Gender In Dracula

In all the vampire lore that we have read two major factors determine a characters worth: the publishing date of the piece and gender. Gender plays an immensely important role, especially when women become involved. In early tales of the vampire women did struggle a little, but had more utility than women in later stories. These four stories exemplify this transition: Lilith, Philostratus, Christabel, and Varney the Vampire. The female gender in vampire lore, when compared to their male counterparts, loses all strength and utility.
Lilith, mother of all demons and advocate for gender equality (at least in the bedroom), retains an inordinate amount of power, only when one compare her to Adam she appears spiteful and powerless. When first introduced …show more content…
This girl uses her glamour and thrall to entice young Menippus, thus implying that she does not hold the strength or ability to attack him at night like every other male villain. Male villains, like Varney, Nosferatu, Ruthven, etc., don’t need masks and allusions in attacking their victims. They only need to drink their victim’s blood at night. Plus, she only seems to have one victim, Menippus. For villains like Peter Plogojowitz, he needed to kill many more people before the town began to think that there may be a vampire afoot. Even then, they’re still skeptical. With this woman, it takes one look from Apollonius to confirm her supernatural presence. We only see this one other time, in Varney. Even then, the characters have a portrait of a deceased ancestor who coincidently looks like Varney. To confirm a male supernatural creature one needs proof, but with a female supernatural creature people don’t need any proof. Finally, this women’s death contains no stake through the heart, no beheading, no fire, and no ashes in a body of water. Instead, Apollonius kills her with his accusation of her existence as a vampire. One simple speech has enough power to kill her. In every other story that we have read huge laundry list of things that people have to do to rid the world of the vampire. For instance, in Peter Plogojowitz the town must complete everything that Apollonius does not do, as stated above. This story takes away …show more content…
Immediately, Flora, the leading lady, gets labeled as a damsel in distress who can't protect herself. Multiple times in the tale Flora almost becomes a heroine. At the last second Flora always manages to fall back into danger that the men of the house have to save her from. The men all use Flora as a prop to react to the vampire attack. This denies Flora of any character development and centers the plot on how the men deal with the attack. Flora actually endures attacked, but Rymer denies readers the chance to discover how the experience affected Flora due to her gender. Plus, Flora put together the early vampire lore and her own experiences before any of the men considers a vampire attack as the plausible event. Flora assumes correctly. Unfortunately, when she brings her concerns to Henry he brushes them off as crazy rambling. Flora also surprises Henry when she brings this up since he never considered that she had read the vampire book that Marchdale brought for all three Bannerworth children. Henry would believe a vampire attacked Flora if George or Charles suggested such a thing. Similarly to Flora, the other female characters receive even worse characterizations. The Bannerworth’s mother supplies no support or detail plot. She only faints. The Bannerworth’s father offers important plot details and he died before the vampire. Even the female help fails to provide important plot support. One can only