{"id":962,"date":"2023-09-18T13:08:29","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T17:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=962"},"modified":"2023-09-18T13:08:29","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T17:08:29","slug":"vampire-or-siren-womens-sexuality-in-dracula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2023\/09\/18\/vampire-or-siren-womens-sexuality-in-dracula\/","title":{"rendered":"Vampire or Siren? Women’s sexuality in Dracula"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fin de Si\u00e8cle was an era filled with revolutionary change. At the heart of changing perspectives, was a shifting discourse surrounding the definition of femininity. The exploration into gender questioned ideas of good and bad, modesty and sin, the devil and God, and how all these comprised a woman\u2019s role in society. This exploratory discourse is represented in Bram Stoker\u2019s <\/span>Dracula, <\/span><\/i>through the evolutionary shift of damsel, Lucy Westenra. In a concluding passage on her vampirism, the language used to describe Lucy\u2019s metamorphosis shows the polar perspectives of female purity during the end of the Nineteenth century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lucy Westenra is first introduced to the novel as the embodiment of an angel. She is beautiful, pure, and absolutely captures the attention of all men who cross her path. Lucy is always categorized by the \u201cangelic beauty\u201d of her eyes, and on her deathbed this pure form of beauty is especially present (154). As Lucy succumbs to death her beauty grows, \u201crestoring the beauty of life\u201d back into her corpse (158). Her likeness to \u201clight\u201d and \u201cloveliness\u201d marks a sort of dedication to her purity. While Lucy is a human on earth, she is akin to such adjectives to mark her as a proper, pure woman – the ultimate form anyone could hope for. It is in the peace and serenity of death that she truly shines \u201cevery hour seemed to be enhancing her loveliness\u201d and Lucy continues to allure all her male solicitors (162). Stuck between her two forms, and the two worlds of life and death, Lucy is still viewed as pure and lovely. In the liminal space Lucy occupies before her soul is completely overtaken by the \u201cdevil\u201d she is able to shift into a transcendent pure beauty. In death, she is akin to an angel more than ever, and the men, specifically her husband Arthur, have trouble resisting her dazzling beauty (155). In life Lucy is just irresistibly beautiful and filled with natural \u201clight and loveliness\u201d (155). Because of her perceived purity, she is given grace even as sin slowly overtakes her fleeting soul.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once Lucy is fully transformed into a vampire, her beauty does not leave her but the discourse surrounding her shifts. Where she once embodied purity through her beauty, in her new form her apperance is sinful, transforming her into a sort of seductress. Lucy the vampire\u2019s sweetness has turned to \u201cadamantine heartless cruelty\u201d and her purity to \u201cvoluptuous wantonness\u201d (199). Later, the blood stains her, in turn staining her reputation and forever \u201cstain[ing] the purity of her lawn death robe\u201d (200). The\u00a0 sin has transformed her, and therefore transformed the innocence of her beauty. Lucy is no less beautiful, however the interpretation of her beauty has shifted and turned her into a ravaging seductress. Even her characteristic eyes have changed, they are now \u201cunclean and full of hell fire\u201d no longer the \u201cgentle orbs\u201d they once were (200). Although her appearance has shifted, Lucy\u2019s grip on the men in the story has not, and they are still wildly (just now sinfully) attracted to her. In a climatic moment, Lucy beckons to Arthur, drawing him into her: \u201cleave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together\u201d (200). Lucy is more direct than ever, and her call is irresistible – Arthur has to be physically restrained from her as if he is resisting a siren. As Lucy has been overcome by the devil, her beauty has turned to sin. Like the blood that stains her robes, her sexuality has now been asserted – forever staining her reputation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the course of <\/span>Dracula, <\/span><\/i>the dialogic shift in the description of Lucy\u2019s beauty tracks the expression of feminine sexuality, and the perception of it during the Fin de Si\u00e8cle. In life, Lucy\u2019s beauty is representative of an inherent purity marking her as angelic. However, when she overcomes a formal shift, her beauty transforms with her. Lucy the vampire is now seen as dirtied by the blood she craves, newly aligning her to the devil and sin. This classifies beauty as something inherent and uncontrollable, and when a woman becomes in control of it she somehow becomes dangerous – as if she was bloodthirsty. The expression of Lucy\u2019s beauty throughout <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>tracks the end of the 19th century\u2019s understanding of a woman\u2019s sexuality and, in turn, power. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fin de Si\u00e8cle was an era filled with revolutionary change. At the heart of changing perspectives, was a shifting discourse surrounding the definition of femininity. The exploration into gender questioned ideas of good and bad, modesty and sin, the devil and God, and how all these comprised a woman\u2019s role in society. This exploratory … Continue reading Vampire or Siren? Women’s sexuality in Dracula<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","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\/5328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}