Dracula
What was the characterization used in Chapter 14?
an analysis on chapter 14
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an analysis on chapter 14
With Lucy lost, both literally and metaphorically, the novel pins all its ideas of female virtue on Mina, whom Van Helsing praises vociferously throughout the section, saying, “She is one of God's women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist, and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so skeptical and selfish” (Page 203). Mina taught etiquette and decorum, a fitting profession for a paragon of feminine perfection. Yet despite all this virtue and social value, women are still not equal to men in this world. Mina unconsciously offers a reason, when she teases Van Helsing by giving him the shorthand diary rather than her typed out transcription to read: “I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths, so I handed him the shorthand diary” (Page 197). This reference to Eve’s temptation of Adam, leading to the fall of man, keeps women in their place despite their virtues. They must be subdued lest they lead to further destruction. Lucy, in her newly minted voluptuousness, has become little more than another temptation and force for devastation.
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