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The Power Of Women In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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No horror novel has achieved the notoriety of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Vampires today would not be so popular in horror if not for Stoker’s revamped version of the classic Eastern European bloodsucker. Having come at a time when xenophobic novels were extremely popular, Dracula has kept its relatability despite the test of time. Aside from its hold as a horror novel, Dracula endures because it serves as a reminder of how society works alongside authority figures and the powerless, and from its definition of human values.
The Victorian Era is known for a pious, sexless society where women were considered inferior. While strides have been taken, there is still an inherent bias against sexually liberated women. This shame is still relevant to society today because of its abuse by those in power. Day by day, political scandals involving sexual assault and rape are being revealed on the news. This is only indicative of the willingness of the elite to abuse those working under them- especially young naive women. This power imbalance is also captured in Dracula through the character Mina. Mina Harker serves as the love interest of Jonathan Harker, but is a strangely sexless character when compared to other women in the novel. This attribute give Mina a more innocent disposition, which makes …show more content…

Sexual allegory is combined with victorian culture and violent monsters, a dichotomy of human instincts. Stoker also captures the constant battle between traditionalists and supporters of modernity. Stoker wraps up this thought experiment in the trappings of a horror novel in order to best show off the monsters he designed. With its ability to have inspired countless vampire progeny across literature and film, Dracula is a work that combines fantasy elements with relatable thematic struggles in a way that will allow it to live

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Dracula learns that the group are plotting against him and feeds Mina his own blood to control her. In the final fight, humanity wins over the creature as they can kill him and Mina’s mind from his “spell.” The premise

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Violence In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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Bram Stoker, describes one of the verbal taboos of the Victorian era, violence, through the representation of vampires as “monsters” through the point of view of their victims in his novel Dracula. Stoker portrays violence in three distinct categories- physical, visual and psychological. Each one of these categories is described by one of the antagonists in the Novel, with Count Dracula as the physical aspect of violence, his underlings, the female vampires as the visual and Renfield, the patient at Dr. Seward’s mental asylum, as the psychological aspect of violence. This essay looks at the portrayal of such Categorical violence as different renditions of a “monster” and considers why Stoker would segregate violence in such a manner.

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What Does Religion Symbolize In Dracula

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Bram Stoker's Dracula is filled with interesting symbology and religious comparisons. Dracula is a gothic novel set in late 1800s Britain and Transylvania. Dracula is an epistolary, meaning it is told through a series of journal entries, news clippings, etc. It’s like the written version of found film. Dracula draws from many old myths for its villain and is the basis for the modern vampire.

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Examples Of Imperialism In Dracula

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a Gothic tale that in a lure of decadence warns against the pull of the past. Victorian ideals are set to cherish the idyllic home, but when the national dwelling is compromised, Dracula’s invasion mixes the foreign with the familiar. England, a paragon of Western order and a colonizer, fears any disease that weakens the growing Empire. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Count embodies the Victorian fear of reverse colonization through his deliberate crossing of cultural and physical boundaries as a way to undermine British imperialism.

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Summary Of Homosexuality In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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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).

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Desire In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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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

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Gender Roles In Bram Stoker's Dracula

1350 Words | 6 Pages

The fact that there were some role reversals in the novel, especially among the female characters, made most characters all the more dynamic. All the same, the novel was very obviously influenced by gender roles and when Stoker was writing Dracula there was an obvious dividing line between male and female characters that he would not cross. Stoker’s preoccupation with female sexuality in Dracula “is attested to by the fact that [gender roles] actually come to dominate the story, with the vampire hunters mainly concerned not with Dracula himself but with his effect on their beloved companions” (Dixon) While Mina, who represented the ideal Victorian woman, acted as a support system and assistant to the heroic group of men. While things have changed significantly for men and women alike in the modern age, Dracula will likely remain in place as one of the most famous and telling critiques of Victorian gender

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Dracula’s demise is a representation of a fight between unnatural and natural. For instance, Kathleen Spencer states, “With Dracula’s death, the ‘natural’ superiority of Englishmen over the ‘lesser’ races has been once again convincingly portrayed” (Spencer 218). The portrayal of Dracula as being unnatural, and primitive succumbs to the Western narrative of superiority since they assert that they are sophisticated and therefore superior to those not adhering to their ideals. Dracula is killed in the final stand between him and the Westerners, yet he does not appear upset about losing. Mina states, “As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph” (Stoker 398).

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The Importance Of Dracula In Stoker's Dracula

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,

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Dracula Research Paper

1113 Words | 5 Pages

Additionally, Stoker added culturally sensitive topics that tied into his work, creating his own setting and visuals to match. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a classic literary work that focuses on the state of being human, and looks through the lens of gender, specifically

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Dracula Movie And Book Comparison

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The four pieces of literature to be compared in this comparison are Dracula by Bram Stoker, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola, Nosferatu (1922) by F.W. Murnau, and Dracula (1931) by Tod Browning. In these works of fiction, there are answers to what it would have felt like to be a vampire, what it would have felt like to have a vampire in one’s life,

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332 Words | 2 Pages

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906 Words | 4 Pages

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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.

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