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COPYRIGHT 2002 West Virginia University, Department of Foreign Languages
"Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has a man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and a woman's heart."
Dr. Van Helsing
Brain Stoker's Dracula
"Really excellent," Starling said. "I've never had caper berries before."
Clarice Starling
Thomas Harris's Hannibal
"If we were now to search for some general point that might distinguish late nineteenth - century Gothic from that of the late twentieth century, we might suggest that the identity upon which we now insist is between the monsters and ourselves."
Glennis Byron's Dracula: Brain Stoker
The conclusion of Thomas Harris's novel Hannibal, read against Dracula, becomes a frightful pun. When Clarice Starling, one of the most powerful and popular gothic heroines of the late twentieth century, dines with Hannibal the Cannibal, she too, has a man's brain, served with caper berries. She has the brain of her detestable co-worker Paul Krendler, who embodies all the worst qualities of the FBI and of the patriarchy in general, and thus Harris establishes her controversial identification with Hannibal Lecter's destructive force. Similarly, Van Helsing's description of Mina Harker's man's brain places her outside the boundaries of Victorian womanhood and suggests a subtle link between Mina and the vampire, which Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 screen adaptation magnifies. Reviewers of Harris's novel compare Dr. Lecter and Count Dracula, (1) but none explore the richer connections between the heroines of these novels.
While Stoker's novel, Dracula, (2) portrays Mina Harker as a strong-minded but conventional Victorian woman, and as Dracula's victim, Francis Ford Coppola's film, Brain Stoker's Dracula, (3) reads between the lines of the novel and creates a Mina Harker who escapes the restraints of Victorian society through her relationship with the vampire. Clarice Starling follows a similar trajectory through Harris's novels, The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. In Silence, as an FBI trainee, Starling interrogates Dr. Lecter. This dangerous relationship develops further in Hannibal, culminating in Starling's rejection of her former life. Ridley Scott's adaptation of Hannibal for his 2001 film substitutes an ending which eliminates the problem of the popular heroine's conversion to evil, but also returns Starling to the more helpless position occupied by Mina in Stoker's novel.4 Through a comparative analysis of Coppola's adaptation of Dracula and Scott's adaptation of Hannibal, I will argue that Harris's novel shares in the spirit of Coppola's film, using gore and sexuality delivered with a heavy dose of camp to create a potentially radical liberation fantasy, and that Scott, whose Thelma and Louise sparked both popular and academic controversy, missed an opportunity to create a similarly complex feminist statement in his screen version of Hannibal.
The first step in establishing the relationship between Clarice and Hannibal is to review briefly the more frequently noted connections between Hannibal and Count Dracula. Stephen King, in his review of Hannibal says, "If Hannibal Lecter isn't a Count Dracula for the computer and cell phone age, then we don't have one."5 Hannibal Lecter's maroon eyes, which "reflect the light in pinpoints of red" (Silence 14), his compulsion to feed on humans, and the fact of his being considered something other than human by those who study him (Silence 6, Hannibal 137) provide the most obvious parallels, and others exist as well. In her first meeting with Dr. Lecter, Clarice feels "suddenly empty, as though she had given blood" (Silence 21). Dracula tells Jonathan Harker to "enter freely and of your own will" (Stoker 22) and "In folklore, vampires often require complicity from their prey. Just as Jonathan cannot be coerced, but must 'enter freely,' no vampire can come into a home uninvited" (Auerbach and Skal 23). Dr. Lecte r shares a similar concern with invitations. He serves Benjamin Raspail's thymus and pancreas (which Starling recognizes as the sweetbreads) to guests at his dinner party (Silence 25), and attacks...
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