The Feminist Movement Of Bram Stoker s Dracula - 1379 Words

In Victorian England, the feminist movement began to rise at an almost exponential rate. Women started to have their voices heard and even had many of their causes argued for by some men. Among these men was a lecturer by the name of Bram Stoker. Stoker spent years lecturing on and arguing for feminist causes at the Philosophical Society. That is until the â€Å"New Woman† came about. The New Woman was considered to be a new breed of woman, one that was almost inhuman or mutated, hence the name. They believed in sexual freedom, the blurring of the distinction between the genders, and their right to choose their path of life even when it went against what a man wished. Stoker then claimed that these ideals were wrong and stated it very clearly†¦show more content†¦From what is demonstrated in Dracula, Stoker clearly also believes that sexuality in a woman would additionally lead to the downfall of men along with its immorality. Scenes such as when Jonathan is with the female vampires in Dracula’s castle represent a very literal incarnation of this belief. Jonathan is awake when he hears the women vampires talk of taking him and taking his â€Å"kisses†. This causes Jonathan to be very aroused and he anticipated what the vampires were going to do to him. Jonathan does nothing to get out of the situation he was in despite the danger of it. He simply â€Å"closed [his] eyes in ecstacy and waited† (Stoker, 43) If Dracula had not interrupted, the women would have taken advantage of Jonathan and he would have either died or become a vampire. This alternate possible ending to the scene would have mirrored Stoker’s contraction of syphilis, which would have happened around the time of his writing Dracula. At this time, Stoker had not had sexual interactions with his wife for at least twenty, therefore, if one can assume his heterosexuality, he would have contracted syphilis from some other woman who was â€Å"sexually freeâ₠¬  and had seduced him into bed with her. This clear parallel was Stoker’s way of warning men against the evil of a sexually free woman. Stoker would not have wanted to advocate a cause which would allow more evil women to