"Dracula" and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization

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http://www.jstor.org Stephen D. Arata

THE OCCIDENTALTOURIST: DRACULAAND THE ANXIETYOF REVERSECOLONIZATION

"Fashionsin monstersdo change." Joseph Conrad

BRAM STOKER S DRACULA (1897) PARTICIPATES IN THAT "MODERNIZING" of Gothic which occurs at the close of the nineteenth century. Like Steven- son's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Wilde's Pictureof Dorian Gray (1891), Stoker'snovel achieves its effects by bringingthe terrorof the Gothic home. While Gothic novelists had traditionally displaced their stories in time or locale, these later writers root their action firmly in the modem world. Yet critics have until recently ignoredthe historical context in which these workswere written and originallyread. Most notably, criticismhas per- sistently undervaluedDracula's extensive and highly visible contacts with a series of cultural issues, particularly those involving race, specific to the 1890s. This neglect has in part resultedfrom the variouspsychoanalytic ap-

Fortheir advice and support,I wouldlike to thankAndrea Atkin, JulieEarly, Sheila Sullivan, and OrrinWang. I owe a specialdebt to WilliamVeeder for the time, patience, encouragement,in- sight, and generalgood sense he has providedin such generousquantities. The divorceof Gothic and "history"goes back at least to WalterScott's famousdistinction between the two in the introductionto Waverly(1814). By contrast,I take as one of my starting points David Punter'ssensible claim, in his Literatureof Terror:A Historyof GothicFictions from 1765 to thePresent Day (London:Longman, 1980), that "withinthe Gothic we can find a very in- tense, if displaced,engagement with politicaland social problems"(p. 62). Recently,critics have begunto place Draculain the context of late-Victorianculture, usefully complementing the tradi- tionalpsychoanalytic readings of the novel. CarolA. Senf sees Stokerreacting to the phenomenon of the "NewWoman" of 1890sfiction; Charles Blinderman relates Dracula to aspectsof Darwinian materialism;Erest Fontanasees most of the novel's characters,including the Count himself, as typesof Lombroso'scriminal man; Mark M. Hennelly,Jr., arguesthat the novel'sBritish characters are engagedin a gnosticquest to redeemthe late Victorian"wasteland"; Christopher Craft relates the novel's"anxiety over the potentialfluidity of genderroles" to late Victoriandiscourses on sexual "inversion";and FrancoMoretti sees Draculaas a "metaphor"for monopolycapitalism that late- Victorianbourgeois culture refuses to recognizein itself. See Senf, "Dracula:Stoker's Response to the New Woman," VictorianStudies 26 (1982), 33-49; Blinderman,"Vampurella, Darwin, and Count Dracula,"Massachusetts Review 21 (1980), 411-428; Fontana,"Lombroso's Criminal Man and Stoker'sDracula," Victorian Newsletter 66 (1984), 25-27; Hennelly, "TheGnostic Quest and the VictorianWasteland," English Literature in Transition20 (1977), 13-26; Craft," 'KissMe With Those Red Lips':Gender and Inversion in BramStoker's Dracula," Representations 8 (1984), 107-133; Moretti,"The Dialecticof Fear,"New LeftReview 136 (1982), 67-85.

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proachestaken by most criticsof Gothic. While such approacheshave greatly enriched our understandingof Dracula,and while nothing in psychoanalytic critical theory precludesa "historicist"reading of literarytexts, that theory has in practicebeen used almost exclusively to demonstrate,as Stoker'smost recent critic puts it, that Draculais a "representationof fears that are more universalthan a specific focus on the Victorian backgroundwould allow."2 Yet the novel's very attachment to the "Victorianbackground" - what The Spectatorin 1897 called its "up-to-dateness"- is a primarysource of Stoker's continuing power.3 Late-VictorianGothic in general, and Draculain partic- ular, continually calls our attention to the culturalcontext surroundingand informingthe text, and insists that we take that context into account. In the case of Dracula,the context includesthe decline of Britainas a world power at the close of the nineteenth century;or rather, the way the perception of that decline was articulatedby contemporarywriters. Dracula appearedin a Jubilee year, but one markedby considerablymore introspec- tion and less self-congratulationthan the celebrationof a decade earlier.The decay of Britishglobal influence,the loss of overseasmarkets for Britishgoods, the economic and politicalrise of Germanyand the United States, the increas- ing unrestin Britishcolonies and possessions,the growingdomestic uneasiness over the moralityof imperialism- all combinedto erodeVictorian confidence in the inevitabilityof Britishprogress and hegemony.4 Late-Victorianfiction in particularis saturatedwith the sense that the entire nation - as a race of people, as a political and imperialforce, as a social and culturalpower - was in irretrievabledecline. What I will be examining is how that perception is transformedinto narrative, into storieswhich the culture tells itself not only

2 John Allen Stevenson, "A Vampire in the Mirror:The Sexuality of Dracula," PMLA 103 (1988), 139-149. Stevenson's remark is somewhat surprising, since his essay convincingly places Dracula in the context of late-century thought on marriage, race, and exogamy. Psychoanalytic readings of Dracula include C. F. Bentley, "The Monster in the Bedroom: Sexual Symbolism in Bram Stoker's Dracula," Literatureand Psychology 22 (1972), 27-32; Stephanie Demetrakapoulous, "Feminism, Sex-Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal Fantasies in Bram Stoker's Dracula," Frontiers 2 (1977), 104-113; Carrol L. Fry, "Fictional Conventions and Sexuality in Dracula," VictorianNews- letter42 (1972), 20-22; Gail Griffin," 'YourGirls That YouAll LoveAre Mine':Dracula and the VictorianMale Sexual Imagination,"International Journal of Women'sStudies 3 (1980), 454-465; MauriceRichardson, "The Psychoanalysis of GhostStories," Twentieth Century 166 (1959), 419-431; Phyllis Roth, "Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula," Literatureand Psychology27 (1977), 113-121. I am not suggestingthat thereis a singlepsychoanalytic paradigm that thesewrit- ers all follow; but each considerspsychoanalysis as the criticalapproach best suitedfor Stoker's novel. 3 TheSpectator 79 (31 July 1897), 151. 4 Standardaccounts of the late-Victoriancrisis of confidenceand its relationto the imperialideal includeElie Halevy, Imperialismand theRise of Labour(1927; rpt. New York:Bames and Noble, 1961); EricHobsbawm, The Age of Empire1875-1914 (New York:Vintage, 1989);Ronald Hyam, Britain'sImperial Century 1815-1914 (New York:Barnes and Noble, 1976);Richard Shannon, The Crisisof Imperialism(London: Granada, 1976); and A. P. Thornton,The Imperial Idea and Its Ene- mies(London: Macmillan, 1959).

VICTORIAN STUDIES ANXIETY OF REVERSECOLONIZATION 623

to articulateand account for its troubles, but also to defend against and even to assuagethe anxiety attendant upon culturaldecay.

Draculaenacts the period'smost importantand pervasivenarrative of decline, a narrativeof reversecolonization. Versions of this story recurwith remarkablefrequency in both fiction and nonfiction texts throughoutthe last decades of the century. In whatever guise, this narrativeexpresses both fear and guilt. The fear is that what has been representedas the "civilized"world is on the point of being colonized by "primitive"forces. These forces can originate outside the civilized world (in Rider Haggard'sShe, Queen Ayesha plans to sack London and depose Queen Victoria) or they can inhere in the civilized itself (as in Kurtz'semblematic heart of darkness). Fantasiesof reverse colonization are particularlyprevalent in late-Victorianpopular fiction. They occur not just in Haggard'snovels, but in RudyardKipling's early fiction ("The Markof the Beast," "At the End of the Passage,"The Lightthat Failed), in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories (The Sign of Four, "The Crooked Man"), in H. G. Wells's science fiction tales (The Time Machine, The War of theWorlds), and in many of the numerousadventure novels of G. A. Hope, Henry S. Merriman,and John Buchan. In each case, a terrifying reversalhas occurred:the colonizer finds himself in the position of the colonized, the exploiter becomes exploited, the victimizervictimized. Such fears are linked to a perceived decline - racial, moral, spiritual- which makes the nation vulnerable to attack from more vigorous, "primitive"peoples. But fantasiesof reversecolonization are more than productsof geopo- litical fears. They are also responses to cultural guilt. In the marauding, invasive Other, British culture sees its own imperialpractices mirrored back in monstrousforms. H. G. Wells located the germof his Warof theWorlds in a discussionwith his brotherFrank over the exterminationof the indigenous Tasmanian population under British rule. Reverse colonization narratives thus contain the potential for powerful critiques of imperialist ideologies, even if that potential usually remains unrealized.As fantasies, these narratives providean opportunityto atone for imperialsins, since reversecolonization is often representedas deserved punishment. Fantasiesof reversecolonization sprangfrom the same font of cultural anxiety that produced the innumerable "invasion scare" and "dynamite" novels of the 1880s and '90s. The Invasionof England,Sir W. F. Butler'stitle

5 Qtd. in BernardBergonzi, The EarlyH. G. Wells:A Studyof theScientific Romances (Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1961), p. 124.

