The Divorce of Signifier and Signified in Dracula. Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez

Transcription

1 The Divorce of Signifier and Signified in Dracula Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez Bram Stoker s Dracula has been critiqued for its content and the way that thematically it subverts notions of otherness. However, there is less criticism on how the novel is doing a similar thing structurally. The novel s structure has many modes of discourse (e.g. journal entries, newspaper articles, etc) and many voices performing such discoursing. This allows for contradictions to arise in the novel, which in turn make Dracula a satirical piece and which lead to questions about the legitimacy of claims of authenticity. Though the novel is superficially about hunting down an evil vampire, questions of the lack of voice and language run covertly throughout the novel. Given these complications, it is worthwhile to ask how the narrative discourse and language are working in the novel to subvert the notion of other. Dracula is the main other in the novel since he isn t even given the chance to speak; he is denied language. Dracula represents the subconscious in the novel because the subconscious also lacks verbal language which is the domain of the conscious. When Dracula is killed at the end of the novel, he ceases to exist out there. Because the novel is about Dracula and the effort to define and categorize him through journal entries in order to defeat him, Dracula is the novels signified, that which the signifiers the novel s modes of discourse, such as the journals and diaries are meant to signify. However, Dracula is an elusive signifier and at the moment of his death, he disappears completely. At the end of the novel, Jonathan laments that their modes of discourse have become meaningless heaps of typewriting (Stoker 400), suggesting that the signifier exists now but not the signified. At the novel s

2 conclusion, the signified retreats completely into the level of the subconscious where it can no longer be retrieved. Thus, at the moment of death, Dracula retreats fully into the subconscious of the other characters where it can no longer be defined as other. The signifier divorced from the signified is significant because it works to subvert the notion of otherness in the novel. Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist and one of the main precursors of Structuralism, defined a sign as being composed of a signifier and signified. The signifier is the word and the signified is the idea which that word represents. That is, The signifier is the material sound pattern, a written or spoken word, whilst the signified is the concept associated with the particular signifier (Allen 218). If these concepts are applied to the novel Dracula, the text composed of many different modes of discourse (i.e. the journal entries, articles, etc.) becomes the signifier while Dracula is the signified. The text is the signifier because it is a series of words which are meant to represent something else. Dracula is the signifier; he is that something else that is represented by these words. At the end of Dracula, these words become divorced of what they meant to symbolize, and by so doing, the notion of other is taken to a level beyond language and its dualistic system of representation. The ways in which Stoker s novel subverts the notion of otherness through its thematic competition of discourses has been widely analyzed. The novel breaks down social constructs of sexuality, gender, race, etc., by, among other things, presenting Dracula as sexually ambiguous; by having Dracula the other invade the West in a process of reverse Imperialism and by having Mina and Lucy transform from ideal representations of women to women who are sexually assertive and more capable than the men, respectively. The novel is a collision of discourses that speaks for those who have

3 been marginalized by the category of other, including women and ethnic minorities, through patriarchic, white supremacy. In the socially dominant hierarchy, using the signifier other to represent the signified minorities, creates boundaries that are to a great extent artificial social constructs that perpetuate and undermine the legitimacy of these groups as social entities able to climb the social ladder. In other words, categorizing someone as other makes them so. The signifier itself becomes not only a symbol but a tool for oppression. Furthermore, this kind of language that perpetuates otherness is representative of the belief system and stereotypes of those who create and benefit from the language: white, male Victorian society. For instance, in the novel Jonathan keeps a journal in which he keeps attempting to define what he sees and experiences traveling while he s traveling to Dracula s castle and while he remains in the castle. He attempts to place all the strange things he sees under the category of other, such as when he continually calls the villagers near Dracula s castle picturesque (3). He needs to use these categories in order to set himself apart from them so that they don t appear threatening anymore, yet these categories summon an artificial barrier between him and these people. Harker constantly tries to normalize the strange into the discourse of the nineteenth-century travelogue (Seed 64) and uses language to separate himself from the other. Those who create this language benefit from it and those left in the margins by this language can only participate of it in a way that works against them, perpetuating their own oppression. In Dracula, the notion of other is destabilized through the novel s content which breaks the stereotypes which this language seeks to perpetuate (e.g. women as frail and good) and by reversing the hierarchy. However, the novel s thematic collision of discourses is almost wholly a byproduct of its structural competition of discourses. The

