{"id":398,"date":"2016-04-10T16:05:26","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T20:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=398"},"modified":"2016-04-10T16:05:26","modified_gmt":"2016-04-10T20:05:26","slug":"the-new-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2016\/04\/10\/the-new-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘New Woman’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dracula is based on typically conventional ideas regarding marriage, men and women as well as playing with the themes of ‘abnormal’ sexuality, homosexuality and ideas about the ‘New Woman’.<\/p>\n

In chapter 12 (page 172; Penguin Classics edition) Lucy is on her deathbed and so the doctors awaken Holmwood and bring him to Lucy in order to say his goodbyes. ‘Her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and the pale gums, drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than ever. In a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which were now dull and hard at once, and she said in a soft, voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from her lips: – “Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!”‘<\/p>\n

Throughout Lucy’s vampire trans\"\"ition, she becomes increasingly sexualised because\u00a0her suppressed sexuality is becoming more obvious and transparent as well as becoming the sexual aggressor, which in 1897, was not the norm. Women were supposed to accept their husband’s sexual needs and expectations but never act on their own. Throughout the novel a sca\"\"le was set, Mina on one end, representing the ideal Victorian woman with traditional ideals and Dracula’s three daughters on the other end, depicting the Victorian idea \"\"of evil and impurity mostly shown with their hyper-sexuality and vampirism and as Stoker made clear that vampires are evil, then therefore so are hyper-sexual women.<\/p>\n

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In the text above, Lucy portrays a wanton creature, ‘her breathing grew stertorous’, ‘the mouth opened’ and ‘she said in a soft, voluptuous voice’ as well as asking Holmwood to kiss her, ‘Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!’. Indicating her sexual aggression and her desire to the point that\u00a0even on her deathbed, she is showing signs of impurity and lust.<\/p>\n

I think that sexuality figures so centrally in our novel because Stoker uses the character of Lucy to tackle the concept of the ‘New Woman’ and Victorian men’s fear of women rightly taking advantage of newly available educational and employment opportunities to break free from the intellectual and social restraints imposed upon them by a male-dominated society. Stoker portrays her as having weak morals and ‘an unruly desire’ which was so different to what the typical 1897 Victorian woman strived towards in order to please her husband and society but what was starting to happen. Stoker used the character of Lucy to depict the decline from the Victorian feminine ideal to the perceived selfish, wanton, unnaturalness of the ‘New Woman’.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dracula is based on typically conventional ideas regarding marriage, men and women as well as playing with the themes of ‘abnormal’ sexuality, homosexuality and ideas about the ‘New Woman’. In chapter 12 (page 172; Penguin Classics edition) Lucy is on her deathbed and so the doctors awaken Holmwood and bring him to Lucy in order … Continue reading The ‘New Woman’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2749,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","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\/398","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\/2749"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}