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Playlist Dracula: Shmoopversations 16 videos
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Dracula Part 5: The Mortals 28746 Views
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Description:
Dracula knows how to charm a lady. Maybe it’s his charisma, maybe it’s his looks, maybe it’s his...hypnotism? Yeah, it’s probably the hypnotism. That seems like an unfair advantage.
Transcript
- 00:01
We speak student!
- 00:07
Dracula
- 00:09
The Mortals
- 00:11
a la Shmoop
- 00:13
Dracula's affected by women around him in a unique way.
Full Transcript
- 00:17
Can you talk a little bit about
- 00:19
the effect that Lucy and Mina have?
- 00:22
[ evil laugh ]
- 00:24
How does Bram Stoker portray women in Dracula?
- 00:29
Yeah, no, that's interesting. So they're two --
- 00:31
Mina and Lucy, they're two sort of
- 00:34
potential archetypes of the "New Woman."
- 00:37
They meet different fates,
- 00:38
as people will find out as they continue reading Dracula.
- 00:42
So Mina, who is Jonathan Harker's
- 00:45
first his fiancee and then his wife,
- 00:47
is a very efficient clerical person
- 00:51
who collates all of these documents that they need in the hunt for Dracula.
- 00:55
Lucy is...
- 00:57
sort of a blonde, sweet, virginal character.
- 01:00
When we first meet her, she's writing.
- 01:02
She's in a letter correspondence with Mina
- 01:05
about the fact that she's
- 01:06
fielding three marriage proposals.
- 01:09
[ wolf whistle ]
- 01:10
And that's sort of the ambivalence that Stoker has about women.
- 01:13
Because on the one hand, Lucy is this very sweet, virginal character.
- 01:17
Eventually, she'll get vamped to death,
- 01:19
and then herself become a vampire.
- 01:22
And vampire in the pejorative "vamp"
- 01:26
sense that we have for
- 01:28
women who claim to have loose morals.
- 01:32
[ laughs ]
- 01:34
So both of that is sort of
- 01:37
implicit and dueling in the representation of women in Dracula.
- 01:40
Got it. Okay, that makes sense.
- 01:42
[ whoop ]
- 01:42
What is the Crew of Light?
- 01:45
So, the Crew of Light is the three men who propose marriage to Lucy,
- 01:50
then Jonathan Harker, who's the first to meet Dracula,
- 01:54
and Van Helsing, who's a scientist from The Netherlands.
- 01:58
And these are the five men that come together.
- 02:02
I think there are five men who come together
- 02:03
to hunt Dracula.
- 02:05
They'll eventually go all the way back
- 02:07
to Carpathia, to Castle Dracula, to stake him to death.
- 02:13
They are the Crew of Light, versus
- 02:15
- Dracula's obvious darkness. - Got it.
- 02:19
[ whoop ]
- 02:20
How does Bram Stoker portray women in Dracula?
- 02:25
What is the Crew of Light?
- 02:28
[ evil laugh ]
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