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Dracula And Dracula Essay

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CPT Formal Essay
Dracula: Lucy, Mina, and the Similarities & Differences Between Them

Dracula, a novel which had originally been written by Bram Stoker in 1897, is commonly classified as a ‘horror novel’ by the majority of its readers. However, when putting the novel through further analysis, the various symbols and themes of sexuality which the novel contains are brought to the notice of its readers, despite them being easily overlooked by their readers the first time the novel might be read. In addition, Dracula is a novel which often catches the eye of the majority of the male population of its readers, due to its use of female sexuality as a symbol throughout the majority of the novel, since the exploration of these taboo female …show more content…

First of all, Mina and Lucy are both characters which play an extremely significant role in the novel, as they are the sole female characters, as well as narrators, which are described in great detail by Stoker. Stoker often describes Mina and Lucy as being complete opposites of each other throughout his novel in order to illustrate, as well as act in contrast, to the two distinctly different categories of women which he had believed to exist in the Victorian Era – which was the society’s ideal, ‘innocent’ and ‘submissive’ women, which acted in contrast to the ‘rebellious’ women who took several risks and managed to break free from the confining norms and ideals of their prejudiced society which viewed them as being a ‘danger’ to the society at large. Furthermore, despite the fact that Mina and Lucy both hold completely different views on which of the two categories - which Stoker believed had existed during the Victorian Era - a woman should fall under, they both manage to acknowledge the widely-accepted belief that men are seen as being more ‘dominant’, as compared to women, in the eyes of their Victorian society. For instance, when Lucy mentions to Mina in the novel, "My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them?" (Stoker, 86). In addition, Stoker utilizes Mina in order to illustrate his vision of what an ideal and ‘perfect’ Victorian woman is like. For example, in Stoker’s novel, Van

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