The Victorian vampire, and specifically Dracula, is a frightening creature. He is completely mysterious, as well as corrupt with evil. He feeds on living people, even children, sentencing them to untimely deaths for his benefit. Only some minute presence of God can deter him. In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula represents all manifestations of the devil. As the devil would, Dracula coerces young women into performing ungodly acts; he turns them into one of his own through mysterious forces, or meets them face-to-face and attempts to pervert them. Sexuality plays a strong role in the novel in that way; Dracula’s ability to change good-natured women is a large part of what gives him his evil nature.
In his article, Dracula: Vampires, Perversity, and Victorian Anxieties, Greg Buzwell describes the vampire as, “a strangely alluring representation of nocturnal glamour, and potent sexuality.” As explained in the article, Dracula imposes not only a physical threat of the women in the novel, but also poses a predatory threat on any land he chooses. As Dracula turns his victims, he lets loose a sort of virus, or foreign threat of any kind.
In addition, Buzwell says in his article that, “During the course of the book Dracula attacks both Mina and Lucy; but Mina, due to the traditional Victorian qualities of determination and loyalty towards her husband is able to resist his advances. The rather more free-spirited Lucy is not so lucky.” Here, he describes that Dracula’s evil advances are a metaphor for the realistic temptation that the women face in the book, not unlike the temptation that the devil would ensue. But that because Mina maintains her good values, she does not end up like Lucy. Here, the reader can see that Dracula imposes a metaphor for the morals a Victorian woman should follow, or succumb to, at her own risk.