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{{Cargo_Research_Articles
 |date=1997-01-01
 |author=Paul M. Chapman
 |topic=Vampirism
 |summary=This scholarly article compares the treatment of vampirism in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, particularly Conan Doyle's The Parasite and John Barrington Cowles with Stoker's Dracula. It examines themes such as hypnotism, the femme fatale, and fin-de-siècle anxieties about science, sexuality, and the occult in late Victorian supernatural fiction.
}}
''A Vampire Soul Behind a Lovely Face'' is an article written by [[Paul M. Chapman]] published in the [[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7).

This scholarly article compares the treatment of vampirism in the works of [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] and [[Bram Stoker]], particularly [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s [[The Parasite]] and [[John Barrington Cowles]] with [[Bram Stoker|Stoker]]'s ''Dracula''. It examines themes such as hypnotism, the ''femme fatale'', and ''fin-de-siècle'' anxieties about science, sexuality, and the occult in late Victorian supernatural fiction.


== A Vampire Soul Behind a Lovely Face ==
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p88-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 88)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p89-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 89)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p90-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 90)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p91-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 91)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p92-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 92)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p93-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 93)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p94-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 94)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p95-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 95)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p96-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 96)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p97-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 97)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p98-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 98)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p99-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 99)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1997-vol7-p100-a-vampire-soul.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 7, 1996/7, p. 100)]]

'''CONAN DOYLE, BRAM STOKER AND THE ''FIN DE SIÈCLE'' VAMPIRE'''

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century Britain's wealth and power on the world stage appeared paramount. The celebrations surrounding Queen Victoria's Golden and Diamond Jubilees in 1887 and 1897 respectively were a public affirmation of the country's sense of its strength and well-being. Beneath this surface, however, lurked manifold tensions. The industrial and agricultural base was threatened by foreign competition, particularly from Germany and Northern America, and all was not well with the colonies. 

To match this material unease there was also a spiritual unrest amongst many of the more privileged members of society, and the era witnessed an outburst of interest in all types of esoterica; spiritualism, hermeticism and theosophism all thrived, accompanied by a complementary literary outpouring of both theoretical non-fiction and a positive rash of speculative and occult-hued fiction. 

Two of the most notable names to be found amongst writers of the latter category were [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], then gaining prominence as the creator of [[Sherlock Holmes]], and [[Bram Stoker]], business manager to the greatest British actor of the age, [[Henry Irving]], and later to find fame in his own right as the author of ''Dracula'' (1897). The two men were close friends, although it was drama rather than literature that had effected an introduction. In 1874 the fifteen-year-old [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] had been taken to see [[Henry Irving|Irving]]'s Hamlet at London's Lyceum Theatre by his uncle James. The performance left a lasting impression and in 1892, when [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] first tried his hand as a dramatist with a one-act adaptation of his own short story '[[A Straggler of '15]]', he hopefully sent the script to [[Henry Irving|Irving]] at his Lyceum headquarters where it came into the hands of [[Bram Stoker]], who later described his reaction in his ''Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving'' (1906): 

: I took up the packet and unrolled a number of type-written sheets a little, longer than foolscap. I read it with profound interest and was touched by its humour and pathos to my very heart's core. It was very short, and before [[Henry Irving|Irving]] came in again from the stage I had read it a second time. When he came in he said presently in an unconcerned way: 
: 'By the way, did you read that play?' 
: 'Yes!' 
: 'What did you think of it?' 
: 'I think this,' I said, 'that that play is never going to leave the Lyceum. You must own it — at any price. It is made for you.'' 
: 'So I think too!' he said heartily. 'You had better write to the author to-day and ask him what cheque we are to send. We had better buy the whole rights.' 
: 'Who is the author?' 
: '[[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]!' (1)

The play was premiered under the title [[A Story of Waterloo]] (later further shortened to Waterloo) on 21 September 1894 at the Prince's Theatre in Bristol. Unfortunately, due to lecturing commitments in America, its author was unable to attend. He did, however, become a familiar face at the Lyceum and it is not surprising that he and the Dublin — born [[Bram Stoker|Stoker]] became firm friends, for besides their Celtic loquacity they shared a belief in the tangibility of an unwritten gentlemanly code which placed women on a higher moral and spiritual plane, faith in the civilising mission of the British Empire, and a conviction that the future of Britain and the United States lay in ever closer political and cultural amalgam. 

