A Novel About A Vampire Who Disrupts The Lives Of Jonathan Harker And His Friends

Bram Stoker’s Dracula illustrated fears about sexual women in contrast to the woman who respected and abided by society’s sexual norms. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla” represented not only the fear of feminine sexuality, but also the fear of sexuality between women. John William Polidori’s “The

The death of Lucy Westenra serves as a pivotal moment in Dracula. It is a reminder of the terrible fate that awaits the victims of the Count, and it motivates many of the men later involved in his defeat. But Lucy’s death also demonstrates one of the novel’s core themes, and this is no better seen than in Van Helsing’s conversation with Dr. Seward regarding her blood transfusions. We learn through this conversation that Lucy died due to her impurity, and so one of Dracula’s core themes is revealed: the struggle between lust and chastity, between promiscuity and marriage. The novel serves as an indictment of sexual freedom and a call for a return to traditional romance.

In the novel, Dracula, by Bram Stoker, we are introduced to two specific ladies that are essential to the essence of this gothic, horror novel. These two women are Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra. The purpose for these two women was for Stoke to clearly depict the two types of women: the innocent and the contaminated. In the beginning, the women were both examples of the stereotypical flawless women of this time period. However, as the novel seems to progress, major differences are bound to arise. Although both women, Lucy and Mina, share the same innocent characteristics, it’s more ascertain that with naïve and inability of self control, Lucy creates a boundary that shows the difference between these two ladies and ultimately causes her

Are there still connections between Bram Stokers famous novel Dracula and modern day society? In Dracula, Stoker expands on many themes that indeed exist today. Not only does he touch on the most obvious theme, sex. He expands on gender division and good versus evil. Some say since times have changed the themes I introduced have changed as well, leaving connections between then and now irrelevant. However, I feel that although times have changed they still have roots from the time of the novel to now. In this essay I will expand on the themes of this novel while connecting them to modern day society, the critical texts I have chosen and will mention later on in the essay are a good representation of the commonalities between the chill, dark Victorian days in which the era that Dracula was written in and modern day.

Stoker’s novel Dracula, presents the fear of female promiscuity, for which vampirism is a metaphor. Such fear can be related to the time in which Dracula was written, where strict Victorian gender norms and sexual mores stipulated

The notion of separate spheres serves to set up the roles of men and women in Victorian society. Women fulfill the domestic sphere and are seen as submissive and emotionally sensitive individuals. Conversely, men are intelligent, stable, and fulfill all of the work outside of the home. In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, the Count seems to actually embody the fear of the breakdown of such separate spheres. However, Stoker breaks down these separate spheres and the fear associated with their breakdown through the theme of the “New Woman” intertwined with the actions and behaviors of the characters in the novel.

In Dracula, Stoker portrays the typical women: The new woman, the femme fatale and the damsel in distress, all common concepts in gothic literature. There are three predominant female roles within Dracula: Mina Murray, Lucy Westenra and the three vampire brides, all of which possess different attributes and play different roles within the novel. It is apparent that the feminine portrayal within this novel, especially the sexual nature, is an un-doubtable strong, reoccurring theme.

Throughout the Story of Dracula, it is apparent that the standard of a male in contrast to a female is Dramatically greater. We see through the letters that were sent back and forth between Mina and Lucy that Lucy is trying to choose between three men. The first of which is Quincey Morris whom in which is extremely wealthy and has a title to his name, however the downside to choosing him is that he is old. The second of which is Dr. Seward; although he is a doctor it is considered to be a negative due to the fact that his profession is in a mental institution. The problem with his profession being in a mental institution is that during the Victorian era, mental institutions were not a

    Perhaps no work of literature has ever been composed without being a product of its era, mainly because the human being responsible for writing it develops their worldview within a particular era.  Thus, with Bram Stoker's Dracula, though we have a vampire myth novel filled with terror, horror, and evil, the story is a thinly veiled disguise of the repressed sexual mores of the Victorian era.  If we look to critical interpretation and commentary to win support for such a thesis, we find it aplenty "For erotic Dracula certainly is.  'Quasi-pornography' one critic labels it.  Another describes it as a 'kind of incestuous, necrophilious, oral-anal-sadistic all-in-wrestling matching'.  A

