The Abuse Of Women In Bram Stoker's Dracula

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), women play a role of overall incompetence and are shown to be powerless and obedient to men. Women’s role in the 19th century during the Victorian era of the United Kingdom consisted mostly of taking care of the children and maintaining the house because they were unable to work or vote until nearly two decades after Dracula’s conception. This way of society led to Stoker depicting women to be lesser than men and exist as victims in the aspect that Dracula exploited various women throughout the story. In Stoker’s Dracula, women are depicted as feeble, dependent, and exploited by men which is directly related to the setting Stoker wrote the story in. In Dracula, the author demonstrates women as being subordinate

These women are exploited by Dracula to extend his own life in the expense of their own, either by killing them or converting them to vampirism. The argument can be made that Dracula also kills and uses men to his own advantage, although he more often exploits women by using them over time such as mind control as his own minions. Meanwhile, Dracula most often kills off men rather than keep them for later use with the exception of Renfield. For example, Dracula slaughters two boats full of sailors, one of which was the Demeter on a voyage to Varna. After the ship came to shore, the captain’s log was discovered telling the story of what happened. “3 August… It is nearly all over now. Just as I was beginning to hope that the mate would come out calmer… ‘Save me! Save me!’ he cried… ‘You had better come too, captain, before it is too late. He is there. I know the secret now. The sea will save me from Him, and it is all that is left!’ Before I could say a word, or move forward to seize him, he sprang on the bulwark and deliberately threw himself into the sea” (Stoker 91). Dracula could have easily used these men as his own servants, but instead killed them all or drove them to their own deaths by insanity. This shows how Dracula actively exploits women such as Lucy, Mina, and the three vampire daughters rather than killing them. During the Victorian

“For instance, Jonathan Harker writes this in his journal on the way to Transylvania: ‘The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers , white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails… On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands.’ According to this, the men of Eastern Europe are considered to be barbaric. In addition, they are clearly inscribed as ‘Oriental’” (Dittmer). Essentially, Dittmer is saying that the men in Eastern Europe live as savages, similar to those who in the past would rape and pillage villages. This assumption is further supported by the character Renfield, a man who eventually leaves all his Western traits behind to succumb to Dracula’s Eastern ideology, and later being referred to as a life-eating maniac. Eric Kwan-Wai Yi, a professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, argues that Mina played a key role in tracking down Dracula and defeating Dracula, and as a woman led everyone the right direction towards annihilating the tormenting evil that is Dracula. “Astonishingly, instead of degenerating into an animal-like existence as in Lucy’s case, Mina