The instance when Mina drinks from Dracula’s breast is the strongest example of this; where the reader to this point is accustomed to Dracula doing the “biting”, and suddenly Mina has the power to penetrate a male. Both Lucy and Mina, when they carry out a relationship with Dracula, become sexual beings, as opposed to when they are mortals and are forced to obey the social boundaries of their society. By expressing this sexuality, they become threatening to the men. Mina is intelligent, and despite the strong aversion she has to the “New Woman” or the “Modern Woman”, she is, in fact, a sort of modern woman; connected with modern ways, a schoolteacher with secretarial skills, she possesses a “man’s brain”. It is this very brain, which is ultimately used to aid in Dracula’s downfall.
‘The role of female vampires in the novel is to warn of the dangers of female sexuality’ consider the presentation of the female vampires in Dracula in the light of this comment Many may argue that the novel Dracula highlights the suppression and belittlement of women during the 19th Century. In Victorian England, women’s sexual behaviour was dictated by society’s rigid expectations. A Victorian woman was either a virgin or else she was a wife and mother. If she was neither of these, she was considered a whore, and thus of no consequence to society This idea is reinforced by Stoker with the contrast of the ‘brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips,’ the virginal white is contrasted with the hellish red of their lips shows the battle the women went through suppressing and hiding their sexual desires. Stoker’s choose of women as the temptresses may be a warning to the women of the Victorian era to beware about pushing the boundaries of their sexuality.
Dracula stands for Satan, and that stands for whatever is evil and bad. He hates goodness and tries to perpetuate evil while at the same time keeping an almost charming since about himself. However despite the vampires charm and strangely enticing appearances their wickedness could not be hidden from the band of men. Even beautiful Lucy, when she becomes a vampire, is hated by this band of men, despite the fact they were in love with her before. This is clearly a battle between the two most significant supernatural beings in the Christian Faith.
In this we are clearly shown that the weird sisters possess traits of masculinity. The association of witchery and the supernatural, which was believed to be the work of the devil, and the outstepping of your gender role would have heightened the sinfulness to a Jacobean audience and created an association between evil and women having masculine traits. When we find out that the witches are in fact manipulating Macbeth and hold power of him their masculine traits help explain that only men can hold power and that the witches have sacrificed their femininity to become supernatural beings of power. Not only do the witches possess traits of masculinity, they also completely lack feminine
Duffy structures the poem like a monologue so the reader can track Havisham’s descent into inhumanity, as she descends further into madness. It begins with “beloved sweetheart” presenting the potential off love to someone wanting a “male corpse”. The monologues track the progress of the characters as they descend further into inhumanity. Each piece shows loss of humanity through the influence of external forces and how they are partly responsible for the characters’ loss of humanity. Shakespeare uses Lady Macbeth’s persuasion and the witches’ charm, both in act 1 to show the influence of others.
It is there that Dracula in a burst of anger stabs the cross, and renounces God and everything pure. Dracula is immortal everyone knows that. He has the ability to control minds as we’ve seen from both R. M. Renfield and Mina’s friend Lucy. With Lucy we also saw that he has the ability to shape shift when he turned into a werewolf type creature when he rapes her, and thought he doesn’t see her Mina is standing back watching when he says “No! Do not see me!” When this happens he quickly hides, and Mina forgets what she ever saw and truly thinks to herself that “Lucy, you're dreaming.
Dracula diffidently contains gloom and horror. There are wolves howling at the Count’s command, Jonathan gets trapped in a room with the three female vampires, and the females cackle is spooky. The presence of gore also proves that Dracula contains horror. Dracula drinks blood, and to kill the vampires stakes where driven through their hearts. Dracula is Gothic literature
The blood flowing down Dracula's chin depicts him as a monster and he's fed himself to an excess, showing greed, lust for blood, the desire for blood, and paints him as overly sated. He is linked to hell through the word "malice" and reinforces that Dracula is evil; Stoker again suggests that Dracula has supernatural powers through his ability to paralyse Harker just by looking at
The Victorians referred to homosexuality as "sexual inversion" (Kindron). In fact, many Victorians held the belief that a sexually inverted man was actually a woman trapped in a man's body (Kindron). Homosexuality emerged in the Victorian period much to the dismay of society. In reading Dracula, it is impossible for one to miss the homosexual tendencies that are present. Before diving too far into the homosexual side of Dracula, it is pertinent for one to understand the heterosexual side of the novel as well.
How does Angela Carter deal with the issue of gender in ‘The Lady of the House of Love’? Support your answer with reference to other texts or films you are aware of in Gothic genre It would seem that in ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ Angela Carter reverses the roles of gender as instead of the female being the helpless victim, she is instead the dominant and powerful character, the role usually played by the male. It would seem Carter is showing how females can break out of this routine in which they are trapped by society and take the main role; something which is also seen through her other stories such as ‘Werewolf’. Carter reverses the traditional scenario of a male vampire feeding on females by using a countess who only sucks the blood of young men and so it becomes a paradigmatic femme fatale. Instead of her being a helpless victim, she is instead taking on the role of a villain and so Carter is challenging the traditional gender role of a helpless female victim in a traditional gothic story; she seduces and murders men, much like the Count in the Bloody Chamber.