A Vampire’s Touch: Exploring Sexual Nature in Dracula

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Who knew vampires were such sexual creatures? It seems obvious once you consider their care free lust for human blood. Due to the context of the time period Dracula was written, the late nineteenth century, expressing your sexuality openly and publicly was not condoned. People in society, especially women, were taught to keep their sexuality under control and to themselves until they were legally married. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the reader witnesses how Lucy Westerna, Mina Murray, Jonathan Harker, and Count Dracula, individually, behave toward their secret sexual desires. Eric Kwan-Wai Yu states, “Whatever shapes or fear vampirism might evoke elsewhere, in this novel the dominant form has to do with sexual menace or the dreadful perception of sexual perversity” (147). Sexuality plays a critical role in Dracula, affecting each character in a unique manner.
Lucy Westerna and Sexuality
Lucy Westerna, probably the most sexual character in the novel, illustrates that losing control of your sexual desires will lead to inevitable consequences. Early in the novel, the reader draws a clear picture of how open Lucy is with her sexuality. Lucy exchanges letters with Mina Murray, her best friend, explaining her three proposals from three different men. In her letter to Mina, Lucy writes that she will “be twenty in September, and … never had … a real proposal.” This is devastating to Lucy, so the reader can clearly infer that she is the over confident, to the point of being a snobbish type of woman who expected to be proposed to at least once before she turned twenty. Lucy ends up fulfilling her wish by receiving “[t]hree proposals in one day.” She should be ecstatic about this news, since she dreamt about this day for so long, but her arro...

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... Dejan. “Vampiric Seduction and Vicissitudes of Masculine Identity in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Victorian Literature and Culture 37 (2009): 411-25. Cambridge Journals. Web. 18 April 2013.
McCrea, Barry. “Heterosexual Horror: Dracula, the Closet, and the Marriage-Plot.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 43.2 (2010): 251-70. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 April 2013.
Prescott, Charles E., and Grace A. Giorgio. “Vampiric Affinities: Mina Harker and the paradox of Femininity in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Victorian Literature and Culture 33 (2009): 487-515. JSTOR. Web. 29 April 2013.
Stoker, Bram, and Roger Luckhurst. Dracula. New ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Yu, Eric Kwan-Wai. “Productive Fear: Labor, Sexuality, and Mimicry in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 48.2 (2006): 145-70. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 April 2013.

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