Female Sexuality and Victorian Society in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Introduction: Stoker, Dracula, and Victorian Womanhood

Bram Stoker is considered to be the world's most famous horror novelist. Though he produced a number of short stories, essays, and novels, his classic novel Dracula, published in 1897, remains his most praised and admired work. Dracula is a story that focuses on a Transylvanian vampire who comes to London. One of the most pressing themes in the novel is the suppression of female sexual expression. This theme illustrates how women's behavior during that era was defined by strict European social expectations. Stoker characterizes the status of women and how they were expected to behave in society through his heroines Mina and Lucy, and how their behavior changes in ways that society deems unacceptable.

In this novel, Bram Stoker reflects the prejudice and skepticism with which Victorian Britain viewed Eastern Europeans. During his lifetime, Stoker became an ardent theatre lover and an admiring friend of actor Henry Irving. Many critics have debated over the character of Count Dracula, arguing that it was greatly shaped by Irving's personality. Some have suggested that the novel was a kind of unconscious revenge against a man Stoker so deeply esteemed. Dracula is one of those novels that does not seem to age even to this day. Stoker successfully coined the term "undead" for his famous vampire character, a concept that has profoundly shaped the mythology of the legendary monster.

Plot Overview: Jonathan Harker and the Castle

The novel begins by introducing the audience to Jonathan Harker, a discerning, industrious, and aspiring young English lawyer. He travels to Transylvania to assist a Transylvanian aristocrat, Count Dracula, in purchasing an English property. His journey into Europe's distant lands is described as filled with unease. While working for Dracula and arranging the London property his firm has procured, Jonathan realizes he has become Dracula's prisoner inside the castle. He writes in his journal:

"When I found that I was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came over me. I rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door and peering out of every window I could find, but after a little the conviction of my helplessness overpowered all other feelings. When, however, the conviction had come to me that I was helpless I sat down quietly, as quietly as I have ever done anything in my life, and began to think over what was best to be done. I am thinking still, and as yet have come to no definite conclusion. Of one thing only am I certain: that it is no use making my ideas known to the Count. He knows well that I am imprisoned, and as he has done it himself, and has doubtless his own motives for it, he would only deceive me if I trusted him fully with the facts." (Chapter 3)

Gradually, Jonathan comes to see Dracula as a diabolical figure who plans to prey upon London's populace. His suspicions are confirmed when Dracula drives away three ghostly women who attack him. While Dracula departs for London, Jonathan makes a desperate escape from the castle, leaving the reader in suspense about his fate.

In the meantime, Mina, Jonathan's fiancée, visits her best friend Lucy Westenra, who has recently received three marriage proposals and has chosen Arthur Holmwood as her suitor. Both Mina and Lucy spend their vacation in the town of Whitby, where Mina begins to notice Lucy's strange behavior, including sleepwalking. A Russian vessel carrying fifty boxes of earth is shipwrecked at Whitby, yet all the boxes are ultimately delivered to their intended destination. Mina observes her best friend growing weaker and paler by the day. During one alarming episode, Mina finds Lucy unconscious in a cemetery and glimpses a dark figure with glowing red eyes bending over her — but by the time Mina reaches her, the figure has vanished. With each unusual event, Lucy's health continues to deteriorate.

Lucy Westenra and the Gothic Theme of Seduction

Lucy's behavior in this part of the novel signals that Dracula has already attacked her. During her sleepwalking episodes she seems to know her destination, yet stops without resistance when interrupted, as though concealing her purpose from those around her. In later chapters, Lucy's seduction by Dracula maps directly onto sexual seduction, and it is here that the novel's central theme becomes most explicit. The virgin is corrupted by the aristocratic vampire, in keeping with a common Gothic fiction convention in which the aristocracy preys upon women of non-aristocratic blood. Dracula's penetration of Lucy parallels sexual penetration, and Lucy appears unable — or unwilling — to save herself from him.

When Lucy is rescued from the cemetery, she describes her experience as ecstatic:

"I didn't quite dream, but it all seemed to be real. I only wanted to be here in this spot. I don't know why, for I was afraid of something, I don't know what. I remember, though I suppose I was asleep, passing through the streets and over the bridge. A fish leaped as I went by, and I leaned over to look at it, and I heard a lot of dogs howling. The whole town seemed as if it must be full of dogs all howling at once, as I went up the steps. Then I had a vague memory of something long and dark with red eyes, just as we saw in the sunset, and something very sweet and very bitter all around me at once. And then I seemed sinking into deep green water, and there was a singing in my ears, as I have heard there is to drowning men, and then everything seemed passing away from me. My soul seemed to go out from my body and float about the air. I seem to remember that once the West Lighthouse was right under me, and then there was a sort of agonizing feeling, as if I were in an earthquake, and I came back and found you shaking my body. I saw you do it before I felt you." (Chapter 8)

By invoking the lighthouse, Stoker employs a strong phallic symbol, and by using the word "earthquake" he implies orgasm. Here Stoker interweaves the novel's central theme with a sense of terror and moral alarm.

Mina soon learns of Jonathan's whereabouts. After his escape, he is brought to a hospital in Budapest, where he recuperates from his harrowing experiences and comes to accept them as though they were a dream. Mina travels to nurse Jonathan during his recovery, and they marry shortly afterward. Jonathan gives his diary to his wife, afraid to read it himself, and she seals it away.

Meanwhile, Lucy returns to England. Arthur, worried for her health, asks for Dr. Seward's assistance. Puzzled by Lucy's condition, Seward refers her to his mentor, Professor Abraham Van Helsing — a man of open mind who believes not only in the methods offered by modern science but also in supernatural phenomena that may affect a patient's wellbeing. In addition to modern procedures such as blood transfusions, Van Helsing relies on ancient methods such as hanging garlic flowers around Lucy's neck. A few days before Lucy's death, her mother dies of a heart attack during one of Dracula's schemes to reach Lucy. It is only after Lucy's death that Professor Van Helsing obtains her diary and learns of her friend Mina.

Conclusion: Dracula's Challenge to Victorian Male Authority

All the men become fearful of associating the women with the socially disdained. The men also fear for their own safety and social standing. Towards the end of the novel, Dracula taunts Professor Van Helsing by declaring: "Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine" (Chapter 26). At this point, Dracula articulates an age-old male philosophy that stretches back to Adam and Eve — the belief that men suffer greatly, and ultimately fall from grace, because of women's ungovernable desires. The novel thus draws on deeply embedded Victorian anxieties about female sexuality and the threat it posed to the established social and moral order. Stoker's Dracula remains a powerful Gothic exploration of how societies attempt to contain, define, and punish female sexual expression.

Works Cited

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Mass Market Paperback, October 1997.

SparkNotes. "Themes in Dracula." SparkNotes, Accessed 17 Mar. 2003.

ClassicNote. "Notes on Dracula." 2000, Accessed 17 Mar. 2003.