Women and Children First: the Complexity of Societal Change in Dracula and NOS4A2 by Sarah White Honors Thesis Department Of

Women and Children First: The Complexity of Societal Change in Dracula and NOS4A2

By

Sarah White

Honors Thesis

Department of English and Comparative Literature

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

2020

Approved:

(signature of advisor)

______

Dracula, published in 1897, is a fictional compilation of letters, telegrams, and journal entries which have been written by the novel’s main characters and put together by one of its protagonists, school mistress Mina Harker. The novel has been interpreted in many ways: a representation of the fear of Eastern Europeans invading and colonizing the

West, a reaction to increases in communications technology at the turn of the century, or a response to increasing independence for women during the 19th century. NOS4A2, published by Joe Hill in 2013, recreates Dracula in a contemporary setting while reimagining what it means to be a vampire. Its villain, Charles Manx, does not drain his victims in the same way that Dracula does by drinking their blood. Instead he strips them of their negative emotions through a special power that allows him to bring others into his own imagined world, a place where it’s always Christmas. This ability also allows him to become younger while returning his victims to a more naïve state of mind. In reinventing the vampire myth, Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 reimagines Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Therefore, how can Hill’s choice of repurposing Stoker’s novel impact the way that Hill’s novel is interpreted?

NOS4A2 is undoubtedly an unofficial adaptation of Dracula, and I will argue that this choice might have a basis in the paradoxical and ambiguous way Stoker’s novel treats the advent of New Womanhood, a feminist idea of the late 19th century which supported increased independence for women by fighting for their right to work and for the freedom to explore their sexuality. NOS4A2 uses this same paradoxical and ambiguous approach in its response to the contemporary fears surrounding the preservation of childhood innocence and how it has been affected by the introduction and accessibility of new technologies such as iPads and smartphones which allow children to easily access information that was once out of reach. This ambiguous and paradoxical approach to the emancipation of women as a result of emergent technologies may be the reason that Hill chose to reimagine Dracula in the writing of his novel. The idea of New

Womanhood and the preservation of childhood innocence are both controversial because of the way that women in the late 19th century and young people today are challenging the roles in which society has placed them. They are both branching outside of ideas of purity and innocence that are expected of them in their times. In the 19th century, there was an expectation for women to behave in a childlike fashion and not grow into sexual beings or adults who contributed to society. Women were essentially treated as children during the 19th century and were encouraged to remain dependent first on their parents and then on their husbands. This childlike regard towards women opens the possibility for contemporary writers to use 19th century novels that treat the evolving role of women in order to shape how their novels treat the role of children today. Both of these social anxieties come from the widespread belief that women and children should remain pure and innocent and not be exposed to ideas that would challenge this innocence. The similarity of these two anxieties allows NOS4A2 to update the plot of Dracula to fit contemporary culture while also using that structure to create a response to its society that mirrors that which is presented in Stoker’s novel. By looking at Dracula as a critique of

1890s society and interpreting views about women with regard to their sexuality and independence, one can start to understand the critique that NOS4A2 makes of 21st century culture and its views on childhood innocence and the desire of preserving that innocence indefinitely. Dracula makes multiple references to the feminist movement occurring in the 19th century, referred to as the New Woman. The New Woman was an idea that arose in

England during the last half of the 19th century. She was “understood as both product and instigator of new rights and freedoms campaigned for by a growing feminist movement”

(Schwartz 1369). The traditional role for women at this time was to get married and take care of children at home, but the New Woman challenged these traditions and was defined by the pursuit of a career and the possibility of exploring her sexuality before marriage. While the New Woman was “often a professional woman who chose financial independence and personal fulfillment as alternatives to marriage and motherhood” (Senf

35), her views on sexual liberation led her to be seen as destructive and a challenge to traditional views. As Carol Senf writes, “When it came to sex the New Woman was more frank and open than her predecessors. She felt free to initiate sexual relationships, to explore alternatives to marriage and motherhood, and to discuss sexual matters such as contraception and venereal disease” (Senf 35). This embrace of sexuality greatly defied the views and roles of traditional womanhood and was often the point that was most highly regarded as detrimental in the prominence of the New Woman. The treatment of the New Woman in Dracula has been interpreted in various ways because it can be extremely contradictory, as it is influenced by both the acceptance and rejection of the

New Woman during Stoker’s time writing as well as his upbringing. His mother,

Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley, was a feminist that fought for the rights for women to work and gain the same respect as men. She believed that “training in manual skills could enable disadvantaged Irish women to realize these prospects” (Wainwright 652).

The prospects to which this quote refers are the possibilities of worthwhile lives for women in the middle class, particularly unmarried women. She also spoke to the

Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, insisting that women should be able to find value through work rather than being completely valued by their marriage. With this in mind, it is clear that Stoker’s treatment of women in his novel is the product of both his society and his childhood.

Similar to how the New Woman shaped Dracula, NOS4A2 focuses on the ways in which an increase in technology during the 1980s and early 2000s impacts childhood innocence and imagination, and how the loss or indefinite preservation of these qualities may affect people. Before the increased accessibility to the internet in the 1990s, children were forced to experience the world solely through the events of their community. This increase in access to information through technology has led to concerns that children are unable to remain innocent and imaginative for the same amount of time they were able to do so in the 1980s and the decades before, leading parents to question whether technology is harming their children. In 1991, the World Wide Web opened to the public, and technology has continued to evolve into the 21st century and become increasingly available at an exponential rate. This rise in technology means each new generation is introduced to the internet earlier in their developmental stages. This has led to the question of whether or not it is healthy for children to have access to technology and the internet at such a young age. There have been many concerns raised over the increased use of technology and the internet during childhood and adolescence, to the extent that “a report by the American Pediatric Association directly implicates social networking sites such as Facebook and not the common ‘storm-and-stress’ of adolescence as being responsible for some of the more pronounced clinical symptoms seen by clinical professionals today” (Farber et al. 1226). Some of the symptoms the article refers to include “Depression, sleep deprivation, social anxiety, aggression, Internet addiction, social isolation … the adverse effects of sexting, online sexual solicitation, and online harassment” (Farber et al. 1226). These concerns have led to parents wishing for days when there was less reliance on technology and kids were able to develop without the influence of people through the internet and the constant access to public forums that it provides. However, it is also possible that these concerns have been overstated and are not as great a threat to the next generation as many believe due to the lack of research dedicated to the possible influence of technology on the mental state of children and adolescents. There is also the question of possible long-term effects of technological dependency. However, there has not been enough time since technology became ubiquitous to conduct extensive research.

