"Only a Demon in Her Shape": A Queer Positive Reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula

Abstract

Since Dracula embodies a lot of Queer stereotypes from the time and multiple members of Stoker’s band of heroes show signs of being closeted, many scholars have taken to reading Stoker’s heroes’ rejection of Dracula as a rejection of their Queer identities. The problem with such readings is that they tend to emphasis the groups’ acts of Queer shame without acknowledging the fact that they come to find love and acceptance among one another and so, resolve their fears, insecurities, and the self-hatred they feel as a result of being a Queer person living in late nineteenth century England. By acknowledging neither the acceptance the group receives from one another nor the resolution of their Queer shame, those who read Stoker’s horror novel through a Queer lens have repeatedly reached the conclusion that Dracula is symbolic of and or intended to represent Stoker’s heroes’ Queer desires and sentiment. All the while, another interpretation, one that acknowledges the groups’ acceptance of their Queer identities and paints Dracula as a symbol of the negative, monstrous image of the “homosexual” that tormented the Queer community in the aftermath of the 1885 Amendment and Oscar Wilde trials, has gone mostly unexplored and ignored. And that interpretation is what this paper explores.