Dracula 2

Dracula demonstrates an ambivalent attitude toward women. On the one hand, women, represented by Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra, are pure and virtuous, and must be protected from harm. On the other hand, women’s sexuality, illustrated by the female vampires in Castle Dracula and by the vampire-Lucy, is seen as threatening, though strangely attractive. Most of Dracula’s victims are women – Lucy, Mina, even the nameless woman at Castle Dracula, and the men in the novel are unable to protect them (although Mina is eventually saved, largely through her own actions). Why are women so problematic for Stoker? What fears about women and their sexuality go unsaid in the novel? Van Helsing means it as a compliment when he asserts that Mina has a “man’s brain,” but how would Stoker’s readers have understood this statement? A hundred years later, how have assumptions about men’s and women’s minds changed? In what ways have they stayed the same?