here is a pervading sense of instability and unease; an age was coming to an end and things would

change, not necessarily for the better. The foreign threat appears in Dracula, who not only threatens
the loss of life, and civilized living but also the women, so that the very future of the city is one of
parasitical creatures who are sired by a foreign menace. The twofold threat here is thus not only that
of diluting racial bloodlines, but also of losing the culture of this city to the lesser foreign type.

Sexuality

There existed a prejudiced view in regards to women and their sexuality in the Victorian era. Women
were believed to have no sexual appetite that needed to be fulfilled; instead, their only type of desire
was to satisfy the male’s needs. Essentially, Acton believed that women had little to no sexual desire.
They were very simple in terms of sex since they “are not very much troubled by sexual feeling.
However, Acton acknowledged the idea that some women were lustful and contained an appetite for
sex, but he saw these as unusual sexual desires that “surpass those of men, and shock public feeling
by their exhibition” Many Victorian women were stereotyped. It was believed that they only desired
the role of mother, wife, and daughter. Acton’s attitude to women greatly influenced the Victorian’s
belief that women possessed no need for sexual gratification. there existed a wish fantasy by most
Victorian men that women would fulfill the role of the “angel in the house” Acton believed a woman
should sacrifice her personal desires for her man. Sigmund Freud’s theories of sexuality allow us to
better understand how the women were sexual beings before meeting Dracula. For Freud, we are
sexualized beings, even from our earliest childhood. Freud’s theories regarding sexuality weave a rich
tapestry displaying the Victorian fear of expressing sexual feelings and desires in Dracula. Freud
believed that investigating one’s state of unconsciousness would reveal repressed desires; however,
this definition of psychoanalysis has been enhanced, as noted above. Repressed feelings of fears and
desires are predominantly expressed through unconscious states, mostly in dreams

These multiple identities expanded the Victorian view on women. Victorian women are capable of
expressing other sexual roles and desires besides that of wife and mother. Dracula explores the idea
that women are more sexual than men, and, therefore, they desire more than being a nurturer. In
the traditional Victorian era, the idea of sex and sexual acts was seen as a ghastly subject. Directly
discussing such intimate details was unacceptable and often repressed. Foucault has demonstrated
how the Victorian age often broke “the rules of marriage” by “seeking strange pleasures” (Foucault
893). Similarly, Stoker shows his characters seeking strange pleasures outside of marriage such as the
sucking of blood and bodily fluids. The sexual acts that the characters display in their dreams would
be classified as “grave sins”. This inevitably strengthens the female characters’ sexual identities they
display in their dreams that are projected into reality.

His spread of vampirism empowers the three vampire sisters, Lucy Westenra, and Mina Murray to
become voluptuous, sexualized women. The vampire figure gives these characters the opportunity to
act upon their repressed sexual desires. Therefore, these women directly confront the Victorian fear
of female sexuality as their sensual wants and needs are finally exposed to the men in their lives. The
three vampire sisters symbolize the overt female sexuality that most Victorian men feared and, in the
case of Dracula, desired. They are erotic, sensual, and possess sexual desire that surpass that of men.
Lucy represents the ideal Victorian woman, the glorified angel of the household. However, she too is
sexualized and is made aware of her desires when she succumbs to vampirism. Finally, Mina serves
as the mother figure that descends into the role of the “fallen woman.” Her sensual interaction with
Dracula and her progression into vampirism stresses her fallen, rejected status. Ultimately, the sisters
unleash the dormant sexual desires in the male characters. Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing expose
their sexual desires through their interaction with the vampire sisters. However, their voluptuous,
lusty appearances attract Harker more so than his fear of them Instantly, the fair vampire tempts
Harker because of her light colored hair, skin, and overall appearance. To Harker, she signifies the
ideal Victorian woman because of her sexual nature. he begins to become hypnotized by the dark
features of the other two vampires Each one of them gives off a dangerous, erotic, sexual allure that
Harker struggles to repress. For Harker, the vampire sisters represent a surge of female sexuality that
the Victorians tried to repress. Instead of becoming disgusted with their overt sexuality, he is excited
and yearns to experience pleasure with them . He was both intrigued and disgusted by her sexuality

Lucy represents the fair, demure woman that Victorian culture fancied. Similar to Mina’s
predicament, she too becomes a fallen woman as her repressed desire of fulfilling her sexual needs
are satisfied in her vampire form. She is quick to discuss her love life and a woman capable of
swooning any man. Stoker is critiquing the Victorian culture’s view of female sexuality and sex. She is
“immaculately, implacably virginal” and she desires matrimony, the ideal Victorian woman As
mentioned earlier, Lucy is proposed to by two different men, later on a third, and she becomes so
ecstatic that she states an unaccepted idea in Victorian society. “Why can’t they let a girl marry three
men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it”
(Stoker 67). This remark, while simple in nature, becomes a repressed desire that Lucy reveals to
Mina but then automatically revokes her statement. Essentially, Lucy is stating that she wants to
have sex with three different men and for it to be accepted. Instantly, she calls this “heresy,” a belief
that is opposite of Christian religion, and retracts her statement because it is not accepted

Van Helsing notices this and performs a blood transfusion on Lucy from three different men, Arthur
Holmwood, John Seward, and Van Helsing himself. Van Helsing notices the sexual implication of the
blood transfusion. “ ‘Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had made her truly his
bride…But there was a difficulty, friend John. If so that, then what about the others? Ho, ho! Then
this so sweet maid is a polyandrist’ ” (Stoker 158). Van Helsing implies that Lucy is a polyandrist, a
woman married to more than one man at one time, and he tries to hide this secret from Lucy for it is
seen as unacceptable. Previously, Lucy admits to wanting more than one man, but instantaneously
disregards such a preposterous idea. And yet, her slow transformation into a vampire and her
interaction with Dracula enables her desire to be acted upon in reality. By giving blood to Lucy, the
men are penetrating her and forcing their own bodily fluids into her. This allows her to experience
multiple sexual identities as her blood is mixed with blood from three different men, none of whom
are her husband, as she remains single. Lucy’s evolution into vampirism further enhances her
repressed sexual desires and Acts

The difference between Mina and the other female characters is that she unknowingly labels this
despicable persona as the “New Woman. the “New Woman” is defined as a woman who is
“progressive,” independent, and expresses sexual indulgence Here, she expresses how their
appetites would stun “New Women,” but Mina states her happiness that the men are accepting.
Thus, she places the men’s expectations and judgment above her fellow women. Mina continues to
condescend towards the “New Woman” by emphasizing that it would be foolish looking if the “New
Woman” proposed instead of the men. journal entries reinforce Mina’s distaste for the “New
Woman” and to distance herself from that label. However, Mina and Lucy slowly begin to fully
embody the “New Woman” persona through the influence of Dracula

They both seek sexual gratification and are independent in their vampire state. Yet, Mina is the
female character who is most resistant to becoming categorized as the “New Woman” even though
her repressed desires are rooted in this persona since her desire is of being useful to her husband,
Jonathan Harker. Ultimately, Mina becomes the most sexualized and sensual woman in the novel
through her direct interactions with Dracula. Mina slowly changes from a Victorian woman into the
“New Woman” because of the vampirism that begins to spread throughout her body. As a vampire,
she exercises independence and an appetite for sexual satisfaction that the “New Woman”
represents

Like Lucy, Mina expresses her primary desire to be of help to her husband within her first letter.
“When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan. Mina yearns to fulfill the role of wife
and revolve her existence around her husband’s needs. Thus, she exhibits the traits of a traditional
Victorian woman She is selfless and bases her desires upon that of her husband’s needs. And so, she
tries to master secretarial skills, a feminine role, in order to fulfill this desire in her conscious state.
Yet, even though Mina is aware of her desire and works towards it in her conscious state, she has a
repressed desire to be independent which is stressed by mastering secretarial skills without Harker’s
knowledge “I shall try to do what I see lady journalists do: In this passage, Mina expresses a need to
mimic the lady journalists she admires; however, these women journalists are considered
independent as they seek information on their own accord. This is a small glimpse of Mina’s desire to
be like the “New Woman.”

Mina represents the self-sacrificing, supportive, and wifely angel in the house, while Lucy represents
the sexual, disobedient, and powerful monstrous female. Mina’s interactions with the men, as well as
through her view on femininity, and through Lucy’s interactions with the men and with Mina. Mina is
excluded but is able to be purified from vampirism while still alive. In contrast, Lucy, being a threat to
British Victorian femininity, has to be killed and mutilated before her memory can be purified. How
well the women fit into the male community’s view of the Victorian female ideal, with Mina fitting it
the best, is found to be the reason for why Lucy suffers a worse fate than Mina..

The concept of the virgin/whore dichotomy, as well as the Madonna/whore dichotomy, refers to how
women, both in literature and outside of literature, are presented as being either the virgin or the
whore, depending on contemporary society’s views on what constitutes a virgin or a whore. “the
pure, virtuous, non-sexualized female” (345). The qualities of the angel in the house “An Impudent
woman is looked on as a kind of monster

the concept of the angel in the house, examines how femininity in Dracula relates to late-Victorian
fears of female sexuality and deviation from feminine gender roles, as well as how both Mina and
Lucy stray from contemporary ideals of femininity. The first description of Mina, by Mina, gives the
impression that she is skillful; she knows how to stenograph, is proficient with the typewriter, and
considers herself an amateur journalist. One could also get the impression that she uses all of these
skills solely for the benefit of her husband: Mina as the angel in the house, as her self-sacrificing
nature is emphasized very early in the novel. Mina’s introduction makes it apparent how well she fits
into the British Victorian female ideal. The ideal requires women to practice care work to be
“compassionate and maternal to be a supportive helpmate to be “chaste paragons of morality”
( Mina’s role can be regarded as that of the good wife and mother, as she frequently speaks about
trying to be a good wife. She explains wifehood as a sort of “duty”: shouldn’t be a burden to his
husband which means hide her worry and discomfort we see mina many times doing this even tries
to look as if she hadn’t cried. As she is their ideal of what British femininity is, the men’s views on
purity, motherhood, as well as their only emotional support, might be completely corrupted if
Dracula succeeds in corrupting Mina too. Mina’s reaction when affected by vampirism is in
accordance with the characteristics of the angel in the house. She claims herself to be “Unclean,
unclean!” (Stoker 300) and, in contrast to Lucy’s exclamation of “Kiss me!” (Stoker 168) towards her
fiancé during her vampire transformation Mina’s reaction is to keep to her angel in the house
characteristics despite being afflicted with vampirism, while Lucy, as will be discussed later, turns
gradually more transgressive and sexual. Both of the instances of Mina cooking and serving tea are
presented as Mina providing support and a sense of normalcy she has given them explicit permission
to kill and mutilate her, should they feel it necessary. This is Mina’s utmost action as the angel in the
house; declaring her absolute subservience to the men, as well as her absolute dedication and
support to their mission of “saving” Victorian femininity, even if it means that she must die Mina is
also punished for “inviting” Dracula to corrupt her, although Mina’s punishment does not entail as
much physical harm to herself as Lucy’s punishment does.

The men’s view of her as weak can also be seen as a paradox, as she becomes anxious whenever she
is excluded, and they exclude her because they do not think she is fit to be included. Thus, they
create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which they punish her for being worried while being the ones
making her worry to begin with. A more visible and physically damaging part of Mina’s punishment is
the scar she receives from the sacramental bread. As the Victorian feminine ideal was to be
“genteel” and “supportive” (Swartz-Levine 345), her challenging Arthur, her soon-to-be fiancé, by
being difficult for him to read could be an indication of her being uncooperative and unsupportive.
Her declaration that she “flatter[s] [herself]” (Stoker 58) also indicates that she enjoys being
challenging to men. Her use of slang further diverges from the Victorian feminine ideal of being
“genteel” (Swartz-Levine 345) as the only other characters using slang in the novel either are men or
are women from another social standing, implying that the use of slang is improper when coming
from a woman of Lucy’s social standing. Another example of Lucy diverging from the Victorian
feminine ideal can be observed, not only in her challenging Arthur, but also in her questioning, or not
immediately obeying, the men. This can be observed when Van Helsing tries to offer her stinking
garlic flowers to protect her from Dracula, and she “ma[kes] a wry face” Shortly after Lucy’s
introduction, she wishes she could marry three men to not make any of them unhappy. While she
acknowledges this as “heresy” Thus, Lucy’s declaration of wishing to marry three men is, initially, the
most definitive sign marking her as the whore to Mina’s virgin. This is also the beginning of Lucy’s
transformation into the monstrous female, as her transgressive sexuality is what is presented as her,
arguably, most damning trait. other men also have provided Lucy with their own blood, their
disinclination of divulging it to

Arthur indicates that they also deem themselves symbolically married to Lucy. Dr. Seward decides
that they must never tell Arthur about the other blood transfusions, which displays that it is
something shameful. The notion of Lucy as a “polyandrist” seemingly links to Lucy’s earlier desire for
three husbands, but it now makes her wish a reality, thus taking her transgressive sexuality from
thought to action and further placing her outside of the Victorian female ideal. Both Dr. Seward and
Van Helsing suggest the idea of the multiple “marriages” as shameful and wrong. If the “marriages”
were to be considered real marriages, it seems that Van Helsing would put greater blame and shame
on Lucy for the transgression, as she is the one “married” to multiple men, while the unmarried men
would be “married” to her only.

The significance of Lucy being watched while asleep can be observed in the article by Sophie Duncan.
She claims that in late-Victorian culture, “the sleeping woman is a central erotic object” (77) and
especially “Victorian culture fetishised the sleep-death boundary”

Lucy Childlike mina mother like generation gap.

“voluptuous” in fact belongs to the codes of nineteenth-century pornography. Furthermore, Lucy’s

bodily closeness to the child is strengthened by a color chiasmus miming her embrace: the [pale-
dark] combination associated with their figures (“a white figure”; “something dark at its breast” 187)
is reversedinto a [dark-pale] combination of their hair (“a dark-haired woman”; “a fairhairedchild”,
187). The text transgresses the verbal prohibition on Lucy’s pathological desire and forbidden
activities involving children, if only with the explicit use of a pornographic adjective

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a Gothic novel written in the time of Victorian England. England was an
imperial force then and almost one-quarter of the earth’s land was part of the British Empire

The Victorian era is a transitional period saturated with old doctrines and a new lifestyle filled with
technology. These created fears and anxieties among the Victorians. Specifically, this refers to the
contrast between science and superstition, the fear of the Foreign, sexuality and homosexuality, and
the rise of the New Woman. The contrast between science and superstition was represented by the
clash between Eastern European folklore and the industrialization of Britain. Furthermore, England’s
numerous colonies contributed to the contact with other nations which brought the fear of a possible
reverse colonisation. Sexuality and homosexuality were taboo topics that Stoker approached through
the metaphors related to blood. There is a particular focus on female sexuality as women’s interests
became the focus of interest in the male-dominated society which led to a change of traditional
values and gender roles and the appearance of the so-called New Woman – an opponent to the
patriarchal society.

