Our Fair Lady

Lauren Cullins


OUR FAIR LADY




In the modern western world the body represents either masculine superiority or feminine inferiority. In the novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker he shows the emergence of the new modern woman.

The Author uses vampirism as an example of “mixed” identity, showing the relationship between desire and gender, making it clear how it promotes anxiety in the Victorian culture. We see the workingwoman, Mira, and the sexualized, Lucy and the penetrated victims (Dracula s three wives).
In the Movie Nosferatu and the 1931 edition of Dracula the display of females as sexual beings isn’t as prominent as in the novel. We see words like voluptuous, Desire, penetrate, and repulsive used repeatedly to show the heightened sexual idolization of the vamped women in Stokers Dracula.
“ Her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and the pale gums, drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than ever….. her eyes, were dull and hard at once and she spoke in a soft, voluptuous voice, such as I never heard from her lips”(p.181)

These women in the novel give a pleasurable, thrilling desire to the opposite sex. It is Dracula’s bite that turns them into irresistible beings. Not that they weren’t “sought after” by men prior to the bite, as Lucy had three suitors; its just that after they are penetrated by Dracula they give men a “wicked desire” placed them in a strange hypnotic state and covered them with a “deadly fear”.
Lucy in the story represents Virtue and innocence as does Mina and women in general during this era. However Dracula bites her for the first time her sexual aura is heightened, becoming extremely sexualized by the men in the novel.

“Why cant a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble¨.

Her sexual appetite not satisfied by one but possibly three or more men.
Bram Stoker uses Van Helsing, the doctor, philosopher, and metaphysician in the novel as a tool to maintain Victorian Gender codes. He is key, job also entailing the maintance of social structure.
Van Helsing tries to maintain gender categories by diagnosing Lucy and attempting to reverse her transformation from human to vampire. This is very important to Van Helsing and Jonathan. The likelihood of losing his or her social status is quickly pushed to the forefront of the mind.
To see Lucy and Mira “change” because of the coming of Dracula was Van Helsing´s main concern. He did all that was in his power to reverse Lucy´s transformation and to make sure the same didn’t happen to Mira. “Edward Westermark, was thinking about when he coined the memorable phrase “social adultery”. Here, then, is the real horror of Dracula, for he is the ultimate social adulterer, whose purpose is nothing if it is not to turn good English women like Mina and Lucy away from their own kind and customs”( http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp.)
One direction that both the movies and the novel shared was the common female prey; All vampires are Female other than count. He never seduces, or penetrates another male. Only by biting a woman does Dracula Penetrate a male.
“Your girls that you all love are mine already, and through them you and others shall yet be mine.”
In both movies we see sexuality and gender differently. Both films limit the focus on sexuality. In the movie nosferatu, Dracula’s three wives don’t appear at all. The only women Dracula seems to be intrigued by is Mina. The feeling so strong that while Dracula is preying on Jonathan its almost as if Mina can feel it and is being put under the same hypnosis from afar.
She actually wakes from her sleep and cries out Jonathans name as if to warn him or try and wake him from his trance.

While Jonathan is trapped in Dracula’s Castle he describes a dream or nightmare in a journal entry. He speaks of being filled with “a wicked burning desire” after being in the presence of Dracula’s three wives. This takes you into the male imagination.
“The fair girl bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me.. The girl went on her knees and bent over me simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal.” (p48)

He, Jonathan, goes on to describes Dracula’s three women that appear to him in his dream as repulsive. Although the scene itself seems as if it would have been quite pleasurable had the removal of blood not been their main objective.
During the 1890’s if a woman was viewed as a sexual idol they could not be respected among the “higher” social classes, the class in which Jonathan, Lucy, Van Helsing, and Mira belonged to. “
Stoker simply wanted to show and represent the “ new woman of the Victorian Age” by creating Mina, the new workingwoman. Admiring her grace and class while still being sexualized. Showing both “conflicting sides” of this New aged Woman.