Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Dracula's self-definition
There is an interestingn passage that Foster starts his article with - "We become who we are - we take on our subjective identities - by denying, refusing, or negating the other person we might have been: the male or female we are not, the sibling we envy, the bad child who has all the fun. (483)" This is interesting because as we define ourselves in life, it seems that according to the novel we also define ourselves in death - or more specifically, un-death. The reading exposes that as a living mortal man, Dracula was learned. In his un-dead state, he is redefined by accepting "...the other person [he] might have been" and becomes a slightly feminine, orally-fixated monster. Lucy underwent similar transformation, turning from a Victorian-era "girly-girl" into a bloodthirsty child attacker with a deep manly voice. Her good nature turned to pure evil as she became undead, until her soul was reclaimed in death.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Interesting what Doug said, it’s as if our unconscious child comes alive completely when some purposefully pulls it out of us as Dracula did with Lucy. She becomes what her rational adult self said she could not be. She became the lacy she desired secretly to be in her un-dead, unconscious state. Because consciously and completely dead she could not have fulfilled her desire because restrictions-rationality and true death-wouldn’t allow it.
I think that is an excellent point that you have made here. Besides the oral fixation that you find Lucy desiring, one of the quintessentially Freudian concepts, the image of the "bad child who has all the fun" truly helps to define the new Lucy. This is in stark contrast to what one might argue the, better half of Lucy represented through Mina and their interactions.
Post a Comment