[Laura Linneman is currently a Masters student at the
University of Dayton. She intends to
continue research on the dread of female sexuality, inversion of gender roles,
and the “Vagina Dentata” motif in Dracula and other fiction.]
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
reflects the Victorian fear of reverse colonization by the “Other” or the
encroachment of the outsider on the British Empire as well as the repression of
sexuality in Victorian England; however, there is one facet of the text that
has never been fully explored: the inherent male fear of castration and
feminine sexuality as well as its relationship to the “vagina dentata”
motif. Furthermore, this dread of female
sexuality has not been adequately explored in light of the novel’s historical
context. Written during the rise of the
New Woman, Stoker crafts a response to the increasing independence of women,
embracing the strength and abilities of women, but rejecting the New Woman’s
sexual forwardness and lack of maternal instinct. Using the female vampires to represent the
New Woman, Stoker creates a social commentary that juxtaposes the New Woman
with the reinvented traditional woman to demonstrate the dangers the New Woman
poses.
By re-envisioning the critical
landscape of Dracula, the discussion on the place of and misconceptions
of female sexuality within a phallocentric discourse will be extended to
demonstrate that a vaginally-centered discourse exists. As Judith Butler states, “Within a language
pervasively masculinist, a phallogocentric language, women constitute the unrepresentable. In other words, women represent the sex that
cannot be thought, a linguistic absence and opacity” (9). Therefore, female sexuality is not verbalized
as clearly as male sexuality; however, through the male dread of the
unrepresentable nature of female sexuality, particular motifs and images, such
as the vagina dentata, are used to visually represent the male projection of
female sexuality in light of a phallocentric discourse.
The “Vagina Dentata” Motif
The
fear of female sexuality, particularly of the vagina itself, has proliferated
cultural folklore for centuries. The
most prevalent of the symbols found in folklore is the myth of the vagina
dentata, or the “toothed vagina”: “This motif occurs in a widespread
geographical area, as well as crosses the lines of social and economic
differences. In one form or another, the
vagina dentata motif exists as a representation of the fear of
castration inside the vagina” (Otero 269).
In Dracula, the physical attributes associated with the vampires
revolve around the teeth and the lips.
Because the vampires’ teeth and lips are the point of penetration and
sexual contact, the physical attributes of the vampires can be seen as a modern
adaptation of the vagina dentata motif, particularly because five of the six
vampires are fully female and Count Dracula exhibits characteristics of both
genders.
Not only are these monstrous
women virulently sexual, but they also exhibit the typical attributes
associated with symbols of female sexuality.
As Jill Raitt states, “feminine symbols remain mysterious, cavernous,
unpredictable, dangerous: at once life-bearing and death-dealing… the negative
side of the feminine symbols is exaggerated and even rendered terrible”
(419). It is important to note that the
sexually aggressive, non-maternal women are vampires who are also equipped with
a set of fangs that are able to literally and symbolically castrate men;
however, in order for these women to be deemed socially acceptable and restored
to purity, it is necessary, as in all vagina dentata tales, for the teeth to be
removed.
The
first women that are clearly described in the text are the vampire women in Count
Dracula’s castle. When Jonathan meets
these women, his description accentuates their explicit sexuality, focusing on
his attraction and repulsion to their lips, the physical attribute that causes
his uneasiness in their presence: “All three had brilliant white teeth that
shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me
uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire
that they would kiss me with those red lips” (Stoker 46). As the primary orifice of sexual contact in Dracula,
the vampire mouth is representative of the vagina dentata in that it is
deceptively tempting yet dangerous. The
mouth is first seen as an alluring orifice, inviting with promised pleasure and
“voluptuous” softness; however, upon contact the orifice actually contains
sharp, penetrating teeth that can subdue, kill, and even castrate a man.