SUMMER 1990 624 StephenD. Arata

for his 1892 novel, describes the subject matter, overt or displaced, of hundredsof late-Victorianfictions, all of them concerned with the potential overthrowof the nation by outsiders.6 There are distinctions between these subgenresand the reverse colonization narrativesI am discussing,however. Invasion-scarenovels focus on the threat posed to Britainby other industrial nations, particularly Germany, France, and the United States. As I. F. Clarke demonstrates,changes in internationalpower relationshipswere mir- roredin these novels, as differentforeign powers were in tur perceivedas the most likely invader (pp. 107-161). Dynamitenovels, with their emphasison anarchistor nihilist activities, originatedpartly in the Victorian fascination with the "criminalelement," especially as it was thought to exist among the growingurban underclass. These novels articulatea middle-classfear both of foreign revolutionaries(like the mysteriousHoffendahl of HenryJames's The PrincessCasamassima [1886]) and of an industrialunderclass that was itself becoming increasinglypoliticized. By contrast, reverse colonization narratives are obsessed with the spectacle of the primitive and the atavistic. The "savagery"of Haggard's Amahaggersand Wells's Morlocksboth repelsand captivates;their proximity to elemental instincts and energies, energies seen as dissipatedby modem life, makesthem dangerousbut also deeply attractive. PatrickBrantlinger has linked this interest in the primitiveto the late-Victorianfascination with the occult and the paranormal,and by extension to the Gothic. The primitive and the occultist alike operatedbeyond or beneath the thresholdof the "civilized"rational mind, tapping into primalenergies and unconsciousresources as well as into deep-rootedanxieties and fears. Brantlingeridentifies a body of fiction he terms "imperialGothic" in which the conjunction of imperialist ideology, primitivism,and occultism producesnarratives that are at once self- divided and deeply "symptomaticof the anxieties that attended the climax of the British Empire."The "atavisticdescents into the primitive"characteristic of imperial Gothic "seem often to be allegories of the larger regressive movement of civilization"and of the ease with which it could be overcome 7 by the forces of barbarism. What Brantlingerfinally shows is how, in late-

6 For discussions of invasion scare novels, see I. F. Clarke, Voices ProphesyingWar 1763-1914 (Lon- don: Oxford, 1966); Cecil D. Eby, The Road to Armageddon:The Martial Spirit in English Popular Literature(Durham, NC: Duke University, 1988); and Samuel Hynes, The EdwardianTurn of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 34-53. For a discussion of dynamite novels, see BarbaraAmett Melchiori, Terrorismin the Late VictorianNovel (London: Croom Helm, 1985). 7 Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literatureand Imperialism, 1830-1914 (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1988), pp. 228-229. For a somewhat different account of the conjunction of Gothic and imperialism, see Judith Wilt, "The Imperial Mouth: Imperialism, the Gothic, and Science Fiction," Journal of Popular Culture 14 (Spring 1981), 618-628. Wilt sees Britain's "imperial anxieties" summoning up "the great gothic and science fiction tales of the '80s and '90s" (p. 620), which in turn do the cultural work of "subverting" imperial ideology.

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Victorian Britain, political and cultural concerns about empire become gothicized. The novel of empire and the adventurestory especially become saturatedwith Gothic motifs: Kipling's"The Phantom Rickshaw"and "At the End of the Passage,"Conan Doyle's "The BrownHand," EdgarWallace's Sandersof theRiver, and Haggard'sShe are representativein this respect. Un- like dynamite or invasion-scarenarratives, which generally aim at a docu- mentary-likerealism, turn-of-the-centuryfictions involving the empire often inhabit the regions of romance and the supernatural. A concern with questionsof empire and colonization can be found in nearly all of Stoker'sfiction. His quite extensive body of workshows how imperial issues can permeate and inform disparate types of fiction. Stoker's oeuvre apart from Draculacan be roughly divided into two categories in its handling of imperialthemes. First, there are workssuch as "Under the Sun- set" (1882), The Snake'sPass (1890), The Mysteryof the Sea (1902), and The Man (1905) in which narrativesof invasionand colonization,while not central to the plot, intrudecontinually upon the main action of the story. Legendsof French invasions of Ireland in The Snake'sPass; attacks by the Children of Death on the LandUnder the Sunset in the fairytales; accounts of the Span- ish Armada, Sir FrancisDrake, and, in a more contemporaryvein, the 1898 Spanish-AmericanWar, in The Mysteryof the Sea; allusions to the Norman invasion of Saxon Englandin The Man - in each work, seeminglyunrelated narrativesof imperialexpansion and disruptionthemselves disrupt the primary story, as if Stoker were grapplingwith issues he could not wholly articulate throughhis main plot. And, as his referencesto the Armadaand to Norman and French invasions suggest, Stoker is everywhereconcerned with attacks directed specifically against the British Isles. The second categorycomprises Stoker's more overtly Gothic fictions: TheJewel of SevenStars (1903), The Ladyof theShroud (1909), and The Lairof the WhiteWorm (1911). These works fit Brantlinger'sparadigm of imperial Gothic, with its emphasison atavism, demonism and the supernatural,and psychic regression. Each of the "heroines"in these novels - Queen Tera, PrincessTeuta, LadyArabella - representsthe eruptionof archaic and ultimately dangerousforces in modem life. (That Stoker associates these erup- tions with women is worth noting; fearof women is never far from the surface of his novels.) Equallyimportant is the fact that each of these Gothic fantasies intersects with narrativesof imperialdecline and fall: the decay of the Egyptiandynasties in Jewel, the defeat of the Turkish empire in Shroud,the collapse of the Roman empire in Lair.The conjunction of Gothic and empire brings Stoker's later novels thematically close to Dracula. If they cannot match Dracula'spower and sophistication, this is in part because Stoker be-

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came increasinglyunwilling or simplyunable to addressthe complex connections between his fictions and the late-Victorian imperial crisis. Only in Draculais Stoker'scareer-long interest in the decline of empire explicitly an interest in the decline of the Britishempire. Only in this novel does he man- age to imbricateGothic fantasy and contemporarypolitics. Several critics have noted the political overtones of Count Dracula's excursionto Britain.Carol Senf, like Brantlinger,suggests that Draculaman- ifests "the threat of the primitive trying to colonize the civilized world," while Burton Hatlen argues that the Count "representsa dark, primitive strataof civilization"come to disruptfurther an alreadybeleaguered Victorian culture.Judith Wilt emphasizesthe connection between Dracula's"awful visi- tations" and the "willful penetration"of Transylvaniaby the emissariesof Wester imperialmight. 8 These accounts quite rightlystress the archaicfor- ces unleashed by the Count, forces which threaten to overtur the progres- sive, scientific world of contemporaryBritain. More can be said, however, both about the nature of the highly overdeterminedthreat posed by Count Draculaand about the relation of that threat to what I am calling the crisisof imperialculture. Stoker maps his storynot simplyonto the Gothic but also onto a second, equallypopular late-Victorian genre, the travelnarrative. By examining how and to what extent Draculaparticipates in these two genres, we can illu- minate the underlying fear and guilt characteristicof reverse colonization narratives.Like late-centuryGothic, the travel narrativeclearly displaysas- pects of imperialideology. Like Gothic, too, the travel narrativeconcerns itself with boundaries- both with maintainingand with transgressingthem. The blurringof psychicand sexualboundaries that occursin Gothic is certainly evident in Dracula(and is one reasonthe novel is so accessibleto psychoanalytic interpretation),but for Stokerthe collapseof boundariesresonates cultur- ally and politically as well. The Count's transgressionsand aggressionsare placed in the context, providedby innumerabletravel narratives, of late-Vic- torian foraysinto the "East."For Stoker, the Gothic and the travel narrative problematize,separately and together, the very boundarieson which British imperialhegemony depended:between civilized and primitive, colonizerand colonized, victimizer(either imperialistor vampire)and victim. By problem- atizing those boundaries,Stoker probesthe heart of the culture'ssense of it-

8 Carol Senf, "Dracula:The Unseen Face in the Mirror,"Journal of NarrativeTechnique 9 (1979), 160-170;Burton Hatlen, "TheReturn of the Repressed/Oppressedin Bram Stoker's Dracula," Min- nesotaReview 15 (1980), 80-97; JudithWilt, Ghostsof theGothic (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1980). See also RichardWasson's "The Politics of Dracula,"English Literature in Transition9 (1966), 24-27. Wassonsuggests that in invadingEngland "the Count'smotives are political"(p. 25), thoughit is not alwaysclear what is meantby "political,"since Wassonargues that Dracula represents"demonish forces ... unloosedin the humanpsyche" (p. 25).