They also shared a number of intellectual interests, one of which was a concern with the supernatural and the occult. [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s inquisitiveness was demonstrated by his attendance, as an observer, of séances in Southsea and Portsmouth, and his joining of the ''Society for Psychical Research'' in November 1893. Although [[Bram Stoker|Stoker]] appears not to have been directly connected with any organisation (he was not, as is often claimed, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) he certainly had contacts in practising occult circles and his interest is undeniable. Both men's fiction bears out their fascination. Between them they produced some of the classics of the genre, ranging from finely wrought psychological chillers replete with recurrent motifs of cruelty and revenge, to more traditional Gothic material utilising the potential of the shunned house theme, myriad forms of haunting and such myths as the revenant mummy with a mission and the pliant metaphor of vampirism. 

Towards this last named they took divergent paths. [[Bram Stoker|Stoker]], of course, formulated Dracula, whose eponymous protagonist owed much to selective borrowings from Central and Eastern European folk traditions whilst also lying in a line of literary descent from Lord Ruthven, the Byronic blood-drinker of John Polidori's ''The Vampyre'' (1819). [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] opted for a more modern approach. The vampirism in '[[John Barrington Cowles]]' (2) (1886) and '[[The Parasite]]' (1894) is of the life-force rather than the life-blood, and the 'vampires' themselves are female and very much alive. Despite this obvious interpretive difference the vampire stories of [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] and [[Bram Stoker|Stoker]] do share a number of major thematic concerns, most especially in their examination of certain personal and contemporary dichotomies. 

'[[John Barrington Cowles]]' and '[[The Parasite]]' both centre around hypnotic possession. In the former the title character falls in love with a beautiful young woman, Kate Northcott, an apparently tragic figure whose previous two fiancés have suffered mental breakdown and premature death. The narrator, Cowles's best friend, Bob Armitage, watches his companion's growing infatuation with trepidation as, through a series of strange encounters and incidents, he comes to realise Northcott's genuine and demonic nature. Cowles, blinded by a controlling passion, misses the warning signs until, in a moment of devastating revelation, the object of his desire, thinking herself secure in his devotion, tells him the truth. Like his two predecessors he is unbalanced by the disclosure. To aid his recovery, and to escape the now hateful presence of his former Intended, he takes a rest cure on a remote Scottish island. But there is to be no escape. In the climactic scene (suffused with dark echoes of the unashamedly romantic ending of one of [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s earlier works, '[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-star]]') he is lured by an indeterminate female apparition to a cruel clifftop death. 

'[[The Parasite]]' is similarly concerned with obsessional desire, in this case that of Helen Penelosa, a middle aged spinster with powerful hypnotic propensities, for a young professor — and the story's narrator — Austin Gilroy, whom she meets when he comes to mock at one of her demonstrations. Her infatuation is out of place. The professor is already engaged to a young woman, Agatha Marden, and when he learns of Penelosa's interest he rejects the older woman in no uncertain terms. Unfortunately, in a spirit of scientific enquiry, he has placed himself under Penelosa's mesmeric influence. When this expedient fails to force his love, in which he remains true to his fiancée, Penelosa, by controlling his speech and actions, tries to ruin his professional and moral reputation. When even this proves inadequate she engages in a sadistic pièce de résistance, attempting to make him disfigure the somnolent Agatha Marden with sulphuric acid. The mental strain placed upon Penelosa, however, proves too great; Gilroy's love is too strong to be overcome. At the height of this battle of wills she dies, freeing her victim before the heinous deed can be committed. 