In
the text, it is obvious that the women are influenced by the New Woman, an influence
that generally seems to be embraced and respected; however, the overt and
aggressive sexuality of the New Woman is rejected by the male characters as
well as Mina Harker. As Carol Senf
states, “When it came to sex the New Woman was more frank and open than her
predecessors. She felt free to initiate
sexual relationships, to explore alternatives to marriage and motherhood, and
to discuss sexual matters such as contraception and venereal disease” (35). As an educated woman with a “man’s brain” (Stoker
241), Mina embraces some of the newfound independence of the New Woman, but
seems to reject the sexual forwardness that many New Women displayed, including
the otherwise traditional Lucy Westenra: “Some of the “New Women” writers will
someday start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other
asleep before proposing or accepting.
But I suppose the New Woman won’t condescend in the future to accept;
she will do the proposing herself” (99-100).
This discomfort with gender reversal in sexuality is prevalent
throughout the text with the male characters describing women as passive and
idealized; however, this typical heterosexual relationship is not shown. On the contrary, sexual advances are initiated
by the females (excluding encounters with Dracula, which will be explored
later) and the men are passive sexual partners.
Upon
transformation into a vampire, the latent sexuality is awakened in Count
Dracula’s female prey. This awakened
sexuality is the point of gender transgression, in which the male and female
characters reverse traditional sexual roles.
Returning to Jonathan Harker’s encounter with the three vampire women,
Harker vividly describes this inversion of conventional sex roles. In this scene Harker describes himself as a
passive and effeminate participant: “I lay quiet, looking out under my
eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation” (46). Emasculated at the hands of these “thrilling
and repulsive” (46) women, Harker fearfully yet anxiously awaits penetration by
the “hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there” (47). This scene of the female aggressor is
repeated throughout the text, most explicitly in the confrontation between the
vampiric Lucy and Van Helsing’s Crew of Light.
This scenario is particularly
important because it inverts all of the sexual norms that were propagated in
Victorian Britain. In this setting, the
male is the passive, penetrable sexual partner while the female is the
dominant, penetrating aggressor.
Furthermore, it qualifies the fact that all females are able to enjoy
sex as opposed to the Victorian notion that only perverse females enjoyed sex
(Demetrakopoulos 106). As Butler argues,
“The libido-as-masculine is the source from which all possible sexuality is
presumed to come” (53); however, in this instance, the males are libido-less
and the females are the source of sexuality.
Although the vampire women do not physically castrate the men, their
sexual dominance psychologically castrates and emasculates the male characters
by indicating female power over men. Not
only are the women in this text more sexually potent, and in some cases
smarter, but as with vagina dentata myths, this power emanates from their sexed
bodies – bodies which are seductively feminine and soft, yet threatening and
harmful. Due to the transgressions of
these women, in stepping outside of their gender roles and emasculating the
men, it is necessary for the dangerous “teeth” to be removed in order to make
the women suitable and subject the male’s restoration of dominance and sexual
virulence.
In Karen Horney’s “The Dread of
Woman,” Horney describes how the male fears of castration and dread of female
sexuality are projected onto women and the women are objectified in order for
men to never have to deal directly with their fear, but only deal with the
projected “threat” of female sexuality (350).
By idealizing females, as the Crew of Light idealizes the purity of
femininity, men are able to distance themselves from female sexuality by
denying its existence. In their staking
of Lucy’s corpse, the attitudes of the men mirror these ideals in Seward’s
description of Lucy’s body after it has been “restored”: “There, in the coffin
lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the
work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege… but Lucy as we had seen her
in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity” (Stoker 222). In this passage, the vampiric Lucy is not
even identified as human; the male dread objectifies her as a “Thing” so
monstrous that it is only fit for destruction.
On the other hand, when male dominance is reasserted and she again
becomes submissive and penetrable, Lucy’s femininity is idealized. It is the male dread of female sexuality that
allows men to either identify women as idealized females or as monstrous
whores.
Male Fears and Desires
At
the core of this text lies the root problem of the male response to the
sexualized woman: the male fear of the vagina, the ambivalence to women’s
“monstrous” sexuality, and the need to restore gender norms by maiming the
transgressive woman. In phallocentric
discourse, many of these male fears are unfairly projected onto women (Otero
280). Therefore, in a phallocentric
culture, the vagina is intentionally viewed as monstrous to mask male fears of
female sexuality. Butler also asserts
this male definition of self based on the otherness of women in her reading of
Lacan, “By claiming that the Other that lacks the Phallus is the one who is
the Phallus, Lacan clearly suggests that power is wielded by the feminine
position of not-having, that the masculine subject who “has” the Phallus
requires this Other to confirm and, hence, be the Phallus in its “extended”
sense” (44). Consequently, in the vagina
dentata motif, the male fear is projected as the teeth; however, the true fear
stems from the ambiguity of the vagina itself as well as the male fear of
losing his manhood, both physically and psychologically.
