Women with Fangs Intimidating Victorian Men
Analyzing the repression of sexuality in LeFanu's Carmilla and Stoker's Dracula.
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
- Edmund Burke
During the Victorian period, the traditional woman was often viewed as something pure—virginal—and that she was to be the submissive-type in any relationship. There was also a sense of fear revolving female sexuality, or any manner of sex:
“Sexuality was carefully confined; it was moved inside the house… On the subject of sex, silence became the rule” (Foucault 3).
In both LeFanu’s Carmilla and Stoker’s Dracula, the period-typical anxieties surrounding a woman’s sexuality are expressed heavily throughout.
Fear as Part of the Sublime
Fear, as Edmund Burke expresses, is a major component of the sublime. “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear” (Burke 39). This fear operates in a similar manner to that of actual pain, and it is this sense of terribleness that is sublime, “whether this cause of terror be endued with greatness of dimensions or not” (Burke 39).
Because this emotion of terror is sublime, the fear of female sexuality would consequently be part of the sublime as well. This emotion surrounding female sexuality is not built upon any logical fact, but because “things that cause terror generally affect the bodily organs by the operation of the mind suggesting the danger,” these Victorian men thought a sexually charged woman was a danger (Burke 117).
Repression of Female Sexuality
Carmilla focuses heavily on the repression of female sexuality. There is an obvious connection between vampirism and that of eroticism, and with this being one of the first novels to portray a female vampire, it goes deeper to share this concept of a woman’s sexual desires—or, since Carmilla’s bloodthirst is after another woman, homosexuality—being something of a threat.
Specifically, at the time that this novel was written, any woman who expressed such sexual deviances was deemed clinically insane:
“The patriarchal society of the Victorian period allowed women little license when it came to deciding their own futures or allowing them the same freedoms as men” (Craig 10).
While men were also sexually repressed, they were not typically viewed as being psychotic, whereas for women, much of this “insanity” was believed to derive from the female genitalia.
With this, there was the belief that removing a woman’s genitalia—specifically the clitoris—would simultaneously extract any psychosis from the patient. In Carmilla, the clearest example of this action against woman’s sexuality is when the wanderer offers to file down one of Carmilla’s teeth. “Your noble friend… has the sharpest tooth,—long, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle… now if it happens to hurt the young lady, and I think it must, here am I, here are my file, my punch, my nippers; I will make it round and blunt” (LeFanu, ch. 4).
If vampirism is a reflection of woman’s sexuality, this act of filing down Carmilla’s fang represents removing a woman’s genitalia. The fact that a man is the one offering to do so ties into this as well.
Another instance of this is during the actual death of Carmilla, where two “medical men” carry out the ritualistic act. “A sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire… the head was struck off, and… the body and head was next placed on a pile of wood, and reduced to ashes” (LeFanu, ch. 15). Here, there is the apparent symbolism of these medical men who are slaying the beast, reflecting the way that nineteenth-century doctors would castrate a woman who was diagnosed as being clinically insane. This scene is extremely brutal—“approaching in violence… in proportion to the nearness of the cause”—going hand-in-hand with how medical professionals would treat women at the time (Burke 116).
Resisting Men’s Control
There is also the idea of how Carmilla stems away from the norm of men holding a level of control over women, especially in terms of sexuality. “Where there is power, there is resistance,” and Carmilla is the perfect example of resistance (Foucault 95).
As mentioned earlier, a woman’s sexuality was suppressed at this time, so far to the extreme that when Carmilla began expressing her attractions to Laura, Laura first assumed she was a man in disguise.
“What if a boyish lover had found his way into the house, and sought to prosecute his suit in masquerade, with the assistance of a clever old adventuress” (LeFanu, ch. 4).
She is unfamiliar with such displays of affection coming from another woman because there is the taught knowledge of keeping these desires to oneself—only a man could express themselves in such a manner. Despite this, Carmilla represents the sexual freedom that nineteenth-century men feared, and she is able to pull Laura into her circle, causing the other woman to respond to such temptations.
Laura has mixed feelings towards Carmilla, which represents her hesitancy to obtain the same sexual freedoms. “I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence” (LeFanu, ch. 4). To Laura, this liberation seems all too pleasing, but her mind is also caught up with the times, causing her to deflate and view her emotions toward Carmilla as “abhorrent.”
