The Role Of Women In Bram Stoker And Mary Shelley's Dracula

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein primarily focuses on Victor and his monster, but women also play a part. There are three major female figures in the novel; the housekeeper for the Frankenstein family: Justine, Victor’s “adopted cousin” and later wife: Elizabeth, and the never completed female monster. To both Victor and the monster woman are desired objects that offer comfort and companionship, but as the novel goes on, women become targets for revenge. This goes to show that the women in Frankenstein prove to be both powerless and powerful when it comes to dealing with the men that surround them.

One such aspect of Shelley’s life portrayed in the novel was the role of women in society. In general, the predominant contenders in literature in the Romantic era were men. Mary Shelley, who was tutored by her father, had to publish her novel anonymously because it would not have been accepted otherwise. In Romantic literature, women were depicted as passive with a sense for nature and intuition. This can be seen in Frankenstein during Victor’s description of Elizabeth Lavenza: “While I admired...pretension” (Volume I, Chapter I, p 39). This quote can be viewed as an oppression of women due to the patriarchal structure of the language, as well as an emphasis on the nature of women. Mary Shelley also criticizes this oppression, but does not criticize overtly. This may be due to the fact that Shelley read her mother’s works as a child, and was influenced by the pro-feminist ideals that her mother advocated for. In addition, Frankenstein, at its core, is an expression of Shelley’s political viewpoints. The years 1811 to 1817 were ones of severe deprivation and hardship for the new working class created by the Industrial

During the Victorian Era, women struggled to attain gender equality by challenging the traditional roles that defined them. These women no longer wanted to remain passive and obey the demands of their husbands nor be domestic and the caretakers of their children. They strived to attain the role of a 'New Woman', an intelligent, liberated individual who was able to openly express her ideas (Eltis 452). Whereas some women were successful in attaining this new role, others were still dominated by their male counterparts. The men felt threatened by the rising power of women and repressed them by not allowing them to work, giving them unnecessary medications, and diagnosing them with hysteria (Gilman

Expressing one's sexuality is often considered a taboo, especially if it concerns women’s sexuality. A woman expressing her sexuality is often looked down upon because of the notion that women must be innocent and demure. These notions were meant to repress women’s sexual gratification and constrict women into feminine roles as mothers or as wives. These stereotyped feminine roles caused women to be viewed as less of a threat to male masculinity. However, in the Victorian Era, new ideas on what it meant to be a woman challenged these feminine roles and the patriarchal order. The “new woman” wanted to be equivalent to men, financially independent, and sexually liberated. The new woman threatens the patriarchal order because equality of the sexes challenges power dynamics and gender roles. In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, he challenges the social constraints that limit individual and sexual desires through vampires who are capable of revealing the characters’ repressed desires. With the use of vampires as figurative representation of the new woman, the novel reveals the fear of female sexuality through the erotic acts presented by the women and the men who must confront them.

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.

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.

Evil features in both ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ but the personification of this evil is different in both novels. A feeling of menace and doom pervades ‘Dracula’ because of his supernatural powers. One feels that he has control of the evil and he has the power to manipulate the environment and people for his own ends. ‘Frankenstein’ centres on the creation of a monster made from parts of dead bodies and the fear created by the monster due to circumstance and the ignorance of society. Also, one feels a certain amount of apprehension that the monster is deserted by his creator and loses control without his support and guidance.

In his Literary Theory: The Basics, H. Bertens classifies stereotypes of women in literature into a number of categories; dangerous seductress, self-sacrificing angel, dissatisfied shrew, and defenseless lamb, completely incapable of self-sufficiency, or self-control, and dependent on male intervention. Bertens concludes that the primary objective of these women – or “constructions” – is to serve a “not-so-hidden purpose: the continued cultural and social domination of males”. One such novel that came under feminist scrutiny for these particular reasons was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, although this perlustration didn’t occur until 70 years after Stoker originally penned his masterpiece. However, during the mid-1960s, the rise of the feminist

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a highly controversial novel written in the Victorian Era. The Victorian era was a time when gender played a very restrictive role in society. Men and women were expected to follow certain behavior and to stay within the conventions of the time. In Dracula, the reader encounters "the new woman", a woman who does not stay within the bounds of Victorian gender tradition. The reader also gains insight into the dominate role that men play in the novel and how the patriarchy impacts society. There are two opinions among critics, one being that the men primarily dictate the events and characterization in the novel, or the second argument being that women actually fulfill this role

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

In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, Stoker’s use of inverted gender roles allows readers to grasp the sense of obscureness throughout, eventually leading to the reader’s realization that these characters are rather similar to the “monster” which they call Dracula. Despite being in the Victorian era, Stoker’s use of sexuality in the novel contributes to the reasoning of obscureness going against the Victorian morals and values. Throughout the novel the stereotypical roles of the Victorian man and woman are inverted to draw attention to the similarities between Dracula and the characters. Vague to a majority of readers, Bram Stoker uses Dracula as a negative connotation on society being that the values of

The gothic vampire classic Dracula, written by Bram Stoker, is one of the most well known novels of the nineteenth century. The story focuses on a vampire named Dracula who travels to England in search of new blood, but who eventually is found out and driven away by a group of newly minted vampire hunters. A major social change that was going on during the late nineteenth century, around the time of that this novel was being written, was the changing roles of women in British society which constituted as the “New Woman” movement and the novel seems to explore and worry about this subject extensively. These women wanted to be freed both politically and sexually, but much of the general population at the time found it unsettling (Dixon,

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.

One of the main depictions of women in the novel is that are either both sexually promiscuous and overtly sexual, or they are pure and chaste. In Victorian society, you were either a virgin or a married woman, if women were neither then they were not of much moral worth to society. Much like this Victorian ideal, the overtly promiscuous and sexual females of Dracula are depicted as evil and monstrous, while the pure and chaste women are displayed as strong and heroic.