V-Coded Horror – Dracula 1931's Purity Problem

Yes, I really am watching every standalone horror film—and all the sequels that actually matter—in chronological order, starting from the very first time a scream could be heard: Dracula (1931). This series is my obsessive little journey through the evolution of horror’s women—the victors, villains, & victims, the vixens, and the virgins—and everything those roles have meant (or demanded) across the decades. I’m not here to rank kills or critique special effects (though I might get catty about both). I’m here to sit with what horror films have always shown us about femininity, fear, sex, control, power, and who gets to survive it all. Whether they’re center stage or barely named, the women of horror have always been more than scream queens—they’ve been symbols, scapegoats, and sometimes, monsters themselves. Let’s start where it all got loud.

The 1931 film Dracula opens not with gothic organs or ominous silence, but with the delicate strains of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake—a surprising choice that sets the tone for a story not just of horror, but of femininity, fragility, and the haunting consequences of desire. This overture is no accident: like Odette in Swan Lake, the women of Dracula are cast in roles of idealized purity, their worth and safety dependent on their innocence. Mina (Helen Chandler), Lucy (Frances Dade), and even the unnamed Maid (Joan Standing) move through a world where their gentleness marks them for danger—where the very softness that defines them also renders them vulnerable to consumption. In both Swan Lakeand Dracula, purity is not protection—it is bait. These women are not simply victims of Dracula’s power, but of the societal myth that says to be good is to be passive, and to be passive is to be devoured.

Before Dracula even boards the Vesta, we get a glimpse of what he’s leaving behind: three vampiric wives, lounging around his castle in matching gowns like some undead bridal throuple. The film treats them like a living nightmare, dripping in sex and menace, as if the horror isn’t that they drink blood—it’s that they exist outside the nuclear family model. They’re not mothers or muses or love interests—they’re partners. And that’s the real threat: the idea that women might find power, sensuality, and community with each other and not need the approval of men. The brides are portrayed as monstrous not because they’re polyamorous or predatory, but because they’re unapologetic. They want. They take. They share. And there’s no tragic piano score trying to save them. Patriarchy needs women to be in competition, not in covens. Which makes it all the more telling that when Dracula enters England, he doesn’t just bring death—he brings a rejection of that alternative. A closing of the circle. The polyamorous wives are left behind in silence. Now he’s here for something more dangerous to the story’s version of order: a pure girl in white with no idea what’s coming.

The novel’s ship is called Demeter—goddess of grain, grief, and the whole death-and-rebirth thing—but the 1931 film quietly changes that name to Vesta, and if you’re a symbolism girly like me, that’s basically a flashing neon sign. Demeter is tied to cycles: Persephone goes down into the underworld, the seasons change, the world mourns, and then life comes back. Dracula arriving on the Demeter is spooky, sure, but it’s part of a larger mythic rhythm. But Vesta? No, no—Vesta is something else entirely. She’s the Roman goddess of the hearth, the eternal flame, the literal embodiment of virginity and domestic purity. Her priestesses had to remain celibate or be buried alive (which, let’s be real, already sounds like a horror film). So when Dracula rolls up on a boat named after her, it’s not just about traveling from Transylvania to England—it’s about violating the sacred feminine. Vesta isn’t a mother goddess like Demeter—she’s the locked room, the sealed flame, the thing patriarchal society needs to keep untouched. Dracula doesn’t just kill; he desecrates. And that swap reframes the whole horror of the movie: it’s not about death as transformation, it’s about sex as destruction. Virginity is the altar, and he’s here to bite it. Literally. Which sets the tone for a lot of horror to come—because from this point forward, horror will not shut up about purity, punishment, and the terrifying idea that once a woman is “touched,” she’s already halfway to hell. Thanks, Vesta. You’ve done your job.

