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"There Was No Sign of Man in It": Casting Dracula As Posthuman and Valuing the Progressive Vampire

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The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Master's Theses Summer 8-1-2017 "There was No Sign of Man in It": Casting Dracula as Posthuman and Valuing the Progressive Vampire Mary Elizabeth Wolverton University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses Recommended Citation Wolverton, Mary Elizabeth, ""There was No Sign of Man in It": Casting Dracula as Posthuman and Valuing the Progressive Vampire" (2017). Master's Theses. 306. https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/306 This Masters Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “THERE WAS NO SIGN OF MAN IN IT”: CASTING DRACULA AS POSTHUMAN AND VALUING THE PROGRESSIVE VAMPIRE by Mary Elizabeth Wolverton A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Letters, and the Department of English at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts August 2017 “THERE WAS NO SIGN OF MAN IN IT”: CASTING DRACULA AS POSTHUMAN AND VALUING THE PROGRESSIVE VAMPIRE by Mary Elizabeth Wolverton August 2017 Approved by: ________________________________________________ Dr. Alexandra Valint, Committee Chair Assistant Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Nicolle Jordan, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Katherine Cochran, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Luis Iglesias Chair, Department of English ________________________________________________ Dr. Karen S. Coats Dean of the Graduate School COPYRIGHT BY Mary Elizabeth Wolverton 2017 Published by the Graduate School ABSTRACT “THERE WAS NO SIGN OF MAN IN IT”: CASTING DRACULA AS POSTHUMAN AND VALUING THE PROGRESSIVE VAMPIRE by Mary Elizabeth Wolverton August 2017 Although not an immediate commercial success, Dracula has since become a seminal example of Gothic horror at the fin-de-siècle, leading not only to film, stage, and television adaptations, but also to literary reimaginings and a plethora of scholarship. I argue that the vampires in Dracula do not fit into the traditional critical understandings of the vampire; rather, they belong in two different but related categories recently theorized by science fiction studies and related to human evolution: transhuman and posthuman. I suggest that a reading of the novel that prioritizes the pervasive influence of evolutionary theory on Victorian literature encourages a reading of vampires as a posthuman species. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) challenged and troubled the Victorians, who now had to consider humans as a species that not only evolved over time but that could also, like other species, go extinct. Humans in a state of transhuman evolution and vampires as posthuman call into question a common belief that Victorian fin-de-siècle literature echoes contemporary fears of regression post-Darwin. Instead, the vampires in this new reading highlight Victorian fears of the progression of another species that will naturally overtake homo sapiens. Having read the text as an expression of a fear of the vampire’s evolution, I will then argue that rather than limiting the discussion of Stoker’s novel to fin-de-siècle Gothic horror, we can also read Stoker’s novel as a work of science fiction. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work owes a sincere debt to the thesis workshop of Dr. Nicolle Jordan and the editorial assistance of Erin Gipson, Erica van Schiak, Britani Baker, and Jessica Cloud. Additional thanks goes to the paper’s chair, Dr. Alexandra Valint, and committee members, Drs. Nicolle Jordan and Kate Cochran. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii “There was No Sign of Man in It” ...................................................................................... 1 Transhuman and Posthuman ........................................................................................... 7 The Evolution of the Vampire ...................................................................................... 21 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................... 33 iv “There was No Sign of Man in It” Despite scores of bloodsuckers on the page and screen since his creation, the most widely recognized vampire in the world remains Bram Stoker’s 1897 creation, Dracula. Although not an immediate commercial success, the novel has since become a seminal example of Gothic horror at the fin-de-siècle,1 leading not only to film, stage, and television adaptations, but also to literary reimaginings and a plethora of scholarship. Much of the critical conversation on the text seeks to understand the vampires themselves, reading the vampires of Stoker’s novel in one of four ways:2 first, as degenerate humans; second, as stand-ins for humans of another race, sexuality, or religion; third, as regressive, abhuman beings; or fourth, as mutants outside of the known and recognized taxonomy. I argue that the vampires in Dracula do not fit into any of these four categories; rather, they belong in two different but related categories recently theorized by science fiction studies and related to human evolution: transhuman and posthuman. I suggest that a reading of the novel that prioritizes the pervasive influence of evolutionary theory on Victorian literature encourages a reading of vampires as a posthuman species. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) challenged and troubled the Victorians, who now had to consider humans as a species that not only evolved over time but that could also, like other species, go extinct. Humans in a state of transhuman evolution and vampires as posthuman call into 1 Fin-de-siècle translates to “end-of-the-century,” and refers to the period between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The term came into the common vocabulary around 1889 (“Fin-de-siècle”). 2 There have been numerous other readings of Dracula, of course, including Franco Moretti’s interpretation of the Count as manifesting monopoly capitalism and Talia Schaffer and Christopher Craft’s address of Dracula as representing homoerotic desire. However, I want to focus on common readings that are related to evolution; therefore, I will limit my analysis to these four conversations. 1 question a common belief that Victorian fin-de-siècle literature echoes contemporary fears of regression post-Darwin. Instead, the vampires in this new reading highlight Victorian fears of the progression of another species, a fear that a species stronger, smarter, faster, and more intelligent than man will naturally overtake homo sapiens. Having read the text as an expression of a fear of the vampire’s evolution, I will then argue that rather than limiting the discussion of Stoker’s novel to fin-de-siècle Gothic horror, we can also read Stoker’s novel as a work of science fiction. Dracula opens with Jonathan Harker, an Englishman, travelling to Transylvania to complete business with a shadowy figure named Count Dracula. The trip goes awry as Dracula is revealed to be a vampire intent on conquering England (if not the larger European continent). As Dracula sets into motion his plan for conquest, he travels to London to begin the process of creating other vampires by biting them, including Jonathan’s fiancé, Mina, and her friend, Lucy. Mina; Lucy’s three suitors (Dr. John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris); and Dr. Seward’s professional mentor Dr. Van Helsing work together to oppose and defeat Dracula; this group is known as the “Crew of Light”.3 Lucy, once bitten, transforms into a vampire, and the Crew stakes and beheads her; Quincey Morris dies fighting Dracula; and Mina very nearly becomes a vampire. The Crew must chase Dracula across London before the vampire retreats to his continental home, where The Crew of Light corners and stakes him through the heart. The vampire menace that the Crew of Light defeats lends itself to allegory, and, accordingly, readings of the novel offer a multitude of interpretations on how to read the 3 This nickname, now used widely among critics, originated in Christopher Craft’s essay, “‘Kiss Me with Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1984). 2 vampire. Thus, before I offer my own interpretation of the vampire, I will look to previous vampire scholarship on which my understanding builds and from which it departs. The first way to read the vampire is as a degenerate man, a reading which builds on Victorian concerns of degeneration theory and criminal physiognomy, like that which Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso, respectively, popularized in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century particularly, an increase in knowledge about the human body and Darwin’s theories helped create a strong fear in Victorian England of man’s degeneration, that humans and society were becoming a “morbid deviation from an original type,” that culture had become so corrupt that individuals were no
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