In a particular addition of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, Maurice Hindle had suggested that “sex was the monster Stoker feared most.” This essay will examine the examples of this statement in the Dracula text, focusing on female sexuality. The essay will also briefly look at an article Stoker had written after Dracula which also displays Stoker’s fear.
Dracula is a novel that indulges its male reader’s imagination, predominantly on the topic of female sexuality. When Dracula was first published, Victorian women’s sexual behaviour was extremely restricted by social expectations. To be classed as respectable, a women was either a virgin or a wife. If she was not either, she was considered a whore. We begin to understand once Dracula arrives in Whitby, that the novel has an underlying battle between good and evil, which will hinge on female sexuality. Both Lucy Westenra and Wilhelmina “Mina” Murray embody two-dimensional virtues that have been associated with female. They are both virgins, whom are innocent from the evils of the world and that are devoted to their men. Dracula’s arrival threatens those virtues, threatening to turn Lucy and Mina into the opposites, noted for their voluptuousness, which could lead to an open sexual desire.
Dracula succeeds in doing so with Lucy. After Lucy herself becomes a vampire, she requests a kiss from Arthur Holmwood, her fiancée, which turns voluptuous – a word Stoker continually uses throughout. Here Stoker presents the female characters
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.
A product of the contextual values of the Victorian Era, the epistolary novel, “Dracula” written by Bram Stoker, explores the societal anxieties of the erosion of traditional Victorian values. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution and Modernism, along with the declining value of the Christian faith, Stoker challenges the contextual values of religion and female sexuality, along with the repercussions for the individual who strays away from societal constructs and expectations. 19th century England had its foundations built by the Church, where Christian ethics and morals were imbedded and intertwined within the social fabric of society. Despite this, religious influence was plummeting with the development of technology and science. New
Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is a story about a Vampire named Count Dracula and his journey to satisfy his lust for blood. The story is told through a series of individuals’ journal entries and a letters sent back and forth between characters. Bram Stoker shows the roll in which a certain gender plays in the Victorian era through the works of Dracula. This discussion not only consists of the roll a certain gender takes, but will be discussing how a certain gender fits into the culture of that time period as well as how males and females interact among each other. The Victorian era was extremely conservative when it came to the female, however there are signs of the changing into the New Woman inside of Dracula. Essentially the woman was to be assistance to a man and stay pure inside of their ways.
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.
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.
After religion the universal themes that are evident in the novel are that of good against evil, love and the topic which I wish to discuss female roles. In Bram Stokers novel Dracula, women are portrayed as either weak and easily seduced by the vampires powers or evil seductress and sexual beings..... when Jonathan is left by the count, I his castle to die he finds himself confronted with 3 vimpyress, one of the women is described by Jonathan in this encounter "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..........." Jonathan describes her as been voluptuous, a word that can be used or interpreted as something which he desired.
