She-Vampires In Dracula

Moreover, the she-vampires can be seen as our Femme Fatale characters that are not controlled by male authority. Jonathan Harker is “only in the presence of theses she-vampires through an act of wilful defiance of the count’s instructions-it is a situation at least so for his own seeking and his response to events as they unfold demonstrates at least a tacit willingness on his part to participate.” Through this “wilful defiance” he deliberately refuses to recognise Dracula as his authority figure, as in the Marxist society Dracula is the employer with wealth and Harker is the employee who would be of a lower financial status to the Count, and goes against his superego and lets his ID take over. When he waits in “agony of delightful anticipation” it leads us to believe that Harker is an active participant in this act and is not

Even at the end of the scene we are still unaware if Harker was afraid of these she-vampires and if he was an active participant as “horror overcame” him and he “sank down unconscious.” This reaction to the “horror” he witnessed is what would be expected of a woman. This shows the strength of the three women and the fear they have provoked in Harker, possibly since they are Femme Fatale women and he cannot understand what these women want. This idea that Harker shows attributes of a women, such as weakness, and that the she-vampires have male attributes, such as strength, could have been used by Stoker to show that society has created these set rules for women and men to behave in a specific way, but these stereotypes can be broken and gender boundaries can be blurred. This scene can also be interpreted as Harker having an orgasm, which shows that this “fear” may have been masked by his “burning desire” for the women. Meaning, he may have been afraid, but he may have still been an active