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Dracula's Brides: Economic Seclusion, Prostitution, and Domestic Neglect

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Dracula's Brides: Economic Seclusion, Prostitution, and Domestic Neglect International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-2, Issue-6, Nov - Dec, 2017 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.2.6.27 ISSN: 2456-7620 Dracula’s Brides: Economic Seclusion, Prostitution, and Domestic Neglect Abriel Garrick Abstract-- Bram Stoker’s Dracula accrued international to be guarded, were secured. To the west was a great recognition and acclaim and is the foundation of an valley, and then, rising far away, great jagged expansive creative outpour of literature, film adaptations, mountain vastnesses, rising peak on peak, the sheer and numerous interpretations. The name Dracula is rock studded with mountain ash and thorn, whose familiar around the world and has been critiqued by roots clung in cracks and crevices and crannies of the numerous schools of thought. The paper looks at the Bram stone. This was evidently the portion of the castle Stoker’s use of female vampires to highlight the New occupied by the ladies in bygone days, for the Woman, economic dependence, and domestic neglect. furniture had more an air of comfort than any I had Keywords--Domestic, New Woman, vampire, Victorian seen. (35) Initially meant for protection from hostile society, the Bram Stoker’s Dracula was written in the midst of impenetrable fortress is now a controlled prison. The same intense social uproar; the New Woman fueled anxiety security against the dangerous outside world is a prison toward changing gender roles in Victorian era England; limiting their interaction and influence on the larger society. progressive women struggled for social equality and against The women’s suite was positioned where the natural terrain the negative impact of stagnant social expectations. The would not allow outside guidance to reach Dracula’s brides. restrictive gender roles in Victorian England kept women Women’s ‘occupation’ of wife and mother left their secluded to their homes. Thought of as delicate and fragile, financial security solely reliant on the men in their lives. women needed protection from the complications of Women’s intellectual, physical, and rational abilities were society. Thought of as a means of protection, women’s measured against their proficiency in their domestic duties. restriction to the home became a hindrance to their social The long held belief that women belonged by the hearth progress. By restricting Dracula’s brides to his castle, was based on their perceived inherent qualities. Women’s Stoker highlights women’s immobility and subsequent ability to perform adequately in occupations outside the dependence on the males in their family. Bram Stoker uses home was seen as non-existent because the effort needed Dracula’s brides’ restricted domain to highlight the limited was too rigorous. To break the cycle of dependence upon opportunities for women to progress outside of their men new employment opportunities were needed; better economic gender roles. Women who did venture beyond the employment required better education. In “Feminist hearth were thought to have ‘abandoned’ their domestic Thinking on Education in Victorian England” Laura duties, allowing the societal influence to penetrate the Schwartz asserts: home, and disturbing the atmosphere of respite in the home. Opposition to women’s education was based upon a While in Castle Dracula Jonathan Harker witnesses the strong assertion of sexual difference . women’s physical restrictive aspects of the female vampires’ intellects were seen as insightful and sensitive without surroundings. Dracula has placed his brides’ quarters in the the ability to make rational evidence-based most secure position; judgements; physiologically, they were not equipped From the windows I could see that the suite of rooms to deal with the rigours of university education . lay along to the south of the castle, the windows of the because women’s vocation in life was supposedly end room looking out both west and south. On the different from that of men, it was believed to be latter side, as well as to the former, there was a great pointless and cruel to educate her beyond her sphere as precipice. The castle was built on the corner of a great wife and mother. (674) rock, so that on three sides it was quite impregnable, Without skills to earn a living outside of their sexual and great windows were placed here where sling, or qualities women whom desired to maintain economic bow, or culverin could not reach, and consequently autonomy turned to the reliable profession open to women; light and comfort, impossible to a position which had prostitution. www.ijels.com Page | 181 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-2, Issue-6, Nov - Dec, 2017 https://dx.doi.org/10.24001/ijels.2.6.27 ISSN: 2456-7620 The female vampires’ dependence on Dracula necessity to become over-sexualized as prostitutes. Without represents not only a dominating patriarch but also an alternative, women turned