The
actualization of castration of the penis by the vagina dentata is a fearful and
gruesome scenario: the vagina physically devours the penis and turns it into
some semblance of another vagina. This
physical emasculation never takes place in Dracula, but the
psychological emasculation is very evident in the sexual encounters between the
Crew of Light and the female vampires, particularly the transformed Lucy
Westenra. Lucy’s repressed sexuality
before her transformation is apparent, as Senf argues: “her desire for three husbands
suggests a degree of latent sensuality which connects her to the New Woman of
the period… she is torn between the need to conform and the desire to rebel”
(Senf 42). After her transformation, the
restraints of conformity no longer have a hold on her and she sheds both her
sexual restraint and any maternal instincts she had.
As
Lucy’s transformation takes place, her sexuality grows evident through the
changes in her physical appearance. Like
the female vampires at Dracula’s castle, Lucy begins to radiate sexuality and
much of the focus is on her mouth:
Her
breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened,
and the pale gums, drawn back, made
the teeth look longer and sharper than
ever. In
a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious
way she opened her eyes, which were now
dull and hard at once, and said in a
soft, voluptuous voice, such as I had never
heard from her lips: - “Arthur! Oh, my love,
I am so glad you have come! Kiss
me!” (Stoker 167-168)
As is typical in Stoker’s narrative style,
when he describes the vampire women he reiterates the voluptuousness that
defines the overt sexuality. This word, voluptuous,
is repeated throughout passages where the vampire women instigate sexual
situations. The repulsion men like
Seward and Van Helsing feel towards Lucy’s vampiric sexuality mirrors an
extreme version of typical Victorian attitudes towards explicit sexuality,
particularly in women. To Victorian
readers the physical descriptions of the vampires would warrant feelings of
disdain: “Women should not be ‘wanton’ or ‘voluptuous’; they should be ‘pure’
and ‘spiritual’” (Stevenson 145).
Therefore, as is common in vagina dentata myths, the violence used
against a woman like Lucy and her vampire counterparts is justified. The removal of the danger of the teeth is the
utmost concern; a woman can only be returned to purity by having the “teeth”
removed through violence, in order to return her to a desexualized,
non-threatening state.
The
most explicit description of this desexualizing and violent removal of the
teeth is in the Crew of Light’s final encounter with the undead Lucy in her
burial crypt. In this final
confrontation, the men violently stake and behead Lucy, effectively separating
her sexed body from the most dangerous and controlling part of her sexuality –
her mouth. The Crew of Light justify
this violence, stating that it “would restore Lucy to us as a holy, and not an
unholy, memory” (Stoker 221). As a
vampire, Lucy is seen as a monstrous nonhuman creature that needs to be
destroyed and returned to a passive, harmless, unsexed woman.
In this violent encounter, the
true fear of emasculation and castration becomes evident. The Crew of Light does not fear the
supernatural nature of the vampire; rather, the true threat of the vampire is
that vampirism blurs traditional gender roles.
Human prey, in this case females, transform into creatures in which the
typical distinction between male and female roles becomes inverted. To restore order it is necessary to rid these
female vampires of their teeth – the physical feature that allows women to
enter a phallocentric world as an equal.
As Jane Gallop suggests:
The phallus is both the
(dis)proportion between the sexes, and
the (dis)proportion between any
sexed being by virtue of being sexed
(having parts, being partial) and human totality.
So the man is ‘castrated’ by not
being total, just as the woman is ‘castrated’ by not being a man.
