Women And Femininty In Dracula

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This book I think shows a very c lear and obvious theme of femininty throughout the novel. It

shows women as innocent, quiete, and having high morals. Then they are sucked into the evil that is

Dracula. The women are shown as whores to us the readers, and they even have a parallel to the Siren

creatures - especialy Dracula's brides. They lure in men, and use their sexuality to do what they want with them.

They are described as having very thick and juicy lips and Harker even gets sexually turned on by this.

Van Helsing and even Dracula are presented to us the readers as intelligent. They can be good or bad,

but they are not judged upon harshly like the women. The women through the book go through a very

sad transformation for the worse, from being ladies of purtity to being a whore.There's not a lot of

women in Dracula, but Stroker puts them in several types of specific ways.

I believe that Stoker puts the very few women of Dracula in the Madonna and Whore situation. Mina,

who is a shy and soft spoken type of girl. She spends days and nights waiting to hear what's happening

with her love Jonathon. The fact that Mina is so pure, it's supposed to be the total opposite to what

Dracula bride's said at the beginning of the book, who try ruin Harkers plan of saving himself for

marriage. The word “whore” is used to describe the women that suck the blood and that are plain evil.

Women like this are usually called Sirens, like those out at sea, trying to trick men into seducing them

so they can do evil acts with them.

Mina in the novel “Dracula”, is considered to be the ideal symbol of femininity in “Dracula”.

She submits to her husband in the same way that Dracula's brides and Lucy's three admirer...

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...d just submit to him. She even starts to suck the blood of kids, who in normal situations she
Page 4 would've protected. This shows us, the reader, how powerful Dracula is and how much he can control

women to the point that he top their maternal instincts. Dracula tell us that the ideal women is someone

that is pure, kind, loving, protective and of high morality. This story also tells us the the type of woman

who is controlled, manipulated, abused, and suffers her loss of innocence and purity. The biggest of all

is falling from God's grace. Femininity in this book is very simple and to the point. You're either on

the good side, which is being pure, good, virtuous, and maternal – or those who have joined the evil

side and have become women of sexual promiscuity, to use men through sexual ways and to go

through life without the grace of God himself.

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