Compare the ways in which the writers of Dracula and Dorian Gray present characters

challenging social conventions [40]

Bram Stoker presented many controversial views about women in his novel, Dracula. The characters
of Lucy and Mina are considered to be modern women and thus challenging social conventions in
different ways. Lucy is sought after by men, and because she was proposed to by 3 she is seen as
promiscuous. This is the reason why she dies first; it is a punishment for being an active agent. Mina
however, is intelligent and knows how to type short hand, she is eager to work and be a part of all of
her husband’s business and is independent enough to do things without him in the professional
sphere. The perfect Victorian woman would be a housewife, be passive and subservient to her
husband in the domestic sphere. She was an object and a possession for men and wouldn’t have
much of a personality or sexuality for herself. Men, however, were socially allowed to sleep around
and do as they wish, a0s long as they eventually settled down with a wife and made money for the
family. This creates a double standard for women, because they were supposed to only ever have
sex when they were married, but men wanted to have sex before they were married so used
prostitutes and ‘whores’, who they condemned for having sex with them. This type of women is
depicted in Dracula’s castle, when the three women take advantage of Harker, sexually arousing him
thus making him weaker and more vulnerable. Although Lucy wasn’t very sexually active, she is
viewed as it because she had a lot of male attention, which wasn’t her fault.

Dorian Gray gives us many conceivable homosexual characters such as Dorian, Adrian, Lord Henry
and Basil. Dorian and Adrian have had a past experience that ruined Adrian into heartbreak. Lord
Henry toys with Dorians feelings and takes pleasure in having an influence on the young and
innocent boy. Basil is the first person we see in love with Dorian, with his physical form and the
effect he has on people around him. This homosexuality makes them all outsiders from Victorian
society and is what shocks the readers so much that the book had to be edited to make it less
controversial for the readers to be able to read it. The conservative Scots Observer claimed it was
‘Fit for none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys’, (telegraph boys being young
promiscuous gay men). The homosexuality and overall outsider theme mirrors Oscar Wilde, who was
prosecuted and jailed for having homosexual relations himself and challenged social conventions by
being a Francophile. There are many scenarios in Dracula which may allow for readers to believe
there are some homosexual tendencies. For example, the psycho-sexual content between Dracula
and Harker; There is an obsession with physical contact, exchanging of fluids and vulnerability which
denounces him even more to the readers.

Dracula is a perfect example of a character who Stoker has perfectly designed to be ‘evil’ in the eyes
of the readers. He is a foreigner, who want to travel across to modern England and take over,
corrupting the blood of the innocent. In Victorian England there was a massive fear of the foreign,
specifically the East. Dracula is also depicted to have an ‘Aquiline nose’, a stereotypical trait of a
Jewish person. This further makes him an outsider and thus scary. There is also antisemitism seen in
Dorian Gray, through the abuse of the Jewish theatre owner. Wilde plays on the stereotypes, making
him untrustworthy and money obsessed.