"I Would Be Master Still": <i>Dracula</i> as the Aftermath of the Wilde Trials and Irish Land League Policies

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of sexual identity, gender, and politics in the specifically Irish context of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Neither Stoker nor Dracula are typically thought of as Irish, but by highlighting Stoker's presentation of "thirdspace" characters, as well as his own "thirdspace" identities, it becomes possible to see the distinctly Irish origins and influence of the author and the novel. Critics have in the last 20 years read Draculaeither as a novel with queer concerns or a novel with political concerns. By looking at these two aspects together and in light of each other, a specifically Irish, postcolonial understanding of the novel becomes possible. In 2001, vampires are often portrayed as bisexual, promiscuous, and androgynous. In 1895, Stoker presented vampires as having blended characteristics of masculinity and femininity. Female vampires have masculine sexual behaviour, while male vampires like Dracula have typically feminine sexual behaviour. This picture of vampires mirrors the way homosexuals were being discussed by some theorists at that time. Particularly in the aftermath of the Oscar Wilde trial, scientists came to see homosexuals as people who possessed both masculine and feminine characteristics, as a third sex. Also as a result of the trial, it became popular to discuss homosexuals as a group that restocked their populations by converting young people. Conversion was also the typical way to conceive of colonial activities during this time. Natives were considered backward or inferior, so converting them to English lifestyles and customs was seemingly the kindest action the English could take. Replacing native customs with industrialisation and technology was considered a progressive type of colonialism. Stoker portrays this conversion method of colonialism in the character of Dracula. The Count threatens to take London not by force, but by slowly converting its citizens to his way of life. This intersection of colonialism and homosexuality in Draculaallows Stoker to re-define the importance of a third position to the contemporary Irish problem of the Land League. Like homosexuals at that time, the Anglo-Irish also occupied a third position, considered neither truly Irish nor truly English. Just as it takes those defined by a third position to defeat Dracula's attempt at colonisation, Stoker seems to suggest it will take the Anglo-Irish to settle colonial issues in Ireland successfully.