Dracula asserts that the sexually aggressive female vampires are representative of the New Woman,
and thus are evidence of Stoker’s conservative reaction to changing gender roles..

New Woman movement which sought to demonize the Victorian marriage market because of its
creation of a class of female parasites: idle middle-class woman entirely dependent on fathers and
husbands.

This reading reveals a text that argues that work for women is the only antidote to the degeneration
inherent in traditional womanhood, through which women are reduced to nothing more than their
biological functions.
 Dracula is traditionally read as a conservative reaction to changing gender roles at the end of the
nineteenth century. Thus, critics assert that texts like Dracula reveal ‘male novelists’ anxieties about
the sexual and social repercussions of feminism, fears reflected in predatory and monstrous females’

the New Woman at the fin de siècle. the core concerns of the movement (‘inequality in marriage and
professional life, the moral double standard and sexual violence, and women’s political
disenfranchisement’

New Woman writers, positioned herself as an upholder of sexual virtue. Far from seeking the
dissolution of marriage, Grand suggested that the primary goals of the women’s movement were
improvements in women’s education and the eradication of prostitution. Viewed in the context of
this picture of New Womanhood at the end of the century, Lucy Westenra and the three female
vampires hardly qualify. Instead, Lucy Westenra and the three vampire sisters are representations of
what Stoker presents as an outdated and old-fashioned womanhood: domestic, uneducated, and
consumeristic.

the vampire women are bound to the domestic space awaiting the return of their husband and
provider - at the end of this scene, Dracula returns with food for the three women, revealing that
they are entirely dependent upon him. They do not hunt for themselves; they merely wait to be fed.

Heilmann identifies as the core concerns of the woman’s movement of the period: ‘girls’ education,
the close correlation between healthy bodies and minds, the injurious effects of dysfunctional
mothering, the dangers of sexual ignorance… [and] the need for a purposeful occupation besides and
beyond marriage.…’25 This list reveals the primary differences between the two heroines of Dracula,
which mark Mina Harker, not Lucy Westenra, as a New Woman.26 Mina is educated, trained as a
teacher and proficient in up-to-the-minute clerical skills and technology. Lucy, on the other hand,
lacks both Mina’s education and her mental stimulus. The novel suggests that it is this lack of activity
or intellectual engagement that leaves Lucy vulnerable to vampire attacks; in contrast, Mina is
healthiest in body when mentally active, pursuing the information needed to defeat the vampiric
invasion. Mina works in a professional capacity both before and after her marriage, first as a teacher
and then as a partner to Jonathan in his work as a solicitor.

Kept in the dark by Van Helsing and the other male characters, neither woman is equipped to protect
Lucy against the sexual/infectious threat that Dracula poses. Mrs Westenra, uninformed of the threat
stalking her daughter, makes a variety of mistakes in her role as carer for Lucy: removing the garlic
blossoms with which Van Helsing has bedecked the room and opening the window to allow in fresh
air. Lucy is therefore left completely vulnerable to Dracula’s advances. Had Van Helsing explained the
situation to Mrs Westenra, Lucy would have been protected and would have survived Dracula’s
interest in her. The male characters, however, decide that information itself is dangerous to the
women, and thus leave them to their fate. We can see, in this section of the novel, a parallel to the
arguments put forward by New Woman writers about the necessity of sexual education to help
women identify and fight the threats posed to them by venereal disease. Neither Mrs Westenra nor
Lucy recognize the symptoms of the disease Dracula spreads with his infectious kisses, and thus they
are helpless against them.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Britons found themselves in a world of new possibilities and
new perils –in a society rapidly advancing through imperialist explorations and scientific discoveries
while attempting to cling to traditional institutions, men and woman struggled to make sense of the
new cultural order. Th genre of invasion literature, speaking to the fear of Victorian society becoming
tainted by the influence of some creeping foreign Other, proliferated at the turn of the century, and
Stoker's threatening depictions of the Transylvanian Count Dracula resonated with his readers.
Certainly, Stoker's supernatural novel touches on many themes, including immigration, infection, and
sexual conventions, and has spoken to the social concerns of many different generations

In the last decades of the century, women gained the rights to divorce, to retain their own assets if
they married, to own their own property, and to pursue a university degree. Literary depictions of
the New Woman, and the use of the term New Woman itself, were popularized during this time in
response to the male-dominated Victorian society and the apparent lack of equality between men
and women. If the New Woman was autonomous, with personal, social, and economic control over
her own life, she was also something to be feared. The New Woman was uninterested in “propriety”
and the expectations to marry young and submit to her husband’s will, and this position in particular
took on enormous social significance. This focus on the New Woman's potential to reject completely
the patriarchal system leads some critics, like Carol Senf, to focus incorrectly on sexual freedom to
categorize the novel’s characters. Senf suggests that Lucy and the hyper-sexualized wives of Count
Dracula are more accurately New Women, while Mina, who becomes a wife and mother, should be
precluded from the title Mina has a professional job, writes in shorthand, and is responsible for
collating the recovered texts that materially form the novel. Lucy, by contrast, has no job, and her
writings are primarily occupied with discussions of the suitability of her proposed suitors. While both
girls are at some point infected with vampire blood, Lucy's lack of autonomy leads her to succumb to
the vampiric curse of the male Count Dracula. Completely reliant on the men in her life, Lucy is,
ironically, ultimately killed by the very same group of men who proposed to her. Mina, much more
self-reliant than Lucy, is instead able to turn her infection into the biggest advantage our characters
have in fighting Dracula.

Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray. Both characters exemplify the ideals of Victorian womanhood,
although in different ways: while Lucy is representative of the emotional and domesticated view of
women which was held by men of the time, Mina maintains no life of luxury or idleness as does Lucy.
She is sensible and devoted to both God and her husband, qualities which were held in high regard in
the Victorian era.

However, both women also represent the emerging phenomenon known as the "New Woman" –
although again, in differing ways. The phenomenon became increasingly common in the late
nineteenth century and is characterized by the active resistance to traditional controls placed on
women. While Lucy represents the augmented importance of women's sexuality and its implications,
Mina embodies all other aspects of the New Woman, retaining a job and a sense of practicality
evident throughout the novel.

Their differences are first apparent in the letters the two childhood friends exchange. In her
correspondence, Mina confesses that she has been over-whelmed by her work as an assistant
schoolmistress and states that she is learning shorthand and practicing on a typewriter so as to be of
use to Jonathan when they are married (Stoker 55). In stark contrast to Mina's studiousness is what
Lucy describes doing with her time – going to picture-galleries and for walks in the park (56). Lucy
also conveys much more emotion in her letters than her childhood friend: she writes that she wishes
Mina were there so she could tell her friend what she feels and frequently confesses that she is
afraid, sorry, or happy (57), while such emotion is not as apparent in Mina's writing. Another, possibly
the most significant, difference between the two women is that Lucy is an openly sexual character
and Mina is not.

After being proposed to by Dr. Seward, Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood all in one day, it
becomes clear that Lucy is quite the flirt, as she writes to Mina, "why can't they let a girl marry three
men, or as many as want her?" (60). Although she later discounts this as heresy, the tone of her
comment is one of playfulness and reflects her genuine sexual attraction to all three men (Johnson
27). Lucy embodies the Victorian man’s traditional view of the upper-class woman as someone who
does not work and is highly emotional and sensual. Lucy's sexualization, characteristic of the New
Woman, becomes much more apparent after the young woman succumbs to vampirism

her childhood habit of sleepwalking, always attempting to exit the house she shares with her mother.
This is perhaps because, as she has already playfully hinted at in wishing that a woman could marry
as many men as she pleases, she feels a disinclination for the constraints of marriage, an institution
which is traditionally centered around the home. by simply calling out to Arthur, her voice, too
diabolically Lucy as this seductress is in direct opposition to the view of a woman's sexuality held in
the Victorian era, a time marked by sexual repression. The fact that Lucy's victims are children is
significant and suggests that Lucy's animosity is directed not just at marriage but at motherhood as
well, a role that Victorian women were expected to fulfill. This "exaggerated perversion" of
motherhood reflects the fear that the New Woman would not only be a bad mother, but potentially
harmful and deadly as well. By isolating and exaggerating Lucy's flirtatious tendencies, Stoker calls
attention to the possible destruction that is caused by the sexualized New Woman.

In short, the three women offer Jonathan more overt sexual gratification in three paragraphs than
Mina does in the entire novel. The vampires represent what Victorian women should not be, as does
Lucy: voluptuous and sexually aggressive. Such sexual proficiency threatens to undermine the
foundations of the male-dominated Victorian society by compromising man's ability to reason and
maintain control, as is evident when Jonathan nearly succumbs to the brides' deadly "kisses." They
also represent what was perhaps the greatest threat of Dracula's coming to London – his ability to
transform sensible Victorian women into uncontrollable lustful monsters.

The brides share another similarity with Lucy: their victimization of children. When Dracula prevents
the three vampires from "kissing" Jonathan, he provides them with a young child to appease their
hunger (44), sharing the implication that voluptuous vampire seductresses, and thus the sexualized
woman they represent, make for deadly mothers

In contrast to Lucy, whose descent into vampirism is marked by her increased sexualization, the
action leading up to Dracula's attack on Mina is characterized by the young woman's continuous
exclusion from the affairs of men. Van Helsing states that Mina should play no part is destroying
Dracula, as "it is no part for a woman. Ironically, it is being excluded from the pursuit of Dracula that
truly distresses Mina, as she grows increasingly anxious and increasingly susceptible to Dracula's
attacks. As soon as the men discover Mina's developing vampirism, they see that their exclusion of
her has been a mistake and agree that she should be in their full confidence (253) and with good
reason: it is by means of Mina's telepathic connection to Dracu-a that the men are able to determine
the whereabouts of the Count, tracking his escape from London to Transylvania.

Although both Lucy and Mina embody the Victorian New Woman, neither is a completely full-fledged
New Woman: Mina, whose New Woman status is established by her practical competence and her
position as an assistant schoolmistress, desires only recognition within a marriage of her choosing
rather than radical sexual and social independence, whereas Lucy, who embodies this sexual reform,
is consciously indifferent to feminist reform, choosing not to work. Yet Lucy dies and Mina does not.
This may signify that at the outset of the novel, the group of men were extremely disturbed and
uncomfortable with Lucy's overt sexuality, seeking to kill what she had become so as to return the
young woman to a more pure, socially acceptable state. Indeed, after Arthur kills her, Lucy's face
under-goes a physical transformation, returning to the much more innocent face that she had had in
life (192). Although Mina does have a close encounter with death, the men fight to preserve her life,
signifying that they have more or less come to terms with the intellectual, working New Woman of
which Mina is an example, while tossing out the old emotional example of the traditional woman
such as Lucy. In fact, at the end of the novel, Van Helsing says of Mina and Jonathan's son: "This boy
will someday know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness
and loving care" (327). Here Stoker expresses that despite fears of the New Woman being a harmful
mother, as is embodied in Lucy, ac-companying the new era of woman comes a new era of children,
who can understand and accept a woman who is not only a loving mother but also a brave and
intelligent woman – and that this New Woman should be respected and allowed to thrive.

Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula explores many themes and includes an examination and
representative social commentary on the emerging phenomenon of the Victorian New Woman
gaining popularity in the nineteenth century. The two major female characters in Dracula, Mina
Murray and Lucy Westenra, are both frustrated by male prerogative: Lucy is expected to make an
aristocratic marriage, and Mina is simultaneously placed on a pedestal and discounted by the group
of men pursuing Count Dracula (Johnson 21). From this frustration comes the emergence of the New
Woman qualities each woman embodies. Lucy personifies Stoker's commentary on the sexualized
nature of the New Woman and its implications on motherhood, while Mina is representative of the
New Woman's professional and practical status. It is clear what Stoker thinks regarding the former, as
both the vampire Lucy and the brides of Dracula must be destroyed for what they stand for, while the
group of men risk their lives to save Mina's, and are eventually successful in this endeavour. While
neither Lucy nor Mina is a perfect example of the Victorian New Woman, each embodies separate
characteristics of a New Woman, and through examining these childhood friends and how they are
treated in the novel by the other characters, one is able to grasp a sense of the attitudes surrounding
gender roles in late nineteenth-century society.

Most critics agree that Dracula should be seen as an excellent example of indulging the Victorian
male imagination, mainly regarding female sexuality. Victorian society dictated hard restraints on
sexuality, especially female sexuality. Dracula and its connections to women issues during the
Victorian time, a Victorian woman in fact, had only two options; she was either a virgin or else she
was a mother since the Victorians considered that sexual repression was a sign of good breeding and
if she was neither of these she was seen as promiscuous. A woman was only considered as a “lady” if
women repressed their “instincts”, meaning that they should desist from sex. The Victorians and
writes that led by the “cult of true womanhood,” which required purity and submissiveness in
women, females were told to become almost asexual. Women who were sexually active and who did
not deny their sexuality were therefore a threat, both to themselves and to society, which is clear in
Dracula the three beautiful vampires that Jonathan Harker (which is one of the protagonists in
Dracula) encounters in Dracula’s castle represent all the qualities of how a women should not be –
voluptuous and sexually aggressive.

As women’s sexuality became more and more repressed, Victorian men were also directed to desist
from sex but with some few exceptions. The Victorian man was only allowed to have sex within
marriage. A woman had to help men to control their instincts to become more like the women. Even
though men were urged to control their sexuality, the Victorians believed that heterosexual desire
was in a man’s nature. Therefore the society pleaded ignorance about a man’s inability to control his
sexuality. However Victorian Society believed that male sexuality was necessary for reproduction.

In Dracula, sex and blood are closely associated with each other, reflecting the Victorians’ belief that
blood is sperm. an exchange of bodily fluids which can be associated with sexual intercourse.2

Dracula was published in 1897, a period which was marked by the expansion of the British Empire.
Science prospered and it was the century of Charles Darwin and a period of growing industrialisation.
Elizabeth Miller describes how British scientists enjoyed describing how England was the peak of
social evolution, in which the rights and the powers of individuals were well developed and the rule
of law most firmly established (72-73). Although the Victorians praised themselves for not putting
boundaries on the individual, claiming that the individuals were receiving advantages from their
highly developed Victorian society, especially from the democratic reforms, they were still very strict
about not letting the members of the society have an outlet for their sexuality.

