How Bram Stoker Reanimated Mummies

"...the consciousness of the mummy does not rest but is to be reckoned with." - Bram Stoker

Why are mummies so scary? They don't moan and walk around in real life, the way they do in movies, but they are actual things. Mummies are the realest of all the horror movie monsters. Vampires and werewolves come from literature; trolls and ghosts from myths and folklore; but mummies actually exist. Fear of mummies is a projection of European guilt over the colonial project and embodies aspects of that project by making magical monsters out of the colonial other.

Europeans weren't the first to plunder the Great Pyramids, but late-Victorian London is the focus of this blog, so I'm not going to get side-tracked by other plunderers, especially when the influence of writers from 1890s London has such a profound influence on the development of the monster mummy narrative.

The belief that some of the antiquities were cursed had been circulating around Europe since the end of the 17th century, but that didn't stop "collectors," like Lady Meux and Sir William Wilde. Sir William, Oscar Wilde's father, collects Egyptian antiquities that he took directly from Egypt. Bram Stoker later recalled listening to Sir William's stories about Egypt "before all the archeology started." Lady Meux developed one of the largest collections with over 2,000 pieces, including mummies, which she tried to donate to the British Museum upon her death.

This was the social/political climate in which Bram Stoker wrote the first prominent work of fiction featuring mummies as supernatural antagonists: The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903). Like Stoker's vampires, his mummies became postcolonial pop-culture icons. Before the Jewel was published, mummies' curses were used to explain the deaths of anyone connected to anyone who came into contact with a mummy. After the Jewel was published, the mummies themselves could be reanimated.

"Father, in the Egyptian belief, was the power of resurrection of a mummied body a general one, or was it limited? That is: could it achieve resurrection many times in the course of ages; or only once, and that one final?" 

"There was but one resurrection," he answered. "There were some who believed that this was to be a definite resurrection of the body into the real world. But in the common belief, the Spirit found joy in the Elysian Fields, where there was plenty of food and no fear of famine. Where there was moisture and deep-rooted reeds, and all the joys that are to be expected by the people of an arid land and burning clime." 

Then Margaret spoke with an earnestness which showed the conviction of her inmost soul: 

"To me, then, it is given to understand what was the dream of this great and far-thinking and high-souled lady of old; the dream that held her soul in patient waiting for its realisation through the passing of all those tens of centuries. The dream of a love that might be; a love that she felt she might, even under new conditions, herself evoke. The love that is the dream of every woman's life; of the Old and of the New; Pagan or Christian; under whatever sun; in whatever rank or calling; however may have been the joy or pain of her life in other ways. Oh! I know it! I know it! I am a woman, and I know a woman's heart. [...]" - Bram Stoker, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903)

The idea of a mummified Egyptian queen, not dead, but asleep and dreaming of love, was transferred directly into an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1997, in which the 500 year-old mummy of an Inca princess is brought back to life and falls in love with Zander.

"Inca Mummy Girl," Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
7 October 1997.

Conscious willing desire is what separates pop-culture supernatural antagonistic mummies from their zombie counter parts. Zombies mindlessly wander about seeking brains, but if a mummy feeds on a human it is for strength to carry on a new life, or to maintain guardianship over their afterlife. For Stoker's mummy, it was both. In this scene of the Jewel, Stoker's protagonists are trying to interpret "ka" and "ab" from an Egyptian text:

"It means that for this night the Queen's Double, which is otherwise free, will remain in her heart, which is mortal and cannot leave its prison-place in the mummy-shrouding. It means that when the sun has dropped into the sea, Queen Tera will cease to exist as a conscious power, till sunrise; unless the Great Experiment can recall her to waking life. It means that there will be nothing whatever for you or others to fear from her in such way as we have all cause to remember. Whatever change may come from the working of the Great Experiment, there can come none from the poor, helpless, dead woman who has waited all those centuries for this night; who has given up to the coming hour all the freedom of eternity, won in the old way, in hope of a new life in a new world such as she longed for...!"

