The Madwoman In The Attic: The Woman Writer, By Susan Stoker
analytical Essay
735 words
To look at Stoker's female characters, one has to take into account the Victorian ideas of gender performance. An age named after its long-reigning female ruler Queen Victoria, the Victorian period was anything but a women's world (Abrams 1). Queen Victoria may have been the figurehead of the nation and the era, but that did not mean that the rest of the public sphere was a welcoming place for women in general (Abrams 1). A woman's place was in the domestic sphere (Abrams 3). She was the so-called angel of the house as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar point out in their work The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the
Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination:
The angel in the house is a woman in white […] her dutiful chastity manifested
…show more content…
In this essay, the author
- Explains that the victorian period was nothing but a women's world. queen victoria was the figurehead of the nation and the era, but she wasn't welcome in the public sphere.
- Analyzes how the victorian angel of the house was not the only view of women in the time. the new woman heralded a new age for ambitious women.
- Analyzes how stoker's novel can be read as a warning against the new woman. lucy and the vampire women are too aggressively sexual in their behaviour towards men. mina seems to remain true to victorian ideals of female sexuality.
- Analyzes how motherhood was seen as an affirmation of a woman's femininity, as seen by mina harker in dracula.
They had the roles of wives and mothers (Abrams 6). Motherhood was an affirmation of a woman's femininity (Abrams 6). She may have been a wife before but her duty as a woman was only fulfilled when she had a child to care for (Abrams 6). Women who were not able to conceive were pitied and seen as a failure (Abrams 6). Childless women were often urged into the role of governess or nursery maid to make up for their loss (Abrams 6). Motherhood as seen as an innate urge of women is also remarked upon by Mina Harker in Dracula when she comforts Arthur Holmwood after his fiancée, Lucy Westenra, dies: "We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child" (Stoker …show more content…
A so-called New Woman started to emerge and with her the idea that women could become independent and inhibit a space outside the home (Buzwell). This emergence of the New Women heralded a new age for ambitious women. As Lynn Abrams in an article for the BBC states: "The aim of first-wave feminists was to gain better education and employment opportunities for middle-class women, better working conditions and wages for working-class women, and eventually the vote - so that women might have some influence over their fate" (9). This New Woman can also be seen in Mina who works as a schoolteacher (Stoker 55), typewrites (Stoker 55), uses a stenograph (Stoker 55) and assists the men in their work (Stoker 208). However, the operative word here is assist. Although Mina exhibits many traits a New Women would have, she is still confined by Victorian norms. She is the men's assistant and more often than not excluded and not included in their vampire hunt. Mina symbolises an interim state between the Victorian angel and the feminist New Woman – not completely independent but not entirely domestic
Related
- analytical
- Dracula: The Effect of Women’s Role Changeanalytical essayThe concepts of “New Woman” and “True Woman” are major parts of the novel. “True Woman” is a concept usually associated with Victorian England, but generally women who are religious, pure, submissive, and domestic (Brashears). Mina is the best portrayal of this idea. For example, her husband, Jonathan Harker’s interaction with her expresses the submissiveness as a “True Woman.” When Professor Van Helsing asks who is willing to join the mission to kill Dracula, Jonathan says, “I answer for Mina and myself” which puts Mina under the authority of her husband (Stoker 256). On the other hand, “New Woman,” was basically opposite, by being outside the home, working, involved in society and free (Brashears). Although for the most part, Mina follows the idea of the “True Woman,” she does not when she assists her husband to have (in reference to the letters and journals) “type ...
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how the beginning of the movement to the "new woman" is represented through mina's overall commitment to following the traditional role, as she is still a "true woman."
- Analyzes how lucy, who transitions from "new woman" to "true woman," ends with a deprivation of reputation, which is portrayed through her developing viewpoints expressed to mina.
- Analyzes how the reputation decline is depicted through the three brides of dracula as the result of the transformation in which the men fear the powerful women.
- Analyzes how the novel dracula proposes that the change to "new woman" directly influences one's reputation negatively exaggerated by the deaths of the other more characterized women.
- Analyzes how the characters in bram stoker's novel, dracula, represent a different stand in the transformation from "true woman" to "new woman."
