Tall, Dark, and Deadly

Both in the book and in the episode, “Buffy vs. Dracula,” women go all "googly-eyed” for Dracula. However, it’s not just his “penetrating eyes” and foreign charm that have knees knocking and palms sweating. I think it’s the fact that Dracula and vampires present the opportunity for a complete loss of control. We see this especially for Buffy who, starting from a very young age, makes life or death decisions that impact the people around her. Each day, she has to fight for life: for her own life and for the lives of everyone in Sunnydale and the world. She expends enormous amounts of energy pushing against the very thing that vampires represent. She represses her darkest desires, particularly her desire for death. In the fifth season, Buffy asks Spike to tell her how he killed the last slayer, and he tells her that the last slayer died because she wanted to die. He says:

Death is your art. You make it with your hands, day after day. That final gasp. That look of peace. Part of you is desperate to know, what's it like? Where does it lead you? And now you see, that's the secret. Not the punch you didn't throw or the kicks you didn't land. She merely wanted it. Every Slayer... has a death wish. (Spike, S05 E07)

We are at once fascinated and repulsed by what we push against, and I think Buffy is drawn to Dracula because he exudes death.

In class we talked about sharing blood as a sexual act, and how vampires are innately sexual beings because of this. I think this same fascination for the desires we repress or dread can be seen in the novel. Women in the Victorian era were not supposed/allowed to be sexual. As we see from the novel, the feminine ideal is a woman like Mina who is chaste and devoted to her husband. When Dracula bites Mina, she falls from grace and becomes tainted. Women, like Lucy, who share blood with more than one man become vampires. Thus, perhaps a modern interpretation of the allure/power of the vampire over women in the Victorian era stems from the promise of sexual liberation. Once again, the vampire represents a loss of control, a giving into the most primal instincts. Stroker wrote Dracula at a time when England prided itself on being the model of a cultivated society. A cultural fear, as seen in Dracula, seems to be the presence of wanton women who have let go of all inhibitions and act on their darkest urges. I think the timeless (no pun intended) appeal of vampires relates to the idea that people will always be attracted to their shadow self or the part of themselves that they repress.