation rather than a summary, and concludes with a

scriptural reference
I used consuming to that fancy a multitude

that will
life of was live

be examined
a; positive things, no and

in its proper place later:

perpetual matter how and entity, in the low that scale by of

creation, one might indefinitely prolong life. At times I held the belief so strongly that I actually tried to take human life. The doctor here will bear
me out that on one occasion I tried to kill him for the purpose of strengthen

ing my own vital powers by the assimilation with my own body of his life
through the medium of blood?relying, of course, upon the Scriptural

phrase, "For the blood Materialism

mate, between

is the life" (p. 209). kinship?between

fauna, between to matter

emphasizes
flora all and

the inanimate
non-human in motion. In and

and the ani

human ani

mals?reducing

phenomena

the materialistic

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The Massachusetts
conception of things, there is no spirit, no

Review
dualistic alternative to matter,

and that conception is also deterministic. Issues of ethical value are at stake: conscience, freedom of the will, immortality, and the integrity of human is tenuous enough on a cash nexus, but relationship, which
even more vulnerable on a protoplasmic nexus. Darwinian reduction of

actions, including the act of thinking, to physiological actions is the product especially of T. H. speculations, and to a lesser Huxley's extent of the speculations indulged in by others of the first and second of Darwinists, G. J. Allman, and E. Ray generations John Tyndall,
Lankester.

human

The Darwinian of Renfield's prefiguration explanation of what he was about was developed in several works, particularly in by Huxley "On the Physical Basis of Life," an essay that was enormously popular and that maintained its influence for decades. Huxley was, more than
anyone else, responsible for the constant expansion of the parameters

of Darwinism,

from its initial statement

its associations through materialism, agnosticism, ethical positions. Huxley had in mind; than Darwin
including extensions. cerebration, to

of the theory of natural selection with the theory of human evolution, with the Higher Criticism, and social, political, and always went on to something more radical the monistic
chemical

reduction

of human
was one of

activity,
those

turbulence

In a work earlier than "On the Physical Basis of Life"?in "The of Organic Nature"?he had informed a working-class Phenomena an audience that they were This met with organized molecules. He tried that theme out again, in greater detail, in agreeable reception. the 1868 lecture "On the Physical Basis of Life." He alerted his Edin burgh audience to the interesting fact that the physical basis of life is protoplasm, a definable combination of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and is manifest in all living things from a flower to a fly, carbon which a whale to a man. All human action, he claimed, is from
the if result so, of the molecular be true, I am in forces the now same giving of vital of the sense which protoplasm to the same and and displays extent, it, that and the

it must

thoughts

to which

utterance,

are the ing them, which is the source

expression of other

molecular phenomena

changes (p.

thoughts your in that matter

regard of life

163).2

Henry Huxley, Essays (London: 1893), I.

2 Thomas

"On

the Physical

Basis of Life,"

Collected

416

Vampurella:
Huxley
exhaust to eat

Darwin

and Count Dracula

that the lecture
and to that he

noted
a

in the course of the lecture

quantity say mutton, of his to

itself would
would again. have

certain

something, inward

protoplasm, him back bring I possess, will

completion

singular

laboratory,

which

dissolve

a certain

portion

of the modified protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will convert the
dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into

man

(p. 147). for the possibility

and

Except
what's

of provoking
lobster will do

dyspepsia,
as well as

it doesn't
sheep?since

matter
we

eaten?wheat

in the conversion process. Huxley enjoy a "catholicity of assimilation" the kinship of all life, all living things being reducible to emphasized universal protoplasm which, created by plants and consumed by ani is plastic enough to be variously incarnated. All of this illustrates mals, the grand Coleridgean motto of Huxley's philosophical and aesthetic in diversity?and that means that lower creatures will systems?unity with equal facility subsist on higher creatures.
I might undergo return and sup the to my upon same own would, lobster, wonderful place at return and the matter of life into of the crustacean And were would I to

metamorphosis sea, and undergo the compliment

humanity. the shipwreck, and demonstrate

crustacean our

probably

might, common

nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster (p. 148). The controlling image is that of a factory, the account of which has its profit and loss columns: we take in fuel and convert it to the
of energy.

