Julie Weiner
Nov 25, 2014
Research Paper 1
First Reader: Ann Croxson In early folklore, the vampire was a creature of superstition, imagined as a walking corpse with terrible breath who fed off blood at night. It was a hideous creature that rose from its grave to haunt villages. Hundreds of years later, the image has changed greatly in Western literature and film, from a terrifying monster to a suave, charming individual who is dangerous but irresistible. Today, the vampire is a staple in literature and movies because the image is more attractive than terrifying. Older vampire novels published during a time when sex was taboo and unsafe presented the vampire as a sexual tempter and a monster. However, with the development of safe and affordable
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The pornography of the period portrayed often female deflorations and rape. (Marsh and Delgado). Dracula featured many attacks on vulnerable women, especially the two main female characters, Mina and Lucy. Blood was a metaphor for taking virginity, and Dracula taking Lucy and Mina’s blood was like taking their virginities (Marsh and Delgado). In Chapter 21 of Dracula, Mina was attacked by Dracula in the dead of the night. Dr. Seward says of Mina, "Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down [Dracula 's] bare breast, which was shown by his torn open dress” (Stoker 288). This scene symbolizes a rape: her pure white dress, representing her virginity, is tainted red with blood, and the damage to Dracula’s clothes is a sign of a struggle, meaning his attack was not consensual. Other subliminal sexual images include the stakes that stab Lucy in her vampire form as phallic, penetrative symbols (Bomarito), and the transfusion of blood as a sex act (Marsh and Delgado). Dracula featured many Victorian prudish themes, shunning women for practicing free love and loose sexuality (Nystrom 70). Mina and Lucy’s different paths in Dracula represent how resisting temptation and remaining pure will save one’s life, whereas giving into temptation could turn one into, literally, a sexual monster, respectively (Nystrom 70). Mina survived Dracula because she resisted his tempting, seductive nature and let the men destroy him. However, Lucy’s descent into vampirism turned her into a voluptuous beast who had to be destroyed because of how terrible she had become. Temptation killed
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
J. Gordon Melton, in the excerpt “Sexuality and the Vampire” published in his The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead (1998), explains that vampires have a sexual appearance that started from their origin in Dracula. Melton supports his statement by analyzing the monsters' transition to sexual beings through the stories of Dracula’s desires, multiple countries’ erotic tales revolving around vampire-like beings, the manifestation of sensual themes in literary, stage, and screen works, and their current evolution of the once terrified immortals to loved heroes. The purpose of this essay was to outline the seductiveness of the written immortal creatures in order to explain the fanged-mammals’ appeal beyond their terrifying monster abilities.
Dracula has many themes which are represented by the characters themselves. While the most prominent theme included the focus on the imbalance of religion and science, a very subtle but important statement was made about the impact of evil on women. The graveyard scene summarizes Lucy’s progression from an innocent girl to an evil temptress. Not only does this apply specifically to women but anyone who is turned by Dracula.
Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” came to print in 1897, at the height of nineteenth century Victorian life in Europe, a progressively modern era that saw much medical and technological advancement. This era brought with it the contentious idea of an empowered woman, the “New Woman,” a woman who aspires to be educated as well as sexually and economically independent. Stoker gives a contrasting view of this notion in “Dracula.” While the main characters, Lucy and Mina, are clearly opposite in personality, they are both portrayed as unequal, defenseless objects that are to be protected and desired. However, one woman’s fate is determined by her weakness, while the other is determined by her strength.
In the 19th century Bram Stoker wrote the infamous novel, Dracula. This novel was composed in the style of letters, journal entries, newspaper articles and telegrams in order to convey to the reader a realistic story. The story of Dracula is about an ancient vampire who moves to London from his native country of Transylvania. In London, Dracula seduces and bites a young woman by the name of Lucy Westenra. When Lucy falls sick, no one knows how to help her because while Dracula has bitten her many times she has always been in a trance. Lucy?s friends decide to join together to combat what ever is ailing Lucy. In hopes of some help, Lucy?s friend Dr. Seward asks an old mentor of his by the name of Dr. Van Helsing to come to London and solve this puzzling illness. When Dr. Van Helsing arrives in London and sees Lucy he is the only one that knows almost immediately what has happened and what they are up against. The character of Dracula rarely appears in the story because this creates suspense and magnifies the fear of the unknown. The theme of good versus evil is developed throughout the book in many ways. One of the most important examples is Dracula and Mina. Dracula is the ultimate evil and Mina is full of goodness and purity. The Victorian view of women was not helpful to the characters in Dracula. For example, every time the male characters in the story decide not to tell Mina some particular type of information, things end up going terribly wrong. Even though Mina ends up being the key to destroying Dracula she is still a women and the Victorian view gets in the way.
