Female Sexuality Flashcards
Dracula
Presents women as either virginal, Mina who is essential to the redemptive ending of the novel and is rewarded by not giving into Dracula’s threat over women and inspires men to heroism
Or whoreish, Lucy whose sexual instability threatens to undermine the domestic order and society itself through her weakness to resist her desires
Lucy’s symptoms reflect female hysteria further emphasizing the weakness and instability of women and their need to be protected
The three vampire women are more perverse and violent than Dracula
Suggests women should not stray from Victorian standards otherwise they will be punished as Mina is only rewarded for conforming
The mark from Mina’s forehead is removed once the men overcome Dracula suggesting that only men can purge women of their sins and only through remaining innocent and fulfilling the role of the mother will one be rewarded
TBC
Celebrated throughout the text and by the end in Wolf Alice there is much more female autonomy
Women are not placed into the two roles that Lucy and Mina are, they disturb the binary and depict how women can be both predator and the prey and they can prosper just as men can when they realise, they must break out of their passive roles
The mark on the narrator’s forehead remains for the rest of her life perhaps because she still desires her life, although society forces her to be ashamed of that
As the novel goes on the women become more metaphorically ‘marked’ by liberation however they are unapologetic for it because they can prosper as individual women, not by conforming to male standards or what is expected of women
