On The Beating of His Wings: Eroticism and Influence as a Manifestation of the Gothic Sublime in Bram Stoker's Dracula
Abstract
In this presentation I aim to explore the eroticism present in Bram Stoker's Dracula as it refers to the elusive nature of desire and its consequence, embodied meaningfully in the application of the concept of the Gothic Sublime in the novel. It is on the wake of great and terrible actions, propelled by the selfish and brutal reality of appetite, that the channel is open toward the nebulous regions of the human psyche which bear great weight on the dynamics of the characters of the book.
It is important also that there appears to be a connection between violent behaviours, of an obsessive kind, with a luxurious, decadent eroticism - as if it is upon the brink of death that life is at its most potent. The Gothic literary genre revels in the mire of human identity and its sometimes callous and bewildering expression.
The aesthetic effects of such excess are my main concern in this presentation. George Bataille's understanding of eroticism and desire in The Accursed Share, along with Vijay Mishra's concept of the Gothic Sublime, will form the theoretical basis for this work.
There is, throughout the novel, a sense of malevolent influence, like that of an ancient evil which is timeless and inexorable, an evil embodied by the Count and his condition, an endless hunger which is contagious, that spreads toward all the other characters like a plague, and on the beating of his wings, upon the long shadow which they cast, they cower, at least until a very similar bloodlust awakens on them that would hunt. The malice practiced within stands as representation of the grotesque fact of reality, as it teeters on the balance between the sacred and the profane.