Dracula's Guest And Other Weird Tales Read Free

Worm)
who is also destroyed by lightning, in her deaththe Countess Dolingen symbolizes both the final triumph of the male over the female and her purgation from Nature itself – punishment perhaps for her beauty, her allure or quite simply for her femininity.
    In his depiction of fearsome women and atmospheric excess, parallels have been drawn between Stoker’s stories and those of another Irish writer of the Gothic, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73). The possibility of a direct connection between Stoker and Le Fanu is tantalizing: Stoker started working as an unpaid drama critic for the Le Fanu-owned
Dublin Evening Mail
in 1871; during this time he was also a regular visitor to the Wildes’ house in Merrion Square, Le Fanu being their close neighbour. Many of Le Fanu’s stories were published in the
Dublin University Magazine
(at one time also owned by him), which Stoker would undoubtedly have had access to during his period at Trinity, and Le Fanu’s
The Watcher and Other Weird Stories
(1894) was in Stoker’s library. Whether the two actually met is unclear, although it seems likely that they must have been aware of one another. Certainly, the influence of Le Fanu upon Stoker’s writing is widely acknowledged, most especially in the case of ‘Dracula’s Guest’ and
Carmilla
(1872).
    Set in Styria and framed as a case from the file of Le Fanu’s psychic doctor, Martin Hesslius, the novella centres on the beautiful young Carmilla, who arrives at the castle of an aristocratic family. Uncannily, Carmilla is the very image of a figure that had appeared, many years before, in a dream of the family’s daughter, Laura. Whilst the two girls are forming an unusually close attachment bordering on the sexual, the surrounding villages are beset by a series of mysterious deaths. Laura soon falls victim to this ‘plague’ but is saved by a family friend, the uncle of one of Carmilla’s previous victims, who reveals their mysterious guest’s true vampiric identity. Carmilla’s tomb is subsequently discovered and, in her lifelike death-state, she is decapitated and staked. Stoker borrowed much from Le Fanu’s story, not least his technique of building a story on the shaky foundations of both doubt and fear, leaving the supernatural or unexplainable elements unexplained and indefinitely powerful. In the end we are left with only half a rationalization forthe events that take place in both Styria and Munich – and enjoy the stories all the more for it.
    Both Stoker’s and Le Fanu’s Gothic stories deal with the violation of boundaries: between the worlds of the natural and the supernatural, dreams and reality, human and animal, life and death. Carmilla herself violates all four of these, adding sexual ambiguity (akin to Dracula’s) to her list of misdemeanours. She woos Laura like a predatory lover with ‘gloating eyes’ and ‘hot lips’, female sexuality displaying itself in all its guilty wantonness: ‘she would whisper, almost in sobs, “You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one forever.” ’ 15 Whilst homo-social desire may be aberrant for Le Fanu, for Stoker, it is a source of sanctuary from dangerous female sexuality. Men tend to falter when strong women abound, as
Dracula
’s Professor Abraham Van Helsing’s words encapsulate:
    Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss – and man is weak. 16
Stoker’s Short Stories and the Gothic Tradition
    Le Fanu’s influence on Stoker can be similarly traced in a number of other stories in this volume. Apparitions and dreams, for example, fuelled the momentum of both authors’ stories, 17 whilst the tale of the mental breakdown and death of a student under the malign influence of a long-dead judge in Stoker’s ‘The Judge’s House’ (1891) bears more than a passing resemblance to Le Fanu’s own ‘Mr Justice Harbottle’ (1872), itself a drastically rewritten version of his ‘An