Woman strengths and weakness in Dracula Essay Example

her as exhibiting personality traits potentially dangerous in women. She is ever the tease falling into the traditional female role more than Mina ever did. Her vanity and superficiality is shown very clearly in a letter to Mina THREE proposals in one day. Isnt it awful. But for goodness sake dont tell any of the girls or they would be getting all sorts of extravagant ideas and imagining themselves injured and slighted if in their very first day at home they did not get six at least. Some girls are so vain Stoker . As a mortal Lucy is already a sexual being- her transformation into a vampire only accentuates her seductiveness making her a threat to the men. She becomes everything she wasn't in life maternal, mature, cunning and sly. When the vampiric Lucy is approached by Holmwood in her tomb his intent to destroy, she tries to seduce him and he finds her hard to resist to get him to protect her from the others.

In the eyes of the men she has become a monster as well and their desire for her is manifested in their obsession with destroying her. Lucy's unmanageable sexual penetration is presented as inherently evil because it threatens fixed gender distinctions Signorottii. Jonathon Van Helsing Seward and Holmwood are all overwhelmingly and unavoidably attracted to the vampires and to sexuality in general. Fearing this they both displace this attraction and justify their hostile reaction to it by projecting the attraction onto the female vampires with the rationale that it is not themselves who want the vampires it is the vampires who want them and using religion to justify the

murders Rot.
The men refuse admit to this attraction because what they are attracted to poses such a threat to their manhood. Vampires are allowed to show their sexuality in a much more explicit manner than the living. One of the three vampire women who attempt to feed from Jonathon in Draculas castle exhibits this with surprising directness. He is young and strong there are kisses for us all Stoker. The vampire women offer immediate sexual gratification a tempting alternative to the socially imposed delays and frustrations of Jonathons relationship with the chaste and somewhat sexless Mina Wasso.

During Mina's transformation, she becomes a much more dangerous threat to the men. Her mans brain is now being used to Draculas advantage. Furthermore, Dracula is able to give his women ,Mina being no exception, what Jonathon could never give; knowledge, power, sexuality and lust. Minas relationship with Dracula is the envy of Jonathon for he is too proper and must adhere to the social boundaries of the time to strictly for him to carry out such an impassioned relationship even with his own wife.

Mina is used as a tool by both Dracula and Van Helsing. Dracula uses Mina as a link to the mind of England, the new territory he plans on colonizing, because his parasitic existence has used up the people and land of Transylvania. Draculas best chance for survival now lies in the West where technology, reason and progressive democratic ideals prevail. Mina's skills as a teacher and her ability to type and write in shorthand give Dracula an inside link to this new territory Wasson. In fact Draculas reason for expanding into England is to

create a race of female vampires equipped with masculine qualitie.

In their quest to exterminate Dracula, Mina becomes the intermediary link to Van Helsing and the other men. Van Helsing uses her by hypnotizes her to gain access to Dracula's mind and find his weaknesses. She tells Van Helsing that you can hypnotize me and so learn that which even I myself do not know. Mina and Draculas psychic bond is exploited by Dracula's ultimate destroyers to attain their goal of both eliminating Dracula, this creature who has sexually liberated their women, and saving Mina Signorotti.

Lucy is never used as such nor is she as threatening as Mina is mostly because Lucy never possessed the aggressive masculine attributes that Mina did. True Lucy has the sexual strength that Dracula wants in a companion and both Mina and Lucy evoke the sensuality and maternity which Draculas brides do not. It is ultimately Minas intelligence rationale and ability to adapt to modern life that allow her to live. Lucy dies because she is a rough draft of Draculas ideal companion. Draculas experiment with Lucy reveals unpleasant results of a woman fighting to break free of the traditional gender roles whereas his experiment with Mina produces a much more satisfying outcome Mina is viewed more as Dracula's equal and he believes this perfection has been attained. However Dracula did not count on Mina's strengths to be used against him in anyway and is it the very mans brain which attracts Dracula to Mina that causes his destruction.