Sexuality, especially female sexuality, was not accepted and therefore was repressed in such terms of
regulations. Sex was something that was only necessary for reproduction, within the confines of
marriage.
In Stoker’s novel women are seen as helpless creatures who either are seduced and penetrated or
deluded by Dracula to become his helper, since they are the negotiation of the male, weak and easy
to impose upon. novel establishes a masculine ideal which is strong and self-controlled, independent
man of action.

common issue in Dracula is rape which is expressed indirectly through blood. The threat of rape is
particularly present in Dracula because it strongly demonstrates the power of men over women’s
bodies during the Victorian time and therefore important to illustrate that “fallen” women
predominantly were considered who did not own the right of possession of their own bodies. Men of
the Victorian society were free to treat them as they pleased too. On the other hand, men who could
not control their sexuality were also considered as weak and passive, qualities that characterized a
woman. Dracula contains several rape scenes, both of women and the attempted rape of men. These
rape scenes strongly illustrates how penetration and blood function as a symbol or insinuation of
sexuality and intercourse.

The influence of the British Empire was widespread in its colonies throughout Asia, Africa, North
America and Australia. It is widely acknowledged, especially by some post-colonialist critics, that the
views, values and attitudes of the westerners about the colonies and the places outside the West are
built on prejudice. In the eyes of the westerners, the colonial people are backward, ignorant and
subordinate and therefore they need to be remoulded.
In the 19 th century, the inventions of the steam engine, telegraph, telephone, electric light and new
discoveries in medicine changed the way people lived, particularly in Western Europe. But the changes
are slow to reach intoEast (including Eastern Europe and Asia, etc.). So, Eastern Europe is often
characterized as backward and inferior to Western one in culture, language and customs. , Dracula is
interpreted as the threat of the barbarian attempting to overtake the civilized world.
a symbol of progress in industrial society—to Dracula Castle. However, the deeper he goes to the East,
“the more unpunctual are the trains.

Because technological progress has cut humanity off from the old superstitious and dark knowledge,
civilized man has no defence against them. In the 19 th century, England was the most powerful
country in the world. In the English eyes, Eastern Europeans,symbolized as barbarian and uncivilized,
seek to overthrow their civilization and progress. Especially Dracula’s accent, “dark” sexuality and foul
smell make him a representative of all dark foreigners in the Victorian society. In addition, Dracula is
an epistolary novel. However, because the activities of reading and writing are crucial in this novel to
establish a kind of middle-class hegemony, Dracula, as the Other, is inevitably elbowed out of the
narrators

The ‚New Woman‘ is the breaking-free of the ‚Angel in the House‘ - the pure woman. They want self-
determination, higher education (cf Spencer 206). They demand freedom and an active role in life
and society, which was for people at that time very scary as Spencer explains: "In the eyes of most
Victorian men, for women to deny their traditional role was to deny their womanhood, to challenge
the distinctions between men and women" (206). This fear can also be explained by the fact that
gender was seen as sexual complementation - what is male, is not female and also the other way
around
In Dracula, Stoker portrays the typical women: The new woman, the femme fatale and the damsel in
distress, all common concepts in gothic literature.

These three brides represent the femme fatale, the fatal woman. The over sexualised women whose
charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising,
dangerous, and deadly situations. These women serve as monstrous reminders of what happens if the
boundaries of proper behaviour and traditional gender roles are crossed. These women, although
beautiful, possess the wrong type of beauty, one of which brands them as evil, openly sexual and
seductive women. Who, in addition lack the chaste passivity and fragility of the ideal Victorian lady, thus
making them deserving of some form of punishment in order for them to be returned to their pure,
innocent, albeit dead, human form.

A Victorian woman effectively had only two options: she was either a virgin, a model of purity and
innocence, or else she was a wife and mother. If she was neither of these, she was considered a
whore, and thus of no consequence to society. Thus making the real fear of this book, not darkness
and vampiric nature, but instead the loss of female innocence: a trait that is of extreme value and
importance to men.

When considering and analysing the character of Lucy, it is evident that even before a vampire, she
exerts a sense of sexuality and arrogant flirtatiousness. “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or
as many as want her, and save all the trouble? But this is heresy and I must not say it”.

When Lucy writes this she suggests that maybe she has some hidden desire to break out of the
restrictions and constraints of Victorian expectations. Another example of Lucy’s sexual nature before
becoming vampire is in her statement to Mina saying “My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we
women are so little worthy of them? ” this one line reduces Lucy to a frivolous Victorian woman
whose desire to be satisfied by men is as strong her desire to satisfy men herself. In the Victorian era,
women were titled either as daughter, wife, or mother, and were largely expected to restrain
themselves to the territory of the domestic life.

Woman became “the Angel in the House,” responsible for setting a moral example for her children
and caring for her husband. With the emergence of New Woman, these ideals were challenged, with
women becoming independent, working, attending education, refusing to marrying and not bearing
children. Mina Harker displays numerous features of a perfect Victorian woman: she is an obedient,
loving wife, she accepts the decisions of men, takes care of the household as well as everyone around
her, is religious and chaste.

stereotypes of the time, which listed women as inferior to men in the “physical, moral, and
intellectual” senses Mina defies this gender stereotype. Although she defies this, she is not seen as a
threat towards society as she is content to fulfil the other gender expectations of being the “angel of
the house”. Mina also possesses some characteristics associated with being a new woman. Instead of
staying at home, Mina works as an “assistant schoolmistress” and is “practising shorthand” and
learning to “stenograph well”. By Mina learning shorthand and learning to stenograph, she is
showing stronger new woman attributes, but further analysis shows that actually, instead of Mina
learning these qualities for herself, as a new woman would do, she is learning them for her husband,
in order to be “useful to

She is intelligent and useful to not only Jonathan, but the other males also, which is perhaps the only
reason she is spared at the end of Dracula. After looking closer into Dracula and focusing particularly
on the females, it is clear that Stoker was a very typical Victorian male, with typical Victorian morals
and maybe even a dislike towards the new woman movement.

Through the killing of Lucy, the woman that stated that she “wished she could marry three men” and
being over sexualised even in the human life. And with the killing of the three vampire brides, of
great sexuality and lack of maternal instinct is essentially the moral of the story. Mina is the only
female spared, as she is the only female that never displayed any signs of sexuality and was the
typical “angel of the house”. Revealing to the Victorian audience at the time that in order to stay alive
one must follow what is expected of them

During the Victorian era, when Stoker lived, female sex drive was often considered as unnatural,
possibly because, as Weiman states ‘male sexual pleasure (is) necessary for reproduction and female
sexual pleasure (is) not, (therefore) sexual pleasure (is) the sole providence of men’. Another reason
could also stem from evolutionary ideas of male sexuality being biologically imperative.

Stoker portrays the male characters to have an element of control and power over female characters
in ‘Dracula’. Dracula is presented as much older and immoral and controls multiple women who are
inferior to him, for example the three vampire women in his castle. However, these women also have
power over other men such as Jonathan Harker through their sexuality. The colour symbolism in ‘’red
lips’’ alongside ‘’voluptuousness’’ connotes ideas of promiscuity, lust and sexuality, making the male
character Johnathan ‘’uneasy’’ as it places power in female sexuality but also plays on Victorian fears
of it

Diversely, the character of Mina Harker symbolizes the ideal Victorian woman: caring, intelligent and
chaste, but remaining subservient to her husband Jonathan reducing women, no matter how
idealised, to still have dependency on men.

Mina being complimented on having a ‘‘man’s brain’’, suggesting that not only are there distinct
gender differences between characteristics, for instance intelligence and bravery, but also that if
being like a man is a compliment for a woman, that being a man is then regarded as more rewarding.
Interestingly, this suggests Mina’s character reflects characteristics of the ‘New Woman’ – ‘the term
used at the end of the nineteenth century to describe women who were pushing against the limits
which society imposed on women.’.
In Mina’s letter to Lucy she reveals she ‘’work[s] very hard’’ as well as ‘’practising very hard’’ which
firstly highlights her intellectual characteristics but also, due to the epistolary form of the novel,
reinforces admiration for her and her New Woman traits as she has the ability to articulate fluently
both in writing and speech. ‘’Many New Woman novels strongly opposed the idea that home is
woman’s only proper sphere’’ , here, Mina Harker seems to reflect this idea. It is vital to acknowledge
however, that Mina Harker is pursuing her education to ‘’be useful to Jonathan’’, suggesting she is still
seemingly secondary to her husband; she ‘’must attend to him at once’’ which implies that although
she has some new woman characterises, she has a consistent reserved sexuality. This is juxtaposed
with the character of Lucy and Stoker presents her as a ‘foil’ to Mina.

Mina’s chastity is highlighted by Stoker and her purity continuously admired through the novel. The
biblical allusion ‘I bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the judgement day’ could perhaps
be a reference to the mark of Cain. In the story of Cain as soon as blood of Abel touched the ground
the earth became cursed, and he was left drinking/swallowing Abel’s blood. The consumption of
blood and its impurity holds clear links with the vampire myth used in ‘Dracula’. Here, the
responsibility is placed onto Mina, because she is presented to hold the ‘shame’; not only is this
wrongfully placed but it is also exaggerated. This is because, Mina believes her encounter with
Dracula where she laid ‘’still and endured’’ has possibly affected her chastity. The possible link of the
mark on Mina’s forehead and the mark of Cain could perhaps reflect the seemingly illogical belief of
the severity of female ‘sexual impurity’.

Stoker presents women such as the character of Mina to comply with her own sexual objectification.
This could be interpreted from her asking to be killed, ‘’brave men have killed their wives and their
womenkind’’ if she is to become a vampire and belonging to Dracula, implying her want of the
preservation of her chastity even if through death

As the predominantly Christian Victorian society perceived female sexuality as unnatural, it was
common to then assume that this meant it was evil, as ‘‘most unnatural” occurrences of the Victorian
era could only be explained by the workings of “evil” forces’. It could be interpreted that as there is a
theme of religion throughout Dracula, Stoker could be reflecting how Victorian society’s views of
female sexuality stemmed from their perceptions of religious texts; this depicts a violent image of the
era’s social and sexual taboos. Here, the expected gender roles are reversed, Jonathan Harker
becomes passive while the females are the sexual aggressors. The narration is from Jonathan’s
perspective; this could encourage the reader to empathise with Jonathan’s fear, but could also
reinforce his powerless situation as he is only able to write about his experience. Dracula’s blood
taking and transforming them into vampires could be an extended metaphor for the loss of blood i.e.
virginity. The capture of the women by the devil, who are transformed into evil creatures that are
mythologically damned to hell, presents them as ‘fallen women’ who ‘could be a woman who
transgressed Victorian sexual norms.’

Lucy Westenra’s characterisation evidently has aspects of the ‘fallen woman’ as she is perceived as
much more sexual than Mina – this causes her troubled destiny. While at first, she may just be a
seemingly excited girl, ‘’why can’t I marry all three’’, the modal verb ‘’can’t’’ highlights that polyandry
is forbidden, therefore her reaction suggesting a frivolous character. It could be interpreted that
because of her fallen woman personality traits, she is then punished and becomes a vampire; this
could be because the ‘fallen woman’s sexual independence made her practically troublesome to
patriarchal order’?. She is then transformed to a ‘’voluptuous wantonness’’, the adjective
‘’voluptuous’’ here creating connotations of her as a sultry, seductive woman, suggesting ideas of
promiscuity.

The notion that she preys upon young children reinforces her immorality. There is a parallel between
her presentation as her human, and as a vampire – they are both seen as immoral, which could
suggest Stoker’s views on the ‘Fallen woman’ which is ‘a woman who transgressed Victorian sexual
norms.’ Her punishment escalates in chapter 16 where the three suitors kill her by putting a stake
through her heart ‘’ driving deeper and deeper the mercy – bearing stake’’ and the blood ‘’ welled
and spurted up around it’’. The scene could be interpreted as symbolic of violent sex or even gang
rape. It could also be argued that her sexual aggressiveness is for ‘men’s secret fantasy’ and is
acceptable because in the end, she was used, solely, for the sexual pleasure for the male characters.

To conclude, female sexuality is clearly shaped by historical, cultural and religious influences;
‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker portrays female sexuality as a reflection of Victorian society’s fear and
misconception of it, reducing it to being unnatural and a sin in a somewhat simplistic way. In
reference to Weiman, it is evident it was common belief that ‘sexual pleasure is the sole providence
of men’. Stoker explores this belief and agrees with the condemnation of women, evidently through
the portrayal of Lucy, but perhaps also through the lack of punishment for Mina. Accordingly, Stoker
may like the formation of the New Women, however only to an extent where women are still
subordinate to men, this subordination may be through the lack of women’s control over their female
sexuality or perhaps simply through the obedience of men. Essentially, this view confirm that female
sexuality has been presented in a perhaps problematically inaccurate way.

each positive description, it is followed with conflicting thoughts, “There was a deliberate
voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive..” (45). These conflicting thoughts that
Jonathan is having shows that he is afraid of what they could do to him due to the aggression that
females can withhold. However, it seems that this quality both attracts yet frightens him, and he still
pursues their attention.

If you are a woman, you cannot appear overtly sexual or come across as too interested in men.
Women that are more open with their sexuality, such as the female vampires mentioned above, are
portrayed as evil and seeking out the destruction of others. It’s like there is a fine line where Victorian
women were expected to act feminine, but not too feminine cuz that would be dangerous.

Freud proposes that literature and the other arts, like dreams and neurotic symptoms, consist of the
imagined, or fantasized, fulfillment of wishes that are either denied by reality or prohibited by the
social standards of morality and propriety.
The forbidden, mainly sexual (‘libidinal’) wishes come into conflict with the ‘censor’ and thus are
repressed into the unconscious realm of the artist’s mind. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory
posits that human behavior is the interaction of the three component parts of the mind – id, ego, and
superego. Freud divided the mind into three parts – the conscious, the preconscious or the
subconscious and the unconscious. The main objective of psychoanalysis is to bring what exists at the
unconscious to the conscious

Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis argues that human behaviour is the result of the
interactions among three component parts of the mind i.e., id, ego and superego. Id incorporates all
the biological components of personality present at the time of birth – i.e., sex (life) instinct – Eros
(libido) and the aggressive (death) instinct – Thanatos. It responds directly and immediately to our
basic needs and desires. By the direct influence of the external world, a part of the id is modified into
ego. It is the decisionmaking component of the personality. It works by reason. The superego’s
function is to control the id’s impulses, especially those which society forbids, such as sex and
aggression etc. It consists of values and morals of society learnt from one’s parents. The
psychoanalytical theory mainly focuses on the unconscious part of the mind rather than the
preconscious and conscious part.

