Mina Change In Dracula

Chapter 4 - “I am alone in the castle with those awful women. Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is nought in common. They are devils of the Pit!”

The behaviors and characteristics of Mina Harker, along with the transformation she undergoes when coming into contact with the Count, play a crucial role in helping Stoker break down separate spheres. Her connection to the Count is what lifts her outside of her domestic sphere. The men depend on Mina to be able to hunt down the Count. Without her help, they would not be successful. In a sense, this helps Stoker give women a more dominant role in the novel. While separate spheres hold women to be domestic figures confined to housework and completely submissive, Stoker pushes this ideology away by making the men submissive instead. For example, Jonathan Harker writes in his journal about Mina saying, “She was so good and brave that we all felt that our hearts were strengthened to work and endure for her, and we began to discuss what we were to do” (Stoker 250). Through

In Dracula, Stoker portrays the typical women: The new woman, the femme fatale and the damsel in distress, all common concepts in gothic literature. There are three predominant female roles within Dracula: Mina Murray, Lucy Westenra and the three vampire brides, all of which possess different attributes and play different roles within the novel. It is apparent that the feminine portrayal within this novel, especially the sexual nature, is an un-doubtable strong, reoccurring theme.

Stoker emphasises the threat of the ‘New Woman’ through constant mentioning of their dress and appearance; he does this to emphasis the contrast between the ‘New Woman’ and the traditional women. In the chapter where Jonathan is approached by the 3 woman vampires, who represent the dreaded ‘New Woman’ the language used to describe the women is very critical. He refers to them as “ladies by their dress and manner” stating them to be effeminate and vulgar and this makes it seem that they are impersonating women. Facially they are described as having “high aquiline noses”; these bird-like, pronounced features make them appear animalistic and dangerous. He contrasts their “dark, piercing eyes” with the “pale yellow

Even more, the nauseating “cruel-looking” (49) creature described in the novel is turned into a charming young Gary Oldman. Although Coppola starts the film with a brilliant representation of Stoker’s monster, he seems to embellish on the younger Dracula (12:44-13:00). In the novel Dracula becomes younger by gorging himself with blood, but Jonathan Harker describes him “like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion” (83). Coppola makes the monster more of a human, and the audience can feel for his and Mina’s love affair. Also, Jonathan seems distant from Mina, and this makes the love is even more

Dracula is a signet classic novel written by Bram Stoker. This novel is portrayed by an antagonist character known as Count Dracula. He has been dead for centuries yet he may never die. He has a peculiar power of hypnotic fascination but he is weak in god’s daylight. He is immortal as long as he is able to drink blood from the living. He can change his form into a wolf, a bat or a puff of smoke. Dracula get in touch with Jonathan Harker through a real estate transaction. He went to Dracula’s castle through a carriage as were planned. After a few days, he felt as if he were prisoned in the castle as his movements were restricted. Meanwhile, Harker has a fiancée named Mina

The normal Victorian representation of a woman would be that of a weak character, who would faint at the sight of blood; a character who would only discuss weather and art. In this novel, the stereotype of an ideal Victorian woman is broken as it is contrasted with the modern woman. The two best friends, Lucy and Mina, are each a representation of each. While Lucy is shown as all weak and someone who gives in easily, Mina stays on the “good side” even after she has been bitten by a vampire and her conversion has started. She is presented a hero, who plays an important role in bringing Dracula down through her intelligence and resourcefulness. Hence, by representing Mina as such a powerful character, Stroker breaks the stereotypical idea of a

From the novel, Dracula, my favorite character was Mina Harker, and for many reasons. Even from the beginning, Mina is described as a polite and kind woman. She was close friends with Lucy, and would do anything to support her and Lucy's mother, even if it meant guiding Lucy back to her bed in the middle of the night. In addition, Mina is shown to care deeply for all the people that help her and her friend. She does all that she can to try and help her best friend, even when all hope seems lost. Furthermore, Mina is proven to be extremely useful in the fight to find Dracula. Her diaries contain vital information on Dracula progress, and it was her idea to type out all the diaries in chronological order. Even after Dracula destroyed most of