1040 wordsRead More - The Victorian Male Utopiananalytical essayThroughout the Victorian Era, society's extremely rigid social and religious expectations often dictated citizens' behavior, especially that of women. In the male dominanted society, women were expected to be maternal and sexually pure, succumbing to the so called “upper hand” of their stronger, superior husbands, and anything divergent of this image was inadmissible. Any form of female sexual expression was so condemned that it was hinged upon the moral battle between good and evil. Sexuality was considered a gender deviation—an act of straying from society's stereotypical views of masculinity or femininity—and was deemed unacceptable. In the beginning of the novel, Dracula, Mina and Lucy are the embodiment of this ideal Victorian woman. Mina is practical and intelligent, and her major goal in life is to be a useful wife to her husband, Jonathon Harker. All the while, Lucy's physical beauty thwarts her purity, fortifying her curiosity as sexual being that ultimately leads to her demise. Female sexual expression exemplified through the contagion of Mina, Lucy, and the Weird Sisters in Stoker's Dracula was a threat capable of overpowering the already established male dominated Victorian society, and like any other gender deviations that stray from the norms and disrupt social structure, it was associated as an evil that needed to be vanquished.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how society's rigid social and religious expectations dictated citizens' behavior, especially that of women. any form of female sexual expression was so condemned that it hinged upon the moral battle between good and evil.
- Analyzes how mina murray is an ideal victorian woman because she embodies the virtues of the times, never questioning male prestige or her place in their community.
- Analyzes how the weird sisters of dracula's castle are examples of exactly what a victorian woman should not be.
- Analyzes how lucy westenra's fate is synonymous with her good friend mina’s ambitions of virtue and innocence, but her playfulness with this reality results in her being sexualized.
- Explains that gender deviations were punished as much as they were rewarded in dracula. the ungovernable desires of women left the men vulnerable to a societal fall from grace.
1119 wordsRead More - Vampiric Relations: An Argument on Gender Paradigmsanalytical essay...females, and Mina, who is good only because of her masculine mind, Stoker uses a strict and dominantly patriarchal paradigm where men have freedom to be feminine, but women have freedom only in their masculinity to argue against Le Fanu. Stoker’s argument denies the possibility of the matriarchal paradigm in which women have more power that is suggested in “Carmilla” in order to maintain a male dominant paradigm not only in literature, but in the society of the time.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how bram stoker's dracula is neither the first nor the most progressive of its kind. the progressive story shows many scenes of homosexual exchange between carmilla and the protagonist, laura.
- Analyzes how the portrayals of male characters differ in carmilla and stoker's other works.
- Analyzes how stoker shows dracula's desperate nature to create so that he is not alone in his immortality.
- Analyzes how le fanu flips the gender roles in order to bring attention to the issue of inequality of sexuality between men and women.
- Analyzes how stoker uses the women in his novel to firmly reinstate the use of women as tokens of exchange and as fully monogamous creatures.
- Analyzes how stoker creates an unfair paradigm by giving his female characters no freedom in their own exchange, and punishing them fiercely for any behaviour outside of the stereotypical womanly duties.
- Analyzes how le fanu's carmilla eliminates all social boundaries between men and women, placing them on an even scale.
- Analyzes how stoker punished and/or firmly controlled all of the female characters in the novel to create his strict and unequal paradigm where men have more freedom and women have even less.
- Analyzes how stoker uses mina harker to show that a good woman who doesn't need to be sexually object to have power must possess the qualities of man.
- Concludes that stoker uses a strict and dominantly patriarchal paradigm where men have freedom to be feminine, but women have only freedom in their masculinity to argue against le fanu.
- Explains that criticism, a quarterly for literature and the arts, was published in 1996.
1975 wordsRead More - Hypnotism’s Influence on Bram Stoker and Draculaanalytical essay...battle to life. In the novel, on the other hand, Stoker makes sure that his female character triumphs (by surviving) and that she returns home to “become a dutiful wife and caring mother”. This is where we could argue that “Stoker is much ahead of his times in portraying a ‘New Woman surpassing even the best male ‘professionals’ in terms of intellectual labor, a ‘gallant’ woman wit a remarkable ‘man-brain’ who helps save the empire, even though her power abruptly dimishes toward the end of the novel, and she is finally summoned home to become a traditional mother figure” (Kwan-Wai Yu 158). Although Stoker was very accurate in the new scientific and technological advances that he incorporated into Dracula, he was also very accurate in portraying a strong willful woman who is able to complete a job that was unwittingly given to her in the most extraordinarily manner.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how stoker used count dracula to depict the horrors of modern science between the 1880s and 1890s.
- Analyzes how mina improves her intellectual power by using extreme logical reasoning, maps, geometrical calculations, and brilliant speculation. she is only able to use her hypnotic sessions with van helsing.