Whatever relation of lack man
feels, lack of wholeness, lack
in/of being, is projected onto woman’s lack of phallus, lack of maleness. Woman is then the figuration of phallic ‘lack’: she is a hole. (22)
What previously separated men and women was
the males’ ability to penetrate; hence, now imbued with vampire fangs, women
are able to penetrate rather than simply being the penetrated. Therefore, the men can no longer project this
lack of phallus onto the vampire women.
Instead, these vampires are sexually capable of both male and female
roles. No longer are they deemed as
inferior, but rather now as a sexual whole, possessing both the phallus and the
vagina. The vampires have the ability to
both penetrate and procreate, making the male irrelevant except as a submissive
partner used to pleasure the vampire through penetration with the teeth. It is this threat that is most dangerous to
the Crew of Light and allows for them to justify their extreme violence towards
these trangressive “Others.”
The Equation of Sexuality with Nonmaternal
Instincts
In
addition to transgressive sexuality, the vampire women further violate
Victorian beliefs about female nature in their lack of maternal instinct. This suspicion towards nonmaternal women
stems from a wider mythology directly related to the vagina dentata
motifs. As Otero purports, “the ‘terrible
mother’ is an image that represents the fear of ambivalence and androgyny in
female sexuality” (273) and, like the vagina dentata motif, is prominent in
folklore. The “terrible mother” motif
features a sexualized female, one that is capable of nourishing a child, but
chooses instead to devour children.
Within the text, Stoker equates
overt sexuality in females with cruelty to children, making children the prey
of choice for the female vampires who identify with both the vagina dentata
motif and the “terrible mother” motif.
The first instance of this preying on children is witnessed by Harker in
his encounter with the three female vampires in Castle Dracula:
“Are we to have nothing to-night?” said one of them, with a low laugh, as she
pointed
to the bag which he had thrown upon
the floor, and which mover as though there
were some living thing within it… If my
ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and
a low wail, as of a half-smothered child.
The women closed round, whilst
I was aghast with horror; but as I
looked they disappeared and
with them the dreadful bag. (Stoker 47-48)
It is traditionally believed that women
have a natural maternal instinct and nurture children, but this generally
accepted notion is deconstructed as these women not only reject motherhood, but
are nourished through draining the blood from children. Similar to the lated\r confrontation with
Lucy, the vampire women’s behaviors are so atypical that Harker must convince
himself that these women are not women at all, stating “Mina is a woman, and
there is nought in common. They are
devils of the Pit!” (61). Like the sexual inversion, the lack of maternal
feelings inverts social norms and further dehumanizes the vampires so that violence
against them is further justified.
Returning
to the Crew of Light’s encounter with the vampiric Lucy, Seward’s account
reinforces and parallels Harker’s earlier account of the three vampires. Harker was obviously appalled by the sexual
forwardness as well as their feeding on a child. Seward reiterates this same horror when he
witnesses Lucy’s cruelty towards her child-victim and her sexual forwardness:
“With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child
that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as
a dog growls over a bone” (Stoker 217).
As Harker objectifies the three vampire women, so too does Seward now
reject Lucy’s womanhood, comparing her instead to a dog and a devil. The actions are so unladylike and socially
unacceptable that it would seem impossible to define these vampire women as
females; instead their identities are projected onto nonhuman creatures.
The Pure Woman: Mina Harker
On
the opposite spectrum of femininity, Stoker’s heroine, Mina Harker, is
representative of a more traditional Victorian woman in terms of her sexuality
and maternal instincts, but also a New Woman in terms of her intellect and
independence. It is unfair to define Dracula
as a misogynist text when it is clear that Stoker embraces the intellectually
liberated modern woman. Stoker’s
objection, like many Victorians, was to the sexually liberated New Women;
therefore, it is clear that Mina, although she is preyed upon by Count Dracula,
is not consumed by vampirism and able to aid the Crew of Light due to her
rejection of the omnisexual and overtly sexual vampire behavior. Through Mina, Stoker aligns himself with the
conservative branch of modern women, creating a heroine who is intellectually
equal to her male counterparts, but is desexualized and still chooses the
traditional roles of wife and mother (Senf 38).
In the beginning of the text, Mina is an assistant schoolmistress who is
intellectual and self-sustaining; however, after her marriage, Mina adopts
traditional female roles of wife and mother.
