Lucy Westenra

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• (pg. 146) Lucy's hair:  "usual sunny ripples"
• vs. Lucy after transforming into a vampire : "a dark-haired woman" carrying a "fair-headed child" - Dark hair like Dracula's symbolising evil, fair symbolises "purity"
• Mina describing Lucy: "something that looked like a good-sized bird"
• "She looks so sweet as she sleeps"
• *Lucy questioning the role of the man: "I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him".
• "I believe we should have shocked the "New Woman" with our appetites"

• Puritan lens: Twisted, unchristian example of a woman, whose sexual greed reasonably leads her to being corrupt by Dracula
• Feminist lens: A sexual representation of femininity, avant-garde for the time, who society tries to tame her down for challenging the sexual morality of a Victorian woman
• Critics (AO5) Sally Kline -> a Victorian woman in fact, had only two options; she was either a virgin or else she was a mother since the Victorians considered that sexual repression was a sign of good breeding and if she was neither of these she was seen as promiscuous.

• Lucy challenges monogamy, Mina obeys it                                             -> Lucy is punished for being promiscuous by turning into a vile monster of the undead corrupting children, whereas Mina is being rewarded.
• PURITAN LENS: She deserves it ';                                           FEMINIST LENS: Sympathetic towards her
• At the same time, Lucy can also be perceived as being punished for being morally naive
• *Utterly bold and promiscuous -> from a Puritan perspective, we can feel deep disgust towards her atrocious actions!

• "The cult of womanhood" - Social Purity Movement
• "A woman was only considered as a “lady” if women repressed their “instincts”, meaning that they should desist from sex "; This required purity and submissiveness in women, and were told to become almost asexual. Women who were sexually active and who did not deny their sexuality were therefore a threat, both to themselves and to society,(The Importance of Blood during the Victorian Era: Blood as a Sexual Signifier in Bram Stoker’s Dracula)
• -> For women in 1897, lack of knowledge of their own bodies and sexuality was a primary source of pride -> she is being punished as a woman would have been at the time "by God" for experiencing the desire men were being excused for.
• Gender and class in Victorian society: For men sex was central, and for women reproduction was central. Men were independent, while women were dependent. Men belonged in the public sphere, while women belonged in the private sphere. Men were meant to participate in politics and in paid work, while women were meant to run households and raise families. (Britannica)
• Women were also thought to be naturally more religious and morally finer than men (who were distracted by sexual passions by which women supposedly were untroubled). While most working-class families could not live out the doctrine of separate spheres, because they could not survive on a single male wage, the ideology was influential across all classes. (Britannica)
• FEMINIST LITERATURE: "The New Woman"-  a woman especially of the late 19th century actively resisting traditional controls and seeking to fill a complete role in the world.