“A brave man’s blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble” (page 138). This quote, coming from the famous novel Dracula, captures the message Bram Stoker creates in the novel about the roles of men and women. In the story, solicitor and nobleman Jonathan Harker is invited to Castle Dracula to finish a real estate transaction. He quickly becomes unsettled during his travels due to warnings, crucifixes, and charms given to him by local peasants. Yet, the mission continues, and he goes on through the many disconcerting obstacles to reach the residence, only to realize a few days later that he is now a prisoner of the castle. Simultaneously, his fiance, Mina Murray’s, friend Lucy becomes a victim of Dracula., and doctors Seward
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She makes it clear multiple times, to several people, that she is a proponent for the “New Women” in England and the points in which they stand for. Some parts of her character even show her to be participating in the newly emerging feminist movement. It was fairly unusual for her to be partaking in her gentleman’s studies, as well as for her to be teaching herself shorthand. It is also peculiar that she is financially stable without Harker, and supports herself with a full time job. However, the author did not designate Mina as a representation of these strong females. He instead wrote her to have several facets that were standard for the women of the time period. Mina being a very maternal figure, who eulogizes the men for being powerful and for their accomplishments, as well as her fervent devotion to religion, all goes to show that this leading lady, is not meant to be so much of a leader after all. But rather, a quiet, temperament, gentle woman who stays back and encourages the males in the story. These two competing components of Mina’s personality delineate the conflicting viewpoints and attitudes of many woman at the dawn of the women’s liberation campaign at the time that the novel Dracula was written, all while proving that even the most prime epitomes of a stereotypical girl’s innocence and purity can break the boundaries they are so often enclosed
She makes it clear multiple times, to several people, that she is a proponent for the “New Women” in England and the points in which they stand for. Some parts of her character even show her to be participating in the newly emerging feminist movement. It was fairly unusual for her to be partaking in her gentleman’s studies, as well as for her to be teaching herself shorthand. It is also peculiar that she is financially stable without Harker, and supports herself with a full time job. However, the author did not designate Mina as a representation of these strong females. He instead wrote her to have several facets that were standard for the women of the time period. Mina being a very maternal figure, who eulogizes the men for being powerful and for their accomplishments, as well as her fervent devotion to religion, all goes to show that this leading lady, is not meant to be so much of a leader after all. But rather, a quiet, temperament, gentle woman who stays back and encourages the males in the story. These two competing components of Mina’s personality delineate the conflicting viewpoints and attitudes of many woman at the dawn of the women’s liberation campaign at the time that the novel Dracula was written, all while proving that even the most prime epitomes of a stereotypical girl’s innocence and purity can break the boundaries they are so often enclosed