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PARTISAN REVIEW
animals that are nocturnal, familiar, and alien. A wolfis an uncanny
dog; a bat is an uncanny bird; a rat is domestic and wild,
heimlich
and
unheimlich.
Dracula's bite is equally uncanny. Although his
canines are wolfish , the holes he leaves in Lucy's neck look to Mina
"like pin-pricks," as though made by the pin of a brooch pushed ac–
cidentally through a tiny fold of skin. Dracula's bite, in short, is that
of a serpent, author of all our woes .
Like Satan, Dracula is a dark parody of Christ, whom he
quotes : "The blood is the life!" he says, reminding us that he too par–
ticipates in a kind of Eucharist - for Dracula not only drinks his vic–
tim's blood , but he also makes Mina, at least, drink some of his,
from a vein he opens in his breast. And as Dracula recapitulates
Satan, so do his victims recapitulate Eve. Late in the novel, after
Jonathan Harker discovers that Dracula has begun to visit his wife,
Mina, he comes to a resolution:
To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina
must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that
unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old
times one vampire meant many : just as their hideous bodies
could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruit–
ing sergeant for their ghastly ranks .
If Mina is going to play Eve , he will play Adam, as bite for bite, the
repressed slowly returns .
In Harker's mention of sacred earth there is even a sign of some
dim awareness on Stoker's part (and their names rhyme for a reason)
that puritanical Christianity produces prurient fantasies, of which
Dracula is an example . In the movies, Dracula must sleep in his own
coffin; in the novel , it is enough that he sleep in consecrated ground.
"This evil thing," says Van Helsing, "is rooted deep in all good; in
soil barren of holy memories it cannot rest." When Dracula travels
from Transylvania to London, he brings with him fifty crates of con–
secrated earth , to make sure he isn't caught short. Van Helsing and
his comrades render these coffin crates, one by one, unfit for
Dracula's repose through a kind of homeopathic magic, by sprin–
kling them with holy water and bits of consecrated wafer. Van Hel–
sing's explanation is not impressive for its logic:
And now, my friends , we have a duty here to do . We must
sterilise this earth , so sacred of holy memories, that he has
