Degeneration In Bram Stoker`s `dracula` And Oscar Wilde`s `the Picture Of Dorian Gray`

Max Nordau epitomises the Victorian anxiety of degeneration when he writes that '[o]ne epoch of history is unmistakably in its decline, and another is announcing its approach'. In his essay, titled 'Degeneration', Nordau voices concerns over the possible corruption of the human race and the British Empire, and he depicts degeneration as a process that produces a deformed variation of a species: When under any kind of noxious influences an organism becomes debilitated, its successors will not resemble the healthy, normal type of species, with capacities for development, but will form a new sub-species.

In Nordau's model, degenerate humans are a sub-species separate from the dominant human species, and the Victorian fin-de-siècle explores the possible 'noxious influences' that can produce such degenerates. By considering Bram Stoker's Dracula and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, this essay will explore how degeneration is represented as intrinsically part of the human condition. For Dorian Gray, it is the inevitable condition of the human form to descend into physical degeneracy. The Picture of Dorian Gray centres on the exclamation the protagonist makes about the inevitable aging of his own form in comparison to the permanent beauty of a portrait of himself: If it were only the other way! If it were I who was always to be young, and the picture was to grow old! [.] I would give my soul for that!

From Gray's perspective, at the beginning of the novel, the abstract notion of the soul is worthless in comparison to the preservation of his youthful body. He conceives youthful beauty as essential to human identity, so that 'when one loses one's good looks, what ever they may be, one loses everything' (pp. 21-22). In contrast to his good looks, Gray imagines his figure becoming 'broken and deformed' (p. 21) and his aged body as 'dreadful, hideous, and uncouth' (p. 21). When Max Nordau describes the physical body of the degenerate as having 'morbid deviations from the normal form', Gray, imagining his youthful body as the normal human form, can only see the aged body as its malformation. Whilst age is equated with external corruption, youth is associated with internal degeneracy. When Lord Henry Wotton speaks of the ideology of Hedonism, Gray is aware of an internal change: '[Dorian Gray] was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him' (p. 15). The descri ption of the influences as 'entirely fresh' suggests that the external stimuli of Henry Wotton's ideas are separate from Gray. Gray, however, proposes that 'they seemed to have come really from himself' (p. 15), the verb 'seemed' blurring the distinction between the internal and external influences. It is only once under the influence of Henry Wotton, then, that Gray realises his internally repressed desire to live a Hedonistic lifestyle. Indeed, once Gray sees the picture of himself, in which 'his own beauty came upon him like a revelation' (p. 20), he understands how desirable his own body is, and describes himself in terms of narcissism: 'I am in love with [the portrait], Basil. It is part of myself' (p. 23). In love with his own desirable body and motivated by pleasure, Gray defines himself both internally and externally by desire. Hence, by the end of the novel, Gray locates this transformation in his youth as the origin of his corruption. For Gray, youth becomes the true source of degeneracy. Gray depicts youth as having 'soiled him' (p. 181), and describes it as an undeveloped state, a 'green [.] an unripe time' (p. 181), implying that it is in youth's 'sickly thoughts' (p. 181) that the act of corruption first begins. Initially, Gray's indulgence in his youth is justified by an attempt to control himself, as he tells Basil Hallward after Sibyl Vane's death: 'I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, to dominate them!' (p. 89). But, rather than controlling them, Gray's dependence on his youthful identity only exasperates his emotions, resulting in the killing of Basil Hallward: an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had been suggested to him by the image of the canvas, into his ear by those grinning lips. (p. 129)