George Washington used the term "the Great Experiment" to refer to the United States of America and Stoker was a scholar of American history, so it's not a stretch to say that "the Great Experiment," in this case, refers to modernity. If the experiment is a success the modern world will be everything that the mummy ever dreamed of, and by extension the right place for all other cursed Egyptian antiquities.

The notion that preserving antiquities is the burden of the benefactors of societies great experiments is at the heart of the cursed artefact myth and permeates the views of many modern Egyptologists and museum patrons. In the words of Jasmine Day in "The Mummy's Curse: Mummymania in the English-speaking World" (2006):

Popular archeology's promise of empowerment to its audiences can thus become implicated in a regressive imperialistic fantasy. The 'Humanity Ownership Argument' frequently invoked in debates about control of cultural property, holds that a body of material culture should not be possessed solely by a single ethnic group. This resembles the demand of the Dragon Principle that valuables be ceded to those who can best utilize them. [Some people] believed that indigenous peoples' requests for reparation of their former possessions threatens archeology. They spoke as if their own property were being threatened, because they identified with the archeologists.

In other words, to some, the British Museum is a better caretaker of Egyptian artefacts than Egyptians are. In 1890s terms, British collectors felt they were better caretakers of Egyptian antiquities that Egyptians were.

Bram Stoker might not have invented the mummy, but he animated it and infused its new life with the anxieties of the emerging postcolonial era, the traces of which can still be seen today.

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Popular Perceptions of Electricity in the 1890s

If you lived in a major city, like London, electricity had become part of your everyday life by the 1890s. You might not have it in your home, but even if you did, you might not understand what it was.

Even electrical engineers, like Nikola Tesla, used words like "energy" to describe that which was generated by electricity and that which he felt after sleeping. It's not clear that many people distinguished between the two. Tesla actually got the idea for tuning radio frequencies through his belief that he and his mother were tuned into the same frequency when she died. Still, Tesla understood more about electricity than most people do today, but the electrical revolution was spreading rapidly.

A town called Godalming, Surrey, built the first central station to provide electricity to the public in the fall of 1881. They did so because the disagreed with the rate the gas company was charging them. I understand the feeling from dealing with my internet provider. Godalming's system was first used for their street lamps, but within the year more than 80% of its homes were connected. Overall, the town wasn't happy with their new electrical system and reverted to gas (also a familiar feeling in dealing with new internet providers). However, by 1882, London had a large-scale power station at Holburn Viaduct.

The power Holburn Viaduct produced was mostly used to power public resources. In spite of widespread apprehension the rails of the London Underground were being electrified. People worried about potentially-fatal electrical short circuits and dangerous accidents. London's Bersey Cabs hit the London streets in 1897. By 1899, ninety percent of New York City's taxi cabs were electric. Electrification of the home was reserved for the most forward-thinking members of the upper class, with the Savoy Hotel being the first such establishment to run its lights and lifts on electric power. While this impressed many of its guests, the popular imagination still viewed this new power source with as much fear as it did curiosity. 

Many people believed electricity could recharge their bodies. The field of medicine was experimenting with electricity. Even rural doctors would charge for coursing low levels of electric current through the body in an effort to cure a variety of real and imaginary ailments. Of course, wherever you could find a quack Victorian doctor, you could find quack Victorian products.

I don't know what electric oil was, but it sounds like wonderful stuff. Moreover, I'm also not sure how you get electricity in a bottle.

In the midst of all this electric healing, electricity was deliberately used to kill for the first time in 1890, when a convicted murderer, William Kemmler sat in the electric chair on 6 August 1890. The first attempt left Kemmler unconsciousness, but did not stop his heart and breathing. After they recharged the generator, the second attempt ruptured blood vessels under Kemmler's skin; the areas around the electrodes singed. Kemmler's execution took about eight minutes. George Westinghouse later commented that "they would have done better using an axe," and a witnessing reporter wrote that it was "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." Some say Kemmler burst into flame before finally dying.

Thomas Edison horrifically played on the public's fears about the dangers of electricity when attempting to discredit his competitors by electrocuting and torturing dogs, cats, cows, horses, and most famously, an elephant in public demonstrations.

