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Who Is The Protagonist In Dracula

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‘An Angel or a Monster?’
The Paradox Surrounding the Mina Harker in Dracula
Victorian England valued purity and viewed their women in a state of perpetual childhood. This damages a woman’s sense of self and the ways in which civilisation viewed and treated women who conformed to or broke this stereotype. Bram Stokers’ Dracula, a fictional gothic novel, utilises the gothic genre, its tropes, themes, and motifs to encapsulate heavy themes of the real world, including the infamous concern of the ‘New Woman’ and all she entails.
The two main female characters, Mina and Lucy, are Stokers focal point in portraying how women in Victorian society were challenging the social norms and enhancing the perturbing concept of the New Woman. By focusing on …show more content…

The article, ‘"Dracula": Stoker's Response to the New Woman’, (1982) by Carol A. Senf, critically analyses the characters of Lucy and Mina, particularly the way that Lucy is portrayed as a New Woman whereas Mina places herself between the standard Victorian woman and New Woman. Mina enjoys playing into the stereotype of a housewife and takes on the role of a motherly figure to the other characters. However, her intelligence places her on the brink between New Woman and a platitudinal Victorian woman. Mina’s academic brilliance was a prevalent characteristic throughout Dracula. Stoker demonstrated her high intelligence by how her perception and logic helped the group defeat …show more content…

In reference to Havelock Ellis, he discussed the intimate relationships between women in Victorian society and how “when parted, long letters are written, often daily; they are full of affectionate expression of love.” Mina and Lucy’s writings fall under this idea as Nancy Sahli describes their writing as “a high degree of emotional, sensual, and even sexual

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Mina Quotes In Dracula

842 Words | 4 Pages

The beloved novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker is an influential piece of gothic literature. Horror stories typically portray the Victorian woman to be a helpless victim and to be sexually objectified, but the story “Dracula” continuously uses the character Mina Murray Harker to challenges these gender norms. Mina is one of the several protagonists in the story, and it is important to note that she is the only female in the protagonist group. She is engaged to a man named Jonathan Harker who is also in that group. Initially, she embodies the ideal Victorian woman who is gentle, maternalistic, and loyal to her husband, but as the story progresses, her character develops to show independence and take on a more active role in defeating the antagonist, Count Dracula.

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How Does Dracula Change Throughout The Novel

601 Words | 3 Pages

Dracula presents itself as a gradually transforming tale about bravery in face of the hidden evils of the world. The changing pace from slow, vivid scenes to a rapid conclusion allows the novel to encompass many different themes. However, there are some passages that read the same at the start and at the end. From pages 251 to 254 Stoker applies his writing expertise to indeterminately explain Lucy’s fate. On page 251 Seward confusedly asks Van Helsing about his strange fit of laughter at the thought of Lucy’s death.

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Theme Of Corruption In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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.

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What Does Religion Symbolize In Dracula

1196 Words | 5 Pages

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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Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards A Feminist Figure Of Humanity?

1075 Words | 5 Pages

It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it.

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Stereotypes In Dracula

876 Words | 4 Pages

He was seen as the hero of the novel. This acted in accordance with the quintessential fiction novel trope. However, Mina was pivotal in the discovery of Dracula’s real identity as well as finding his location, leading to his defeat. This challenges the female stereotype as women were underestimated and depicted as no real help. While Dracula’s depiction of women was quite positive, Nosferatu was not as much.

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Summary Of Homosexuality In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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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The Oppression Of Women In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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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Women In Dracula Essay

696 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel, women’s looks and behaviors are different of what was going on in the Victorian era. In the novel, Mina was the ideal Victorian woman. Mina was the wife and mother type of person, said to be marrying Jonathan. After all she had to deal with concerning Jonathan; she remained loyal and never gave up on him.

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Heroism In Bram Stoker's Dracula

1332 Words | 6 Pages

Later, the men reluctantly allow her to be more involved with the pursuit of the Count because of her telepathic connection to him, but are reluctant to do so because they fear for her health. Because this novel was written during the Victorian era, there was a dramatic gender inequality between men and women, so for Mina to partake at all in their killing of the Count was unusual. Mina is capable and willing to help the men, but is only able to do so as an assistant by typing their diary entries. The gender roles of this time period play a role in who ultimately defeats Dracula, the group of men with Mina only as an onlooker. Although the male characters praise Mina for her help, she is not portrayed as a hero

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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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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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Female Sexuality In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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.

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Morality And Morality In Dracula

1329 Words | 6 Pages

During the Victorian period in which Dracula was written, morals and ethics were often strictly enforced. Some of the morals that were upheld had to do with personal duty, hard work, honesty, as well as sexual proprietary. It was very important during this period that one was proper in their sexual behaviors and conventional in whom they had sexual relations with. However, during this period, many authors sought to challenge the ‘norm’ with ideas of reform and change and Bram Stoker was no exception to this. In his novel, Dracula, Stoker provides a critique of this rigidity in his portrayal of Dracula and Dracula’s relationship with Jonathan Harker.

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Sexual Anxieties In Bram Stoker's Dracula

650 Words | 3 Pages

Indeed, the work condemns the expression of sexuality, particularly deviant sexuality, as in the case of Lucy, who is eventually destroyed and transformed into a voluptuous vampire. Dracula is the immoral foreigner; he contains and conveys a sexually transmittable disease, perhaps akin to syphilis in its internal and external transformation of the afflicted. In this novel, Stoker stands by the ideal woman, Mina, who resists temptation and becomes a submissive and dedicated wife and mother. Finally, Abraham Van Helsing and his group of men defend the patriarchal pillars of society and try to contain, at all costs, the sexually dominant behavior that attempts to contaminate society. The anxieties surrounding and permeated by the characters of the novel emulate a literary culture inspired by Gothic literature.

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