Portrayal Of Female Sexuality By Bram Stoker s Dracula Essay

In a particular addition of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, Maurice Hindle had suggested that â€Å"sex was the monster Stoker feared most.† This essay will examine the examples of this statement in the Dracula text, focusing on female sexuality. The essay will also briefly look at an article Stoker had written after Dracula which also displays Stoker’s fear. Dracula is a novel that indulges its male reader’s imagination, predominantly on the topic of female sexuality. When Dracula was first published, Victorian women’s sexual behaviour was extremely restricted by social expectations. To be classed as respectable, a women was either a virgin or a wife. If she was not either, she was considered a whore. We begin to understand once Dracula arrives in Whitby, that the novel has an underlying battle between good and evil, which will hinge on female sexuality. Both Lucy Westenra and Wilhelmina â€Å"Mina† Murray embody two-dimensional virtues that have been associated with female. They are both virgins, whom are innocent from the evils of the world and that are devoted to their men. Dracula’s arrival threatens those virtues, threatening to turn Lucy and Mina into the opposites, noted for their voluptuousness, which could lead to an open sexual desire. Dracula succeeds in doing so with Lucy. After Lucy herself becomes a vampire, she requests a kiss from Arthur Holmwood, her fiancà ©e, which turns voluptuous – a word Stoker continually uses throughout. Here Stoker presents the female charactersShow MoreRelatedPortrayal Of Female Sexuality By Bram Stoker s Dracula1598 Words   |  7 PagesBram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula is a novel that condemns liberated female sexuality, presenting it as volatile and threatening to the established patriarchal order of the Victorian Era. By examining the varying level of sexuality among Stoker’s female characters and their narrative outcomes, the novel’s attitude that female sexuality is hostile becomes apparent. 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