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Sigmund Freud provides techniques for interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud provides techniques for interpretation of Dreams
Interpretation dreams by Sigmund Freud essay
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Much like Madeline, Lucy becomes a victim of involuntary sleepwalking where she too is stuck in a “dream-world,” yet looking at Freud’s theory of dreams, how can we completely agree on the idea that she was not also acting on her ID? (???) states that “The symptoms (of sleep walking) are not simply a matter of individual affliction-they point to a shadowy world of dreams, repressed desires and the supernatural outside the rational daylight world of an increasingly affluent, increasingly materialistic Victorian society.” The idea of “repressed desires,” exposed in our dreams described by Freud is evidently seen in Lucy. By walking out alone at night we see the emergence of the New Woman being revealed through her sleep walking. This contradicts the “Angel in the House” figure who is “Dearly devoted” to a man, because a typical Victorian woman …show more content…
As she sits at the “churchyard” we can almost see her reflecting the ideas of the Victorian gentleman whose morals are based on religion, and as a male you had the right to go anywhere or do anything you please as long as you keep your gentlemanly status. The setting of the “churchyard” is also ironic to the acts that follow as there was something “long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure.” Dracula is our demon character in “black,” physically dominating over Lucy while Lucy is portrayed as innocent in “white.” This is much like “The nightmare” painting by Henry Fuseli, which portrays a demon sitting on top of an unconscious woman. The resemblance to Dracula is seen with the demon hiding in the shadows, but still controlling the woman by putting himself in a position on top of her while she is unaware. When Mina finally wakes up Lucy “she trembled a little, and clung to me.” This reaction could indicate that Lucy was unable to stop Dracula from biting her and was terror-stricken from the
As a matter of a fact, when Lucy dies, the men feel great distress and have nowhere else to turn but to Mina. In order not to show weakness in front of the other men, the Englishmen each individually “express [their] feelings on the tender or emotional side,” and confess their anguish for Lucy’s passing (Stoker). To the men, Lucy was only a companion whom they barely knew, but to Mina, Lucy was a lifelong friend. Mina’s loss of Lucy was profound, however, she held her emotions in check and through strength and perseverance she never shed a tear. Moreover, Mina is often portrayed as stronger physically than Jonathan when Dracula emits his wrath upon them. Even though Mina is the one suffering, Jonathan cannot physically handle Dracula’s wrath as he turns “white as death, and shook and shivered,” even though he has yet to sacrifice anything and Mina has sacrificed almost everything and continues to persevere (Stoker). Jonathan’s signs of aging signify that even though Jonathan is a man and supposed to be strong, the stress and anguish derived from the events lately has taken a physical toll on him. However, Mina is the one directly affected by Dracula and aside from the effects of Dracula’s hypnotic spell, Mina was portrayed as happy and youthful. Last but not least, Catherine Eckel, a member of the National Science Foundation and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, conducted a study involving
...stingly, Lucy reveals a furtive desire to escape the traditional constraints that are placed upon her. Prior to being pleased with her committed relationship, Lucy complains, “why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” (Stoker 92). Her desire for three husbands suggests a latent sensuality that connects her to the New Woman; she is torn between the need to conform and the desire to rebel (Senf 42). On the night of Lucy’s initial vamping, Mina witnesses her friend in the cemetery of Whitby: “it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell” (Stoker 144). For Lucy, this exceedingly sexual scene acts as an exaggerated fulfillment of her earlier sexual curiosity regarding polygamy (Prescott & Georgio 502).
...ed to kill Basil Hallard) and dies, his corpse acquiring the shape of his soul and the painting, his soul, regaining the purity of his youth. To regain the purity of his soul he must expose himself as he really is to the eyes of the world. It is, in short, an act of confession that will grant him salvation through the mercy of God. In Dracula, Arthur’s liberation of Lucy’s soul through strong thrusting of the stake, a three-foot long phallic symbol, through her heart is the regaining of the masculinity of England’s youth. The elimination of the Count and the resulting withdrawal of the forces of evil (the gypsies and the wolves) represents the reaffirmation of that masculinity against the foreign threat of the count. This ordeal has helped them to reencounter their true virtues and will enable them to guide the country to a brighter and more prosperous future.
