Many of today’s conceptions of sexuality and gender roles derive from the Victorian époque, whose rigid sociocultural prejudices and values became a traditional referent deeply ingrained in the Western societies of the subsequent centuries. The present article seeks to examine the treatment of female sexuality and gender distinctions in the nineteenth century, and the depiction of these social concerns in the Gothic Mode, specifically in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), by providing the historical context of the Victorian age, describing the (sub) genre known as Gothic Mode and its main features, and analyzing the representation of Victorian social principles and anxieties in the aforementioned novels.
The ‘Blue Stocking’ vs The ‘Angel in the House’
The Victorian era (1837-1901) is characterized as a transitional and also liminal period between conventional social doctrines and the rise of a new lifestyle permeated by the increasingly stronger role of science and technology. Over those decades, England underwent a rapid industrial development that would bring about profound societal and economic changes, such as the emergence of the middle-class or bourgeoisie, followed by multiple moral doubts and shaken social beliefs. This age of new scientific knowledge and intellectual criticism forced the Victorian society to question the old aristocratic power and those long-stablished traditional values. Consequently, this political, social and cultural turmoil revealed a growing concern about the redefinition of social classes, sexual identities and gender relationships, leading to the construction of certain fears and anxieties particularly related to female sexuality and women’s role in both the private and the public sphere. Up until the nineteenth century, the subjection of women had been an inherent part of the social standards due to the predominant theory that men and women were physically and mentally built to perform different activities. As a result of what was believed to be a natural separation between both sexes, women were considered physically weaker and less rational, but morally superior and thus best suited for the domestic sphere. The issue of domesticity was a key element in the construction of femininity as a social notion and it was reinforced by the virginal ideal of the ‘Angel in the House’, a concept coined by Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem, which stablished the feminine model of the domestic deity or spirit, who is the center of the household and also retains her chastity even as wife and mother. The concept of chastity, meaning pure or virginal, manifested itself in the objectification of women’s body as the property of both sociocultural principles and legal system, which strengthened male supremacy. In fact, the strict regulations on female sexuality and behavior were due to the great importance placed on maintaining a family’s lineage. Middle- and upper-class girls were expected to aspire to this feminine ideal and thus they were educated in terms of what was known as accomplishments in order to have the best qualifications to get a good husband and also not to be mistaken for an individual devoted to intellectual pursuits, the so-called unfeminine “blue stocking”. Furthermore, women were not only assumed to be chaste, but “obsessed with their personal appearance, with beauty and fashion”, rather than being rational beings. Therefore, women were educated in the shadow of men as superficial and delicate objects that should desire marriage as it allowed them to become mothers. However, in this marital union, women were suppressed and forbidden from fulfilling any sexual or emotional desire in order to show some semblance of modesty, a behavior that abided by the idea of the sexless female introduced by Dr. Acton’s in his The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (1857). By extension, women were relegated to certain roles within society under the omnipresent protection of some male figure, usually the father or the husband, and without the possibility of having individuality or personal desire. According to their social standing, Victorian women’s identity was encapsulated and could only be described and formulated through one of the following four terms, which are the concepts of the virgin, the mother, the governess, and the prostitute. It is essential to mention that all these social, cultural and political changes that shaped the Victorian conceptions about sexuality and gender roles, especially female sexuality and identity, had a profound impact on and were reflected in the Gothic Mode.
The Victim vs The Predator
The Gothic Mode is an art movement originated as a result of the sociocultural changes of the nineteenth century and also as a (sub) genre of Romanticism. It is usually related to those elements that exert awe – in the sense of simultaneous fascination and repulsion – and also to concepts such as alienation, upset time chronologies and the uncanny, which is the process of defamiliarization by which a familiar place becomes unhomely and disturbing. This latter idea explains the particular phenomenon in literature by which many women writers of that time cultivated the Gothic mode with stories that reflected domesticity through the notion that the home is both a shelter and a prison. Most importantly, this transgressive genre explores power relationships in terms of gender and sexuality containing many stories about psychological and physical abuse, perversion and sexual violence. In general terms, Gothic female characters can be divided into two different roles, which are the “victim”, who is defined as fragile and vulnerable; and the “predator”, who represents the sublime, the figure that is both attractive and fearful. This division is also reflected in the separation many scholars have stablished between two gender-based categories, which are the Female and the Male Gothic. Although some critics believe that this model, which was first introduced by the scholar Ellen Moers in 1976, is a construct of the second-wave feminism, it can be, in fact, a helpful classification in order to comprehend the thematic choices in Gothic literature. A naïve description of what distinguishes both groups is the gender of the writer. However, this division goes beyond a plain binary gender, exploring issues such as sexuality, power and rights equality. Therefore, Female Gothic novels, beyond being generally written by female authors, tend to express the imprisonment Victorian women suffered in the household and in their own body, as well as the inconformity towards a strict patriarchal system (Smith, 2000). Moers presents Anne Radcliffe as the first female author to create a narrative in which the main character is both a heroine and a victim that becomes a model for Female Gothic. On the contrary, Male Gothic is characterized by introducing a negative misogynistic representation of women, who appear as an “unnatural being or monster driven by a psycho-sexual force” (Miles, 2009, p. 78). These arguments lead to the distinction between terror and horror by Ann Radcliffe in her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” in which she privileges the former as the element that expands the soul and leads readers towards the sublime, while the latter, generally identified with male authors, annihilates those faculties to an elevated life. Therefore, the different characteristics between Female and Male Gothic, as well as between terror- and horror- Gothic, can be found respectively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, two Gothic that depict female identity in antithetical terms.
