![]() ![]() Harker is literally narrating what happened but with a terminology, let’s say, a little constipated typical of a Victorian gentleman who prefers to maintain form. There are no metaphors, no allusions to guilt, despite the fact that the act of recreation is excessively careful. The first thing Harker records in his diary is that one of the vampires - the blonde one - knelt before him and recreated… non judgmentally. “This is what really happened,” the astute directors who have adapted the novel to film seem to tell us, “Harker had a wonderful time with Dracula’s girlfriends.” Of course, with some guilt and trying to repress himself so as not to howl like a condemned man. The problem, if anything, is that a description in explicit terms for Victorian England sounds somewhat far-fetched to our ears. The novel specifically describes that encounter is carnal in nature. The cinema has taken many precautions to represent this scene, with a Harker trying to hide a grimace of pleasure when being attacked by those three beautiful women without understanding that, in reality, Bram Stoker completely dispenses with metaphors. It is in this encounter between Harker and the vampires where Bram Stoker reveals for the first time what it feels like to be bitten by a vampire. The count does not bite him either, but hands him over to his hateful but sensual concubines: Dracula’s three girlfriends. The second example that this story gives us is that of Jonathan Harker, a prisoner in the Transylvanian castle in the first part of the novel: Dracula’s Guest. Sadly, his deviation prevents him from becoming a full-fledged vampire. He is the only character who really wants to be bitten, and the only one who does something voluntarily to help the earl settle in London. Renfield’s fate is the most ungrateful in the novel. Mind you, he kills him in an atrocious way, basically beating him to death against the bars of the cell. His mental illness and his confinement in the asylum remind us of Oscar Wilde’s passage through Reading jail, where he was locked up for committing the crime of loving another man. In turn, Renfield anxiously awaits that bite, and in several passages he himself slips the certainty that the earl has promised it to him.īram Stoker goes to great lengths to portray Renfield as a deviant person. Dracula does not bite him, despite the fact that he is quite weak as a result of the burning of his lairs by Van Helsing and his group of enthusiasts. Take the case of Renfield, in Creole terms, given away in a padded asylum cell. Question of principles? It is probable.Īfter all, as a prince of vampires we can think that this is his privilege, that is, to choose the victim that best suits his personal tastes, or also that women can become easier prey, but none of these possibilities are logical according to what Bram Stoker raises in the novel. In principle, some questions must be established: Count Dracula does not bite men he alone to women, first to Lucy Westenra and then to Mina Murray. To understand what the vampire bite represents, and why the sensation of being bitten by one could perhaps be recognized by anyone, both in physical and emotional terms, we will take a paradigmatic example: the great gothic novel by Bram Stoker: Dracula (Dracula ), which has served as inspiration for some of the great heels of the genre. ![]() Instead, he assumes the elegant posture of surrender, of docility, which is sometimes shifted with some timid gesture of discomfort. The prey does not fight, it does not squirm as it undoubtedly would when attacked by human or animal. In fact, these “unfortunate” victims often have a wild look as the vampire prepares to pierce their necks. If horror movies have taught us anything, it is that a vampire’s bite is not painful. ![]()
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