The Victorian era produced a community organized strictly into stratified classes and social positions. Men dominated this cultural structure, with women being their inferior counterparts. Women were bound to an expectation of servitude, seen as inferior to strong, intelligent men, and expected to act as docile subordinates, especially to their husbands. Women's duties were limited to household-related tasks, including maintaining a proper household, raising children, and entertaining guests. The ideal woman of the Victorian era embodied purity and obedience. Sexual interactions were strictly between husband and wife, and any provocative expression outside of these relationships was prohibited. Sexuality is a fundamental human characteristic, and men feared that women who indulged in these innate tendencies would then seek other freedoms and disrupt the balances of Victorian society. Thus, in order to maintain despotism over the female sex and protect Victorian virtues, it was crucial for men to demoralize and reject women who defied these sexual constraints. In Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, Lucy Westenra, initially the archetypal Victorian woman, is bitten by the evil vampire protagonist and thus takes on undead form. His transformation into the Undead is accompanied by erotic physical characteristics that oppose the norms of his modest society. In a passage describing an encounter between the vampire Lucy and four Victorian men - Morris, Van-Helsing, Arthur and Dr. Seward - the author illustrates the expectations of Victorian women by contrasting the modest and pure Lucy before the vampire with the transformed, sensual, Undead Lucy. Because her new appearance and provocative actions threaten the core of Victorian values, it is necessary for men to subjugate the rebellious woman, reestablish the patriarchal hierarchy, and safeguard the norms that stabilized this period. To do this, Stoker strips Lucy of her humanity, equating her with an animal, a demon, and a lifeless “thing.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Stoker uses Lucy's metamorphosis to expose the dichotomy between the Victorian ideal and its licentious counterpart, and highlight society's need to return Lucy to her former self. . Pre-Vampire Lucy, the paragon of Victorian woman, is described with words of innocence, “gentleness,” and “purity” (187). Stoker describes Lucy's eyes before the vampire as "pure, gentle orbs" (188). Stoker's rhetoric emphasizes the qualities expected in women of his time: virginal and angelic. In comparison, the Undead Lucy's physical appearance is one of lust and free sexuality. Her so-called “purity” is transformed into “voluptuous wantonness” (187). However, because her desire openly confronts the feminine expectations of the time, her enlightened sensuality is doomed. His new seduction transformed his “gentleness” into “unyielding and heartless cruelty” (187). She is made evil in the eyes of men because of her defiance of Victorian norms of sexuality. In this passage, Undead Lucy's sensuality challenges the patriarchal expectations of men and her threat provokes a physical reaction among traditional men. Their responses illustrate the danger it poses to their lives, their established societal values ​​and their need to defeat this dangerous being. Appalled by her carnal appearance, the men suffer visceral reactions. Dr. Seward is so offended that his “heart grows cold like ice” (187). Its sensuality generates a “Arthur's gasp" and the four men "[shudder] with horror" (187). Men have never seen anything like Vampire Lucy before. Her eroticism so boldly challenges Victorian-era norms that men recoil in fear. Even the valiant "Van Helsing's iron nerve... gave way" at the sight of the new woman (187). When Arthur, Lucy's fiancé, confronts his transformed bride, he "would have fallen" if Dr. Seward "had not grabbed his arm and held him up" (187). Thanks to the stark contrast between the engaged couple, a reversal of Victorian roles is occurring. Arthur is now the weak, fainting figure, embodying some of the delicate attributes that Lucy once possessed. Lucy, in juxtaposition, is completely emancipated from her Victorian chains, now stronger than the mere mortals who once dominated her. Men are at the mercy of this powerful and supernatural being. However, they soon realize that they must overcome their fear. They must kill the formidable and lecherous vampire in order to protect themselves physically and restore Lucy to her "natural" place in society as a pristine Victorian doll. Stoker highlights the need to restore Lucy to her rightful place as an insubordinate in the patriarchy through her degrading diction. Using Dr. Seward as narrator, Stoker projects the thoughts and mind of the Victorian man to demonstrate the threat Lucy poses to his society and to degrade the defiant vampire in response to his cultural challenge. Dr. Seward likens it to a subhuman entity in three degrees: 1) comparing it to an animal, 2) comparing it to a devil, and 3) comparing it to a "thing" without a person. (188). Because Lucy's natural sexuality is carnal, Stoker devalues ​​her humanity and compares her to an animal in order to reestablish her as an inferior being to Victorian man and to safeguard the virtues of the era. When Lucy encounters the four men, the vampire "[retreats] with an angry growl, like that which a cat gives when caught unawares" (188). The growl, which triggers the image of an aggressive beast baring its teeth and growling in the reader's mind, distorts his face into an animal form, stripping him of any physical human features. Stoker continues the metaphor, stripping her of all human and maternal instinct, as she "[throws] to the ground...the child she had hitherto clutched fiercely to her breast, growling at it like a dog grunts on a bone.” » (188). By depriving her of any maternal tendencies, Stoker transforms the Victorian woman into a cruel and heartless beast. She is the antithesis of herself, so different from Lucy before the vampire that she is now more equal to a dog. Through Seward's descriptions, Stoker repositions Lucy in her subordinate role. This dehumanization continues as Lucy is stripped of her human morality and compared to a demonic figure, in order to further distance her from Victorian society and protect the Victorian values ​​she threatens. Lucy's sexuality so endangers the social structure of the time that the woman is described as a "devil" (188). His temptation is so powerful that his existence can only be that of an evil spirit. Christianity being at the heart of Victorian values, this is one of the most damaging insults. Lucy's eyes, which in literature often act as a symbol of a person's interiority (in one cliché, they are "the window to the soul"), are "impure and full of hellfire » and “[shine] with an unholy light” (188). ). By making Lucy satanic, Stoker distances her from the Christian values ​​of Victorian society, rejecting her completely and further exerting the superiority of men over the sexual creature. Moreover,.