In conclusion, 1890s people thought electricity had the potential to replace gas as a fuel source; that it was deadly dangerous; but that in small amounts, electricity had magical healing powers. I've read just enough to believe the rumours that some people actually wore electric jewelry for its healing powers and will leave you with the steampunk Jem image that conjured in my mind. The reference here is, of course, to Jem's flashing earrings.

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The Perfect Woman

"The Crush," by Charles Dana Gibson.

Perfection in humans is inarguably subjective, but as I've written a post on the perfect man of the 1890s, it has been pointed out to me that I ought to write one about the perfect woman.

Minerva

I want to write about a female bodybuilder because Eugene Sandow, the bodybuilder, was the perfect man in the 1890s, and I support gender equality, and there were female bodybuilders - even before Sandow began promoting bodybuilding for health and beauty. One of these was America's first famous strong woman, Josie Wohlford, or 'Minerva,' as she was called. Minerva held the Guinness Book World Record for the greatest weight lifted by a woman (18 men on a platform totalling over 3,000 lbs). I want to write about Katie Brumbach the same way, but the female bodybuilders of the 1890s didn't represent an ideal the way that Sandow did.

Katie Sandwina

In the Sandow ideal, form followed function. On the stage, Brumbach performed feats of strength as Katie Sandwina the feminine giantess, but feats of physical strength were not the feminine ideal in the 1890s, an era that would give rise to the Gibson girl in the United States and Lily Langtry in the UK.

[The Gibson girl's] image was unlike those of American woman that had appeared in the nineteenth century. Physically, she looked different. She was tall, with an incredibly tiny waist. She wore her hair swept up into a softly twisted bun called a chignon, revealing her long swanlike neck. What distinguished her more than any physical characteristics, however, was her attitude. [...] The lift of the Gibson girl's chin and her half closed eyes [...] suggested that she was more aloof than nurturing. Some thought her sophisticated. Others thought her haughty or conceited. She didn't stay at home, either. The images placed her on a golf course or on the beach. The media quickly labeled her "the typical American girl."

Gibson girl, 1899.

An invention of the 1890s, the Gibson girl's popularity continued to grow in the early twentieth century. Possessing similar attributes, Langtry was "introduced" in the 1877 and grew in popularity through to the 1890s.

Lily Langtry

An American in London, Langtry was literally introduced at one of Lady Sebright's evenings at home in May 1877. Her social performance there attracted comment, as well as invitations to other events with other important social figures. She had married well enough that she didn't need to work, but her great social success and personal interest in London Society led to an acting career and affairs with noblemen, including the Prince of Wales. Langtry's story encapsulates feminine ideals of the era in that her looks, and her ability to enchant were her keys to success.

Still, it wouldn't do to call Langtry the perfect woman, the way that Sandow was called the perfect man. She did after all, attract gossip by cheating on her husband. The perfect woman of the 1890s was an impossible ideal, one that I think is captured beautifully as George W.E. Russell recalls his friend, Mrs Lowther.

She possessed what men arrogantly call a "masculine understanding," trained into accuracy and thoroughness by the systematic studies of her girlhood. She could direct, organize, and control on the largest scale and in the smallest details. She was competent to deal with the toughest and most intricate problems of business, money, and, if need were, law. She could discuss, on equal terms and at a moment's notice, policies with Premiers, and Fiscal Reform with Chancellors of the Exchequer; Laws of Evidence with Judges, and Education Bills with Bishops. Yet she "bore this load of learning lightly as a flower," and could turn in an instant from the most strenuous themes to the graces and amenities, even the trivialities, of social life. Her enjoyment of that life was keen, and, in whatever phase she found herself, her talents and accomplishments were ready for the occasion.

She was, as most people know, a genuine artist; being very quick to catch an effective point, bold and rapid in execution, accurate in draughtsmanship, and endowed with that rare gift in English art - a true sense for colour. No one but an artist could have arranged the interior decoration of Lowther Lodge, where colour and form are so harmoniously combined. As to music, one who is well qualified to judge says, "She was very musical, and played the piano quite beautifully. She used to have lessons from Chopin, and up to the end remembered by heart pieces she had learnt with him, and played them very often when we were alone." Her waltzing was renowned for lightness and grace; and her familiarity with all minor accomplishments, such as painting on china, wood-carving, and embroidery, was remarkable. Nothing came amiss to her, and no one, I should think, ever spent so few idle moments in a long life.

