Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray are two of my favorite characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in part due to how they illuminate the text’s perspective on female sexuality. Vampirism, in Dracula, is metaphorically linked to a number of socially frightening images, from ethnic stereotypes to a growing fascination with blood-sucking creatures. Sexuality is another such frightening image, and there is a notable contrast between how human women and vampiric women act. Dracula vampires, in general, are creatures of overt sexuality and lust. Dracula himself reflects the vampire tropes of Bram Stoker’s time, including the pervasive fears of foreigners preying on local women; Dracula has multiple female vampires at his estate that he has turned undead and kidnapped.
As for how the women act after becoming vampires, their desire to feed bears strong resemblances to sexual desire. When Jonathan Harker encounters them while staying at Dracula’s estate, it is because of his failure to follow the Count’s warning to only sleep in his designated room. By failing to heed this warning, Jonathan opens himself to the insatiable lust of these women, an attribute so strong that they might find him anywhere in the estate to indulge themselves. They are described with starkly white teeth and unnaturally red, “voluptuous” lips, and Jonathan describes himself as feeling not only fear, but “ecstasy” at the touch of the women (Chapter 3). The women’s “voluptuousness” is a clear reference to their sexuality, but it is not the attractiveness of these women that is seen as frightening, is it that Jonathan describes their sensuality as “deliberate” (Chapter 3)—in other words, purposefully acting untoward and improper. In addition, the women awaken these sexual feelings in him unwillingly, something uncharacteristic of an ideal gentleman. In combination with their violent feeding habits, the sexuality of vampiric women is part of what makes them monstrous, as they represent unwanted parts of 1890’s society.
The stark differences between human women and vampire women are seen most plainly through Lucy. In her letters, she is innocent and polite enough that the men of Dracula are tripping over themselves courting her. She is comfortable in her attractiveness, and teases about it—she jokes with Mina about her indecision between suitors by saying, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men”—but never blatantly inappropriate. Even this comment causes her to take back her words, noting them as “heresy” (Chapter 5). But when Lucy is turned to a vampire (spoilers!), she is purposefully using her allure. In fact, she has a bottomless sexual appetite, and is said to pose a threat not only to human lives, but in diminishing the self-control of men (Chapter 16).
However, vampirism is not a surefire path to a woman’s sexual corruption. Rather, vampirism represents (for women) the threat of becoming unclean or impure, something that has the potential to cause their inhibitions to vanish. Mina Murray, for example, is never fully vampiric, and is returned to humanity at the end of Dracula. Throughout the novel, she has remained even “purer” than Lucy. She is the ideal Victorian woman: she never expresses any sexual thought, need, or suggestion, not even in the privacy of letters. Additionally, she has a strong desire to be of use to her husband, Jonathan. Despite her intense sympathy and kindness (she mentions the progressive “New Women” of England, and demonstrates an understanding of them), she is also dutiful, and remains a conservative housewife. Because of this dramatic escape from vampirism at the end of the novel, the binary of vampiric women is not entirely strict. Women such as Mina, who are paragons of Victorian womanhood, have the capability to resist this fate. Additionally, women in the novel are seen as important for upholding the morality of society, allowing vampires to represent multiple “evils.” Dracula is attempting to access and turn the men of England through the women he targets, painting Mina as an important figure not just in containing her sexual impulses, but in her empathy, her intelligence, and other positive qualities.
Additionally, the text’s perspective on male sexuality complicates the notion that only female vampires are sexually ravenous creatures. Men, too, are seen to fall prey to impurity, as demonstrated by Dracula’s plan to tempt them, and Jonathan’s attraction to the three vampires at the Count’s estate.
Works Cited:
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1897.