Vampires. Mirrors. Lacan.

"It amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me... I turned to the glass again to see how I had been mistaken. This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the mirror!" (Stoker 26).

I can imagine that the connection between Lacan and vampires' inability to see themselves in the mirror have been linked to the nth degree, but I suggest that this class doesn't assign The Mirror Stage if you guys are sick of hearing about it.  As it stands, I am going to go ahead and take a look at this unmistakable connection.  There are several ways to interpret this scene in Bram Stoker's Dracula, all of which I can't really cover in this one post, so I am going to focus on Jonathan Harker's reaction to the missing "man" in the mirror.

Harker, being a grown man, has long ago experienced "The Mirror Stage," in which he gained recognition of his image and, therefore, his identity.  In this class we have discussed this experience as a moment of self-othering, in the discovery of one's self as an object.  This is why I propose that when Harker notices Dracula's lack of reflection, he is once again appearing to himself as other, as though going through this process all over again. 

Despite the fact that Dracula is clearly in the room, he can only see himself in the mirror.  So how can he differentiate himself from this vampire who stands before him?   He looks back at Dracula and this is the moment where he is face to face with his Gothic other.  The other that no longer exists in the mirror, but has found his way into the real world.  This, "increase[s] the vague feeling of uneasiness that [he] always [has] whenever the Count is near" (Stoker 26). 

This minor description of what has just been unleashed within the text is not lost on me.  I think that this further proves my point in that, like a child, Harker has no clue what he has just discovered.  He is only confused at the realization that he is facing a man, who he can see is whole, and yet there is no image in the mirror.  Harker has yet to realize that he is, in fact, the equivalent of a mirror image to Dracula.

So the idea is that when I look at my Gothic other in the mirror every morning, my other is looking back at me.  Harker can see himself in the mirror, because his other is right there beside him, being reflected.