ipl-logo

Rape In Bram Stoker's Dracula

682 Words3 Pages

Although written and published in Victorian England where the culture revolves around societal constraints and restrictions of expressing sexual desires, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” has many scenes that seem to revel in sexual language and sensual description, yielding indications of repressed lust and sexuality. Such sexual connotations are not directly expressed, but camouflaged by vampire attacks and the act of blood sucking. Rape, one of the erotic overtones recurring throughout the novel, illustrates how penetration and blood sucking function as an insinuation of sexual intercourse, at the same time revealing different expectations the Victorian society imposes upon women.

Several rape scenes are disguised through the use of symbolism …show more content…

While Arthur “placed the point (of the stake) over the heart,” Lucy’s body “shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions” and after the plunging act Arthur is completely exhausted, all of which indicating that Lucy and her fiancé Arthur are enacting a grotesque parody of their wedding night. The description of Lucy’s response, her body contorting and screaming, almost resembles orgasmic sexual pleasure. The huge stake serves as a phallic object, the repeated penetrating alludes to sex, and the spurting blood from the pierced heart symbolises either the blood from a broken hymen or the ejaculation of a man during sex. On the one hand, penetrating Lucy with the stake and killing her restores the gender order in the novel, by making the male the penetrator yet again. It also suggests that for becoming a sexual woman, Lucy must be punished by sexual means, which leads to her destruction. Likewise, the three siren-like vampire women at Castle Dracula whose dominant sexuality confirms the male fear that their pursuit of sexual gratification surpasses that of men are killed at the end. Van Helsing sees as his obligation to destroy and finish off them, indicating that Van Helsing himself also performs a rape on the three “weird sisters.” He not only rapes one but three women, which can be interpreted as a demonstration of complete power of the Victorian male over the

Show More
Related
381 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout the excerpt from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stoker utilizes diction to convey the central idea that peoples’ worst fears lie in the unknown. In this section, the narrator is being held captive by an unknown entity. He begins to feel that his only hope is to understand the captor and starts to question the manner of the individual. In an effort to express the central idea, Stoker employs diction.

Read More
1161 Words | 5 Pages

Everybody knows the classic tale of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is most famous for its introduction of the character of Count Dracula into both deep-rooted and contemporary literature and media. One critic claimed,” Bram Stoker set the ground rules for what a vampire should be.” It follows the story of Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor who visits Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania – soon realising that he is being kept as a prisoner. Dracula forms a liking to the character of Lucy which ultimately leads to her death.

Read More
1461 Words | 6 Pages

Thus, the second category of Stoker’s violence is evident here – the visual aspect. The female vampires, with an immaculate mix of violence and sex, entrance their victims and prey on them. This seems to be a frightening portrayal of a “monster” since we do not expect a monster to attract the victims in using their beauty. However, it is for the same reason, that Stoker’s theme of violence has to be

Read More
1367 Words | 6 Pages

In Stoker’s novel Dracula, Renfield is a patient in Dr. Seward’s mental asylum who has a desire to gain the life of small, living organisms (e.g., flies, spiders, and rats) by consuming their souls. Although the purpose of Renfield’s character may be considered irrelevant to the central plot of Dracula, it is of utmost significance. To elaborate, the Renfield sub-plot functions as an “abstract representation for a better understanding” and in-depth knowledge to the character of Count Dracula through Renfield’s actions (Dracula). According to Gray, the character of Renfield “parallels aspects of Dracula 's livelihood,” such as his need to consume life. The dark relationship that Renfield and Dracula share is evident in the scene when Renfield

Read More
901 Words | 4 Pages

The essay I chose to compare Dracula with was “Kiss Me With Those Red Lips: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” by Christopher Craft. The essay explains the sexuality in Dracula, desire, gender, and even homosexuality. Craft mentions his essay gives an account of Stoker’s “vampire metaphor” (Craft 108). He highlights certain and very valid points in the story of Dracula that breaks the Victorian gender role, writing, “a pivotal anxiety of late Victorian culture.” (Craft 108).

Read More
696 Words | 3 Pages

As she is sick, Arthur gives her a blood transfusion to try to help her become better but when it does not work, she is stabbed in the heart to go back to her original beauty and die. Lucy in the book shows how the ideal Victorian woman can so suddenly turn into the bad, evil, sexual woman that was unacceptable. Throughout the novel, Bram Stoker showed in detail what was considered to be the ideal Victorian woman through the character Mina. He also showed how women were sexualized, misbehaved, and evil through the behaviors of Dracula’s three daughters.