- Analyzes kwan-wai yu's explicit description of the "new woman" that mina has adopted. she has unequalled intellectual power, accompanied by ascetic practice and reliant on modern technology.
- Analyzes how stoker was influenced by his culture to incorporate hypnotherapy into dracula and why he chose it.
- Analyzes how stoker used van helsing to reflect the thoughts and ideas of the society for psychical research.
2905 wordsRead More - Dracula by Bram Stokeranalytical essayThroughout the Victorian era, a woman’s sole purpose was to marry, produce children, keep the house clean and have dinner on the table by the time their husband returned from work. They were restricted to working tedious jobs at minimum wage until they were married and were not allowed to receive a real education. Once married, a woman was expected to become a fulltime mother and house wife tending to the needs in the home on command. All these lovely skills were that of the traditional Victorian women. They were pressured to express their femininity through their dainty attire, gentle mothering, social order and expressing the manners and obedience that was expected of them. All in all it was required that they be as little of an individual as possible. With the rising of the ‘New Woman’, not only did it challenge the traditional traits of the suppressed Victorian female, but it gave power to women in a male dominant society to become what ever she wanted. Throughout Bram Stokers classic novel ‘Dracula’, we can see the prime and accepted theme of the traditional Victorian women as it battles with the new and rising theme of the ‘New Woman.’ Mina Harker (Murray), Lucy Westendra and the death of Count Dracula all aid the theme of the ‘New Women’ in their own way yet are all brought to their conclusive demise.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how the victorian women were pressured to express their femininity through their dainty attire, gentle mothering, social order, and expressing the manners and obedience that was expected of them.
- Analyzes how mina harker, the wife of jonathan, is an aspiring 'new woman' in the victorian era. she writes in a journal daily about what she sees fit and remembers conversations and writing them down.
- Opines that "new women" writers will start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting.
- Analyzes how the passage shows mina's acceptance of the "new woman", but that she hasn't fully indulged herself in it.
- Analyzes how lucy westendra first appears in the novel as a love seeking traditional victorian woman who then transforms into an 'new women' when she becomes vampire after the bite of count dracula
- Narrates how lucy westendra changed from sweetness to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and purity to voluptuous wantonness.
- Analyzes how john, professor van helsing, and lucy's late fiancé arthur see the 'new woman' that lucy has become. they believe she has lost all values and virtues of the traditional woman.
- Analyzes how count dracula symbolizes the rising idea of the ‘new woman’ in stokers' novel.
- Analyzes how the battle is lost in stokers' classic novel 'dracula', where women resume their role as the traditional house wife and mother, while men rein in their ability to suppress the female mind.
1158 wordsRead More - Gender Deviation In Bram Stokeranalytical essayDuring the Victorian Era women were expected to be either a mother and a wife, or a pure, innocent girl. Any other deviation from the set path resulted in punishment, both physically and socially. Deviation can vary as women being over sexual to resembling men in their actions. Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, is no exception in its representation of Victorian ideals. For his purposes, Stoker uses symbolism, tone, and diction throughout to convey the standard Victorian British perception of themselves. Through this conveyed standard to express his belief that gender roles are essential and relevant to Victorian society and that there are consequences if strayed from.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how bram stoker's novel, dracula, depicts victorian ideals. he uses symbolism, tone, and diction throughout to convey the standard victorian british perception of themselves.
- Analyzes how symbolism was applied to verify stoker's perception of the importance of traditional gender roles in victorian society.
- Analyzes how dracula's "woman" represents the role of a woman in society, or even the possible consequences if she strayed from her set path.
- Analyzes how harker and dehumanize dracula's wives, lucy, and mina, by comparing them to an animal, which adds to the negative connotation of his point.
- Analyzes how lucy's manipulative actions juxtapose with the true nature of her actions, those of evil. dracula feeds upon people for sustenance, and as a reader one is repulsed.
- Analyzes how harker uses harsh words to describe his feelings towards the brides of dracula and how she is a changed woman.
- Analyzes how stoker believes that women must remain in their given gender role and if they were to not adhere to it they would be punished.
1430 wordsRead More - Dracanalytical essayThe idea of Victorian womanhood is extremely sacred, especially to a woman like Mina, who primarily wishes to be of use to her husband. Dracula’s penetrating the West and his actions are threats to female purity, and so they are threats to Victorian culture and order of England (Western world). Dracula is penetrating the entire nature of Vi...
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how mina harker's journal entry illustrates using the rational mind to combat the supernatural.