Despite this uncertainty, the rise in childhood technological usage and the spread of more information about the dangers of the world through the internet has led to a new cultural phenomenon in parenting: helicopter parenting. This form of parenting is described as “parents’ use of developmentally inappropriate forms of involvement, control, and problem-solving, aimed at fostering offspring’s success in attaining various tasks and life goals” (Rousseau and Scharf 920). While it is described as an attempt to generate success in tasks, it is also used in order to protect children from things their parents believe to be harmful. People described as prevention-focused are defined as

“oriented toward security, safety, and compliance with perceived obligations and duties… individuals tend to avoid difficulties, failure, or negative experiences as they perceive them as a sign of incompetence rather than an opportunity to learn and develop themselves” (Rousseau and Scharf 920). These individuals are more likely to helicopter parent due to their motivations of safety and preventing negative experiences, particularly in the lives of their children. This is the motivation that is most closely examined in Hill’s novel through the character of Charles Manx and the creation of Christmasland, the place where Christmas never ends that he is able to share with others and where children never grow up or have to experience the problems of the world.

Dracula has been recreated many times through direct retellings and film adaptations. There have been many movies titles Dracula which directly depict the plot of the novel. Dracula has also been reimagined in many novels, such as ‘Salem’s Lot by

Stephen King and Anno Dracula by Kim Newman. These novels take the plot of Stoker’s novel and recreate it in order to form something more significant to their society and culture. Most recently, Joe Hill reinvented this classic tale in his novel NOS4A2, and, like the previous adaptations, Hill changed aspects of Dracula in order to create a story that is shaped by contemporary culture. The title of Hill’s novel is clearly derived from previous film adaptations of Dracula such as the silent film directed by F.W. Murnau in 1922, and the film directed by Werner Herzog in 1979. which were both entitled Nosferatu. These movies used the plot from Stoker’s novel but changed the name in order to avoid having to purchase the rights to adapt the novel. Hill’s novel references both of these films with its own title, NOS4A2, which is a license plate pronounced as ‘nosferatu.’ Manx jokes that his wife once called him a nosferatu which is why he chose that license plate (Hill

56). It also signals to the reader that Manx is the vampire within the novel. The word nosferatu is a Romanian word that means vampire and is now widely understood to be synonymous with Dracula due to the movies that used the word as a title. This obvious link to other retellings of Dracula presents the possibility of NOS4A2 joining the list of its retellings, and the similarities between characters in Hill’s and Stoker’s novels makes this connection even clearer.

The character in Hill’s novel that is most closely linked to their classic counterpart is Charles Manx who serves as a reconceptualization of Dracula. Despite the characters having very different motivations, their appearances are similarly described and they both serve as the villain of their novels. At the beginning of Dracula, Harker describes Dracula as “a tall old man, clean-shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot” (Stoker 24). He also describes Dracula as having a thin nose, domed forehead, hair “growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere,” particularly sharp white teeth which hang over ruddy lips, and an extremely pale pallor. Throughout the novel, there are brief mentions of how Dracula’s appearance is changing to make him appear younger, but this is not greatly focused on. Harker also describes Dracula as acting in an aristocratic manner which was becoming outdated in

England at the time. This detail, as well as the details about how Dracula prefers ancient architecture over modern buildings and seems very proud of his past and ancestry, shows

Dracula as a man somewhat out of time in the modern world of Stoker’s novel. Hill describes Manx in a similar fashion. When Victoria McQueen, the protagonist of the novel, sees him for the first time, she describes him as “one of the tallest men she had ever seen… He was bald and there was something obscene about his pale skull… He wore a coat from another era” (Hill 159). He is also described as having “weasel-like” features and an overbite. These features tie him to Dracula because of the overbite, similar to Dracula’s teeth which hang over his lips, and his appearance as being anachronistic to the modern world. Both are described as pale and balding or bald. They are also both described in a way that makes them appear immediately intimidating with sharp features and being extremely tall. These features give them a sense of foreboding from their first appearances in their novels. There are also mentions of how Manx appears younger as the novel continues, but these references are not focused on in great detail, and it is instead just a brief mention of how he seems younger than before. These details, in combination with Manx’s title as nosferatu, cements Hill’s novel as a contemporary version of Dracula. This status as unofficial retelling as well as the similarities between its eponymous characters allows the interpretation of Dracula’s social commentary to influence the reading of NOS4A2.

Dracula’s social commentary is primarily focused on the idea of the New

Woman, and the entire novel can be read as a response to the growing popularity of this feminist idea. The portrayal of the New Woman in Dracula is more complex than simply being in support of her or against her. It is a nuanced portrayal that can be read as more ambiguous, or in favor of certain traits associated with the New Woman while against others. Senf argues, “Indeed Stoker’s treatment of women in Dracula does not stem from his hatred of women in general, but … from his ambivalent reaction to a topical phenomenon – the New Woman” (Senf 34). While the novel is in support of women’s independence and intelligence, it seems to be against the sexual promiscuity that was often associated with the New Woman, causing its views to be in favor of the New

Woman, but only to an extent. The fact that Mina is able to be saved after her attack by

Dracula, as well as how she is able to help the vampire hunters by seeing through

Dracula’s eyes after this attack, suggests that the novel does not support the belief that certain sexual acts mean that a woman is fully unclean. However, this belief is challenged by the portrayal of Lucy’s final death when the men drive a stake through her. The portrayal of women in Dracula is often paradoxical and hard to pinpoint because the depiction of the novel’s female characters tends to contradict itself throughout the novel.

While the portrayal of women can seem contradictory and unclear, it is evident that the presence of sexual aggression in women is something of which the novel disapproves.

Yet it is in support of women becoming more educated and independent in other ways.

This interpretation of Dracula’s paradoxical approach to the New Woman and how it believes in a certain level of independence, even if that extent is unclear, can be applied to NOS4A2 and its portrayal of childlike innocence.

Similar to how Dracula portrays its complex message about womanhood through conflicting descriptions and paradoxical ideas, NOS4A2 presents the preservation of childhood as something that is only beneficial when allowed to an extent. The extent that

Hill’s novel allows as positive is much clearer than that in Dracula because of the different versions of childhood that it presents as well as the ability to read the novel through the lens of the interpretation of Dracula. However, NOS4A2 still presents its response in a similar fashion as Dracula through the guise of contradictions and clarifications rather than completely embracing or rejecting the preservation of childhood. Hill’s main character is Victoria McQueen and the novel focuses primarily on her and her relationship with Charles Manx. Vic can be read as an amalgamation of Mina and the other vampire hunters from Stoker’s classic novel. Her qualities as a strong female character who drives the plot with her own abilities ties her to Mina; however, she lacks the help of the men who appear in Dracula such as Jonathan Harker or Arthur Holmwood. In addition to Charlie Manx and Vic, Margaret Leigh is the only other character closely tied to Dracula. She is the knowledgeable hunter that becomes the source of information for other characters of NOS4A2 which is the role that Dr. Van

Helsing plays in Stoker’s novel. While Van Helsing tends to give as little information as possible, Maggie tries to provide as much as she can. When Vic is younger, Maggie simply tells her that Charlie Manx exists and that she should not go looking for him, but when Vic is an adult, Maggie is the one that brings the information about Manx to Vic and asks her to try and find him. Maggie, similar to Van Helsing, is the only one who knows the extent of the problems with this vampiric figure and knows that he is not dead and must be dealt with. Like the men in Dracula, Vic does not immediately begin searching for him due to Maggie’s pleas, but Vic seeks her out later in the novel for more information and answers about how to save her son, Wayne, like the men seek out Van

Helsing’s information about vampires more deliberately after they see the proof of his theories in Lucy’s return from death. NOS4A2 takes a much clearer stance on the idea of womanhood than Dracula given that both of the main characters who oppose Manx are women. This shows that NOS4A2 does not respond to the same ideas as Dracula and will instead be focusing its response on the role of children.