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
Bram Stoker in Dracula imagens a “proper women” by demonizing Lucy ascribing to her traits of a wanton woman; a whore of a demon. A misogynistic attitude is popular in a patriarchal society especially in the middle of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, Mina although is praised; Stoker unconsciously ties in her behavior that may resemble a woman of propriety she is the very bane of what a progressive woman looks like when looking at her through a gynocritics lens. To prepare the reader for the ideology of the “new and proper woman,” Stoker gives Dr. Steward and Van Helsing separate spheres from that of Lucy’s and Mina’s Character. In chapter fifteen, they are now experts in the dealings and explanation of Lucy the human and Lucy the Un-Dead. As we read the chapters sixteen and seventeen it is preconditioned for us to follow the ways they are dealing with Lucy. It is justifiable to call her a voluptuous lipped “thing” without a soul. Their credibility as learned men allow for them to penetrate a woman for the sake of her soul so she can take her place amongst angels. A woman in the nineteenth century is synonymous to the term “Angel.” Doing anything that is non-Angelic, like the suffragettes places the women to be the binary opposition to Angel; Demon. The “proper woman” is demonstrated with terminology such as; “purity, sweetness, and dainty-looking” (Dracula 211) (220). The interpretation would be considered more
She is emotionally and physically invested in multiple men and cannot commit to one person for marriage. She complains to Mina, "Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?" (96). This quote is a favorable example showcasing the differences from an ideal Victorian women and the uprising New Women. Lucy psychologically crosses the boundaries from the Victorian role to a New Women, despite her thoughts being immoral and indecent. Lucy’s extreme beauty and flirtatious behavior attracts a great deal of attention, which she enjoys. Essentially, Lucy cannot resolve these sexual urges out in the public as she suppresses these emotions, and fixes her dilemma when she sleepwalks. Dracula converts Lucy into a vampire when she sleepwalks and represents a "voluptuous wantonness" (342) just as the vampire sisters were described. Lucy was suppressed in her human form and eventually embraces her sexual behavior in her vampire form. Ultimately, Stoker uses Lucy to demonstrate the kind of women who uses their beauty to their advantage. In a way, Lucy can be viewed as a threat to the Victorian society due to her sexual openness. On account of this revelation, Lucy’s husband, Arthur, is chosen to kill Lucy and bring her back towards the pure and innocent women she once was: “There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to
Though it appears on the surface to be an engaging horror story about a blood-sucking Transylvanian man, upon diving deeper into Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, one can find issues of female sexuality, homoeroticism, and gender roles. Many read Dracula as an entertaining story full of scary castles, seductive vampires, and mysterious forces, yet at the same time, they are being bombarded with descriptions of sex, images of rape, and homosexual relationships. In Francis Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, Stoker's presentation of homoeroticism is taken, reworked, and presented in a different, stronger light. Coppola does much in the area of emphasizing a homoerotic relationship between Mina Harker and Lucy Westerna: a relationship Bram Stoker
Critical analysis of the novel reveals the themes of sexuality and the buried symbols held within the text. Due to feminism and sexual ideas presented in the book, the stories focus the attention on men who fall victims of the forbidden female pleasures and fantasy. From the setting of Dracula, Victoria Era, the novel encompasses all social prejudices and beliefs regarding the roles assigned to women and men. Men used to have enough freedom and lifted up to authority while women were suppressed socially. Bram Stoker uses the two women; Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker and Professor Van Helsing to express the ideal women should be and should not be in the ideal society. The dissenting opinion gives threat to the patriarchal Victorian society to end in ruins.
Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, published in 1897, explores various sexual erotic possibilities in the vampire's embrace, as discussed by Leonard Wolf. The novel confronts Victorian fears of homosexuality; that were current at the time due to the trial of playwright Oscar Wilde. The vampire's embrace could also be interpreted as an illustration of Victorian fears of the changing role of women. Therefore it is important to consider: the historical context of the novel; the Victorian notion of the `New Woman' specifically the character of Lucy Westenra; the inversion of gender roles; notions of sexuality; and the emasculation of men, by lessening their power over women; in the novel Dracula. In doing this I will be able to explore the effects
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.
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
As the reader continues to uncover the truth about Dracula’s control over Lucy, it becomes evident that the acts are degrading towards women. The first piece of evidence is witnessed by Mina. While Mina watches over Lucy, as she declines in health, Miss. Murray notices the act of Dracula’s power when the two friends and the vampire see each other around town. The novel’s main female character voices, “I slewed around a little, so as to see Lucy well without seeming to stare at her, and saw that she was in a half-dreamy state, with an odd look on her face that I could not quite make out” (Stoker 102). This statement hints that Lucy is completely under Dracula’s trance. In the act of Miss. Westenra’s faraway status, Mina notices Dracula’s red eyes that have bewitched her friend. Mina is not the only one who observes Lucy’s lack of self-control. Seward becomes the next spectator that witnesses the effects of vampirism bestowed by Dracula. He says in his journal, “It was certainly odd that whenever she got into that lethargic state, with the stertorous