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Although Mulvey-Roberts’ seminal essay ‘Dracula and the Doctors: Bad Blood, Menstrual Taboo and the New Woman’ comprehensively explores menstrual pathologies in Dracula, I depart from her reading of the vampire as merely a metaphor for menstruation or as a ‘surrogate for menstrual taboo’ and will argue instead that the vampire in Stoker’s text functions as a displaced embodiment of female sexuality and menstrual blood, demonstrating stratifications of power and the interaction of a multiplicity of (pseudo)-medical and moral discourses. In this article, I will focus on the character of Lucy Westenra as an example of Victorian socio-cultural and psycho-sexual anxieties pertaining to women. From her first encounter with Dracula to her final beheading and staking, Lucy is an exemplary case study in the pathologising of menstruation and the control and containment of female sexuality.
From Jonathan Harker’s initial moonlight journey to Castle Dracula, to his moonlight encounter with the three vampire wives of his host, the motif of the moon dominates the narrative. Lucy’s nocturnal, sleepwalking nightmare through the streets of Whitby, her ascent to the graveyard and her encounter with the vampiric Count are illumined by a full moon.
There was a bright full moon, with heavy black clouds, which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as they sailed across […] Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed, for there, on our favorite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white. The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much for shadow shut down on light almost immediately; but it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was whether man or beast, I could not tell […] When I got almost to the top I could see the seat and the white figure, for I was close enough to distinguish it even through the spells of shadow. There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. […] When I came into view again the cloud had passed, and the moon light struck so brilliantly that I could see Lucy half reclining with her head lying over the back of the seat. She was quite alone, and there was not a sign of any living thing about.
The supine posture of Lucy in this scene is undeniably sexual and her nocturnal sleep-walking and encounter with Dracula reeks of illicit sexuality. Her sexual defilement or moreover her own expression of innate sexuality augers her eventual demise and descent into an uncontrollable blood-thirst, described by Stoker in terms akin to nymphomania. From the outset, Lucy is an example of the discontented Victorian woman, uneasy with her prescribed role. Her coquettish sexuality, flirtatiousness and flaunting of idealized, Victorian womanhood are evident in her response to a series of received marriage proposals. In a letter to her friend Mina Harker, she writes:
My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worth of them? Here I was almost making fun of this great-hearted, true gentleman. I burst into tears – I am afraid, my dear, you will think this a very sloppy letter in more ways than one – and I really felt very badly. Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it.
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