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Flashcards in Dracula: Critics Deck (14)
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1
Q

William Hughes

A

William Hughes
patriarchal society = Mina’s destiny is to be a mother

(DON’T AGREE: BUT she produces a baby, as well as ordering the novel)

2
Q

Robert Frost - Role of women

A

Robert Frost
women = virginal victims AND
illustrate the contradictions and ironic tensions in Victorian society

3
Q

Oscar Wilde

A

Schaffer
Dracula represents Oscar Wilde’s trial:
fears, secrecies, repressions, and punishments

4
Q

Carol Senf - Reverse-colonialism

A

Carol Senf

Harker becomes frightened only when he realises he is assisting Dracula to England

5
Q

Robert Frost - Mina’s role in ‘Dracula’ compared to she-vampires

A

Robert Frost

- Mina is the antithesis of the she-vampires, she is a Victorian virgin set on an idealised pedestal

6
Q

Glennis Byron - role of female vampires

A

Glennis Byron

  • Female vampires represent a rejection of maternity in their preference not for feeding but rather feeding ON a child
  • savagely reject the woman’s central role as mother
7
Q

Jennifer Fleissner

A

Jennifer Fleissner
- Mina’s passage from typist to vampire victime to wife and mother is a perfectly natural, even necessary, trajectory in the development of a modernised femininity
Why?
- in period during which Dracula was written, typewriting became increasingly viewed as an acceptable part of a middle-class woman’s life
- Mina is only the messenger for information - her shorthand/typewriting is training for her role as a mother who transmits information to her child needed to enter the wider world

8
Q

Carol Senf - Unconscious development of Lucy’s rebellion

A

Carol Senf
- During the day, Lucy never admits her rebellion about the restraints placed on women, but at night her rebellion surfaces as she wanders around Whitby in her sleep and meets Dracula

9
Q

Phyllis Roth

A

Phyllis Roth

  • only relations with vampires are sexualised
  • only when Lucy becomes a vampire, she is allowed to be “voluptuous”
  • yet she must have always been so considering her effect on men and Mina’s descriptions of her
  • vampirism = sexuality
10
Q

psychoanalytical perspective - what vampirism disguises

A

vampirism is a disguise for greatly desired and equally strongly feared fantasies

11
Q

Glennis Byron - The staking of Lucy

A

Glennis Byron

- the staking of Lucy provides the most brutal enactment of the restoration of gendered boundaries

12
Q

Carol Senf - Two dimensional characters of ‘Dracula’

A

Carol Senf

  • all characters are youthful and inexperienced (except Van Helsing) and are 2D
  • only distinguishing characteristics are their names and their professions

(DON’T AGREE: e.g. Dr Seward has emotional breakdowns, shows jealousy, is self-critical
- product of social repressions)

13
Q

Carol Senf - Biased narration

A

Carol Senf
- question narrators’ reliability:
Harker suffers nervous breakdowns;
Lucy exhibits schizophrenia;
Seward occasionally questions the sanity of their mission, and his diary entries about Renfield indicates his realisation of the narrow margin between sanity and insanity: “It is wonderful, however, what intellectual..power lunatics have”
- Lucy’s death could be easily attributed to the blood transfusions
- Dracula is tried, convicted, and sentenced by men (including 2 lawyers) with no opportunity to defend himself

14
Q

Carol Senf - Dracula is an internal threat

A

Carol Senf
- a vampire cannot influence a human being without that person’s consent (cannot enter dwelling w/out being invited in)
- thf. Dracula is internal not external threat
Renfield’s desire for immortality;
Lucy’s desire to escape repressive society;
Desire of all characters to overcome restraints of religion and law