Such a Beast: Sexuality and Humanization in Dracula

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

Vampire is "a bloodsucking ghost that come back from dead person believed to come from the place where a body is buried and wander about by night sucking the blood of people asleep and causing their death." Before vampires were seen as evil monsters and creatures humans must fear. However, now, vampires have become an "famous popular culture and fascination among teens around the world"  This art has increased vampire large groups of fans this way resulting to the creation of many fan clubs and social organizations, whether online or not.

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

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

Despite the plot’s complete failure in inciting interest within me, I was intrigued by Stoker’s style and storytelling capabilities. I was constantly curious as to why Stoker was revealing a vast amount of information about the scenery and internal feelings of each character while developing the plot in such a dull manner. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that Stoker is attempting to use rich imagery about both settings and the characters’ emotions to emphasize Count Dracula. While reading each chapter, clear mental images of the settings and the characters’ feelings are formed. Through the story being told from extremely

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.

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.

    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.

Lucy is the center of attention between the men in this group, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her” (Stoker 69), and because of this she is Dracula’s first target. She opens up more possibilities to Dracula.

Stoker emphasises the threat of the ‘New Woman’ through constant mentioning of their dress and appearance; he does this to emphasis the contrast between the ‘New Woman’ and the traditional women. In the chapter where Jonathan is approached by the 3 woman vampires, who represent the dreaded ‘New Woman’ the language used to describe the women is very critical. He refers to them as “ladies by their dress and manner” stating them to be effeminate and vulgar and this makes it seem that they are impersonating women. Facially they are described as having “high aquiline noses”; these bird-like, pronounced features make them appear animalistic and dangerous. He contrasts their “dark, piercing eyes” with the “pale yellow

For example, after Lucy’s conversion, she proves herself to be just as able as Dracula to steal and feed on infants in the dead of night, in a reasonably discrete fashion. Through this, Stoker could be implying that he is satisfactorily aware of perceived stereotypes regarding women, but is choosing to contend with popular opinion by

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

Bram Stoker’s ingenious piece of work on writing Dracula has set the expectation for gothic novels all over the world and time to come. The mindset of writing Dracula through the Victorian Era really sets the tone for the reader by creating a spine-tingling sensation right through the novel. With this in mind, Stoker wouldn’t have been able to succeed his masterpiece without the effective uses of symbolism, imagery, foreshadowing, and its overall theme.