A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula

Abstract

Vampire sexuality, as represented in Bram Stoker's Dracula, reveals itself both as a phenomenon that is terrifyingly foreign to typical experience and, paradoxically, as a distorted mirror of human behavior. On the one hand, the vampire inspires a xenophobic response because his needs violate the normal limits of exogamy: he is physiologically dependent on women who are foreign to him. On the other hand, the novel undermines the very idea of the “foreign” by suggesting that even the most bizarre aspects of a vampire's sex life are strangely familiar—usually because they parody or literalize human sexuality.

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