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self, its ways of defining and distinguishingitself from other peoples, other cultures, in its hour of perceived decline.

In many respects, Dracularepresents a break from the Gothic tradi- tion of vampires.It is easy, for instance, to forget that the "natural"associa- tion of vampires with Transylvania begins with, rather than predates, Dracula.The site of Castle Draculawas in fact not determineduntil well after Stoker had begun to write. As Joseph Biermanpoints out, Stoker originally signalled his debt to his countrymanLe Fanu'sCarmilUa (1872) by locating the castle in "Styria,"the scene of the earlierGothic novella. 9 In rewriting the novel's opening chapters, however, Stoker moved his Gothic story to a place that, for readersin 1897, resonatedin waysStyria did not. Transylvania was known primarilyas part of the vexed "EasternQuestion" that so obsessed Britishforeign policy in the 1880s and '90s. The region was first and foremost the site, not of superstitionand Gothic romance, but of political turbulence and racial strife. Victorian readersknew the Carpathianslargely for its en- demic culturalupheaval and its fosteringof a dizzyingsuccession of empires. By moving Castle Draculathere, Stoker gives distinctly political overtones to his Gothic narrative.In Stoker'sversion of the myth, vampiresare intimately linked to militaryconquest and to the rise and fall of empires. According to Dr. Van Helsing, the vampire is the unavoidableconsequence of any invasion: "He have follow the wake of the berserkerIcelander, the devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon, the Magyar." 0 Nowhere else in the Europe of 1897 could provide a more fertile breeding ground for the undead than the Count's homeland. The Western accounts of the region that Stoker consulted invariablystress the ceaseless clash of antagonistic cultures in the Carpathians.1 The cycle of empire -

9 JosephBierman, "The Genesisand Datingof Draculafrom Bram Stoker's Working Notes," Notes andQueries 24 (1977), 39-41. Fora briefdescription of Stoker'smanuscripts and notes forDracula, includinga "Listof Sources"that Stokerdrew up, see PhyllisRoth, BramStoker (Boston: Twayne, 1982), pp. 145-146. Stokergleaned his versionof Carpathianhistory and cultureentirely from travelnarratives, guidebooks, and variousworks on EasternEuropean superstitions, legends, and folktales.Daniel Farson,one of Stoker'sbiographers, mentions his "geniusfor research"(The Man WhoWrote Dracula: A Biographyof BramStoker [London: Michael Joseph, 1975],p. 148). Stoker's debt to Le Fanuis most immediatelyevident in a chapterdeleted from Dracula, in which Harker, travellingto CastleDracula, discovers the mausoleumof a "CountessDolingen of Gratzin Styria." The chapterwas laterreprinted separately as "Dracula'sGuest." See TheBran StokerBedside Com- panion:Ten Storiesby theAuthor of "Dracula," ed. CharlesOsbome (New York:Taplinger, 1973). 10 BramStoker, Dracula (1897; rpt. Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1984), p. 286. 1 I have basedmy observationson the standardVictorian and Edwardianworks in Englishon the region, which includeJohn Paget, Hungaryand Transylvania(London: Murray, 1855); James O. Noyes, Roumania(New York:Rudd & Carlton, 1857); CharlesBoner, Transylvania:Its Products andIts People(London: Longmans, 1865); Andrew W. Crosse,Round About the Carpathians (Edin-

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rise, decay, collapse, displacement- was there displayed in a particularly compressed and vivid manner. "Greeks, Romans, Huns, Avars, Magyars, Turks, Slavs, French and Germans, all have come and seen and gone, seek- ing conquest one over the other," opens one late-centuryaccount (Bates, p. 3). The Count himself confirmsthat his homelandhas been the scene of per- petual invasion: "there is hardlya foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriotsor invaders,"he tells Harker(p. 33). His subsequentquestion is thus largelyrhetorical: "Is it a wonderthat we were a conqueringrace?" (p. 41). The "race" in which Dracula claims membershipis left ambiguous here. He refersat once to his Szekelywarrior past and to his vampiricpresent. The ambiguityunderscores the impossibilityof untanglingthe two aspectsof Dracula'sessential nature, since his vampirismis interwoven with his status as a conquerorand invader. Here Stokerdeparts significantly from his literary predecessors.Unlike Polidori and Le Fanu, for instance, who depict their vampires as wan and enervated, Stoker makes Dracula vigorous and energetic. Polidori'sCount Ruthven and Le Fanr'sCarmilla represent the aristo- crat as decadent aesthete; their vampirismis an extension of the traditional aristocraticvices of sensualismand conspicuousconsumption. Dracula represents the nobleman as warrior.12 His activities afterdeath carryon his activities in life; in both cases he has successfullyengaged in formsof conquest and domination. Racialconquest and domination, we should immediatelyadd. Stoker continues a Western traditionof seeing unrest in EasternEurope primarily in terms of racial strife. For Stoker, the vampire"race" is simply the most viru- lent and threateningof the numerouswarrior races - Berserker,Hun, Turk, Saxon, Slovak, Magyar,Szekely - inhabiting the area. Nineteenth-century accounts of the Carpathiansrepeatedly stress its polyracial character. The

burghand London:William Blackwood and Sons, 1878);C. Johnson,On theTrack of theCrescent (London:Hurst & Blackett,1885); M. EdithDurham, The Burden of theBalkans (London: Edward Arnold, 1905);Jean Victor Bates, Our Allies and Enemies in theNear East (New York:E. P. Dutton & Co., n.d.); and especiallyEmily Gerard, The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies fromTransylvania, 2 vols. (Edinburghand London:William Blackwood and Sons, 1888). 12 Several critics have, correctlyI think, placed Draculain the traditionof aristocraticrakes like Richardson'sLovelace, who in turnhave theirroots in the medievallord with his demandsfor the droitde seigneur.This view can obscureStoker's emphasis on Dracula'smilitary, rather than just his sexual,prowess. In additionto Bentley,Fry, and Hatlen, see JudithWeissman, "Women as Vam- pires:Dracula as a VictorianNovel," MidwestQuarterly 18 (1977), 392-405. It is also possibleto readDracula as a bourgeoisfantasy of aristocraticpower and privilege;like the hereditarynoble- man, Draculais associatedmost closely with land (he muststay in contactwith his native soil to survive),wealth (whichhe literallydigs out of the landon the nightof Harker'sarrival in Transyl- vania), family (his name is transmittedthrough generations without the line being interrupted), andof courseblood (which in tur is connectedwith the otherthree; remember, for instance,that when Harkercuts Draculawith his knife, he "bleeds"a "streamof gold"coins [p. 364]). For the middle-classVictorian audience, the vision of aristocraticpuissance embodied by Draculawould have been deeplyattractive, especially given the ineffectualityof the novel'sonly Englisharisto- crat, LordGodalming.

VICTORIAN STUDIES ANXIETY OF REVERSECOLONIZATION 629

standardVictorian work on the region, Charles Boner'sTransylvania (1865), begins by marvellingat this spectacle of variety:

The diversity of character which the various physiognomiespresent that meet you at every step, also tell of the many nations which are here broughttogether. ... The slim, lithe Hungarian. .. the more oriental Wallachian, with softer, sensuousair, - in her style of dressand even in her carriageunlike a dwellerin the West; a Moldavianprincess, wrappedin a Turkishshawl. ... And now a Serb marchesproudly past, his countenance calm as a Turk's;or a Constantinoplemerchant sweeps along in his loose robesand snowy turban. There are, too, Greeks, Dalmatians, and Croats, all differentin feature:there is no end to the variety. (pp. 1-2). Transylvaniais what Draculacalls the "whirlpoolof Europeanraces" (p. 41), but within that whirlpool racial interaction usually involved con- flict, not accommodation.Racial violence could in fact reach appallingpro- portions, as in the wholesale massacres,widely reportedby the British press, of Armeniansby Turksin 1894 and 1896, the yearsin which Draculawas being written. For Western writersand readers,these characteristics- racial heterogeneitycombined with racial intoleranceconsidered barbaric in its in- tensity - defined the area east and south of the Danube, with the Carpathi- ans at the imaginative center of the turmoil. By situating Dracula in the Carpathians,and by continually blurring the lines between the Count's vampiricand warrioractivities, Stoker forges seemingly"natural" links among three of his principalconcerns: racial strife, the collapse of empire, and vampirism. It is important too to note the se- quence of events. As Van Helsing says, vampiresfollow "in [the] wake of" imperialdecay (p. 286). Vampiresare generatedby racial enervation and the decline of empire, not vice versa. They are produced, in other words, by the very conditions characterizinglate-Victorian Britain. Stoker thus transformsthe materials of the vampire myth, making them bear the weight of the culture'sfears over its declining status. The ap- pearanceof vampiresbecomes the sign of profoundtrouble. With vampirism markingthe intersection of racial strife, political upheaval, and the fall of empire, Dracula'smove to London indicates that Great Britain, rather than the Carpathians,is now the scene of these connected struggles.The Count has penetrated to the heart of moder Europe'slargest empire, and his very presence seems to presageits doom:

