Term Paper on "Dracula by Bram Stoker. Bram Stoker"

Term Paper 3 pages (1036 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Dracula by Bram Stoker. Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is a classic Victorian-era novel that allows the reader a glimpse into the mores of Victorian England. The novel is a horrific tale of Count Dracula, who lures men and especially women into his lair and turns them into blood-sucking vampires (the Un-Dead), who roam only at night and suck the blood of innocent victims to survive. He is evil, but underlying his evil are the mores of Victorian England, which created sharp stereotypes for women that were nearly impossible to bend or break.

The author gives away much information about Victorian attitudes toward women through his characters. In fact, the novel is often seen as an analogy of the two distinct roles of women in society: mother/wife, or whore. Early in the novel, Stoker makes this apparent when he introduces some of the count's accomplices. Harker's journal notes, "The fair girl went on her knees and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal" (Stoker 45). Throughout the novel this type of division between innocence and "voluptuousness" continues. There is no gray area for the women in the novel, they are either good or bad, virgin or vixen, wife and mother or whore. These are the classes women had to choose from in Victorian society, and the rules were rigid. Once you crossed the line from virgin to vixen, you could never be a true "lady" again.

Stoker introduces the two women, Mina and Lucy, as chaste and good ladies who hold a decent place in society. Mina is a working class schoolmistress, while Lucy is an upper-class lady of leisure. The most either can hope for in their lives is to marry and become respectable wives and mothers. Lucy writes to Mina, "You and I, Mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle down soon soberly into old married women, can despise vanity" (Stoker 64). Thus, Lucy writes what most women felt in Victorian times. Their only goal was to remain true (pure) to one man, raise children, and be seen but rarely heard. Anyone who strayed from this cultural norm was somehow wanton and suspect.

The theme of voluptuousness continues throughout the novel, and it could be an analogy for "whore." When Lucy succumbs to the count and becomes a member of the Un-Dead, her entire being changes. Stoker introduces her as a wanton vixen. He writes, "Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness" (Stoker 225). Later, the count indicates what many men must have felt in Victorian times. He sneers, "Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine -- my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!'" (Stoker 326). Thus, Stoker indicates women are nothing more than possessions for most Victorian men. They long for a vixen, but… READ MORE

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