VAMPIRIC AFFINITIES: MINA HARKER AND THE PARADOX OF FEMININITY IN BRAM STOKER'SDRACULA

Abstract

AFTER MINA HARKERawakens from Count Dracula's vampiric embrace, she asks the men around her, but more pointedly herself, “What have I done to deserve such a fate, I who have tried to walk in meekness and righteousness all my days?” (285, ch. 21). As she recounts this perverse seduction in her own words, however, she contradicts her earlier disavowal: “strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him” (284). These conflicting statements capture the peculiar double bind with which Mina struggles throughout Bram Stoker'sDracula(1897). Many critics concentrate on Dracula himself and the men who do battle with him; interestingly, the novel also develops Mina's complex subjectivity through her unspoken but deep affinity with the vampire. Van Helsing's paranoid observation, “Madam Mina, our poor, dear Madam Mina, is changing” (319; ch. 24), epitomizes shifting cultural anxieties at the moment when a long-standing ideological conception of proper femininity comes under suspicious attack. Although nothing seems more natural to Mina than her desire to help her husband in the public sphere while maintaining an intimate friendship with Lucy Westenra in the private, these familiar roles become estranged by the new taxonomies of deviancy popularized during the late nineteenth century.

Histories of ‘a loathsome disease’: Sexual health in modern Britain

“…This intersection between eugenics, degeneration and VD has not only received considerable historiographical attention but has also been heavily scrutinised from a range of disciplinary perspectives. For example, this trifecta's sensational (if often‐oblique) appearance in literary genres like late‐Victorian gothic horror and New Woman fiction has made it a particularly popular subject among literary scholars (Krumm, 1995; May, 1998; Nixon & Servitje, 2018; Pietrzak‐Franger, 2018; Prescott & Giorgio, 2005; Showalter, 1985; Smith, 2004), which in turn has shaped the way that historians write about this important historical moment.…”

Rethinking the New Woman in Dracula

“…Though critics routinely acknowledge Mina's 'intellect' 48 , her 'secretarial skills and knowledge of the latest technology' 49 , and her 'commitment to work' 50 , there is an odd insistence that the birth of her child at the end of the novel in some way bars her from New Womanhood. Thus, Shane insists that 'while Mina does appear to be associated with aspects of New Womanhood in terms of her education and career aspirations, these qualities are ultimately muted as she assumes a maternal role in the novel's conclusion.'…”

“…Thus, critics assert that texts like Dracula reveal 'male novelists' anxieties about the sexual and social repercussions of feminism, fears reflected in predatory and monstrous females'. 1 In this reading, female characters like Lucy Westenra are seen to be 'positioned outside Victorian normativity' 2 and thus her transformation into a vampire reveals 'the threat posed to traditionally conceived British masculinity by a female sexuality that deviates from the socially proscribed norm.' 3 For these critics, Lucy and the three female vampires at Castle Dracula embody 'the sexually decadent New Woman' 4 ; this 'excessively forward sexuality' 5 is read as synonymous with emancipation, and thus Stoker is seen to present 'self-sufficient women as parasitical and immoral.'…”