{"id":275,"date":"2016-03-12T03:09:01","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T03:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=275"},"modified":"2018-09-02T22:05:55","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T22:05:55","slug":"fears-of-female-intellect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2016\/03\/12\/fears-of-female-intellect\/","title":{"rendered":"Fears of Female Intellect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAh, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has a man\u2019s brain– a brain that a man should have were he much gifted– and woman\u2019s heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination\u201d (Stoker 250).<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Van Helsing\u2019s praises Mina\u2019s \u201cman brain\u201d after Dr. Seward informs him about Mina\u2019s role in preparing the individual diaries. Although Van Helsing\u2019s praise registers acknowledgement and appreciation for Mina\u2019s role in compiling information about Dracula, it also betrays anxiety about her intellectual capacities. Considering Van Helsing\u2019s praise of Mina\u2019s \u201cman brain\u201d in the context of the debate surrounding the \u201cWoman Question\u201d in the Victorian era illuminates Van Helsing\u2019s underlying anxiety about female intelligence. Van Helsing attempts to alleviate this anxiety by masculinizing Mina\u2019s intelligence and by emphasizing her feminine characteristics.<\/p>\n

The much-debated \u201cWoman Question\u201d was concerned with trying to determine women\u2019s proper place in society, and in the Victorian era, women were considered to be the \u201cweaker sex\u201d in almost every context, including the literary and medical establishments (1061). Although the number of women writers increased drastically during the Victorian era, and women writers were acknowledged for their achievements, women\u2019s writing was also considered to be a type of \u201cbrain-work\u201d that \u201cunfitted women for motherhood\u201d (1061). Although Van Helsing is complimenting Mina\u2019s skill in compiling factual information in the quotation above, both Mina\u2019s skill at typing and organizing the information in the diaries and the profession of women\u2019s writing can be considered as a display of female intellect that provoked anxiety about the effect of \u201cbrain-work\u201d on women.<\/span><\/p>\n

Van Helsing both disguises and attempts to alleviate his unease at Mina\u2019s intellect by masculinizing her intelligence. By stating that Mina has the brain of a particularly gifted man, Van Helsing implies that Mina\u2019s intellect is inherently masculine. This particular way of describing Mina\u2019s intelligence also suggests that she herself is not intelligent, but is merely borrowing the trait of masculine intellect. Van Helsing\u2019s qualification that Mina has \u201ca brain that a man should have were he much gifted\u201d also suggests that Mina is appropriating a man\u2019s rightful intelligence. By describing Mina\u2019s intelligence as a masculine feature, Van Helsing implies that Mina\u2019s intellect is unnatural and does not rightly belong to her. His technique of separating Mina from her intelligence allows Van Helsing to both suggest that intelligence in a woman is unnatural and to alleviate that anxiety by separating the woman from her brain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Van Helsing further alleviates his anxiety about Mina\u2019s intelligence by emphasizing her feminine characteristics, which allows him to categorize her within the confines of a Victorian understanding of femininity. According to Victorian standards, \u201cThe ideal Victorian woman was supposed to be domestic and pure, selflessly motivated by the desire to serve others rather than fulfill her own needs\u201d (1061). Van Helsing\u2019s remark that Mina possesses a \u201cwoman\u2019s heart\u201d is meant to stand in for all of the attributes of the Victorian ideal of femininity. While Mina \u201cman\u2019s brain\u201d is not fully her own because it is inherently masculine, her \u201cwoman\u2019s heart\u201d truly belongs to her as it is an aspect of femininity. By referencing Mina\u2019s \u201cwoman\u2019s heart,\u201d Van Helsing reassures himself that Mina is indeed truly feminine. His comment that the \u201cgood God fashioned her for a purpose\u201d further establishes that Mina is, in fact, an ideal Victorian woman. The statement implies that Mina exists not as a woman in her own right, but for some higher, perhaps patriarchal, design, and also allows Van Helsing to consider Mina\u2019s intelligence not as an unnatural attribute but part of some divine plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading Van Helsing\u2019s praise of Mina\u2019s efforts to compile the information about Dracula in the context of the Victorian debate about the \u201cWoman Question\u201d reveals an underlying anxiety about female intelligence. Van Helsing\u2019s description of Mina\u2019s intelligence as a \u201cman brain\u201d suggests both that he views her intellectual abilities as at odds with her gender and that he wishes to separate her intelligence from her gender by masculinizing it. In order to retain Mina within the bounds of femininity, Van Helsing takes the additional measures of emphasizing Mina\u2019s femininity by drawing attention to her \u201cwoman\u2019s heart\u201d and by suggesting that Mina\u2019s oddly masculine intelligence is perhaps not unnatural, but part of some divine plan. The variety of measures that Van Helsing employs to normalize Mina\u2019s intelligence is indicative of the widespread anxiety about women\u2019s intelligence and place in society that pervaded British society at the end of the 19th century. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAh, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has a man\u2019s brain– a brain that a man should have were he much gifted– and woman\u2019s heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination\u201d (Stoker 250). Dr. Van Helsing\u2019s praises Mina\u2019s \u201cman brain\u201d after Dr. Seward informs him … Continue reading Fears of Female Intellect<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3012,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3012"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}