dracula Flashcards
(25 cards)
my soul..
hides in the air
why cant a women
marry three men or as many as she wants
(Lucy’s naivety links to her guarded life with wealth, yet she lacks propriety as she innocently )
men like their women to
be fair and women are not as fair as they should be
she looked
peaceful
god shield me
from the harm of his night
kitten forced
down into a sourcer
grasped my neck
forcing me into his bosom
i did not
want to hinder him
i could not resist
the tempatation of mystifying him a bit perhaps the taste of the apple remains in us all
womens heart
but a mans brain
sweetly pretty
white frock
present purity and physical delicacy
something dark
stands behind
contrasting lucy’s innocence to draculas corruptive nature
unclean
unclean even the all mighty shuns my polluted flesh
one of
gods women
mina’s mark of cain
Mina has a mark of Cain on her head. The biblical allusion presents her sin of committing lustful acts. Dracula’s influence is not just a physical one but also spiritual. In the biblical story Cain is outcast as a murderer, and mina is similarly denied by society when she visits Transylvania, and her shame presents her ongoing faith amongst her tainted blood. Initially, she’s tied to damnation, which she evades through her redemption. In Victorian society corruption of faith and sin in women were seen as shameful and Mina’s corruption brings her internal and external shame
what does mina drinking the blood symbolise
she confronts her sexual transgression and she becomes sexually corrupted. this lins to findesciele worries of impurity and loss of chastity. catherine of sierra context links to this as she drinks christs blood and ots a paradox of that, but also links to fers of polluted blood as she becomes dracu;as flesh of his flesh blood of his blood
‘Her wanton reputation is compromised when she’s given transfusions from each of the men’
As Cecil Rhodes quotes ‘to be British is to have won the lottery of life’
Nina Auerbach states that stoker could be talking about fears of immigration.
drenched in
scarlett
The bed was ‘drenched in scarlett’ before the transfusion. When contrasted with sexuality it can present the blood a woman loses during sex. It also highlights anxiety of tuberculosis at the time, highlighting the tension between beauty and decay.
her sweetness
had turned into adamantine cruelty
voluoptous wantoness
sweetness was restored
Her appearance shocks the men so much and could arguably terrify them and therefore emasculate them to a certain degree as even van Helsings ‘iron nerve had failed’
lucys eye were no longer the gentle orbs we knew but unclean and full of hellfire
Even in her vampiric sate there’s religious imagery her eyes are no longer ‘the gentle orbs we knew’ but ‘unclean’ and ‘full of hellfire’ drawing upon her anti-Christ nature and otherness she brings. Hellfire draws upon the fall from grace and evokes imagery of damnation and her opposition to the divine order. By making her anti-Christ stoker stresses the conflict between Christian values and the supernatural evil. Her transformation serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of straying away from societal values and the patriarchy and highlights fears of the new women and independence and the wave of immigration that was seen to pollute British blood. As Cecil Rhodes quotes ‘to be British is to have won the lottery of life’ and Nina Auerbach states that stoker could be talking about fears of immigration.
She lacks maternal qualities as she feeds from children while stuck as the bloofer lady. She shifts from a potential wife and mother into a sexualised predator.
She was ‘diabolically sweet in her tone’ vampirism corrupts innocence ad purity and the female virtue
lucys second death significance
er initial death was a bad death and She’s the antithesis of the ideal Victorian death - inks to context of Victorians obsessions with death’ as she was overtly sexualised ‘voluptuous wantonness’ it reflects the social anxieties of moral decay and unchecked desires leading to loss of control. As her innocence is further corrupted, she becomes the bloofer lady. However, in her second death she has a good Victorian death as she dies beautifully and her ‘sweetness is restored’. Theres a gothic tension between life and death that conflicts with her decaying morality. As her body undergoes drastic transformation, she loses her sweetness and beauty and even the ‘red seemed to have gone from her lips and gums’ and the ‘bones on her face stood out prominently’
he can do all
He can do all he wants yet he is not free’
evokes a small sense of sympathy from the reader. As he is bound by his curse and cannot liberate himself, he is the most cursed of them all. Though he strips others of freedom and rationality and life he is unable to gain the human qualities he seeks. Arguably in the novel this is his most gothic trope as he’s a villain through force who lives off humans as sustenance.
two were dark
‘Two were dark and had high aquiline noses’- gothic tropes of otherness and obscurity and fear- links to the ‘pollution’ of blood and fears of immigration.
links to dracula and the dark windows, his dark shadow
renfield qoutes
hes more like
a native
blood is
Renfield- was a solicitor like Harker
‘he’s more like a beast than a man’ he’s been corrupted and deranged.
‘a native lunatic’ ‘immensely strong’ ‘paradoxical rage’ links to fin de siècle worries of degeneration.
He’s diagnosed with zoophagus
Renfield and Dracula have a servant master relationship, and his madness and rage increases when Dracula is nearby. Their master servant relationship is a perversion of the Christian faith which shows how Dracula corrupts religion. He has a duality of character, acting sometimes rational and sometimes like a violent wild beast. Hes described as a pet lunatic that dehumanises him and implies his mental instability
‘Blood is the life’ is a parody of Christianity. It distorts religion and presents Dracula as an anti-Christ. as he also pollutes people with blood
