In how far does Mina Harker represent the “New Woman” of the Victorian Era in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”?
“No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.”
(Stoker 204)
As Quincey Morris, one of the figures of Bram Stoker’s Gothic Novel Dracula from 1897, says his quote indirectly characterizes the role of women at the time of Stoker’s writing process: The Victorian Era. During his work-of-art Dracula, Queen Victoria was ruling, which meant a new period for women in England and all over Britain because there was a current and rigid image of females as mothers and housewives. But the womankind at that time did not put up with that image any longer (XXXXXXX). In addition, the novel consists of unequal feminine characters who incorporate different types of women. In the following, this essay will discuss how Mina Harker, a fundamental character in Bram Stoker’s craft, is a stereotype of the Victorian Woman herself; therefore, it will summarize what constituted the so-called “New Woman” at that time.
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Baker/ Womack 172). The English lady is very clever, sophisticated and independent, too. Besides, she is described as “one of God’s women […] [-] [s]o true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist” (cf. Stoker 168f) by her husband Jonathan. Moreover, Mina still remains faithful to her fiancé, although she has not heard anything from him for weeks, for why he is locked in Count Dracula’s castle; nevertheless, Mina’s intuition shows her that something might be wrong with him. After that, she nurses him as per “the angel in the house” (Ledger