This was the being I was helping to transferto London [Harkerwrites in anguish]where, perhapsfor centuriesto come, he might, amongstits teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and createa new and ever wideningcircle of semi-demonsto batten on the helpless. (p. 67). The late-Victoriannightmare of reversecolonization is expressedsuccinctly here: Harkerenvisions semi-demonsspreading through the realm, colonizing

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bodies and land indiscriminately.The Count's "lustfor blood"points in both directions:to the vampire'sneed for its special food, and also to the warrior's desire for conquest. The Count endangersBritain's integrity as a nation at the same time that he imperilsthe personal integrityof individualcitizens. Harker'slament highlights the double thrust- political and biological - of Dracula'sinvasion, while at the same time conflating the two into a single threat. Dracula'stwin status as vampire and Szekely warriorsuggests that for Stoker the Count's aggressionsagainst the body are also aggressions against the body politic. Indeed, the Count can threaten the integrityof the nation preciselybecause of the nature of his threat to personalintegrity. His attacks involve more than an assaulton the isolated self, the subversionand loss of one's individualidentity. Again unlike Polidori'sCount Ruthven or Le Fanu's Carmilla (or even Thomas Prest's Sir Francis Varney), Dracula imperilsnot simplyhis victims'personal identities, but also their cultural,political, and racialselves. In Draculavampirism designates a kind of colonizationof the body. Horrorarises not because Draculadestroys bodies, but because he appropriatesand transformsthem. Having yielded to his assault,one literally "goes native" by becoming a vampireoneself. As John Allen Stevenson argues, if "blood"is a sign of racial identity, then Draculaeffectively deraci- nates his victims (p. 144). In turn, they receive a new racial identity, one that marksthem as literally"Other." Miscegenation leads, not to the mixing of races, but to the biological and political annihilation of the weakerrace by the stronger. Through the vampiremyth, Stoker gothicizes the political threats to Britain caused by the enervation of the Anglo-Saxon "race."These threats also operate independentlyof the Count's vampirism,however, for the vampire was not consideredalone in its ability to deracinate.Stoker learnedfrom EmilyGerard that the Roumanianswere themselvesnotable for the way they could "dissolve"the identities of those they came in contact with:

The Hungarianwoman who weds a Roumanianhusband will necessarilyadopt the dress and mannersof his people, and her children will be as good Roumaniansas though they had no dropof Magyarblood in their veins; while the Magyarwho takesa Roumaniangirl for his wife will not only fail to convert her to his ideas, but himself, subduedby her influence, will imperceptiblybegin to lose his nationality. This is a fact well known and much lamented by the Hungariansthemselves, who live in anticipatedapprehension of seeing 13 their people ultimately dissolving into Roumanians. Gerard'saccount of the "imperceptible"but inevitable loss of identity - national, cultural, racial - sounds remarkablylike the transformationsthat Lucy and Mina suffer under Dracula's "influence." In life Dracula was a

13 Gerard,I, 304-305. Scholarshave long recognizedStoker's reliance on Gerard.See Roth, Bram Stoker,pp. 13-14, and LeonardWolf, TheAnnotated Dracula (New York:Clarkson Potter, 1975), pp. xiii-xiv and referencesin his annotationsthroughout.

VICTORIAN STUDIES ANXIETYOF REVERSECOLONIZATION 631

Roumanian (Gerarddesignates the Szekelys as a branch of the Roumanian race); his ability to deracinatecould thus derive as easily fromhis Roumanian as from his vampirenature. The "anticipatedapprehension" of deracination- of seeing Britons "ultimatelydissolving into Roumanians"or vampiresor savages- is at the heart of the reversecolonization narrative.For both Gerardand Stoker, the Roumanians' dominance can be traced to a kind of racial puissance that overwhelms its weaker victims. This racial context helps account for what critics routinely note about Dracula:that he is by his very nature vigorous, masterful,energetic, robust. Such attributesare conspicuouslyabsent among the novel's Britishcharacters, particularly the men. All the novel's vampires are distinguishedby their robusthealth and their equallyrobust fertility. The vampireserves, then, to highlight the alarmingdecline among the British, since the undeadare, paradoxically,both "healthier"and more "fertile"than the living. Perversely,a vampiric attack can serve to invigorate its victim. "The adventureof the night does not seem to have harmedher," Mina notes after Lucy'sfirst encounter with Dracula;"on the contrary, it has benefited her, for she looks better this morning than she has done in weeks" (p. 115). Indeed, after his attack, Lucy's body initially appears stronger, her eyes brighter, her cheeks rosier. The correspondingenervation that marks the British men is most clearly visible in Harker (he is "pale," "weak-looking," "exhausted,""nervous," "a wreck"), but it can be seen in the other male Britishcharacters as well. Harkerand Draculain fact switch places duringthe novel; Harkerbecomes tired and white-hairedas the action proceeds, while Dracula,whose white hair growsprogressively darker, becomes more vigorous. The vampire'svigor is in turn closely connected with its virility, its ability to produce literally endless numbersof offspring.Van Helsing's con- cer that the earth in Dracula'sboxes be "sterilized"(pp. 347, 355) under- lines the connection between the Count's threat and his fecundity. In marked contrast, the nonvampires in the novel seem unable to reproduce themselves. Fathers in particularare in short supply: most are either dead (Mr. Westenra, Mr. Harker,Mr. Murray,Mr. Canon), dying (Mr. Hawkins, LordGodalming, Mr. Swales), or missing (Mr. Seward, Mr. Morris), while the youngermen, being unmarried,cannot father legitimately. Even Harker, the novel's only marriedman, is prohibitedfrom touching Mina aftershe has been made "unclean."In Dracula'slexicon, uncleanlinessis closely related to fertility, but it is the wrong kind of fertility;Mina, the men fear, is perfectly capableof producing"offspring," but not with Jonathan. The prohibitionre- garding Mina is linked to the fear of vampiric fecundity, a fecundity that threatensto overwhelmthe far less prolific Britishmen. Thus, as many critics

SUMMER1990 632 StephenD. Arata

have pointed out, the arrivalof little Quincey Harkerat the story'sclose sig- nals the final triumphover Dracula, since the Harkers'ability to secure an heir - an heir whose racial credentials are seemingly impeccable- is the surest indication that the vampire'sthreat has been mastered.Even this triumph is precarious,however. Harkerproudly notes that his son is named after each of the men in the novel, makingthem all figurativefathers (p. 449), yet Quincey'smultiple parentageonly underscoresthe originalproblem. How secure is any racial line when five fathers are needed to produceone son? Such racial anxieties are clearest in the case of Lucy Westenra. If Dracula'skiss serves to deracinateLucy, and by doing so to unleash what the male charactersconsider her incipiently monstroussexual appetite, then the only way to counter this processis to "re-racinate"her by reinfusingher with the "proper"blood. But Stoker is carefulto establisha strict hierarchyamong the potential donors. The men give blood in this order:Holmwood, Seward, Van Helsing, Morris.Arthur Holmwood is first choice ostensiblybecause he is engaged to Lucy, but also, and perhaps more importantly, because his blood is, in Van Helsing'swords, "moregood than" Seward's(p. 149). As the only English aristocratin the novel, Holmwood possessesa "blood so pure" (p. 149) that it can restoreLucy's compromised racial identity. Dr. Seward, whose blood though bourgeoisis Englishnonetheless, comes next in line, fol- lowed by the two foreigners,Van Helsing and Morris.We should note that Van Helsing's old, Teutonic blood is still preferredover Morris'syoung, American blood, for reasonsI will take up in a moment. Even foreignblood is better than lower-classblood, however. After Lucy sufferswhat proves to be the fatal attack by Dracula, Van Helsing, looking for blood donors, rejects the four apparentlyhealthy female servants as unsafe: "I fear to trust those women" (p. 180). More precisely, Van Helsing's distrust of "those women" marks a point of intersection between his usuallycovert class prejudicesand his often overt misogyny. 4 That Draculapropagates his race solely throughthe bodies of women suggestsan affinity, or even an identity, between vampiricsexual- ity and female sexuality. Both are representedas primitiveand voracious,and both threaten patriarchalhegemony. In the novel's (and Victorian Britain's) sexual economy, female sexualityhas only one legitimate function, propagation within the bounds of marriage.Once separatedfrom that function, as Lucy'sdesire is, female sexuality becomes monstrous.The violence of Lucy's demise is grisly enough, but we should not miss the fact that her subjection and Mina'sfinal fate parallelone another. They differin degree, not kind. By the novel's close, Mina's sexual energy has been harnessedfor purelydomes-

14 A full discussionof the genderissues raised by Draculais outsidethe scopeof this essay.Many critics have discussedthe thinly disguisedfear of women evident in the novel. In addition to Craft, Demetrakapoulous,Fry, Griffin, Roth, and Weissman,see Alan Johnson," 'DualLife': The Status of Women in Stoker'sDracula," Tennessee Studies in Literature27 (1984), 20-39.