4 structural competition of discourses has to do with language, symbol, and the novel s organization into a series of journal entries, newspaper articles, and other modes of discourse. These modes of discourse are signifiers and the diverse modes of discourse, which are a diversity of signifiers, end up competing to a point in which the signifiers contradict each other and what they intend to signify can no longer be represented. The novel s competing perspectives is one aspect born of its structural competition of discourses. The diversity of perspectives in the novel straddles both a collision of discourses in terms of content and one in terms of structure. Although as noted above, the language used in the novel is one that benefits those in the higher rungs of the hierarchy, the fact that the novel is narrated from multiple points of views disrupts the hierarchy somewhat because it presents contradictions in the text thus raising questions about the legitimacy of this hierarchy. These contradictions arise often when Mina enters the narrative, suggesting that she lacks an overt voice and therefore must speak in code under the text. They are contradictions in content that reflect a problem with the language of the novel, the fact that the discourse is male dominated. Issues of content thus reflect upon issues of structure and language in the novel, and just as the content disrupts the notion of other, the signifier/signified binary is broken at the end of the novel in a way that reflects the breaking of the me/other dichotomy. For example, one instance in which content reveals problems of language and the restriction of language to the privileged few occurs when Dracula visits Mina and makes her drink his blood. In this scene, the men tell Mina to go to bed, that they will solve her problems (255-6). On the surface, this scene is about the men plotting against the vampire while Mina is attacked by Dracula. Dracula is an evil force that must be eliminated and proof of that is the fact that he s attacking Mina at that instant. Yet if this scene is

5 analyzed with the problem of female voicelessness in mind, one detects that Dracula is providing Mina with the language denied to her by the men of the novel. Mina acquires the power to dream after the men tell her to go to her room, thus excluding her from their plotting against the vampire. They feel she has become a threat to their masculinity, their desire to be the heroes that save the damsel in distress, and therefore they exclude her from the male discourse. Mina is upset and Dracula comes at this moment as if to revindicate her, to give her a mode of expression, a power over the men. The men are emasculated by Dracula when Dracula gives Mina his blood and as a consequence, the power to dream. As a result of Dracula s intervention, Mina becomes a text to be studied when she examines the transcript of her hypnotic trances (Seed 75). Dracula gives her a nonverbal language inaccessible to the men except through her, the language of dream images which can be interpreted to locate the count s whereabouts. Mina s dreams work as symbols that relate to the real world in the way that the signifier and the signified relate to each other. The dream images are thus the signifier which signify Dracula s location (i.e. the signified). Thus, the novel satirizes the men s belief that they are Mina s saviors when in reality they are thoroughly dependent upon Mina. The last words of the novel are Jonathan s and they illustrate his effort to return to the status quo: how some men so loved [Mina], that they did dare much for her sake (Stoker 400). Although Dracula would never have been defeated without the help of Mina, Jonathan gives himself and the other men all the credit. More importantly, in this last sentence he utilizes language to redefine what occurred, he uses language to return Mina to her proper place. This example demonstrates how language is used in Dracula as a social tool to subvert the others and leave them voiceless and how this effort to return to the social

