Dracula and Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula

In the 19th century Bram Stoker wrote the infamous novel, Dracula. This novel was composed in the style of letters, journal entries, newspaper articles and telegrams in order to convey to the reader a realistic story. The story of Dracula is about an ancient vampire who moves to London from his native country of Transylvania. In London, Dracula seduces and bites a young woman by the name of Lucy Westenra. When Lucy falls sick, no one knows how to help her because while Dracula has bitten her many times she has always been in a trance. Lucy?s friends decide to join together to combat what ever is ailing Lucy. In hopes of some help, Lucy?s friend Dr. Seward asks an old mentor of his by the name of Dr. Van Helsing to come to London and solve this puzzling illness. When Dr. Van Helsing arrives in London and sees Lucy he is the only one that knows almost immediately what has happened and what they are up against. The character of Dracula rarely appears in the story because this creates suspense and magnifies the fear of the unknown. The theme of good versus evil is developed throughout the book in many ways. One of the most important examples is Dracula and Mina. Dracula is the ultimate evil and Mina is full of goodness and purity. The Victorian view of women was not helpful to the characters in Dracula. For example, every time the male characters in the story decide not to tell Mina some particular type of information, things end up going terribly wrong. Even though Mina ends up being the key to destroying Dracula she is still a women and the Victorian view gets in the way.

Throughout most of the novel, Bram Stoker keeps Dracula?s character in the shadows because it creates apprehension and uncertainly for t...

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...carried the same views of women from the 19th century, but by giving Mina such an important role he also saw that maybe the ?New Women? would not be such a threat to a male-dominated society. I really did enjoy reading this novel. I was surprised to find out how many words and meanings I did not understand until clarified, that Victorian?s understood. For example, giving someone your blood through a transfusion was considered so intimate that you were then seen as married. I would like to have spent more time learning about science during this particular era and how patients like Renfield were treated. My favorite character in the book is Mina. I think that I relate to her the best and her character is very admirable. Forgiveness is such a hard thing to do and she forgave so unselfishly while all the time maintaining her Victorian purity and dignity.