JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 58 из 359His character, though engaging, is just not strong enough to take that weight. We assume that if Dracula hadn't gotten in by using Renfield, he would have gotten in another way.
In a way it was the mores of Stoker's day which dictated that the Count's evil should come from outside, because much of the evil embodied in the Count is a perverse sexual evil. Stoker revitalized the vampire legend largely by writing a novel which fairly pants with sexual energy.
The Count doesn't ever attack Jonathan Harker; in fact he is promised to the weird sisters who live in the castle with him. Harker's one brush with these voluptuous but lethal harpies is a sexual one, and it is presented in his diary in terms that were, for turn-of-the-century England, pretty graphic: The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the sharp white teeth . . . . Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck . . . . I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a langourous ecstacy and waited-waited with beating heart.
In the England of 1897, a girl who "went on her knees" was not the sort of girl you brought home to meet your mother; Harker is about to be orally raped. and he doesn't mind a bit. And it's all right, because he is not responsible. In matters of sex, a highly moralistic society can find a psychological escape valve in the concept of outside evil: this thing is bigger than both of us, baby. Harker is a bit disappointed when the Count enters and breaks up this little tête-à-tête. Probably most of Stoker's wide-eyed readers were, too.
Similarly, the Count preys only on women: first Lucy, then Mina. Lucy's reactions to the Count's bite are much the same as Jonathan's feelings about the weird sisters. To be perfectly vulgar, Stoker indicates in a fairly classy way that Lucy is coming her brains out. By day an ever-more-pallid but perfectly Apollonian Lucy conducts a proper and decorous courtship with her promised husband, Arthur Holmwood. By night she carouses in Dionysian abandon with her dark and bloody seducer.
In real life at this same time, England was experiencing a mesmerism fad.
In a way it was the mores of Stoker's day which dictated that the Count's evil should come from outside, because much of the evil embodied in the Count is a perverse sexual evil. Stoker revitalized the vampire legend largely by writing a novel which fairly pants with sexual energy.
The Count doesn't ever attack Jonathan Harker; in fact he is promised to the weird sisters who live in the castle with him. Harker's one brush with these voluptuous but lethal harpies is a sexual one, and it is presented in his diary in terms that were, for turn-of-the-century England, pretty graphic: The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the sharp white teeth . . . . Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck . . . . I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a langourous ecstacy and waited-waited with beating heart.
In the England of 1897, a girl who "went on her knees" was not the sort of girl you brought home to meet your mother; Harker is about to be orally raped. and he doesn't mind a bit. And it's all right, because he is not responsible. In matters of sex, a highly moralistic society can find a psychological escape valve in the concept of outside evil: this thing is bigger than both of us, baby. Harker is a bit disappointed when the Count enters and breaks up this little tête-à-tête. Probably most of Stoker's wide-eyed readers were, too.
Similarly, the Count preys only on women: first Lucy, then Mina. Lucy's reactions to the Count's bite are much the same as Jonathan's feelings about the weird sisters. To be perfectly vulgar, Stoker indicates in a fairly classy way that Lucy is coming her brains out. By day an ever-more-pallid but perfectly Apollonian Lucy conducts a proper and decorous courtship with her promised husband, Arthur Holmwood. By night she carouses in Dionysian abandon with her dark and bloody seducer.
In real life at this same time, England was experiencing a mesmerism fad.