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tic use. In the end, women serve identical purposesfor both Draculaand the Western characters.If in this novel blood stands for race, then women quite literallybecome the vehicles of racial propagation.The strugglebetween the two camps is thus on one level a struggleover access to women'sbodies, and Dracula'sbiological colonization of women becomes a horrificparody of the sanctioned exploitation practicedby the Western male characters. By consideringthe parallelfates of Lucy and Mina, moreover, we can see how the fear and guilt characteristicof reversecolonization narrativesbe- gin to overlap. The fear generatedby the Count's colonization of his victims' bodies - a colonization appropriatelydesignated monstrous- modulates into guilt that his practices simply repeat those of the "good" characters. Dracula'sinvasion and appropriationof female bodies does not distinguish him from his Western antagonistsas much as at first appears.Instead of being uncannily Other, the vampireis here revealed as disquietinglyfamiliar. And since the colonizations of bodies and territoryare closely linked, the same blurringof distinctions occurs when we consider more closely the nature of the Count's invasion of Britain. Just as Dracula'svampirism mirrors the do- mestic practicesof Victorian patriarchs,so his invasion of London in orderto "batten on the helpless" natives there mirrors British imperial activities abroad. As a transplantedIrishman, one whose national allegianceswere con- spicuouslysplit, Stoker was particularlysensitive to the issues raisedby Brit- ish imperial conquest and domination. Britain'ssubjugation of Ireland was markedby a brutalityoften exceeding what occurredin the colonies, while the stereotypeof the "primitive. . . dirty, vengeful, and violent" Irishman was in most respectsidentical to that of the most despised"savage." 5 The ill will characterizingAnglo-Irish relations in the late-nineteenth century, ex- acerbatedby the rise of Fenianismand the debate over Home Rule, far sur- passedthe tensionsthat aroseas a resultof Britishrule elsewhere. When that ill will eruptedinto violence, as it did in the 1882 Phoenix Parkmurders, Victo- rian readerscould see, up close and in sharpfocus, the potentialconsequences of imperialdomination. For Stoker's audience, Dracula'sinvasion of Britain would conceivablyhave arousedseldom dormant fears of an Irishuprising. The lack of autobiographicalmaterials makes it difficult to determine the extent, if any, to which Stoker consciouslyfelt himself in solidaritywith his Irish brethren. On the one hand, his few published essays, particularly one advocating censorship, reveal a deeply conservative outlook in which "dutyto the [British]state" outweighs all other considerations,even those of a dubious freedom or self-determination. On the other hand, through

5 See L. P. Curtis,Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Studyof Anti-IrishPrejudice in VictorianEngland (Bridge- port, CT: BridgeportUniversity Press, 1968).

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Stoker'svery adherenceto what he calls "formsof restraint"runs a deeply anarchic streak. The attractionof forbidden,outlawed, disruptiveaction is evident enough in Draculaas well as in Stoker'sother fictions; the same tension between restraint and rebellion may have characterizedhis relation to the ruling state. It probablyalso characterizedhis professionallife. Certainly his status as glorified manservantto the autocraticHenry Irving almost uncannily reenacted, on the personal level, the largercultural pattern of English domination and Irishsubservience. Stoker's lifelong passionfor Irvinghad its dark underside: the rumors, persistent in Stoker's lifetime, that Count Draculawas modelled on Irving suggeststhe deep ambivalence with which the transplantedIrishman regarded his professionalbenefactor. Like Quincey Morris,Stoker seems finally to stand in alliance with his Englishcompanions without ever being entirely of their camp. Dracula suggests two equations in relation to English-Irishpolitics: not just, Dracula is to England as Ireland is to England, but, Dracula is to Englandas Englandis to Ireland. In Count Dracula,Victorian readerscould recognize their culture's imperial ideology mirroredback as a kind of mon- strosity. Dracula'sjourney from Transylvaniato Englandcould be read as a reversalof Britain'simperial exploitations of "weaker"races, including the Irish. This mirroringextends not just to the imperialpractices themselves, but to their epistemological underpinnings.Before Dracula successfullyin- vades the spaces of his victims' bodies or land, he first invades the spaces of their knowledge. The Count operates in several distinct registers in the novel. He is both the warriornobleman, whose prowessdwarfs that of the novel's enfeebled Englisharistocrat, Lord Godalming, and the primitivesav- age, whose bestiality, fecundity, and vigor alternatelyrepel and attract. But he is also what we might call an incipient "Occidentalist"scholar. Dracula's physical masteryof his British victims begins with an intellectual appropria- tion of their culture, which allows him to delve the workingsof the "native mind." As Harkerdiscovers, the Count's expertise in "Englishlife and customs and manners"(p. 30) providesthe groundworkfor his exploitative invasion of Britain.Thus, in Draculathe Britishcharacters see their own ideology reflected back as a form of bad faith, since the Count's Occidentalismboth mimics and reversesthe more familiarOrientalism underwriting Western imperial practices.16

III

To understand fully how the Count's Occidentalism functions, however, we must relate it to the second literarygenre visible in Dracula,the

16 See EdwardSaid, Orientaism(New York:Vintage, 1979).

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travel narrative.Jonathan Harker'sinitial journey to Castle Draculaconsti- tutes a travel narrativein miniature, and the opening entries in his journal reproducethe conventions of this popularVictorian genre. Critics have occa- sionally noted the travel motifs in Dracula,but have not pursuedthe implica- tions of Stoker'smixing of genres. To be sure, Gothic has alwayscontained a strongtravel component. The restlessroaming found in many Gothic fictions - Victor Frankenstein'spursuit of his monster, Melmoth'swanderings, Mr. Hyde's perambulationsof London - suggests that an affinity between the two genres has always existed. Stoker's use of travel conventions is new, however. EarlierGothic writerswere interestedprimarily in the psychological dimensions of travel; the landscapetraversed by the Gothic protagonist was chiefly psychological.17 Stoker on the other hand is interestedin the ide- ological dimensionsof travel. Harker'searly journalentries clearly reveal his Orientalistperspective, which structureswhat he sees and what he misses as he travels through the Carpathians.This perspectiveis embeddedin the ge- neric conventions that Harkerdeploys, conventions familiarto late-Victorian readers.Stoker's disruption of Harker'stourist perspectiveat Castle Dracula also calls into question the entire Orientalistoutlook. Stoker thus expressesa telling critique of the Orientalist enterprisethrough the very structureof his novel. Earlyin his stay at Castle Dracula, Harkerto his great surprisefinds his host stretched upon the librarysofa reading, "of all things in the world," an English Bradshaw'sGuide (p. 34). We probablyshare Harker'spuzzlement at the Count's choice of readingmaterial, though like Harkerwe are apt to forget this brief interludeamid ensuing horrors.Why is Draculainterested in English train schedules? The Count's absorption in Bradshaw'sechoes Harker'sown obsessive interest in trains. (Later we discover that Mina, at- tempting to secure Harker'saffections, has herself become a "train fiend," memorizingwhole sections of Bradshaw'sfor his convenience.) Harker'sjournal opens with the terse note: "shouldhave arrivedat 6.46, but train was an hour late" (p. 9). The next morning, more delays give him furthercause to grumble:"It seems to me that the furtherEast you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?" (pp. 10-11). An obsessionwith trains- or, as in Harker'scase, an obsession with trainsrunning on time - characterizesVictorian narratives of travelin Eastern Europe.Even EmilyGerard, whose enthusiasmfor all thingsTransylvanian seldom flagged,had little patience with its trains. "The railwaycommunications

17 Criticswho do addressthe travelmotifs in Draculagenerally emphasize travel's connections to psychology rather than to politics. "Transylvaniais Europe'sunconscious," asserts Geoffrey Wall (" 'Differentfrom Writing': Dracula in 1897,"Literature and History 10 [1984], 20). Alan Johnson quotesWall approvingly,and arguesthat Harker'sjourney to Transylvaniais a "symbolicjourney into his own mind" ("Bent and BrokenNecks: Signs of Design in Stoker'sDracula," Victorian Newsletter72 [1987], 21, 23).

