Women in Dracula

Stoker, Bronte and Keats use women as a literary device to create fear, creating female characters who transgress 19^th century society. Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra are examples of the idealised Victorian female to the improper, sexualised female. Even before Lucy becomes part of the ‘undead’, she is scandalous when proposed to three times, claiming ‘Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?’. As an undead vampire, Dr. Seward describes how her ‘sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness’. Lucy as a living human being as to when she becomes a vampire are somewhat alienated in Dr. Seward’s description. She is not just described as being a ‘devil’ when she is a vampire but she is also ‘changed’ physically – her sweet and pure attraction is lost, to be replaced by a malevolent, sexualised character that repulses and yet entices the men in the book. It is important to note however that Lucy is the more vulnerable, weak character, who although is ‘sweet’ still defies the stereotypical Victorian woman, she is victimised by Dracula. Mina Harker on the other hand, who is ‘a woman’ is the one who helps to finally track down and defeat Dracula. Van Helsing even describes her as having a ‘man’s brain’ with a ‘woman’s heart’. Even when she is forced to drink Dracula’s blood she declares herself as ‘unclean!...my polluted flesh!’ she still returns to her natural, ‘pure’ and maternal state at the end of the novel ‘the curse has passed away!’. Maurice Hindle describes the fear of the characters and to some extent the Victorian reader as ‘the dread is that they themselves will be turned into bloodthirsty vampires’. Stoker presents these two contrasting female characters to symbolise the good and evil and the consequences of moral corruption. Where Lucy is the sexualised, ‘new woman’ she is punished by becoming the victim of Dracula and part of the undead. Mina on the other hand, who represents the Victorian ideal is rewarded, by defeating Dracula and living ‘happily ever after’.