expenditure

the Physical Basis of Life" was a remarkably successful ad dress. Darwin and others of Huxley's circle were surprised that he uOn
hadn't been stoned. One contemporary letter observed that the audience

had been intensely interested. The discourse was published in The Fort and sent that periodical into seven reprintings. In his nightly Review the review's editor, searched for a suitable Recollectionsy John Morley, to the excitement generated by the essay and found it analog only in the reception given Swift's "Conduct of the Allies" a century earlier. to the fame of the protoplasmic theory was the Bathy Contributing bius haeckelii incident. After examining a specimen of material gathered from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, Huxley concluded that he had observed in the gelatinous substance fundamental protoplasm, ur-schleim

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it with the dignity of a taxonomic name animated, and he endowed that recognized E. H. Haeckel's work on protozoa: Bathybius haeckeln. It was a satisfaction for Huxley to find (and more so for Haeckel) this primordial ooze, since it could be taken to constitute the link that inert matter and physical life. Later analysis showed between
Bathybius haeckeln was not protoplasm, but calcium sulfate precipi

tated out of a mixture

imaginary Protamoeba, Representing creatures was

of alcohol
also given

and marine
taxonomic

mud. A
existence,

group of similar
among them

Protomonas?and "the protoplasmic

Vampurella. theory as a victory for the mechanis

tic over the vitalistic and the rhetorical haeckelii?to Initial reviews notion make

conception of life," Huxley claims one modern ability?so

critics attacking the Hutchinson of protoplasmic Sterling consanquinity (as James at best equivocal), did), the defense of idealism (which defense seemed had nothing to do with ethics (but to and the caveat that materialism had clearly ad and many other critics, Huxley Richard Holt Hutton vanced immorality). the initial burst of hostile criticism there appeared several de After In an for example Dr. James Ross's 1874 On Protoflasm. fenses, to the British of Life") and the Commonality address ("Protoplasm of Science, Professor G. J. Allman, for the Advancement Association in passing that protoplasm had become "a subject in whose observing an unwonted study there has during the last few years prevailed amount of activity," rendered a description of amoebic activity that is appropriate
A stream of the it to yielding it may

protoplasm "quite literally of the essay were generally hostile,

had both the prestige student of Bathybius 3 a household word."

for vampire

activity:
body and and of then the Amoeba flows into back the

towards with soft that

runs away the from instantly protoplasm it in its current, destined prey, envelops where it sinks deeper the central protoplasm, mass, increase and the becomes size and dissolved, restore the digested, energy of and

deeper assimilated

in order

its captor.

of Life and the Vitalist 8G. L. Geison, "The Protoplasmic Theory Mechanist Debate," Isis 60 (1969), p. 279. On Vampurella, see N. A. Rupke, "Bathybius haeckelii and the Psychology of Scientific Discovery," Studies in the History and Philosofhy of Science ?7 (1976), p. 61. For another study of Bathybius haeckelii: Philip F. Rehbock, "Huxley, Haeckel and the Oceanographers," Isis 66 (1975), pp. 504?533.

418

Vampurella:

Darwin

and Count Dracula

about protoplasm found its way into comical works also, Controversy ex for example in an 1875 Aberdeen satire the long title of which both theme and tone: Protoflasmy Powheadsy and Porwiggles; presses and the Evolution illustrating Pro of the Horse from the Rhinoceros; and Uf the Creation Mode uf fessor Huxleyys Scientific of Getting in and in The Mikado'. "I am," asserts Pooh-Bah Moses, setting Act I,
of fact, back a haughty particularly You will understand to a protoplasmal and exclusive person, I tell you of that pre-Adamite I can trace

in point ancestral my

descent.

this when

ancestry

primordial

globule.

Less gentle was Samuel Butler's quip from Luck or Cunning'. "Great and Huxley is no life but protoplasm, is its is Protoplasm. There
prophet."