By taking a clear stance on women and drawing connections between the role of women in the 19th century and that of children in the 21st century, NOS4A2 introduces children to the plot of Dracula. While Dracula does include a few children characters through the students that Lucy feeds on after her transformation into a vampire and

Mina’s child, these characters are only mentioned briefly while those in NOS4A2 are central to the plot and are developed more fully as characters of their own. At the end of Dracula, Mina has a child and names him after the men that helped defeat Dracula. In contrast, Vic has a child about halfway through Hill’s novel, Wayne, who is later kidnapped by Manx. When Mina has a child, she enters the role of a traditional woman by embracing motherhood, something that many believed was against the ideals of the

New Woman. This embrace of a traditional role adds to the complexity and ambiguity of

Dracula’s views of the New Woman because Mina was originally portrayed in a non- traditional way through her ability to type and how her intelligence influences the plot of the novel. When Vic is forced to protect Wayne against Manx, she also embraces her role as a mother, but she is forced to try and save her child from the danger he is in, even though that danger is Manx’s plan to keep children from experiencing any negativity in the world. This need to protect Wayne shows how ambiguous NOS4A2 is about the preservation of childhood. While Vic is attempting to save Wayne from the same negative experiences she has faced, there is something contradictory in the idea that she is being forced to expose her son to the negativity of the world in an attempt to protect him from danger. This focus on how Vic handles being a mother and having her child placed into the same dangers that she experienced when she was younger is an addition to

NOS4A2 that helps solidify its message in a similar way as Mina’s eventual motherhood helps shape the response Dracula makes to the 19th century ideas about New

Womanhood.

Lucy and Wayne: Negative Representations of Societal Change

There has been an extensive conversation on how Dracula treats the female characters of the novel with scholars such as Jennifer Swartz-Levine, Matthew Brennan, and Carol Senf arguing that it either degrades the New Woman or supports her. The scholars who argue that Stoker’s novel portrays the New Woman in a negative way focus on the portrayal of Lucy and the other vampire women who live in Dracula’s castle. For example, there is the assertion that, “From the nameless writhing vampires who attack

Jonathan Harker, to the overly sexualized vampire-in-waiting Lucy Westenra, to the seemingly traditional Mina Harker, Stoker examines three divergent types of women, all of whom pose some threat to Victorian notions of social order and sexualized hysteria”

(Swartz-Levine 346). Swartz-Levine then describes how the three vampire women who attack Jonathan are aggressively sexual, and how Jonathan finds the one who appears the most English, due to her blonde hair and fair skin, to be the most disturbing. Swartz-

Levine asserts that this is the case due to the woman’s English appearance which would lead Jonathan to expect the woman to be more civilized and proper than her sisters who are described as having darker skin and hair. Swartz-Levine also describes how Lucy and

Mina both fail to resist the temptation of Dracula and how this failure to resist him is symbolic of the loss of their virginity. This loss of virginity is indicated by the blood on

Mina’s nightgown after her interaction with Dracula and the blood that comes from

Lucy’s heart and mouth when the men stake her in her grave. The scene where the men kill Lucy in her grave is often focused on to argue that Dracula wants to degrade the New

Woman. It is seen as “a vicious attack against a helpless woman, but it succeeds in destroying the New Woman and in reestablishing male supremacy” (Senf 45). This attack is seen as reinstating the natural order of the time and allowing the men to conquer the woman while also restoring her to her chaste and less aggressive role. It is primarily seen this way due to the usage of the stake. Brennan states, “… he also extinguishes Lucy’s far more threatening and voluptuous sexual desire, as Arthur, her fiancé, sadistically drives a phallic stake through her insatiably lustful heart” (Brennan 1). Brennan’s view also supports what Swartz-Levine says about this scene being presented as a loss of virginity, as well as a sort of rape. The insertion of the stake rids Lucy of her sexual desire, but it also represents sexual aggression in the male characters as a positive attribute while it is regarded as morally wrong when shown by women. The three vampire women are often presented in support of this argument as they are the clearest form of sexual aggression that is presented in the novel, and Jonathan concludes his description of them by writing,

“Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is naught in common. They are devils of the Pit!”

(Stoker 57). Many argue that this description of the vampire women shows the novel’s disdain for the New Woman because of their sexual promiscuity. The three women are disregarded as women because they are sexually aggressive and are not nurturing of children. Senf states, “… their aggression, overtly sexual behavior, and treatment of the child cause Harker to conclude that they are not women at all” (Senf 41). This degradation of the vampire women as not truly being women seems to present the idea that the New Woman is not recognizable as a woman due to her sexual aggression and rejection of motherhood, acts that directly contradicted the traditional views of womanhood.

The depiction of Lucy in Stoker’s novel presents the idea that aggressive sexuality is a negative trait for a woman. The first half of the novel focuses on Jonathan Harker’s expedition to Count Dracula’s castle. While he is there, discovering the horrors of

Dracula and the unnamed vampire women, his fiancée, Mina, goes to visit her friend,

Lucy. Lucy gets sick and has to receive multiple blood transfusions from the men who had proposed to her earlier in the novel as well as from Dr. Van Helsing. Mina leaves because she receives a letter that tells her that Jonathan is sick. However, Lucy’s health continues to fail, and she begins to die. In the scene where Lucy is about to die, it becomes clear why many interpretations of the novel believe that it is against the spread of the New Woman.

So Arthur took her hand and knelt beside her, and she looked her best, with all the

soft lines matching the angelic beauty of her eyes. Then gradually her eyes closed,

and she sank to sleep. For a little bit her breast heaved softly, and her breath came

and went like a tired child’s.