Dracula kills Lucy who is a sweet, victorian woman that did not deserve to be bit by Dracula. Killing people, to most people, would be an action only a purely evil person would do “Lucy’s eyes in form and colour; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle ors we knew” (226). Lucy getting bit not only hurt Lucy, but it caused all the people near and dear to her hurt also. Vampire-Lucy still looks pure and sweet which is even harder on the people she loves because they see that she looks beautiful and like herself but she is not herself. When something evil is being hidden as something good it is extremely evil and hurts the people that love and care for her. He does not act how a civilized and well manored man should act. He hurts other people to benefit himself. Clearly such actions are incredibly evil and no sane person would think to do such a
“Dracula, in one aspect, is a novel about the types of Victorian women and the representation of them in Victorian English society” (Humphrey). Through Mina, Lucy and the daughters of Dracula, Stoker symbolizes three different types of woman: the pure, the tempted and the impure. “Although Mina and Lucy possess similar qualities there is striking difference between the two” (Humphrey). Mina is the ideal 19th century Victorian woman; she is chaste, loyal and intelligent. On the other hand, Lucy’s ideal Victorian characteristics began to fade as she transformed from human to vampire and eventually those characteristics disappeared altogether. Lucy no longer embodied the Victorian woman and instead, “the swe...
Spencer, Kathleen L. Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic, and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis. 1st ed. Vol. 59. N.p.: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992. JSTOR. Web. 6 Jan. 2014. .
Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu’s texts, Dracula (1898) and “Carmilla” (1872), use gothic tropes in similar ways to captivate readers with horror and terror. This essay will illustrate how, in comparison, both texts include gothic tropes: the New Woman, sexuality and setting, in order to provoke emotions and reactions from the readers. To achieve this, this essay will focus on the women that challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes, and deconstruct each text in regards to the very strong undertones of homosexuality; specifically between Carmilla and Laura, and Dracula and Harker. By discussing the harshness and darkness of the environments described, including ruined castles and isolated landscapes; this essay will also explore the
In society, the significance of social status and role is observable with both genders. This includes the acceptable behaviors and responsibilities for both men and women within one’s culture. It is a constant struggle to follow these established guidelines in order to preserve a good reputation and not possess a low social status. In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, the different characters each represent a different stand in the transformation from “True Woman” to the “New Woman” that surfaced in the late nineteenth century. This new idea made women more independent, with their lives no longer revolving around their husbands, and most importantly created a big change in social expectations. The characters Lucy, Mina, and the three brides of Dracula play a part in revealing Stoker’s belief that social status is changed for the worse with this change in women’s roles.
In Case's article “Tasting the Original Apple,” it talks about the role that now the new woman has and how it comes into conflict with how men react towards it as stated “Dracula is often read as a largely reactionary response to the threat of autonomous female sexuality posed by the phenomenon of the "New Woman," with its anxieties about female sexuality being most clearly visible in Lucy Westenra's story. Particularly once she has been "vamped," Lucy's sexual assertiveness seems to link her with the New Woman. But Lucy's actions as a vampire, like those of the "awful women" (42) Jonathan encounters at Dracula's castle, perhaps owe less to the specific threat posed by the New Woman's insistence on sexual autonomy than to the ambivalences built into the model of Victorian womanhood from the start. Since ideal womanhood (and the ground of male desire) was characterized by a combination of total sexual purity and at least the potential for passionate devotion to a man, this model...
...ny other novels of the time, Stoker’s Dracula purposely highlights the superiority of men, while simultaneously belittling women. After only a few pages of this novel, the reader should understand just how helpless the females become. No matter what the issue or controversy, they are unable to find any sort of solution, successful or not, without the help of the male characters. Stoker even goes as far as almost teasing Mina, by allowing her to aid in the hunt for Dracula, yet giving her trivial duties. Lucy on the other hand creates the novel’s most blatant case for male superiority. She is forced to constantly depend on four men for her survival. All blood transfusions she received were from men and even that could not save her life. Stoker manages to make a bold statement by pinpointing the inferiority of the two female main characters in the novel.