Like the proposition that all life is kin through sharing protoplasm is the notion that the organization of the protoplasm itself is coercive, a advanced this deterministic theory determinant of our behavior. Huxley in a book, Lessons in Elementary Physiologyy and in several addresses he developed a mechanical that were reprinted as essays. Throughout a model that seemed to deny free will as model for the human body, well as spirit. And again we find that this aspect of his popularization in the Irish Church of Darwinian materialism caused a stir. A writer "On the Hy 1875, said that Huxley's Societyys Journal for January, had been "universally Are Automata" read"; pothesis that Animals Disraeli noted with some disdain that in London society young men and a lecture by Professor Watts casually pratted about automatism; delivered at the that Animals Are Automata), the Hyfothesis (On struck the crucial note: Presbyterian College, London,
men Young a science pressing of Great Britain and which of Ireland! would your Will identify nature, you with identify yourselves re with and, brutes, you turn our world into would

so-called, falsely the noblest aspirations

a Sodom, and lay upon your brightest hopes the blight of an eternal night?

at Holborn Viaduct, of City Temple, Dr. Joseph Parker, minister automatism hypothesis in the 1875 Jobys Comforters: tacked Huxley's it in The New attacked H. Mallock and W. Scientific Symfathy; as "great on the physi which describes Mr. Storks (Huxley) Refublic, cal basis of life and the imaginative basis of God" (p. 25). Dr. Jen discovers the which reads a manuscript kinson (Benjamin Jowett)

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The Massachusetts
problem of the day as the reconciliation
and then he comments on automatism:

Review
of the natural with the spiritual,

Witness ject living their of

the animal subjects whole

discussions

on the sub now so much attention engaging public on and the marvellous results which automatism, experiments a brain to us; a frog with have of late days revealed half

having destroyed more

brains can

theology
ever build

than all the doctors of

up again (p. 97).

the Church with

Later
in just their

on, Mr.
last

Harrison)
the

Saunders says, his voice

a

the Positivist Frederic (representing mostly "I know that "tremulous with excitement":
and a martyr, a prayer and St. a beefsteak, George Mivart, are atomic movement."

analysis same?atoms

pig and

George Romanes, Leslie Stephens, to the popularization of Darwinian A gnosticism of Hume and Huxley

also contributed and James McCosh in his 1884 materialism; McCosh, drove to the ethical implications:

Will the seducer be more likely to be kept from gratifying his lust \vfien the highest philosophy teaches him that the soul of his victim is a mere
collection of nerves?

In short, Huxley's a degree of polemical

even into the 'nineties.

reductionism achieved exposition of physiological fame, throughout the 'seventies and 'eighties and
That undifferentiated protoplasm was named

that Professor AUman's description of amoebic ingestion is Vampurella, to vampire courtship, and that Pooh-Bah hails his proto appropriate ancestor are points that may be only of incidental interest. What plasmal is important is that the issue was kept before the public for a long time alone ?205,000 copies of Huxley's Lessons in Elementary Physiology were sold between 1866 and 1915. Anyone aware of what was moving in the intellectural currents of the age, as Stoker was, could not well the concept itself and, more materialism, help knowing of Darwinian to the point, of the fundamental that that concept might objection
encourage vice, which translates mostly into carnal connection con

ducted
THE

in a new

Sodom.
APE

ONANISTIC

In Victorian
embodiment of

culture,
an

both popular

and pious, the ape emerges

machine, characterized

as the
pri

ambulatory

protoplasmic

420

Vampurella: marily

Darwin

and

Count

Dracula the ape as virile male,

by hairiness and horniness.

rendition or another a

Cynocephalus,
character in the

is in one

legends

of many

cul

as well as Victorian, which knew tures, Greek, Persian, Portuguese, more about apes than did the ancient world, but which considerably still often preferred myth to reality.
The hideous monster rummaged and her of his through Mdlle. The who the drawers and eventually laid

hold of a razor which

forward sprang suddenly herself from ing to free on the throat blood. and neck loss of

he flourished and chattered

attacked assailant. victim Proche, gorilla had by

in evident delight. He
the poor lady severe inflicted this time fainted struggl wounds from