Consider as well how the four men in the story risk their lives for that of Mina's. Bram Stoker reveals his attitude towards the nature of Victorian society by making the evil side in this novel very seductive. Even though the side of good is well aware of the harm the evil side can cause, the seductiveness of the evil side tempts our protagonists on many occasions. For example when Van Helsing has trouble bringing himself to stake the three women because of their physical beauty and when Jonathan Harker nearly allows himself to be bitten by one of the women because of how physically attracted he is to her. "I felt in my heart some wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips."# Stoker comments on the nature of Victorian society by showing how unacceptable it was to give in to those primal desires. This relates to the struggle between good and evil between our heroes of Victorian society and the devilish vampires. Vampires are in control of those evil, primal desires in the story and good people like Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing must fight off these desires lest they lose their clean and pure Victorian existences.

Throughout the Victorian period in which Dracula was written, there was great concern over the roles of women, and the place they held in society. The two central female characters in Dracula are Mina Murray, later Mina Harker, and Lucy Westenra, though arguably Dracula’s three daughters also hold a strong place in terms of female characters in the novel also.

There is a power struggle in Dracula over what gender is dominating the events and the characters in the novel. These first two critics believe that the women of the novel primarily control the plot and even take the role a man usually plays. Eric Kwan-Wai Yu says that women in the novel, such as Mina Harker are not given as much credit as they should be in regard to their influence on the plot and male characters in the novel. Mina makes significant contributions, if not more significant than the males in the novel, in the destruction of Dracula. In his criticism, "Productive Fear: Labor,

The characteristic that successfully saves her was her ability to continue to be strong and continue to control herself. Lucy, on the other hand, usually was weak and she didn’t even try to fight off Dracula. She often tries to not recollect the events that occurred between the two. In the end, Mina was able to actually go back to her old habits and be back into a pure state, while Lucy, sadly, was not able to. Lucy turned into a vampire, and as a vampire her terrible characteristics were more apparent than those of when she was pure. While Lucy was a vampire, he eyes were “unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew” (222-223). Lucy was not only an active threat to children but her desires for the men of the land also posed an active threat. At one point, Dr. Seward recorded, “at that moment, the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then been killed…” (223). Both Lucy and Mina get to a common phase of purity but since Lucy has a lack of self control and she has unexpected childish qualities, she eventually had to get back her qualities of innocence in her death.

In the 1993 version, Van Helsing refers to Lucy as "a willing recruit, a whore of darkness, a bitch of the devil."(Bram Stoker's Dracula). Also, Mina chooses whether to be with Dracula or with Jonathan. We wonder at the end whether she will choose to remain with Jonathan after Dracula's death.

Mina Murray is the fiancée of Jonathan Harker. She is portrayed as a good character in the book because she is shown as a really kind hearted and vivacious school mistress that always seems and is innocent and helps in anyway that she is able too. Mina is Lucy Westerna’s best friend and she is a very intelligent and resourceful young woman who eventually leads Dr. Van Helsing’s men to Castle Dracula.

These aspects would suggest that she is “New Woman”, however Mina is very much sexually reticent which is against the sexually assertive nature that helps define the “New Woman” movement. While the “New Woman” movement did have some focus on the former aspects it was likely that the more outward sexuality present in the movement was what Stoker and many Victorians were worried about with the movement “Financial independence and personal fulfillment as alternatives to marriage and motherhood were not responsible for the New Woman’s becoming a symbol of all that’s challenging and dangerous in advanced thinking. The crucial factor was..sex” (Senf, 1982). While the well educated Mina does have several aspects of a “New Woman” she would not feel comfortable being associated with the movement as she is reluctant to display affection for her fiancé and she consciously rejects the forwardness and sexual frankness of “New Woman” writers: