Vampire women

Question 1

‘Dreamy fear’

Answer 1

• juxtaposition
• Harker’s conflict of being scared or attracted
• Victorian superstitions surrounding sleep

Question 2

‘Brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me feel uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear’

Answer 2

• semantic field of preciousness - tainted purity / attitudes towards promiscuity in the victorian period.
• sexualised lexis - ‘voluptuous’
• themes of temptation yet entrapment
• Harker feels somewhat threatened by brides so subverts male gender roles - Victorian audience may perceive him as cowardly

Question 3

‘I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest someday it should meet Mina’a eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth’

Answer 3

• Modern audience would be sympathetic of Mina - infidelity more accepted to an extent in victorian period
• colour imagery - danger
• sexuality and temptation
• influence of Castle Dracula on Harker ‘wicked’ - crossing geographical boundaries

Question 4

‘I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat […] I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited - waited with beating heart.’

Answer 4

• complex adjective signifies power struggle or mortal and immortal beings - Harker is perceived as weaker and more sensitive - boundaries of liminality
• sensual language evokes Harker’s tactile pleasure
• vampiric intimacy - may frighten victorian audience and reinforce gothic genre