Mina Harker

The Victorian Era was a period during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), where England had an outreach across the world through the use of colonialization and their development of science and technology. Darwin’s evolutionary theory of humans coming from ancestors of apes caused huge uproar, which got people thinking about god and religion. Also, due to the new found industrial revolution causing a rapid growth of factories, mills, industries and the ever growing middle class caused people…

it. Mina and Lucy are very significant to the novel as they are the only female characters, and they are both given very different characteristics, Mina is the ideal Victorian woman, and Lucy is a rebel to society, which leads her to fall under Dracula’s spell. Bram Stoker makes it very clear that the two represent Victorian women, though what makes Mina the ideal one? Firstly, Stroker uses Mina to exemplify his idea of the perfect Victorian woman. In the novel, Van Helsing describes Mina, “She…

Dracula is a fictional character based on vampirism in the European Victorian Era written by Abraham Bram Stoker in May of 1897. Dracula was a made up creature of Bram’s imagination from his research of folktale and mythology. His inspiration and research led him to the creation of the now famous stories of Dracula and all Gothic vampire horror stories. In this essay you will discover the similarities and differences in religion and British Literature. Religion plays a large role in this novel…

Lucy’s sickness brought many to her, none of whom could find the reason for it. At the cause of modernity, those around her could not fathom a creature, such as Dracula, would exist, let alone be the cause of her problems. Through her death, she, in turn, brings the death of Dracula and demolishes the ways of modernity of those around her. With the weakening of Lucy, Dr. Seward comes to tend to her and with his knowledge finds no causes for her illness. Van Helsing then comes to England to…

he fails in transforming Mina Harker, the heroine. This is because “the world seems full of good men—even if there are monsters in it” (Stoker 209). Mina’s character is the epitome of what the New Woman is. For example, she is intelligent and hard working, accepting the technological advances and utilizing them to aid in tracking down Dracula. However, with this in mind, Mina is still the obeying and supporting wife to Jonathan. Though she embodies some of its traits, Mina mocks the New Woman…

anything for the ones they love, but to what extent does that dedication reach? In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jonathan Harker goes to Transylvania to work for Count Dracula at his castle. He realizes that there is something off about the Count, and eventually finds out that Dracula is of the undead, a vampire. Jonathan eventually escapes the castle to be with his friends and fiance, Mina. Mina’s best friend, Lucy Westenra falls ill, and eventually dies because she was bitten by Count Dracula. She is…

In Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, we see the New Woman first being introduced to the reader by the three women that Jonathan Harken encounters in Count Dracula’s castle. Mina and Lucy are a representation of the good, traditional Victorian women in comparison to those three women. In her article "Bram Stoker 's Dracula and Late-Victorian Advertising Tactics: Earnest Men, Virtuous Ladies, and Porn", Tanya Pikula argues that “Dracula not only functions as a ‘kind of ‘test-bed’ for competing arguments…

of the Israelites, Abraham Van Helsing is the self-established leader of the vampire hunters, and he provides the others with moral inspiration to defeat the vampiric reign of terror. By the end of the novel, the other characters, such as Mina and Jonathan Harker, have come to incorporate aspects of Catholicism into their own lives, if not have symbolically converted. For example, the…

story, Lucy appears to be, at least for the time period, an immoral woman. Her encounters with Dracula are sensual, and suggest the occurrence of sexual taboos, such as sex outside marriage, sex with someone who is not your partner, and so forth. When Mina asks Lucy if she recalls any details of the night of her rendezvous with Dracula, Lucy states: “Then I had a vague memory of something long and dark with red eyes, just as we saw in the sunset, and something very sweet and very bitter all…

During this time period, purity, innocence, loyalty, and intelligence were all considered to be desirable qualities of a woman. This is why Mina Harker, who is the embodiment of these ideals, is described as a desirable wife. This was also a period during which a new kind of woman, who was more intelligent and independent, began to emerge. Mina Harker reflects these new ideals through her intelligence, job, and skill regarding modern technology. Unchaste and sexually-forward women were viewed…