This is really a psychiatric disorder which is termed as Clinical Vampirism. Psychiatrists also call this
disorder as ‘Renfield’s Syndrome’. It is named after the background character Renfield of this novel. It
is a condition where the patients feed upon blood of the living creatures. It starts early and is
believed to progress in three phases. The first phase is that of ‘Auto vampirism’ where the patient sips
blood from his/her wounds. Then develops the next phase i.e., ‘Zoophagia’ where the subject
consumes living creatures like insects, cats, birds et cetera. The next phase results in ‘Vampirism’ i.e.,
drinking the blood of another. Renfield in this novel is diagnosed as a zoophagus maniac and at the
last part; Dracula brutally killed him for his betrayal.

Dracula entered the room of Mina while she was sleeping and drank her blood as well as forced Mina
to drink his blood; which was not consensual. Consequently, that was an example for molestation
Blood exchange thought to be the same as semen giving.

Mina realizes that her sexual intercourse with another man had made her impure and does not want
to have a physical relationship with her husband. She asks God to forgive her since Mina enacted an
act which was against the Christian morality. “Oh! My God! My God! What have I done? God pity me!
Look down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril. And in mercy pity those to whom she is dear

The novel put forth the idea of ‘New Woman’, who wished to get liberated from all sorts of
restrictions. A ‘New Woman’ demanded freedom in all sense – economically and sexually. The male
characters in the novel respect and admire both Mina and Lucy. But they fear the aggressive sexual
nature of the women. The relationships between the two women and the male protagonists are
elevated which indicates that the women are virtuous and not rule breakers. Lucy had fallen prey to
Dracula and her repressed desires were fulfilled. Lucy and the vampire sisters were the fallen women
who rejected motherhood. It is evident in the scene where they feed upon small children. The
vampire sisters were given the body of a smothered child by Dracula instead of Jonathan Harker. It
was only in the vampire states that they could express their emotions. Lucy, before her death had
expressed her wish to consummate with the three suitors. But she had drawn back the statement by
saying it as a heresy. Madam Mina stands as a symbol of ideal Victorian woman. She never transforms
into a complete vampire but still shows similar features of Lucy due to her interactions with Dracula.
She seeks sexual gratification and is independent in the state of trance. Mina is economically
independent since she is a schoolmistress. She is progressive and wishes to help her husband in all
ways. Mina makes it clear in her letters to Lucy and her journals.

Mina slowly changes into a New Woman from a Victorian woman because of her vampirism. Even
though Mina wishes to be a ‘New Woman’, she also expresses her disgust towards them. Some of the
‘New Women’ writers will someday start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each
other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the ‘New Women’ won’t condescend in
future to accept. She will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it too! (Stoker 94)

These repressed desires are fulfilled with the help of Dracula. The men i.e., Arthur, Quincey, Seward
and Helsing did blood transfusion while Lucy was asleep. They also see her asleep in her coffin. There
is also a part in the novel where Mina sees Harker in deep sleep at the time of his recovery at the
hospital at Buda Pest. None of them were married to each other while these anecdotes happened. If
Dracula had not seduced both Harker and Lucy, then chances will not be there for their partners to
see them asleep.

l. It is also important to note that the women who had tried to outrun the males in the case of
sexuality had been destroyed forever which gives the message that the Victorians never permitted
the women of their society to be hypersexual than their men. Women were, hence, trained to be
‘good angels’ who protected their family rather than being a ‘fallen angel’ who tried to control
everything and everyone

Narrative Technique

Objective looking on to the events. Jonathan and Minas thoughts upon the vampire attacks etc.

The narrators’ stylistic differences clearly identify characters who come from
different social strata and parts of the world.

protracts the progression of suspense and horror in the novel. Indeed, the reader is continuously
reminded of the vulnerability of these characters by the first-person journalised isolation. After
Jonathan it jumps to the accounts of Mina and Lucy back in England. This serves to disorient the
reader to an extent, as the continuous movement from one narrative to another prevents a
crystallisation of the nature of Dracula’s terror, keeping him as more of an entity than any tangible
foe. Indeed, Stoker strengthens the pervasiveness of the Count’s growing threat by interjecting the
entries of the main characters with dry and factual reports from the ‘The Dailygraph’ that are pasted
into the journals of some characters, which, because Dracula exists not only in the biased and
unpredictable accounts of the main characters, adds a sense of realness to the horror, allowing it to
escape the confines of human imagination and place it in a palpable reality.

The novel does not use one specific narrator but rather employs a series of first-person narrators
who tell their stories through letters, official reports, journal entries, newspaper articles, telegrams
and memos. The effect of using multiple first-person narrators is similar to a case study. Each of the
narrators provides his version of the events, allowing the reader to piece together a total, unbiased
picture. By comparing each of the narratives, which often tell the same events from different
perspectives, the reader can create an accurate timeline of the action and an understanding of the
truth independent of the biases of the individual characters. The technique also makes the reader
an active participant in the story: Not only does the reader have to interpret the events, but she is
also asked to make moral judgements about them, such as whether Dracula was truly evil and
whether the actions the characters take to kill him are morally acceptable.

We get different viewpoints of the same incident which adds to the richness of the narrative and
gives us clues which would otherwise be unavailable had the entire story been told from the
perspective of the narrator. It also makes it easier for us to come to terms with the coincidences in
the novel, as well as the interconnectedness of the characters. Perhaps, the biggest advantage of
using this style is that the author can introduce different voices with ease. As there is no omniscient
narrator, we get a better understanding of the characters since we get to hear their own perspectives.
As readers, we form a greater connection with the characters as we are privy to their private
correspondence which can provide us with intimate details which would seem extraneous in any
other form.

One of the best parts about epistolary novels is that readers are truly tested as instead of being given
information, sometimes we have to infer it. Like the characteristics of Jonathan Harker through his
additions and how he writes.

Similarly, Mina Murray and her friend Lucy Westerner’s correspondence serves the purpose of
introducing their relationship and Lucy Westerner’s voice paints the picture of a carefree girl in the
prime of her life, with everything to look forward to including the promise of true love. This works
particularly well because had this not been an epistolary novel, we would never have had a chance to
hear her voice through her letters. Instead, the author would have had to rely on Mina’s impressions
of her and perhaps develop her character through some small incidents.

One of the main reasons epistolary novels use journals entries is that they tend to be more believable
as the characters have the freedom to be candid without worrying about judgement.

Harker’s journal also sets the stage for one of the larger themes of the book- that of the rational
versus the supernatural. He chronicles how he slowly comes to fear and understand the true nature
of Count Dracula. He shares the experiences which helped him come to the conclusion that Dracula is
a vampire and his interactions with the Count introduce us to Dracula’s ill-intent. We know that
Dracula will be the main antagonist in the book even if we may not completely know who or what he
is.

Stoker builds up suspense through Harker’s entry using the reactions of the people he meets on his
way and the strange gifts they give him- garlic, a crucifix, some mountain ash, etc. Harker is painfully
rational as he continuously ignores the evidence before his eyes- whether the furtive glances of the
villagers who warn him against going to Count Dracula’s castle or in his refusal to trust his senses even
when he notices that the Count is not reflected in his shaving mirror or his growing certainty that he
might just be the only living thing in the castle. While Harker sets the stage for the ultimate
unmasking of Dracula, it is Dr. Seward’s journal that gives us additional clues as to the horrors
inflicted by (presumably) Count Dracula.

The epistolary nature of Dracula successfully develops dramatic irony- the reader knows the
significance of the events long before the characters. We readers are the only ones who are able to
compile the narrative fragments to make sense of events as they unfold. As Dr. Seward struggles to
understand why Lucy Westerner is fading away, the reader can guess based on the evidence of the
wounds on her neck, the presence of a bat and our knowledge of Harker’s journal, that it is because
of Dracula draining her blood that she is ill.

As the novel deals with supernatural themes, the epistolary structure and use of different narrators
with varied viewpoints who corroborate each other’s narrative lends an element of realism to the
story. Harker too finds himself questioning his reality until it is corroborated by the experiences of
others.

Threat Of the other

In Victorian England, people feared the exotic outsider, seeing it as a disease that could weaken the
Empire. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was born of this fear. England’s identity was bound up in its position as
the most powerful nation and fear of losing this position reinforced its determination to maintain it.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula depicts the count’s otherness as a physical, spiritual, and cultural threat to the
English characters to demonstrate the true frailty of the British Empire.

This exotic, othered figure not only makes him feel weak by comparison but makes him feel as though
he could be “crushed” if the other chose to exert its full strength. This observation acts as
commentary on the insecurity of the Englishman who can be rendered helpless should the colonized
people turn their “prodigious” strength against him. Harker immediately classifies Dracula, from his
body temperature, as something other – someone who is not a living man like himself.

Dracula’s mere proximity makes Harker feel threatened, and his body reacts instinctively, shrinking
from the danger he perceives in his exotic, sharp teeth and claws. Harker, representative of England,
feels uncomfortable with even the proximity of the exotic other. This discomfort exemplifies the
threat Dracula’s otherness poses to Harker’s fragile Englishness – Dracula has the power to convert
him into a vampire, the exotic overtaking his English identity.

After physically threatening Harker, Dracula essentially invades England through Lucy Westenra. Lucy
Westenra is a physical embodiment of the West, along with its ideals and privileges; she is a blonde,
innocent Englishwoman who is uplifted in her native land, wary of the outsider. When Dracula bites
her, he is physically invading the golden female symbol of England as well as invading England itself.
After the bite triggers the start of Lucy’s conversion, she becomes other as well. She no longer acts
like herself and her skin is “in excessive pallor” (Stoker 139). Hair becoming dark. innocent and
powerless children she attacks. Her character realizes England’s greatest fears: the power of the
exotic to harm one of the Empire’s own, and the dissemination of foreign power on English soil.

Moreover, the novel pointedly shows Dracula attacking and converting women, the sex perceived as
weaker in Victorian England. The novel portrays the foreign invasion of England as gendered, a sort of
reverse-colonization of the fragile West by the East, with the other as the aggressor. A gendered
representation of foreign invasion also implies that the other can taint England as easily as a man can
assault a woman, with as traumatizing of an effect; Dracula’s choice to drink the blood of (and
penetrate) women paint him as both an inhuman monster and a man who rapes women.

Specifically, the novel portrays Dracula as unholy in the eyes of Christian England. Moreover, Harker
as an “English Churchman” finds the crucifix “idolatrous,” (Stoker 11). Firstly, Harker is in near
complete denial of the ungodly nature of what he is about to meet. Secondly, his spiritual beliefs do
not even align with those of the other human Christians he encounters in the East. Harker’s first
mistake is thinking that he does not need protection and his second is thinking that his Church of
England renders him above using protection from the wrong Christianity. Harker is the male
personification of a vulnerable English Empire: equally as susceptible to foreign invasion as a woman
but prideful enough to snub non-Anglican Christianity, to deny his frailty, and to ignore warnings from
foreigners until it is too late. The novel spiritually others Dracula from the humans to the extent that
Harker’s fellow travelers call him “Satan…hell…witch” and even “vampire” in their foreign tongues,
crossing themselves continually. held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him,” and the fury in
Dracula’s face vanished instantaneously (Stoker 33). The sight of blood draws out Dracula’s unholy
and demonic nature, the spiritual opposite of the traditional Englishman. A demon is a spiritual
threat to a Christian and therefore Dracula’s physical attack threatens Harker’s mortality until the
crucifix, a symbol of God, protects him.

In their interpretation of Christian theology, sparing a soul from being a demonic creature absolves
the hunters of murder and concurrently eliminates the threat the spiritually othered Lucy posed to
the frail English religious identity

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an exploration of the fragility of the English Empire through the threat of
Dracula’s physical, spiritual, and cultural otherness. Dracula is a danger to English lives, threatening
Harker, Mina, Lucy, and anyone who dares stop his invasion of England. He is the embodiment of the
unholy, a red-eyed hunter that can only be slowed by garlic and symbols of Faith. If the Satanic figure
Dracula had won, England’s Christian God would have lost. If Dracula survived and was able to
continue preying on England to increase his power, he would have been able to decimate fragile
England and repopulate it with his culture of hunters – with foreigners like him. Thus, England’s
identity and power rested delicately in the balance of Dracula’s intelligence versus that of his
pursuers. Radical others from Transylvania and the rest of the world presented imminent danger to
Victoria’s rigid sociocultural structure. Dracula’s pursuit of assimilation, however, begs the question: if
he had succeeded in assimilating and Harker did not bear witness to his otherness, could England
have protected itself from a chameleon, his physical, spiritual, and cultural threat concealed? If Stoker
did not support the Empire, would any Western character who resisted Dracula’s attacks have
prevailed?

the key difference between Lucy and Mina in this novel: Lucy is very open about sex and sexuality,
whereas Mina rarely comments on the subject at all. In only the second letter written by Lucy, she
laments ‘Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?’.
Even though Lucy recognises that this is a somewhat heretical comment, she still makes this inner
confession to her friend Mina, and whilst it appears that the two have an emotional link through their
friendship, there is no point in the novel where Mina makes such a controversial comment; rather,
Mina is everything that a Victorian woman could be expected to be, ‘So true, so sweet, so noble’ as
Van Helsing comments.

Despite this key difference, we see that both characters are fairly erudite Victorian women. The use
of high register adjectives such as ‘exquisite’ and ‘brusque’ in their respective narratives
demonstrates their relatively high intelligence, however Mina’s learning of shorthand and
concentration more on the factual aspect of the various events perhaps suggests that she is of slightly
higher intellect than her friend. Mina is always keen to help Jonathan, and Stoker makes us aware of
this dedication through Mina’s actions and the language used to describe them.

Whilst Lucy write to Mina that ‘A woman ought to tell her husband everything.’, it is clear that her
dedication to Arthur is not as complete as that of Mina to Jonathan. Lucy tends to be rather more
open than Mina when making comments on the taboo subject of sex. Her voluptuousness becomes
progressively more pronounced throughout her transformation, right through until the graveyard
scene, where she says ‘Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry
for you.’

The key difference here is that Mina allows Jonathan to take control of her life, whereas Lucy seems
to want to take control of her own life. It is only because of Mina’s dedication to her husband’s work
that she, at least initially, begins to piece together the story of what has happened, and is therefore
protected from harm. Lucy remains uninformed by the men and so is vulnerable. Indeed, if Van
Helsing had shared his knowledge about why he placed the wreath of garlic around Lucy’s neck, then
Mrs Westenra may not have removed them, and Lucy may have survived. Information within this
novel can be perceived as power – those with information are well protected against attacks, whereas
the uninformed are vulnerable.

Lucy and Mina have varying opinions of their role in a relationship, yet both recognise that in
Victorian society men are more powerful and important:
Mina is well informed about the dangers of Dracula, whilst Lucy is unaware – Mina is protected, and
Lucy is vulnerable. This only changes when the men decide that Mina, as a woman, should be
protected from the truth, and so she becomes uninformed, and vulnerable, which leads to her being
attacked. It is only when the men realise that Mina, despite the fact that she is a supposedly ‘weak’
female, can help them through the hypnosis plan, that they are finally able to slay Dracula.

In this novel, we see the presentation of two typical Victorian females – pure, innocent Mina who,
through her dedication to her husband’s work is kept informed about the dangers of Dracula and is
therefore ultimately saved, and Lucy whose slight promiscuity is exaggerated as she becomes a
vampire. Whilst there are many similarities between the two characters, Mina is a ‘perfect’ Victorian
wife in the sense of her dedication to Jonathan, compared to Lucy who is more physically attractive,
and ultimately it is this difference that leads each character to their individual fate.

Many critics persuade us, that Mina and Lucy embody paradigmatic
representatives of the ‘New Women’ ideas and behaviour.

Role of Victorian Era

Devoted to family, decent and home-loving – this is how the common Victorian
women are usually described. The woman is dedicated to and supports her
husband always, striving for the same objectives, never being competitive to
him, sacrificing herself daily. Innocence, dignity, purity and chastity are her
virtues. In the Victorian era marriage was probably the most significant aspect in
a woman’s life. For many women it was just a condition of survival. Society
disapproved of women making their own living, or supporting themselves, they
inescapably depended on men’s income: “Barred by law and custom from
entering trades and professions by which they could support themselves, and
restricted in the possession of property, women had only one means of livelihood,
that of marriage.

Moreover, women in the discourse of the Victorian era had to be virgins and free
from thoughts of sexuality and love, to be at least considered as a potential wife.
However, this requirement of absolute purity was not valid for men, who had
freedom and could participate in premarital sexual relationships. women were
under the total control of their husbands. Marital rape and beatings were legal.
Any money or property brought into the marriage by the wife belonged to
husband, as did the children. It’s not surprising that many women considered
marriage as a kind of slavery.

Prostitution was legal in the Victorian era. It represented the second category of
women – the first pure chastity wife and mother. Those were sexually-crazed and
depraved prostitutes, who also served the desire and fantasy of men as ‘Femme
Fatale’.
In summary it can be said, that the women in Victorian era had no right to
anything due to the patriarchal discourse. At the same time they had to be ideal
women, the “angel in the house”[5]. Such unfair social systems had to break
eventually. A new movement – the first wave of feminism – emerged.

The New Woman Movement

The term ‘New Women’ embodies a new representation of womanhood which

arose in Victorian society in the beginning of 1860s as a reflection to lasting and
comprehensive oppression performed by men and the male-dominated discourse.
It was a strong force in challenging not only the views of separate spheres, but
also the Victorian example of the ideal domestically confined woman.

The ‘New Woman’ was supposed to choose independence over marriage and
having children, deny monogamy and bourgeois customs for sexual freedom,
professional identity, political consciousness and hierarchy.
Thomas Hardy explored the woman who took a space outside social convention
and chose to live on the margins, often being punished for acting in such way.
Unlike Victorian society these above novelists perceived the New Woman not as a
harm, pathology and danger but with loyalty.

While Mrs. Westenra adores and takes great pride in Lucy, she is not equipped to
fulfil the role of mother and father to Lucy. Stoker does not give Mrs. Westenra
the faculties to adapt to her new role. Mrs. Westenra’s greatest deficiency is
ignorance; she cannot see or understand the danger Lucy is in when Lucy is
being attacked by Dracula, nor does she observe any reproachable behavior in
Lucy’s actions with her three male friends and would-be suitors. Mrs. Westenra is
herself ill, so in the spirit of chivalry none of the men inform her of the
seriousness of Lucy’s illness.

Mrs Westenra did not try to get any information about Lucy’s illness, a fact which
is not surprising for the Victorian times, when women were not supposed to the
intricacies or seriousness of illnesses. It is scandalous, but it would be indecent
for a woman to know much about illness, even if it was related to her daughter,
she could not require information from a male doctor.

Lucy got education at an etiquette school, where she meets Mina, who later plays
for Lucy not only the role of a friend, but also takes over some traditional mother
functions. These are two sources of Lucy’s knowledge about society in society as
guide principles. Mina could not replace a father figure for Lucy, informing her
how to behave with a man and how to choose the suitable one.
Desdemona is the wife of Othello. She fell for him because of his tales of
adventure. Lucy found herself in a similar situation -- being attracted to a man
bearing such tales.

In Mina's diary, she describes one of the townspeople as "evidently the Sir Oracle
of them." This is in reference to The Merchant of Venice, wherein the character of
Gratiano says, "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips, let no dog bark."

These references to Shakespearean characters give depth that is almost literally

worth a thousand words. Rather than just saying Arthur's stories make him
attractive, you get the entire experience of Desdemona falling for Othello. Rather
than just saying the old man in town is talkative, you get the complete arrogance
and conceit of Gratiano.

And when Lucy writes that she is "lying like Ophelia in the play, with virgin crants
and maiden strewments," (from Hamlet) you get not only an image of the setting,
but also the insanity, ordeal, and tragic death of Ophelia, which parallels Lucy's
own.

the appearance of Dracula in London disrupts Victorian English culture thus revealing
the repression and lack of freedom of romantic relationships in the Victorian era.
“why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this
trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it” (67). This quote reveals that deep
down, Lucy does not approve of monogamy, and that she does not understand why
society says she can only be with one man. However, because Lucy is too afraid of the
social norms, and does not want to commit “heresy” she does not take the idea any
farther than that.

each of her three suiters and Van Helsing give Lucy blood through a transfusion.
Though in reality this is not a sexual relationship, there is something romantic about
giving a part of themselves to Lucy. Dr. Seward says that “no man knows till he
experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the veins of the
woman he loves” (138). Dr. Seward’s description reveals how giving Lucy his blood
made him feel closer and more connected to her. However, Dr. Seward would have
never been able to feel closer to Lucy if Dracula had never come to London because of
the strict social norms in Victorian society

Arthur compares this connection the blood transfusion creates as something akin to
marriage. Arthur says after Lucy’s death, “that he [Arthur] felt since then as if the two
had been really married, and that she was his wife in the sight of God” (185). Arthur
thinks that through the blood transfusion he and Lucy were married, however Arthur
does not know that the other three men also provided blood for Lucy, and by that logic
is also married to the other three men. Thus, making Lucy a polygamist, and
completely undoing the Victorian idea of what a romantic relationship should be.
Though Dracula’s appearance in London is detrimental it allows for Lucy to be with
multiple men thus allowing her to “save all the trouble”

Women at the time have limited legal rights and few opportunities to make their own
choices, and although they bring this issue to light, they know they are unable to
change it, and follow the social norms

There is something very romantic about the blood “being the life”. However, blood is
almost sexualized in Dracula. The suitors who give the blood to Lucy are doing to in a
romantic gesture, and there is something very sexual about biting one’s neck in order
to drink their blood.

The fact that the author makes it necessary that Lucy receives blood from men is just
another way that women are portrayed to need men not just because of social norms
but in this novel, Lucy quite literally needs a man to survive.

This novel pushes the boundaries of women in literature, even if in a subtle way,
and it shouldn’t be unacknowledged.
These are a few of the reasons why Stoker’s female characters are
groundbreaking characters: intelligent, independent, full of life. And although
modernism wasn’t fully formed until the twentieth century, this gothic novel
deserves a place among those who strongly influenced the future of literature.
Stoker continues with his epistolary style, continuing in the tradition of having two young,
naive ladies corresponding about love and life. These innocent girls will very soon become
involved in the horror which Dracula brings. Stoker contrasts their innocence with the
approaching plague of horror and evil, a typically gothic pattern of narrative; it would not be
dramatically effective to have depraved characters confront the evil menace.
The setting is a typical one for the gothic novel. We leave the hustle and bustle of a
metropolitan city and journey to an isolated city, replete with legends of empty graves,
sepulchral old natives, and legends of dead people who haunt huge old houses.
Furthermore, any type of ghost story should be set in some place far from civilization, and
here at Whitby, where there are rambling old houses, sleepwalking, and graveyards, we have
a perfect gothic setting.
Old Mr. Swales is the archetypal prophetic figure, one who senses and can articulate the
approaching doom and horror, yet one whose exhortations and prophesies are ignored or
remain misunderstood by the populace.

Many supernatural things, like Mr. Swales' death, are never fully explained by Stoker, leaving
all the events surrounded by an aura of superstition and mystery.
y. Of course, Stoker is playing on the notion of a lover's life's blood. Recall that Arthur
declares, "My life is hers, and I would give the last drop of blood in my body for her." The
same thing, in a perverted sense, can be said for Lucy's blood, which is given to her "demon
lover," the vampire. The same thing is happening when Dr. Seward gives his blood to his
beloved Lucy, and finally, in future chapters, Van Helsing, who has learned to love Lucy as a
daughter, will gladly give his blood to save her. Each time, Van Helsing points out that the
blood is from a strong, powerful, virile young man, yet he is continually vexed as to how the
lady's strength disappears. Of note here is the fact that it was dangerous to give such
transfusions, because if the blood wasn't of a matching type, it could have possibly killed her.
In emergencies, however, any blood is usually given to a patient if a transfusion will,
hopefully, save a life.

For example, even though Lucy is locked in her room and protected from the vampire by the
profusion of garlic, the evil spirit of the Un-Dead is able to summon a wolf from his cage in a
zoo, have him smash in a window, and thereby enable the vampire to enter the room. The
smashing of the window and the wolf's horrible and terrifying attempt to enter the room cause
Lucy's mother to panic and to rip the garlic away from Lucy's throat, leaving Lucy vulnerable
to attack. The evil presence of the vampire manages to "materialize" inside Lucy's room,
where it drugs the four household maids, thus preventing their aiding Lucy.

this novel was written at the end of the Victorian period when the reading public expected
novels to last a long time. The killing of Dracula, of course, represents the social victory of
middle-class morality over the corrupt morality of the aristocracy.

Indeed, as an Englishman who “visits the British Museum” in an attempt to

understand the lands and customs of Transylvania, Harker emerges as a model of
Victorian reason, a clear product of turn-of-the-century England. Harker’s
education, as well as his Western sense of progress and propriety, disables him
from making sense of such rustic traditions as “the evil eye.” To a man of
Harker’s position and education, the strange sights he witnesses en route to the
castle strike him as rare curiosities or dreams. He already begins doubting the
reality of his experience: “I think I must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming. . .
.” Harker’s experience suggests that the foundations of Western civilization—
reason, scientific advancement, and economic domination—are threatened by
the alternative knowledge that they presume to have surpassed. Western
empirical knowledge is vulnerable because it has summarily dismissed foreign
ways of thinking and, in doing so, has failed to recognize the power of such
alternative modes of thought.
Harker’s description of his ascent to the castle as “uncanny” foreshadows the
psychological horror of the novel. In 1919, Sigmund Freud published an essay
called “The Uncanny,” in which he analyzed the implications of feelings and
sensations that arouse “dread and horror.” Freud concludes that uncanny
experiences can arise at two times. First, they can arise when primitive,
supposedly disproved beliefs suddenly seem to be confirmed or validated once
again. Second, the uncanny can arise when repressed infantile complexes are
revived.

the novel can be seen as a case study of repressed instincts coming to the
surface. Indeed, such a reading seems inevitable if one considers Freud’s model
of psychosexual development, which links the first stage of this development—
the oral stage—with the death instinct, the urge to destroy what is living. The
vampire, bringing about death with his mouth, serves as a fitting embodiment of
these abstract psychological concepts, and allows Stoker to investigate Victorian
sexuality and repression. Harker functions in the novel as a representation of a
modern, intelligent man who always tries to do the right thing, but who finds
himself confronting lust and evil nonetheless.
. Rather than constructing a narrative from the perspective of an omniscient
third-person narrator, Stoker presents the story through transcribed journals. In
effect, the novel masquerades as a real diary. Were the story told as a first-
person reflection, we would be sure of the fate of the protagonist: because he is
telling his tale, he must have lived through it. However, because the author of the
diary writes directly as events happen, he may be tragically unaware of the
danger of his surroundings. Harker has no time to reflect on his experiences and
no way of knowing if he is placing himself in danger.

Harker is simultaneously confronting a vampire and another creature equally

terrifying to Victorian England: an unabashedly sexual woman. perhaps Dracula’s
greatest threat to society: the transformation of prim, proper, and essentially
sexless English ladies into uncontrollable, lustful animals. , Harker stands to be
drained of a vital fluid, which to the Victorian male imagination represents an
overturning of the male-dominated social structure.

Neither Mina nor Lucy is a particularly profound character—instead, both

represent the Victorian ideal of female virtue. The two sets of women we have
seen thus far in the novel stand in stark and obvious opposition to each other:
Lucy and Mina represent purity and goodness, while the predatory sisters
in Dracula’s castle represent corruption and evil. The count threatens womanly
virtue.

Although Lucy’s letters pay homage to a certain male fantasy of domination—“My

dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of
them?”—they also reveal that she is a sexualized being. Lucy is not only an
object of desire who garners three marriage proposals in a single day, but is
herself capable of desiring others. Lucy writes: “Why can’t they let a girl marry
three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” Though Lucy
immediately condemns her own words as “heresy,” her apology does not blot out
her desire to experience life beyond the narrow confines of conventional morality.

Mina and Lucy’s correspondence contrasts sharply with the terror-filled journal
entries that comprise the first four chapters. Dracula’s foreign presence
threatens to overturn the whole of Western culture by subverting carefully
constructed and policed morals and by allowing superstition to trump logic.

Lucy describes her three suitors, who are largely two-dimensional characters:
Seward is a serious intellectual, Quincey Morris a slang-talking Texan, and Arthur
Holmwood is a bland nobleman. Stoker is more -concerned with creating a band
of men whose goodness is -unquestionable than with creating complex,
multifaceted characters. This characterization sets up a framework for a clear-cut
moral battle later in the novel.

as an unapologetic skeptic, Swales stands in contrast to the Eastern European

peasants, whose lives are ruled by superstitions. Though uneducated, Swales
stands as a product of Western society:

Renfield’s habit mirrors the count’s means of sustenance and confirms Stoker’s
concern with the relationship between humans and beasts. From a psychoanalytic
standpoint, the desire to consume is a primal urge to incorporate an object into
one’s self and at the same time to destroy the object.

Largely because of the relatively recent publication of Charles Darwin’s The

Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), Victorian society was
anxious about such primal urges, seeking to keep them hidden beneath the
veneers of science, art, and polite conversation. Darwin’s works questioned the
centuries-old belief in creationism and toppled the previously unassailable
hierarchy of man over beast. Humans were no longer the undisputed crown of
creation—they were merely another link in a great chain. Although the last
decades of the eighteenth and first decades of the nineteenth century were ripe
with scientific advancements, they were also marked by a profound sense of
uneasiness at having to abandon old and refuted, but nevertheless comfortable,
modes of thought. Thus, because it confirms the animalistic and possibly savage
nature of human beings, Renfield’s behavior would have caused no small shock
among Stoker’s original readers. In Seward’s lunatic, we see how fine a line
separates the beast from the drawing-room dandy.

Dracula’s portrayal of women makes the novel seem like a fantasy of the
Victorian male imagination. Women are primarily objects of delicate beauty who
occasionally need to be rescued from danger—a task that, more than anything
else, ends up bolstering the ego of their male saviors. Indeed, among the female
characters in the novel, only Mina exercises any considerable strength or
resourcefulness. The other women are primarily two-dimensional victims, pictures
of perfection who are easy for Dracula to prey upon. Both Lucy and her mother
are helplessly weak, and the latter is too delicate to bear even the suggestion
that something is amiss with her daughter’s health.

Despite the profound political and social change that crossed England in the late
nineteenth century, Stoker displays little interest in the advancement of women.

Given Stoker’s obsessive concern with female chastity and virtue, it is hard to
imagine him granting his female characters the degree of sexual freedom
necessary to become “New Women.” In fact, these chapters make the erotic
nature of Dracula’s attacks even more obvious. Lucy’s wounds suggest a virgin’s
first sexual encounter: she escapes into the night and is penetrated in a way that
makes her bleed. After this initial encounter, Lucy hungers for more, attempting
to steal out of the house and return to the graveyard.

Already viewed to some degree as a dangerous sexual adventurer, Lucy begins

her transformation from a pure maiden into a figure of female wantonness. In this
sense, Dracula threatens not merely a single girl, but also the entire moral order
of the Victorian world and its ideals of sexual purity.

Seward’s inability to diagnose or stem the progression of Lucy’s illness

demonstrates the effectiveness of Dracula’s assault on Victorian social order and
also exposes the limits of Western science and reason. Only legend and
superstition—not reason and science—are effective in fighting Dracula. Even the
many advancements of medical science prove useless. Maintaining an open mind
and acknowledging the power of superstition, Van Helsing challenges the rigorous
confines of Victorian thought. Although Van Helsing proves himself a competent
modern surgeon by performing one blood transfusion after another, neither his
methods nor his knowledge are restricted to the teachings of Western medicine.
As he places garlic flowers around Lucy’s room, he steps outside the role of
doctor and becomes more of a “philosopher and a metaphysician.” One of the
main ironies of the novel is that the Londoners are made vulnerable to Dracula’s
attacks precisely because they live in a world that encourages them to dismiss
such supernatural predators as powerless in a civilized society such as Britain

First, the transfusions confirm the moral purity of the men who submit to them
for Lucy’s sake. If there were ever any doubt about the moral righteousness of
Van Helsing and his compatriots, Stoker means to dispel it here. The blood itself
is characterized as morally outstanding: preparing Holmwood for the first
transfusion, Van Helsing points out that his patient “is so young and strong and of
blood so pure that we need not defibrinate it.”
Second, the transfusions hint at a kind of sexual intimacy that societal constraints
prevented Stoker from writing about openly in the 1890s. The transfer of the
men’s blood into Lucy’s veins has physiological effects similar to those of sexual
intercourse: afterward, the men feel spent, but the act brings a revitalized flush
of color to Lucy’s cheek. More important, the characters themselves suggest a
parallel between the two acts. Van Helsing not only says that it might be
improper for Arthur to learn that other men have donated their blood to his
fiancée, but also makes a direct connection between blood and sexuality: “No
man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away
into the veins of the woman he loves.”

Dracula’s attack has transformed a model of English chastity and purity into an
openly sexual predator.

Lucy’s body also becomes a metaphorical battleground between the forces of

good and evil, between the forces for liberation and repression of female
sexuality. Van Helsing’s crew pumps her full of brave men’s blood. This battle
reflects the struggle of Victorian society to recognize and accept female sexuality.
Victorian England prized women for their docility and domesticity, leaving them
no room for open expression of sexual desire, even within the confines of
marriage

Van Helsing articulates these prejudices of the Victorian age as he praises Mina’s
character. He implies that a woman who cannot manage much truth, sweetness,
nobility, and modesty has no place in Victorian society. Though Lucy possesses all
of these in plenty, she also betrays a fatal flaw: her openness to sexual
adventure. Recalling Van Helsing’s lesson in vampire lore, we know that Dracula
is powerless to enter a home unless invited. The count thus would not have been
able to access Lucy’s bedroom unless she invited him in. Though no character
ever blames Lucy for her susceptibility to seduction—or even mentions it—we are
aware that the young woman has fallen from grace. Victorian society firmly
dictated that wantonness came at a high price, and in Dracula, Lucy pays dearly.

In this section, Lucy’s transformation reaches its terrible end. Lucy is now a
perversion of the two most sacred female virtues in Victorian England:
maternalism and sexual purity. Lucy counters this “mother-spirit” by preying on
innocent children. Rather than providing them with nourishment and protection,
she stalks and feeds on them. The hideous transformation of this once beautiful
woman into a demonic child-killer demonstrates the anxiety the Victorians felt
about women whose sexual behavior challenged convention.

Van Helsing’s band of do-gooders feels this same anxiety about female sexuality
as they face off against its hypersexualized opponent. As the men confront Lucy,
whose purity has changed to “voluptuous wantonness,” we note the rather
limited vocabulary Stoker uses to paint the scene. Lucy is described almost
exclusively in terms of her sexuality: her face becomes “wreathed with a
voluptuous smile,” and she advances with “outstretched arms and a wanton
smile.”

The act of Lucy’s final destruction strongly resembles an act of sexual congress.
Holmwood’s piercing of Lucy with his stake unmistakably suggests intercourse:
her body “shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions. . . . But Arthur
never faltered . . . driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake.”
Holmwood’s attack restores Lucy’s purity and soul, thus implying that Holmwood
returns Lucy to the socially desirable state of monogamy and submission. As her
fiancé, Holmwood cleanses the “carnal and unspiritual” from Lucy by
consummating a sexual relationship that, without Dracula’s interference, would
have not only been consecrated by God, but also would have legitimized Lucy’s
troublesome sexual desires.

The scene, which likely shocks us as much as it does the men, challenges gender
conventions in several ways. First, neither of the men appears to be the
aggressor. Rather than jumping to his wife’s defense, Harker sprawls on the bed,
while Dracula, rather than feeding, is fed upon. Although the count forces her into
the position, Mina is in effect the instigator as she actively sucks from the wound
on Dracula’s chest. Here, the vampire presents a perverse mockery of the nursing
mother: rather than giving life by offering milk, the count tries to ensure Mina’s
death by feeding her his blood. Symbols commonly viewed as male become
female, and vice versa: aggression becomes stupor, and milk is transformed into
blood. The entire scene defies gender categories, which would be especially
troubling to Victorian audiences who relied upon rigid categories to structure
their lives. In a world governed by reason and order, Dracula can pose no greater
threat than by disordering gender roles.

The feeding ritual in Harker’s room perverts not only the image of a mother
nursing her child, but also the image of the Eucharist. The Christian ritual of
Communion celebrates Christ’s sacrifice through the ingestion of the wafer and
wine, which, depending on one's beliefs, either represent Christ's flesh and blood
or literally become them through transubstantiation. Participating in the
Eucharist, some believe, confers immortal life after death. Dracula, by contrast,
consumes real—not symbolic—blood. Though the blood grants the count
immortality, his soul is barred from achieving anything that resembles Christian
grace. Renfield, who lives according to Dracula’s philosophy, goes so far as to
discredit the notion of a soul. Indeed, according to Dr. Seward’s diary, the patient
“dreads the consequence—the burden of a soul.” Much of Van Helsing’s arsenal
against the count comes from Catholic symbolism, including the crucifix and holy
Communion wafers. Given the rising religious skepticism in Victorian society—as
Darwin’s theory of evolution complicated universal acceptance of religious
dogma—Stoker’s novel advocates a return to the more superficial, symbolic
comforts and protections of the church. Stoker suggests that a nation that
ignores religion and devotes itself solely to scientific inquiry dooms itself to
unimaginable spiritual dangers.

Stoker’s guiding principle in his characterization of Mina is not realism, but

idealism. In Mina, Stoker means to create the model of Victorian female virtue.

Men are justified in killing women to preserve their sense of ownership and their
conception of female virtue. With the promise of this power in hand, men can rest
assured of the patriarchal order of their society and of their own future control.

Stoker reiterates the threat of rampant female sexuality by reintroducing the

three vampire women who threaten to seduce Harker in the novel’s opening
chapters. The women pose two distinct threats. First, they stand ready to convert
Mina, sapping her of her virtue and transforming her into a soulless vixen.
Second, the women threaten to undermine men’s reason and, by extension, the
surety with which they rule the world. Even the righteous and pious doctor is
susceptible to the vampires’ diabolical temptation.
,
In these final chapters, we see a number of opposing forces meet for final battle.
These oppositions include not merely a conflict between Victorian propriety and
moral laxity, but also one between East and West, and one between Christian
faith and godless magic. The Gypsies who escort Dracula’s casket to his castle
represent the powerful and mysterious forces of the East, of a land ruled not by
science and economics but by traditions and powerful superstitions. Determined
to defend the vampire against these Western invaders, the Gypsies are part of a
landscape that is dark, foreign, and nearly ungovernable to the English.

As Dracula dies, Mina notices a look of peace steal over his face. This moment in
the novel speaks to one of Stoker’s overarching ideas, that of Christian
redemption. Though Dracula can be discussed endlessly as a novel of Victorian
anxieties, it is also a novel of Christian propaganda. It strictly adheres to Christian
doctrine, which offers eternal salvation for those who have cleansed themselves
of evil. , Mina voices the wish of each of the other members of the band, whose
struggle has been one of good against evil in an orthodox Christian context.

The short coda, which describes how the documents have been arranged, mirrors
the Author’s Note that opens the novel. It is designed to reinforce a feeling of
authenticity, assuring us that the events we have read are a matter of
documented historical fact rather than fiction. In this way, Stoker hopes to bridge
the gap between the real and the fictional, the natural and the supernatural
worlds.
Dracula holds a mirror up to the late-Victorian society, towards the epoch of
where social norms and beliefs were being challenged and subject to change and
the conflict and contrast between the new and the old values created the
inclinations for fears and anxieties. In Dracula, Stoker explores the creation of the
New Woman as it led to a change in a male-dominated culture and the fear of the
other opposing classic social principles.

Dracula challenged Victorian conservative values of femininity by foregrounding female sexuality in

its characterisation of the females and the alluring setting of Transylvania as a direct contrast to the
British setting. The rise of the New Woman distinguished an age where women who were once
suppressed in a conservative society became the subject of sexuality, desire and promiscuous
conduct. The novel Dracula recognises and reflects how this fear and anxiety was perceived by
patriarchal and how this threatened the traditional Victorian society not only in terms of changes for
women but how his caused sexual unease for men.

As the first character in Dracula to witness Dracula’s wives, the novel reflects how all women of the
late-Victorian society had the expectation to conform to specific notions of gender respectability of
the doting wife and mother.

The New Woman was a defining moment in Victorian society, changing the cultural appropriations
women had to conform to and it was often criticised by the conservative public. Dracula reflects the
fears of the New Woman through how even though Dr Seward is recognised for his factual, scientific
beliefs as a result of his many degrees, even he succumbs to the Victorian fears of the New Woman,
seeing the harm in this newfound sexuality, instead of realism.

Mina’s characterisation depicts that she has become the embodiment of the most distinguishable
traits of both sexes; the brain of a man and the heart of a woman, and thus allowing her to be a rising
symbol of the New Woman, by her desirable nature. Being seen as a desirable being, through her
intellectual and emotional maturity, Dracula instils the anxiety that Mina poses towards the men of
the late Victorian era, through her development as a New Woman, rather than adhering to her
gender role.

The fear of the ‘other’ or anyone that was not English was also considered a threat to Victorian
society and reflected as a major concern in the novel. It was a significant fragment towards the
exposure of the late-Victorian society to reverse colonisation, immigration to Britain and their
experience of diverse cultures, in which Dracula became the projection of the late-Victorian society’s
worst anxieties and fears.

The foreshadowing of Dracula’s arrival through the storm created the characteristic fear of foreign
invasion that made the novel relevant to the fin de siècle epoch, a term used to signify themes of
cultural decline. Dracula became an imitation of the late-Victorian era, building the tension and
unease through the storm, depicting chaos and change whilst creating the emergence of a strong
oppositional force, Dracula. Similarly, the idea of foreign immigration and reverse colonisation was
seen as a flood of change and it was their beliefs based upon a national, racial and moral sense that
saw the foreign as a potential threat and fear against the British imperialistic power.
It’s obviously a clear demonization of women, more specifically, the sexual women. Lucy transformed
into a vampire because she is infected by Dracula and three men gave her their blood to save her.
Having other men’s blood in her vain is a sexual innuendo, indicating that Lucy is no longer a virgin,
thus is the “impure” sexual women. a sexual woman is considered impure and evil.

But the Victorian men is not the only reason why sexual women is abominated, Stoker describe Mina
after she is inflected “unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it should be
that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear.” (stoker 249).
From Mina’s statement, it’s not hard to see that Mina despite herself because she is no longer
“clean”. In the Bible, it is said that “And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and
his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, unclean, unclean”
(Leviticus 13,45). The sexual women are feared and discriminated in the society. even other women
despite a sexual woman and won’t recognize her.

Women in Victorian age is ought to be submissive and pure, loyal to their husband and be the “angel
in the house”, play the role of a good wife and mother. Anything beyond that is obviously “too much”
for a woman to be. This is clearly oppression towards women, using “virginity” at a standard to judge
women and force them to men’s helper instead of men’s equal.