SUMMER 1990 636 StephenD. Arata

were very badly managed,"she writes of one jourey, "so that it was only on the evening of the second day (fully forty-eight hours) that we arrived at Klausenberg.... It would hardlyhave taken longer to go from Lembergto London" (Gerard, I, 30). Harkerimmediately invokes a second convention of the travel genre when, having crossed the Danube at Buda-Pesth,he in- vests the river with symbolicsignificance. "The impressionI had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most Western of splendid bridgesover the Danube ... took us among the traditionsof Turkishrule" (p. 9). In crossing the Danube, Harkermaintains, he leaves "Europe"behind, geographicallyand imaginatively, and approachesthe first outpost of the "Orient." 18 Harker'sfirst two acts - noting that his train is late, and then trav- ersing a boundaryhe considerssymbolic - function as a kind of shorthand, alerting readersthat Harker'sjournal is to be set against the backgroundof late-Victoriantravel narratives.Once the travel genre is established,there is an inevitability about Harker'ssubsequent gestures. Not only does he con- tinue to gripeabout the trains, he also searchesfor quaint hotels (p. 12), sam- ples the native cuisine (p. 10), ogles the indigenousfolk (p. 11), marvelsat the breathtakingscenery (p. 11), wondersat local customs (p. 15), and, in- terspersedthroughout, provides pertinent facts about the region'sgeography, history, and population. Harker'sfirst three journalentries (chapter 1 of the novel) are so thoroughly conventional as to parody the travel genre. Such conventionsconstitute what WolfgangIser calls the "repertoireof the familiar" that readerscan be expectedto bringto texts. 19Indeed, Harkeris so adept an imitator of travel narrativesin part because he has been such an assiduous readerof them. Like Stoker himself, Harker"had visited the BritishMuseum, and made search among the books and maps in the libraryregarding Transyl- vania" in order to gain "some foreknowledgeof the country"(p. 9). This foreknowledge - the textual knowledge gathered before the fact, the same knowledgethat any casualreader of contemporarytravel narratives would also possess- structuresHarker's subsequent experiences. In as- sumingthe role of the Victorian travellerin the East, Harkeralso assumesthe Orientalist perspective that allows him to "make sense" of his experiences there. For Harker, as for most Victorian travel writers, that "sense"begins with the assumptionthat an unbridgeablegap separatesthe Western traveller from Easternpeoples. The contrastbetween Britishpunctuality and Transyl-

18 See, for example,the openingof Noyes'sRoumania (1857). Noyes, an Americansurgeon living in Vienna, ascends"a lofty mountain"overlooking the city andgazes across the riverat the "Orient": "There,looking into the purpledistance eastward ... I resolvedto visit that mysteriousOrient whoseglowing portals seemed to open just beyond"(p. 1). 19 WolfgangIser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communicationin Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 34. See also HansRobert Jauss, Toward an Aestheticof Reception,trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis:University of MinnesotaPress, 1982).

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vanian tardinessstands, in Harker'sview, as a concreteinstance of morefunda- mental and wide-rangingoppositions: between Wester progressand Eastern stasis, between Western science and Easternsuperstition, between Western reason and Easternemotion, between Western civilization and Easternbar- barism. The "backwardness"of the Carpathian races displayed itself most surelyin what one travellercalled their inability to "[settle]themselves down to the inexorablelimits of timetables"(Crosse, p. 342). As Harkermoves fur- ther east toward Castle Dracula, he leaves even the railroadsbehind and is forced to travel by stagecoach. Simultaneously,he leaves Western rationality behind: "I read that every known superstitionin the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians"(p. 10). Harkermay marvel and wonder at this strangeworld he has entered, but he does not expect to be disconcerted.He tradesextensively on his "foreknowledge," which allows him to retain a comfortable distance from the scene. He views it simply as a divertingspectacle, imaginingthe "barbarian" Slovaks he sees by the roadsideas "an Oriental band of brigands"performing "on the stage" (p. 11). At first, Harker'sdescent into the dark heart of the Carpathiansserves only to titillate, not to unsettle. His favorite word in this first section is "picturesque,"that stock term of the travel genre. Throughout his journey, he is able to reduce everything he encounters to an example of the picturesqueor the poetic. Until he reaches Castle Dracula, that is. There, everything is disrupted. Stoker undermines the conventions of the travel narrative, just as Draculaundermines all the stable oppositionsstructuring Harker's - and his readers'- foreknowledgeof Easternand Western races. For the fact is, by Harker'sown criteria, Draculais the most "Western"character in the novel. No one is more rational, more intelligent, more organized, or even more punctual than the Count. No one plans more carefullyor researchesmore thoroughly. No one is more learned within his own spheres of expertise or more receptive to new knowledge. A reading that emphasizesonly the archaic, anarchic, "primitive" forces embodied by Dracula misses half the point. When Harkerarrives at the end of his jourey East, he finds, not some epitome of irrationality,but a most accomplishedOccidentalist. If Harker has been diligently combing the librarystacks, so too has the Count. Harker writes:"In the libraryI found, to my great delight, a vast numberof English books, whole shelves full of them, and bound volumes of magazines and newspapers.... The books were of the most varied kind - history, geogra- phy, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law - all relating to Eng- land and English life and customs and manners" (p. 30). Displaying an epistemophiliato rival Harker'sown, Dracula says: " 'These friends'- and

SUMMER1990 638 StephenD. Arata

he laid his hand on some of the books- 'have been good friendsto me, and for some yearspast, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure.Through them I have come to know your great England'" (p. 31). The novel thus sets up an equivalence between Harkerand Dracula: one can be seen as an Orientalist travelling East, the other - unsettling thought for Stoker'sVictorian readers- as an Occidentalisttravelling West. Dracula'sabsorption in Bradshaw'stimetables echoes Harker'sfetish for punctual trains, just as the Count's posture- reclining comfortablyon a sofa - recalls the attitude of the casual Wester readerabsorbed in a late-Victorian account of the exotic. But of course Dracula'spreoccupation with Englishculture is not mo- tivated by a disinteresteddesire for knowledge; instead, his Occidentalism representsthe essence of bad faith, since it both promotes and masks the Count's sinister plan to invade and exploit Britainand her people. By insist- ing on the connections between Dracula'sgrowing knowledge and his power to exploit, Stoker also forces us to acknowledgehow Western imperialpractices are implicated in certain formsof knowledge. Stoker continually draws our attention to the affinitiesbetween Harkerand Dracula,as in the oft-cited scene where Harkerlooks for Dracula'sreflection in the mirrorand sees only himself (p. 37). The text's insistence that these charactersare capableof sub- stituting for one another becomes most pressingwhen Dracula twice dons Harker'sclothes to leave the Castle (pp. 59, 64). Since on both occasionsthe Count's mission is to plunder the town, we are encouragedto see a corre- spondence between the vampire'sactions and those of the travelling West- erner. The equivalencebetween these two sets of actions is underlinedby the reaction of the townspeople, who have no trouble believing that it really is Harker, the visiting Englishman, who is stealing their goods, their money, their children. The peasantwoman's anguished cry - "Monster,give me my child!" (p. 60) - is directed at him, not Dracula. The shock of recognition that overtakesHarker, and presumablythe British reader, when he sees Dracula comfortablydecked out in Victorian garbis, however, only partof the terrorof this scene. The trulydisturbing notion is not that Dracula impersonatesHarker, but that he does it so well. Here indeed is the nub: Draculacan "pass."To impersonatean Englishman, and do it convincingly, is the goal of Dracula'spainstaking research into "English life and customs and manners," a goal Dracula himself freely, if ratherdisingenuously, acknowledges. When Harkercompliments him on his command of English, Draculademurs:

"Well I know that, did I move and speak in yourLondon, none there are who would not know me for a stranger.That is not enoughfor me. Here I am noble ... I am master.... [In London]I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me, or pause

