i am very against assigning identity markers to historical figures who had no access to our modern understanding of sexuality and gender identity, but the complicated and fraught relationship between bram stoker and oscar wilde and how it undoubtedly informed dracula (even if only unconsciously) makes me want to break a hole into the sound barrier
i’m still foaming at the mouth about this so let me just start by saying that i believe it’s inherently immoral to ascribe modern labels to pre-modern figures who cannot vouch for themselves and whose innermost thoughts we will never have access to. that said, if we inspect Stoker’s life and records, we’d probably find ourselves reluctant to identify him as a heterosexual man, as our modern sensibilities define it.
Bram Stoker spent his entire life being intrinsically linked to Oscar Wilde. It was a bond he must have cherished once, though he later damned it. It was likely defined by equal parts admiration, jealousy, desire, and competition. They were raised together as childhood friends. Wilde’s mother cherished Stoker as if he were one of her own. Despite this, Stoker lived perpetually in Wilde’s shadow. Wilde outperformed Stoker on just about every platform. He was a stronger academic, more popular, and infamous for his roaring personality. Across their many shared circles of friends and writers, Wilde was a literary and cultural rock star. Stoker would never achieve comparable icon status, even after Dracula’s success.
Even in love, wherever Stoker was, so, too, was Wilde.
Notably, Wilde and Stoker competed for the affections of Florence Balcombe, Wilde’s first love and Stoker’s eventual wife. But that’s not all – Like Wilde, Stoker was part of the “little cult” (Stoker’s words) surrounding Walt Whitman. In the queer circles of Stoker and Wilde’s contemporaries, keeping photographs of Whitman and waxing poetics about how much one admired the American poet was a way of flagging – think of it like the Victorian gentleman’s handkerchief code.
On January 1882, Wilde and Walt Whitman would spend a few hours together in America, free of reporters or onlookers. This was a strange feat of privacy for both authors, as they both had a flare for publicity and spectacle. Later, Wilde would tell a friend of that night: “the kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips.”
On Valentines Day of 1872, Stoker sent two letters to Walt Whitman. This was not the first time he’d written letters to Whitman – but it wasthe first time he mustered enough courage to actually send them. In his emotional and gushing letter, Stoker says he and Whitman are the “same kind of man.” He expresses his love for him. He circles around the suggestion of some secret confession, writing: “I only hope that we may sometimes meet and I shall be able perhaps to say what I cannot write.”
In 1895, Wilde went to trial for the charges of sodomy and gross indecency. I think it’s reductive to argue that Draculais simply a closeted response to Wilde’s persecution- the creation of great literature is seldom so straight-forward. But I don’t think we should ignore that Stoker began writing Dracula literally a month after Wilde was publicly condemned for his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. By the time Draculawas published in 1897, Wilde had been imprisoned for two years. The abuse Wilde suffered while imprisoned created chronic health problems that would kill him two years later.
Of the many people who advocated for Wilde throughout his imprisonment and helped relocate him into a more humane prison, Stoker was never one of them. He never visited Wilde in prison. He did not write him letters. To my knowledge, he never spoke publicly about him ever again. In fact, he would go onto remove seemingly all record and mention of Wilde from his writings and personal documents, in attempt to blot Wilde out of his life entirely. By 1912, Stoker would go onto advocate for the imprisonment of all homosexual writers.
How much of Stoker’s homophobia, which is demonstrative across almost all of his writing, was rooted in self-loathing? What did Wilde’s persecution trigger within Stoker, besides this novel? We’ll never know. But I do know that, in Dracula, the transgressive power of queerness is both monster and savior. Queerness is in the horror of Count Dracula and it is in the intimacy between Jonathan and the crew of men who save him. There’s queerness in the love between Mina and Lucy and there’s queerness in what Lucy becomes because of that. Of all the people Count Dracula preys upon, he never utters the word “love” for anyone but Jonathan. There’s queerness in that, goddammit. And there’s queerness, too, in the novel’s heteronormative conclusion. And it makes me really very sad for Stoker, if I’m being honest.
There is no mention of Wilde in Dracula, but as far as I’m concerned, his fingerprints, his memory, and his ghost walk through the halls of the text — and I’ll defend that.
Loving Dracula Daily of course but it’s insanely hilarious to me that I have to check my email and read a chapter of Dracula before coming on tumblr in the morning lest a 125 year old book be spoiled for me
I have to admit I’m half tempted to try and find out if I can join late just in order to know where everyone is at.
Like, I’ve read the book. I know what happens.
It’s just that it is ALLover my dash right now.
You CAN join late, the site even has an archive so you can catch up!
I just want everyone new to Dracula and reading Dracula Daily to note that you are getting to read this novel in a weird and wonderful way that its author absolutely did not intend. This is not a straight serialization of the text. Dates skip around in Draculaas it is written, moving the reader backwards and forwards in time to help shape the specific narrative Bram Stoker wanted to tell. We all will–in fact–be skipping ahead some chapters in a few days to meet another narrator only to skip immediately back to catch up with our collective friend Jonathan Harker.
And I think this is rad! I think it’s amazing to have a bunch of readers who are reading this book–not as Bram Stoker wrote it–but in a way that conforms to the steady march of events within it. This is a unique opportunity in that you guys don’t get to shape your reactions in relation to things you know will happen later. You can’t have your dread or anticipation undercut by future events.
Like all the characters you’re going to meet, you just have to wait for Dracula to act upon you.
