Women In Bram Stoker's Dracula

At the thought of Dracula, the paranoia that is deep within us arises. Bram Stoker’s Dracula has its audience warily glancing around to look for any unusual occurrences and cause the beating of the heart to rapidly increase. This novel will have you hiding under your blanket at night and making sure there is nothing underneath the bed. However, Dracula is not just about how it will cause you to curl in fear, it also portrays the values during the Victorian Era, and demonstrates the advancement of technology. Not only was this novel frightening in its time, but it will have audiences of today fearing the events that the characters go through upon encountering the supernatural creature known as Count Dracula. During its time, this novel would be considered frightening because with Western Europe being more modern,

Victorian women were seen to be stay-at-home wives and especially not as intelligent as men were. The impurity of Lucy would have been frightening amongst Victorians because they are blind to superstitions, thus having a vampire in England is new and unusual. Also, the fact that the “monster” is a woman is different because women are known, or characterized, to be pure and innocent, and that frightens the men since a woman can be as strong as they can. Throughout Dracula, however, there is a woman who portrays faith and the definition of purity, and that woman is Mina. The role of women comes into play when Van Helsing complimented Mina saying that “She has a man’s brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman’s heart” (Stoker 251). Although the men knew what she can do, Mina was still sidelined all because she is a woman. Women’s rights is another issue that was mentioned in the novel. Mina seems to believe in equality between men and women, even though she knows it will not happen anytime soon, she is an example of how men and women can be