Blog Post #1 - The Otherness of Female Sexuality in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Hie Jin Shim

As established in Robin Wood’s “The American Nightmare,” there are eight variations of “the other” or “otherness” that society tries to repress. “Otherness represents that which bourgeois ideology cannot recognize (Wood 27).” There are two ways of dealing with otherness: either eradicate it or assimilate it into society. Of the eight variations of otherness, one in particular can be closely examined in this scene (among many other scenes) in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula—Women’s sexuality.

During the scene in which Count Dracula comes to finally claim Lucy’s life, the first few seconds are shot in the perspective of Dracula. The tracking shot is fast, fleeting, choppy, and wildly focused on moving creatures such as a frog, insect, and man, similar to how a beast hunting its prey would move (which is essentially what Dracula is doing here). However, because the speed in which the shot is moving is abnormally fast and in close proximity to the ground, it can be implied, and later confirmed, that he is in the form of a beast. His presence passes over a bush of vibrant red flowers which quickly decay and turn black when Dracula catches sight of them. This is symbolic in many ways but we’ll just focus on two: it represents death, Dracula, coming to claim the life of the flirtatious and blithe Lucy, hence why the flowers are red, and it also represents Dracula’s feelings of passion and love for his darling Mina transformed into anguish after she leaves him to marry another man.

Next we see Lucy lying in her bed, clad in a sheer red nightgown. The color red represents Lucy’s amplified wanton tendencies and feelings of lust as a result of falling victim to Dracula and his bite. She lies in bed, a place of lovemaking, gasping and moaning with her breast exposed. This can be interpreted as sexual appetite as she awaits the arrival of her new master, Dracula.

The camera frequently cuts back and forth between the bedroom and the church in which Jonathan and Mina are getting married. This offers the audience the true motive behind Dracula killing Lucy. Mina stands in the house of God, who Dracula renounces earlier in the film, after rejecting Dracula’s love to marry Jonathan. Now in despair of losing the one chance he had of finding love, he attacks someone whom Mina holds very dear in her heart; her precious friend Lucy. This is as an act of revenge: If he cannot find happiness in love, then he will seek vengeance through others’ loss. By killing Lucy, who was engaged to soon to be married, he not only destroyed her chance of finding the love and happiness he could never hope to achieve, but also caused Mina great suffering in losing her best friend.

As the camera cuts from Mina in the church to Dracula outside Lucy’s bedroom window, he proclaims that “your impotent men with their foolish spells cannot protect you from my power.” This acts as foreshadowing: he may have lost Mina to Jonathan but he will certainly win her back, for no mortal man can defeat him. Dracula condemns Lucy to “living death” and “eternal hunger for living blood.” The scene cuts back to Mina and Jonathan drinking wine in marriage and then back to Dracula drinking Lucy’s blood in her eternal damnation, acting as a striking parallel between the two events. Lucy’s death, or “vampirification” if you will, is quite sensual and provocative. She is shown not crying out in pain but moaning and clutching to her bed sheets in sexual desire. This creates the association between women sexuality and the unholy and sacrilegious; what was once pure and clean has been damned and made filthy at the hands of one of God’s betrayers. The scene fades out with a shot of Jonathan and Mina sharing their first kiss as man and wife. This invokes empathy in the audience, who sees Dracula’s pain and suffering and understands, but not necessarily agrees with, his desire to seek revenge.

Works Cited

Wood, Robin, and Lippe, Richard "The American Nightmare." Essays on the Horror Film. Ed. Andrew Britton. Toronto, 1979. 25-32