Not
only does Mina possess the qualities of a wholesome woman in terms of her
conduct and lack of sexuality, but she also separates herself from the image of
women created by the female vampires by having blatant maternal instincts. In fact, Mina becomes the mother figure for
the Crew of Light, comforting and nurturing them as if they are her children:
“We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller
matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big sorrowing man’s head
resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my
bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child” (Stoker
236). Not only does this demonstrate
Mina’s maternal qualities, but it also foreshadows the birth of Quincey Harker,
an actualization of Mina’s role as a mother.
A major question that underlies
Dracula is why is Mina saved from Dracula’s curse? Mina is spared the same fate as Lucy because
she is endowed with the appropriate masculine qualities that allow her to
survive and even destroy Dracula, but also because she rejects the unacceptable
qualities vampirism endows in women, such as increased libido. In discussing Stephen Heath’s argument,
Butler states that “relying on the postulated characterization of libido as
masculine, Heath concludes that femininity is the denial of that libido”
(53). Therefore, because Mina is
idealized as the model Victorian woman, she rejects her newly awakened
sexuality whereas Lucy succumbs to Dracula’s curse because she embraces her
sexuality. Since qualities like
intelligence were valued yet considered noncompetitive when paired with
passivity and a desire to fulfill traditional female roles, Mina is not
considered a threat to masculinity.
Another factor in Mina’s salvation
is her resistance to Dracula’s advances.
In complete opposition to Lucy, who never attempts to resist, Mina is
portrayed as fighting Dracula as hard as possible: “When the blood began to
spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the
other he seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must
either suffocate or swallow some” (Stoker 294).
This indicates that Mina has both the intelligence and the morality to
withstand Dracula’s assault and eventual curse.
Count Dracula
It
is impossible to study this text without looking at the source of vampirism,
Count Dracula himself. Like the female
vampires, Dracula’s physical appearance is described multiple times, using the
same vocabulary. For instance, when Mina
first lays eyes on Dracula, she states: “I knew him at once from the
description of the others. The waxen
face; the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin white line; the
parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing between; and the red eyes…
I knew, too, the red scar on his forehead where Jonathan had struck him”
(292-293). Similar to his female
counterparts, much of the fixation in Dracula’s appearance is on his oral
features. Furthermore, it is notable
that in Dracula’s physical description, the colors of red and white are
stressed. As Stevenson points out,
“Stoker consistently uses a combination of red and white to indicate wither
incipient or completed vampirism” (141).
Hence, in physical descriptions of the female vampires, including Lucy
and Mina as they fall prey to Dracula’s seduction, the colors of red and white
are present. What is more is that Mina
grows to share the same scar as Dracula, a scar that marks her as an untouchable. Upon seeing it, Mina wails, “Unclean!
Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I must bear this mark of shame upon my
forehead until the Judgment Day” (302).
These colors and this scar are notable because they are signs of the
categorization of vampires into a recognizable, homogenous group of monstrous
“Others.” By adopting Dracula’s coloring
of red and white, a different physical appearance, as is evident in Lucy’s
transformation, allows the Crew of Light to further objectify the vampires as
nonhuman creatures.
For
all purposes, Dracula is essentially a physically male version of his female
progeny; however, in the text he represents something just as terrifying
through his parodic adoption of a male form.
While all of the females are capable of the omnisexual acts, it is only
Dracula who acts on his abilities to be both the male and female sexual
partner. Therefore, Dracula truly blends
gender roles by using his sexuality to penetrate as well as give birth and even
breastfeed. Equally alarming is
Dracula’s ability to seduce wholesome women and turn them into his sexually
liberated progeny. This ability of
awakening latent sexuality in wholesome Englishwomen is alarming because it
emasculates their male partners; this vampire is able to taint these women and
awaken something in them that no honorable Victorian man could awaken or
satisfy. While the Victorian male is
threatened by female sexuality, Dracula thrives on it.
