Vampire Legend
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The purpose of this research is to examine the ways in which the legend of the vampire, encased within Bram Stoker's Dracula, emerges as an index of the position of women amid fin de siecle decadence. The plan of the research will be to set forth the principal elements of the climate of social and sexual repression that defined prevailing ideas about women in Victorian society and culture, and then to discuss aspects of the novel that show it to be as much (if not more) a product of such closely held attitudes as a commentary upon them. Throughout, reference will be made, from a twentieth century perspective, to the status of the so called New Woman, whose identity was at the time of the novel's publication just beginning to emerge. The power and sensual attractiveness of the vampire offer access to forbidden (sexual) fruit that could not fail to appeal to the elements of repression of Victorian culture. Precisely because of the strict moral sanctions against what today would be referred to as acting out depraved sensibilities, Dracula offers those behaving under the guidelines of a repressive culture the opportunity in the form of an unsought moral obligation to explore the abyss of profane knowledge and activity and render it powerless in the world. Initially, of course, the obligation comes to light as a depraved thrill, in Harker's half waking, half sexual experience in Dracula's castle with the three vampire women. "There was something about them that made
. . .
y hungry imitators of
the "queens of the demimonde," the so called rampant
modernizations were monsters of the mind. But like most such
creatures, they had some relation to the real world.
The new woman, then, had a dual aspect in popular image.
While increased visibility was argued to have expanded her
theoretical opportunities to raise the moral tone of
society, it had also, according to observers, made her
recognizably more open to dangerous and corrupting
influences. . . . The new woman, in herself, was now seen as
potentially either pure or impure, but her critics were
coming to suspect the worst of her. The very fact that
middle class women were now added to the "common" women who
had long been visible, day or night, in the streets and in
public places doubtless helped to reinforce the
identification of hitherto irreproachable women with their
polar opposites, the adulteresses and whores (Hartman 151;
emphasis added).
Both Mina and Lucy behave as whores toward their lovers, Lucy more or less willingly, having succumbed to the seduction, Mina powerless to resist the depraved enforcement of the positi
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 8720
Approximate Pages = 35 (250 words per page)
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