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Different Perception of Women: Dracula by Bram Stoker

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In the late 19th century, when Dracula by Bram Stoker is written, women were only perceived as conservative housewives, only tending to their family’s needs and being solely dependent of their husbands to provide for them. This novel portrays that completely in accordance to Mina Harker, but Lucy Westenra is the complete opposite. Lucy parades around in just her demeanor as a promiscuous and sexual person. While Mina only cares about learning new things in order to assist her soon-to-be husband Jonathan Harker. Lucy and Mina both become victims of vampirism in the novel. Mina is fortunate but Lucy is not. Overall, the assumption of women as the weaker specimen is greatly immense in the late 19th century. There are also many underlying sexual messages throughout the story. The topic of anything sexual, in the late 19th century, was not a topic to be discussed openly. This explains why Stoker decodes all of his references. The late 19th century was the era of the American Renaissance so the novel includes many gothic and Poe-etic elements. In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, the author depicts women in a vulgar and promiscuous way to represent the weakness and dependency of women on men, includes many gothic and Poe-etic elements to relate the novel to American Renaissance and makes many sexual references to add some edge to the story to the delight of men but the horror to women.
Women have been viewed as the weaker specimen for many centuries now. Stoker’s novel definitely shows pieces of him dubbing women as the weak. Stoker writes about three voluptuous women attempting to seduce Jonathan Harker and Jonathan being saved by Dracula in return for a half-smothered child as the women’s meal. One of the sisters reply to Dracula, “Are we ...

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