In the novel, Carmilla is expressed as being a dangerous individual, and she is the one to cause Laura—the previously innocent girl—to fall victim to such seductions. It is men who will “save” her—the medical men who actually ended the vampire’s life, as well as Laura’s father who took her on a tour of Italy as a means to reintegrate her back to normalcy.
Repression of Male Sexuality
In terms of Dracula, “almost all readings presume a given sexuality that is repressed and displaced throughout the text” (Spencer 197). Most of the characters within the novel are perfect cookie-cutter images of Victorian-era gender norms, with the exception of those who have fallen victim to a vampire’s bite.
During Jonathan’s imprisonment at Dracula’s castle, the three vampires who attempt to seduce him are a Victorian nightmare—they are highly sexualized, sensual, and aggressive in their attempts.
“The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness…” (Stoker, ch. 3).
These women are nothing like how they would have been expected to act, had they been human. “The repression of instinct is a special prerogative of properly socialized persons,” and these women are clearly lacking in this department (Brophy 60). Taking these gender norms and presenting the antithesis of them as the “villains” in the story symbolizes how women at the time would be painted as monsters if they were to not follow the strict guidelines of being an active woman in society. These warped images of what a woman should be are just that.
This scene also ties into the suppression of sexuality. Unlike Carmilla, Stoker expresses the repression of male sexuality as well, which is perfectly encapsulated in this moment. As these vampires make to entertain Jonathan, he finds himself unable to look at them—“I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes”—and describes their actions as “thrilling,” yet “repulsive,” all at the same time (Stoker, ch. 3).
These women are able to act on their sexual desires, yet Jonathan has been brought up in a world that frowns upon such ideas, causing him to almost feel uncomfortable by the vampires’ obvious advances. It is apparent that he is interested, though, especially when he writes, “I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart,” but these learned experiences seem to taint his growing attraction to the women (Stoker, ch. 3).
In the novel, this hyper-sexualization is soon directed towards the previously innocent Lucy, but only after she turns into a vampire. “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” (Stoker, ch. 12).
Now that Lucy is no longer suffering from these period-typical repressions, she is the same monster that has been taunting the party throughout the story, acting as another deterrent to their plans of flushing out all evil. Because of this transformation, the only way to “restore” her lost purity is by snuffing it out entirely—in the case of the novel, by means of driving a wooden stake through her heart. This also symbolizes the lengths that men would go to destroy any sense of sexual liberation a woman is granted.
Final Thoughts…
Carmilla expresses Carmilla’s sexuality as something dangerous—Laura’s illness—and worthy of punishment—her gruesome death—but Laura still craves it, not wishing to fully escape from the throes of these consequences. Now that she knows what sexual freedom tastes like, she can never go back to the way things were before. In Dracula, the women that break away from this repression are portrayed as monsters—vampires—and their stories all seem to end in horror.
Together, these two novels perfectly encapsulate the period-typical anxieties that surrounded both male and female sexuality, along with the methods in which those afraid would use in attempts to stifle and repress such emotions.
Brophy, Gregory Donald. “Graphomania: Composing Subjects in Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction and Technology.” The University of Western Ontario, 2010.
Burke, Edmund. “A Philosophical Inquiry Into The Origin Of Our Ideas Of The Sublime And Beautiful.” P.F. Collier & Son Company, 1909-14.
Craig, Stephanie F. “Ghosts of the Mind: The Supernatural and Madness in Victorian Gothic Literature.” The University of Southern Mississippi, 2012.
Foucault, Michel. “The History of Sexuality.” A Division of Random House, Inc., 1990, pp. 3-35.
Foucault, Michel. “The History of Sexuality.” Pantheon Books, pp. 77-159.
LeFanu, J. Sheridan. Carmilla. The Project Gutenberg, 2003, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10007/10007-h/10007-h.htm.
Spencer, Kathleen L. “Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic, and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crises.” ELH, vol. 59, no. 1, 1992, pp. 197-225, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2873424. Accessed 23 April 2021.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. The Project Gutenberg, 1995, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm.