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Essay on Bram Stoker’s Dracula
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Subject Women in Dracula
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Dracula was first published in 187; that is during what we call the Victorian period. At that time a woman had only two options she was either, a virgin, a model of purity and innocence, a wife, and a mother or a whore (not even considered as a member of society). In Dracula, Bram Stoker built the female characters according to these views. What fate is then awaiting all these women? In order to understand what role women play in the book and to what extent they match with the Victorian conception of womanhood, I will first focus on the she-vampires, the Weird Sisters the whores, then I will spend more time on Lucy’s character which is torn between purity and a flirtatious nature and finally I will study Mina’s character, which represents the ultimate Victorian woman.
As I have just said, in Dracula women are pictured in a very Manichean way (the good woman is a virgin, the bad woman, a whore). In chapter , Jonathan Harker has a dream of three women who enter the room (in a wind of the castle he has been warned not to go in) and try to “kiss” him. A parallel can be drawn between sexual acts and the vampires bite the act of draining the blood is described by the female vampire as a kiss. In this situation, Jonathan is both scared and full of lust; he does not move but continues to watch the women through half closed eyes. One of the women bites his neck with two sharp teeth. In this scene the women are wild beasts, they are compared to animals, “she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining in the scarlet lips and on her red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth”. Dracula addresses them as if they were wolves”Back I tell you all!”. The women must remain under his control; he is the ruler in his kingdom and women must obey him, just like women must obey men in Victorian patriarchal society. This scene also assimilates sin with sexuality; the women vampires embody both evil and lust. By linking sexuality to evil, the story falls under the moral rules of Victorian society the free expression of sexual desire and women living their sexuality freely was considered both immoral and unacceptable. They were then seen as threats to men self-control, even Jonathan can resist. The Weird Sisters represent what the Victorian ideal stipulates women should not be voluptuous and sexually aggressive. Sexuality should mean morality. That leads us to ponder about the subversion of Lucy’s character.
Lucy is described as a fair and good woman but she is also flirtatious. In chapter 5, Lucy in her correspondence to Mina reports that she received three marriage proposals in a day; she rejects Dr. John Seward’s proposal and Quincey Morris’s proposal for her hearts belongs to Arthur Holmwood “such a lover, such a husband and such a friend”. In her letter she asks why women should not be able to take three husbands, but immediately apologises for asking such a question (“heresy”) however, she finds it difficult to hide her pleasure (“I couldn’t help feeling a sort of exultation that he was number two in a day”), she is flattered and obviously wishes she could have all three but such a desire is not acceptable for it is against patriarchy. She tries to pull on the mask of the innocent and angelic Victorian girl, to do what is expected of her (she cries and blushes) but in the end it is she who chooses her husband (not so common in Victorian society). In way she is the New Woman, subverting the codes of gender condition.
Her sexuality is what we could call avert and will make her more vulnerable to Dracula. She slowly turns into a vampire, that is to say into a whore. In chapter 8, Lucy is being seduced by Dracula. The virgin is ruined by the aristocratic vampire; she is unable or unwilling to save herself from him. Although she still is seemingly innocent and pure, Dracula will eventually corrupt her. During her “out-of-body experience, she described her feelings as blissful she felt that the “West Lighthouse was right under her” and “a sort of agonising feeling as if I were in an earthquake”. The light house is a powerful phallic symbol and the earthquake could symbolise female orgasm. Once more the themes of pleasure and desire are associated with fear. The vampires a threat to female purity and therefore to Victorian culture and order. Lucy becomes one of the undead, she turns into a vampire and thus becomes a threat as well. Lucy undergoes transformation in chapter 1 her teeth sharpen, and she cannot bear the scent of garlic anymore. She also asks Arthur to kiss in a very sexual manner she is turning into a depraved sexual being. The flirtatious but also pure Victorian Lucy becomes a living dead whore. After being buried Lucy starts attacking children which is what paedophiles usually do. This outraging behaviour justifies van Helsing, Seward and Arthur’s reaction the killing of Lucy. The death of Lucy as a vampire echoes penetration and sexuality; it is almost a rape, Lucy’s body is mutilated (they decapitate her) but it is alright to mutilate a vampire for it represents evil. However, the account of Dracula’s staking at the end of the novel lasts only three lines. When the stake is driven through her heart Lucy returns to her former state of innocence and purity, she recovers her beauty. Everything is as it should be; the vampire, the whore is now become a virgin again. She has no sexual needs anymore, and does not speak her mind anymore either. She is no longer a threat for Victorian male and society. Everything is under control.
In Dracula, the perfect woman a virgin, a mother, a pure hearted being that embodies all the virtues of Victorian times is Mina.
Mina is a lot calmer and far less flirtatious than Lucy. In a letter to Lucy she writes that she is going to acquire the skills of a journalist, but as a good Victorian girl shoe only wants to do it for her own benefit and pleasure, in no way to earn money. She is an intelligent woman and also seems to knows that she must keep on playing the part Victorian society forces her to play she has to be a god wife (she takes care of Jonathan when he comes back from Count Dracula’s castle, and she studies how to use a typewriter to be useful to her husband) and a good mother (she comforts Quincey and Arthur after Lucy’s death even though she herself has a lot of things to deal with and suffers too). Mina also has an inventive mind; she is the one who suggests van Helsing hypnotise her to discover where Dracula is hiding. She will be of great help to the men until the end of the novel, in fat we could go so far as to say she is at the service of men.
In chapter 1, Dracula forces her to drink the blood dripping from the wound he made in his chest and consequently becomes one of her servants. He manages to make her do it by threatening to kill her husband. Unlike Lucy, Mina is a model of Victorian purity; she takes no pleasure in being drained and in drinking Dracula’s blood. Throughout the whole book her sexuality remains a real enigma; she is married but never speaks of her sexual desires. It is as if she were asexual. We understand why the scene in which Dracula makes her drink his blood and promises her that she will be “flesh of his flesh” and “blood of his blood” (which clearly suggests sexual union and the sacrament of the Eucharist) is seen as a complete violation of her purity. But in the end her purity is restored, for she is virtuous, the creation of God, as Van Helsing says “one of god’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter…”.
Throughout the novel, Bram Stoker associates sin with feminine sexuality and does it a very moralizing way. If women give way to their sexual impulse and desire, they become a menace for society and for men and therefore have to be destroyed. Women should not have progressive views, they should not yearn for more freedom (the New Woman) for if they do their fate is to suffer a great punishment death. The Weird Sisters and Lucy eventually find peace, but peace in death. If a woman cannot remain pure and chaste than she has to die. Mina is the only one to survive because of her moral perfection, her mind cannot be perverted. Because she knows where she stands and does not be different from what is expected of her, she deserves to live, unlike the others. It seems that the role given to women in the book is similar to the role given to women in Victorian society.
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