VICTORIAN STUDIES ANXIETY OF REVERSECOLONIZATION 639

in his speakingif he hear my words, to say 'Ha, ha! a stranger!'I have been so long master that I would be master still - or at least that none other should be master of me." (p. 31). To understandfully how disquietingDracula's talents are, we have only to rememberthat in Victoriantexts non-Western"natives" are seldom- I am tempted to say never, since I have not come up with another example- per- mitted to "pass"successfully. Those who try, as for instance some of Kipling's natives do, become the occasion for low comedy or ridicule, since Kipling never allows the possibilitythat their attempts could succeed to be seriously entertained. Grish Chunder De in "The Head of the District" (1890) and Huree Babu, the comic devotee of Herbert Spencer, in Kim (1901) are two examples. Kipling voices a common assumption,one that structuresBritish accounts of non-Western cultures from Richard Burton to T. E. Lawrence. The ability to "pass"works in only one direction:Westerners can imperson- ate Easterners,never vice versa. Dracula is different, however. A large part of the terrorhe inspires originates in his ability to stroll, unrecognizedand unhindered, through the streets of London. As he tells Harker, his status as "master"resides in this ability. So long as no one recognizeshim as a "stranger,"he is able to work his will unhampered.Like RichardBurton travelling disguised among the Ar- abs, or like Kipling'subiquitous policeman Stricklandpassing himself off as a Hindu, Dracula gains power, becomes "master," by striving "to know as much about the natives as the natives themselves."20 The crucial difference is that in this case the natives are English. Links between knowledge and power are evident enough in Kipling's work; his two great impersonators- Stricklandand Kim - both work for the police, and each uses his talents in the service of colonial law and order. Dracula,too, understandshow knowledgeand powerare linked. In this case, however, knowledge leads, not to the stability envisioned by Kipling'schar- acters, but to anarchy:it underminessocial structures,disrupts the order of nature, and ends alarminglyin the appropriationand exploitation of bodies. Stoker'stext never explicitly acknowledgesthe continuity between Dracula's actions and British imperialpractices, but it continually forces us to see the first as a terrifyingparody of the second. In the Gothic mirrorthat Stoker holds up to late-Victorianculture, that culture, like Harkerpeering into the glass at Castle Dracula, cannot see, but is neverthelessintensely awareof, its monstrousdouble peering over its shoulder. Draculanot only mimics the practicesof British imperialists,he rap- idly becomes superior to his teachers. The racial threat embodied by the

20 RudyardKipling, "Miss Youghal's Sais," in PlainTales from the Hills (1886; rpt. Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress, 1987), p. 24.

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Count is thus intensified:not only is he more vigorous, more fecund, more "primitive"than his Western antagonists, he is also becoming more "ad- vanced." As Van Helsing notes, Dracula'sswift development will soon make him invincible:

In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child; but he is growing, and some things that were childish at the first are now of man'sstature. ... That big child-brainof his is working. Well for us, it is, as yet, a child-brain;for had he dared, at the first, to attempt certain things he would long ago have been beyond our power. (p. 360). Van Helsing'smetaphor of the child growinginto manhood is a familiar and homely way to explain Dracula'sprogress, but the image deflects attention from the notion of racial development that is the real source of the vampire'sthreat. Since Dracula'sgrowth is not boundby a single lifetime, but insteadcovers potentially limitlessgenerations, the properanalogy for his development is not that of an individual. He is in effect his own species, or his own race, displayingin his person the progressof ages. Draculacan himself stand in for entire races, and through him Stoker articulatesfears about the development of those races in relation to the English. A passagefrom Emily Gerardis relevant here, since Stoker seems to have had it in mind when he made his vampirea Roumanian. In discussing the variousraces in Transylvania,Gerard singles out the Roumaniansas rep- resenting what she calls "manhood in the future tense":

It is scarcelyhazardous to prophesythat this people have a greatfuture before them, and that a day will come when, other nations having degeneratedand spent their strength, these descendantsof the ancient Romans, risingphoenix-like from their ashes, will step forwardwith a whole fund of latent power and virgin material, to rule as masterswhere 21 formerlythey have crouched as slaves. Gerard's"prophesy" sounds much like Van Helsing'smetaphor for Dracula'sde- velopment.What Gerardagain allows us to see is that the anxietiesengendered by Count Draculado not derive wholly from his vampirism.He is dangerous as the representativeor embodimentof a race which, all evidence suggested, was poised to "stepforward" and become "masters"of those who had already "spenttheir strength."Even Dracula'sdestruction (which, if he stands in for an entire race, becomes a fantasized genocide) cannot entirely erase the "moral"endorsed by the rest of the story:that strongraces inevitablyweaken and fall, and are in turn displacedby strongerraces. The novel provides an extraordinarilylong list of once-proudpeoples, now vanquishedor vanished- not just the Huns, Berserkers,Magyars, and others who have passedthrough Carpathianhistory, but the Romanswho gave their name, and perhapstheir

21 Gerard,I, 211. Gerardaccepts the idea, commonin the nineteenthcentury, that the Roumanians possesseda Romanheritage. This defusessome of the potentialanxiety of her observation,since the Roumaniansare therebyreclaimed as a "Wester" race.

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blood, to the modem Roumanians, as well as the Danes and Vikings who, Mina tells us, once occupied Whitby (pp. 80-81). Do the British evade the fate of Huns, Danes, Vikings, and others, since Draculais destroyedby novel's end? Critical consensusfollows Christo- pher Craft when he suggeststhat Draculaembodies the "predictable,if varia- ble, triple rhythm"characteristic of Gothic novels: it "firstinvites or admitsa monster, then entertains or is entertained by monstrosityfor some extended duration, until in its closing pages it expels or repudiatesthe monster and all the disruptionthat he/she/it brings"(Craft, p. 107). This triple rhythm also characterizesmany narrativesof reverse colonization. The mingled anxiety and desire evident in these texts is relieved when the primitive or exotic invader - Haggard'sAyesha, Wells's Martians, Kipling'sSilver Man - is at last expelled and orderis restored.Dracula, however, is finally divided against itself; it strives to contain the threat posed by the Count but cannot do so entirely. The novel in fact ends twice. The narrativeproper closes with a fantasy of revitalized English supremacy:his invasion repulsed, the Count is driven back to Transylvania, and destroyedthere. Along with this is what David Seed calls the "diminishmentin stature"suffered by Draculaover the final third of the novel, as he is transformedfrom the essence of evil to a "dis- appointinglyconventional embodimentof Nordau'sand Lombroso'scriminal type."22 But the satisfactionof closure broughtabout by Dracula'sdiminish- ment and death is immediatelydisrupted by Harker's"Note," which consti- tutes Dracula'ssecond ending. Dracula, appropriately,is subduedby the weaponsof empire. Harker's "greatKukri knife," symbol of British imperialpower in India, and Morris's bowie knife, symbol of American westwardexpansion, simultaneouslyvan- quish the Count (p. 447), apparentlyreestablishing the accustomed dominance of Western colonizer over Eastern colonized. The triumph extends even furtherfor the British, since Draculais not the book'sonly fatality. The American Quincey Morrisdies too. His demise is not simply gratuitous,for the American represents,however obliquely, a second threat to Britishpower hidden behind Dracula's more overt antagonism. 23 A shadowy figure throughout, Morris is linked with vampiresand racial Others from his first appearance. When he courts Lucy, Morris reminds her of Othello; both arousedand frightened by his words, she comparesherself to "poor Desde- mona when she had such a dangerousstream poured in her ear, even by a black man" (p. 74). Morris'sdangerous hunting expeditions are a modem

22 Seed, p. 75. See Dracula,pp. 405-407, for Van Helsing'sdescription of the Count as a Lombrosan criminal.We shouldbeware, however, of equatingVan Helsing'sviews with Stoker's. 23 Aside fromMoretti's essay, little has been writtenon Morris.Hatlen gives the majorityview when he saysthat Morris'sfunction is to become"an honorary Englishman," whose "reward" is "thepriv- ilege of dyingto protectEngland" (p. 83).

