The following is another question I chose to discuss.
Why does Dracula only drink the blood of English women? Why doesn’t he drink, say, Jonathan Harker’s blood when he has the chance? Why is Lucy Dracula’s first target? What makes her vulnerable? What does this say about attitudes towards women at the time?
In the Victorian-era Dracula was a dark mysterious creature, who instilled fear in the innocent and vulnerable english women.
Drinking/sharing another’s blood was seen to be very intimate and sexual. This is why Dracula only drank the blood of English women, his desire is women. There are many possibilities to why Dracula had attacked Lucy first, but I believe that Dracula simply wanted Lucy because she was appealing to his sexual desire. She was described to be a pure and very beautiful young woman. She was also at a very vulnerable state when he first targets her, as it was when she was having troubles sleeping and went outside sleepwalking many times. He would’ve taken note on how vulnerable she was at that time as well as her beauty.
Dracula seemed to be attracted to women who weren’t so innocent and didn’t fit into the standards of society at that time. For example the vampires he already had (his 3 wives) were highly sexualized, as early in the novel they tried to seduce Jonathan Harker. For their time, Lucy did not meet the standards of the model Victorian woman. She was sexualized throughout the novel, a lot compared to how they described Mina, who was a perfect model of the Victorian woman. Lucy wasn’t innocent because she was pretty outgoing and she had 3 men propose to her in one night, plus she had wished it was alright to accept all of them. I believe this is another thing that attracted Dracula to Lucy.
