Gender Subversiveness and Queerness in Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)

Abstract

This thesis analyzes gender subversiveness and queerness in Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). It argues that the novels anticipate radical reimaginings of gender and sexuality, such as Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity. Both Carmilla and Dracula consistently characterize their vampires as performing their genders rather than possessing them innately, or as having both distinctly feminine and masculine characteristics simultaneously. The novels also show a fascination with sexual queerness (both homosexuality and non-normative heterosexuality), as they consistently reinforce the overt and covert queerness of the vampiric characters. However, though both Carmilla and Dracula conceptualize a world where sexuality and gender roles are not as rigid as Victorian society would generally prefer them to be, the novels also strain to monstrify their androgynous and queer characters. Thus, through the figure of the monstrous vampire, Carmilla and Dracula show a fascination and obsession with gender- and sexual queerness, and amplify undercurrents of shifting attitudes towards these issues in late-Victorian Britain. They anticipate radical theories of gender as performance, and they depict queer disruptions of the structures of homoerotic male and female friendships.