LAUSR

Abstract:The titular antagonists of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897) embody a queer repudiation of reproductive futurity through an erotic logic that ends not in reproduction but in monstrous consumption. Existing across and recalling a vast history, the characters of Dracula and the Beetle stand in opposition to the progress- and procreation-oriented culture of fin-de-siècle England. This paper examines the Gothic queerness of stopped time, arguing that a subtle figuration of these characters as trans- underlies their radical break from a contemporary eugenic logic. A trans- impulse in these texts—one that encompasses taxonomic, temporal, and gender boundaries—initially marks the monstrous body but ultimately engulfs the English subject.