Dracula Passivity Quotes

I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The fair girl went on her knees, and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstacy and waited – waited with beating heart.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 3. At Dracula’s castle, Jonathan Harker has a vision or dream, in which he is seduced by three sexually aggressive, predatory, vampire women. In this first supernatural act in the novel, Harker is the passive victim, a reversal of traditional gender roles.

It is a very strange thing, this sleep-walking, for as soon as her will is thwarted in any physical way, her intention, if there be any, disappears, and she yields herself almost exactly to the routine of her life.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 7. Mina describes how she is able to get the sleepwalking Lucy to go back to bed. Lucy is so passive during that time that Mina is able to easily redirect her physically. Many of the women characters in the story also seem to be easily controlled or influenced.

She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said "Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!"
There was something diabolically sweet in her tones, something of the tingling of glass when struck-which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 16. Lucy Westenra, in her undead form, appears to Arthur Holmwood and his friends when they visit her tomb to free her soul. They shudder with horror at the sight of the devilish vampire, that once was the pure and innocent Lucy. Dracula has now turned her into a predatory, highly sexual creature.

As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix. She recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 16. When Lucy appears as a voluptuous and sexy vampire to Arthur Holmwood and the others, Arthur is passively drawn to the creature who beckons him to come with her. That is until Van Helsing intervenes with his crucifix to repel her.
Close