Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal Fantasies in Bram Stoker's "Dracula"

B. Stoker's Dracula is examined with particular emphasis on Stoker's attempt to deal with feminism, & on the repressed sexuality which scorches the pages of this Victorian-era novel. Stoker uses a bipartite construction in Dracula in his introduction of two divergent F types: Lucy, a traditionally sweet & helpless figure who appears in the first half of the book, & Mina, gifted with a man's brain, therefore intelligent & independent, who emerges in the second. An interesting reversal of traditional sex roles is presented as the M is depicted as passive & yielding to aggressive vampire women. Other appeals to repressed interests include the rejection of the typical Victorian mother's role when the vampire women were seen to eat some children, & the forbidden thought-into-action of the violations of "good" women, both as performed by Dracula & by Lucy's rescuers as they drive a stake through her -- new vampire -- heart. Dracual's popularity is hypothesized to continue because of a need for our most strongly repressed desires to become manifest in fantasy form. D. Abrahams.