Why Do Some Modern Writers Think so Little of Women- as Explained by Dracula

I was watching one of the newer adaptations of Dracula this past week (let’s keep it a bit vague), and it made me think about how almost all modern incarnations of Dracula portray Lucy. In fact, it’s pretty awful, and it got me thinking how little many modern writers must think of women. Let me explain.

In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, Lucy is the epitome of innocence. She is kind, lovely, and portrays an excessive amount of admiral qualities. So, being a woman of her station who is upper class yet as kind as she is, she has 3 suitors asking for her hand. She is even sweet enough to say that she wishes she could marry all three- not because she’s promiscuous- but because she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt as she can only choose one person. Her whole character is there to essentially set up this innocence that gets horribly corrupted. As Dracula kills Lucy, she is corrupted and turned into a vampire.

The loss of Lucy is told from the point of view of the three suitors who are destroyed by the death of their love. Her death breaks them, and her coming back a corrupt vampiric creature is jarring because Dracula took this innocent flower and made it into an inhuman monster. It’s actually the reason these three men come together with Van Helsing to destroy Dracula and take revenge. Their love for her brought them together to stop the evil. It’s touching and almost poetic, even the part about innocence being horribly corrupted. So, naturally, if you portray Lucy as a vulgar flirt going after everyone, the poetry gets lost.

In the newest variation of Dracula, on top of being promiscuous, leading on her suitors, and cheating on her fiancé, Lucy is also shown as being unbelievably vain. By portraying her this way, you don’t invest as much in her and ultimately don’t care as much when she dies and becomes corrupted. But how could they take the source material and turn a character from such innocence into that?

While the newest Dracula had me thinking on it, I realized that almost all adaptations depict her in this way. So, why do modern writers do that to Lucy? It seems to be, from my point of view, that they are misunderstanding why three men desire her. They seem to be assuming that because she is desired she must be promiscuous and leading the men on. They are putting the responsibility of the men liking Lucy onto Lucy and not onto the suitors. Can three men really not like the same woman without her leading them on or flirting with them? Of course! So why do these writers interpret three people loving someone as that person having to be promiscuous for that to happen? It’s almost insulting. They, themselves, are corrupting her innocence in the place of Dracula.

If Bram Stoker could see that a woman could possess innocence while also being loved in the late 1800s, why can’t we see that in present times. Are we going progressively backwards in ways?

It then got me thinking about all the innocent, well-loved characters in fiction who have suffered at the hands of modern adaptations. Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew is loved and sought after by many as a sweet and gentle character and was made into a promiscuous and whiny teenager in Ten Things I hate About You.

And really the list goes on.

So, as a society, let’s do something about this. Just because multiple men like the same woman doesn’t mean she is leading them on or that she is vain. I think we need to remember that there is beauty and desirability in innocence. And, maybe this is just a pet-peeve of mine, but when we take characters from much-loved novels and works of fiction, perhaps, we can respect them enough to keep them (at least mostly) true to their source.