Dracula and The Female Other: An Analysis of the Relations Between Victorian Anxieties and Bram Stoker’s Depictions of Women
Faculty Mentor
Beth Torgerson
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Start Date
May 2025
End Date
May 2025
Location
PUB 323
Primary Discipline of Presentation
English
Abstract
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, serves as propaganda for the idealized gender and sexual roles in Victorian England. The novel uses feminine and vampiric characters to express women as an Other, either by gender or radical sexuality; Lucy Westerna and Mina Harker serve as models of Victorian women exploring the “Woman Question” because of their desire to work, think rationally, and explore their individualism, while the vampiric women in Dracula’s castle serve as an entity of the Other because of their gender, sexual preferences, and ambiguity. The female Other personifies the threat and anxieties of change to the English patriarchal hegemony. I am particularly interested in analyzing the symbolic evolution of these women and interpreting what they mean to a literary audience. Through the depictions of sexuality and gender inversion with his female characters and his vampiric characters in Dracula, Bram Stoker responds to the changing ideas about gender and sexuality in Victorian England by projecting the fear of expressed female sexuality and desire with characters representing the female Other. By examining Lucy, Mina, and the vampiric women in a gendered lens, theories about the complex gender ideals of Victorian England are uncovered.
Recommended Citation
Shah, Kaylani Maniben, "Dracula and The Female Other: An Analysis of the Relations Between Victorian Anxieties and Bram Stoker’s Depictions of Women" (2025). 2025 Symposium. 8.
https://dc.ewu.edu/srcw_2025/op_2025/o4_2025/8
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Dracula and The Female Other: An Analysis of the Relations Between Victorian Anxieties and Bram Stoker’s Depictions of Women
PUB 323
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, serves as propaganda for the idealized gender and sexual roles in Victorian England. The novel uses feminine and vampiric characters to express women as an Other, either by gender or radical sexuality; Lucy Westerna and Mina Harker serve as models of Victorian women exploring the “Woman Question” because of their desire to work, think rationally, and explore their individualism, while the vampiric women in Dracula’s castle serve as an entity of the Other because of their gender, sexual preferences, and ambiguity. The female Other personifies the threat and anxieties of change to the English patriarchal hegemony. I am particularly interested in analyzing the symbolic evolution of these women and interpreting what they mean to a literary audience. Through the depictions of sexuality and gender inversion with his female characters and his vampiric characters in Dracula, Bram Stoker responds to the changing ideas about gender and sexuality in Victorian England by projecting the fear of expressed female sexuality and desire with characters representing the female Other. By examining Lucy, Mina, and the vampiric women in a gendered lens, theories about the complex gender ideals of Victorian England are uncovered.