In literature her taste was for the old than for the new, and she had a hearty contempt for that smattering of ephemeral criticism and culture which is so often used to conceal fundamental ignorance of the books really worth knowing.

Two women reading on a verandah at Ingham, ca. 1894-1903
(Harriett Petifore Brims, JOL, SLQ, Neg 132733)

Her conversational gifts were altogether exceptional. She was always perfectly natural, always in touch with those to whom she was talking, taking their points and interested in their interests. She was keenly alive to anything in her guests' conversation which struck her as important or curious or amusing, and was always ready with the apt reply which showed that she had been attending and not merely hearing. Her own copious and varied knowledge of life and society and art flowed in an easy and continuous stream, which never needed either pumping or damming. She could hit off a ludicrous situation - perhaps sometimes an absurd character - with a touch of genuine humour; and, if her moral sense was shocked or her convictions were outraged, she could express disapprobation with an emphasis all the more impressive because it was not violent.

Perhaps the only subject which did not interest Mrs Lowther, among all those which are discussed in modern society, was Health. Doctors and diseases, diets and systems, bored her to extremity; and this was natural enough, inasmuch as she had never had occasion, in her own case or in that of her family, to make herself acquainted with the dismal lore of the sick-room. She was one of the strongest women in the world; astonishingly active, and ignorant of the meaning of fatigue. In the discharge of her various duties as wife, mother, hostess, member of society, mistress of a large establishment [...] she laboured incessantly, and with no apparent loss of energy, till the last weeks of a protracted life. Energy was indeed her most striking characteristic; and by energy I mean that indefinable gift, rather spiritual than physical, which makes a man or woman live intensely in every nerve and fibre, and throw the whole being into the tasks and interests of the moment. - Sketches and Snapshots by George W.E. Russell

An interesting woman indeed, I don't use Russell's account to suggest that Mrs Lowther was the perfect woman, only that 1890s feminine perfection was the happy stuff of the eulogizing imagination. Whatever resemblance she bore with the real Mrs Lowther, the character Russell sketches for us in that passage shared characteristics with the New Woman, in that she was educated, independent, and capable. Like the Gibson girl, she might be put into practically any situation and would know how to behave. Like Langtry, she seemed capable of enchanting the people around her, so that you want to make her a friend. She would probably be a good friend to have because she listens so well. And like Minerva and Katie Sandwina, she was strong; healthy strong, but (unlike them) not lifting 3,000 pounds on her shoulders strong.

"The New Woman and her bicycle - there will be several varieties of HER!"

Women's weight lifting and bodybuilding still struggle for acceptance, the way that many women's sports are still not taken as seriously as men's. The perfect woman of the 1890s, therefore, poured her inexhaustible energy into more feminine pursuits, while ever-pressing the boundaries of what was traditionally masculine and what was traditionally feminine.

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Humans of London (in the 1890s)

Who isn't occasionally inspired by Humans of New York? Since I've taken a little break from writing recently and been playing with Photoshop, I thought I would share what I've come up with.

These are writers in London in the 1890s (if they had Facebook and someone got inspired by Humans of New York).

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Humans of London: Bram Stoker

Again, my twist on Humans of New York, but London in the 1890s...

Yesterday I posted one for Arthur Conan Doyle.

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1890s Male Body Image

Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel's 1898 selfie.

Victorian sexuality can be approached from so many directions, including (but not limited to) body image, sexual orientation, masturbation, prostitution, sex education, disease, religion, marriage, and pornography. All of these aspects overlap and influence each other, creating tremendous diversity in attitudes toward sex at any given point in history. Each of these factors provide the context in which sexual identities are created. This post is the first in a series of posts that seek to explore that context from the 1890s with an emphasis on male sexuality.

