Gender Boundaries In Dracula Essay

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How illuminating is it to see vampires in Dracula as enacting a ,'blurring of gender boundaries’ ?

Dracula was initially published in 1897 by Bram Stoker. Many critics view the novel as exploring the fears society had and then presenting them in the form of the vampire. One of the fears presented in the characterisation of the vampire is gender transgression and the blurring of the gender boundaries which the Victorians upheld. In this essay I am looking to explore the many ways that the vampires reflect this fear of breaking gender norm society has and how Stoker does this.
In Dracula many readers do reflect that there is blurring of gender lines in the portrayal of the vampires in regarding to female sexuality In Victorian society there …show more content…

This idea of the new woman rejecting her role of a mother is presented in Lucy when she is caught sucking the blood of a child; “She flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning.” This evokes the maternal image of mother clutching her child and yet the child is dead. This is be Stoker portraying the message that female empowerment will have a negative effect on the future generations as the women will neglect their roles. As Stoker has done before he dehumanises Lucy by using the simile of her, “growling over it (the child) as a dog growls over a bone.” This dehumanisation of Lucy is Stoker demonstrating the unnaturalness of female empowerment and of the new women’s …show more content…

“I laid down the razor, turning as I did so half round to look for some sticking plaster. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.” Finally, Dracula’s (which can be viewed as jealous) fury at the vampire women’s when they caught ready to feed on Harker. "How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him…This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me." The use of exclamation marks and rhetorical questions helps to portray the anger and to reinforce the possessiveness of Dracula who goes as far as to treat Harker as object. For many critics this possessiveness introduces the idea of a homosexual subtext within the novel as Edward Carpenter says, “Dracula claims Jonathan Harker and establishes his homosexuality within the

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