Hypnotic control also features strongly in Dracula. The Count himself is highly accomplished in its practice and uses it to lure his victims to their fate. Lucy Westenra is repeatedly put into a somnambulistic trance by his influence, during the course of which she is slowly bled to death (or undeath). The otherwise strong-willed Mina Harker is similarly incapable of resisting his call, at one point even being forced to suffer his ministrations whilst her husband lies powerless beside her, rendered incapable of comprehension or action by a Dracula-induced hypnotic trance. 

Dracula's vampiric handmaidens are also granted hypnotic capabilities. When Jonathan Harker is surprised by three of them in Castle Dracula he is unable to resist their joint hypnotic and sexual allure and is only saved from them by the timely intervention of the Count himself. Similarly, when Lucy Westenra becomes a fully-fledged vampire she also gains the power of hypnotic ascendency, through which she attempts to seduce and destroy her fiancé Arthur Holmwood, who is only saved by the presence and determination of Dr Van Helsing. 

Through the figure of the vampire both [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] and [[Bram Stoker|Stoker]] were able to explore the ambivalent status of hypnotism, its uncertain standing, hovering on the borderland between occultism and science, and its potential as a force for either good or evil, themes which had earlier been explored by Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, but which, given the prevailing attitudes of the late-nineteenth century, were then highly contentious. The 1890s saw a number of novels, such as F. Marion Crawford's ''The Witch of Prague'' (1891) and Richard Marsh's ''The Beetle'' (1897), whose plots centred around the abuse of hypnotic power, and it was, of course, the decade which saw the appearance of the greatest of all literary symbols for the evil potential of mesmerism, Svengali, the manipulative villain of George Du Maurier's Trilby (first published, coincidentally, in the same year as '[[The Parasite]]', 1894). 

In '[[John Barrington Cowles]]' the clash between the occult and scientific dimensions of hypnotism occurs at a stage performance given by Dr Messinger, 'the well-known medium and mesmerist', a man with 'the reputation of being the soundest living authority upon the strange pseudo-sciences of animal magnetism and electro-biology'. (3) During the show Messinger attempts to hypnotise Cowles, but is frustrated by the counter-force exerted by Kate Northcott. Exhausted by the effort, and baffled by his defeat, Messinger is forced to abandon his demonstration. Because it is clearly hinted that Northcott's powers are supernatural in their origin, the defeat of the pseudo-scientific Messinger represents the triumph of occult (here clearly equated with evil) hypnotism. 

The presentation of hypnotism in '[[The Parasite]]' is rather more complex. Professor Gilroy is a staunch scientific rationalist, a materialist whose philosophy in many ways echoes that of [[Sherlock Holmes]]: 

: But when you ask me to study feelings, impressions, suggestions, you ask me to do what is distasteful, and even demoralising. A departure from pure reason affects me like an evil smell or a musical discord. (4) 

One of his colleagues, Professor Wilson, a psychologist, invites him to a demonstration of hypnotism. Although not to Gilroy's taste he attends, partly because Agatha Marden — who is 'interested in it, as woman usually is in whatever is vague and mystical and indefinite' (5) will also be there. 

The main attraction of the evening is Miss Helen Penelosa, a middle-aged spinster from Trinidad (a West Indian location hinting at undertones of Voodoo), who demonstrates her capabilities by mesmerising Agatha Marden, a display which Gilroy finds both disturbing and intriguing, so much so that he agrees to allow Penelosa to hypnotise him over a number of weeks in a scientific exercise jointly monitored by Professor Wilson. 

As the experiment proceeds the sceptical Gilroy is gradually disabused of much of his earlier prejudice about the tangibility of hypnotic influence, which he reservedly begins to see as having some scientific foundation: 

: Have begun Binet and Ferré's 'Animal Magnetism'. What strange, deep waters these are! Results, results, results — and the cause an absolute mystery. It is stimulating to the imagination, but I must be on my guard against that. Let us have no inferences nor deductions, and nothing but solid facts. I know that the mesmeric trance is true; I know that I am myself sensitive to this force. That is my present position. I have a large new notebook which shall be devoted entirely to scientific detail. (6)

Later, reference is made to the genuine experiments carried out in France by the pioneer psychologist Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot and his colleagues, but still carrying a hint of caution: 

: Afterwards we hope to pass onto the phenomena of suggestion and of lucidity. Professors have demonstrated these things upon women at Nancy and at the Salpetriere. It will be more convincing when a woman demonstrates it upon a professor, with a second professor as a witness. (7)

The great experiment has to be abandoned as Penelosa's ultimately fatal obsessional infatuation with Gilroy takes over, but not before its duration and level of success has permanently shaken the rational complacency of the young professor. 

