George Stade
DRACULA'S WOMEN
Dracula's attributes, as we fit together the scattered pieces
of evidence, amount to those of a negative Eros, not the plump,
dimpled, and cuddly babe of love, but an ancient, lean , mean
demon of lust made kinky by repression. He is rank of breath, hairy
of palm, livid of lip, and anemic, all of which, according to cau–
tionary old wives' tales, are what you get and deserve for self-abuse
and sexual excess. His brows meet over his nose; his teeth are sharp,
his ears pointed - all signs of his animal nature . He has a "grip of
steel," which means that once he gets a hold on you, he doesn't let
go. On the other hand, he does not embrace you without an invita–
tion: he will not cross your threshold or sill unless you ask him in.
When early in the novel (by Bram Stoker, of course) Jonathan
Harker visits Dracula's castle, he is at first left standing outside the
door. The count, from inside, greets him like this:
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!" He
made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue,
as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone . The
instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he
moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped
mine with a strength which made me wince ....
Once you have entered his house or he has entered yours, he
will hypnotize you . Under his penetrating glare you will become
passive, submissive, or, as we used to say, feminine; your will and
intelligence, all your inhibitory faculties, become subservient to
what they normally inhibit. "I know that when the Count wills me I
must go," says Mina Harker after Dracula has had his way with her.
"I know that ifhe tells me to come in secret, 1 must come by wile; by
Editor's Note: This essay is an excerpt from the forthcoming volume,
The Psychology
oj
Men: New Psychoanalytic Perspectives,
edited by Gerald 1. Fogel, M.D., Frederick M.
Lane, M .D ., and Robert S. Liebert, M .D ., to be published by Basic Books, Inc.
Copyright
c
1986 by Basic Books, Inc.