The Illustrated Police News homicidal rats, sharks, devilfish, as the simian assailant of "A passage quoted from that story a scene of general mayhem?a
one the fainted blood-stained woman, razor one

reports on sea monsters, and hideous apes such jealous wives, at Famber." The Fearful Adventure is accompanied by a cartoon depicting is lush with painting
woman, a woman's

fallen off a wall

and one neck

and slashed,
who a has smile

shrieking in one hand,

gorilla, in another,

on his face, and the linen of an overturned table like a figleaf over his loins. The myth of the male ape as hyper-virile, jumping about the pampas chasing naked girls as in Candtde or raping them, as in "A
Fearful Adventure at Famber," an the continues today Theodore scheme, in the enlarged Dreiser's "the male version

of King
Stuart Darwinism,

Kong.
P. Sherman, noted that in in of analysis Darwinian debt of to the

species is characterized
for such the other sex." pieces popular

by cupidity,

pugnacity,
the

and a simian inclination

ape fructified but not also at Famber," only the

Horrors as "A

provoked by Fearful Adventure

theological attacks on Darwin Darwin in the Origin?"Much

history7"?was natural selection somewhere on enough to those provoke who tree by the ancestral

and Huxley. The hint insinuated by will be thrown on man and his light
attack leapt drawn to after the attack on the theory of that warranted conclusion there

by Darwinism

crouched

an ape. The least pleasing prospect about that ape was his sexuality. To Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop opponent at a spring, 1860, Huxley's of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the meeting notion of "the brute origin of man" was inconsistent with man's supremacy over the earth, power of speech, gift of reason, free will and responsibility, historic fall and future redemption. The "unflinch

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The Massachusetts

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of Darwinism, came straight said Adam ing materialism" Sedgwick, from "the bottom of the well." In a review of Huxley's Manys Place in Nature the Athenaeum found Huxley's aim "to degrade (1863), man" by parading before us "gibbering, grovelling apes" as our grand
parents.

is a hidden allusion to Sedgwick's figure, "the bottom of the well," the boogy-man of Victorian sex. Dracula is like the mytholo culture, ape in being a creature of prodigious sexual appetite, arid the gized vampire has the talent of exciting in the purest of victims uncontrollable libidinous energies. The introduction to this fundamental motif of the novel occurs in the scene of Jonathan Harker's temptation in Castle Dracula. Jonathan, in "an agony of delightful anticipation," awaits the of the vamps: ministrations All three had brilliant white
their some voluptuous

teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of

about them fear. that made I felt me uneasy, a heart in my . . . red lips.

longing deadly desire that with kiss me those wicked, burning they would on her over me, The fair girl went and bent There gloating. knees, fairly a deliberate was was and which and repulsive, both thrilling voluptuousness as she arched I neck she actually till her like an animal, licked her lips see in the moonlight on on the scarlet could the moisture shining lips and the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth (pp. 39, 41).

was something lips. There some and at the same time

to close Such wanton display of a vagina dentata encourages Jonathan is similarly charmed by the his eyes "in a languorous ecstasy." Mina
carnivorous love-making of Count Dracula, who is intent on transub

stantiating her into him, and in giving her something of himself as well. he turns to her veins "to refresh his thirst," she confesses, "I When was bewildered, and, strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him" to which the Count devotes his life sexual gratification (p. 255). The
is sometimes rendered subtly, and sometimes obviously, as he goes about

is diligently hetero the land seeking heterosexual alliances (Dracula unlike Carmilla). The Count not only ingests the blood of the sexual, young women he preys upon, but endows them with his blood, which to Steven Marcus' least, according might be guise for his semen?at calculation, the two fluids were sometimes considered convertible, forty ounces of blood replenishing the loss of one ounce of semen. That scene concluding Chapter convertibility may lurk behind the memorable in his own chest, after scratching wounds the Count, wherein 21, not altogether unwilling?Mina forces the delicate, pure, pious?and
to sup:

422

Vampurella:
When
of my them tight, the wound,

Darwin

and Count Dracula

the blood (she reports) began to spurt out, he took my hands in one
and with so that the I must other either seized my suffocate neck or and swallow pressed some

his, holding to mouth

of the-

(p. 255).