Body Image

Facial hair is the first thing that comes to mind about how Victorian men looked. Men styled their facial hair as elaborately as women styled their hair. As it is today, hair was important to Victorian men, and the market knew it. Men could buy elixirs to prevent or cure hair loss, to make their mustaches and beards grow faster, or to hold them in place. Special tea cups and spoons were designed for mustaches. Contraptions were being invented to curl a man's mustache; others were intended to hold it in place after it was curled. Lead combs promised to get rid of grey hairs by dying them black.

From the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 1884.

I've already begun to address body image, in my post on the perfect man. While women's fashion was beginning to realize that women's clothing was so constrictive that women couldn't move, Eugen Sandow's role as the perfect man illustrated that a man's ideal body emphasized function, as well as form. The form of a man's body indicated the feats of strength he was capable of performing.

Eugen Sandow's feats of strength.

For men who wanted to perform feats of
strength, but didn't believe they could do it.

Strong women, like Mary Arniotis, existed, but Arniotis was the exception. She was born into a circus family, and little is know about her life, but her most famous photo is done in the style of the strong man.

Mary Arniotis in the 1890s.

Sandy became the founder of body building as a sport, and based the ideal measurements for a male body on classical statues, often posing for cabinet cards as if he were a statue himself.

Clearly, Sandow didn't invent the 'classical' male form. In the late-18th and early-19th centuries, men wore corsets to artificially achieve the ideal shape. By the 1890s, they were using electric belts, though the tone in advertisements for these belts emphasize fitness, health, and as a cure for "weakness."

Ad dated 5 January 1900.

Exercise, the way we do it at a gym, increased in popularity by the 1890s, especially at spas, like the Zander Institute in Stolkhome, where wealthy Londoners could go to get healthy by using machines like these:

All three of these images are from the Zander Institute.

These institutions of health treated everything that ailed the 1890s Londoner, including obesity.

Doctors, who studied obesity in the 19th-century, were already beginning to acknowledge the problem of medical professionals refusing to treat obese patients. Doctors, like Horace Dobell, Isaac Burney Yeo, and John Ayrton Paris were already making the connection between obesity, diet, and a sedentary lifestyle. As early as 1825, those struggling with their weight were warned against trusting fad diets, but people were still doing whatever it took to get the ideal shape, even when their efforts were in vain.

Smartly dressed fat man sitting in a chair.

Another aspect of body image is fashion. For as long as it has existed, fashion has played an important part in human sexuality. In the late-19th century, women's accessories were fetishized and used for flirting, and cross-dressing was something loads of middle-class Victorians wanted to do in front of a camera.

If he couldn't lift a family of six, a gentleman could still demonstrate his ability through his status, indicated through the number and quality of coats he wore. A man's coat could indicate his interests, his social status, and his ability to provide for a family. As illustrated by the photos above, clothing played a huge role in gender, and they knew it!

Cross dressing happened in literature, and theatre, where the clothes defined the person's gender. In stories, a woman could put on her brother's clothes, and make everyone think she was him.

So it was the clothes and ability to pick things up that made the man in terms of body image. Soon, I will follow up with a post about who Victorian men wanted to 'pick up.'

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Bram Stoker & Oscar Wilde Kiss & Tell

After many years of lipstick kisses, Oscar Wilde moved to a new tomb in 2011

How did Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde feel about kissing in their writing? I've talked about dancing, and women, and other things. So what about kisses?

Let's start with the Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).

[Sybil Vane] was free in her prison of passion. Her prince, Prince Charming, was with her. She had called on memory to remake him. She had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought him back. His kiss burned again upon her mouth. Her eyelids were warm with his breath.

From the TV series Penny Dreadful

I was once told that people kiss because it engages so many of the senses: touch, taste, smell... In that passage, this certainly seems true. Sybil is just remembering Dorian's kiss, and the memory of it activates all of these senses. It's quite different from how she kisses her mother.

Sybil rushed to her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. 

When it comes to kissing family members, Sybil likes to take a running leap.

"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sybil, I think," said the lad [her brother] with a good-natured grumble."

Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she cried. "You are a dreadful old bear." And she ran across the room and hugged him.

But it seems Sybil is wrong about how much her brother likes being kissed.

There was jealousy in the lad's heart, and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him, had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck, and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and kissed her with real affection. 