- Analyzes how stoker plays with the underlying sexual theme by positioning lucy reclined on the seat with dracula bending over her as he "penetrates" her neck with his teeth
- Analyzes how dracula's penetrating the west and his actions are threats to female purity and victorian culture and order of england.
- Analyzes how mina is overwhelmed by the supernatural things occurring and tries to explain those events using non-occult means.
- Analyzes how mina was searching for lucy, and ran through the town. she rejoiced that it was so, for she wanted no witness of poor lucy's condition.
- Analyzes how mina's peculiar thought process is alarming because while dracula is attacking her best friend, she is rejoicing at the emptiness of the town because there would be “no witness of poor lucy’s condition.”
- Analyzes how dracula's move into the west creates a backwards colonialism that opposes the precise nature of the western world.
692 wordsRead More - Dracula by Bram Stokeranalytical essayAs the saying goes, “Women can do everything Men can do.” In the Gothic Novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, there is a constant theme of sexuality, from both male and females in society. In the Victorian era, the roles of male and females have caused a lot of tension. After reading Dracula, some would argue the roles men and women hold in society. As mentioned in Dr. Seward’s Dairy from Val Halsing., “Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and a woman’s heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination” (Stoker and Hindle, 2003 250). A women’s mind is not the always the first thing on a males mind. Some would overlook what a woman really has to offer.
In this essay, the author
- Opines that in bram stoker's dracula, there is a constant theme of sexuality, from both male and females in society.
- Analyzes how dracula is often read as a reactionary response to the threat of autonomous female sexuality posed by the phenomenon of the "new woman."
- Analyzes how sexuality comes into play with jonathan having to resist temptations from the three women that appeared in the room.
- Analyzes how sexuality remains a theme in the novel when it comes down to mina murray harker and lucy westenra.
- Analyzes how van helsing and the other men felt as though they had to keep mina safe from dracula protecting what was left of her purity and womanhood.
- Concludes that dracula got what he wanted and that was to have control over the people of england if not all some. it shows that just like men, women were also open to the idea of having more than one relationship.
- Cites alcantera, darisapennill, erincase, allison. gender and the struggle for narrative authority in dracula.
971 wordsRead More - “Dracula, in one aspect, is a novel about the types of Victorian women and the representation of them in Victorian English society” (Humphrey). Through Mina, Lucy and the daughters of Dracula, Stoker symbolizes three different types of woman: the pure, the tempted and the impure. “Although Mina and Lucy possess similar qualities there is striking difference between the two” (Humphrey). Mina is the ideal 19th century Victorian woman; she is chaste, loyal and intelligent. On the other hand, Lucy’s ideal Victorian characteristics began to fade as she transformed from human to vampire and eventually those characteristics disappeared altogether. Lucy no longer embodied the Victorian woman and instead, “the swe...
In this essay, the author
- Explains that bram stoker's dracula is a gothic, "horror novel" about the vampire count, who is looking to move from transylvania to england.
- Analyzes how stoker symbolizes three different types of women: the pure, the tempted and the impure.
- Analyzes how the men in bram stoker's dracula believed that lucy could be saved in death, which would return her to her purer and more socially respectable state.
- Analyzes how dracula uses blood to symbolize an erotic relation and link between the donor and the receiver.
- Analyzes how dracula portrayed the threat of female sexual expression along with a switch from male dominance to female
- Analyzes how stoker subtly hinting at lucy's inner promiscuity in "dracula" depicted a sexual scene between lucy and her fiancé, holmwood.
- Explains that bram stoker's dracula is a reflection and rebuke of victorian society.
1398 wordsRead More - Dracula Essayanalytical essayIn Dracula, Bram Stoker portrays a clear battle between the “traditional woman” of the time and the “new woman.”. Stoker uses the contrasting characters of Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray to depict this evolution in women and, also, to paint an image of the reaction to this advance, expressed by both men and women.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how bram stoker uses the contrasting characters of lucy westenra and mina murray to depict this evolution in women and paint an image of the reaction to this advance.
- Analyzes how mina murray embodies the traditional women that were commonplace in the late 19th century.
- Analyzes how lucy westenra is the antithesis to mina. stoker punctuates on lucy's lecherous and emotional personality.
- Analyzes how lucy's illness slowly, but laboriously takes over her body, symbolizing the slow progression of the old fashioned woman into the new age woman.
- Analyzes how van helsing speaks of mina and jonathan's newborn son and how he is going to be the new age man. stoker wrote dracula to prove that the young woman will eventually emerge as the leading type of woman.
789 wordsRead More