Podcast S01-E02: Bram Stoker's Dracula or the violence towards women
Written by Hermance L. Written on: March 21st, 2020.
Transcript:
Dracula is a Gothic horror fiction written by Irish author Bram Stoker that tells the story of Jonathan Harker, a solicitor, who travels to Transylvania to meet Count Dracula and help him finalize the purchase of a property in England. Soon afterwards, the Englishman discovers his host's castle's strange, dark secrets and, managing to escape, comes back safe to England with his now wife Mina Harker. However, when sinister incidents multiply in London, including Lucy Westenra’s tragic death, Mina and Jonathan alongside Van Helsing know that the danger creeping on the city streets can only mean one thing: Count Dracula is here.
Ever since its publication in 1897, the novel has been adapted multiple times in songs, plays, and on TV as well as in cinema making Dracula ‘the most portrayed literary character in films’. And even though Bram Stoker did not invent the concept of vampires in fiction, the first vampire character to appear in print was Coleridge’s poem Christabel published in 1816, Stoker undoubtedly contributed in making the blood-sucker creatures popular so much so that Dracula eclipsed Stoker’s other works.
These various adaptations, as well as academic essays, have led to the analysis of different themes present in Bram Stoker’s Dracula such as colonisation, anti-capitalism, and xenophobia but also homosexuality, sexual conventions, and feminism or even anti-feminism and so on.
And today, in this episode, I will discuss Lucy and Mina and how they are condemned to become Dracula’s victims by the men in their lives.
Critics of the 20th and 21st century have argued for a very long time that if Lucy Westenra completely falls into Dracula’s clutches it is because, compared to her best friend Mina Murray, she represents the old ways of Victorian society regarding women and that her main fault is to be too dependent of the men in her life. But when we look a little bit closer we realise that Lucy’s and Mina’s backgrounds represent two sides of the same coin when it comes to the concept of the ‘New Woman’ that emerged in the last decade of the 19th century. Kathryn Boyd mentioned that in the second half of the 19th century, women gained access to education, obtained the rights to own their own property and retain their assets even once married. Lucy is from a wealthy family and doesn’t need to worry about her future as after her mother’s death she will inherit the family fortune and property and can retain her control over her assets (though it does seem that Lucy would probably transfer her rights to Arthur Holmwood). On the other hand, Mina Murray doesn’t have any fortune or property to inherit, she is bound to pursue higher education and earn money to allow herself to financially contribute to the household alongside her future husband. So is it really Lucy’s dependency to men that leads her to become Dracula’s first British victim? Well, to be honest I don’t think that it is the case. And I also don’t think that Lucy and Mina both representing an aspect of the turn of the century “New Woman” ideal should matter. In fact, if there is one element that struck me when I was reading Dracula it’s that Lucy and Mina are actually victims of the male misconceptions about the female sex. Basically, men refuse to share important information regarding Dracula and vampirism because they deemed the women in their lives to be fragile little things who need to be coddled even though these women have shown that they could just be as strong as any man sometimes.
There is this moment in Bram Stoker’s novel when doctor John Seward asks his friend and mentor Professor Van Helsing to come to London to examine Lucy Westenra who appears to be suffering from anaemia and lung deficiency. When Van Helsing arrives, Seward and us the readers understand that Van Helsing knows more than what he wants to make us believe and, instead of telling the whole truth on what is really happening to Lucy, the Dutch doctor is beating about the bush, telling half-truth only to his friend John Seward and nothing to Lucy Westenra before merrily going back to Amsterdam. By purposefully holding crucial information to Lucy, Abraham Van Helsing condemns Lucy to be attacked by Dracula in her sleep and condemns her to:
“the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, with such unknown horrors as it is for me!” (Dracula, Chapter X p. 143)
Lucy is forced to live with the physical harm and pain that Dracula causes her every night without understanding what is going on with her:
“Another bad night. […] More bad dreams. This morning I am horribly weak. My face is ghastly pale, and my throat pains me. There must be something wrong with my lungs, for I don’t seem ever to get air enough.” (Dracula, Chapter IX, p.119-120)
Because Professor van Helsing is convinced that Lucy Westenra is too sensitive of a lady to accept the idea of evil blood-sucker beings being responsible for her health issues, but also because reasonable and wealthy British gentlemen would not believe him, Van Helsing becomes Dracula’s unwilling accomplice as he knows that a vampire is using Lucy’s sleep-walking behaviour to kind of hypnotise her and take control of her body and shutting down her consciousness so that he can physically harm Lucy by biting her and drinking her blood but also so that he can sexually abuse her in her sleep.
