The pathologisation of female sexuality
As a hysteric, Harriet’s physical appearance belies some of the character-istics that were ascribed to the hysteric, but coincides with others. The general perception of the female hysteric was of a thin, wan, consumptive-looking individual, and we think of Harriet’s friend and traveling com-panion, Olga. However, these parameters were sometimes contradicted. Cases of hysterical mania, as reported at the West Riding Asylum, defy the generalisation that the hysteric always had a consumptive appearance: ‘the body retains its plumpness in an almost miraculous manner […] emaciation is warded off.’[44] This is more in keeping with Marryat’s creation of Harriet. Her enjoyment of the pleasures of food was not a characteristic she shared with the typical hysteric: ‘Miss Leyton thought she had never seen any young person devour her food with so much avidity and enjoyment […] she ate rapidly and with evident appetite […] as soon as her plate was empty, she called sharply to the waiter in French, and ordered him to get her some more.’ (p4)
What is apparent is the character’s sensuality, which her appetite for food encodes. We learn that for her schooling Harriet was ensconced in an austere convent; upon her release all her appetites are being explored. She is described, gorging on chocolates: ‘Miss Brandt had a large box of chocolates beside her, into which she continually dipped her hand. Her mouth, too, was stained with the delicate sweetmeat – she was always eating, either fruit or bonbons.’ (p32) Although she differs from the ‘classic’ vampire, like Dracula, who is never seen to eat, Harriet’s lust for food emphasises her sensuality, an overt form of behaviour that was allegedly characteristic of the hysteric: ‘Hers was a passionate tempera-ment, yearning to express itself – panting for the love which it had never known.’ H. L. Malchow also reads ‘abnormal appetite’ as being represent-ative of ‘the rhetoric of race prejudice by the nineteenth-century long obsession with cannibalism [and cannibalism’s] association with self-destruction.’[45]
Harriet’s time at school had clearly been repressive but tales of her time there also supply evidence for a ‘hysterical’ reading of her. The masturbatory fears of the century are evident in her descriptions of her school life:
“It’s the very last place where they will let you make a friend – they’re afraid lest you should tell each other too much! […] us girls, we were never left alone for a single minute! There was always a sister with us, even at night, walking up and down between the row of beds.” (p16)
In 1871 ‘A Physician’ published a work called Satan in Society.[46] This publication deals extensively with the problem of masturbation. The critic Alex Comfort has referred to a ‘masturbational insanity’ that was prev-alent in England in the nineteenth century.[47] Whilst the tone of the publication is rather ‘hysterical’ itself it does highlight fears of the time: ‘Beyond all dispute the crime exists, and incontestably the female boarding-school is the arena where it is most widely acquired and practiced.’[48] Issac Baker Brown was a nineteenth-century physician who, it is fair to say, became obsessed about the alleged problem of female masturbation in women. He pioneered the operation of clitoridectomy which he believed would prevent women from masturbating. Why was Brown so concerned about masturbation? Well, he believed that it was the root cause of hysteria in women. What is more, he was convinced that it had a very dire prognosis – he believed there were eight distinct stages:
Hysteria (including dyspepsia and menstrual irregularities)
Spinal irritation (with reflex action on uterus, ovaries etc., and giving rise to uterine displacements, amaurosis, hemiplagia, paraplegia etc).