He even kisses their mother before he leaves. I have to say that there's not this much kissing in my family. We kiss children, and spouses, that's about it. If we ever kiss each other, it's on the cheek. Absolutely none of this "real affection" and hair-touching that Oscar Wilde is talking about.

Dorian Gray (2009)

But back to Sybil and Dorian. There's a big difference in how the two of them remember kissing that reflects on how they each feel about their relationship. As I said before, Sybil's memory is very visceral, whereas Dorian's memory of it literally focuses on the art.

"After the performance was over, I went behind and spoke to her. As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. She trembled all over and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can't help it. Of course, our engagement is a dead secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care. I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth."

Spoiler: Dorian loves Sybil for her art, but doesn't like the person she really is. He leaves her. She's not very happy about that.

"I think I should never have known it if you had not kissed me—if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love. Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away from me."

That is part of a desperate plea on her part.

Sybil Vane commits suicide, and Dorian imagines kissing himself, while looking at his hideous portrait.

Once, in boyish mockery of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly at him.

But, when she's dead, he does try to get some memorial of her.

"You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and some broken pathetic words."

Moving on to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).

Immediately, the kisses become more sexual, as Jonathan Harker is in Dracula's castle with the three brides of Dracula.

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.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

“Go on! You are first, and we shall follow; yours is the right to begin.” The other added:

“He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all.”

"Yours is the right to begin" is an interesting choice of words, most likely borrowed from the grimoires to give this scene an occult feel.

Of course, the Count saves Jonathan from this 'terrifying' scene, but promises the ladies they can kiss him at will, when he has fulfilled his use.

Big surprise in Dracula is that vampires love to kiss.

But there's also some regular courting going on in this story. There's some kissing when Lucy tells Mr Morris that her heart belongs to another, then as he leaves, he says:

‘Little girl, I hold your hand, and you’ve kissed me, and if these things don’t make us friends nothing ever will. Thank you for your sweet honesty to me, and good-bye.’

 Of course, the man Lucy loves loves her back.

Besides, it was all so confused; it seemed only a moment from his coming into the room till both his arms were round me, and he was kissing me. I am very, very happy, and I don’t know what I have done to deserve it.

Mina and Lucy in NBC's TV series Dracula.

Much has been written to compare Mina and Lucy. Lucy kisses people when she is breaking up with them, she kisses passionately, with both arms around her. Mina is married and her kisses to Jonathan are promises. Lucy dies because of vampires, whereas good men are able to save Mina's soul. Is this a commentary on women's sexuality? Yes, it probably is. But I like it when Mina and Lucy kiss each other. In fact, this is probably my favourite line in the whole book. From Lucy to Mina:

Oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your own home with your husband.

When Lucy is dying, and under Van Helsing's care, he gives her fiancé permission to kiss her. Implicit in this is that when a woman is sick, she no longer has the authority to offer, or deny, kisses to her intended.

“The brave lover, I think, deserve another kiss, which he shall have presently.” [Van Helsing]

Lucy actually thanks Van Helsing for this aspect of his 'service' with a kiss.

Very shortly after she opened her eyes in all their softness, and putting out her poor, pale, thin hand, took Van Helsing’s great brown one; drawing it to her, she kissed it. “My true friend,” she said, in a faint voice, but with untellable pathos, “My true friend, and his! Oh, guard him, and give me peace!”

“I swear it!” he said solemnly, kneeling beside her and holding up his hand, as one who registers an oath. Then he turned to Arthur, and said to him: “Come, my child, take her hand in yours, and kiss her on the forehead, and only once.”

Of course, when Lucy is dead, Arthur kisses her corpse.

he went back and took her dead hand in his and kissed it, and bent over and kissed her forehead.

But we can't overlook the fact that, in Dracula, kisses are contagious. As Van Helsing explains:

Friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor Lucy die; or again, last night when you open your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have fill us with horror.

 So, after Lucy dies, they have to really kill her. Then, Van helping says:

“And now, my child, you may kiss her. Kiss her dead lips if you will, as she would have you to, if for her to choose. For she is not a grinning devil now—not any more a foul Thing for all eternity. No longer she is the devil’s Un-Dead. She is God’s true dead, whose soul is with Him!”

