Throughout Dracula<\/u>, Stoker represents societal anxieties toward the \u201cNew Woman\u201d and changing female sexuality through Lucy\u2019s modern morality and eventual Vampiric transformation, while Mina plays the role of the pure traditional woman with strong values. From the very beginning Lucy and Mina are set apart, Mina wanting only to marry Jonathan, while Lucy laments not being able to accept marriage proposals from three men saying, \u201cWhy can\u2019t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?\u201d (67). As Dracula preys on Lucy, she receives blood transfusions from four men, representing sexual encounters with them. Stoker reinforces the underlying message of the dangers of female sexuality when Lucy, the only sexually impure and liberally thinking woman in the story, becomes a vampire, telling readers that the \u201cNew Woman\u201d is a monster. Finally, Stoker puts the final nail in the New Woman\u2019s coffin when Lucy demonstrates her lack of all maternity as, \u201cWith a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone\u201d (226). As a Victorian woman, Lucy is a true monster as a woman who throws aside any maternal instinct or care for children, which is still thought of as a mark of femininity.<\/p>\n
In order to ensure that readers understand the monstrosity that is the \u201cNew Woman,\u201d Stoker presents Mina Harker as the ideal representation of traditional Victorian femininity. Throughout the story, Mina is true to her husband and loyal to her friends. Remaining pure until marriage in love, lust, blood, and sex, Mina presents Victorian ideals of women\u2019s sexuality perfectly in that she lacks any. Once Dracula decides to prey on Mina, even then she shows that she is an unwilling subject, wishing she could fight him and doing everything she can to help the men end Dracula\u2019s existence. While Lucy\u2019s relationship with the four men is group of men is represented as a polygamous marriage due to their blood sharing, Stoker portrays Mina as a queen and the men as her knights, as more than once they all kneel at her feet and pledge to be true to each other and to do whatever they can to save her or to kill her if she becomes a vampire (317, 352). Mina still has a career, but works only to help her husband. She is the perfect wife and even acts as a motherly figure at times. She is truly the perfect Victorian woman. Lucy is doomed to Vampirism and death due to her sexuality and modernity as a \u201cNew Woman\u201d, while Mina\u2019s traditional character saves her from Dracula in the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Throughout Dracula, Stoker represents societal anxieties toward the \u201cNew Woman\u201d and changing female sexuality through Lucy\u2019s modern morality and eventual Vampiric transformation, while Mina plays the role of the pure traditional woman with strong values. From the very beginning Lucy and Mina are set apart, Mina wanting only to marry Jonathan, while Lucy laments not … Continue reading The Vampiric New Woman and the Victorian Feminine Ideal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3017,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","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\/429","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\/3017"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}