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#and those readings don’t necessary counteract a queer reading and vice versa
dashedwithromance · 2 years
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thinking about how dracula, at its core, is a queer novel that bleeds with loneliness. we don’t know how bram stoker would identity if he had access to modern terminology and contemporary views on sexuality as an identity rather than a sexual preference (and i don’t think we should know), but queer is super useful term here
and dracula, a novel about a monster who passes his infection on through blood, published two years after oscar wilde’s terribly public, terribly dangerous trial for sodomy, in a time where it was fresh knowledge that STD’s could be passed through blood… i mean, it feels disingenuous to the source material to ignore the terror steeped in the novel like that.
this is a book that revolves around the presence of and the physical lack of sex, that features a single man of his kind so monstrous he cannot say holy words or stand the touch of consecrated things, or even see himself in the mirror… it echoes such a terrible, tortured loneliness echoed in a lot of queer work and gothic in general (and the two very often overlap). the idea of being the only one of your kind, or at least, feeling like the only one, in a world that actively hunts you
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