Blood Spurts From The Female Vampire s Chest - 1515 Words

Blood spurts from the female vampire’s chest, as her human lover drives the stake further and further into her heart. The scene where Lucy is killed can be interpreted in different ways due to the varying interpretations of blood. One way to interpret blood and vampirism in Bram Stoker’s Dracula is through the psychoanalytical critical lens. In this interpretation, blood symbolizes sexual fluid and vampires are a metaphor for eroticism. The novel was written in Victorian England, which had strict morals regarding female sexuality. In an article, Jesse Battan describes ideals from this time period as â€Å"insist[ing] that women s erotic impulses were shaped by maternal instincts and a social conscience†. Victorian society trained women not to act upon their desires and instead to repress their sexuality. Lucy Westerna, a main female character in the novel, has a sleepwalking habit that reveals her subconscious desires. However, as the novel progresses, her desire s are no longer merely subconscious because her sexuality is expressed through her vampirism. This prompts the hunters to try and remedy this issue by murdering her. Bram Stoker conveys that Lucy defies Victorian England standards due to the progression of her character from the typical nineteenth century maiden into a sensual creature. At the beginning of the novel, Lucy follows society’s standards by suppressing her sexuality and only revealing her repressed desires through her sleepwalking. After discovering Lucy