Dracula, Women of

Lucy Westerna and Mina Harker are the only two female characters Bram Stoker describes in detail in the novel Dracula. Lucy and Mina are two of the three characters that the reader sees becoming a vampire, and both characters are narrators. It is clear that these two play a very important role in the novel. Their actions have a huge effect on the way the novel unfolds. Lucy and Mina have many differences and similarities in representing the Victorian women. Lucy represents all of the evil traits of a woman of the time, while mina represents the “New Woman” of the era. Mina and Lucy share many similarities and differences, Mina is very modest and shy, but Lucy is more outgoing and flirtatious. Mina and Lucy both look forward to being married in the future, sharing the goal of becoming wives. Mina is a middle-class working girl, while Lucy is from a more upscale background. They are childhood friends who went to the same school and grew up together. Regardless of their different backgrounds, they are good friends and they both have fine reputations. Mina and Lucy differ from each other mainly because one is married and one is not. Mina and Lucy are both seduced by Count Dracula at one point in the novel, but they had very different reactions. Mina hated herself for it and called herself unholy and unclean, and she says she wanted to be free and faithful to Harker. Mina fought it, whereas Lucy embraced it and became a child-killing monster. Mina's faithfulness to Harker is what helped her resist Dracula's power, whereas Lucy was not as faithful, and indeed was not yet married, and therefore, gave way to Dracula's seduction. Mina being married accounted for the difference because she had someone she was willing to love and someone that gave her the power to resist Count Dracula. Lucy and Mina are both attractive women in the novel, but in contrast to Lucy’s voluptuousness, Mina is strangely sexless. She is strangely sexless because she gives off a feminine