The depiction of hypnotism in '[[The Parasite]]' is ultimately very similar, if rather more sophisticated, to that in '[[John Barrington Cowles]]'. The origins of a sinister woman's mesmeric proclivities are presented, in a veiled fashion, as being supernatural and sinister, and their use, or misuse, as essentially evil in intent. The major difference lies in the stories' conclusions. In the former Penelosa is killed by the ultimate weakness of her personality, whereas in the latter Kate Northcott's fate remains uncertain. 

The scientific and moral dimensions of hypnotism are treated somewhat differently in Dracula. The open-minded Dr Van Helsing is the opposite of [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s Professor Gilroy. His curiosity regarding the boundaries of science has led him into an extensive investigation of the occult and pseudo-science. When faced by the doubt of his twenty-nine year old protegé, Dr John Seward, Van Helsing tries to persuade him of the reality of the seemingly improbable: 

: 'I suppose now you do not believe in corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialisation. No? Nor in astral bodies. No? Nor in the reading of thought. No? Nor in hypnotism—' 
: 'Yes,' I said. 'Charcot has proved that pretty well.' (8)

Here there is little of Gilroy's equivocality. Indeed, Van Helsing is himself an able hypnotist and uses his skill to combat the Count. Following her vampiric induction Mina Harker develops a mind connection to Dracula, which Van Helsing exploits during the vampire hunters' pursuit by mesmerically eliciting their prey's movements from her. Thus Stoker neatly illustrates the twin dualities of hypnotism; the occult/scientific dichotomy and the potential for either good or evil. There is no real resolution of these questions in the pages of Dracula, but it is clear that Van Helsing's open-mindedness and his manipulation of Mina are deciding factors in bringing about the Count's downfall. 

If both [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] and Stoker used the motif of the vampire to explore the vagaries of hypnotism they also evoked one of the sub-genre's other favourite themes, that of the eternal femme fatale. Like hypnotism it was a theme which had proved fascinating to the Romantics and the Decadents throughout the nineteenth century, and was particularly in vogue during the 1880s and '90s, the time during which '[[John Barrington Cowles]]', '[[The Parasite]]' and Dracula were all written and published. 

The figure of the vampire presented an ideal model for the 'literary depiction of a rapacious and corrupt femininity, corresponding to the type defined by Mario Praz, in his magisterial study of the darker aspects of nineteenth century literature, ''The Romantic Agony'', as the deadly temptress: 

: In accordance with this concept of the Fatal Woman, the lover is usually a youth, and maintains a passive attitude; he is obscure, and inferior either in condition or physical exuberance to the woman, who stands in the same relation to him as do the female spider, the praying mantis, &c., to their respective males: sexual cannibalism is her monopoly. (9) 

Outwardly it would seem curious that [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] and [[Bram Stoker|Stoker]], both robust and healthy outdoor types, should find themselves compelled to write memorable works on a theme more in keeping with the tastes of pale Aesthetes and Decadents. But the uncertainties of a changing social order, including the growing vociferousness of dissatisfied women, was of obvious concern to the conservatively-inclined. The malleable vampire legend essentially served to supply a convenient metaphor for social and sexual disorder, through which both writers could contrast the twisted, predatory, and ultimately weak femininity of the vampiric personality against the perceived strength provided by the pure and virtuous ideal of Victorian womanhood so prevalent amongst the leading female characters in their wider fiction. 