Read More
1830 Words | 8 Pages

Feminist Reading: Dracula between Beauvoir’s and Roth’s Ideas In her article, “Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” Phyllis Roth argues that Dracula is a misogynistic novel which is obvious in the system of power in which men are dominant and active figures whereas women are just followers and obedient to their system. She draws on Simon de Beauvoir’s idea that “ambivalence as an intrinsic quality of Eternal Feminine”, in order to show that women are victims to men powers. In her chapter, “Myth and Reality”, Beauvoir discusses the way that anybody in the society, specially men, doesn’t do their job in taking a step towards the oppressed women, but to act just like what the system of myth impose them to act.

Read More
1160 Words | 5 Pages

The horror genre of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, combined with mild eroticism is able to draw in readers due to the fact that Stoker is able to intricately weave suspenseful sexual scenes/scenes of desire throughout the novel—making it clear that

Read More
1350 Words | 6 Pages

At first glance, the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker appears to be a typical gothic horror novel set in the late 1890s that gives readers an exciting look into the fight between good and evil. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Dracula is a statement piece about gender roles and expectations for men and women during the Victorian age. Looking at the personalities, actions, and character development of each of the characters in Dracula bring to light startling revelations about Victorian society and how Stoker viewed the roles of men and women during this time period. To really understand Dracula, it is important to note that this novel was written during a time “of political and social upheaval, with anxieties not just about the

Read More
1253 Words | 6 Pages

Gothic horror novel Dracula, the title character makes only several relatively short appearances, some of which are while in disguise. Throughout the novel, Stoker keeps Count Dracula in the shadows, both literally and figuratively. This essay will describe these appearances and analyze Stoker’s use of them to determine what effect they might have on the impression of the character and the novel overall. It will be claimed that by keeping his title character hidden for much of the novel, Stoker’s Dracula is made much more frightening to the reader. Human beings tend to fear the unknown, and by leaving Dracula to the imagination,

Read More
1495 Words | 6 Pages

What would it be like to be a vampire? What would it be like to have a vampire in one’s life? What were the vampires of folklore like? These topics will be reviewed throughout this essay by comparing four of the vampire books and movies. All the vampire movies have some similarities and differences but four literature pieces in particular will be gone through in this comparison.

Read More
811 Words | 4 Pages

The downfall of Lucy Westerna and the arrival of Dracula arose fears in which only challenging their sense of humanity and understanding of the world could they be able to overcome the dangers which had surrounded them. A sense of urgency is created in when Bram Stoker uses exclamation marks, as the turn of Lucy begins. “Arthur! Kiss me!” she states it as if it must happen now, or it never will.

Read More
858 Words | 4 Pages

Dracula is about vampires in general, the myth, the mystery and the horror. Even though Dracula wasn’t the first vampire story, it was the first really popular one. Throughout the novel, the author, Bram Stoker, portrays many different aspects of women's roles in the 19th century. With the use of imagery and symbolism, the theme of sexuality and gender roles has an enormous presence in the novel. Social gender roles of women and men during the Victorian Era were very strict and looked upon differently than any other time period.

Read More
667 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel Dracula, Bram Stoker highlights the theme of sexuality that challenge ideas of sex to both the female and male characters. The author objectifies the female characters in the novel to be over sexualized and portrays sex to empower women. Stoker may present the theme of female sexuality; however, he demonstrates gender inequality triumphs at the end leaving women in the shadows again. Women in the eighteenth century hardly had any type of power outside of overseeing the household and they probably contained much less power expressing any type of sexual emotions. Stoker’s novel gives readers a different perspective of the female sexuality as if almost empowering women and stating that they too can be sexual creatures like men.

Read More
1329 Words | 6 Pages

This sheds a light on Dracula as a figure who truly does feel homosexual affection towards Harker. When Harker disobeys Dracula he finds himself in a room where Dracula’s three wives are. Harker journal entry recalling this event describes it in very close details. He describes the women in a very erotic way, saying “I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle” (Stoker, 48), and the “soft shivering touch of lips.

Read More

More about Rape In Bram Stoker's Dracula

Related Topics

Open Document