Epileptoid fits or hysterical epilepsy
Cataleptic fits
Epileptic fits
Idiotcy
Mania
Death [49]
This fear of the contagiousness of illicit behaviour was typical of the fears that surrounded allegedly hysterical girls. Silas Weir Mitchell, probably most famously known as the doctor who championed the ‘rest cure’ as loosely fictionalized in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, wrote: ‘pretty surely where there is one hysterical girl there will be soon or late two sick women.’[50] In The Blood of the Vampire, we see this prophecy materialise. Olga, the companion Harriet traveled from the convent with “is ill […] we had the same cabin on board the steamer, and Olga was very ill.” (p11) When Olga is first ‘seen’ by the reader she is described as ‘a pale, unhealthy-looking young woman’. Olga describes her illness to fellow guests and the reader is made aware of how powerful Harriet’s contagion is:
“Miss Brandt and I occupied a small cabin together, and perhaps, it was because it was so small, but I did not feel as if I could breathe […] such a terrible oppression as though someone were sitting on my chest […] It was the same in London, though Miss Brandt did all she could for me, indeed she sat up with me all night.” (p22)
Therefore, the ‘vampire’ has performed an attack under the cover of night but, to all casual observers, Olga appears self-indulgent and perhaps a borderline hysteric herself with her pale appearance and need for long periods of sleep. Furthermore, Olga’s weakened state and languid appear-ance could also mark her out as a female masturbator; we note the following quotation from the author of Satan in Society: ‘symptoms which enable us to recognise or suspect this crime [are] a general condition of languor, weakness [the patient is] pale, lean [with] the appearance of incipient consumption.’[51] We could also see the narrative of Harriet sitting up all night with Olga in her room as a coded reference to lesbian activity. Octavia Davis suggests that Harriet’s ‘overt desire for Margaret Pullen’s affection illustrates what contemporary science termed primitive bi-sexuality.’[52] Sian Macfie and Tammis Elise Thomas also comment on vampirism enabling writers to depict lesbianism in their work.[53] Tamar Heller interprets the vampirism in Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ as indicative of a range of disruptive feminine behaviours – anorexia, lesbianism and inappropriate sexuality.[54] Margaret Pullen describes herself as feeling: ‘scooped hollow’ after spending time in Harriet’s company. Harriet’s vampiric contagion – whether hysteria or lesbianism – affects both Olga and Margaret with remarkable rapidity.
Bram Stoker’s Lucy transgresses sexual decorum with her lasciviousness; just before Lucy dies an as yet unused adjective is introduced into the narrative to describe her. As she makes the transition from dying to ‘un-dead’ she becomes ‘voluptuous.’[55] “Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!” (p. 146). This ‘voluptuousness’ continues when she has become one of the ‘un-dead’: “Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!” (p. 188) Overt sexuality is a dominant feature of Harriet Brandt’s presentation: ‘“Kiss me!” she murmured in a dreamy voice. Captain Pullen was not slow to accept the invitation so confidingly extended. What Englishman would be? He turned his face to Harriet Brandt’s, and her full red lips met his own in a long-drawn kiss that seemed to sap his vitality.’ (p62) Harriet comes close to stealing another woman’s fiancé. Her mixed race background – as shall be discussed below – serves to make her threat even more dangerous.
While it is Harriet’s sexual transgressions that cause most consternation and prove most dangerous to Ralph and, ultimately, her husband, her passion for Margaret Pullen’s baby daughter, Ethel, also has fatal consequences. Harriet’s relationship with baby Ethel is complex. At first her enthusiasm for the baby is excessive, lavishing expensive presents on her and being extremely exuberant in her demands to spend time with baby Ethel: ‘The sight of the infant seemed to drive Miss Brandt wild […] “I love little white babies! I adore them.”’ (p14) We begin to fear for the baby however, when it becomes clear just how enervating Harriet’s company has been on others. She becomes increasingly tactile with the baby: ‘[Harriet] laid her lips in a long kiss upon its little mouth’ (p34). It is not long before the baby is quite obviously unwell: ‘the doctor was not
so sure of himself […] wondering how such a state of exhaustion and collapse could have been brought about.’ (p64) We are also given a brief allusion to the baby-devouring scene in Dracula, when Olga says, regarding Harriet and babies: “Sometimes, I tell her I think she would like to eat them.” (p58) Harriet’s response, however, when hearing of the death of baby Ethel is one of indifference, completely lacking in feminine, maternal feeling and totally belying the emotion she expressed over the child when drawing away its life’s resources. At this point, however, Harriet has innocence on her side regarding the death of baby Ethel because she is, for now, unaware of her psychic power.