The true character of Kate Northcott stands as an obvious antithesis to the ideal. When first encountered she is described in terms of commingled beauty and tragedy. As the story develops her real nature becomes evident. Shortly after she and John Barrington Cowles have become engaged he visits her home in the company of Bob Armitage. They are met by a disturbing sight: 

: Her face was a little more flushed than usual, and she held in her hand a heavy dog-whip, with which she had been chastising a small Scotch terrier, whose cries we had heard in the street. The poor brute was cringing up against the wall, whining piteously, and evidently completely cowed. (10) 

This sadistic vignette is capped by Northcott's extravagant philosophy of punishment: 

: 'Supposing that every time a man misbehaved himself a gigantic hand were to seize him, and he were lashed with a whip until he fainted'-she clenched her white fingers as she spoke, and cut out viciously with the dog-whip 'it would do more to keep him good than any number of high-minded theories of morality.' (11) 
 
Clearly she is no average Victorian Miss. Cowles, however, refuses to be warned by this revelatory outburst and persists in his love, to the extent that she feels safe in revealing to him the secret that had unbalanced and killed both of his predecessors. He disappoints her by proving incapable of absorbing this. knowledge, some degree of which he subsequently imparts to Armitage: 

: 'It is too dreadful-too horrible-unutterably awful and incredible! O Kate, Kate!' and he rocked himself to and fro in his grief; 'I pictured you an angel and I find you a—' 
: 'A what?' I asked, for he had paused. 
: He looked at me with a vacant stare, and then suddenly burst out, waving his arms: A fiend!' he cried, 'A ghoul from the pit! A vampire soul behind a lovely face! Now God forgive me!' 

Continuing the supernatural allusion, he asks his friend: 

: 'Did you ever read of wehr-wolves?' he asked. 
: I answered that I had. 
: 'There is a story,' he said thoughtfully, 'in one of Marryat's books, about a beautiful woman who took the form of a wolf at night and devoured her own children. I wonder what put that idea into Marryat's head?' (12)

Despite the detail of this disclosure the actuality of Kate's condition remains a mystery. The references to ghouls, fiends and werewolves are colourful, but confused. The most telling phrase is 'vampire soul', suggesting that-the obvious pleasure and satisfaction she derives from the contemplation and infliction of physical pain notwithstanding-it is the personalities and mental equilibrium of her victims that she feeds on, rather than their flesh and blood. The more ethereal nature of her man-eating is evinced by the method through which she finally chooses to despatch the faithless Cowles; the use of an alluring astral projection. 

In '[[The Parasite]]' the themes explored in '[[John Barrington Cowles]]' are further refined, the first twist provided by the physical description of Helen Penelosa, who is somewhat less prepossessing than Kate Northcott: 

: She was a small frail creature, well over forty, I should say, with a pale peaky face, and hair of a very light shade of chestnut. Her presence was insignificant, and her manner retiring. In any group of ten women she would have been the last woman whom one would have picked out. Her eyes were perhaps her most remarkable, and also, I am compelled to say, her least pleasant, feature. They were grey in colour, grey with a shade of green-and their expression struck me as being decidedly furtive. I wonder if furtive is the word, or should I have said fierce? On second thoughts feline would have expressed it better. A crutch leaning against the wall told me what was painfully evident when she rose: that one of her legs was crippled. (13)

This overwhelmingly negative description is highly revealing. The green tint to the eyes helps to place her; vampires often have green eyes. Their feline quality conveys the impression of a predatory and possibly cruel personality. Her physical affliction serves several purposes. It sets her apart, and provides a possible source for the frustrations inherent in her character and her urge to power through mastery of hypnotism. It is also probably intended to convey an outward reflection of her moral weakness; the now (understandably) unfashionable motif of the sinister limp. She certainly contrasts with Gilroy's fiancée, the guileless Agatha Marden, a typical, and rather tepid, example of young late-Victorian womanhood. Their rôles, however, are reversed when Penelosa demonstrates her mesmeric powers: 