6 hierarchy is upset by the thematic competition of discourses in the novel. Because the novel is not only comprised of Jonathan s journal but the journals of many other characters including Mina, the reader understands that his is only one perspective among many, that there are many simultaneous discourses occurring. Even though Mina is limited to a male discourse, taken holistically, the contrast in perspectives reveals the satire underlying the novel. Thus, the competing discourses reveal inconsistencies in perspective that work to overthrow the male discourse intends to represent, and these male signifiers become divorced of what they intend to dignify. Another method in which the text is a competition of discourses, a method that rests exclusively on structure, is the different means of information gathering used by the characters to present their perspectives. The novel s many modes of discourse include journal entries, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, telegrams, memorandums, and gramophone recordings. The consequence of this diversity is instability within the discourse, both because these modes claim an authenticity that collapses as the novel progresses and because they re precariously unified. Just as the variety of perspectives in the novel work to disrupt the signifier/signified dichotomy and overthrow the notion of other, the separation of these discourses into journal entries, gramophone recordings, newspaper articles, etc., leads to gaps in the text and a failure to meet with the expectations of authenticity which work to overthrow that same dichotomy. The disruptions born out of the multiplicity of discourses become more and more pronounced within the text and culminate in a severing of the link between signifier and signified. Even before the novel begins, it makes a claim at authenticity. The note immediately preceding Chapter I is meant to warn the reader that though the events

7 about to be narrated might appear fantastical and difficult to believe, they are nonetheless true: How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of later-day belief may stand forth as simple fact. There is throughout no statement of past things wherein memory may err, for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary, given from the standpoints and within range of knowledge of those who made them. (Stoker xxi) This note claims that though the story is at variance with the reader s natural skepticism, the novel s events are carefully collected and stand forth as simple fact. Not only is the reader assured that the statements are true but also that there is no chance of the events having changed through a fault in memory because everything was set down immediately after it happened. The reader s skepticism is meant to correspond with Jonathan Harker s skepticism at the beginning of the novel, and the reader is meant to become convinced of the ensuing events at the pace that Jonathan does. Jonathan s skepticism is visible when he meets the superstitious villagers and later, on the morning after the scene with the female vampires, when he spends a long time wondering whether what happened the night before was a dream, telling himself I must watch for proof and I must know the truth (Stoker 42). This emphasis on truth is meant to make the story more compelling; the narrative is more effective if we can suspend disbelief. Stoker must have believed that the story would be more appealing to readers if there was a chance of the events being true.

8 The concern with authenticity does not end with this initial note but continues with the novel s format. The concern is with reliability, timeliness, and authority. The novel s modes of discourse are short clips of reality pieced together to form a whole that is truer to reality than any of these pieces taken separately. The story is not narrated by one narrator but by many, presumably because if it is narrated by several characters, it is less likely to be an unreliable narrative. That is, if the narrative is cohesive and makes sense, the events are likely to be true because the journal and diary entries are written independently from each other. The concern with authentic writing also extends to concerns with timeliness as mentioned above, the entries are written immediately after they occur, thus avoiding errors resulting from faulty memory and the interpretation of past events in the light of future events. Finally, the authority of the narrators has its own kind of authenticity. Since these are first person accounts, they contain first-hand knowledge that hasn t been transformed by countless retellings. The newspaper articles are even more convincing in their degree of authority because the role of newspapers is to deliver only proven facts. Despite the claims to authenticity found in the structure of the novel, this claim collapses as the novel goes on. The language of proof and evidence breaks down before the gaps and ambiguities of the novel (Seed 64). Authentic writing is that which is judged to be legitimate language and Dracula s language isn t. Despite the fact that the novel is about the vampire, the count s account is pointedly missing from the narrative. In this sense, though there are a variety of modes of discourse, they present only one side of the narrative picture. The critic David Seed argues that:

9 Stoker is here creating a narrative in which the gaps between the narrating documents become as important as the sections of narrative proper [ ] Stoker s novel increasingly exploits its own silences in such a way that Dracula himself in Section Two becomes paradoxically a personification of absence. [ ] his actions now take place offstage. (68) Dracula is voiceless and that is a gap that is never addressed and chips away at the claim to authenticity. Clearly, the other characters in the novel do not believe that Dracula s voice is legitimate enough, yet without it, the reader is blind to half the picture. Because Dracula is the signified, the absence of his narrative voice represents one obvious divorce between the signifier (the entries) and the signified. The claim to authenticity also fails because the journal and diary entries are subjective and shaped by the characters self-interests and fears. This is not only true in the process of writing but also in the process of editing the entries by eliminating certain aspects and deciding on their order. In weeding out the needless matters in compiling these entries, the meaning could have changed. An omniscient narration could make a greater claim at objectivity since the reader would have no reason to doubt what s written unless, through the unfolding of the story, the events turned out to be incompatible with one another, thus giving rise to questions about the narrator s reliability. The subjectivity of the characters narrations is further complicated and delegitimized because they show only one side of the issue: Dracula s own subjectivity is too threatening to include. In fact, at the end of the novel, Jonathan admits that he cannot ask the reader to believe what has occurred. He writes We could hardly ask any one, even did we wish to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a story (Stoker 400).

