While references to conjugal relations between Jonathan and Mina are absent from the novel there are allusions to the act in Mina’s sharing of bloody bodily fluids and form of marriage ceremony enacted in Dracula’s declaration that she is “flesh of my flesh,; blood of my blood; kin of my kin” (261). In the marks they both bear on their foreheads and the sins they enact there is an uncanny doubling. Mina’s feminising protection of Jonathan mirrors Dracula’s claim that “This man belongs to me” (35) furthers their connection but it is her recognition that she is tainted and “Unclean!” (270) that ensures salvation. Mina, unlike Lucy, does not develop the voluptuous traits of the female vampire, nor does she give voice to sexual desire, this enables her to retain her purity.…
Notice that you seldom hear of any sexual acts from her. With that in mind, lets recall the scene where she is forced to suck the blood of Dracula and vice versa. I believe this scene was to show the evils of not staying in traditional gender roles. Note the passage located in chapter 21, where it says “forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man's bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress.…
The statement that Mina is forced to suck Dracula’s blood could be metaphorical for forced oral sex, and as he restrains her while she tries to resist, exhibits the male sexual dominance of the time period. Also, Mina’s white clothing could signify her purity or virginity, which is stained (in this case with blood). Furthermore, Mina repeatedly labels and feels ashamed of herself, exclaiming to Jonathan, “Unclean, unclean! I must touch [you] or kiss [you] no more” (Stoker 284). This reaction reflects the social norms of this time period, as Mina considers herself impure after her encounter with Dracula.…
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…
The three vampire sisters are the least of all the known characters but they play a significant role in the fight against foreign intrusion. Much debate has gone on about how the three sisters relate to Dracula, mainly the debate has fallen under two categories. One being they are the brides of the vampire or the most likely choice that they are his offspring. If true that indeed they possess the genes from Dracula than their killings was very important. Evidence comes in when Harker in his sexual trance he describes that all have "the same nose as him."…
Dracula and Wuthering Heights: Did They Conform? Both the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Dracula by Bram Stoker conform to the societal norms of their time but not in a direct way. The characters in Wuthering Heights like Catherine for example, do make decisions like marrying Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff which is a reasonable decision as she wants to keep her status and be rich. The characters in Dracula, especially the females, conform to society as they do not meddle in other people’s business and the men go out to work.…
Although Lucy has some of the characteristics of this woman she falls short in comparison to Mina who excels them. I would like to argue that although Lucy is the one that Count Dracula fully converts into a vampire, Mina is the one that has all the characteristics of the New Woman. Although Mina posses these characteristics she struggles between being the traditional woman who is who she is tell to be while she is trying to break from this and be the New Woman. They need to fear Mina because she is the one in a way disrupting the norms of society. She is acting like an independent woman who does not need a man to be her hero like Lucy did.…
A Catholic man, Van Helsing personally views Count Dracula as not only a threat to western Europe, but as a threat to his religion and what he views as morally right. Even the Count’s act of drinking blood perverses the Christian ritual of communion; moreover, his appearance rivals that of Satan with flaming red eyes and fanged teeth. As such, Van Helsing becomes determined to rid the world of Dracula’s influence by enlisting the help of the others, and by establishing himself as the figurehead of the group due in part to his superior knowledge, Van Helsing encaptures their devotion to the cause. As his namesake, Abraham, was the patriarch 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.…
and they begin kissing passionately, confessing their love to each other. Dracula then begins to very erotically kiss Mina’s body in a region outside of the cameras angle, which is assumed to be her sexual area because she begins biting her lip, arching her back, rolling her eyes and displaying many other clues to the sexual ecstasy she is…
There is a thin line between normal and abnormal. Normality is completely relative to the society in which one exists. Each culture has its own definition of average and each person is expected to live up to that definition. When someone does not meet that expectation, they are often ostracized from the group and labeled an outcast, or even a monster. Although the “monster” itself faces many struggles throughout life, the family of the “monster” is often left conflicted between fitting in with society and supporting their loved one.…
Vampires have changed over the years and the depictions of vampires through the years give us an idea about the anxieties of that time period, the way the people viewed the pressing issues of that time period. I am going to discuss the similarities and the differences between Bram stoker’s Dracula and the film Nosferatu. Dracula was portrayed as a tall old man with a white moustache who appeared to be a human and he had a charm about him normally associated with aristocrats whereas in the film Nosferatu, Count Orlok’s appearance is nightmarish and closer to that of a monster than of a human. He is shown to have misshapen eyebrows, huge pointed ears, long claws which are sharp for nails, walks around in an abnormal way and does not have any of the charm of Dracula. While Count Dracula has shape shifting abilities where he can transform into a wolf, dog and a bat, Count Orlok does not transform or change into anything.…
“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away”- Thomas Hardy. Dracula, by Bram Stoker was written during the late nineteenth century, and is classified as a horror film. Further analysis however, has brought to light the buried symbols and themes of sexuality that the novel holds within 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?…
The tension between the past and present is one of the key central tropes that is continually addressed in the novels ‘Dracula’, written by Bram Stoker, and ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’, written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. While gothic novels such as ‘Dracula’ and sensation fiction based on gothic tropes like ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’ are both presented in a modern society, the plot, underlying symbolism, and settings allows the past and present to persist as a central trope of the gothic. In the early stages of the gothic, the genre ultimately provided a representation for domestic fears and anxieties amongst the cultural shifts within society. The tension between the past and the present existed within gothic novels as a way of expressing concerns over modernity and the rapidly changing culture. Most importantly, the tension between the past and present consistently reappears through the plot, setting and representations of characters because of the ever-present change in society.…
Blood sucker, dead, predator: These are all words that can describe a vampire. There have been several vampire stories throughout the years. Each author takes and gives them different characteristics but they usually are universally described as a creature that was once human that somehow has returned from the dead and preys on living humans by drinking their blood to stay alive. Dr. John William Polidori, an English writer and physician, is said to have created the first written vampire story in his short story The Vampyre: A Tale.…
It was the idea that a woman could be their own person: intelligent, able to freely express themselves and not at the mercy of men. In Dracula, Stoker introduces Lucy, a flirtatious and a seemingly more sexually open woman, who corresponded more with the traits of the New Woman rather than the ideal woman at the time, as she states, "Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it". It is not surprising to the audience that the flirtatious and sexually empowered Lucy is the first to fall to the sexual corruption of Dracula. Stoker’s blatant disagreement with the concept of the ‘New Woman’ is present when Mina writes in her journal,…