Arthur bent and kissed her...

Next, people start kissing Mina. Van Helsing kisses and is kissed by her, as acknowledgement of their friendship. After Mina's own husband kisses her, he asks God to bless her.

After Mina becomes sick, she polices her own kissing.

Winona Ryder as Mina (1992).

“Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear.”

The message here seems to be that virtuous married women, although not immune to corruption, have more control over their own kisses, and, by extension, their own bodies. As is clear in this scene, where Mina is laying ill.

Then she raised her head proudly, and held out one hand to Van Helsing who took it in his, and, after stooping and kissing it reverently, held it fast. The other hand was locked in that of her husband, who held his other arm thrown round her protectingly.

In that kissing scene, Mina chooses who gets to kiss her and where, with her husband protectively watching over her.

Mina and Jonathan's kisses continue to be followed by promises, even when given to cement friendships.

Mina and I both felt so, and simultaneously we each took one of the old man’s hands and bent over and kissed it. Then without a word we all knelt down together, and, all holding hands, swore to be true to each other.

As they ride through the snow in pursuit of the Count, Mina is seeking the three women her husband wrote about.

It was as though my memories of all Jonathan’s horrid experience were befooling me; for the snow flakes and the mist began to wheel and circle round, till I could get as though a shadowy glimpse of those women that would have kissed him.

Kisses that are uncontrolled make men weak, in Dracula.

Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss—and man is weak. 

By comparing kisses in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula, the message we get from both of them is that kisses need to mean the same thing to both (or all) the parties involved. Also, it's possible that there was more kissing in the Wilde family than there should have been!

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Photos of Victorian Dead People

WARNING: This post contains images of dead Victorian babies. This is a terribly sad collection of photos.

Taking pictures of dead people was a classical Victorian art form that lasted well into the twentieth century and is more politely referred to as 'post-mortem photography,' or 'memorial portraiture.' The photos themselves were called 'cabinet cards,' or 'mourning portraits.'

While we may consider them creepy, they were a normal part of American and European culture, and are still used today by many families who lose a baby during childbirth. Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep is the name of one organization that provides this service to grieving families.

In the 1890s, grieving families commissioned the photos of lost loved ones of all ages. The pictures were, in many cases, the only visual remembrance they had of their lost loved one.

Before 1839, mourning portraits were expensive endeavors that involved hiring a portrait artist. But the daguerreotype was invented in 1839, making a new kind of portraiture more accessible to the rising middle class. The practice reached its peak at the end of the nineteenth century, and faded away during the twentieth.

Post-mortem photography faded away as medical services increasingly became a part of everyday life. In the nineteenth century, most people died in their homes, frequently during childhood. Children would often be photographed with a toy, or with another relative, usually a sibling, or the mother. High childhood mortality rates were part of why so many of these photos are of infants and children.

The most significant differences between post-mortem photography in the 1890s, and what organizations, like Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, do today are where the photos are taken, and the stigma that is attached to them. I originally wrote this post as part of my halloween series, but am editing it now to encourage greater sensitivity toward this art form and its history, which is as long as the history of photography.

Infant 1890

Montreal 1890

Metta Jones, age 2 months, April 1890.

Germany 1890

Boy photographed by G.W. Barnes,
Rockford IL, 1890.

Mom and triplets, 1890.

Rosita Quintero 1892

A young girl in West Newton Massachusetts, 1893.

The Keller Family, 1894.

A priest, 1897.

5 year-old Flora Hoffman, 1897.

Miss Grace, 1898.

One of the most common misconceptions of post-mortem photography is that metal stands were used to pose the dead as if they were still alive. Dead subjects were usually posed in coffins, in beds, or as if napping in a chair. Brady stands, which people commonly think were used to pose the dead, were actually used to assist the living in staying still long enough to have their photos taken. If you spot one of these stands in a Victorian photo, it's a good indication that the subject was alive at the time the photo was taken.

Which raises the question: What the heck is happening in this photo???

This post was edited on 24 November 2014.

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If you have enjoyed the work that I do, please consider supporting my Victorian Dictionary Project!