“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...
Stevenson, John Allen. A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula. 2nd ed. Vol. 103. N.p.: Modern Language Association, 1988. JSTOR. Web. 6 Jan. 2014. .
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.
Dracula features behind the lines, the chaos of this gender confusion and one of the main characters, Mina, is a vivid illustration of this. Beyond all, she is the orthodox woman, “Mina indeed acts and is treated as both the saint and the mother…….She is all good, all pure, all true.” (Roth, 31). Since the beginning, Mina has strived to portray herself as the perfect wife and the best potential mother by displaying her motherly instincts sporadically throughout the novel. She is impatient to get married and serve her husband, Jonathan when she writes, “When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and…..write….on...the typewriter.” (Stoker, 62). Without hesitation, she marries Jonathan in Hungary despite his illness and nurses
Dracula accentuates the lust for sexuality through the main characters by contrasting it with the fears of the feminine sexuality during the Victorian period. In Victorian society, according to Dr.William Acton, a doctor during the Victorian period argued that a woman was either labelled as innocent and pure, or a wife and mother. If a woman was unable to fit in these precincts, consequently as a result she would be disdained and unfit for society and be classified as a whore (Acton, 180). The categorizing of woman is projected through the “uses the characters of Lucy and Mina as examples of the Victorian ideal of a proper woman, and the “weird sisters” as an example of women who are as bold as to ignore cultural boundaries of sexuality and societal constraints” according to Andrew Crockett from the UC Santa Barbara department of English (Andrew Cro...
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.
From Transylvania to Hollywood, vampires have transformed from unfamiliar, mysterious personalities to one of the most dominant monsters in the horror genre today. Vampires are one of the oldest and most noted creatures in mythology, with many variations of them around the world. Although the most famous version is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, many variants have come before and after telling of the same legend with their own added ideas and modifications to relate to their cultures. Today, there is a multitude of literary and film works that convey and resurface peoples’ fear of vampires. As gothic works like Dracula, by Bram Stoker and Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire directed by Scott Jeralds share certain traits reflective of the genre; These factors include setting, actions of each vampire, the initial reactions to news of them, and how their presence affects the people who live within the region the vampires inhabit.
Mina Murray was engaged to Jonathan Harker and when Dracula kept him prisoner, the Count wrote letters to Harker’s boss and pretended to be Jonathan and to inform his boss and his fiancé that things were going good with his business trip. The Count was giving Mina and Jonathan’s boss false hope and keeping Harker prisoner at his castle. Dracula would even dress up in Harker’s clothes and mail the letters so it would not arise any suspicion. The Count seemed to only focus on turning women into vampires and he used the men to lure the women into his trap. Therefore, that is why he was keeping Jonathan alive. Everything Dracula did was made with lots of forethought. Such as when Lucy a young woman who also was a friend of Mina was mysteriously getting ill and sleep-walking during the night no one knew what was happening to Lucy because she would get sicker after they discovered she was sleepwalking. Lucy was sleep walking because she had gotten bite by Dracula and every night he called to her so he could feed off her again. He also made sure she was alone and waited a few days before attempting to suck her blood again. Although, Dracula was a smart man in his cunning actions he could not hide the fact that something evil was
it horrifies us and reinforces our sense of boundaries and normalcy” (Halberstam 13). Assuming that Bram Stoker’s Dracula sets the archetype of the vampire, it is clear that modern vampires have demonstrated a decrease in the Gothic horror despite similarities in the Gothic imagery and themes, and such a shift is attributed to a changing value of the limit within society and postmodernism. The Count is the benchmark of the vampire archetype as the monstrous Other that “announces itself as the place of corruption” (Anolik and Howard 1). Dracula is associated with disruption and transgression of accepted limits—a monstrosity of great evil that serves to guarantee the existence of good (Punter and Byron 231).
The author’s op-ed piece was published in 2009, the very peak of the vampire contagion, where one could find these creatures wherever they looked. This pandemonium that arose from vampires is what drove del Toro and Hogan to pen “Why Vampires Never Die.” Furthermore, the purpose behind this essay is to give an abridged description of the past of vampires for the people who had become fanatics of the creatures. Also, this essay showed how vampires have persisted in pop culture. They suggest that vampires have been remade by diverse cultures at different times, and this change echoes that society's angst and concerns. The novelist’s imply that Stroker’s Dracula may mirror an exaggerated human on a prim...