{"id":386,"date":"2016-04-08T09:18:55","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T13:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=386"},"modified":"2016-04-08T09:18:55","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T13:18:55","slug":"lucy-the-ideal-victorian-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2016\/04\/08\/lucy-the-ideal-victorian-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucy: The Ideal Victorian Woman?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bram Stoker&#039;s Dracula (4\/8) Movie CLIP - Lucy the Vampyr (1992) HD\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8rlohOLUi9k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>OK&#8230; Remember that scene where Lucy gets a stake driven through her heart? Let&#8217;s talk about that. (By the way, the video above is from the 1992 film adaptation of <em>Dracula<\/em> &#8211; viewer discretion is advised.)<\/p>\n<p>As I discussed in my last blog post, Mina Harker is considered\u00a0pure and chaste (an ideal woman, according to the Victorian definition), while the three &#8220;sisters&#8221; of Dracula are considered evil, and highly sexual monsters. However, one more prevalent female exists: Lucy. She possesses both features, so I am just going to say that she fits somewhere in between all of the madness.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at the scene of Lucy&#8217;s final death (which is, indeed, very sexual). &#8220;The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam&#8221; (Stoker, p. 231). If one reads this in a particular way, it becomes clear that this is so much more than a bloody death&#8230;. It is sexual pleasure (an orgasm). However, amidst all of the pleasure, &#8220;Arthur [never] falters&#8221; (Stoker, p. 231). Rather, he resembles Thor in that he drives a <em>stake<\/em>\u00a0through Lucy&#8217;s heart<em>\u00a0<\/em>(could be read as a penis), never faltering. It almost seems as though Holmwood is trying to retrieve his breath after a sexual act. In general, this is an important instance in the novel because it shows that this is what happens when one falls victim to a vampire&#8217;s seduction &#8211; to sex. After she is killed, she is finally able to return to her state of purity.<\/p>\n<p>I could be completely wrong, but I&#8217;m just going to make a claim about the function of sexuality in <em>Dracula<\/em>.\u00a0Bram Stoker intertwines sexuality (continuously) throughout his novel <strong>because he wants to remind readers of the problems that sexuality causes<\/strong>. In other words, he wants to awaken their anxieties &#8211; introduce a world where\u00a0women can overtly appear sexual and lustful &#8211; only to make them realize that a world where sexuality is prevalent is a world doomed to evil and destruction (as seen throughout <em>Dracula<\/em>). In other words, sex is being equated with evil. In this scene with Lucy, the language is so sexually-charged because Stoker wants readers to understand that in Victorian society, if a woman\u00a0falls victim to sexual seduction, she will become a monster until the moment of her death.<\/p>\n<p>In summarization, Stoker utilizes\u00a0conventional gender and sexual norms in his novel (Lucy is pure), only to disrupt them (Lucy becomes a sex-crazed, blood-sucking vampire), and then return them to their previous state (dead, but nonetheless innocent). Throughout everything, the anxieties of Victorian society are awakened because people are able to see this &#8220;side&#8221; of women. So, in order to evade the life of Lucy, women must continue to follow a life of chastity and elegance.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK&#8230; Remember that scene where Lucy gets a stake driven through her heart? Let&#8217;s talk about that. (By the way, the video above is from the 1992 film adaptation of Dracula &#8211; viewer discretion is advised.) As I discussed in my last blog post, Mina Harker is considered\u00a0pure and chaste (an ideal woman, according to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2016\/04\/08\/lucy-the-ideal-victorian-woman\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lucy: The Ideal Victorian Woman?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2975,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","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\/2975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}