Resumo

CALLIS, Cari. The Heroine’s Journey of Mina in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Blood, Sweat and Fears. Cuad. Cent. Estud. Diseñ. Comun., Ensayos [online]. 2023, n.117, pp.186-200.  Epub 01-Mar-2023. ISSN 1853-3523.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18682/cdc.vi117.4282.

Dracula , (W. W. Norton & Company Inc. 1997) the epistolary novel written by Bram Stoker 1897 is a collection of diary entries, letters, newspaper articles and interviews collected and documented by Wilhelmina “Mina” Murray. She’s the perfect Victorian woman, a model of domestic propriety, always supporting her posse of men with her goal to be “useful” to them with her knowledge of new technology like the typewriter and the Dictaphone. She’s the keeper of the story, proficient in shorthand and beloved by her husband, and everyone who meets her including Professor Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming) whose efforts to destroy Dracula provides evidence of for authenticity. Although the novel begins in Jonathon’s voice and point of view as the classic Victorian hero confronted by evil including those undead brides of Dracula- it shifts into the voice and perspective of the heroine of the novel, which is the fiancée and eventual wife of Jonathan Harker and the only woman to survive drinking Dracula’s blood (not the other way around). Mina mind melds with him to reveal his location to the men who carry out his death sentence and release his soul.

Mina’s emotional journey takes her from naïve fiancée to a fully initiated wife of Harker and from former perspective bride and sexual conquest of Dracula to the fiercely intelligent and resourceful heroine able to defeat great evil through her power of feminine intuition. “Wilhelmina” Mina Murray Harker, whose very name means willing to protect, is more than just the Victorian “New Woman” who seeks only to be useful in the support of men. She’s also the precursor to the superhero whose journey more closely connects to Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s discussion of the Heroine’s Journey in 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters (F & W Media 2001) than it does to Joseph Campbell’s description of the Hero’s Journey. This essay traces the path in the novel Dracula of Mina’s emotional growth from an innocent virginal girl to facing her greatest fear-that of her own sexuality fully realized in her confrontation with her shadow archetype in the character of Dracula.

Palavras-chave : Bram Stoker; Dracula; vampires; Victorian; New Woman; Archetype; Myth; Victoria Schmidt..

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