Gender in Bram Stoker's Dracula Essay

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

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

In Dracula by Bram Stoker, women portrayed a critical role throughout many aspects of the novel. Lucy Westerna was the first critical character to support a society run by men. another woman recognized for her compliance to male dominance is Mina Harker, in the fact that she falls to her sense of "duty" by gender roles. the three weird sisters, or Brides of Dracula, are different in the fact that they portray a more seductive, or inappropriate, side of women from the 19th century. By targeting the women throughout the novel, feminism reveals itself prominently in Bram Stokers Dracula.

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.

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

In the 1993 version, Van Helsing refers to Lucy as "a willing recruit, a whore of darkness, a bitch of the devil."(Bram Stoker's Dracula). Also, Mina chooses whether to be with Dracula or with Jonathan. We wonder at the end whether she will choose to remain with Jonathan after Dracula's death.

In extreme contrast to the lecherous she-beasts met by her husband in Transylvania, Mrs Johnathan Harker epitomises the Victorian notion of a good woman. Rather than occupy the role of a physical lover, Mina is a maternal figure, nurturing all her friends with an innate and instinctive tenderness. To the bereaved Lord Arthur Godalming she ‘opens her arms unthinkingly’ (275), resting his head on her shoulder ‘as though it were that of a baby that some day may lie on my bosom’ (275). Despite this simile endowing Mina with power over Godalming it is an acceptable power for a woman to have, that possessed by mothers over their babes, rather than that by dominatrices over their victims. At the same time as being femininely caring, she is also intelligent and sensible, perceived as typically masculine qualities by the Victorians. Described by Van Helsing on more than one occasion of having a ‘man’s brain’ (281, 404) while also having a ‘woman’s heart (281), Mina is rendered virtually void of any sexual desire or attraction. Her womanliness centres on gentle compassion and the manliness of her mind ensures she is too sensible to give in to any subconscious eroticism. She alone of the novel’s female characters survives, and ends happily married with one son.

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

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

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

These aspects would suggest that she is “New Woman”, however Mina is very much sexually reticent which is against the sexually assertive nature that helps define the “New Woman” movement. While the “New Woman” movement did have some focus on the former aspects it was likely that the more outward sexuality present in the movement was what Stoker and many Victorians were worried about with the movement “Financial independence and personal fulfillment as alternatives to marriage and motherhood were not responsible for the New Woman’s becoming a symbol of all that’s challenging and dangerous in advanced thinking. The crucial factor was..sex” (Senf, 1982). While the well educated Mina does have several aspects of a “New Woman” she would not feel comfortable being associated with the movement as she is reluctant to display affection for her fiancé and she consciously rejects the forwardness and sexual frankness of “New Woman” writers:

Lucy and Mina are very crucial in the short story since they are the only protagonist females and characters the author uses to portray the roles of women in the Victorian Era. Stoker juxtaposes the two women to illustrate and compare the groupings of ladies that existed during Victorian Era. The novel presents the intelligent,