Over the course of cinematic history, many filmmakers have attempted to recreate the chilling, unprecedented world of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Arguably very few have succeeded, for the majority of directors tend to avoid the pervasive sexuality inherent in the novel. It is a difficult task to achieve, considering the blatant imagery surrounding sex and vampirism, such as the reproduction following a vampiric encounter and the phallocentric nature of the violence committed both by and against these creatures: penetration is involved in their hunting, and one must impale them with a stake in order to destroy them. Readers are thereby forced to admit that Dracula is, in fact, a highly eroticized piece of literature, though whether or not Stoker himself was aware of this suggestiveness, we cannot be sure. The most successful effort at capturing that sexual energy on film has been Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula. In fact, it has often been proposed that Coppola’s version is too carnally focused in comparison to the original work, which leads a viewer to wonder about the purpose in this overt sexualization. It can be concluded that adding copious amounts of eroticism to the film is directly related to Coppola’s strive to depict Count Dracula as more human rather than monster, and sexuality in his film serves as a balance so that the lines between good and evil are blurred. Evidence for this deduction is found in three scenes in particular: Jonathan’s seduction by Dracula’s vampiric wives, Lucy’s demonic transformation, and Mina and Van Helsing’s relationship during the climax of the story.
In DRACULA, the general content is about the fighting between Dracula and humans, since Dracula tries to transform all the female characters into vampires. The language of the book is not very sexual, but the word “Voluptuousness” did shows up a lot in the book. The female characters, Mina, Lucy and the three sisters, they have different personalities, different attitude to love, and different virginity. When Dracula tried to transform them into vampires, they experience different processes and have different endings.
The men want to protect Lucy when Dracula is taking her but they do not let her help but with Mina they let her contribute and recognize her smarts. Lucy is a perfect victorian lady. She is pure, innocent, and easily influenced. That is why she is so easily overtaken by Dracula. Lucy sleepwalks because her life is being drained from her. It is the physical manifestation of what is happening in her life. Victorian Ideals are shutting them into a box until they become lifeless. She is proposed to by three men and and like any Victorian Lady she chooses the one that can take of her the best while she does love Arthur he is also to inherit a lot of money and power making him the perfect husband and her the perfect wife. Lucy lets other takes care of her rather than fighting back herself so she is taken over.
Swart-Levine asserts that the true monster is the women and their use of sexuallity. Lucy’s behavior backs this claim up Swartz-Levine states, “Lucy is dehumanized. She becomes a "Thing," with a capital T; she loses her proper name but gains a new one, of sorts” (Swartz-Levine 3). Lucy’s behavior is deemed inappropriate in Victorian England and by doing so she opens the door to bad things happening to her. Lucy has to be punished since she allowed to be bitten by Dracula and kept acted far from the standards of a Victorian woman. Swartz-Levine explains, “ Lucy, gives permission for these acts to occur--she is performing an act of contrition by admitting her sins and asking for punishment so that she can be forgiven and attain the afterlife” (5). By admitting to her sins and being killed in her vampiric form her soul is freed and she can be forgiven in the afterlife. Due to vampire lore one who becomes a vampire has their soul trapped in torment until they are killed. Lucy’s death symbolizes salvation and freeing her soul from her vampiric form is how. Furthermore the death of a character can mean something
During Freud’s time, society typically viewed dreams as an intervention of a higher being or entity (Freud, 1900, p.4). However, Freud made the claim that dreams are the product of the dreamer and also that it serves two purposes. First, dreams form to keep a person asleep at night by blocking out external stimuli, much in the same way a person consciously does when turning off the light and minimizing noise before going to bed (“Freud’s Approach,” 2000). Next, Freud (1900) viewed humans as having grotesque sexual urges that “are suppressed before they are perceived” (p.37) in order to protect the person and allow him or her to get along in society; however, dreams serve the purpose of releasing these repressed desires as wishes which are disguised in the dream. Because a person cannot readily be aware of the unconscious wish, the dream is divided into two ...