Dracula According to Freeland

In the wake of seeing Dracula, I thought it would be especially relevant to discuss how Cynthia Freeland would perhaps have analyzed the play. While the plot way very similar to that of the novel, I found that the portrayals of certain characters and the degree of sexuality expressed in the play differed from that of the original work from which it was derived.

In terms of genre familiarity, there is no doubt that the play is very much like the novel in the sense that it establishes the very characteristics that we now expect to see in all vampire films/plays/etc. In the play, Dracula was portrayed as a stately, perhaps aristocratic man with a personality as mysterious as his accent. He displayed a hatred of light, mirrors, and religious artifacts, and there were many scenes in which a coffin was present or implied. In fact, even the doorway leading into Mina's room was coffin-shaped. In this way, there is no doubt that Freeland would agree that the play followed all of the norms of vampire genre familiarity.

Freeland's next condition can also be found within both the play and the novel. According to Freeland, vampires must violate the boundaries between life and death. In doing so, they exist as a contradiction to how humans usually consider life; they are, in a sense, both alive and dead simultaneously. The play effectively portrayed this dual nature; the scenes in which Harker, Mina, Van Helsing, and others strove to first figure out what Dracula was and later how to defeat him presented the very existence of the vampire as a puzzling metaphysical problem.

Finally, I think Freeland would agree that the play portrayed Dracula as a creature that violated the norms of femininity and masculinity; perhaps even more so than the Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel. In the novel, Dracula had the desire to drink blood from all humans; both male and female. This is also true in the play. The scene in which Harker first cuts his neck, however, goes above and beyond Freeland's stipulation in the sense that it definitely generated homosexual undertones. This is not to say, however, that Dracula was in any way homosexual; there were numerous scenes that possessed blatant heterosexuality, such as the scene in which Mina is forced to drink from his chest and the scene in which Dracula forces himself onto Lucy's bed. Scenes such as these demonstrate the dual nature of the sexuality present in both the play and the novel; which proves Freeland's point that true vampires must in some way violate the norms of femininity and masculinity.