And then insensibly there came the strange change which I had noticed in

the night. Her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and the pale gums,

drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than ever. In a sort of sleep-

waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which were now dull and

hard at once, and said in a soft voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from

her lips: --

‘Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!’ Arthur bent

eagerly over to kiss her; but at that instant Van Helsing, who, like me, had been

startled by her voice, swooped upon him, and catching him by the neck with both

hands, dragged him back with a fury of strength which I never thought he could

have possessed, and actually hurled him almost across the room. (Stoker 154-155)

This section of the novel clearly shows two sides to Lucy after she has been infected by

Dracula. She is both childlike and voluptuous. While she is described as beautiful and gentle while she is first awake and being described as a child, she is described as “hard” and dangerous when she awakes and becomes more aggressive. Her demand for Arthur to kiss her is a form of sexual aggression, and Van Helsing stops this kiss from happening despite Arthur’s willingness to comply. Van Helsing is presented as a moral guide in the novel as well as a source of information. He is the one with the knowledge of evil in the form of vampires, and he has access to holy wafers and other religious devices which allow them to defeat Dracula and the other vampires. His refusal to allow Arthur to kiss

Lucy presents the idea that Lucy’s aggressiveness to be shown physical affection should be shunned and is morally wrong. Van Helsing also refuses to let Arthur kiss Lucy when he first enters the room and she appears more childlike; however, this scene occurs after the blood transfusions have taken place. The transfusions were given by all of the men who loved Lucy as well as Van Helsing, and these transfers of blood were treated as a form of physical intimacy that could be related to sex. Van Helsing stops Arthur from kissing his fiancée until they have driven a stake through Lucy in her vampire form, at which point she has once again been made clean. While Lucy is never as sexually aggressive as the other vampire women, she is more aggressive as she is entering her vampiric state than she was when she was fully human. It is also important that this passage comes from the diary of Dr. Seward who is one of the men who gave Lucy his blood during a transfusion and one of the men who proposed to her at the beginning of the novel. Before she closes her eyes, he describes them as having an “angelic beauty” which is ironic given her implied promiscuity. He also mainly focuses on her beauty and her breast as he describes her throughout this passage. He mentions that her voluptuous voice is not something that he has heard before, but his main focus remains her eyes which he describes in greater detail. His focus on her breast is mainly through a focus on her breathing, but it is important that this man who has been intimate with Lucy through a blood transfusion without disclosing this to her fiancé is also in the room and describing her beauty when she has this change of character which he has seen before. His recognition of this state in Lucy contributes to the description of her as promiscuous and sexually aggressive. She is presented as morally compromised because she loses her

“angelic beauty” in place of a hardness and voluptuousness which she had never previously portrayed. After her death, Lucy is also described as more sexually appealing than beautiful, showing the contrast in how she is seen by Dr. Seward and the other men now that she has entered into a state that is more similar to that of the New Woman than traditional womanhood. This depiction seems to highlight the novel’s disdain for the New

Woman and its support of traditional womanhood.

So far, there has been no critical discussion of NOS4A2 due to its relatively recent publication. Due to this lack of discussion, its messages about the preservation of childhood innocence and how its depictions and views are shaped by the way that New

Womanhood was presented in Dracula have not been studied. Manx is first introduced in the novel when Vic sees him at the age of 17 and discovers a young boy in the back of his car, a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, whom she believes has been kidnapped, and she tries to save him. However, the boy refuses to run away because he has already become fully innocent and does not understand he may be in danger. Vic runs away and Manx becomes known as a pedophile. This description of himself makes Manx angry because he believes that he protects children and now he is known as someone who hurts them.

He resents Vic for contributing to this public image, and this resentment leads him to attack her and kidnap her son, Wayne. Most of the depictions of the preservation of childhood innocence are portrayed as negative throughout NOS4A2 through Manx’s insistence that this is his mission and the effects that this regression into childhood has on

Wayne while he is in Manx’s car. Wayne is forced backwards through the stages of childhood development as the car drains him of his negative experiences, making him into a more childlike and innocent figure that does not understand the negative aspects to the things that he hears or does. Maggie describes the kids Manx takes to Christmasland as “children who can’t understand anything except fun…. Innocence ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know” (Hill 552). This description sums up the negative aspects of Manx’s idea of childhood perfection because they cannot understand anything except for the positive feelings they experience when they are kept completely innocent. This becomes most clear with the description of Wayne in the Wraith while he “plays” with a butterfly:

“Hey, Sunny,” Wayne said. He reached out to pet it with his finger, and it tried to

fly away, which was no fun. Wayne sat up and caught it with one hand.

For a while he tried to teach it to do tricks, but it wasn’t long before the

butterfly tired out. Wayne set it on the floor and stretched back on the couch to

rest, a bit tired himself. Tired but feeling all right. He had milked a couple of good

loop-de-loops out of the butterfly before it stopped moving …

Wayne glanced at the floor. The butterfly was in a pile, both wings and all

its legs torn off. He frowned, confused. It had been all right when they’d started

playing …

Wayne shook his head. He looked at the butterfly again, with a creeping

sense of unease, maybe even shame. He had a memory of tearing off at least one

wing, but at the time it had seemed … exciting. Like peeling the tape off a

perfectly wrapped Christmas present. You murdered Sunny, Wayne thought. He unconsciously squeezed his

moon ornament in one fist. Mutilated it.

He did not want to remember pulling its legs off. Picking them off one at a

time while it kicked frantically. (Hill 465-466)

This is the first real change that we see occur in Wayne while he is in the Wraith. Manx tells Bing, his sidekick who he manipulates to help him kidnap the children, that he has created a place where children do not know unhappiness, remain children forever, and never face danger or harm. These statements solidify him as being a helicopter parent for all of the children that he takes to Christmasland. However, his wishes for them to be innocent forever and not know unhappiness cause the children to become like Wayne when he tears apart the butterfly. Before this scene, Wayne’s parents have separated, and he has seen his mother in a mental hospital. It is clear that he has understood unhappiness during his childhood. Throughout the ride in the Wraith, Wayne becomes more innocent and naïve, and he is unwilling to run away when he is able. He loses the part of himself that knows what is wrong when tearing the wings off a butterfly. The scene with Wayne and the butterfly shows how he is changing and the negative consequences of this change. When he is playing with the butterfly at the beginning, his thoughts are described like those of a child. He thinks that the butterfly flying away isn’t fun and tries to teach it tricks. These are the thoughts of a much younger child than Wayne. He is unable to discern that his training is hurting the butterfly, and this only becomes clear to him when he wakes up later. At this point, he is more like his older self and can understand the implications of what he has done. He is confused and discomforted by the joy that he previously experienced while he was playing with the butterfly. Despite his discomfort, he does not describe himself as feeling shame for his actions. Instead, he strokes the ornament that represents the loss of his negative thoughts and feelings and tries to forget about what he has done. After this passage, he picks up the remains and brushes them into an ash tray, immediately forgetting about the butterfly and what he has done now that it is out of sight. This action, along with the stroking of the ornament, show that

Wayne has not completely returned back to his former self. He has reverted to an earlier stage of childhood development while being in the car, and he is unable to stop himself and return to the developmental stage that he had previously reached. This scene also shows how the new innocence that Wayne has developed has caused him to become naïve and almost cruel to the butterfly. He talks about how fun it was to tear the butterfly apart piece by piece, and he is originally unable to understand that he has done something wrong. This innocence is similar to what Maggie describes later in the novel. Wayne does not understand the implications of his actions. Therefore, his innocence causes him to do actions that hurt other living things. It is clear that this reinstatement of Wayne’s innocence has caused him to do something that he would not otherwise do. At another point in the novel, Wayne states that the car makes everything funny, even if it’s awful.

