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- Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
- Sprache: Englisch
Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (American Studies Institute), course: Weird America, language: English, abstract: This term paper deals with the appearance of the "New Woman" in the end of the 19th century and especially with Stoker's processing of this type of woman in his novel "Dracula". The changes in the roles of men and women and the struggle for adjustment - especially in terms of sexuality - are commented on by a closer examination of the different characters concerning their looks, behavior and emotions.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Content
1. Introduction
2. Gender and Sexuality under Historical Aspects
2.1. What is gender?
2.2. Gender roles in the Victorian Age
2.3. The New Woman (after 1880)
3. Gender in Dracula
3.1. The Weird Sisters
3.2. The Crew of Light
3.3. Jonathan Harker
3.4. Count Dracula
3.5. Lucy Westenra
3.6. Mina Harker (before Murray)
4. Conclusion
Bibliography
1. Introduction
Bram Stoker’s vampire story Dracula is set in fin de siècle England. The temporal setting was not coincidentally selected, but it was prudently chosen. It was a time of radical change, the change of women’s role in society. Women grew more and more independent from male dominion and that again altered their attitudes as well as their behavior. As a result, men experienced the “New Woman” (coined by Sarah Grand, a radical feminist novelist) that almost entirely appeared weird - if not even preternatural - to them. Primarily, their recently acquired sexual liberalness frightened men to the utmost. Something demonical must have beset them; something bad must have poisoned their minds and their blood. Stoker, too, believed in the potentially evil spirits of sexual power. In his works, and especially in Dracula, Stoker copes with society’s “unprecedented anxiety and uncertainty about the social roles, sexual nature, and natural spheres of activity of men and women”[1] by hiding female independence, aggressiveness, and sexual insatiability behind the mask of the demonical influence of vampirism. Vampirism in this case symbolizes feminism, which affects every person - whether male or female - that comes into contact with its supernatural powers. It blurs fixed gender boundaries and challenges Victorian society. Therefore, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a feminist novel, especially concerning sexuality.
2. Gender and Sexuality under Historical Aspects
2.1. What is gender?
Gender is a term not only relating to the biological differences between the male and the female sex. It is rather a collective name for the classification of men and women according to values, beliefs, and conventions - especially of their social roles and thereof deriving expectations. These expectations are determined by society and culture and often fixed in laws. Violation could entail complete social exclusion.
2.2. Gender roles in the Victorian Age
In the Victorian Age conducts of behavior were generally applied to women. Consequently, I will predominantly examine women’s roles. Women at these times had to act in the exact boundaries that were assigned by culture and society. Either they lived as virgins or married and became wives and mothers. Marriage was the highest gain to achieve, but at the same time it was their undoing. Marriage withdrew all their legal rights and subjected them to their husbands. Property and decision making were placed in the husbands’ hands as “in law a husband and wife are one person, and the husband is that person.”[2] Women were assigned to their own sphere - the home. Their tasks extended from domestic service to homemaking as well as childbearing and child raising. If they earned money outside the home, it was out of the question to keep it. Clear-cut boundaries divided the two genders: Men acted “[...] competitive, assertive, [...] and materialistic” and Women ought to be “pious, pure, gentle [...] and sacrificing.”[3]
The most stringent differences, however, appeared to manifest themselves in sexuality. “’Victorian sexual morality’ is generally represented as bourgeois, oppressively heterosexual and patriarchal, and terrified by any deviations from this standard.”[4] Women were classified as asexual beings. Only men experienced pleasure from sexual intercourse and so, for their sake and for the sake of motherhood, women had to submit their bodies to the will and the needs of their husbands. A woman’s willingness was out of the question as she had no permission to deny her conjugal duties, so, abuse in the bedroom was no scarcity. Horrible experiences in the bedroom and general sexual dissatisfaction made women describe their marital sex as “[...] hateful, dreadful, and disgusting.”[5] Sex in general was despised, sexuality had to be repressed. Until their wedding night women had to preserve their purity and to chastely cover their bodies.
2.3. The New Woman (after 1880)
“’Victorian feminism’, which had brought about changes in property and marriage laws that ‘gave wives legal status independent from their spouses, enabling them to own and inherit wealth’,”[6] frightened the conservative part of society. The definitions of masculinity and femininity were challenged as the New Woman strove for independence. The domestic sphere was abandoned or at least depreciated. For those who stuck to the traditional gender boundaries the survival of the human race was considered the most eminent threat as “the compatibility of [...] maternal functions, intellectual development and social emancipation”[7] was questioned.