In this situation Mina is independent and confident and overpowering Van Helsing for the first time.
Stoker also challenge the traditional role of man and women, when men are rational and dominate
and women are emotional and submissive. He makes Jonathan feminine by let him cried out after his
wife is infected “‘In god’s name what does this mean?’ Harker cried out, ‘Dr Seward, Dr Van Helsing,
what is it? What has happened? What is wrong? Mina, dear what is it? What does that blood mean?
My god, my god! Has it come to this!’ and raising him to his knees, he beat his hands wildly together.
‘good god help us! Help her! Oh, help her!’” (stoker 248). In this scene, Jonathan is very feminine and
Mina is more rational. This challenge the stereotype that man is always logical and women is
emotional. Mina is tough, rational and calm while Jonathan is desperate and emotional. Stoker also
challenge the traditional stereotype by making Mina the hero in the novel. Also, in the story, Mina is a
working women and knows shorthand, she is the representative new women. This greatly challenge
the fact that women can only save by men, and always appear mere as appendix to the men. In the
second half of the story, Mina is giving out useful suggestions, comforting the men and getting
involved in the men’s world. Mina is brave and independent and has always be practicing shorthand
waiting for the opportunity to use the skill, she changes her fate with her own hand. To sum up,
Stoker challenge the sexism stereotype in Victorian age and inspire women in Victorian age to fight
for equality.

This clearly indicate the reason why men look down upon women, women in Victorian age is always
submissive and devoted. They can’t live without the support of their husband and men is always the
breadwinner in the family. Victorian women’s fate is controlled by men thus they are at a unequal
status. The Powerless, meek, pure women is favored by men, but not respected by them. In
conclusion, the stereotype of “angel in the house” makes women too dependent on men, which is
why misogyny take place.

Stoker’s novel reflects the fears and anxieties of the late-Victorian society, where the change or
disruption of traditional Victorian values and anything that did not stay true to society’s norms were
greatly feared. The conservative Victorian society and its values are challenged in Dracula through the
idea of the “New Woman” and the traditional views of sexuality.
. A new woman was one that was categorised as someone who was rational, intelligent, and
financially independent. Mina represents features of the New Woman through her autonomy and the
fact that she has “a professional job, writes in shorthand, and is responsible for collating the
recovered texts that materially form the novel.” (Boyd 2014, p.2). Her intelligence and wit are what
helps the men win the battle with Dracula.

The use of repetition of the words “man” and “brain” puts emphasis on these words to convey the
meaning of the sentence. He highlights her intelligence and compares her to a man, and even infers
that she is better than the average man, further emphasising her New Woman features. The
juxtaposition of the “man’s brain” and the “woman’s heart” puts emphasis on the fact that Mina is
both intelligent and caring, and it shows how Van Helsing considers her to be very good.

Lucy Westenra represents the New Woman and challenges the traditional views of sexuality,
reflecting the fears and anxieties which the Victorian society has. By juxtaposing her with Mina,
Stoker highlights the difference between the ideal Victorian woman and the New Woman. Mina is
effectively an ideal Victorian woman. She is simultaneously both the traditional Victorian woman and
the New Woman where she has features of both. Mina is presented as a good, wholesome, chaste,
and pure woman, where she is rarely seen in a sexualised light. The features of the traditional
Victorian woman would include being domestic and one dominated by care, where Mina often shows
her maternalism. “We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller
matters when the mother-spirit is invoked.” (Stoker 245). Stoker’s diction and the use of the inclusive
pronouns “we” and “us” creates a generalisation of all women. It displays her support of the
traditional views of gender roles. It shows how Mina is depicted as the ideal woman, as she fits with
the criteria of a traditional woman.

On the other hand, Lucy is depicted as the New Woman, where they were categorised as “a sexually
independent woman assertive in decision-making.” (Clippard 2017, p.3). Through her freedom and
sexual independence, Lucy was portrayed as the New Woman. Dracula biting Lucy and her transition
into becoming a vampire was symbolic of the rise in sexual appetite. Once she becomes a vampire,
her desire for sexual independence is heavily brought out, as seen when the vampire Lucy calls out to
Arthur: ‘come to me, Arthur… My arms are hungry for you.’ (Stoker 226). The use of overtly sexual
connotations highlights her sexuality and her lust for him. Stoker’s choice to use the command “come
to me” shows how Lucy is pursuing Arthur, instead of the traditional stereotypes of man pursuing the
woman, further emphasising how Lucy is the New Woman.

The fear of Lucy’s representation of the New Woman is also reflected in the plot. In contrast to Mina,
Lucy’s end was not desirable where she is unable to be saved from vampirism and is killed by the
ones she loved. The killing of Lucy also symbolises the killing of sexual appeal and the return to purity,
as sex was a threat to man. By juxtaposing Mina and Lucy, Stoker reflects the fears and anxieties of
the sexually independent New Woman.

Stoker is criticizing the actual role of religion in the world of Victorian problems. It
does nothing more than empowering certain people and take their worries away. It
lessens the power of their issues, yet Victorians are not exactly sure why.

The bride-maidens rejoice the eyes that wait the coming of the bride. But when
the bride draweth nigh, then the maidens shine not to the eyes that are filled.
– Bram Stoker
Dracula, Chapter 8. Dr. Seward’s mentally ill patient Renfield makes this reply
when asked why he has lost interest in his hobby of catching and counting
spiders. Renfield is the diabolical version of John the Baptist, who prepares the
way for Lord of Evil – Count Dracula, the bride referred to by Renfield. Renfield
uses scripture in a profane sense, his quote being a transformation of John 3.29:
"The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom
waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice.
That joy is mine, and it is now complete."

During the late Victorian Era, Britain experienced a controversial period of development where new
technology and science threatened the religious beliefs of society. Bram Stoker’s gothic novel of
Dracula (1897) addresses the fears and anxieties brought about by modernisation and highlights the
clash between old and new beliefs and values. his view that science alone isn’t enough to prevail the
supernatural forces and that traditional values and attitudes can’t be neglected in societal
progression.

Throughout the earlier section of the novel, Stoker uses the male protagonist Jonathan Harker’s
response to the supernatural concepts as a symbolic representation of British society’s view towards
science. He reflects the general population of Britain at the time whose attitudes were conditioned
by British superiority over neighbouring European empires and who believed that ‘others’ were
primitive, occult and superstitious.

The dramatic irony employed through his resentment for any knowledge and scepticism from these
‘peasants’ is what leads to his downfall and foreshadows his imprisonment by Dracula later in the
novel. As the story progresses, he becomes Dracula’s victim and surrenders his innocence to the
filthy, menacing supernatural world.

Harker’s emotive language reflects his mental struggle against the reality of Dracula’s evil which
parallels with Britain’s similar response towards the growing scientific intervention that disrupted
religious beliefs of Christianity. Stoker, therefore, initiates the idea that avoiding exposure to new
ideas is a flaw and that one must be open to new possibilities to avoid the dangers of ignorance.

During the Victorian Era, the West used their growing knowledge of new technologies and science to
broaden their understanding of the world as manifested by the characters who Stoker specifically
contrived to utilise a variety of scientific methods in their attempts to defeat Dracula. “There must be
a transfusion of blood at once”. Helsing prepares his medical ‘paraphernalia’ and ‘instruments’ for the
procedure. This language choice is reflective of Helsing’s methodical style of medical treatment which
contrasts with the Eastern superstitious methods of ‘garlic’ and ‘crucifixes’.

Their investigations become increasingly more tactical, and they continue to refer to previous journal
entries for clues. This style of investigation is not unlike criminology which was the most sophisticated
method of crime study at the time. Van Helsing demonstrates this analytical thinking when describing
Dracula as a criminal stating, “The criminal always works at one crime – that is the true criminal who
seems predestinate to crime and who will of none other”.

Bram Stoker uses the outcome of the story and the characterisation of his protagonists to pose a
statement regarding the value of science in society. He also emphasises the power of superstition and
Eastern culture and promotes it as something that shouldn’t be undermined by new technologies.
Furthermore, Stoker’s novel behaves as a symbolic representation of the threat of science to the
West during the late Victorian Era and is constructed to pose questions concerning the value of
progress and its contribution to society.

Bram Stoker includes numerous references to the very latest ideas and inventions in his novel. Dr
Seward keeps his diary using a phonograph which was a relatively new and expensive piece of
technology in 1897; similarly, references to Kodak cameras, portable typewriters, telegrams being
sent across Europe and the blood transfusions carried out by Professor Van Helsing all reflect the
rapid technological changes taking place in the late-Victorian period. the characters in the novel
frequently refer to contemporary theories in medicine and psychology. the scientific method of
observing and recording information is integral to both the structure of the book itself. Van Helsing
may use blood transfusions in an attempt to keep Lucy alive, but he also resorts to garlic flowers and
crucifixes to hold the vampire at bay.

“Göz kamaştırıcı bir çağ, çöküş ve umut karışımı, ihtişam ve melankoli, bu fin de siecle döneminin
sanatı…” Sosyal ve ekonomik çalkantıların yanısıra, kimlik sorunlarının yaşandığı ve avangard
yaklaşımlar çıktığı bir dönem olarak, sanat tarihi açısından ayrıcalıklı bir yere sahiptir Fin De Siècle,
which was the mark of the “collision between the old and the new”

At the time, sex and homosexuality were controversial topics, with emphasis constantly put
upon the importance of using caution and awareness when involving such matters and
encouraging an overall chaste and modest lifestyle. A result of common Victorian-era fears
and Stoker’s own personal views on sex and homosexuality, Dracula. Though society
maintained strict social standards and expectations for both sexes, men were permitted
many more freedoms and pleasures than their female counterparts. The patriarchal
tendencies and views of the Victorian society further enforced male superiority and
dominance over women. This particular passage describes the mixed feelings men had
towards forward women; temptation made the “unnatural” occurrence of female sexual
advances desirable (as it was the “forbidden fruit”), yet from a God-believing gentleman’s
standpoint, it was purely evil and almost animalistic. Alluding to the fact that, again, a man’s
sexual attraction was not entirely his own fault or “responsibility. Homosexuality was, in fact,
so serious a matter within society that it was even considered to be a crime, punishable by
imprisonment if tried and found guilty of participating in homoerotic behaviors. . Blood and
sexuality within Dracula were very closely related, “reflecting the Victorians belief that blood
is sperm” therefore, when feeding upon blood and exchanging bodily fluids “(it) can be
associated with intercourse.
When Mina acknowledges what has happened to her, she says, “unclean,
unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more.” (Stoker 248) Mina does not feel
worthy of her husband because she considers herself to be unclean, connecting
to the larger importance placed on female sexual purity during this time
period.7

“Morris is connected with vampires – because America will end up subjugating Britain
in reality and Britain is […] afraid of it” (436). The character of Morris is not only a
direct challenge of Britain’s economic power, but also represents “a contrast by
product of Western civilization, just as America is a rib of Britain and American
capitalism a consequence of British capitalism” (436). Britain is currently very
concerned with their position in the economic world, and how their old monopolistic
control is starting to crumble at the turn of the century. This explains why Stoker
decides to kill off Morris, the American character, in hopes of stifling this increasing
fear of American power over Britain. “focuses on sexuality, gender roles, imperialism,
capitalism, science, narrative technique [anthropology, psychology, politics]

Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula‘ was written during the Victorian period , at a time when
Charles Darwin’s theory of revolution, as well as recent technological
advancements, were leading to less religiosity among people. This sentiment is
exemplified in the attitudes of Mina and Dr. Seward who could not solve the
mystery of Lucy’s ailments because of a dependence on cold rationalism at the
expense of superstitions and spirituality.
Lust here is an emotion that symbolizes a lack of self-control, in essence, man’s
inability to master his own emotions, making him a prisoner to his desires.
While ‘Dracula‘ cautions against a mindless adoption of modern technology and
ideas at the expense of our stash of traditional knowledge on cultures,
superstitions, and religions, he still nonetheless recognizes the import of
technology in the world. The keeping of diaries and journals, the telegram, the
science of hypnosis, transcription, and the art of using a stenograph are some of
the valuable skills that help in dispatching Dracula.

By showing the perspective from Van Helsing, Stoker shows men’s dominance in the traditional
society is inflexible and ineradicable. Through sharing the different perspective from male and female
and the difference perspective between a New Woman and a traditional one, Stoker shows his
conflicted mind toward this new [Link], men are superior to women, and women
are attached to men. It is also a great honor for a woman to gain the respect of a man as Mina did.
Women should faithfully play the traditional female role to ensure that men exercise absolute control
over them. To be a New Woman, such roles need to be eliminated. Women should fight for their
rights, which threatened the dominance of men. Stoker’s novel details men’s fear of women’s publicly
opened to sexuality. Lucy accepted sex to multiple male openly is the proof of change and the fear of
men because of the challenge of their dominance.

Despite her own intellect and abilities, Mina still manages to make herself a subservient wife to
Jonathan, and thinks more highly of men than women. These ideals easily correlate to the standards
of a Victorian society. Mina’s ability to fit in the role of the New Woman in Victorian society is also
well-articulated in this quote by Dr. Seward: “Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has a man’s brain
—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and woman’s heart.” (Stoker 238). The men
in the novel love that Mina is educated, but they also like that they are still able to hold dominance
over her. She does not pose a threat to their masculinity, yet she can engage in sophisticated
conversations with the men.

In addition to her intelligence and will to appease her husband, Mina also demonstrates sexual
restraint, something that was deemed extremely important in Victorian society. Her sexual desires
remain unknown throughout the novel. But, this could be interpreted as a subliminal message by
Stoker to say that women shouldn’t be concerned with sex, unless it entails succumbing to a man’s
sexual needs or desires. Instead of engaging in sexual behaviors, Mina instead uses this energy
towards a maternal instinct. She uses her natural instinct to help the men around her, which is best
seen when she lets Arthur and Quincey cry in her embrace, so that they could feel a mother’s
comfort

Lucy, however, is the opposite of what the ideal Victorian woman is. More so, Lucy represents
represents the characteristics of a “fallen woman” or a woman who was promiscuous. Lucy was not
physically or emotionally committed to Arthur until later in the novel,and she had significant trouble
choosing from one of her three suitors. She does not want to just appease a man’s desires, she also
wants her own preferences to be fulfilled. To satisfy her own sexual hungers, Lucy unconsciously
expresses her desires and longings privately by sleepwalking. The consequence of privately
expressing these thoughts is that she is bitten by Dracula as she sleepwalks. Her impure desires and
lack of maternal qualities make Lucy the opposite of what a Victorian woman should be.

Mina, once again, appeases the societal requirements of a dutiful wife. When the Count threatens
Jonathan, Mina steps in to protect Jonathan and put his safety above her own. Interestingly, through
the Count’s attack on Mina, Stoker shows the male desire to exploit women for their innocence and
submissiveness.

Lucy is the model for a sexually aggressive woman that uses sexuality and beauty as a way to gain
dominance over men. By killing Lucy, Stoker wanted to show readers that this sexual openness would
not work as a way to dominate men, and that it would not last in the strict conventions of Victorian
culture. The men in the novel are also able to reassert their social dominance over Lucy once more,
she was no longer superior and suppressed by them once again. Because of this, Lucy could be fully
dead as a socially acceptable Victorian woman.