This observation can be related to his total innocence and the absence of unhappiness.

Without the feelings of unhappiness, it is difficult to understand consequences to certain actions, meaning that they may seem fun or funny despite how they would appear to someone who could feel negative emotions. It is clear that the preservation of this complete innocence is being treated as problematic in the novel. It is the motivation of the vampire to strip away negative emotions from children and permanently maintain their total innocence. He can be seen as an extreme version of a helicopter parent who is trying to prevent their child from experiencing anything negative. It is clear that the novel is warning against this complete preservation of innocence and ignorance because it can lead to much greater problems than those that would normally be present. This expansion of the problem can be seen when the children in Christmasland are described because they are all violent and inhuman, only able to look at killing as a sort of game. The implication is that the lack of negative experiences can lead to people that are so incapable of understanding negative implications and consequences that they can only focus on their basest instincts, and this is what Wayne will become if he continues to regress through his own development of learning right from wrong.

The characters of Lucy and Wayne are connected through the ways that they both become vampiric and eventually revert back to their previous states. In NOS4A2, Wayne is able to move forward in his developmental stages and become himself again by the end of the novel. However, Lucy dies when she reverts to her normal self, and this death is considered better than her living as a sexually aggressive vampire. The two characters are also linked due to their childlike demeanor. At the beginning of Dracula, it is clear that

Lucy is incapable of supporting herself and is completely dependent on her mother and will eventually become dependent on her husband. Wayne is a child and is therefore dependent on the care of his parents. Both characters are forced to support themselves when they begin to change forms, and they find a sense of independence even though these attempts to care for themselves ultimately end in them reverting back to their previous forms. Wayne keeps a certain level of his independence, but Lucy dies in her attempts to become independent and is forced to resubmit to the control of the others in her life. They both represent the idea that stepping outside of classic roles will lead to trouble and that it is safer to remain inside the roles that have been set out for them.

Independence is something that these characters are unable to maintain due to the people in their lives on whom they depend forcing them to reenter the roles that they had previously abandoned.

Mina and Vic: Positive Representations of Societal Change

There is also an argument which states that Dracula supports the rise of the New

Woman. These arguments tend to focus on the character of Mina Harker. While Swartz-

Levine argues that Mina is another character that challenges the traditional view of womanhood and that this challenge is presented in a negative light, there are some scholars such as Carol Senf and Matthew Brennan who disagree that the challenge that

Mina presents is treated as problematic. In fact, there are some who argue that Mina is both a representation of the New Woman and a representation of traditional femininity due to her becoming a mother at the end of the story and how she is incredibly nurturing towards all of the men throughout the novel. However, it is clear that Mina possesses some of the qualities of the New Woman, and the novel presents these qualities as positive traits. Senf states, “By emphasizing Mina’s intelligence, her ability to function on her own, and her economic independence before marriage, Stoker stressed certain aspects of the New Woman…” (Senf 48). While Mina writes about the New Woman in a negative way in her journal, stating, “I believe we should have shocked the ‘New

Woman’ with our appetites… Some of the ‘New Woman’ writers will someday start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won’t condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it too!” (Stoker 90), she resembles one in a myriad of ways. “She supports herself, before marriage, by working as an assistant schoolmistress… she knows stenography and can type, modern skills that help her complement her husband’s law career, as does her memorizing train schedules… moreover, Mina marries someone she helps intellectually and professionally, and furthermore someone who welcomes and values her help” (Brennan 4). These traits present her as more independent than traditional womanhood would allow because she is able to work and financially support herself and this is viewed as a positive quality. Her ability to type and write in shorthand also proves incredibly useful to the group of vampire hunters, suggesting that this aspect of the New Woman is not a negative trait that should be corrected. Instead, she is integral to the plot moving forward as she decides to combine the writings of all of the men and herself in order to attempt to view the whole story of Dracula as he has entered all of their lives. She is not simply a mother figure to be protected. Instead she plays a vital role in the destruction of Dracula. When she is relegated to a secondary position in order to be protected, she is attacked by Dracula. If one combines this reading with that of Swartz-Levine, it seems that despite Mina’s impurity from her interaction with Dracula, exemplified by her cries of “unclean,” she is still beloved and treated as a virtuous woman. This may be because she did resist the attack and it can be more closely related to rape rather than consensual sex, but it also presents the possibility that women can explore sexuality without becoming monstrous.

Her interaction with Dracula also provides her the ability to see what he is doing which aids the men in their hunt. This portrayal suggests that there is the possibility of an exploration of sexuality that does not end with the destruction of the New Woman. As presented above, the depiction of Mina undermines the idea that Dracula is firmly against the idea of the New Woman. She is financially independent before her marriage to Jonathan and is able to remember schedules and consolidate the different accounts that the men have written throughout the novel. She begins to put all the writings together in order to make a clearer account of what each member of the group knows so they can more easily share information. This consolidation of information, as well as Mina’s ability to see through Dracula’s eyes after her attack, help the group to defeat Dracula, making Mina an integral figure in their eventual victory. When Mina is first introduced in the novel through her letter to Lucy, she writes,

Forgive my long delay in writing, but I have been simply overwhelmed with

work. The life of an assistant schoolmistress is sometimes trying… I have been

working very hard lately, because I want to keep up with Jonathan’s studies, and I

have been practising shorthand very assiduously. When we are married I shall be

able to be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough I can take down

what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at

which I am also practising very hard… I shall try to do what I see lady journalists

do: interviewing and writing descriptions and trying to remember conversations. I

am told that, with a little practice, one can remember all that goes on or that one

hears said during a day. (Stoker 58)

This introduction of Mina is shockingly different from that of the other women in the novel. While she talks about Jonathan, it is clear that she has a life and ambitions of her own. When Lucy is introduced to the novel, it is in a letter to Mina where she talks about the man that she loves, Arthur, and the other man that she has recently met. The following letter is about how she has received three marriage proposals in one night. In contrast with these letters, Mina’s letter becomes very important because it is clear that she differs from Lucy in many ways. Mina seems to be from a lower social class than

Lucy, but she is also much more independent. She has a life and independence from

Jonathan that she chooses to share with him rather than being completely reliant on him.

