Mina Harker's Character In Dracula

Now, they encounter a supreme ordeal, a life or death situation, a moment of suspense and tension for the audience. The group finds Renfield in the insane asylum, covered in blood and dying. He imparts that Dracula had been “taking the life out of Mina” (ch.21). Rushing upstairs to the Harker’s room, the company witnesses Dracula, “in his left hand he held both of Mrs. Harker’s hands; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn open dress” (ch.21). Mina took the first, irreversible step towards becoming one of the undead. Van Helsing later discloses to Mina that, “[Dracula] can live for centuries, and you are but a mortal woman. Time is now to be dreaded—since once he put that mark upon your throat.” (ch.23). Mina and her camaraderie must now follow Dracula back to Transylvania in order to destroy the power that threatens to obliterate Mina’s

Stoker incorporates different allusions to various parts of the religious supernatural throughout Dracula to continue his propagation of the Christian faith. During Mina's retelling of her encounter with Dracula she pleads, "Look down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril; and in mercy pity those to whom she is dear!"(252). The word "mercy" in his dialog draws attention to the fact that Mina fears she may be coming to a bitter end. Mina turns away from logical thought and prays helplessly to the heavens for any sort of assistance it may provide to her. Throughout the story, Mina uses a typewriter to collect each of the characters personal documentation in hopes of catching Dracula. This use of new technology is symbolically shunned by making

Despite all of Mina’s efforts to be helpful to the men, in their sexist ways they exclude her in their hunt for the Count. Van Helsing says:

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.

In the book Dracula, Stoker characterizes Mina as the wife of Jonathan Harker and a friend to Lucy Westenra, a social butterfly. In the beginning of the story, Stoker identifies Mina as the ideal victorian woman in England. This generalizes some interesting contradictions about her character. First and Foremost, Stoker conveys Mina as a tender, maternal figure role of woman. Mina brings out the vulnerable side to Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris as they mourn Lucy’s death. Mina says softly, “I suppose there is something in a woman’s nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood…” (245- 246). She provides comfort and holds them like

It is very interesting to see that even though Mina is not hyper-sexualized like the other women in the book, she is the one that Count does not try to control but much rather make his partner. Mina shows bravery when it came to the Count that not even the rest of the men did. She realizes the changes that are happening to her but does not wait to be taken care of by the men. A morning after she realizes that the Count has visited her during the night she tells Jonathan to go call Van Helsing, saying: “ ‘I have an idea. I supposed it must have come in the night, and matured without my knowing it. He must hypnotize me before the dawn, and then I shall be able to speak. Go quick, dearest; the time is getting close’” (Stoker, 289). Mina knows

Indeed Mina’s attraction to Dracula in the film leads to one of the defining alterations between the film and movie adaption, the humanization of Dracula. The subtitle of the 1992 film is “Love Never Dies,” (Coppola) which is the love between Dracula and his wife Elisabeta, who is the spitting image of Mina, and is also represented by Winona Ryder. Throughout the film Dracula tries to win over Mina in order to regain his love with Elisabeta, who commits suicide after false rumours of Draculas death are feed to her by priest. The betrayal by the priest and his wife’s death, makes Dracula curse god, and therefore become a vampire. The background story of the character Dracula makes the monster almost understandable, and the audience begins to sympathize with Dracula. (0:33-5:38)

After Lucy’s death, Van Helsing tried to convinced Quincey Morris, Seward and Arthur Holmwood that Lucy has turned into “Un-dead” by bringing them to her tomb. They eventually find a solution by plunging a stake into Lucy’s heart. They chop off her head and stuff her mouth with garlic. After Jonathan and Mina’s returning to England, they joined forces with the others. Mina helps Van Helsing by collecting various journals and dairies to retype them. Their efforts were useless went one of Seward’s patient has let Dracula into the asylum to prey upon Mina. These men divided forces among them tracks Dracula across land and sea. Van Helsing takes Mina with him and he killed three female vampires by using sacred objects. Quincey and Jonathan use knives to destroy Dracula went Dracula is about to reached his castle. In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola has released a Dracula movie based on Bram Stoker’s novel. I would prefer watching a Dracula movie rather than reading a book because Coppola evokes the origins of Dracula before he turn into a vampire, twisted the subplot where Mina is the reincarnation of Dracula’s greatest love and the movie ends with Dracula’s soul

The main characters of Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, are motivated for many reasons. Their main reason, as stated throughout the novel, was for their love of Mina, and their desire to keep her safe. At the beginning of the novel when Lucy started having symptoms, Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward did all that they could to try and save her from her misery. They knew that the same might happen to Mina, and that even she might be forced to meet her end the same way as Lucy. Determined to save themselves and Jonathan not only the heartbreak, but also the risks of having a vampire besides Dracula to take care of, the group of men gathered up their courage and forced themselves to find and destroy the source of all this evil. In addition, when Mina

Lucy was introduced having many suitors and being very beautiful, but unlike women of her time she was very sexualized, even more so when Dracula turned Lucy into one of the undead. She is described as having a ravenous sexual appetite that was dangerous to men and their self-control. Mina was an ideal Victorian woman, “One of God’s women,”(Stoker, 1897) as described by Van Helsing. And remained that way through out the novel even thought there was suspense created that Mina who empathizes with the progressive new women of England would suffer the same fate as Lucy. When Stoker wrote Lucy’s demise it had a dominance undertone to it.

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.

In fact, it becomes quite obvious that Stoker deliberately characterizes her differently than her male counterparts. Mina barely lives a life of her own, constantly relying on men to make decisions for her. To the reader, it might seem like a woman taking orders or something of the sort, but it comes to the point where the reader is forced to think that Mina does not know a different way of life. Whether that analysis is true or not, Mina falls completely dependent on men. For example, when looking for Dracula, Mr. Morris says,

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.