Dracula’s brides fuse animalistic hunger with lush Eastern eroticism.

Evidence

The other was fair, as far as can be, with great wavy masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires… . The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth… . I could feel the soft, shivering touch of her lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes with languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 547

Categorization

• FICTION: The vampire bride scene shows how a monster is built from blended terror and desire — useful for crafting monstrous figures that carry ambivalent charge.