Van Helsing’s lack of communication leads Mrs. Westenra, Lucy’s mother, to make a terrible decision that will doom Lucy even further. In fact, there is this one moment in the novel where Abraham Van Helsing insists on Lucy wearing garlic flowers around her neck during the night and leave all windows and doors closed. He doesn’t give any explanation to Lucy as to why these measures are necessary, he just expects Lucy to follow his instructions and she does so without questioning him because he is a man she can have faith in. But the thing is that the Dutch professor also refuses to talk to Mrs. Westenra about the measures he is implementing for Lucy’s sake because, once again, Van Helsing doesn’t believe that a woman can handle such terrifying information and that it could potential kill Mrs. Westenra. And here again, Van Helsing commits a tragic mistake. He will only understand the scope of such error the following morning when Mrs. Westenra tells him that the previous night when she entered her daughter’s bedroom, the place:
“was awfully stuffy. There were a lot of those horrible, strong-smelling flowers about everywhere, and she had actually a bunch of them round her neck. I feared that the heavy odour would be too much for the dear child in her weak state, so I took them all away and opened a bit the window to let in a little fresh air.” (Dracula, Chapter X, p.144)
By doing so, Mrs. Westenra facilitated Dracula’s visit to Lucy enabling Dracula to feed off her daughter without being aware that she was putting her child in danger.
I guess what I am trying to say is that for decades we have been too eager to blame Lucy Westenra for her downfall only because she didn’t represent the ideal version of the ‘New Woman’ as she was described as the perfect ingénue who was dependent of the men in her life. But should Lucy’s kindness, trust and love as well as reliance be blamed for her death? I don’t really think so. The ones responsible for Lucy’s death are first Dracula who imposed himself on her and infected her with vampirism and the other is Professor Van Helsing who willingly withheld information condemning her to be the victim of Dracula’s violent actions. Would it have been better if Lucy had some form of agency? Yes, of course. But in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, agency doesn’t guarantee that a female character will be safe from Dracula’s fangs.
Compared to Lucy Westenra, Mina Murray Harker is a bit more pro-active. She is considered to be the archetype of the “New Woman” because she works as an assistant schoolmistress, is learning shorthand to help her future husband in his work as a solicitor, and is undeniably intelligent and resourceful. Mina herself sympathises with the progressive “New Woman” movement but she still represents a conservative model of domestic propriety:
“She is one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble.” (Dracula, Chapter XIV, p.201)
Mina’s pro-activeness is first shown when she is at Lucy’s family’s house taking care of her friend who started sleep walking again after so many years. When Lucy disappears of her room one night, Mina is the only one who braves the dark empty streets of Whitby to find her best friend and who, in the end, interrupts Dracula as he is drinking Lucy’s blood without any second thoughts:
“It seemed as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether a man or a beast, I could not tell; I did not wait to catch another glance, but flew down the steep steps to the pier and along the fish-market to the bridge. […]There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. I called in fright and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes. […] When I came in view again the cloud had passed, and the moonlight struck so brilliantly that I could see Lucy half reclining with her head lying over the back of her seat. When I bent over her I could see that she was still asleep. ” (Dracula, Chapter VIII, p.100-101)
There is another moment in the novel that shows that Mina isn’t someone easily scared by things that seemed impossible to exist. After travelling on her own to a convent in Budapest, she reunites with Jonathan Harker who, before they get married, wants her to read his journal in which he detailed his stay at Count Dracula’s castle and his experience with undead beings. She doesn’t really know what to make of Jonathan’s journal but she acknowledges his experience and is willing to do whatever it takes to protect her fiancé’s sanity.
Just like Mina didn’t fail her best friend Lucy, she doesn’t fail to support her husband. And it is worth noting that it is only once Mina leaves Lucy to Arthur Holmwood and Dr. John Seward’s care that Lucy’s state starts getting worse and worse leading to the death of her friend.
And while Lucy was condemned to die because she was kind, air-headed and trusting towards John Seward, Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood and Van Helsing. Mina is condemned to be let down by the very same men, as well as her husband, once her intelligence, kindness and resourcefulness cease to benefit the men of her life.