: [T]here was a change in the woman. She no longer seemed small or insignificant. Twenty years were gone from her age. Her eyes were shining, a tinge of colour had come into her sallow cheeks, her whole figure had expanded... She looked down at Agatha with an expression which I resented from the bottom of my soul-the expression with which a Roman empress might have looked at her kneeling slave. (14)

The classical allusion is apposite for the theme. Nineteenth century Decadent authors frequently evoked the memory of the powerful women of antiquity — Helen, Salome, Herodius, Cleopatra as most appropriately representative of the eternal spirit of the femme fatale. Incognizant of the woman's truly dangerous and obsessive nature Gilroy, by agreeing to place himself under her hypnotic influence, opens himself to her misplaced desire. Ignoring the warnings of another of his colleagues, Charles Sadler, 'the handsome young demonstrator of anatomy' and an earlier near-victim of Penelosa's wiles, Gilroy unwittingly encourages her. Knowing she cannot win him from Agatha by conventional means she abuses her power and attempts to channel his love for his fiancée towards her instead. In a moment of lucidity, reminiscent of John Barrington Cowles's awakening to the reality of Kate Northcott's 'vampire soul', he recognises Penelosa for what she is; 'She has a parasite soul; yes, she is a parasite, a monstrous parasite.' (15) By this time it is almost too late. Her drive for complete domination over him almost succeeds when, in a passage replete with sexual undertones and further echoes of the ancient world, she momentarily blinds him to both her physical and moral defects: 

: She lay quietly looking down at me with imperious eyes and her provocative smile. Once she passed her hand over my hair as one caresses a dog; and it gave me pleasure — the caress. I thrilled under it. I was her slave, body and soul, and for the moment I rejoiced in my slavery. (16)

Her moment of power passes. Gilroy, returned to his senses, berates her in no uncertain terms and unleashes the fury of the woman scorned. Although she has lost the ability to command and pervert his feelings she can still control his actions. But her final sadistic aberration-the attempt to compel Gilroy to disfigure Agatha — is too ambitious. The cocktail of internal conflicts, a heady combination of misguided love, lust, hate and drive for power over Gilroy, the sheer effort of mesmeric control, and the battle with the love for Agatha which she has failed to re-channel, proves fatal. In essence Penelosa is killed by her own moral corruption and her inability to face, or alter, reality. 

Compared to '[[The Parasite]]' [[Bram Stoker]]'s femmes fatales in Dracula are positively conventional. They are also more overtly sexual. The three apparently young vampiresses who set upon Jonathan Harker in Castle Dracula have little trouble in making him subsume his feelings for his fiancée in the face of their overtures: 

: There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina's eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth. (17)

Ironically, it is the timely intervention of Count Dracula, and not his love for Mina, which saves Harker from their seductive intent. 

The conflict between the innocent and decadent aspects of womanhood, the ingénue versus the femme fatale, represented here by Mina Murray and the vampire trio, and in '[[The Parasite]]' by Agatha Marden and Helen Penelosa, can also find embodiment within the confines of one character. In '[[John Barrington Cowles]]' there is the contrast between Kate Northcott's idealised and frail beauty and air of tragedy, and her corrupt soul, whilst in Dracula the battle between the two is illustrated by the graphic transformation of Lucy Westenra from an artless girl into a powerfully sexual vampire who, in attempting to seduce and transform her fiancé even mocks the sanctity of marriage, and whose only hope of redemption and restored purity lies in death. 

One quality is shared by the vampiric femmes fatales of both [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] and Stoker. All are tragic figures. Kate Northcott, although an irredeemable sadist, and worse, also possesses a naïve yearning for love. She refuses to realise that the revelation of her true nature makes it impossible for her lovers to remain with her. In their destruction she is unleashing the power of a broken as well as a black heart. Helen Penelosa shows a similar inability to face rejection, even of a forced affection. Like Northcott she genuinely wants to be loved, but on her own terms. Her unhappiness and tragedy stem from an irreconcilable combination of self-pity and manipulative arrogance. She cannot command or control that which she most desires. 

[[Bram Stoker|Stoker]]'s vampire women are straightforward victims. The three in Castle Dracula and Lucy Westenra were the Count's prey. Their monstrous and voluptuous behaviour patterns are beyond the volition of their mortal identities, although some twisted semblance of remembrance remains. Upon Dracula's rescuing of Harker he is challenged: 

: The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:—
: 'You yourself never loved; you never love!' On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. (18)

Beneath the cruelty, however, there is a plaintiveness. The women are pathetically trapped in a netherworld from which their only escape is death. 

On 20 August 1897 [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] wrote to [[Bram Stoker]], congratulating him upon the achievement of Dracula: 

: I think it is the very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years. It is really wonderful how with so much exciting interest over so long a book there is never an anticlimax. (19)

Yet in his autobiography, [[Memories and Adventures]] (1924), [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] denigrated his own major addition to the school of vampire literature: 

: During this Norwood interval, I was certainly working hard, for besides '[[The Refugees]]' I wrote '[[The Great Shadow]]', a booklet which I should put near the front of my work for merit, and two other little books on a very inferior plane '[[The Parasite]]' and '[[Beyond the City]]'. (20)

The reason for this dismissal probably lies in embarrassment. By the time he came to write his memoirs [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] was a crusader for the cause of Spiritualism, and '[[The Parasite]]' is not particularly kind towards mediums. There would appear to be more than a touch of autobiography in the character of Austin Gilroy, and his scepticism towards irrational phenomena probably, to some extent at least, mirrored [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s own at the time, something he would later have preferred to disregard. The hot-house atmosphere of the story may also have reflected his own emotional state and internal moral conflicts during the period of its composition, when his domestic routine was thrown into some turmoil by the news of his wife's contraction of tuberculosis. 

At all events he would appear to have preferred the story to sink into total obscurity. Fortunately this did not happen and, although not as well-known as it should be, it stands as a fascinating complementary contemporary counterpoint to the traditional terrors of [[Bram Stoker]]'s rather more commercially successful Dracula. 


'''Notes'''

1. [[Bram Stoker]]. ''Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving'', Vol. 1. London: Heinemann, 1906, pp. 247-8. It is interesting to note that at this early date [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] was sending typescripts rather than manuscripts. 

2. Anthologised in [[The Captain of the Polestar and Other Tales|The Captain of the Pole-star and Other Tales]] (1890), dedicated to General A. W. Drayson, who had encouraged [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s attendance of séances.

3. [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]]. '[[John Barrington Cowles]]' in [[The Captain of the Polestar and Other Tales|The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales]]. London: Longmans, Green, 1890, p.250. 

4. '[[The Parasite]]' in Richard Dalby (Ed.), Dracula's Brood. Wellingborough: Equation, 1987, p. 112.

5. Ibid., p. 113. 

6. Ibid., p. 122. 

7. Ibid., p. 123. 

8. [[Bram Stoker]]. ''Dracula''. London: Penguin, 1988, pp. 229-30. 

9. Mario Praz (Trans. Angus Davidson). ''The Romantic Agony''. Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 215-6. 

10. [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]. '[[John Barrington Cowles]]' in [[The Captain of the Polestar and Other Tales|The Captain of the Pole-star and Other Tales]], p. 242. 

11. Ibid., p. 243. 

12. Ibid., p. 259. The reference is to Chapter 39 of Frederick Maryat's ''The Phantom Ship'' (1839). In this episode a disturbed sailor recounts the story of how his expatriate Transylvanian family was decimated by his werewolf step-mother.

13. [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]. '[[The Parasite]]' in ''Dracula's Brood'', p. 114. 

14. Ibid., p. 115. 

15. Ibid., p. 127. 

16. Ibid., p. 132. 

17. [[Bram Stoker|Stoker]]. ''Dracula'', p. 51.

18. Ibid., p. 53. 

19. Quoted in Barbara Belford, ''Bram Stoker''. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996, p. 275.

20. [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]]. [[Memories and Adventures]]. Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 99. 










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