In estimating his victims to be "like sheep in a butcher's" (p. 271), looked looks upon English women much as Madam Dracula Audray
upon She meat one for her prostitutes: not

. . . You meat have your too long on the hooks. may keep her own from to your of cutting is no need twice and there liking, own kill your lamb or mutton, and if it suits your taste, you may joint; for sticking.4 and always her flock is in prime condition ready does dressed

A critic of the founding of the British Association for the Advance ment of Science was concerned that opening science up to the public might provide for young ladies information and sights (such as ele calculated to bring a blush to their cheeks. phants flirting on Sundays)
Monkeys and apes?at least when caged?seem to have nothing to do

except fiddle with their mates or themselves. Dr. Lawson dressed himself to the simian neglect of the work ethic:
. . . luxurious as men. from I fancy the strain living that of and it idleness is rather are the productive result of livelihood restraint. of luxury that lust in monkeys their living,

Tait

ad

as well freedom

earning

an honest in moral

disables

monkeys?and

men?from

training

themselves

This
Dracula similar

is coded

language
that is not

for masturbation.
he as experiences clumsy as

The
similar

symptomology
proclivities figure whose and

of Count
from a connection

suggests cause. He

another

to the mythologized
as "something

ape is close?Mr.
"pure evil,"

Hyde,
who

described
about

by Stevenson
the labora

troglodytic,"

scampers

retaliates with "ape-like spite," and kills with tory "like a monkey," But the Count is like Mr. Hyde, and like prototypical "ape-like fury." 4 Quoted
259. See

in Ronald Pearshall, The Worm

Fry, "Sexuality and

in the Bud
Convention

(N.Y.:

1969), p.

also Carrol Sexual

Fictional

in Dracula," and Attack

Victorian Newsletter,
"Suddenly Morris, Gorilla" Crime Men

42

(Fall, pp.

1972), 113-121.

pp. 20-22
Dracula"

and Phyllis A. Roth,

Literature "Murderous Psy

Women

in Bram

Stoker's

chology, XXVII:

3 (1977),

On
ed.,

the virile ape, see Desmond

yOrrible Murder: by Victorian a

and The (N.Y.: 1966). Afes is reproduced in Leonard de Vries, and Passion (N.Y.: 1971).

article

423

The Massachusetts
Cynocephalus palmed Dr. Acton's (another onanist, in having monstrous and

Review
depraved appetites. unemployed, cold, emaciated, He is hairy like

code-phrase), sallow in

fang-toothed, complexion,

and,

irritable,

and studious.5 ("he creeps about alone") Dracula it seems unfair to single out one quality; lacks so much to be singled out as a significant omission in if something were character it would be the soul. Everyone knows that the vampire no reflection in a mirror because like the ape he has no soul (while ape has none,
and many human being?a

alienated

but his has the

the or

the onanist
were

imperils the one he has).

aware machine of the born Darwinian to die,

Bishop Wilberforce
picture and that's of all,

others

keenly

protoplasmic

perhaps, as in Thomas Hardy's "Transformation," Dr. Seward cals to the nutrition of a tree. When what an elephant's soul would taste like, Renfield
"I don't want an elephant's intense "Why soul, cerebral do you or any soul at all!"

to yield his chemi teases Renfield about replies:

For a few moments he

sat despondently.
all the signs he of souls!" shouted.

Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with his eyes blazing and

excitement. plague me "To about hell with you (pp. and your souls?" 239?240)

the Darwinian controversies, Throughout beginning with the earliest and going on right through the 'nineties, with reviews of the Origin, and Ethics," and of course continuing address on "Evolution Huxley's
today, whether a critical we do of argument point or do not have has a soul. revolved In two around papers the question to delivered of the

Metaphysical

of the Society during the years of the popularization advanced the con basis of the human being, Huxley physico-chemical tention that the notion of soul is an unproven hypothesis. One of these 8, 1870), and here papers is entitled "Has a Frog a Soul?" (November

configuration. Huxley again correlates vital activity with protoplasmic In his summary to the second paper, "The Views of Hume, Kant, and of of the Immortality upon the Logical Basis of the Doctrine Whately
5 Quoted in Peter T. Cominos, "Innocent Femina Sensualis in Uncon

in scious Conflict," in Martha Vicinus, ed., Suffer and Be Still: Women the Victorian Age (Bloomington: 1972), p. 162. Dracula does not manifest
all the Functions careless weak of the symptoms and Disorders in dress frame, or onanist of the as those symptoms are listed in Acton's The insane, stunted, Refroductive he does in person, loss of memory intellect, curvature to concentrate, is not he Organs: a not suffer from or of the of

unclean feeble inability

sluggish apathy,

incoherence,

self-reliance, or acne. spine,

424

Vampurella:
the Soul" Huxley
In the

Darwin

and Count Dracula

he notes that Hume maintained (as

17, 1869), (November : himself maintained)

of proof to the

absence faculties

contrary,

the

mental the

former

do

the bodily organization upon not outlast the latter.