In contrast, Lucy is entirely consumed with her relationships with men and her mother and lacks any semblance of independence. In this way, Lucy appears to present traditional womanhood due to her childlike dependence on others. While Mina has a job and is financially independent, her job is also the caretaking of children as assistant schoolmistress which is a more traditionally feminine job. While it is important that she is financially independent, it is more important that she is attempting to learn modern skills and to follow the example of “lady journalists” in her own writing. Journalism is a job that is less traditional for a woman to have, and Mina is attempting to learn skills that would be traditionally useless for a woman. While her ambition to learn these skills is from a desire to help her husband, these are not standard tasks that a woman would undertake for her husband. Despite this, Jonathan supports her in her efforts, and it is clear that he believes that it would be useful to have a wife who can write in shorthand and use a typewriter. He seems supportive of the possibility that Mina could support him in his own career, something that would not be the role of a traditional woman. This support from Jonathan makes the argument for complete contempt for the New Woman more difficult to support. Mina is also integral to the hunt for Dracula, and these non- traditional skills that she has learned are what make her most useful. She is able to communicate in modern ways which helps to destroy Dracula, suggesting that her ability to master these skills is a positive trait, not something to be condemned.

In a similar way to how Dracula can be interpreted as both in support of the New

Woman and against her, NOS4A2 presents some forms of the preservation of childhood as being positive despite its previous insistence that the conservation of this innocence is problematic. When Vic is 8-years-old and she is riding her bike through the woods, she finds the Shorter Way Bridge. She discovers that she can think of a place where she wants to go and the bridge will appear in front of her, allowing her to visit that place no matter how far away it is. This is further explained when Vic is looking for answers and meets Maggie for the first time. Maggie explains, “S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together” (Hill 100). The two worlds that she is referring to are the real world and the imaginary world that people create for themselves. This ability to cut through the two worlds is what allows Vic to travel across the Shorter Way Bridge and for Maggie to find answers in her Scrabble tiles. As Vic gets older and has a child, she is eventually put into a mental hospital because of her insistence about the reality of the Shorter Way Bridge and the calls that she has received from the kids in Christmasland. While in the hospital, she convinces herself that the bridge was not real and that she was simply imagining everything that had happened on her trips. When Manx takes Wayne, she runs after him on her newly fixed motorcycle and eventually finds the Shorter Way Bridge for the first time since her release from the hospital. She describes this encounter as, It was ridiculous, a three-hundred-foot-long covered bridge sitting right on the

ground in the middle of the woods, bridging nothing. Beyond the ivy-tangled

entrance was an appalling darkness…

All those times she had crossed the bridge, not once had it been the

fantasy of an emotionally disturbed woman. That was a confusion of cause and

effect. She had been, at moments in her life, an emotionally disturbed woman

because of all those times she had crossed the bridge. The bridge was not a

symbol, maybe, but it was an expression of thought, her thoughts, and all the

times she had crossed it had stirred up the life within. Floorboards had snapped.

Litter had been disturbed. Bats had woken and flown wildly about. (Hill 477-

478)

This encounter with the bridge is different because Vic finally understands that it isn’t her imagination and it wasn’t the creation of childhood. She is still able to conjure it with her creativity. She describes how the bridge has changed since the last time that she saw it, admitting that it has fallen into disarray. There are boards missing and the bats were more alive than they were before, suggesting that her trips across the bridge may have caused her to be “emotionally disturbed” rather than the assertion that her disturbance caused her to imagine the bridge. She is shocked at the fact that the bridge is real and that she is still able to conjure it, but she also realizes that she always knew that it wasn’t a figment of her imagination. She accepts that it was simply something that she could do that others did not understand. Each trip across the bridge affects her mental state and causes her pain, but she is able to ride across it despite the disbelief of others. She admits that she has been an emotionally disturbed woman, but also accepts that she has not been imagining the bridge, not in the way that people thought. She is able to conjure the bridge when she needs it because she has the same childlike imagination that she had when she was 8-years-old. When she accepts this reality, she is able to remember all of her visits, remember who Maggie is, and find the answers that she needs in order to defeat Manx and get her son back. She is able to get back her son with the bridge while the police are unable to track him down and are too focused on Vic as a suspect to truly try and find him. Vic becomes an author of children’s books because she focused her imagination on something other than the bridge after she was convinced that it was a delusion. It is clear that she has not lost any of the imagination that she possessed as a child. With this preservation of her imagination, it is like part of her was frozen in time as a child, and she was able to keep this part of herself despite growing up. This preservation of her childhood is the only reason that she is eventually able to defeat Manx and save her son; therefore, it is clear that this remnant of her childhood is not a problem in the same way that Manx’s children have been forced to remain in their childhood. There is an extent of childhood innocence that the novel believes is important to maintain.

Vic possesses physical skills that Mina lacks, making her an amalgamation of all of the vampire hunters rather than just an adaptation of Mina, but she is most clearly tied to Mina in the ways her abilities directly shape the novel. Both of these characters possess a high level of independence which they maintain throughout the novel. Mina is able to help the men in their pursuit of Dracula more after she is attacked, and Vic is able to save her son despite being pursued by the police and told that she was insane for the years leading up to his kidnapping. Both of these women are able to maintain their sense of self despite the challenges they face throughout the novels, and they defy the societal expectations that are placed on them. Vic has a child without getting married and is the one who receives only partial custody of her son despite this being uncommon, and Mina is able to financially support herself and take care of the men in the novel, constantly proving that she does not need to be protected and is not dependent on them, despite this being the expectation of the 19th century. Stepping outside of their prescribed roles allows these characters to defeat the villains of the novel, contesting the idea that stepping outside of these roles is an act that needs to be corrected. The way that Vic and Mina are connected show the ways that the representation of women in literature has changed since the 19th century and the positive aspects of stepping outside of traditional roles.

Women and Children: Superficial Representations of Societal Change

When considering the representation of the New Woman within Dracula, there is little scholarly discussion of the three vampire women who live in Dracula’s castle. These women only appear briefly within the novel, and discussion about them tends to center around the idea that these women function simply as warnings for the other women within the novel. Senf states, “The three women appear in a mere half-dozen pages, and their primary function is to introduce attitudes and beliefs that can be more fully explored in Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker” (Senf 42). Along with Lucy, these women are typically analyzed as an example of New Womanhood and its dangers, supporting the argument that the novel portrays the New Woman as problematic rather than favorable.