It is from the portrait itself, the site of Gray's youthful corruption, that the 'uncontrollable feeling of hatred' originates from, and the sinister depiction of its 'grinning lips' emphasises the external representation of his youth as corrupting the actions of his body. Being unable to control his own emotions is another demonstration of Gray's increasing degeneracy, as Nordua encapsulates: [a]nother mental stigma of the degenerate is their emotionalism'. By maintaining his youthfulness, Gray accelerates his transition to degenerate, so that, with his death at the age of thirty-eight, he has the same 'withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage' (p. 184) body that he predicted it youth, prematurely reaching the degenerate state. Just like Dorian Gray, Jonathan Harker descends into degeneracy in Dracula. Looking out at Dracula's castle, Harker sees a figure climb out from a window, and identifies him as Count Dracula as he 'knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms'. Harker is able to recognise Dracula as a 'man' due to his movements, yet, moments later, Dracula's movement is identified with the animalistic, crawling down the castle 'just as a lizard moves along a wall' (p. 30). Unable to make a distinction between the two, Harker's conception of humanity is challenged: 'What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of a man?' (p. 30). Dracula's amalgamation of the human and animal marks him as being in the 'semblance of a man', of being not quite human, but Harker later suggests that Dracula and himself are physiologically similar, if not the same, when he considers how to gain access to the vampire's bedroom: 'Where his body has gone may not another body go?' (p. 40). The use of the noun 'body' to describe both himself and Dracula collapses the distinctions between the two men, and implies that surely his own body is capable of the same acts: 'I have seen him myself crawl from his window; why should I not imitate him, and go in by his window?' (p. 40). By imitating Dracula, Harker is able to achieve a feat that may have been impossible for him before, and we can perceive this relationship in terms of the abhuman condition that Kelly Hurley describes: The abhuman subject is a not-quite-human subject, characterised by its morphic variability, continually in danger of becoming not-itself, becoming other.

Dracula emblematizes the abhuman, able to occupy a variety of physical forms, but, by mimicking Dracula, Harker also moves away from the human, and becomes abhuman. By the end of the novel, Harker closely resembles the vampire. Mina Harker's descri ption of her husband resembles the monstrous, when Jonathan Harker approaches the cart containing Dracula's box: Jonathan's impetuosity, and the manifest singleness of his purpose, seemed to overawe those in front of him; instinctively they cowed aside and let him pass. In an instant he had jumped upon the cart, and, with a strength which seemed incredible, raised the great box. (p. 313)

Harker is powerfully characterized in terms of dominance; he is able to 'overawe' the gipsies, who cower in instinctive submission, and the noun 'impetuosity' conveys a sense of highly charged energy. But, Harker is also depicted as having a supernatural like strength, reminiscent of his first meeting with Dracula, where Dracula's hand 'caught my arm in a grip of steel; his strength must have been prodigious' (p. 11). Indeed, this episode mirrors Harker's submission to the weird sisters, where Dracula interrupts the moment of reverse penetration: But at that instant another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. (p. 34)

The Count's dominance is powerfully imagined in the nouns 'storm', 'fury' and 'lightning', and, as the gipsies are to his presence, Harker seems overwhelmed by Count Dracula. By the end of the novel, Harker, by embodying the spirit of the predator, has descended into the same degenerate state as the vampire. We could, however, consider Harkerto be re-appropriating the characteristics of the vampire within a new human form. Degeneration brings the possibility of the human condition improving by way of its opposite: elaboration. Edwin Ray Lankester's defines elaboration as 'a gradual change of structure in which the organism becomes adapted to a more and more varied and complex conditions of life'. In a sense, Dracula tells the story of Harker's adaptation to monstrous circumstances, and, whilst resembling the vampire, Harker's transformation contains the possibility for humanity to become something better. The Picture of Dorian Gray demonstrates this by way of its opposite, as Dorian Gray tells Henry Wotton: '[the soul] can be poisoned, or made perfect' (p. 177). In contrast to Harker, Gray maintains his degenerate state, and prevents the possibility of changing for the better. Word Count: 1635.

Bibliography

Primary Texts Stoker, Bram, Dracula, (London: Wordsworth Classics, 2000) Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Secondary Sources Hurley, Kelly, The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism and Degeneration at the 'Fin De Siecle', (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Lankester, Edwin Ray, 'Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism' inThe Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c. 1880-1900, ed. by Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, pp. 3-5 Nordau, Max, 'Degeneration', in Fin de Siècle, pp. 13-16.