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equivalent to the Count's warriorexploits, and Lucy'sfascination with his storiesof adventurerepeats Harker's initial responseto Dracula'stales. Later, it is left to Morristo pronounce the word "vampire"for the first time in the novel, when he comparesLucy's condition to that of a mare on the Pampas "after one of those big bats that they call vampireshad got at her in the night" (p. 183). Morris'sfamiliarity with vampirismapparently exceeds even Van Helsing's, since he correctlydiagnoses the etiology of Lucy'ssymptoms the first moment he sees her. 24 There is even a suggestionthat the American is at times leaguedwith Draculaagainst the others. Morrisleaves, without explanation, the crucial meeting in which Van Helsing first names the Count as their enemy; a moment later he fires his pistol into the room where they are seated (pp. 288- 289). He quickly explains that he was shooting at a "big bat" sitting on the windowsill, but this very brief and easily missed tableau - Morrisstanding outside the window in the place vacatedby Dracula,looking in on the assem- bled Westernerswho have narrowlyescaped his violence - suggestsstrongly that Stoker wants us to considerthe American and the Roumaniantogether. Morristhus leads a double life in Dracula.He standswith his allies in Anglo-Saxon brotherhood, but he also, as representative of an America about to emerge as the world'sforemost imperial power, threatensBritish su- periorityas surelyas Draculadoes. "If America can go on breedingmen like that," Seward remarks, "she will be a power in the world indeed."25 If Draculais abouthow vigorousraces inevitably displace decaying races, then the real dangerto Britainin 1897 comes not fromthe moribundAustro-Hungarian or Ottoman empires, but from the rising American empire. Without at all dismissingthe powerfulanxiety that the Count produces, we can say that Stoker'sattention to Draculascreens his anxiety at the threat representedby Morrisand America. Stoker insistently directs our gaze East, all the while looking back over his shoulder.26 It is appropriate,then, that Morris'sdeath,

24 Morettiextends these speculationsby askingwhy "Lucydies - and then turnsinto a vampire- immediatelyafter receiving a bloodtransfusion from Morris" (p. 76). I am indebtedto his essayfor pointingout that Morrisis the firstto mentionthe word"vampire." Moretti goes on to arguethat Morris,like Dracula,is a metaphorfor monopolycapitalism. 25 P. 209. Stoker'sambivalence about America is more visible in his earlierA Glimpseof America (London:Sampson Low, Marston& Co., 1886). Stokerclaims a kinshipbetween the two coun- tries, since their citizensspring from the sameracial stock, but he also sees Americabecoming ra- ciallydifferent, and he suggeststhat the countriesmay become antagonistic in the future.His racial languageis drawnstraight from late-Victorian evolutionism. 26 In this context, we can note Stoker'sapparent confusion over whereVan Helsingresides while in London.Van Helsingasks Seward to bookhim roomsat the GreatEastern Hotel (p. 138), but he apparentlynever stays there, since Sewardlater calls for him at the Berkeley(p. 161). The nameof the formerpoints clearlyenough to the potentialfor anxietyover the "GreatEast." The nameof the latter,however, points in the mostindirect way possible to the threatposed by the West, since it was BishopBerkeley who, afterhis visit to America,penned the well-knownline "Westwardthe courseof empiretakes its way."While Stoker'sconcerns about the Eastare generally on the surface of Dracula,it takessome diggingbefore his anxietiesover the West appear.

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not Dracula's,closes the story proper;appropriate, too, that the confronta- tion between Englandand America is displacedto the Balkans, traditionally the arena where Western powersconducted their struggleswith one another indirectly, or by proxy. England'striumph is immediatelytroubled and qualified,however, by Harker'sappended "Note," written seven years later. In announcing the birth of his son Quincey, Harkerunwittingly calls attention to the fact that the positions of vampire and victim have been reversed. Now it is Dracula whose blood is appropriatedand transformedto nourish a faltering race. As Mark Hennelly has noticed, in Quincey Harkerflows the blood not only of Jonathan and Mina, but of Dracula as well (p. 23). Little Quincey, who is not conceived until after Mina drinksthe Count's blood, is, moreover, bor on the anniversaryof Dracula'sand Morris'sdemise. ThroughRoumania, the English race invigorates itself by incorporatingthose racial qualities needed to reverseits own decline. American energy is appropriatedas well, since, as Jonathan tells us, Quincey Morrishas also contributedto his namesake'sra- cial makeup:"His mother holds, I know, the secret belief that some of our brave friend'sspirit has passed into" their son (p. 449). The "little band of men" can thus rest assuredthat the threats to Englishpower have been neu- tralizedon both fronts, Eastand West, throughthe appropriationof Dracula's blood and Morris's spirit. The cost of such assurance is great, however. Quincey Harkerstands as a mute reminderof the violence upon which the stability of the nation, as well as the family, rests. The remainderof Harker's"Note" is taken up with two related projects: his account of a return visit to Transylvania, and an apology for the "inauthenticity"of the documents comprisingthe novel. These two projects point back, in differentways, to the two genres - travel and Gothic - in which Draculaparticipates. Harker first relates that he has recently revisited the Carpathians:

In the summerof this year we made a journey to Transylvania,and went over the old groundwhich was, and is, to us so full of vivid and terriblememories. It was almost impossibleto believe that the things we had seen with our own eyes and heardwith our own ears were living truths. Everytrace of all that had been was blotted out. The castle stood as before, rearedhigh above a waste of desolation. (p. 449). The text seems to have come full circle and returnedsecurely to its starting point. The conventions of the travel genre are again invoked. Harker'sreturn to Transylvaniaostensibly reenacts the trip that opened the novel; or rather, it attempts to reinstate the conditions and attitudes which precededand, in a sense, enabled that trip. By returningsimply as a tourist (this time he has not even the excuse of businessto take him there), Harker implicitly asserts that nothing has intervened to make the tourist outlook

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problematic. The disruptioncaused by Dracula is entirely erased;the story ends where it began. But Harker'swords are strikinglytentative. In their generalmovement, his firsttwo sentencesassert that thingshave indeedreturned to "normal."The old groundwas (but is not now) full of vivid and terriblememories; we once believed (but do no longer) that what we experienced constituted a living truth. Yet each sentence is significantlyqualified, and qualifiedin such a way as to reverse its effects. The groundnot only was, but still is, full of terrible memories;the living truthsare not impossibleto believe, but almost impossi- ble, which means that belief in them is, at bottom, almost inevitable. The overall effect of the sentences is to exacerbatethe anxieties they are presuma- bly intended to assuage.The unalloyedconfidence and securityof the novel's opening pages cannot be recaptured;any return to the beginning is barred. The linchpin of the passage is Harker'soverdetermined assertion, "Everytrace of all that had been was blotted out." On the manifest level, Harker means simply that all evidence of the Count's horrific presence is gone from the land. His next comment contradictsthis claim, however, since "the castle stood as before." We might see this "blottingout," then, in psychological terms, as a repressionof the insights, the "living truths,"revealed by the narrative as a whole. Alternately (or simply in addition), what has been "blottedout" is preciselythat vision of Transylvania- landscape,people, culture - which Harker, as a travelling Westernersecure in his "foreknowledge"of the region, "saw"on his initial visit. The ideologicalfounda- tions of that vision having been disturbed,Harker can no longerperceive the land or its people in the same way. Significantly, he now sees nothing at all, only "a waste of desolation."The wastelandis the result, not of Dracula'sac- tivities - if that were the case, Harkerwould have noted such a wasteland on his earlier,not his later, visit - but of the desolation that has occurredto Harker'sand the Victorian reader'saccustomed modes of perception. Finally, though, both these kinds of erasures, psychological and epistemological,lead to a differentkind of obliteration.The "blottingout" of "traces"points to the cancellation of writing, to Harker's(though not neces- sarilyStoker's) attempt to disavowthe Gothic narrativepreceding the "Note." When he returns from Transylvania, Harker retrieves the mass of papers comprisingthe narrative- diaries, journals, letters, memoranda,and so on - which have remainedburied and unreadin a safe. "We were struckby the fact," he writes in an oft-cited disclaimer,"that, in all the massof materialof which the record is composed, there is hardlyone authentic document!" Such disclaimersare often found in Gothic fictions; in the same way, Harker's"Note" invokes the narrativeframing devices that are one of Gothic's distinctive features.But Harkeruses this device to repudiateparts of his narrative, whereas in Gothic the function of the frame is preciselyto establishthe narrative'sauthenticity. Indeed, this is the function of the unsignednote that

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opens Dracula:to overcome readerlyskepticism "so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of latter-daybelief may stand forth as simple fact" (p. 8). For Harker,however, the inauthenticityof the documents (what would make for authenticity is unclear) casts furtherdoubt on the veracity of portionsof the narrative."We could hardlyexpect anyone, even did we wish to, to accept these [documents]as proofs of so wild a story" (p. 449). Not only does Harkernot expect us to believe the collected accounts, he does not even "wish [us] to." At the same time that he tries to recapturethe comfortingtourist outlook, Harkeralso tries to erase the "wild"or Gothic parts of his "story,"to blot out all their traces. The two gestures are complementary. In effect, Harker asserts the story's "truth" up until the moment he enters Castle Dracula;the moment, in other words,when his travel narrative,disrupted by the Count's Occidentalism, becomes a Gothic narrative. The trouble, in Harker'sview, starts there. Once the dichotomies on which Harker's(and imperialBritain's) tourist perspectiverest are exploded, anything is possible. The "Note" tries to recontain the anxieties generatedby that moment of rup- ture by invalidatingwhat follows, by calling into question its "authenticity" as narrative. The "realism"of the travel narrativegives way to the fantasy constructionsof the Gothic, which can be dismissed- as Harkerurges us to do - as untrue. "We want no proofs; we ask none to believe us," Van Helsing says in the novel's final moments, and his words sound remarkably like a plea.

Universityof Chicago

SUMMER1990