Gender Stereotypes In Dracula

The Victorian era was a very conservative time when Western society was entirely patriarchal and gender roles where extremely strict. Dracula challenges this normative society by operating under the fear of “the queer” or unnatural. Bram Stoker’s queer, alien characters pervert gender roles in horrific ways and are punished with dire consequences. There are two main sources of these gender role perversions: the Count and every female character. It is striking that the two sources of the horror-creating “queer” are a blood-sucking undead monster, and women. By thus placing women who defy gender norms in a similar category with a monstrous antagonist, Dracula supports the return to traditional gender roles through the extermination

The character that most obviously places this danger into perspective would be Lucy. Although Lucy ends up committing herself to only one partner, it does not stop her for being interested in the possibility of being with three men at once (61). The mere thought of polygyny was enough for the story to progress in such a way that Lucy would end up becoming a monster and being killed at the hands of each man that she attracted (227). Another warning comes in the form of the three vampire women that the Count houses. Their seductive appearance and sexual teases almost seduce Harker to death and Van Helsing to a stalemate (39, 391). Even Mina, when forced into the arms of another man while she was still married to Harker, would slowly turn into an undead because of her

The first instance shown is the three vampire women who feed on the child that the Count brings them (41). Traditional maternity roles are heavily distorted in this scene. Firstly, it is the Count, a man, who is literally delivering a child to his wives, instead of his wives giving him a child. Secondly, the role of a mother is to provide nourishment and protection to children, but the vampires end up taking nourishment from the child by feeding on it and they spit on the values of motherhood by taking the child’s life. This is not a unique characteristic of Dracula’s harem either, for when Lucy turns into a vampire she begins to feed on children in a similar manner (222). In the novel, being a female monster is synonymous with being a perverse mother. Another prominent example is when the Count force feeds Mina from his chest (297). In this instance, instead of a mother feeding a baby with her breast milk to give her child life, a grown man force feeds a grown woman with his blood from his chest to give her un-life. The imagery is very