10 Because of these reasons, the claim at authenticity breaks apart by the end of the novel, threatening the stability of the discourse. As the discourse becomes more and more unstable, contradictions in the text arise and the modes of discourse lose their power to represent the vampire, that which they mean to signify. Another way in which Dracula is structurally unstable is through the unification of the different modes of discourse. The journal entries, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, telegrams, memorandums, and gramophone recordings are linked to the point where there are no distinctions left between them. Although the methods of recording events are diverse, the modes of discourse are lumped together till all that s left is a blob of discourse, a mass that cannot be differentiated. At the end of the novel, Jonathan Harker looks back at the material and information that they have collected and is struck with the fact, that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic document; nothing but a mass of typewriting (Stoker 400). His realization that there is a mass of typewriting but no authentic document reveals that the material is meaningless. That is, the signifier is no longer signifying anything. The reduction of the signifier to a meaningless heap of words is not only apparent at the ending but also if the reader divides the documents according to their mode of discourse. If one were to separate the different modes of discourse, so that for instance, Jonathans journal was read separately from Dr. Seward s diary, the overall story would make no sense whatsoever; it would consist of fragments with no coherent narrative. Again, the signifier would not be signifying. In fact, the novel can be seen as the signifier s progression from having a tentative control over the signified to losing the signified completely. In the novel, the modes of discourse are the signifiers and Dracula is the signified, that which the signifiers intend to

11 represent. As evidenced by the name of the novel, Dracula is what the journals, newspaper articles, etc., intend to signify; in a strong sense, Dracula is the body of the text. The title suggests that the entire novel and all the characters are Dracula. This makes sense if one thinks of the journal entries as the consciousnesses of the characters in the novel, and Dracula as a symbol for the subconscious. Dracula comes out when we re dreaming and represents the repressed desires within that we fear (particularly sexual); he is an apparition of what we repress, particularly eros (Stade vi). Even Transylvania is linked to the subconscious levels of the mind when it is described as an imaginative whirlpool (Stoker 2). Ultimately, the novel can be seen as a battle between the conscious and subconscious levels of the mind, between the level of mind that uses language and that which is an imaginative whirlpool of unstructured thoughts. In Dracula, the fact that the signifier exists but the signified is elusive indicates that the meaning of the novel comes out, not because of the signifier, but despite it. Dracula is not signified, though he s meant to be he is what the signifier attempts to signify. Dracula doesn t have a language of his own, even though the novel is about him. He is never given the opportunity to speak and this makes him more elusive, a more slippery signified. He only comes through once in a while through the discourse of others, the subconscious infecting the conscious. The entire novel is about hunting down the count and the journal articles provide the clues necessary to locate him. That is, the novel chronicles the signifier s efforts to join with the signified and form a complete sign. Dracula has no language but he finds a voice through the journal entries and other modes of discourse through others subconscious. The journal articles are the consciousnesses and unconscious of the characters and Dracula is the sum total of all these minds.

