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What Does Lucy's Body Symbolize In Dracula

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Do you believe in vampires? Vampires are hidden, dark, unhuman creatures. They pray on the living, and create more monsters with one bite. In the novel “Dracula” By Bram Stoker, many symbols, motifs, themes, are hidden in with the plot. Throughout the book, you get an interesting insight from each character. My paper will touch on those symbols, motifs, and themes. It will also touch on a main character, and will be looked at through a feminine lease point. Bram Stoker uses blood as a symbol in the novel “Dracula”; Stoker uses blood to represent Strength, and someone’s life force. “We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights for lord-ship” (Stoker 33). To further explain …show more content…

Dracula also wanted to change a pure woman. “The room was dark, so I could not see Lucy’s bed; I stole across and felt for her. The bed was empty. I lit a match and found that she was not in the room” (Stoker 101). To elaborate, Stoker is explaining the start of Lucy’s adventures in her sleep. “Is this really Lucy’s Body, or only a demon in her shape? It is her body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you shall see her as she was, and is” (Stoker 229). This quote is all about Lucy, how she has changed from a pure young woman to a dark lost soul who kills children. According to Mitchell R. Lewis in the article “Dracula” , “the conflict over Lucy” is revealing Stokers “thematic concerns with gender, sex and sexuality”. To sum it all up, Lucy was the first character to really experience what Dracula really was, and what he was capable …show more content…

“The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips,” (Stoker 22). In this quote from the novel, Stoker shows the teeth of the vampire as a masculine symbol because it is a pointy object. “and last a round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about three feet long. One end of it was hardened by charring in the fire and was sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer such as in households is used in the coal-cellar for breaking the lumps” (Stoker 229). In this example, Stoker shows the stake as a strong long wooden thing, or showing it as the male genitals; the stake is shown has a masculine symbol that takes the life from women, this can symbolize rape. Per Harold Bloom (Bloom on Dracula), Stoker doesn’t know how to distinguish between the female protagonist of “the feckless Lucy and the fortunate Mina”. To suggest, Stoker does not know how to depict a female power in “Dracula”. In conclusion, Women are seen as inferior in this novel, and more masculine symbols show

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In the Victorian age, women had to be either a virgin or a mother/ wife or she was considered a “whore” if she was neither. In addition, when Lucy transformed into a vampire, she had already been infused with the blood of 3 other men than her husbands. This was seen as a sexual practice and given Lucy an impure status and she was to be killed to return to a more socially acceptable one. The three black flowers at the bottom also represent the three vampire sisters, which were often described as “voluptuous.” On top of these roses is a Barbie doll which represents a standard of beauty women were expected to have.

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723 Words | 3 Pages

Dracula has been famous by many people for centuries and count Dracula has become a major figure of horror movie and novel that it also has become one of the most popular characters to cosplay in Halloween. Because of its popularity and existence as representative character in field of horror, many scholars have been analyzing in various ways to find any hidden meanings beyond its massive plot. The novel, Dracula, brings up many different meanings according to how it is analyzed. Analyzing sexuality in Dracula is one way to figure connotative meanings out from Dracula. In this perspective, I would like to identify the desires of Victorian in that period through sexuality represented in the text.

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981 Words | 4 Pages

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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Her life has left her to Dracula, her soul is assumed trapped, and her flesh remains the same. The process even corrupts Lucy into a nightmarish version of herself. In her UnDeath Lucy specifically feeds on the blood of children (Stoker 198). It’s almost like Dracula corrupted Lucy into a dark version of motherhood. Instead of protecting children, she predates

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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).

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1218 Words | 5 Pages

In Dracula, Bram Stoker makes a contrast between two types of women in this novel. Women who are in the vampire state are vastly more powerful than the everyday human woman, but seem to still be subordinate. Towards the end of late 19th Century, the new woman develops toward the economic change as well as the sexual changes in society, with both men and women struggling to find a sense of this new order. The new woman was strong, finding a sense of independence and men were beginning to become terrified of their own woman. Stoker explains his idea behind the characters of the women in Dracula, he believes that “for women to deny their traditional role was to deny their womanhood, to challenge the distinctions between women and men upon which

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825 Words | 4 Pages

Lucy Westenra is the best friend of Mina Harker and thus the second female main character of the novel. Stoker describes with Lucy a representative of the New Women movement, as the time was seen by the British population. She is single and lives with her mother, who is suffering from heart disease. Her family, that was once very prosperous, consist only of herself and her aging mother. She is Dracula’s first victim /vampire child in England.

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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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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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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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305 Words | 2 Pages

Although considered by many to be a horror story, the language of Dracula portrays a story that is the precursor to many modern-day vampire novels. Given the language choices in Dracula it is no wonder that many portrayals of the modern vampire legend are sensuous. As an avid reader of paranormal romance, these not so subtle hints at sensuality leapt from the pages. These hints are scattered throughout the story it is in third chapter when Jonathan Harker meets the three sisters that stand most vivid and read the most like the stories that have come since the publishing of Dracula. Stoker used evocative imagery to bring his characters to life and give them the presence of beauty “brilliant white teethe..ruby of their voluptuous lips.”

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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.

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548 Words | 3 Pages

Lucy’s transformation from the traditional Victorian woman to a impure Victorian woman began as soon as she became Dracula’s first victim. Her once innocent beauty became more dark and sexual, changing her purity into evil. Her transformation can be seen by the passage, “The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness” (Stoker, 324). The idea of a “new woman” was a

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931 Words | 4 Pages

The fear of something different, of monsters in the night that feast on human life. The price of immortality was to suck the blood from the living and become a hated being. Even Lucy was condemned the second it was made clear she was no longer human, “the whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity. ”(Stoker 292), believing her overtaken by a demon they promptly sought to eradicate it. All human characters see Dracula's immortality as unclean; nobody wishes for it.

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When you think of Dracula, you remember the fairy tale you were told as a child about vampires, but in reality how much of the story was a myth? The name Dracula reminds children and adults alike of the vampire they have so often heard of in movies and books. However, his story was quite different from what they may have heard. This story blurs the line between fiction and fact, when Bram Stoker gains inspiration from actual events and creates a legendary character Dracula is a vampire, hundreds of years old, with supernatural powers and weaknesses. He 's extremely physically strong and can shapeshift into several different forms.

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