Dracula's Guest And Other Weird Tales

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Author: Bram Stoker
Tags: Fiction, Classics
and woman but existing since the dawn of history, Lady Arabella is thus the physical manifestation of intrinsic and unbridled woman. Challenging the bounds of gender prescription, however, is not only the prerogative of the women of Stoker’s novels. Just as women consistently overstep their feminine margins, men are continually called to live up to their masculinity. Although the ‘male’ does ultimately triumph in
The Lair of the White Worm
, it requires a band of men to counteract the threat of a single woman. Furthermore, maleness is repeatedly associated with images of familial, mental or physical degeneration. Both AdamSalton and Edgar Caswall are the last in their respective family lines, whilst Caswall himself descends into insanity as the novel progresses. In turn, Mimi and Lilla’s grandfather is rarely involved in the narrative; Richard Salton all but disappears after the opening chapters, and Arabella’s father is but a shadow character, talked about yet never seen. Moreover, the male triumvirate, although vociferous in avowing their willingness ‘to risk whatever is to be risked’ ( Chapter XXVIII ), remain a passive force, Sir Nathaniel resolving to ‘postpone decisive action until the circumstances depended’ ( Chapter XXV ). Women are the inciters of action whilst men are content to let that action take its course: even Lady Arabella’s death is, technically, by her own hand as she removes back to her own lair the kite cable along which the final, deadly, bolt of electricity travels. 25
    The concern about aggressive femininity is augmented in
The Lair of the White Worm
by the species boundaries Lady Arabella straddles between human and snake. Aside from the palpable biblical links with the serpent that identify Arabella with the role of God’s nemesis and the augury of Original Sin, the symbolic snake also places
The Lair of the White Worm
within the context of legendary tales of dragon-slaying in England and their own related associations with moral triumphs of good over evil. References to both the ‘Lambton Worm’ and the ‘Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh’ (1890) (see Appendix II ) connect the novel with such folk fables, whilst the specific significance of the symbol of the dragon, or
wyrm
, to the kingdom of Mercia is evident from the place names that have survived into the modern age. 26 The battle between man and worm/ woman is thus elevated to a level of universality that encompasses both religion and folklore and accords judgement not only against Lady Arabella but also her ophidian species and her female sex.
    This association between serpent and woman at the turn of the twentieth century was not Stoker’s alone. Bram Dijkstra’s
Idols of Perversity
(1986) makes much of the iconography of misogyny against feminine evil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in particular highlighting the recurringimage of the serpent in association with women in a large number of works of art produced at this time. 27 Pictures such as Jean Delville’s
The Idol of Perversity
(1891) and Franz von Stuck’s
Sin
(1893) depicted sexual women and sinuous snakes locked in mutual embrace – an unholy alliance of moral and physical corruption that prompted association with biblical sin and the physical usurpation of the male penis. A direct challenge to the rising force of the New Woman, that new breed of independent female who challenged male prerogatives and refused to be defined by the traditional roles of wife and mother, such works pilloried women both for their ‘natural’ sinfulness and for their adoption of the male role. In spite of her veneer of female respectability, Lady Arabella’s ruthlessness and ambition are revealed when she assumes her true form: a ‘tall white shaft’ that rises from the bushy tangle of the ‘trees which lay between’ ( Chapter XXVIII ). Just as she confuses the male/female divide in her forward conduct, the enormous white penis that Lady Arabella
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