Dracula And Gothic Essay

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.

As the saying goes, “Women can do everything Men can do.” In the Gothic Novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, there is a constant theme of sexuality, from both male and females in society. In the Victorian era, the roles of male and females have caused a lot of tension. After reading Dracula, some would argue the roles men and women hold in society. As mentioned in Dr. Seward’s Dairy from Val Halsing., “Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and a woman’s heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination” (Stoker and Hindle, 2003 250). A women’s mind is not the always the first thing on a males mind. Some would overlook what a woman

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.

     Throughout many types of literature, violence exists to enhance the readers interest in order to add a sense of excitement or conflict to a novel. This statement withholds much truthfulness due to the fact that without violence in a piece of literature such as Dracula by Bram Stoker, the plot would not have the same impact if it was lacking violence. Dracula's power and evilness led to the violent happenings which began with the conflict of Jonathan's inner struggle, as compared to the conflict which blossomed later on with good versus evil.

When Dracula was published, sexual repression was at its height in England. This was also an age which saw a tremendous rise in prostitution and pornography, both of which were seen as moral corruption. The novel shows the hypocrisy and the consequences of sexual repression. Both men and women could be immoral, but women were treated worse for it. Gentlewomen were supposed to be ladylike and were thought to be inferior to men. In Dracula Lucy writes,"My dear Mina,why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them?" Women in Dracula are at the men's beckon as if they were like dogs. Anything the men asked, they did.

Bela Lugosi is arguably the most classic example of an actor taking on a vampire role. However, during 1931 when the universal studio was casting the 1931’s Dracula, Lugosi could only barely speak English, and therefore almost lost his chance at playing the iconic part (“Dracula (1931 English-Language Film”). Nonetheless his accents and costumes, which has become the classic look of the vampire, he himself was so typecast in his role that he was actually buried after his death in his Dracula costume. Certainly, it is Lugosi’s performance that makes Tod Browning’s film such an influential Hollywood picture. Overall, I will give it a 3 star out of 5, compared with the older version film of Dracula, because of the dialogues and sounds, the plot is much easier for the audiences to understand, without any editing or background music the horror of the film is not inferior to

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.

It is mentioned at the beginning of the book that Lucy is a sleepwalker. One night, Mina wakes up and sees that Lucy is no longer in bed. As she goes to find her she discovers Lucy with “something, long and black bending over [her]”, and that the “figure” had “a white face and red, gleaming eyes” (79). Unknowingly to Mina, the figure that she saw was Count Dracula. Soon after her encounter with Dracula, Lucy’s health begins to decline and over time she starts to grow pale, and eventually she dies. About a week after her death, Dr. Seward and the others discover that Lucy’s coffin is empty. While in the tomb they see Lucy in her new vampire form and notice that her “sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness” (180). The next night they go to Lucy’s coffin and notice her body is there. As they look at her new form, Arthur and Dr. Seaward use words like “demon” and “nightmare” to describe Lucy instead of words like “gentle” and “pure” that were once used to describe

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

Her innocence was corrupted by another, and she was forced to rely upon others for her rescue and salvation. But she may also be seen as weak from a Victorian point of view; while both Lucy and Mina are in the beginning of the novel upstanding and loyal women, the one that falls prey to Dracula may be viewed as falling prey to temptation (The Abandonment). In the Victorian era, Stoker was living in an age of reform for women and witnessed the growing presence of a women’s equality movement. Mina is the New Woman who retains the values of the Victorian woman, and Lucy is the one who opens herself to the evils of the vampire, or, possibly metaphorically, the evils of what the New Woman could become. Vampirism can be viewed as a metaphor for the changing sexuality of the time, as Dracula’s brides are considerably more promiscuous and dangerous than Lucy and Mina.

In Bram Stoker' s Dracula, vampires act as principles of mixing in many ways. Dracula comes from Transylvania, which is a land of many people, and his castle is located on the border of three states. Dracula himself describes the place as the "whirlpool of European races", and boasts, "in [his] veins flows the blood of many brave races" (p. 28). Dracula wishes to go to London, to the crowded streets with a variety of people. He takes blood from everybody, and gives it to others (Mina, albeit for his own purposes). His body acts as a vessel of mixed blood. In his veins run blood from ancient and modern times, from England and Transylvania. Dracula seems to act as some sort of

His skin is pale, with slicked-back hair, lips blood red, and his pearly white teeth sharp; he’s Dracula, the original vampire. Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula, which was written in 1897, started the vampire craze that still lasts today. It has sparked numerous novels, movies, and songs across the world through the year, and its popularity is still growing. As times have changed, so have Dracula and his predecessors. Dracula is about Count Dracula meeting this human Jonathan Harker for business and Jonathan along with his friends learn that Count Dracula is a vampire. In the end Count Dracula is killed before he can reach the safety of Transylvania. Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula is the pinnacle of all modern concepts of vampires; however,

As she says "Why can’t they let a girl marry three men" (Stoker 5, 87) though she only wishes that but knows it won't happen. However, she later transforms into a vampire who does not only bite innocent children, but also invites her fiancés for a sexual desires. Yet because of her being too sexual attractive, and with that she becomes a bad women, they killed her in order to bring back the real Lucy with her nature beauty and kindness. Therefore, the man who killed the undead lucy, Arthur, represents Victorian manhood for destroying the woman that threatens the order of society.

To begin with, Lucy is one of the characters that Stoker uses to show the repressed female sexuality during the Victorian era. At the start of the story, Stoker portrays Lucy as a sweet, innocent, upper-class girl, the representation of how society expected women to behave. Many people fall for Lucy’s charm,