Mina's Role In Dracula By Bram Stoker

Mina’s Role in Dracula Multiple characters are woven together by Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula. The novel begins with Jonathan Harker who travels to Castle Dracula where he confronts many frightening situations. Harker’s fiancée is the character Mina Murray. Mina is the most complex character in the novel along with being the best friend of Dracula’s first victim, Lucy. Mina has a direct relationship with each character in the novel. Moreover, she is essentially a never-ending contradiction. While she exemplifies the Victorian woman, she is equal in intelligence and bravery to her male counterparts. Mina is both a Victorian woman and a New Woman. Mina is also a vampire who can pass as a human. The dichotomy within her roles as a woman

Mina seems to have a disposition to cry; for example when the old man she meets in Whitby talks of his own death, she writes that “It all touched [meher] , and upset [meher] very much” (100). One time she admits to becoming hysterical when talking to Van Helsing (238). However, her fit of hysterics is far less severe than that of Van Helsing earlier. This is noteworthy, since women were the ones who were supposed to suffer most from hysterics. Later on, this reversal of gender roles is taken further when, as soon as the male characters encounter emotional crises, Mina remains the stable one. After comforting one of the men, she writes in her diary that crying often helps, yet she herself has stopped crying in order to support the men. She even keeps up superficial cheerfulness when she herself is worried. She decides to repress her own feelings in order to support and comfort the male characters. Her mothering instinct therefore establishes her as an emotional haven and a source of faith for the men. She writes in her diary, “[T]here is something in woman’s nature that makes a man free to break down before her … without feeling it derogatory to his manhood” (294-5). Thus, while she represents the secure home that Victorian men expected to find in women, she accomplishes this by taking on the more stoic, emotional role assigned to men.

A further

Also, Mina is never envious of Lucy’s beauty and popularity with men but rather admires her friend. Her intelligence and practical skills contribute to the usefulness that is expected of Victorian women. She knows shorthand and typewriting, but most importantly, she has knowledge of Cesare Lombroso’s theories about criminals. Likewise, Mina seems quite modest when Van Helsing notices her outstanding intelligence, writing that “speaking to this great, learned man, [Van Helsing] [she] began to fear that he would think [her] a weak fool” (240). Furthermore, Mina keeps reproaching herself in her diary for being silly and naïve. However, she seems quite conscious of her husband’s title and social rank. Jonathan mentions in his diary that Mina would not like him to be called a clerk even though he is already a solicitor: “Solicitor’s clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor” (25). Later, in her own diary, Mina writes that she is proud to see her Jonathan “rising to the height of his advancement” (231). While the surface of Mina’s character befits her image as the prototypical Victorian woman, there are suggestions throughout the novel that something more complex, and perhaps less pure, is lurking