Compare the representation of the Victorian woman in The French Essay

Compare the representation of the Victorian woman in The French Lieutenant's Woman and Dracula - Essay Example Social class structures were beginning to break down as common men were able to make fortunes in industry and landowners found it more and more difficult to keep the idyllic life they’d constructed alive. Women, too, were beginning to question their allotted place in society as more and more opportunities opened for them in the urban centers of the country, providing them with a means of supporting themselves and freeing themselves from the yoke of male domination. However, at the same time, these positions were not the equal rights positions of modern times, so it was often difficult to determine whether one wanted to sacrifice freedom for comfort or comfort for freedom. Rarely was it possible to attain both. All of these social and economical concerns can be found in the novels written during this time period. â€Å"The Victorian novel, with its emphasis on the realistic portrayal of social life, represented many Victorian issues in the stories of its characters† (Gre enblatt, 2005). Two of these novels, The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles and Dracula by Bram Stoker, portray similar tales of women, Sarah and Lucy, who deviate from the expected behavior as they compare to Ernestine and Mina, who have upheld the social norms, yet each finds drastically different conclusions partially as a result of the different perspectives offered by the authors, one having lived in the Victorian period itself and the other writing within a historical framework from a more modern world. In both novels, the reader is introduced to a similar figure in Victorian society, that of the unmarried, young, educated yet penniless woman who fits into no specific social class. Sarah Woodruff in The French Lieutenant’s Woman is quickly understood to be an ex-governess who has no independent income and depends upon others for her well-being while Mina Murray in