absolute of dependence is presumptive evidence

the that

he briefly alludes Then the soul is an hypothesis I follow Hume,

IMMORTALITY OF REASONING

imperative that "the immortality of immense moral value," and concludes: and Whately in defending
BE DEDUCED BY

to Kant's

of

Kant,
THE

the thesis that?the

SCIENTIFIC METHODS NATURE.

OF THE FROM

SOUL CANNOT FACTS

OF PHYSICAL

OR PSYCHICAL

Those Kant's
on

who

find

consolation

in Christian

credenda

further agree with imperative, and would the tie were to be broken between immortal rewards
the one hand be and mundane us, a morality rampage on the would

agree with the proposition that if would and punishments

the among cyrenaic others, other,

rampage by THE vampires.

upon

orchestrated,

PARASITIC

SUPERMAN

there appeared an essay, Eight years before the publication of Dracula as unknown as the novel is famous, which as a definition of retrogres
sive metamorphosis provides a link between Darwinism and Dracula.

in Darwinism A Chafter Written by E. Ray Lankester, Degeneration: of to the development is a study of evolutionary processes leading or the enlargement forms. Such forms are characterized by parasitic
refinement other successful organs, of certain the organs, elaborated Retrogressive and new the complementary being occurs degeneration directed when towards the or of structures metamorphosis

parasitism.

to less varied and less complex conditions of ganism "becomes adapted devotes most of his than its ancestral form enjoyed. Lankester life" to the discussion of parasitic animals such as barnacles and ascid essay ians; but he speaks of the process occurring also with higher animals and with
Any safety new very

civilizations:
set of easily conditions attained, occurring seems to to an animal lead, which render its food just and as

as a rule,

to Degeneration;

425

The Massachusetts
an active, of man healthy a fortune; sometimes or as Rome degenerates degenerated

Review
when when suddenly of possessed he becomes the riches

possessed

of the ancient world

In the

(pp.

18-19).
about whether or not evolution is necessarily

general

argument

takes sides with Huxley progressive, Lankester (whose Scientific Mem oirs he co-edited) and, therefore, against Lamarck and Herbert Spencer:
we are Possibly cles or Ascidians. tail and its eye, life all to the condition of Barna intellectual tending drifting, as the Ascidian is possible for us?just throws its away and sinks into a quiescent state of inferiority?to the reject It

good gift of reason with which

a contented of material

every child is born, and to degenerate

enjoyment accompanied by ignorance

into
and

superstition (p. 32). In significant

followers the

respects, Dracula
of pleasure,

is such a degenerate,
eternal carnal fun, here

offering
and

to his
now?

power

not as in Christian eschatology, spiritual integration later and somewhere In the kingdom of heaven which the Count endeavors to unmapped. establish there are no disembodied souls strumming on harps, but rather fleshly beings whose business is pleasure (and, as unhappily for them as
for Paolo and Francesca, whose pleasure is business, so compulsive is

the hunger). To Professor van Helsing, Count Dracula, in his pro for his congregation, was on his viding a life of material enjoyment way to becoming "the father or furtherer of a new order of beings, not Life" whose road must lead through Death, (p. 158). Jonathan and Mina may have that they didn't want
It not much is really is attractive of enough

been "strangely enough" bewildered by finding to hinder the vampires courting them; but there
a puzzle even about to subvert the attraction the proper of the carnal life. Victorian maiden.

Lucy?despite
maiden. was But turned to

a couple
after Dracula's adamantine,

of mysteries

in her
she

background?is
changes: and the "The purity to

such
sweetness volup

proselytism, heartless cruelty,

tuous wantonness" charismatic Dracula, leech though (p. 189). The he is, develops potential into reality. It is the recognition of the strength van of appetite and of Dracula's ability to satisfy it that motivates new order of to direct his search-and-destroy operation. The Helsing life that Lankester warns fears, the degenerate beings that van Helsing
is an option in evolution, constitutes the moral danger of materialism.

