Progressive Gender Roles In Stoker's Dracula

In regards to gender, Stoker’s Dracula usefully depicts progressive gender roles in Victorian times as well as demonstrating society’s attitudes toward gender. For instance, societal angst about independence interfering with proper female behavior is shown through the various diaries the characters write in. The main character, Jonathan Harker, uses the confidence of his diary to contrast his wife Mina with the brides of Dracula, writing, “I am alone in the castle with those awful women. Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is nought in common. They are devils of the Pit!” (Stoker 69). However, Jonathan also writes of the attraction he felt to the women – “I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they should kiss me with those red lips”

The most blatant form of irony is the high regard in which Mina is held by all the male characters for her intellect – a trait for which women in the Victorian era were often criticized. Van Helsing says of Mina, “[Mina] has a man's brain – a brain that a man should have were he much gifted – and a woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination” (Stoker 284). However, in addition to her man’s brain, Mina has a nurturing and kind nature: qualities that should clash according to the values of the era, but are ironically admired and useful to the men. An additional example of the irony in the book is when Mina comments in her journal, “A grip of the hand, the tightening of an arm over the shoulder, a sob in unison, are expressions of sympathy dear to a man's heart” (Stoker 211) – essentially saying that a man hug is the right way to express deep emotion. The irony can be seen when referring back to Jonathan’s feminine expressions of emotion at Dracula’s castle, including “bitter tears of disappointment” upon not being able to leave and dramatically throws himself on his knees after running back to his room (Stoker 66). As women became increasingly independent in the society, ideas about how to judge a woman’s worth became murky: should women be valued for having intelligence, or condescended for not

The novel can be interpreted in many ways as a reflection of Victorian society’s collectively repressed sexual desires. Symbolism in Dracula is used to express the inherent sexuality that the morality of the time attempted to repress. For instance, Arthur Holmwood drives a stake through Lucy’s heart in order to kill her vampire state, returning her in death to the state of purity and innocence in which society desired her. Stoker’s language in describing the act is subtly sexual, with the stake being a phallic symbol; he describes Lucy’s “white flesh” and the way she writhes and quivers as he buries the stake deeper (Stoker 262). It fits that the Arthur is the one to do it, since he is her fiancé: Lucy is being killed not only for being a vampire, but also for being available to the vampire’s seduction, since technically Dracula can only attack willing victims. When Arthur kills the vampire Lucy, she is once again a legitimate and virtuous lover – “There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we has so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity” (Stoker 264). The sexual symbolism of the stake and the moral symbolism of returning Lucy to her innocence both