Stoker wrote Dracula as a direct reactionto the Wilde trials
Many of Dracula’s characteristics actually echo Wilde as described to the trials, and Dracula’s lifestyle resembles an exaggerated version of precautions to hide homosexuality
Stoker is basically the pro-closeted 1890s alternative to Wilde’s flamboyancy, and that comes out in how he portrays Dracula and Jonathan Harker
Like if you look deeper into Stoker’s letters to Whitman, he’s practically obsessed with feeling “naturally secretive” and “reticent”
(Also he and Wilde had some weird personal rivalry going on, since Stoker married Wilde’s definitely-not-straight ex-fiancee, though later they were friendly…there’s a lot to unpack here)
So, arguably, Dracula was Stoker’s way of apologizing for his silence during Wilde’s trials.
Some highlights:
Wilde’s trial had such a profound effect on Stoker precisely because it fed Stoker’s pre-existing obsession with secrecy, making Stoker retrospectively exaggerate the secrecy in his own writings on male love.
It is difficult, Stoker admits, to speak openly about “so private a matter” as desire. In carefully calibrated language, Stoker asks forgiveness from those who might see that his silence is a sin-to those few nameless souls who know his secret affinity with Wilde.
Since Dracula is a dreamlike projection of Wilde’s traumatic trial, Stoker elaborated and distorted the evidence that the prosecutor used to convict Wilde. In particular, the conditions of secrecy necessary for nineteenth-century homosexual life–nocturnal visits, shrouded windows, no servants–become ominous emblems of Count Dracula’s evil.
Dracula…represents not so much Oscar Wilde as the complex of fears, desires, secrecies, repressions, and punishments that Wilde’s name evoked in 1895. Dracula is Wilde-as-threat, a complex cultural construction not to be confused with the historical individual Oscar Wilde.
tl;dr:
Stoker is actually too repressed to function
Oscar Wilde (especially his trials) absolutely influenced Stoker
Dracula gay
If anyone wants to read a very well-written and surprisingly entertaining account on pretty much everything and everyone Stoker was influenced by, ESPECIALLY his connection with Wilde and Whitman, do yourself a favour and read “Something in the Blood” by David J. Skal. It’s the most thorough recent account on everything that made Dracula and the onlly one that doesn’t shy away from all the points in the above post (Also, it won the Stoker award, which is basically the Pulitzer for horror(-related) literature - There’s a joke in there somewhere, but my brain’s too tired to craft it rn
I. Letter to President Incorporated Law Society Letter from [ditto] to Abraham Aaronson solicitor enclosing copy of reply Letter to Aaronson from Count ___ Styria asking to come or send trustworthy law who does not speak German Letters from latter to his principal with inter alia letters to his pal (In this series of letters is told visit to Castle — Munich Dead house — people on train knowing address dissuade him — met at station storm arrive old castle — left in courtyard driver disappears Count appears — describe old dead man made alive waxen colour dead dark eyes — what fire in them — not human — hell fire — Stay in castle. No one but old man but no pretence of being alone — old man in waking trance — Young man goes out sees girls one tries to kiss him not on lips but throat Old Count interferes — rage & fury diabolical — This man belongs to me I want him. A prisoner for a time — looks at books — English law directory sortes Virgilianae central place marked with point of knife. Instructed to buy property — requirement consecrated church on grounds — near river
So fascinating to have the book presented in chronological order instead of non-chronologically, as Stoker arranged it. This juxtaposition does not exist in the published book. It’s all horror. There is no news from home. It’s amazing how much it changes the experience.
ID: A digital drawing of Count Dracula from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He is a skinny white man with white hair, bushy eyebrows, a bushy moustache, and pointed ears. He is wearing a lizard onesie with the mouth open around his face. The onesie is green with yellow teeth and yellow spikes down the back, and with a red interior lining and red eyes. He is wearing red scaled boots and holding a red lizard-shaped handbag. He is pouting and brusing his hair back from his face, walking down the hall of his castle like he’s on a catwalk. He is wearing green eyeliner and a tasteful red lip. The background is mostly empty, shades of grey and green showing two windows letting in light. Above him, an excerpt from a Dracula Daily email reads: “15 May. - Once again have I seen the Count go out in his lizard fashion.”
Friendly reminder that canonically, since there are no servants at the castle, the Count does all the cooking and cleaning (and according to Jonathan, is verygood at it).
Reblogging this because it seems to be relevant again :)
The first in my series of “Vamportraits” I looove Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It goes so hard and despite its flaws probably has my favorite version of the Count
This is the first of 3 pieces. All of which will be available this Saturday!
“Your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that’s rarer than a lover; it’s more unselfish anyhow.”
- A random cowboy, Dracula
Can I just point out how lovely and wholesome this sentiment is. Romantic love is wonderful, but somehow the love of friendship seems to be more unselfish. We should celebrate it more ❤️
How I found a scene from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast buried in Stoker’s Notes for Dracula
(Art by my good friend Em ‒ who is available for commissions, in case you were wondering)
You know a work has left its mark on a culture when someone can get away with publishing wholeextra books* containing nothing but copies of the author’s original working notes.
For the dedicated Dracula-nerd, though, there is some fascinating stuff buried in Stoker’s notes ‒ mostly in all those ideas thatdidn’tmake the final draft. I could go on about my favourite details, but I don’t think any one thing gave me so much joy as discovering that an early plan for chapter 6 (back while Jonathan Harker is trapped in Dracula’s castle) included what sounds, to modern ears, far too much likethat one scene from a certain Disney film:
Chapter 6 Jonathan Harker’s Diary Cont. Attempt to get away from castle—Wolves—wehr wolf—old chapel—carting earth—shrieks from grave—sights of terror & falling senseless—found by Count
