Roles Of Women In Dracula Essay

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, set in the late nineteenth century, follows Jonathan Harker and the rest of his group as they hunt down Dracula to rid the earth of evil. Under all the action that takes place lies a window to which the Victorian society they are in displays patriarchal rule, sexism, and repressed female sexuality. This is seen in all the women involved, their culture, and the use of vampires in the novel.

The two main female characters in Dracula, Mina and Lucy, show the standards set by men for women during the time. These two characters also serve as foils for each other, which further highlights the patriarchal standards in the Victorian society, and how women are evolving during the time as well. Lucy is described as an innocent

young woman with blonde hair, pale skin, and a beautiful face. She is sweet, obedient and has everyone falling in love with her, as seen in the novel when Arthur Holmwood, Quincey Morris, and John Sewer propose to her on the same day. She is what most women are and should strive to be in the nineteenth century. Mina, on the other hand, is angelic, maternal and intelligent. As a school teacher, she relies on herself for income, and keeps up with Jonathan and his studies. In Dracula, she remarks that “I believe we should have shocked the ‘New Woman’ with our appetites” (90). It is also said that “She has man's brain - a brain that a man should have were he much gifted - and woman's heart” (302), signifying that women weren’t supposed to be intelligent. She can be seen as the New Woman in the novel, and the turning point of women in the Victorian society. Mina, as a leader of a new era of women, is silenced by the end of the novel. After being bitten and saved, she becomes just like Lucy- a stereotypical role model for the Victorian woman. She becomes a mother, stays Jonathan’s wife and succeeds only when servicing the men in her life. This ending for Mina shows how strong the patriarchal reign of that time was, and how men during the time wanted their women to be.
In addition to the juxtaposition of Lucy and Mina, the three ghost-like women who surround Jonathan in the beginning of the novel can also be used as a foil to them too.

The three women symbolize what women in the nineteenth century should not be- voluptuous and sexually expressive. In comparison, Lucy and Mina were saints and ideals to society and the three women were unacceptable and a horror to society. They could be seen as examples of the New Women. “Their aggressive behavior and attempt to reverse traditional sexual roles show them to be New Women” (Senf, 40). These women not only threaten the ideals of Victorian women, but the dominance of males in that time as well. These women threatened the aggression and power men held as they dominated Jonathan in the novel. They were the ones in control and with all the reasoning, which was what the men were supposed to have, not the women. For this reason, the vampires in the novel- specifically the women who were turned into vampires- had to be destroyed. For example, Lucy became the threat that the men were afraid of and was killed. She became sexually aggressive and independent of men. She had lost all the upheld values and morals of society, which was seen by the men when she started to capture children and drink their blood. She leaned toward the values of New Women, rather than the Victorian woman. The men had to kill her, and as they read from the Bible they stabbed her with a stake, which ended the New Woman and restored the patriarchal

supremacy.
Throughout Dracula, women are established to be beautiful, obedient, and sexually repressed. They were supposed to rely on the men for everything, giving them the intelligence, control and reasoning the women weren’t supposed to have. They were sexually repressed and limited by the patriarchal reign over them during the late nineteenth century, and any attempt to challenge the men or the culture that they were in resulted in death or reverting back to the Victorian stereotype for women. This is seen with all the ladies in the novel, like Lucy, Mina, and the three ghost-like vampires.