An Examination of Gender Roles in Dracula and Buffy vs Dracula

Sara Ezzat – July 2020

The episode Buffy vs Dracula first aired on September 26, 2000, and was written by Marti Noxon. There are two main themes running through it, one is Buffy examining her identity and the second is Giles’s re-evaluation of his place in her life. Buffy’s identity struggle is central to the narrative of the series. Buffy works to reconcile her role as a competent, intelligent leader with her desire to be a young woman, to love and shop and do girly stuff. Her relationship with Giles is crucial to her growth throughout the series and to her becoming the person and the leader that she is able to become. Both these themes have parallels in Bram Stoker’s 1891 novel Dracula, the novel from which this episode’s villain is borrowed. Buffy’s complicated identity has parallels to the novel’s exploration of femininity in the character of Mina Harker and Giles’s relationship to Buffy forms a contrast to that of Abraham Van Helsing and Mina. Examining these parallels can illustrate a great deal about the changes in gender portrayals from the 1890s to the 1990s.

The novel is set in fin de siècle England. A time of shifting gender roles and gender expectations. The New Woman was on the rise and so were attempts to repress reform and return to conservative womanhood. Stoker’s novel explores these divisions through the character of Mina. Mina presents herself as the ideal Victorian woman; “She frequently casts herself as the assistant schoolmistress of etiquette, the devoted helpmate of Jonathan Harker, and the compassionate, maternal shoulder that “manly” men turn to when overcome by emotion” (Prescot and Giorgio 487). However, throughout the novel, she is shown to be capable and competent. Van Helsing describes her has having a man’s brain and a woman’s heart, repeatedly praising her abilities. She demurs to the men’s opinions, but it clear that she knows they are not always right. Mina desires to be the dutiful wife and mother, but also to use her mind and her talents so “Mina is thus “new” so far as intellectual ability goes, traditional so far as sexual behaviour is concerned.” (Snef ¶34). She struggles to reconcile her talents with the ideal of womanhood of her time.

The ideal womanhood of Buffy’s time is different in many ways from that of Mina’s time, and yet there are many similarities. In the 90s some third-wave feminists attempted to reconcile feminism and femininity through a more multifaceted approach and the notion of Girl Power. Buffy wants to date and shop whiles she fulfills her duty of monster slaying. The slaying of monsters is where Buffy’s competence lies, in her strength and her skill. By fighting, she is stepping on traditionally masculine territory, yet she seeks to retain her femininity while doing it. But Buffy’s competence also lies in her leadership abilities, her intelligence and her compassion. Elana Levine in her essay Buffy and the “New Girl Order”; defining feminism and femininity; “The series participates in defining identity in ways beyond the feminism/femininity dichotomy that has so long shaped TV representations. One way the program does so is to make Buffy excessively self-aware of her multiply-positioned identities and constantly working to reconcile them.” (Levine 174). The episode Buffy vs Dracula is one stage on that reconciliation as Buffy seeks to grapple with the source of her slayer power through her encounter with Dracula.

The second theme of the episode Buffy vs Dracula concerns Buffy’s relationship to Giles. As the character of Buffy finds her antecedent in Mina, Giles is clearly a modern incarnation of Van Helsing. Like Van Helsing, he is a foreigner and a vampire expert, and like Van Helsing, he feels protective of his charge. However, Van Helsing and all the Crew of Light see it as their role to protect first Lucy and then Mina. They keep Lucy completely in the dark about what is happening, and repeatedly decide to exclude Mina for her protection. Van Helsing says to her directly “We are men and are able to bear; but you must be our star and our hope, and we shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger, such as we are” (239). However, keeping Mina in ignorance repeatedly puts her and the Crew of Light in danger. Mina and the men following their gender roles so strictly undermines the mission and nearly costs Mina her life.

With Giles and Buffy, the roles are more complicated. He has been her watcher, her mentor in her slayer duties. He, like Van Helsing, has considerably more knowledge and experience than her. He could try to shield and protect her as Van Helsing does Mina, for some of this episode he tries just that. However, Giles is not trapped in Victorian gender roles and is able to adapt his place in Buffy’s life. In the penultimate scene of the episode, he allows her to tell him what she needs from him. He adapts to support her and doing so helps Buffy to be the slayer, leader, and woman that she will become.

Through their interactions with Dracula, both Buffy and Mina struggle with their complicated identities as women in changing times and their mentors struggle with how to support them. They are each embodiment of the spirit of their respective ages and society’s continued attempts to redefine how women should behave and how the men in their lives should treat them. Buffy can be read as a modern Mina, free from so much of what haunts and frustrates Mina, free to be more than wife and helpmate. Yet in her freedom, Buffy has new struggles and new questions to answer and so she is fortunate to have a man such as Giles in her life who can accept the role of her helpmate.

Works Cited

Levine, Elana. “Buffy and the ‘New Girl Order.’” Undead TV Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Elana Levine and Lisa Parks, Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 168–189, read-dukeupress-edu.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/books/book/1222/chapter/160057/Buffy-and-the-New-Girl-Order-Defining-Feminism-and.

Prescott, Charles E., and Grace A. Giorgio. “Vampiric Affinities: Mina Harker and the Paradox of Femininity in Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula.’” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 33, no. 2, 2005, pp. 487–515. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25058725. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Senf, Carol A. “Those Monstrous Women: A Discussion of Gender in Dracula.” Children’s Literature Review, edited by Jelena Krstovic, vol. 178, Gale, 2013. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/apps/doc/H1420112251/LitRC?u=uvictoria&sid=LitRC&xid=a0334df4. Accessed 31 May 2020. Originally published in Dracula: Between Tradition and Modernism, Twayne Publishers, 1998, pp. 47-62.

Stoker, Bram. “Dracula.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dracula, by Bram Stoker., http://www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm.