Female Characters In Bram Stoker's Dracula

The role of female characters in Bram Stoker 's "Dracula" and its movie adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola Gothic novel made its breakthrough with Horace Walpole in the late 18th century, when the term 'gothic ' was used to describe something barbarous or medieval. In the late Victorian era, Bram Stoker wrote "Dracula", a novel written in a form of journal with a monster living in a castle full of mysteries that ought to be revealed within the atmosphere of gloom and terror. After the first publication in 1897, its movie adaptations, which "constitute a simpler attempt to make texts 'relevant ' or easily comprehensible to new audiences and readerships via the process of proximation and updating" (Sanders 19) have begun. The most famous

His movie adaptation differs from other adaptations mainly because it is based on Stoker 's novel only. "All screen versions of novels are transpositions in the senses that they take a text from one genre and deliver it to new audiences by means of the aesthetic conventions of an entirely different generic process [here novel into a film] (Sanders 20). Coppola alters the personalities of Stoker 's characters. Consequently, although the movie is based on the gothic novel, Coppola focuses the story on the quest for love and describes the Count as a romantic protagonist who tries to riunificate with his Elisabeta, in this case Mina, and with that fact the director calls for the sympathy of the audience. In addition, the Jonathan and Mina 's relationship is less passionate and threatened by Count 's attempts to seduce Mina. Eventually he succeeds and this causes one of the main differences between the novel and the movie: the scene where Mina voluntarily decides to drink blood from his chest in order to turn herself into a vampire, while in the book Dracula forces her into it with a threat of killing Jonathan. In the movie, she is a seducable, unfaithful, naive woman who wants to reunite with her lover, on the contrary to the book where she agrees to become Undead in order to save her husband 's life, proving to be, one more, time the ideal Victorian woman. Lucy, on the other hand, after having promiscuous personality and emphasized physical appearance in the novel, continues with it in the movie adaptation, but even more adapted to the society of the new century. She is promoted as a woman surrounded by men and she enjoys them as well their wealth and titles. Coppola underlines the theme of sexuality, although the scene is set in controversial Victorian London and "the action moves forward to the late