‘The female characters in Dracula are dangerously seductive’ – Discuss how far you have found this to be the case Throughout Dracula, Bram Stoker presents female sexuality as something to fear, making the female characters dangerously seductive. The weird sisters and Lucy seem to be the main targets of this, with Mina being a contrast as an icon for the Victorian woman and the male and female spheres that were ideal. However, Stoker also begins to challenge the idea of a dangerous female sexuality with the New Woman debate, which was prevalent at the time of publishing, through the use of Mina, although he doesn’t take this extremely far and Mina still shows characteristics of a classic Victorian woman.Firstly, we see how Stoker introduces us to the weird sisters who live in Dracula’s castle and represent all that was seen as wrong with female sexuality and more. They have the abilities to control a man and use him for their pleasure, as well as being able to reduce him to something the Victorian audience would have seen as pathetic. In Ray Cluley’s article “Fearing Female Sexuality in Dracula” he mentions how ‘these women have the power to strip a man of his masculinity’ which to a Victorian reader would be absolutely terrifying because of their strict social expectations of a man being strong and powerful, which Harker is not in this scene, but also a woman being passive, which the weird sisters go against by being outwardly sexual. The fact that a female could so easily reduce a man of everything he is simply with their ‘voluptuousness’ and promiscuous sexuality would have been shocking.Women were meant to be pure and virginal, a complete and utter contrast to the weird sisters who, to a modern audience, embody raciness and the excitement of a female being able to express herself, although it would have been seen as sinful and wrong to a Victorian audience. It also would have been seen as extremely wrong for anyone to engage in sexual acts before a marriage, especially if you had no interest in marrying them, and here Harker is breaking that virtue with not only one woman, but three. He seems to remove himself from the situation and excuse his actions later. On by saying that they are not women like Mina is, so it cannot count. In chapter 3, as Harker is being taken over by the women, he says ‘I lay quiet, looking out under my eyelashes’. He is passive and allows them to continue with whatever they want, not something a typical man would have been thought to have done, but he is also feminised and written to sound almost female, showing the change in his demeaner and the hold the women have over him. Cluley also mentions how “Harker finds them simultaneously ‘thrilling’ and ‘repulsive’, illustrating a patriarchal hypocrisy regarding women’s sexuality” which is a perfect summary to the image of the weird sisters and their meaning in terms of what society would have seen as morally right and wrong.They are described as sublime characters who thrill Harker, leaving him incapsulated by their effects, but also as a threat to him because of their physical ability to emasculate him.The sublime is a classical gothic trope used to show how overwhelmingly exhilarating the shocking and scary aspects of life can be. Using this technique for the weird sisters could highlight how Harker finds them both scary as they threaten his masculinity but also exhilarating as he enjoys their seductions.Lucy is the prime example of why during the Victorian era, the New Woman would have been feared. Stoker writes her to be a flirtatious and sexually driven woman who ends up suffering the consequences of her actions as she is punished severely. We can see Stoker drawing similarities between Lucy and the weird sisters as he purposefully describes her
- / 1