Teaching notes · Example 1
Teaching notes: Women and victimhood in Dracula
Essay question‘Stoker presents the female characters in the novel as little more than victims.’ How far, and in what ways, do you agree with this comment on Stoker’s presentation of the female characters in the novel Dracula?
These notes sit outside the essay. Related candidate scripts belong to their examination boards and are identified by board, year and task. A reported mark applies to that script, not to the Estate’s example.
Chapter C: Cambridge course guide, sources and reports · Board-published candidate-response catalogue.
Teaching notes and examiner feedback
Board-published responses
No further Dracula candidate response has been located in the sources reviewed for this guide. This does not establish that none is available. Check the board’s current public and teacher-only resources.
What the examiners said
From the Cambridge Principal Examiner Report for Teachers, June 2022, Paper 41, Question 6(a), p. 46, unless stated:
- Weaker answers worked through summaries of Mina and Lucy, describing each and saying how far she was a victim. Some never got beyond gender stereotypes and plot recall: Lucy wholly a victim, Mina a victim who needs rescue.
- Most answers did well. There were good investigations of Mina, Lucy and the three vampire women, and candidates drew on psychoanalytic and socio-cultural readings.
- Most argued that Lucy is not a victim by the end. Convincing answers read the vampire women as victims who became predators under the Count. Some wrote of “patriarchy ruling from beyond the grave”. (Our essay tests that view rather than adopting it.)
- The best answers linked characterisation to the novel’s wider workings: male heroism, romantic love, fidelity and devotion, and the Gothic horror of the sleepwalking and bedroom scenes.
- Planning and selection (Paper 41 general comments, p. 42). The best answers are planned strategically and select their material. Some very long answers threw everything at the question. Characters are constructs, so keep the writer in view.
- How these examiners view context (Paper 41 general comments, pp. 42–43). Context is an important part of every answer, but it must be relevant to the question; too often it is not, and speculation is sometimes presented as fact. Critical views work best integrated into the argument rather than bolted on at the end, and feminist or Marxist readings must be tied specifically to the argument, not generalised.
Points to test
Does the thesis survive its strongest counter-evidence? Check every quotation’s chapter, speaker and context. Where could a different interpretation change the conclusion?
Prepared by the Bram Stoker Estate. Page last updated 8 November 2026. Report a correction here.