Chapter 8 Quotes Flashcards
Mina
‘I believed we should have shocked the…
New Woman with our appetites.’
New Woman context
Mina
‘Some of the ‘New Woman’ writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be able to see each other asleep before proposing and accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won’t condescend in future to accept; she will do the …
proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it too!’
Mina shows contempt for the ‘New Woman’ and mocks the ideas of a liberated woman. This may be Stoker using Mina to put his views across as Mina is rarely someone who mocks like this. The book is set in the context of a growing movement for female suffrage.
Mina on finding Lucy when she is sleepwalking.
‘There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half reclining white figure. I called in fright ‘Lucy! Lucy!’ and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a …
white face and red gleaming eyes.’
Dark figure dominating white (pure and innocent Lucy)
red eyes, devil
Mina
‘I was filled with anxiety about Lucy, not only for her health, lest she should suffer from the exposure, but for her…
reputation in case the story should get wind.’
Victorian gossip, reputation is everything.
Mina about Lucy
‘the skin of her throat was…
pierced.’
phallic teeth enter her
Mina
‘Between me and the moonlight flitted a great bat, coming and going in great…
whirling circles.’
Lucy ‘His red eyes again! They are just the same.’
Mina ‘She appeared to be looking over at our own seat, whereon was a dark figure seated alone. I was a little startled myself, for it seemed for an instant as if the stranger had great eyes like burning flames; but a second look dispelled the….
illusion. The red sunlight was shining on the windows of St Mary’s church behind our seat, and as the sun dipped there was just sufficient change in the refraction.’
Mina tries to explain away the supernatural with science.
Mina about Lucy
‘She is paler that is her want , and there is a drawn haggard …
look under her eyes.’
Dracula is draining her
Mina about Lucy
‘the roses in her cheeks are fading and she gets weaker and more…
languid by the day.’
roses, flower imagery
‘the tiny wounds seem not to have healed. They are still open, and, if anything larger than before and …
the edges of them are faintly white.’
she is not healing
Lucy
‘I have a vague memory of something long and dark with red eyes, just as we saw in the sunset, and something very bitter and…
very sweet all around me at once.’
oxymoronic description of sweet and bitter, she desires Dracula but knows it is wrong of her to do so
Lucy on her sleepwalking encounter with Dracula
‘my soul seemed to go out from my body and …
float about the air.’
Link to Dorian Gray, Dracula can make Lucy loose her soul with a bite, Lord Henry also makes Dorian lose his soul. Both corrupting characters.
Lucy on her sleepwalking encounter with Dracula
‘then there was a sort of agonising feeling as if I was in an earthquake, and I came back and found you …
shaking my body. I saw you do it before I felt you.’
earthquake, loss of senses, scary, confusion, destruction caused by Dracula
Nurse about Jonathan in a letter to Mina
‘his delirium his ravings have been dreadful; of wolves and …
poison and blood; of ghosts and demons.’
they put this down to J being delirious
Renfield to Dr Seward
‘I don’t want to talk to you: you don’t count now; the master …
is at hand.’
master, he is devoted to Dracula completely, seen as mad