When Dracula first lays eyes on Mina, it’s not a seduction—it’s a claim. She’s watching Die Meistersinger, bathed in that patriarchal art glow, her posture perfect, her eyes wide, her neck exposed like she’s already halfway his. There’s no dialogue, just the camera doing what Dracula will later do: consuming her. This moment is framed as fate, but it’s really performance. Mina is coded as virginal, well-bred, aesthetically correct—and all of that makes her desirable not just to Dracula, but to the very world that supposedly wants to protect her. Her femininity is a trap built by culture, and Dracula simply springs it. He doesn’t have to force her into a new role—he just has to step into the fantasy she’s been taught to embody. In this moment, she isn’t chosen because of who she is, but because of what she represents: the girl who follows all the rules and is still punished for being beautiful. The opera plays on, but the real performance is her silent submission to being seen. And once she’s seen, she’s already marked.

Mina, played by the delicate and doll-like Helen Chandler, is the picture of pre-code purity: slim, soft-voiced, blonde, and dressed in fabrics so gauzy she basically looks like she’s made of vapor and virginity. From her very first appearance, she’s coded less as a person and more as a possession—smiling sweetly, seated perfectly, responding just the right amount. She’s not the damsel in distress yet, but she’s already been styled like one. Mina is the kind of girl horror loves to hurt: proper, protected, and primed for violation. Her visual coding does the heavy lifting—there’s no backstory, no inner life, just that ghostly glow and the implication that if anything bad happens to her, it will mean something. She is the symbol of everything the film thinks is worth saving, which, of course, makes her the thing Dracula most wants to take. And while the men bustle around debating art and rationality, Mina’s body becomes the site of supernatural tension, sexual danger, and the horror of what happens when purity becomes too pretty to leave untouched.

And then—as if the movie’s winking at us—we cut to Dracula creeping around the opera house during a performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which—if you’ve never had the misfortune of sitting through all five acts—is basically a celebration of patriarchal art, white cultural purity, and the idea that women exist to inspire, not create. Our girl Eva doesn’t get a voice of her own; she’s the prize in a boys’ club talent show, passed around as the reward for properly following (or artistically breaking) male rules. It’s genius-as-gatekeeping, and she’s just the glittery trophy. So of course that’s what’s playing while Dracula enters Mina’s world. The film is practically screaming, “Look! We love women as long as they’re beautiful, quiet, and pure—and here comes the monster to ruin it.” But here’s the thing: Die Meistersinger isn’t just a backdrop. It’s a mirror. Dracula, Walther, Sachs—they all participate in the same system of controlling femininity under the guise of admiration. The only difference is that Dracula doesn’t pretend. He doesn’t want to preserve the virginal flame like Vesta. He wants to eat it. And suddenly, the real horror isn’t just Dracula’s bite—it’s the entire cultural structure that says a woman must be a muse, virgin, or reward, or else she dies trying to be something else.

In early horror—especially in the pre-code and Golden Age era—purity wasn’t just a theme, it was the entire point. The genre was obsessed with the idea of the virgin as both trophy and target: she existed to be watched, desired, and then either saved or ruined. The value of her body wasn’t in what it did, but in what it hadn’t done yet. Films like Dracula didn’t bother asking what Mina wanted—they just framed her as an idealized symbol to be passed between men, protected until she wasn’t. But here’s the thing: modern horror hasn’t actually grown out of that—it’s just put a filter on it. We still see the virgin, the prize, the girl who glows a little too brightly in the dark… only now she’s trauma-informed, or “complex", or elevated. Her purity doesn’t always come from chastity—it might come from grief, or silence, or soft lighting and A24 sound design. But she’s still often written as something to be earned, unlocked, or saved. She’s still marked. And just like in the classics, the camera is still more interested in her suffering than her autonomy. Horror has gotten better at pretending the prize is a person—but at the end of the day, the genre still can’t seem to stop handing out women like awards.

When Dracula tells Mina that it will “give her bad dreams,” the line isn’t just an eerie aside—it’s a confession. A prophecy. A warning spoken with the kind of intimate smugness that only comes from knowing he’s already inside her, and not just in the literal sense. The dreams aren’t the threat. The dreams are the beginning.

It’s a line that slides neatly into the logic of gothic femininity: women do not awaken through will, but through haunting. They do not desire; they are overcome. The dream becomes the only space where she can feel what she’s not allowed to say. And so Dracula, ever the master of psychological possession, doesn’t need to seduce her—he just plants the idea, softly, that the rest will come in sleep. That’s where the real turning begins.

The bad dreams aren’t about fangs or fog. They’re about longing. About the flicker of want behind a well-trained girl’s eyes. What he’s really saying is: now you will crave something, and it won’t be him. She’ll crave him instead. And that is what turns a proper woman into a horror.

Mina enters already altered. She tries to tell them—there was mist in the room, I couldn’t move, I remember the door was open. Her words come in fragments, like a dream being told just after waking, still sticky and half-lost. And what does she get in return? Disbelief. Gentle, patronizing concern. A subtle redirect back to being good and quiet. But we know what she saw. She knows it too. The mist wasn’t just weather—it was penetration in vapor form. It slipped past doors, through keyholes, into her bed, into her body. Mist is formless, boundaryless, a perfect gothic metaphor for invisible violation. He doesn’t knock; he dissolves. He doesn’t speak; he envelops. By the time she realizes what’s happening, it’s already happened. And when she speaks of it, she’s immediately trapped in a familiar feminine double-bind: if she’s too calm, she’s not credible. If she’s too shaken, she’s hysterical. The men want details, but not too many. They want truth, but not if it disturbs the domestic order. They want her sane—not correct. In that conversation, her voice is doing the impossible: trying to translate a sensory event, a subconscious invasion, into the cold language of empirical male logic. But there’s no vocabulary for mist in a room that only recognizes locks and bolts and visible men. And so it slips through their fingers—just like he slipped through hers. Later, when she screams and they all come running, it should be a moment of clarity—but instead, it becomes more evidence of her instability. She screams because her body remembers what her mouth isn’t allowed to say. She screams because he’s not gone, because he never needed to stay—he only needed to leave something behind. They rush in with wet cloths and low voices, as if what she needs is to be soothed, not heard. As if her terror is something that can be dabbed away. But none of that will keep her inside.

She walks out barefoot, drifting into the night in her gown like a sleepwalker—or maybe a bride. She’s not possessed, not really. She’s just done trying to be coherent. The more they try to wake her, the more she dreams. And in those dreams, he is waiting. He doesn’t tell her she’s mistaken. He doesn’t correct her memory. He doesn’t explain it away. He simply receives her. And that’s why she returns to him. Because after everything—after the doubting, the dismissals, the endless attempts to make her small again—he is the only one who never once told her it wasn’t real.

And when she says it—I love the night—her eyes find Van Helsing, and there’s no trace of shame in them. No fear. Just that soft, steady calm that women slip into when they’ve made a decision they know will be called madness. She tells him the bat comes to her and speaks to her, and it’s not a confession—it’s a declaration. She wants to go with him. She says it plainly. And the horror in Van Helsing’s face isn’t about Mina being lost—it’s about her no longer wanting to be saved.

This is the moment the purity story begins to splinter. Because Mina’s not pleading to be cleansed or returned to herself—she’s speaking as someone who’s found something new, something hers. Her silk dress clings to her like it was chosen by a bride, not a patient. She glides more than walks, speaks more than begs. It’s not seduction—it’s sovereignty. And the men don’t know what to do with it, because it doesn’t match the version of purity they’re trying to preserve. She’s too poised, too serene, too willing.

And that’s why the cross burns.

When Van Helsing raises it to her, it’s not just a religious moment—it’s a reckoning. She recoils, visibly shaken, as though something deep in her being rejects the symbol entirely. Not because she’s evil, but because the cross isn’t neutral. It’s a symbol of the world she’s no longer in alignment with: a world that values a woman’s purity more than her power, her obedience more than her desire. The pain on her face isn’t demonic—it’s what it looks like when a woman realizes that returning to virtue means abandoning herself.