These women are first presented while Jonathan is in Dracula’s castle and wanders from his room in the middle of the night. The women approach him, and are sexually aggressive, leading him to be both attracted to and repulsed by them. Swartz-Levine discusses these sentiments by writing, “Jonathan’s fascination quickly transforms into revulsion as the woman’s boldness increases. With each successively assertive move she makes, she becomes less and less humanized as ‘her lips’ become ‘the lips’. Stoker does not ascribe sexual traits to women without either turning them into the Un-Dead or fragmenting them into disembodied physical features. Sexuality, then, is not associated with real women but rather with debased aberrations of the category of woman” (Swartz-

Levine 347). This analysis of the women’s sexuality focuses directly on the way that

Jonathan reacts to these women, originally seeing them as women and shifting to a view of them as objects. When Swartz-Levine states that sexuality within the novel is not tied to “real women”, it introduces the idea that women cannot express sexuality. In this way, the vampire women become objects through their pursuit of a false sense of womanhood in the liberated sexuality that was encouraged in New Womanhood. At the end of the novel, the women are killed by Van Helsing in their coffins, and Swartz-Levine discusses this scene by saying, “Van Helsing makes himself their bridegroom/rapist/murderer as he impales them with his knife and cuts off their heads. In the sexual landscape that Stoker has constructed, the women are grateful for this treatment …and there is no evidence of his actions, for these three, unlike Lucy, crumble into dust once he decapitates them”

(Swartz-Levine 357). Once again, this observation focuses on how the women are viewed by the men within the novel. The focus is now on how the normal order is restored with the destruction of these women and how they seem grateful for this destruction. This is closely linked with the way that Lucy’s final death is presented by showing the way that men are allowed to be sexually aggressive while the women are grateful for the loss of the sexual liberation they have claimed. However, while Lucy remains a corpse within her coffin after her final death, these women turn to dust, eliminating any evidence of their existence. This difference seems to show that these women were so corrupted by this false womanhood and sexual aggression that they could not return to being “real women”. Instead, they are reduced to nothing, showing that there may be a level of New

Womanhood that the novel depicts as being past a point of no return. While Swartz-

Levine seems to focus on how these women are viewed by the men within the novel,

Senf focuses on the way the women are described when not directly related to the thoughts of the men. Despite this difference in approach, Senf also argues that these women are a representation of New Womanhood within the novel. When Senf discusses these women, she states, “Stoker’s villainesses, however, radiate sexuality. Responding to the sexual freedom and reversal of roles which were often associated with the New

Woman, Stoker uses the ancient superstition of the vampire in Dracula to symbolize the evil that can result” (Senf 39). Senf also discusses how the women respond to the child that Dracula offers them as a meal by pointing out that, “…their lack of maternal feelings

[is] a characteristic which Stoker appears to associate with the New Woman…” (Senf

41). Senf focuses clearly on how the women represent a form of New Womanhood that threatens the other women in the novel, once again showing how this form of womanhood is a type of corruption. However, she does so by focusing on the characterization of the women themselves rather than the reactions of others towards them. Senf’s statement that Stoker seems to associate this emotionlessness towards children with New Womanhood suggests that their treatment of the child, along with their sexual freedom, make them a pure representation of the dangers of New Womanhood.

She raises the importance of these women being vampires as a clear symbol of the danger of sexuality, and how these women are turned into monsters due to their sexual aggressiveness and lack of typically feminine traits. This focus on the characterization of the women also tends to focus on the women as warnings against New Womanhood and ends with similar implications that this form of womanhood is corrupting and cannot be remedied.

While the discussion of the vampire women tends to center around the idea of them being a representation of the New Woman, it seems to ignore that these women do not possess the personal fulfillment and independence that New Womanhood encouraged. The women only appear in three scenes throughout the novel: the seduction of Jonathan, tormenting Mina and Van Helsing while they are outside Dracula’s castle towards the end of the novel, and when Van Helsing kills them. The women seem to be in control until they are faced with the presence of Dracula, and then they become subservient and more like traditional women. There is only one scene in the novel where the women interact with Dracula, and it is at the beginning when they are trying to seduce

Jonathan. Most analyses of this scene ignore the part where Dracula intervenes, and when it is mentioned, it is to show how anger and sexuality are linked within the novel. When

Dracula finds them trying to seduce Jonathan, Jonathan describes the events by writing,

With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then

motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back; it was the same

imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves. In a voice which, though

low and almost a whisper, seemed to cut through the air and then ring round the

room, he exclaimed: --

‘How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him

when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you’ll have to deal with me.’ The fair girl, with a

laugh of ribald and coquetry, turned to answer him: --

‘You yourself never loved; you never love!’ On this the other women

joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it

almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. Then the

Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper: --

‘Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?

Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him, you shall kiss him at

your will. Now go! go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.’

‘Are we to have nothing to-night?’ said one of them, with a low laugh as

she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as

though there were some living thing within it. For answer he nodded his head.

One of the women jumped forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me

there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half-smothered child. The women closed

round, whilst I was aghast with horror; but as I looked they disappeared, and with

them the dreadful bag. (Stoker 44)

In many adaptations of Dracula, these women are presented as his brides, suggesting that these women are seen as adopting the traditional role of wife rather than rejecting tradition completely. The novel never labels them as his brides, but this belief seems to stem from their subservience to him and the way live in the castle with Dracula rather than providing for themselves. This assumption also stems from Van Helsing’s statement that the fair sister was found “in a high great tomb as if made to one much beloved”

(Stoker 343). While the women are somewhat defiant towards Dracula, saying that he has never loved and demanding to know whether or not they can have something to eat, they are mostly subservient once he enters. Instead of continuing with their sexual aggression, they do not fight back against the Count’s violent action of throwing them away from

Jonathan, and do not respond with their own anger. Instead, they simply respond with mild indignation and obey his commands. This seems to fit in with the natural order established by tradition within the novel of men being allowed to exact violence towards women in order to make them behave, and women accepting this violence with near gratitude. It is also significant that, while Lucy is shown hunting children to provide for herself after her transition into a vampire, these women are dependent on Dracula for their food in this scene and are under his instruction about who they are allowed to hunt.

In this way, Lucy is a more complete representation of New Womanhood within the novel while these women seem to embrace only the sexual liberation aspect associated with the movement. They seem capable of fending for themselves but lack the independence of choosing for themselves who to hunt and where to go. They are entirely dependent on Dracula to provide for them, the same way that women were traditionally dependent on their husbands to provide for them financially. In this way, the women are less a representation of New Womanhood and more of a foil to Mina, embracing the traits of New Womanhood that Mina rejects. They also show some of the problems with traditional womanhood and why these traits are not ideal. These women are the only ones in the novel who are shown relying completely on a man. Lucy relies on her mother and her suitors before her transformation, but with her sexual liberation she also seems to grow and take the responsibility of fending for herself. Their response to Dracula is also rather childish compared to the other women in the novel. Traditional women were viewed in a similar way as children are seen now, suggesting that these women do possess some more traditional traits than being fully a representation of New

Womanhood. They are childlike in their response to Dracula, taunting him by saying that he has never loved and becoming happy only when he has given them the gift of the child. In this way, they show that they may not be capable of fending for themselves and instead fill the role of women who are entirely dependent on a man to take care of them.

They stay behind when Dracula leaves, and it seems that their societal interactions are limited to what is right around the castle. This indicates that these women are a warning on how embracing sexual liberation without developing skills that will allow for personal independence can lead to the same oppression that was caused by the traditional role for women. The novel uses these women to show that simply rejecting motherhood and being sexually aggressive will not lead to independence and is instead a false sense of freedom. The implication seems to be that Mina has more freedom than the vampire women due to her independence and skills even though she embraces her role as a mother and wife. Despite having less freedom than Mina, the vampire women still attempt to lure her into becoming one of them while she is transitioning into a vampire. In this way, they seem not to realize that they have been oppressed in this way by Dracula, and they want to lure others into becoming like them.

