Mina Harker - A New Woman?

A New Woman?

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik), course: Gothic Novel, 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the question whether Mina Harker can be described as an emancipated woman. Bram Stoker presents two different kinds of women in his novel Dracula: the passive and innocent female and the sexual aggressive woman. The pure and chaste kind of woman is presented by Mina Harker and the sexual aggressive women are represented by Lucy Westenra and the three vampire women. These different types of women find their counterparts in the Victorian society of the nineteenth century. On one side one can find the typical Victorian woman. Those women stood for traditions and long lasting ideals. At this type of woman will be looked at in the first part of the paper. It gives a short summary of the historical background to this subject. This part is followed by a characterisation of the New Woman, a phenomenon that turned up at the end of the nineteenth century. Those women wanted to renew to status of women in the Victorian society. They fought for better educational opportunities for women of that time. The main part deals with the question if Mina Harker has picked up certain traits from the Victorian ladies. It also deals with the question whether she has also taken up traits of the New Woman. Her behaviour throughout the novel will be looked at. Certain typical forms of behaviour of the two kinds of women will be picked out and analysed. The difficulty is that Mina Harker seems to have a dual character since she seems to have adopted from both types of women. This thesis will be tested throughout the main part of the paper. The conclusion gives a summary of the results and it answers to the question which type of woman Mina Harker belongs to.