12 The journals create a community subconscious as is evident by aspects of the novel s content and structure. For instance, throughout the novel, the characters read each others records (Seed 72), so that what they read ends up affecting what they write, and this coming together of ideas, of minds; they infest each others subconscious minds. This merging of consciousnesses is necessary to kill a vampire and the structure of the novel shows how the vampire brings together these consciousnesses. An interesting example of this is the fact that Chapter 16 is surprisingly homogenous after the interruptions of letters, telegrams, and newspaper articles [and ] consists [ ] of one single journal entry (Seed 71). Because this chapter recounts the killing of the vampire Lucy, this structure shows how the vampire in the novel is a symbol of the merged subconscious of all these characters. As George Sate argues in his introduction to Dracula, Dracula cannot see himself, for no mirror will contain his image. Dracula is already a reflection, a shadow, an apparition, a matter of mind rather than matter. [ ] When we look for him in mirrors, our own faces get in the way (v). Dracula is a shadow rather than an actual character. He possesses no language and he resides in the mind as he is a matter of mind rather than matter. He resides in the minds of the characters throughout the novel as well as the mind of the text. He is a reflection of the subconscious mind, a reflection of ourselves, which is why when we look for him in mirrors, our own faces get in the way. Dracula is never given the opportunity to speak yet his voice comes through like an invisible thread through other s discourse. Throughout the novel, the presence of the count disrupts the status quo and raises questions about the arbitrariness of certain categories such as maleness and femaleness. The events themselves raise questions and

13 complications that coalesce to form Dracula s invisible, satirical discourse which attempts to overturn the notion of other. As the novel progresses, Dracula is farther and farther removed from the story until he is destroyed. At the beginning of the novel, the reader comes in contact with Dracula face to face and inhabits his castle through Jonathan s journal. Later on, the reader gets only flashes of the count as he attaches to the necks of his victims. Finally, we only see Dracula through Mina s dreams, until we come face to face with him at the end of the novel and he is destroyed. When Dracula is killed, all that is left is the signifier, divorced from the signified. At this moment, the discourse has separated completely from the signified. It was necessary to compile the journals the signifiers in order to defeat the count yet Dracula s death is his triumph as it erases the signified, it erases the other, the Dracula out there. Dracula is at his most menacing now because he cannot be defined. At the end of the book, Dracula is killed and the transformation is complete: death erases the last remains of otherness. Dracula, who was all of the other characters unconsciousness all along, is now fully joined with those characters. His death represents a merging of the conscious with the subconscious. Now that the material Dracula is not there anymore to stand as other, the merging of consciousnesses is complete. This merging is threatening because the other retreats to a level where it cannot be recognized or ever defeated. Dracula is within the other characters and they don t know it. Because he lacks an outward image and no longer exists as other, the rest of the characters believe that he has been defeated, when in fact, he still resides within them. Mina, Jonathan and company are ignorant in their bliss but also threatened more than ever by the unconscious forces that Dracula represents. Dracula, the other unconsciously present within the other characters, has now retreated fully into the other characters.

14 That is, The threatening other ultimately resides within the characters themselves and Dracula functions primarily as a catalyst for its release (Byron 54-5). The ending is ironic because if the novel consists of the signifier s efforts to latch on to the signified, the signifier instead kills the signified: the word Dracula is nothing but an empty title now that the vampire has died. Dracula raises questions about otherness through its content but also through its structure. The novel s various modes of discourse reveal gaps in the narration and contradictions which end up overturning the claims at authenticity made at the beginning of the novel. At the book s end, these various forms of discourse have become nothing but a mass of typewriting, so that the signifier and the signified are divorced from one another. When that happens, the modes of discourse (i.e. the signifier) lose their control over Dracula, the signified other, and the me / other dichotomy is broken. This shift is also represented by Dracula s death which eliminates otherness by transporting Dracula from a being out there to one fully merged into the subconscious of the other characters. Without a Dracula to signify, the signifier has become divorced of the dignified. The structural tensions between the novel s different modes of discourse increase until they reach their fruition in the separation between signifier and signified. By thus breaking this signifier/signified binary, the novel raises questions about the legitimacy of such a binary and about language s ability to represent what it sets out to. It suggests that a sign is something much more complicated than merely the union of one signifier and one signified, and that the creation and definition of meaning is not a straightforward thing but rather something complicated and elusive, something as slippery as Dracula, the other who resists definition.

15 Works Cited Allen, Graham. Intertextuality: the New Critical Idiom. New York: Routledge, Byron, Glennis. Bram Stoker s Gothic and the Resources of Science. Critical Survey 19.2 (2007): Seed, David. The Narrative Method of Dracula. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 40.1 (1985): Stade, George. Introduction. Dracula. Bram Stoker. New York: Bantam Books, Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.