Frankenstein: the Voice of Women’s Opression
The following section will describe and analyze the different female characters in Frankenstein and how they are portrayed as part of a strict aristocratic system that shapes their behavior. Characterized by an almost all-pervading male narrative voice, Shelley’s Frankenstein usually conveys the impression that her female characters play an irrelevant role in the story. Nevertheless, it seems contradictory to believe that the daughter of such a prestigious feminist as Mary Wollstonecraft would produce her first literary work with the slightest attention to the female characters and just from the perspectives of three male figures. Conversely, the apparent disdain towards a strong female representation within the narration (or different patched up narratives) allows Mary Shelley to depict with precision and harsh criticism the adverse and peripheral social position of Victorian women in the nineteenth century through the tragic outcome male dominance may bring to society. Following the political, social and cultural contextualization analyzed in the first section, notwithstanding the scientific, technological and intellectual progress driven by the effects of the French Revolution and the First Industrial Revolution, the society in which Mary Shelley and her first novel were linked to was still an age of critical imbalance between both genders. Hence, such a prejudicial society led Shelley to experience difficulties in trying to express herself and achieve a writer status, deciding to first publish Frankenstein without asserting her authorship in 1818. As a result, this female subordination, also underwent by the author, is reflected in the four main female characters, which are Margaret Walton, Elizabeth Lavenza, Justine Moritz and Caroline Beaufort, whose stories are told by male focalizers. For instance, the first female character that emerges in the narration is Margaret Walton, and the fact that she is presented with a passive attitude, which may seem a logical behavior due to her correspondence with his brother as she is not physically present in her sibling’s expedition to the North Pole, establishes a model for the successive introductions of the rest of the female figures in the novel. In a way, Margaret becomes a powerful symbol that sets the male dominance in the novel and through which the reader can comprehend the social position experienced by the rest of the female characters. In the case of Elizabeth Lavenza, she is the ideal instance of a loving woman who has continually been controlled, subjected and forbidden from expressing her desires. This submissive conformity comes from both the influence of her family, which considers her a possession for her future husband (Victor), and from her own deeply ingrained social conventions. It is noteworthy that Caroline, Victor’s mother and Elizabeth’s aunt, is the one that offers her as a present, showing the negative effects Victorian principles had on women as female subordination is so rooted in her mindset that even she acts towards female in such a repressive way. Another example that supports these arguments is the character of Justine Moritz, who, although embodying the ideal of a compliant object, ends up being executed owing to the false accusations of a murder committed, in fact, by a male creature created by another man (Victor), who, despite knowing who the real killer is, selfishly decides to not stand up for her innocence depicting the lack of control Victorian women had over their lives. It is essential to mention that Shelley also subtly declares, as some literary critics (Smafie and Smolka) suggest, that the Victorian strict separation of both genders into different spheres not only has a negative impact on women, but also on men’s lives. In this sense, Shelley presents Victor’s ambitious endeavor to experimentally create life as a neglect of the only edge women have over men, which is the gestation process, due to men’s wish to dominate women driven by the fear of female sexuality. It is also argued that Shelley uses the creature’s voice, even though the latter is defined as a male, in order to denounce Victorian women oppression as both, the author and character, are alienated from society. Therefore, Frankenstein is a sophisticated novel that asserts female value in society as equal as men using an omnipresent male narrative (or narratives) as a parallel with the androcentrism of Victorian times.