Indeed, Mina Harker provides considerable useful information regarding Dracula’s modus operandi to Van Helsing after the professor asks for her and her husband’s help to catch the person responsible for Lucy’s death. After a long conversation with the five men and after many praises from them about how “wonderful Madam Mina” is and how her brain is similar to that of a “man” (Dracula, p.250) and that “God has fashioned her for a purpose” (Dracula, p.250) and that purpose being that she was “made to be of help to them” (p.250) Mina is side-lined. She is no longer deemed useful enough to be given information about the situation:
“When we part tonight, you no more must question. We are men, and are able to bear; but you must be our star and our hope, and we shall act all the more free that you are not in danger, such as we are.” (Dracula, Chapter XVIII, p.258)
This contributes to Mina being targeted by Dracula, just like Lucy was. Because she does not participate in any meeting, she is unaware that Dracula can turn into mist, that he can control rats, that he can enter a home only if he is invited in and that the counter effects of being bitten by Dracula are: exhaustion, oversleeping during the day, anaemia, and throat pains, etc. By believing that she is not strong enough to handle such information because she is a woman, Van Helsing plays an important part in Mina’s affliction with vampirism. But what is probably the most striking example of the uncaring nature and lack of basic observation skills of these five men is that none of them were capable of noticing Mina’s symptoms not even Jonathan Harker himself:
“Mina must have felt the exhaustion, for though I slept till the sun was high, I was awake before her, and to call two to three times before she awoke. […] She was so sound asleep that for a few seconds she did not recognise me, but looked at me with a sort of blank terror, as one looks who has been waked out of a bad dream.” (Dracula, Chapter XIX, p.271)
With this extract it is clear that Dracula has been visiting Mina Harker. But because both Jonathan and Mina are staying over at Seward’s house, we can wonder who invited Dracula in. And once again, our female character has been betrayed by a man. The man’s name is Renfield and he is a resident patient at John Seward’s asylum. He has been diagnosed as a “zoophagous maniac” and believes that ingesting spiders, insects and birds can prolong his life. This leads Renfield to worship Dracula and hope to be turned into a vampire by Dracula. Renfield’s desire to consume the life-force of living beings leads him to invite Dracula in while Seward, Van Helsing, Quincey, Holmwood and Jonathan are gone leaving Mina at the mercy of Dracula:
“Then he began to promise me things ‘All these lives I will give to you’ […] And I found myself saying ‘Come in Lord and Master’.” (Dracula, Chapter 21, p.297-298)
When the men finally understand what has happened to Mina due to their foolishness, it is already too late. Just like Lucy, Dracula has subjected Mina to the undead curse but this time around, Dracula did so not because he is enslaved to his very own desires but because he wanted to get his revenge for what the five men did to his boxes of earth.
So in the end, whether Mina Harker exemplifies the ideal of the “New Woman” or not it doesn’t really mean anything as she is only given respect and value as a significant member of the group when men can benefit from her skills, her intelligence and her knowledge. When she stops being of interest she is quickly dismissed and stripped of her pro-activeness and agency rapidly finding herself in the same unfortunate position as her best friend Lucy before her. Abandoned by the men she trusted, she ends up being punished by Dracula for the actions of the men in her life and not for her own involvement in his demise. She is condemned by the very same men she has helped, especially Van Helsing who marked her forehead with sacramental bread, just like he marked Lucy’s neck with a garlic flowers necklace. And even though Mina is saved at the end of the novel, cured from vampirism, she didn’t get the opportunity to stake the vampire who inflicted her pain and killed her best friend.
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, men are miraculously exempt from being infected by vampirism compared to women. Women are bound to be the victims of Dracula’s desires, of his cruelty, of his violence (whether it be physical or sexual) and victims of the undead curse that Dracula places upon them which turns these women into seductive creatures of the night who only attack children and sometimes try to attack men but because men represent the patriarchal society these vampire brides can never succeed in destroying the patriarchy. Take the example of Jonathan Harker who spent several months in Dracula’s castle and whose blood was never once sucked by the Count. Even when Jonathan was left alone with Dracula’s three vampire brides, he somehow remained human, untouched by the curse of the undead. I already hear some of you say ‘But what about Renfield and Quincey, they both died by Dracula’s hand’. Well, yes and no. They did die but not because Dracula sucked their blood. Quincey died of a lethal wound to his chest inflicted by one of the gypsies working for Dracula and Renfield got his back broken and had his head smashed against the floor by Dracula.
Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray Harker fell victims of the male misconceptions about the female sex. They are deemed to be fragile little things whether they adopt a passive or active behaviour, whether they defy social propriety or not and whether they represent the idea of a turn of the century modern woman or not. And in the end, whenever men refuse to communicate and share relevant information, they condemned Mina and Lucy to be preyed upon by Count Dracula.
Bibliography:
Boyd, Kathryn. Making Sense of Mina: Stoker’s Vampirization of the Victorian Woman in Dracula, Trinity University, 2014.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula, London, Penguin Classics, 2003