Heredity, race and the threat of the non-white ‘other’
The hereditary paranoia that surrounded the problem of hysteria is encoded in references to Harriet’s inherited vampirism: ‘Females prepon-derate so much more in the cases of inherited disease […] the inheritance is more frequently from the mother’s side.’[56] Dr Phillips, Mrs Pullen’s godfather, who comes to the resort after being summoned because of baby Ethel’s decline, knew Harriet’s parents. The picture he gives of Harriet’s mother is such that it plays on all the fears of the mother/ daughter inherited legacy seen in cases of hysteria:
She [Harriet’s mother] was not a woman, she was a fiend […] she was a revolting creature. A fat, flabby halfcaste, who hardly ever moved out of her chair but sat eating all day long […] her sensual mouth, her greedy eyes, her low forehead and half-formed brain, and her lust for blood […] she thirsted for blood, she loved the sight and smell of it, she would taste it on the tip of her finger when it came her way.[57] Her servants had some story amongst themselves to account for this lust. They declared that when her slave mother was pregnant with her, she was bitten by a vampire bat, which are formidable creatures in the West Indies, and are said to fan their victims to sleep with their enormous wings, whilst they suck their blood. Anyway the slave woman did not survive her delivery, and her fellows prophecied that the child would grow up to be a murderess. (p69)
Harriet’s future is made explicit for the reader; the text implies that her behaviour can only get more monstrous. A hysteric without treatment has a condition that physicians deemed could only worsen. With Harriet’s inherited legacy we, as readers, are left with little doubt as to the outcome. We have seen Harriet’s appetite for food; the implication is that the rest will follow. Of course, the inheritance of non-white blood from her mother is perceived to be the most dangerous hereditary legacy that Harriet is cursed with.
Harriet’s racial characteristics as a Creole are continually emphasised, and her encoding as belonging to an ‘other’ race suggests a fear of the non-white. The fear of miscegenation and the eugenic belief in the need to keep the white races pure is highlighted in Harriet’s attitude of disgust towards the former slaves and ‘negroes’ on her father’s plantation; she distances herself from them but yet she is marked out because of her ‘quadroon’ status by Phillips and Ralph Pullen. Zieger discusses the ambivalence of Harriet’s mixed race identity by pointing out that the two black nurses who died whilst caring for Harriet when she was young are not lamented nearly as much as the little white child, Caroline, who lived next door to her and who also died. As Zieger argues, that Harriet identifies the race of both as either ‘black’ or ‘white’ and that she talks of liking ‘white’ babies rather than ‘nigger’ babies, indicates her lack of racial identity because of her mixed race heritage.[58] Zieger believes that ‘The novel’s racial loyalties are therefore riven with ambivalence.’[59] We see further evidence of this ambivalence when we consider Harriet’s father. His depiction as a vivisector and torturer of former slaves is clearly designed to repulse the reader. Arguably his actions are to be read as an exaggerated depiction of the abuse slaves were subjected to and the barbarity it was widely alleged that slave owners had been capable of in the days of plantation slavery. Although how much his depiction has to do with the alleged barbarities vivisecting scientists were supposed to be guilty of, rather than an exposé of the appalling racial attitudes of the time, I am not sure. I discuss Marryat’s anti-vivisection agenda below. However, the racial discrimination Harriet is subjected to is of its time and while Marryat, without doubt, highlights these attitudes in this novel, a more forthright challenge to the racism detailed is perhaps not to be expected from a writer working in her social milieu, however much we might desire it.
The racist language used by certain characters, namely Dr Phillips when he refers to Harriet, is not only very much of its time it is also a feature of the genre of vampire fiction.[60] We see in Dracula a similar tone of racial intolerance to set apart the perceived evil threat of the ‘other’ that is challenging the white English middle class. Nineteenth-century physic-ians often compared hysterics with the ‘lower’ races: ‘Hysteric patients exhibit, in almost as great a degree as the insane, the tendency to a recurrence to those grimaces, contortions, and other violent physical movements which are the ordinary expressions of feeling in animals and the lowest savages.’[61] Captain Pullen says of Harriet: “Ah! a drop of Creole blood in her then, I daresay. You never see such eyes in an English face!” (p52) What is most significant here is that, until he is told of her parentage by Dr Phillips, Ralph has no idea of her mixed-race identity and this is what would have been regarded as most dangerous. Harriet looks ‘white’ but her ‘whiteness’ is only skin-deep.[62] Ralph Pullen is seduced by Harriet’s very ‘un-English’ behaviour. As John G Mencke details in his study of fin-de-siècle attitudes to racial miscegenation: ‘the mulatto was the embodiment of the worst qualities of both races and hence a menace to the dominant group. The mulatto woman was seen as the seducer of otherwise virtuous white[s]…’[63] Dr Phillips uses his knowledge to try and distance Captain Pullen from Harriet. He appeals to the Captain by depicting Harriet’s mother – a prophesy of what Harriet will become: “At thirty, when I saw her she was a revolting spectacle. Gluttonous and obese – her large eyes rolling and her sensual lips protruding as if she were always licking them in anticipation of her prey.” (p77) The description of this potential legacy further emphases Marryat’s exploitation of fears surr-ounding heredity that were dominant in contemporary scientific thought and understanding.
And whilst Harriet’s Creole background is used as a stick to beat her with, we note how Harriet repeatedly tries to distance herself from her motherland. She is too clever not to realize the stigma that potentially encompasses her, given her parentage: “I would not stay in Jamaica. I don’t like the people there!” (p16) She emphasises what she sees as her Englishness, as if aware that a Creole background would be unpalatable to the group of people with whom she is mixing: ‘I am an Englishwoman you know […] my father was English, his name was Henry Brandt, and my mother was a Miss Carey – daughter of one of the Justices of Barbadoes.’ (p13) However, Harriet’s protestations about the ‘English-ness’ of her father would have little impact on the contemporary reader who had any knowledge of the scientific thinking regarding hysteria. In the handing down of hereditary defects the mother’s potential legacy was superior to the father: ‘the tendency of the mother to transmit her mental disease is, however, in all cases stronger than the father’s.’[64] Davis, in her essay, explores the hereditary link to the theory of eugenics and the work of Francis Galton.[65] What is crucial to this theory is the potential for bad blood being passed down through generations. Harriet’s blood is part white Englishman and part African slave and therefore not pure. This has a two-fold implication for the advice Dr Phillips later gives her not to marry – most especially not to marry a white Englishman. If she were to marry and have children she would be most likely to pass on her hereditary hysteria and contribute to the further degeneration of the race because of her mixed race blood. Interestingly in her study of blackness and femininity in Victorian culture, De Vere Brody argues that because England never had anti-miscegenation laws, women of mixed race background – children of a colonial (mis)alliance – were more accepted in
English society than America, suggesting that England had ‘welcoming, supposedly more democratic shores.’[66] The ‘supposedly’ is key in this novel when we consider the hostility that Harriet faces once Phillips informs people of details regarding her life story and background.
Marryat’s portrayal of Dr Phillips, whilst not a vivisecting man like Harriet’s father, does encode the patriarchal, authoritarian stance that was emblematic of late nineteenth-century medical practice. It is Dr Phillips who is most aggressive in his distrust of Harriet’s mixed-race background. It is important to remember that the racist fears Dr Phillips voices here were intrinsic to nineteenth-century thought. Many people, both educated and uneducated, in the nineteenth century had generally unenlightened views about the non-white ‘other’. Dr Phillips is no exception: “The bastard of a man like Henry Brandt, cruel, dastardly, godless, and a woman like her terrible mother, a sensual, self-loving, crafty and blood-thirsty half-caste – what do you expect their daughter to become?” (p69) Overt sexual appetite, which is encoded in much of Harriet’s behaviour, was associated with a ‘mark of blackness.’[67] Harriet’s sensuality is continually emphasised. She is contrasted throughout the text with the cool, dispassionate and very English Elinor Leyton, Captain Pullen’s fiancée. Lucy Bland defines nineteenth-century interpretations of hysteria as ‘an exaggeration of the emotionality and capriciousness of woman.’[68] Harriet’s volatile temperament is beautifully juxtaposed with the ice-cold, frigid demeanour of Elinor. Throughout the medical writing we see how the hysterical girl is often defined by her difference to accepted behavioural and moral norms. Evelyne Ender outlines the parameters that moulded nineteenth-century femininity, the construction of which was ‘both scientific and moralistic, descriptive and prescriptive.’[69] Because Harriet defies so many of the ‘normal’ parameters of action and behaviour and because Elinor fits them with her cool and rational behaviour a dynamic is set up between the characters to illustrate the opposing forces of the allegedly good and ‘normal’ versus the allegedly bad and ‘abnormal’, with Harriet’s hysteria/vampirism dictating her abnormal behaviour: ‘the illness [hysteria] thus shows the struggle of the proper lady against the monster.’[70] Elinor and Harriet are by no means binary opposites, as it is quite clear that Elinor’s coldness is one of reasons why Ralph is more susceptible to Harriet’s charms than he otherwise might have been. Indeed Margaret Pullen admonishes Elinor on a number of occasions, advising her that she risks alienating Ralph if she does not show him more affection. However Elinor’s propriety is clearly set against Harriet’s more open sexuality and Jennifer De Vere Brody argues that ‘the “black” woman becomes an object that enables the “white” to perform femininity properly and with impunity. This strategy is repeated in the culture at large.’[71]
The Blood of the Vampire Page 3