to prostitution to support highlights society’s subjugation and lack of options for themselves Just as Dracula’s female vampires are forced financial security for women. This circumstance was into becoming fallen and have no alternative to survive present throughout history which often forced women into women without education or employable skills compulsory domesticity or prostitution. Just as Dracula’s female turned to prostitution. vampires were forced into becoming fallen, without The inference is given further weight once Van education women’s employment opportunities were scarce Helsing is able to end their ‘lives’ and the female vampires and many turned to prostitution to support themselves. have a relief that comes over them; they are freed of an In “Help to the Fallen” published 1859, Robert and existence they did not choose but were forced into. As William Chambers outline the perpetual cycle the lower Jennifer A. Swartz-Levine points out in "Staking Salvation: classes are fixed and thus: “are educated perforce-by The Reclamation of the Monstrous Female in Dracula”: Necessity as well as by Father and Mother-in thieving and “The creatures do not get to be female until after Van debauchery; are brought up to the profession of Crime . Helsing destroys them. They are a collective ‘it’ until after they will have committed no real crime at all, but only a ‘the soul had been won’ at which point they become ‘them’ necessity, discountenanced, for very sufficient reasons, by and ‘her’” (357). He is separating the women under the the law of the land” (original emphasis, 11). seductive vampires from the collective ‘fallen woman’ and As Brynne points out in his 1888 article “Women and their ‘prostitute’ label; restoring their nonsexual femininity. Just Sphere” the only reliable occupations for Victorian women before they turn to dust they have a look of “repose . were wife or prostitute: gladness . the realization that the soul had been won” Primarily, the value of women to men is their (359) as they are being spared their continued involvement sexual value, their value as workers being a very in vampirism (prostitution) and over-sexualization they secondary matter; whereas, primarily, the value of were forced into. men to women is their capacity and power for Harker’s vague recollection of the female vampires, his work and defense, their sexuality being but fear, and his “burning desire that they would kiss me with secondary . the wages of all women are those red lips” (37) is description of the English prostitutes. conditioned by their sexual resources; their The vague recognition, sexualizing, longing, and fear, of the sexuality is a saleable thing; marriage or vampires are the same hidden and unspoken societal prostitution is open to all, and a reserve fund being dynamics of prostitutes in the Victorian era. thus established in fact, their honest wages suffer. The female vampires are shut in their bedrooms; (original emphasis 6-7) only making an appearance when sought out. Their further In “Feminist Thinking on Education in Victorian seclusion to their prescribed domain in the shadows, only England” Laura Schwartz asserts: “Elizabeth Wolstenholme materializing at night, mirrors prostitutes’ ‘work’ schedule. protested that ‘It is to the last degree indecent that women Prostitutes are ‘women of the night’ consolidated and should be dependent upon marriage for a professional working in specific areas of the city. Carrol L. Fry states in maintenance’ (Wolstenholme, 1869, p. 318) . Without "Fictional Conventions and Sexuality in Dracula”; adequate training or employment, middle-class women were In fiction, it is conventional for the fallen woman forced into low-paid positions of ‘drudgery’” (673). to become an outcast, alienated from the rest of Mirroring Victorian England’s slums where, as mankind, or to die a painful death. If she lives, she Chambers and Chambers puts it: “the Dangerous Classes often becomes a prostitute or the chattel of her grow up, all by themselves, in filthy sties . are born and seducer. Similarly, Dracula’s castle is occupied bred every year in an atmosphere of temptation and by his ‘wives,’ who were at some earlier time his ignorance such as honesty cannot draw breath in” (11). victims. He has loved them with the vampire’s The ideal feminine wife and mother was a phallic bite, and they have become outsider, Un- nonsexual person; the over-sexualizing of Dracula’s brides Dead, and, like the fallen woman, not part of the leaves prostitution as an acceptable interpretation. The over- human race. (21) sexualizing attributed to Dracula’s brides is a forced The difficulty in maintaining independence in the characteristic they received with the vampire’s curse. This Victorian Era’s gender debate was not hidden from social forced sexualizing represents the lower class women’s consciousness. Women’s struggle to maintain independence www.ijels.com Page | 182 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-2, Issue-6, Nov - Dec, 2017 https://dx.doi.org/10.24001/ijels.2.6.27 ISSN: 2456-7620 did not gain sympathy from all observers.
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