The
most obvious threat that Dracula represents is his extreme sexuality and his
ability to coax other men’s women into sexual consummation. As Foucalt discusses in The History of
Sexuality, to be overtly sexual in the nineteenth century was a blatant
transgression of social mores: “Not only did it [sexuality] not exist, it had
no right to exist and would be made to disappear upon its least manifestation –
whether in acts or in words” (4). In
this case, Dracula takes it even further by engaging in sexual acts with other
men’s women in plain sight. This sexual
audacity is a complete inversion of Victorian attitudes towards sex; attitudes
which preferred to deny the existence of female sexuality rather than try to
awaken it. Nowhere is this threat more
clearly described than in Dracula’s forceful seduction of Mina Harker: With his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped
her by the back of the neck,
forcing her face down on his
bosom… The attitude of the two
had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing
a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to
compel it to drink… His eyes flamed red with
devilish passion… (Stoker 288).
In this passage, Dracula’s sexual passion
is evident as well as his seizure of another man’s wife; however, there is
something else that is fearful in this passage.
Not only is Dracula engaging in a sexual act, but he is also acting as a
mother breastfeeding a child. Dracula’s
sexual nature now makes itself apparent – sexual consummation and procreation
are one in the same. Therefore, Mina is
seduced, but she will also be reborn as a daughter of Count Dracula. This ability to be both a male and female
partner as well as to seduce married women is the ultimate emasculation for the
Victorian man. Furthermore, it is only
through Dracula that these women are now armed with “teeth,” the penetrating
phallus that the women did not possess before their vampiric
transformation. Essentially, Count
Dracula is sexually capable of anything including asexually creating a new race
of omnisexual females, making the traditional man useless in sexual
endeavors. The fear, then, is not just
of female sexuality, but also “a fear of superior sexual potency” (Stevenson
146).
It
is through Count Dracula that the vagina dentata motif is most explicit. In stories containing the vagina dentata,
females possess all sexual organs: testicles, penis, vagina, breasts, and
womb. While it is implicit that all
vampires possess all of the sexual organs, it is Count Dracula who flaunts his
omnisexuality and uses his feminine organs as deftly as his male
sexuality. Dracula’s occupation of both
gender roles is monstrous to the Victorian Crew of Light which protects the
traditional gender roles of what is “male” and what is “female.” This gender confusion is further discussed by
Butler: “precisely because certain kinds of “gender identities” fail to conform
to those norms of cultural intelligibility, they appear only as developmental
failures or logical impossibilities from within that domain” (17). Hence, Dracula’s gender transgression, as with
his female counterparts, is written off as developmentally flawed and
inherently monstrous because the vampiric identification of gender roles does
not fit within Victorian norms.
Conclusion
Through the use of the vagina
dentata motif, I am suggesting that Dracula allegorically projects the
male fear of castration and the fear of the nullification of the male’s role in
intercourse and procreation through Stoker’s use of vampires. The men are unable to directly deal with their
emasculation anxieties and, thus, must eliminate the threats to their
dominance. From this deep-seated anxiety
expressed in this vagina dentata story, violence against gender transgressors
and sexual “others” is justified through the objectification of those not
clearly categorized in the social strata.
The perversity of vampirism lay
in its inversion of gender roles, the awakened sexuality (including the ability
to perform male and female sex roles), and the female rejection of feminine
behavior, most shockingly anti-maternal actions. Stoker’s visualization of the vampire women
suggests the author’s aversion to the New Woman because of her rejection of
conventional female roles. Not only do
they reject these roles, but they also act as an incapacitating threat to
masculinity, able to physically and psychologically castrate men. Hence, Dracula insists that removal of
the female phallus (the teeth) is necessary to remove the monstrous libido
present in these transformed women.
It is important to understand
that this text can be read through several critical lenses, but for my
purposes, Dracula uses vampirism metaphorically to articulate Victorian
anxieties about the relationship between sexuality and gender roles. As Foucault states, “If sex is repressed,
that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere
fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate
transgression” (6); therefore, it would have been unacceptable to directly
discuss matters of sexuality. Stoker,
then, had to use vampirism to parallel trends caused by the New Woman and
demonstrate that it is necessary to quash this sexual rebellion before male
dominance and virility is usurped.
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