The passage I picked out was on page 394 when Van Helsing comes across Dracula\u2019s iconic three women. It starts by saying \u201cshe was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful [\u2026] made my head whirl with new emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n
This passage illustrates the presence of sexuality and power. In particular, the power men hold in society versus that of women. As shown in the passage when Helsing says \u201cshe was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful [\u2026]\u201d (394), just shows that it seems as though women hold no power except in their beauty and are free to sexualized. Not only this, Van Helsing almost justifies his behavior towards these women as being \u201cthe very instinct of man in me\u201d (394). Helsing is saying that he\u2019s allowed to feel these things because of her beauty and his manly instincts.<\/p>\n
This instinct of man seems to be present throughout the entirety of the novel. In Dracula, men seem to be unable to control themselves around women. Van Helsing is portrayed as a character who is on a mission. There doesn\u2019t seem to be anything stopping him from destroying vampires, even Lucy\u2019s beauty didn\u2019t get to him, but in this passage, he is unable to control himself saying that their beauty \u201ccalls some of my sex to love and to protect\u201d (394), furthering the emphasis that when women are beautiful is when they become important in society and are \u201clovable\u201d by men.<\/p>\n
This passage could also be about what role women are destined to play in society and how standards of beauty play a role in women\u2019s power, which unfortunately still is present today. In the Victorian Era, as echoed by this passage about \u201cradiant beauty\u201d (394), it is obvious that women only seem important when they are beautiful. This is also seen in Lady Audley\u2019s Secret, because Lady Audley is beautiful, she\u2019s able to almost \u201cbeat the system\u201d and get away with lying and marries into a rich successful family solely because she is beautiful. Additionally, Jonathan has a moment with these same ladies when he is also unable to control himself because of their beauty even though he knows the danger (46). These examples further exemplify the fact that if women are beautiful, they\u2019re able to accomplish more and hold more power because men, as shown in these two novels, only seem to regard women for their beauty rather than who they are as a person and what they can do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The passage I picked out was on page 394 when Van Helsing comes across Dracula\u2019s iconic three women. It starts by saying \u201cshe was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful [\u2026] made my head whirl with new emotion.\u201d This passage illustrates the presence of sexuality and power. In particular, the power men hold … Continue reading The Patriarchy Strikes Again<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}