Dracula, and a life of Hope and Despair

In the latter years of the 19th century, an insidious,, and unstoppable invasion occured in Britain.



This invasion caused women to commit strange and horrific acts of moral turpitude. These degrading acts were truly sucking the life from young, highly marriagable women.



The invader?



None other than Dracula.



Or, on the other hand, the beginning of the overcoming of Victorian patriarchical society by women.





You see, this is how my brain works. I actually wrote a paper presenting and defending this argurment for an undergrad class in Victorian Gothic lit.



I don't really know many people that can see Bram Stoker's Dracula as a social commentary on the evils of Women's lib.



My natural bent to be able to see connections and possibilities has been honed to a sharp edge by too few years of school.



I truly love to do this sort of thing. It gives me great pleasure to hold these disparate concepts in my mind and find the ways in which they make a curious whole. However, there is a flip side to this ability: I also see the flaws. Just as I can build up an argument for Dracula being invasive female figure in late Victorian society, I can also shred an argument to pieces. I see a system that has been built up, look into it, see the crumbling foundation, the poor construction of the arches holding it up, find the weak spots and pick at them until the entire thing falls to the ground.



This paradoxical ability allows me to see the strengths and the weaknesses of the metanarratives that we all walk through and in daily. For me, as a situated, perspectival self, it allows for both hope and despair



It is a touchy, sensitive liminal space to walk in. If one is not careful, there can be a long fall into criticism, griping, and moaning. A person who merely bitches and does not act to become an agent of change. The other possibility is that one blindly hopes and believes in a system, following the dictates of that metanarrative in a belief that the strengths will cover up the weaknesses.



I do not wish to be either of those. I wish to always walk that liminal space of hope and despair. That is the space where there is a possibility of action.



Why do I say this?



I was having a conversation with someone I considered a friend last week. This is a person who I am supposedly "doing life with." Someone with whom I thought I could be myself, share my thoughts. Be real. Not so it seems.



He told me flat out that he thought I had taken that big fall and that I was never happy, never satisfied, and would never be.



I didn't bother to argue. I new that I could not change this person's mind. But I do know one thing: I am have not taken that fall. I see the beauty of both sides. I attempt to hold them each gently in my hand.



I do not know if I was right or wrong in how I handled the above statement by this person, but I do know that if someone cannot understand that I see and hold both hope and despair in my hands, at once holding one tighter than the other, than they cannot see me. They simply cannot know me.