The little

idea of the superman emergent to Darwin, and less to Huxley,

owes from Social Darwinism but a good deal to Herbert

426

Vampurella:

Darwin

and Count Dracula

Spencer whose construct, "the survival of the fittest," could be taken to justify, and was taken to justify, unbridled competition among trades
men and among nations. "Brave peoples alone have an existence, an

evolution or a future; the weak and cowardly perish, and perish justly." This remark could have been made by Spencer or by Count Dracula It was made in his conversation with Jonathan Harker inTransylvania. von Treitschke, whose The Mystique War carries Heinrich of by extreme. The metaphor of the capi to a militaristic Social Darwinism
talist or the militarist consuming those weaker than themselves takes on

the value of literalism in the confines of Stoker's novel. Dracula, looking upon his victims as sheep, is remorseful that blood is no longer being spilled as abundantly as it used to be in the exuberance of Wallachian
wars. He longs for a return to carnage, and does his best to advance

the blood lust, as his model Vlad IV did his best. and "He," Renfield playing Renfield refers to Dracula as the Master as messiah. Dracula effects the role of John the Baptist to Dracula with his congregation the sharing of blood, for communion through instead of wine being blood, blood is transubstantiated into wine, Mina from this ritual as Dracula's "bountiful wine-press"; and he emerging offers
warrior.

eternal
As

life. To
the great

these soteriological
beast slouching

functions,
towards

he adds that of the

Dracula per

London,

sonifies the apocalyptic future that frightens van Helsing. Van Helsing is aware that the Count's could lead to the trafficking with women a family related through blood in a genetic as well as propagation of
ceremonial sense. The Lamarckian sentiment in this awareness reflects

Francis
ousness tion" is often There belief character energetic, grated have

Galton's
in Cattle toward their moral

thesis,
and traits

in Hereditary
that are

Genius
talent and

(1869)
genius that his in the

and "Gregari
and an leader "inclina of men

Men,"

hereditable?and view supports

exploiter.

Galton's

cousin's: the States, selection; in as the the

that

much is apparently the wonderful of the

restiess, during the

people, and courageous last ten best. or

truth Darwin (wrote the United of progress are the results of natural men twelve from generations

Descent) as well for

the more have emi and

all parts of to that

Europe great

country,

there

succeeded

The

the model, as Rocke prospect of improving the species?America feller, Ford, Carnegie, Sumner, and many other American exponents of saw it?is what van Helsing Social Darwinism explicitly acknowledges
in the course of the blood-transfusions, communion among the anri

427

The Massachusetts

Review

Dracula forces also being achieved through the giving and taking of blood. Addressing himself to Quincey Morris' giving blood to Lucy, van Helsing can go on breeding men comments: "If America like that, she will be a power in the world indeed" (p. 158). Thus, Dracula
presents a contest between two evolutionary options: the ameliorative,

or the Social Darwinian superman progressive, Christian congregation, in the form of the ultimate parasitic degenerate, Count Dracula. Dracula is not a faultless work of art?the dialect is often ludicrous, van Helsing's the plot is marred by many absurdities, almost always;
such turn; models. possibility: as Harker's Jonathan the blood-transfusions But the the story does miraculous are dramatize of human not a escape, to be convalescence, recommended scary, of and the also as and re clinical

very

over-coming

compassion,

tantalizing human species

itself, by a degenerate messiah. Van Helsing sees the opposition between saw that the way the critics of Darwinism vampirism and Christianity as opposing Christianity. One of these critics, W. Wilford construct in language that Hall, wrote of Human Life, 1880), (The Problem van Helsing might have used could he have spoken English:
From this time on, it is either an unconditional surrender to the material

istic and atheistic evolution

of religion and of the

of Huxley
word

and Haeckel,
of God.

or it is the triumph

unadulterated

Dracula

fantasizes

on

what

could

happen

were

materialism

to

be

as

successful in shaping the moral basis of the human community been successful in elucidating the physical basis of life.

as it has

428