In ENGL 801 “Graduate Studies in English,” a required course for incoming M.A. students, we have always asked our graduate students to develop an original contribution to a current scholarly conversation about a literary or cultural text.
Starting in 2020, we added a final writing assignment: we asked our graduate students to create a piece of public scholarship (700-1,000 words), tailoring their academic paper and its scholarly intervention of 10-12 pages for a general-interest audience.
Students followed the guidelines shared by Irene Dumitrescu in her essay “What Academics Misunderstand about ‘Public Writing’”: “you should follow Horace’s advice for poetry: Aim to instruct or delight – ideally, to do both. Tell your readers a story, and give them the basic information they need to take it in. Avoid jargon for the most part, but teach your readers a key term when it will help them understand your topic better.”
Based on the initial success of this assignment, we’ve continued it in Fall 2021, Fall 2022, and Fall 2023 — and now in Fall 2024.
During the next weeks, we’ll be featuring here the pieces of public writing from Section C (taught by Cameron Leader-Picone) and Section B/ZA (taught by me) selected for publication following anonymous review by three faculty members. Today, we start with “Men, Monsters, and Maidens: Gender in Dracula” by Amber McAfee (MA ’26) from Section B/ZA. Enjoy!
— Karin Westman, Professor and Department Head / Instructor for ENGL 801 B/ZA (Fall 2024)
What scares us more: bloodthirsty vampires or the collapse of our expectations about men and women?
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a Gothic horror masterpiece, but the real horror lies in its challenge to Victorian-era gender norms. Below the surface of blood and fangs, the novel reveals a society grappling with cultural anxieties about shifting gender roles.
New Woman Crushing Victorian Boxes
Victorian society was a fan of its boxes—especially the ones labeled “pure,” “submissive,” and “domestic,” which women were expected to fit into and never leave. These ideals, epitomized by the concept of the “Angel in the House,” reinforced rigid expectations for women to embody purity and obedience (Showalter, 1977). By the late 19th century, the New Woman came stomping through, shattering those boxes with her independence and ambition.
Dracula dives into this societal tension, with Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker as the vivid embodiments of this clash, each representing a different facet of the societal upheaval that evokes the complexity of gender roles in the Victorian era. Lucy is both the life of the party and its biggest controversy. She flirts jokes and even dreams of marrying three men at once—an efficiency that undoubtedly horrified Victorian readers. “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men?” she muses, like someone tired of swiping left. Of course, the fun does not last: Lucy’s free spirit turns her into a vampire, a fate the Victorian reader likely saw as karmic justice for being too modern. When her fiancé, Arthur, stakes her (awkward), it is less about slaying a monster than restoring her to the neat little box labeled “pure.”
Mina, on the other hand, is like Lucy’s more disciplined cousin. She’s the overachiever who balances a checkbook while baking cookies. Mina has a “man’s brain” and a “woman’s heart,” according to Van Helsing—a line that would make any HR department cringe today.
Vampires Making Men Venerable
While Stoker critiques gender roles for women, he doesn’t let the men off the hook either. The Victorian ideal of men as stoic protectors gets a severe reality check in Dracula. These ideals expected men to be emotionally restrained, strong, and always in control. Jonathan Harker, for example, starts out as a confident professional but becomes a damsel in distress, illustrating how these expectations could break down under extreme circumstances (Craft, 1984). Trapped in Dracula’s castle, Jonathan declares, “I am a prisoner!”—a phrase that, in Gothic literature, is basically code for “I’m about to lose my mind.” This exploration of male vulnerability subverts traditional gender roles, making the audience feel the subversion of traditional gender roles. Things go from bad to worse when Dracula’s brides show up. These seductive vampires flip the script, turning Jonathan into the object of desire. Overwhelmed by a “wicked, burning desire,” he’s suddenly playing the role Victorian society reserved for women—helpless, vulnerable, and unsure whether he should be enjoying this.
Then there’s Dracula himself, the original “toxic masculine energy” wrapped in a cape. He’s a foreign, charismatic disruptor who preys on women and shakes up the men. Victorian masculinity takes a hit every time Dracula turns up, from Jonathan’s existential crisis to Van Helsing’s desperate attempts to restore order. The men band together to defeat Dracula, but their effort feels less like a noble quest and more like a group therapy session with stakes (pun intended).
Male Bonding Time
Speaking of group therapy, the male characters—Arthur, Quincy, Dr. Seward, and Van Helsing—bond over their shared duty to protect the women. They are like ‘The Avengers,” except their superpower is repressing emotions. Their male bonding moments are heartwarming but also fueled by guilt and failure. It’s important to note that their actions and emotions also challenge traditional notions of masculinity, as they often find themselves in situations where they feel helpless and out of their depth. Take Arthur, who stakes Lucy in what has to be the world’s most uncomfortable breakup. While the act restores her “purity,” it also leaves him wracked with guilt. Dr. Seward echoes this helplessness, writing in his diary, “I cannot help feeling that she is in some terrible danger, yet I can do nothing to protect her.” Victorian ideals of chivalry may demand that men protect women, but Dracula makes it clear that these men are often out of their depth—and they know it.
Monsters Hate Mirrors
Vampires in Dracula aren’t just villains—they’re mirrors reflecting humanity’s worst fears and desires. Dracula’s brides embody ‘monstrous femininity,’ a term that sounds like the title of a hit feminist podcast. It refers to the portrayal of women as powerful and assertive sexually, often seen as a threat to the traditional male-dominated society. To the Victorian men who encounter them, they are terrifying. They challenge traditional gender roles and expectations, and Jonathan’s conflicted reaction—equal parts repulsion and attraction—exposes the cracks in his carefully constructed masculinity. Dracula takes this further, becoming a walking metaphor for every Victorian anxiety imaginable. His “reverse colonization” of Britain (and its women) taps into fears of foreign influence, loss of control, and, let’s be honest, a little bit of repressed jealousy. Barry McCrea suggests that Dracula represents everything Victorian men were too scared to say out loud.
Anxieties of a Changing Society
At its core, Dracula isn’t just about vampires but a society in flux. The era was like one big identity crisis. Mina as the perfect hybrid of tradition and progress, while Jonathan’s descent into vulnerability challenges the idea of male stoicism. Lucy’s transformation is both a tragedy and a cautionary tale about straying too far from societal norms.
Tale As Old as Time
Dracula feels strikingly modern with its exploration of gender roles and societal change, which resonates in a world still grappling with these issues. Stoker’s characters feel like reflections of ourselves. In the end, Dracula is less about monsters and more about humanity. Its real horror lies in the anxieties we create when we try to box people into rigid roles. Stoker reminds us that sometimes the scariest thing isn’t a vampire—it’s a world that refuses to change.
Works Cited
Craft, Christopher. “Kiss Me with Those Red Lips: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Representations, vol. 8, 1984, pp. 107-133.
McCrea, Barry. “Fear and Desire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Victorian Studies, vol. 47, no. 2, 2005, pp. 284-305. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/victorianstudies.47.2.284.
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton University Press, 1977.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Edited by Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, Norton Critical Editions, 1997.
— Amber McAfee (MA ’26)
K-State English 
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