The Vampire: the sexually free ‘New Woman’
As described in the above contextualization of the nineteenth century, the Victorian era was a transitional period that led to the construction of certain social fears related, for instance, to the contrast between science and superstition, the Foreign, female sexuality and homosexuality, and the rise of the so-called New Woman. All these sociocultural anxieties are present in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). However, this fourth and last part will consider the depiction of female sexuality as a feared change of the traditional gender roles through the significance of blood and the ideal of the New Woman in the novel. The former concept, blood, is an essential body fluid that has been considered, throughout history, a cultural symbol for family identity, as well as for sexual desire and destruction. This substance becomes one of the motifs that Stoker uses as a powerful symbol of sexual intercourse, which can be analyzed through the characters of Lucy, Mina and the Weird Sisters. For instance, Lucy Westenra’s sexual desire is represented through her medical condition, which is caused by the loss of blood under Dracula’s power. This fusion of fluids from different origins confronts Victorian beliefs against intermixing bloods of diverse ethnic groups. Furthermore, the blood transfusions that Lucy undergoes, which always involve male donators in the novel, symbolize the previously mentioned coitus and are used by Stoker in order to depict the fact that Victorian women began to be concern about their own sexual pleasure as a rightful voluptuous and also promiscuous behavior. Therefore, the fact that Lucy is given blood by several men implies the notion that this female character is a sexually free woman who threatens Victorian principles. Consequently, Lucy, who becomes what is known as a Sexually Liberated Woman, must be exterminated, in this case, by driving a stake through her heart. This event shows the repulsion towards female sexual appetite and how women lacked the power to control their sexual lives. Another example of this attack on Victorian beliefs regarding blood impurity is the passage in which Mina is beaten and thus sexually abused (raped) by Dracula, who embodies the figure of the Foreign, the threatening Other whose main purpose is to profane Victorian women’s virtue, among other intentions, revealing their true nature. Another instance of this opposition to Victorians sexual prejudices is embodied by the Weird Sisters, also called the Brides of Dracula, who, after trying to seduce Jonathan Harker, emphasize the concern about female sexual desires through this attempt of a reversed sexual abuse. In this sense, all these scenes are clearly related by the underlying ideal of the New Woman, which can be analyzed through the transformations experienced by Mina and Lucy due to the influence of Dracula. By the late Victorian age, the idea of the New Woman emerged as a description of those women who would claim equal educational, labor and voting rights in order to be able to decide over their personal and professional life. The two above mentioned female characters represent the ideal of the New Woman, although in complete opposite ways. On the one hand, Mina is described as a virginal and sensible woman that embodies the figure of a moderate New Woman, the one that is able to integrate both tradition and modernity without rejecting the Victorian values as she is finally able to overcome Dracula’s seduction and welcome her submissive role. On the other hand, Lucy is described as a disobedient and sensual woman who also embodies the figure of the New Woman, but, in this case, portrays the aspiration for sexual equality, which threatens Victorian conventional gender roles, by being seduced and transformed into a living dead, a vampire driven by sexual desire. As a result, Lucy, as well as the Weird Sisters, is defined as a monster, both attractive and repulsive, that must be killed in order to preserve the patriarchal system. To conclude this section, Stoker’s Dracula depicts the Victorian fears and anxieties towards a changing social organization, and shows, as a warning to female readers, the fatal consequences of being flirtatious and promiscuous.
The Subordinated ‘Other’
The Victorian age was a time of deep social, political and cultural changes that aroused fears and anxieties particularly towards female sexuality and the instability of the traditional gender roles. This context influenced the emergence of the Gothic Mode, which is sometimes divided into Female and Male Gothic. Furthermore, this categorization is respectively related to the distinction between Terror- and Horror-Gothic, which show different literary motifs and themes depending on the personal gendered experiences of the authors. This differentiation between Female and Male Gothic, as well as between terror and horror, can be analyzed through the opposite representations of female social and sexual identity in Shelley’s Frankenstein, which is considered a Terror- and Female-Gothic novel, and Stoker’s Dracula, which may be classified as a Horror- and Male-Gothic literary work. In this sense, the former, written by a woman, subtly and indirectly denounces female subordination under male dominance through the metaphorical absence of female strong voices in the novel. On the contrary, Dracula is an explicit and direct depiction of the social fears towards the freedom of female sexuality and, although introducing modern elements, a clear misogynistic statement that emphasizes the protection of Victorian principles. Therefore, while men feared the Other as a sexually free woman, women dreaded the domestic environment as the unhomely prison that subordinated their freedom.
The Focalizer 