In a similar way to how these women try to get Mina to become one of them, the children that Manx takes to Christmasland in NOS4A2 seem oblivious to the harm that has been done to them and encourage others to join them. These children play a larger role than the vampire women in Dracula and appear in a number of scenes throughout the novel. When Vic finally goes to Christmasland to save Wayne, she describes the children as “cold dolls with teeth” (Hill 642) and comments on how their clothes are stained with blood, showing how these children have been twisted by the removal of their negative emotions. This perversion is most clearly shown during the calls that Vic receives from the children in Christmasland after Manx has been arrested. She answers the first call without knowing that it will be the children from Christmasland who are angry that she has taken Manx away from them, and she continues to receive the calls whenever she isn’t occupied with painting. When she receives a call in September and answers, she is greeted with the voice of another child from Christmasland, saying,

“When is Daddy coming back to Christmasland? What did you do with Daddy?”

“You aren’t real,” Vic said.

In the background she could hear the children caroling.

“Yes I am,” the girl said. A white breath of frozen air seethed through the

small holes in the earpiece of the receiver. “We’re just as real as what’s

happening in New York this morning. You should see what’s happening in New

York. It’s exciting! People are jumping into the sky! It’s exciting, and it’s fun! It’s

almost as fun as Christmasland.”

“You aren’t real,” Vic whispered again.

“You told lies about Daddy,” she said. “That was bad. You’re a bad

mother. Wayne should be with us. He could play with us all day. We could teach

him how to play scissors-for-the-drifter.” (Hill 214-215)

This call comes while Wayne is still young and before Vic is sent to the mental hospital, and the conversation clearly shows that there is something wrong with these children.

When the child is talking about what is happening in New York, it’s clearly a reference to September 11th when the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists. This is later stated explicitly when Wayne’s television program is interrupted by an emergency news cast of the event. However, where most people, even children, saw this situation as terrible, the children in Christmasland see it as fun because they cannot understand the consequences or meaning of what has happened. The way that the child talks is immature, and she is clearly a child, but her words are haunting, and most people would be shocked to hear anything of the sort coming from the mouth of a child, even if that child was very young. It is clear that the removal of all negative emotions has created an almost psychopathic element inside of these children who can only see every situation as positive, and therefore take joy in the suffering of others. This is also made clear when the girl talks about how they can teach Wayne the game “scissors-for-the-drifter”. With the later details about how the children are coated in blood and have decorated their tree with the heads of adults, it seems that this “game” is centered around the murder of anyone who ends up in Christmasland but doesn’t belong. The joy with which this child wants to teach this game to others and the way that she seems to not even understand shows some of the same effects that were apparent in Wayne when he was in the Wraith.

With no knowledge of negative consequences and no capability of feeling negative emotions, anything can be a game, and everything seems positive. However, these children are incapable of questioning the problems with their views, and the novel gives little indication of their previous lives or personality in the same way that Dracula offers no background about the vampire women. Wayne is able to resist his transformation by imagining his grandmother in the car with him and learns that thinking backwards will help him stop from becoming completely like the other children in Christmasland. It seems clear that the other children were unable to do this or, at least, they failed at their attempts to do so. In this way, they have embraced the protection from negativity as preserving their childhood, but they have not seemed to hold on to their imaginations.

They are the opposite of Vic who clearly understands negativity but refuses to lose her creativity and imagination. This seems to make it clear that there are parts of childhood that people are somewhat expected to lose like an overactive imagination which are necessary if one is going to preserve innocence in a safe way.

The children in Christmasland represent a warning about how innocence can be perverted when the wrong parts are preserved in a similar way to how the vampire women in Dracula show the dangers of embracing the sexual liberation of New

Womanhood without developing the skills to be self-sufficient. The children can also be tied to the women due to the presentation of the “ornaments” on the tree in Christmasland which are described as, “Heads: leather-skinned, blackened but not spoiled, preserved partially by the cold. Each face had holes where the eyes had once been. Mouths dangled open in silent cries… They were the only adult faces in sight” (Hill 642). This depiction of the ornaments being the disembodied heads of adults in Christmasland can be linked to how the women are beheaded by Van Helsing in the final scene in which they appear.

However, this connection becomes interesting when considering how the children are beheading the adults that find their way into Christmasland while the women are the ones that are beheaded, suggesting a possibility of a more hopeful end for the children. They can also be linked through the way that the children and the women seem to play with the people they are hunting before finally killing them. The children create games like

“scissors-for-the-drifter” to make hunting the adults more fun while the women try and seduce Jonathan before feeding on him, suggesting that this is something they would do each time they hunt. Finally, these characters are presented as foils of the main female protagonist of their respective novels, showing how they are connected and possibly giving more insight into the novels’ opinions about New Womanhood and the preservation of innocence.

Conclusions

Joe Hill wrote NOS4A2 as a reimagining of Dracula and this allows the interpretation of NOS4A2 to be influenced by that of Dracula. Both were written during times of great societal change and responded to these changes by inspecting the complexities of these problems throughout the novel. Both of the novels take an ambiguous view towards the context they respond to and use this ambiguity to explore the complexity of the issues. While it seems that the opinions towards societal change in these novels can be dissected thoroughly and be made clear, no one seems to agree completely about what Dracula is saying about the New Woman, and this makes the point ambiguous, even after dissecting the message thoroughly. It is also important to note that, no matter how strongly an argument is supported, there are things that complicate the argument, making it difficult to definitively say what stance Dracula takes towards the New Woman, and NOS4A2 uses this same approach in its treatment of the preservation of childhood innocence. Both the New Woman and the preservation of childhood innocence are complex ideas that are difficult to solve in any conclusive way.

The ideas presented in New Womanhood are still being debated after 100 years, and it seems that they will continue to be debated for years to come. The difficulty to solve this issue can still be seen through the way that sexual assault cases have been treated throughout the United States and other countries where women are often not believed about their experience or are somehow blamed. It can also be seen through the common arguments about whether mothers should be able to work or if the absence from their working might harm their children. The fight for women’s equality and independence is one that has not ended and does not seem to be ending any time soon. Hill uses the ambiguity first introduced in Dracula in order to evaluate the problem of the preservation of childhood innocence which has been raised due to the increased presence of technology, an issue that will also likely be debated for many years. There is no definitive answer to whether technology or helicopter parenting may affect children, and this lack of an answer makes it difficult for a solution to be created due to the possibility that there may be no need for a solution. There is a need for more research about the possible effects of technology, and the increasing advancement of technology causes this to be difficult because each year there is a new technology to potentially influence childhood.

It is clear that this debate will not be solved quickly, and, like the debate of women’s equality, may take many generations to begin to understand and attempt to solve.

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