The cross is purity by force. It’s not there to save her—it’s there to correct her. To punish what’s blossomed in her under Dracula’s influence. Because what the men can’t stand isn’t the bite, or the transformation, or even the danger—it’s that she didn’t fight it. That she began to want it. And that’s the ultimate crime in purity culture: a woman who consents to her own undoing.

In that moment, her body becomes a battlefield between two scripts. One where she’s the innocent, protected bride-to-be, sealed off from desire and disorder. And the other—new, blood-warmed, blooming in the night—where she isn’t waiting to be chosen. She’s already chosen. Not Dracula, necessarily—but something deeper: herself. Her want. Her wildness. And that is what must be burned out of her.

The staircase is where it all unravels. Dracula doesn’t drag her—he leads her. One step at a time, slow and controlled, like a ceremony. And Mina follows. Not because she’s hypnotized. Not because she’s possessed. But because she’s ready. Her body moves with the calm of someone who has stopped asking for permission. The descent is quiet, almost reverent. She isn’t falling—she’s arriving. And that’s what terrifies them most. Not the vampire. Not the death. But that she goes to it willingly. That she walks down the stairs like a bride approaching her own undoing and doesn’t flinch. The staircase is supposed to be the boundary. The line between innocence and corruption, girlhood and monstrosity, light and whatever waits below. And she crosses it in silk and silence, her eyes soft, her mouth closed. This isn’t abduction. It’s defection. She’s not being taken—she’s leaving.

And then, just like that, it’s over.

Dracula is staked offscreen. There’s no epic struggle, no cathartic scream—just silence. The horror ends not with spectacle, but with control being reasserted. The men descend into the castle, do what needs to be done, and return. Mina is safe. Mina is rescued. But when we look at her face, something doesn’t fit.

She’s back in the arms of Jonathan, upright and obedient, walking away from the ruins like a good girl who’s survived. But her eyes don’t light up. Her voice doesn’t return. There’s no moment of reunion, no rush of joy. Just stillness. Still altered. Still quiet. The film wants us to believe she’s been restored, but everything about her says otherwise. She’s been cleaned up, but not cleansed.

This is how purity stories end. Not with the girl choosing safety, but with safety choosing her—dragging her back into the daylight and calling it salvation. What we’re supposed to see is closure. What we actually see is loss. Not of life, but of something else—something unnamed and irretrievable. She crossed a threshold, and even though they pulled her back, part of her didn’t return. The silk dress is gone. The night is gone. The bat’s voice has been silenced. But the dream lingers.

Because what is Dracula, really, in this version? He’s not chaos. He’s not violence. He’s not even the villain, not in the way the film wants him to be. He doesn’t seduce Mina by force—he opens a door. He doesn’t chase her—she comes to him. He’s the figure that disrupts the script, not by destroying purity, but by making it irrelevant. He doesn’t punish women for their desire. He makes space for it. And that’s why he has to die. Not because he’s evil, but because he allows the possibility of a woman choosing her own undoing. Her own transformation. Her own night.

Dracula is the glitch in the purity code. He doesn’t break it—he reveals that it was already broken. That the girl was already dreaming. That the cross already stung. That the staircase was always waiting. He doesn’t corrupt Mina. He reflects her—something in her that wanted more than protection, more than respectability. Something that wanted to be felt.

So no, Mina doesn’t end the film screaming or writhing or possessed. She ends it walking. Walking back into the arms of the man she was supposed to marry, into the light, into the “happy” ending. But her silence says everything. This is not a restoration. It’s a burial. The film asks us to believe she’s been returned to herself. But it never asks what part of her had to be lost for that return to be possible.

The story of Dracula is supposed to be about evil entering the home. But what it actually shows us is what happens when a woman dares to leave it.