The reason Lucy was not spared was due to impure social and sexual behaviors. However, Mina was
spared because of the reasons Lucy was not. Over the course of the novel, Mina demonstrated
nothing but pure and correct social behavior. Mina uses her intelligence and resourcefulness as her
means to help and service the men in their pursuit of Count Dracula. Mina had a “man’s brain” and
put the men’s safety above her own, even if it meant sacrificing herself. For her devout loyalty and
skills, Mina was spared, unlike Lucy.

Since the time the Middle Ages gave way to the Modern Period, England was in a period of transition.
England was at the time an imperial force and at the peak of its industrial development. Through
their numerous colonies they came in touch with various nations which brought into question both
the superiority of the white race and England’s position in the world.

The old doctrines and institutions were attacked and modified and a new order was proposed. The
Victorians had to live between two words, the old world that was losing clout and the new world that
was gaining momentum. Houghton describes it as the age of science, new knowledge, searching
criticism, followed by multiple doubts and shaken beliefs.

The society was becoming aware of the fact that their beliefs were no longer quite secure due to the
colossal increase of knowledge; they questioned “to great points in moral and intellectual matters;
where things which have been settled for centuries seem to be again brought into discussion”.

As a consequence, the emerging capitalism led to “a growing sense of isolation and alienation”
(Punter and Byron 20) and disturbed the notions of human identity.
The fears and anxieties of that period were the fear of reverse colonisation and of the foreign, the
contrast between science and folklore, breaking the taboo of sexuality and homosexuality, and the
change of the traditional role of women.

Stoker lets his characters use modern technological advances of that period such as phonograms and
Kodak Cameras; he also emphasises the modernity of its settings by setting the plot in Transylvania
and England. A special focus is set on London as the centre of the British society and imperialistic
power. Conversely, Count Dracula symbolizes the threats for the British society

because “this ‘foreigner’ blends just a little too easily into the modern Victorian world

Victorian Britain moved from an agrarian into an industrial society and the industrialization brought
new devices and technology that improved the Victorian lifestyle. Stoker’s Dracula is an example of
the clash between the modernity and tradition. Stoker puts an emphasis on the newest technology of
Britain and combines them with traditional and folkloric traits.

Doctor John Seward is a British man who represents an objective and scientific approach. Seward
runs an asylum and is aware of the newest scientific matters, keeps a diary on a phonograph, but
most importantly, he is devoted to science. He is Stoker’s most rational character who refuses to
accept the presence of the mysterious. Seward cannot diagnose Lucy’s condition because her case is
medically unfamiliar since her symptoms are of a supernatural origin – a consequence of the vampire
bite, so he cannot use modern science to explain her situation. He lacks the knowledge about
vampires and thinks of them as mere superstition.

Although Abraham Van Helsing is a man of many degrees, and is using the newest technology, he is
also knows a lot about vampires and methods how to destroy them. His knowledge of both medicine
and folklore enable him to solve Lucy’s condition. Van Helsing represents a sort of middle ground
between Dracula and the English. He is a man of science, and thus a man of the West, and yet, like
Dracula, he is, not a native speaker of English, since he is Dutch.

The Fear of the Foreign

During Queen Victoria’s reign Great Britain became a powerful nation and a global empire. It was the
centre of banking and the source of the investment capital. As a result of

its colonial expansion, Britain came in touch with a variety of cultures, and for the most part the
expansion was seen by the British as having a civilizing mission. The civilizing mission was based upon
their own national, racial, and moral ideals and beliefs according to which non-Europeans were
perceived as inferior in every sense.

The Meaning of Blood

Blood is a precious liquid that is both a substance and a cultural concept. It is a symbol for passion but
also destruction, for cultural identity and family. Stoker uses it specifically to address the taboo topic
of sexuality and homosexuality. The use of the exchange of blood as a symbol for sexual intercourse
comes from a theory that was popular in the nineteenth century where semen was regarded as a
product of blood.

Stoker implies that while she was sleepwalking, she actually escapes to “enjoy the night’s forbidden
pleasures” (71). Victorians believed they should not fuse their blood with those of another race, but
Lucy did so with Dracula.

Although men are the ones who are supposed to take pleasure from sex, that is from giving blood,
Stoker allows Lucy to enjoy her sexual drive the same as her male donors: “As the transfusion went
on, something like life seemed to come back to poor Lucy’s cheeks, and through Arthur’s growing
pallor the joy of his face seemed absolutely to shine” (Stoker 143). After having received blood from
Arthur, Lucy feels especially connected to him: “Somehow Arthur feels very, very close to me. I seem
to feel his presence warm about me” (Stoker 147). Arthur’s blood transfusion is particularly
interesting since he is the only one who sees it as something special, as an act of matrimony: Lucy
feels “his presence warm about” her but she also received blood from other men, suggesting that she
had sex with all of them, and that makes her a polyandrist since the act of consummation was the
ultimate act of validating a marriage before God

Stoker includes four rape scenes in the novel. The first scene is Arthur driving a stake through Lucy’s
heart. Gelder argues that the first scene is conventionally read as “a means of bringing Lucy to
orgasm through ‘phallic symbolism’” (70), but it seems as this is in fact a demonstration of the power
of men and the patriarchal society over women since they could treat them as they wished. Arthur
had to “punish” Lucy, the “New Woman”, for enjoying sex. She becomes an Un-Dead since she is no
longer a Victorian pure woman, but a threat to men.

The second rape scene showing male dominance over women occurs when Van Helsing destroys the
three vampire women. The third scene is when Dracula abuses Mina. Since Dracula represents the
Foreign and Unknown, this rape scene represents an attack on Victorian values. This scene also
depicts he Victorian fear of impure bloodlines as Mina shouts: “Unclean’’ illustrating the Victorian
belief that they should not fuse their blood with that of other races because it would lead to impure
blood and diseases. The fourth rape scene occurs between Jonathan and the three women. This
scene symbolizes an attempt of a reverse rape. Harker “sees them as more animal than human” and
filled with fear and desire. In addition to this, Stoker also hints at the third taboo topic:
homosexuality. The possibility of homoeroticism is implied when Dracula prevents the three vampire
women from attacking Jonathan by suggesting that Jonathan belongs to him.

The Change of Traditional Values and the New Woman

Bram Stoker’s Dracula reflects the Victorian values and the Victorians’ attitude towards the changing
society. They were a conservative society with a strong emphasis put on traditional values.
“the traditional values and family structures upon which the middle class had based its moral
superiority were disintegrating” (39) and were challenged by the rise of the idea of the “New
Woman”, the subject of homosexuality, lust and promiscuous behaviour. Stoker portrays the concept
of the “New Woman” through the changes that happened to Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra,
because of Dracula’s influence. Dracula and his Otherness were the trigger that allowed the women
to show their true nature.

Victorian women were expected to be “angels in the house”3: submissive wives who should love,
honour, and amuse their husbands, manage the household and raise children. Gender roles were
strictly determined and “aiming to control by defining and delimiting the nature and roles of the
sexes in a manner that particularly constrained women”

Throughout the century, women struggled for the improvement of their rights, and by the late
Victorian period the concept of the “New Woman”4 was created. This idea represented a threat
to the conservative society of that time:

New Women were often described in terms of their likeness to men. Predominantly middle class,
they aspired to higher education, to the vote, and to careers; they might ride bicycles, smoke
cigarettes, or embrace dress reform, and they uniformly displayed an uncomfortable readiness to
shock the sensibilities of traditionalists. (Nelson 67)

They were arguing for equal rights in terms of education, opportunities for professional careers,
and the right to vote. Those rights would enable them to have a control over their personal and
professional life; they would become independent. Such independent women were seen as a
threat to the patriarchal society. Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra represent “New Women” but
Stoker portrayed them in two different ways: Mina as pure and rational, and Lucy as rebellious
and voluptuous.

Mina Murray receives the title “New Woman” due her rational mind and important contribution
to the battle against Dracula. Stoker manages to depict her as a combination of tradition and
modernity. By being a traditional Victorian woman, she “isn’t really distancing herself from the
New Woman trope but from the pejorative and stereotypical New Woman who threatened the
male patriarchy.

As Boyd suggested, she is a moderate New Woman (8), a practical woman who is interested in
the field of technology and novelties. She has a strong will and is determined; therefore Dracula
does not manage to seduce her so easily. Mina manages to fulfil both the Victorian and the
modern standard. Victorian values are expressed through her emotions. She is the perfect wife –
a loyal and pure woman who cares about her husband Jonathan

Mina is a rational and intelligent, and not led by sexual lust as Lucy. Her aim is not only to be a
good wife, but rather to be partners with her husband. She is learns how to write in shorthand,
uses a typewriter and knows how to operate a phonogram, so she could understand and help
Jonathan. Her will and interest in learning about the newest inventions and her career as an
“assistant schoolmistress” (Stoker 62) make her a strong independent woman thinker who is avid
to increase her knowledge in order to keep up with Jonathan. Mina’s career as a schoolmistress
is significant as well, as her profession places her in the social role of leader and teacher”

Thus, Mina does not only blend the traditional Victorian woman with the “New Woman” but also
the male with the female world. She is “a symbol of development and empowerment” (Boyd 23)
not only of women but also of the whole society.

Lucy also symbolises the new woman who is questioning traditional values and is driven by lust
and sexual appetite, but she is the opposite type of Mina. Through the sexually liberal character
of Lucy Westenra, Stoker depicts the fear of his contemporaries concerning the increasingly
dangerous familiarity of women with their sexuality since such women threatened the
patriarchal society and the idea of “the angel in the house”.

In the beginning, Lucy is more of a traditional woman than Mina. She never realises what is
happening around her, shows no interest in new technology and has no thoughts about her
future life besides to get married. She seems as if she is always in her own world. Although she is
“Lacking maturity and self-awareness, Lucy nonetheless shares the New Woman’s desire for
sexual equality

Lucy’s transformation into a vampire symbolises the transition of Victorian women into rebellious
and self-confident “New Women”. In other words: “The once shy and “pure” young woman,
naive in her beliefs and attitudes was now replaced by a creature whose presence now emanated
a raw, almost animal sexuality Victorian men feel intimidated by her new image, so they decide
they need to kill her since she is endangering the patriarchal society. Similarly, Dracula’s three
brides have almost the same impact on Harker as Lucy on the vampire hunters; they frighten and
excite Harker at same time. Senf sees them as “archaic forces returning to disrupt modern life.

Lucy, Mina and the three vampire women have one trait in common, and that is their
rebelliousness.

They represent the liberation of women’s interests and will in a male dominant society which is
why they must be punished. While Mina accepts her position of a devoted wife, and thus
survives, Lucy is punished by death for her promiscuous behaviour, and the three vampire
women are literally depicted as monsters because of their unorthodox lifestyle.

The Freudian concept of the id is demonstrated very well by Lucy and

Renfield. Lucy is an id because after she is attacked by Dracula, she is
under his control and influence. After lengths of time, she becomes more
and more like him in mind as well as actions. She starts finding her own
victims such as children. After she becomes a full-fledged vampire she
becomes an ego. She is now an ego because she starts to do her own
thing, but her actions reflect those of Dracula.
Sigmund Freud stated that there were two drives that govern a person's
behavior and emotions: sex and aggression
Sex:
  Sex = procreation = continuation of the species
 Vampirism = sex = continuation of the species
 Humans - repressing sexual desires,
this is what was expected of people in the Victorian era,
sexuality was not to be displayed
 Vampires - embracing sexuality --> Stoker is breaking social norms
but
he does it in a way that readers (of that time) can secretly go
against the "norm"
Aggression:

 Aggression driving desires means rash and not planned actions

 Acting before you think
Freud suggests that fear is “linked in some way to an earlier emotional response that has been
repressed.” In chapter 3 Hawker experiences a great amount of fear when he is attacked by the Brides
of Dracula, in a dramatic, highly sexual scene. Hawker’s submission and confusion as to whether he is
experiencing pleasure of pain could, to follow Freud’s theory, be linked to a past memory in which he
repressed his sexual desires.
Freud wrote about the Superego, Ego and Id, the three parts of the human psyche. The Id is natural,
animalistic desires, such as sex and hunger and it is the Ego’s job to ensure that these desires are
controlled, in order for a human to live in an ordered society. This links well with the idea that
repression leads to fear.
The idea of uncanny is that “within the concept of the homely is the notion of concealment itself,” that
where we feel safest may not be that safe at all, and that “home is a place of secrets.” In Chapter three
Harker seeks comfort in a room. the Brides have appeared and suddenly the atmosphere changes from
that of safety and sleep to sexually charged domination. It is this uninhibited pleasure that Hawker
experiences that makes the scene so significant, almost as if his unconscious Id has completely taken
over his Superego.
Sigmund Freud and Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" are two distinct entities that originated in different
contexts and fields. However, it is possible to explore some connections and parallels between the two,
particularly regarding the themes of sexuality, repression, and the unconscious.

Freud's theories revolve around concepts such as the id, ego, and superego, as well as the Oedipus
complex, repression, and the interpretation of dreams.
"Dracula" explores themes of sexuality, desire, and repression, with the vampire figure symbolizing a
dark and seductive force that threatens societal norms and the boundaries of Victorian sexuality.
One possible connection between Freud and "Dracula" lies in the sexual undertones present in both.
Freudian psychoanalysis often emphasizes the role of sexuality and repressed desires in human
psychology. In "Dracula," the vampire's allure and seduction can be interpreted as a metaphor for
repressed sexual desires or a symbolic representation of the unconscious mind breaking free from
societal constraints.
Additionally, the character of Dracula himself can be seen as an embodiment of Freud's concept of the
id, representing primal instincts and desires that defy rational control. Dracula's ability to manipulate
others and exert a powerful influence over their minds echoes Freud's notion of the unconscious mind
shaping behavior.
Furthermore, the themes of repression and the exploration of the unconscious mind in "Dracula" align
with Freud's emphasis on the importance of uncovering and addressing repressed memories and
desires. The characters in the novel struggle with their own desires and the societal expectations
placed upon them, mirroring the conflict between the conscious and unconscious self often examined
in Freudian theory.

Their underlying motivation includes a sense of duty to both nation and religion:
Dracula’s presence is not only a danger to English society but also a threat to
Christian life, as he can make dutiful Christians into unholy agents like himself
The name of ship is taken from the Russian empress who was notorious for her -
promiscuity. This reference is particularly suggestive of the threat that hangs over
Mina Harker’s head: should Van Helsing and his men fail, she will be transformed
into the same creature of appetites as Lucy.