A Novel About A Vampire Who Disrupts The Lives Of Jonathan...

Bram Stoker’s â€Å"Dracula,† a novel about a vampire who disrupts the lives of Jonathan Harker and his friends, seems to turn the sequence of events into an expression of the fears and anxieties that are prevalent in Victorian society. Lucy Westenra could be seen as the Ideal Victorian woman through her purity and beauty. However, such moments as â€Å"why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her,† disrupts that idea (64). The novel registers concern about women’s gender and sexuality. Indeed, Dracula can be read as a warning of what will happen to woman who exhibit these behaviors through showing and comparing the experiences of Lucy, the vampire sisters and Mina. Such concerns are resolved by the end of the novel with the death of Lucy and the vampire sisters symbolizing the death of the sexual New Woman. In Dracula, Lucy embodies some of the characteristics of an ideal Victorian woman. She is praised for her exceptional bea uty, with her looks being focused on throughout the novel. She gets attention from a multitude of men and is even proposed to three times in one day. Her attention from these men show that men during this time see perceive Lucy as an ideal Victorian women. In Quincy’s letter to Arthur he describes Arthur as having â€Å"won the noblest heart that God has made and the best worth winning† (Stoker, 68). To men Lucy is the best woman that a man could hope to wed. Quincy also describes Lucy as a â€Å"brave girl† and praises her for her honor to theShow MoreRelatedHomosexuality in Victorian and Elizabethan Literature.6608 Words   |  27 Pagesas a basis for their novels. Bram Stoker told a story about a vampire that challenged the Victorian gender roles and managed to reverse them, making men faint like women, and making women powerful like men, and called it Dracula. Mary Shelley created a a physical being out of a mans suppressed homosexuality due to his Victori an male upbringing; a man named Frankenstein. Robert Stevenson described what happens when a homosexual male attempts to live double lives to cover up his true feelings, and entitled