Dracula is a novel written by Bram Stoker during the late 1800’s. The book starts out with Jonathan Harker, who is a smart young business man, who wants to travel to Count Dracula for a business ordeal. Many locals from the European area warned Jonathan about Count Dracula, and would offer him crosses and other trinkets to help fend against him. Mina, who is at the time Jonathans soon to be wife, visits to catch up with an old friend named Lucy Westenra. Lucy gives Mina an update on her love life telling her how she’s been proposed to by three different men. The men are introduced as Dr. Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris. Unfortunately for her she will need to reject two of the men, and Lucy ends up choosing to marry Holmwood. Later on after Mina visits Lucy, Lucy starts to sleep walk, becomes sick, and then finds out she has bite marks on her throat. Due to this incident, another new character is introduced who happens to be Van Helsing. As the novel progresses, lady vampires are introduced and Lucy is eventually turned into one of the lady vampires as well. With the introduction of female vampires, the novel Dracula turns into a sexual and sensational novel by Bram Stoker. The female characters in the book are overly sexualized to where we can compare it to how women are viewed from back then in history to today’s world.

It is quite evident that one of the main themes in Stoker’s Dracula relates to sexual desires and fantasies. These sexual desires are quite evident between the characters of Count Dracula, the three sister , Jonathan, Lucy and Mina, all of which had an urge to be consumed by their prey. These desires are caused by the mysteriousness of the vampires, they give off a sense of danger which seems to attract their prey. The human prey fall for their predator because they are drawn to the forbidden, their is a sense of excitement in that danger that leads the prey to fall for their predator. The first instance of these sexual desires are witness between Jonathan and the three vampire sister who “embody an element of danger” that causes a sexual

Arguably, Dracula’s wives are guilty of another of Bertens’ proposed stereotypes, that of utter dependence on man. They rely on Count Dracula to bring them their food, and therefore without him they would presumably die. This seems to reflect the well-established idea of public and private “spheres” that pervaded so much of Victorian domestic life. In this system, the woman was effectively condemned to the role of homemaker, while the man became the breadwinner. The inability of Dracula’s wives to resist feeding on Jonathan when he falls asleep in the study could also reflect on the – once again, Victorian idea – that women were too hysterical and so inept at keeping control of themselves that they were unfit for a vast range of careers. However, while Stoker does indubitably include these stereotypes in his work, it does not necessarily mean that he agrees with them.

The relationship that exists between gender, sexuality and sexual practice is one that is not static, but is ever changing and shifting dependent upon the society in which it exists (Brickell, 2007). This essay aims to describe how Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, presents a “characteristic, if hyperbolic, instance of Victorian anxiety over the potential fluidity of gender roles” (Craft, 111-112), whilst also inverting and subverting conventional Victorian gender patterns through the characterisation and portrayal of the vampire women residing in Count Dracula’s castle, Mina, and Lucy as well as the ‘feminine’ passivity and submissive depiction of Jonathan Harker.

In the late 19th century, when Dracula by Bram Stoker is written, women were only perceived as conservative housewives, only tending to their family’s needs and being solely dependent of their husbands to provide for them. This novel portrays that completely in accordance to Mina Harker, but Lucy Westenra is the complete opposite. Lucy parades around in just her demeanor as a promiscuous and sexual person. While Mina only cares about learning new things in order to assist her soon-to-be husband Jonathan Harker. Lucy and Mina both become victims of vampirism in the novel. Mina is fortunate but Lucy is not. Overall, the assumption of women as the weaker specimen is greatly immense in the late 19th century. There are also many underlying

Victorian women had limited opportunities within their patriarchal society. Divided by the public masculine sphere that existed outside the home and the private sphere of femininity they found themselves governed by the ideals of chastity and domesticity. They became subject to the hegemony of their husbands, and found themselves labelled as either a wife or lover but not both. This bifurcation of women into the Madonna-whore complex consolidated the division between the sexes. Towards the end of the era changes for those within this restrictive domain began to occur, these changes gave rise to the New Woman, someone who was free to make her own choices, who could work and eschew marriage and motherhood. Writers began exploring these shifting attitudes in order to understand the consequences of such freedoms. In his essay, Candour in English Fiction, Thomas Hardy suggests one way to achieve realism in a novel is through the “honest portrayal” (117) of relationships between characters, the success and failures of which need examining in order to achieve believability and excite interest in “the minds of thoughtful readers” (116). The female characters in Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Bram Stoker’s, Dracula do not always conform to the Victorian norms and this determines the types of relationships they develop with the men who surround them. Within their novels, Hardy and Stoker explore the good and bad aspects of these relationships and the repercussions arising out