However, some of her behavior is unconventional and reveals a desire to escape these marital bonds. Victorian expectations of women were rigid and Lucy's desire to escape carries with it elements of the New Woman who “was more frank and open than her predecessors. . . she felt free to initiate sexual relationships [and] explore alternatives to marriage and motherhood" (Senf 35). Lucia receives three proposals from men who are attracted to her for her beauty, her “most noble heart” (56) and her sweet nature. She calls herself a flirt and jokingly wonders "why they can't let a girl marry three men, or all who want her, and save all this trouble" (54). That she quickly recognizes this as heresy shows an acceptance of feminine boundaries, a restriction that is also acknowledged in her doubt that she will ever speak slang since she "doesn't know if Arthur likes it" (53). Stoker limits his depiction of sexual relationships to those characters who have a perceived negative attraction and it is only after Dracula bites her that he describes Lucy in more sensual terms. Dracula's metaphorical penetration enacted in his bite transforms his sweetness into “adamantine, heartless cruelty, and purity into voluptuous wantonness” (191). In this state Lucy takes on the same characteristics as the women Jonathan Harker met in the castle. These women are like the New Woman in their sexual prowess and role reversal, in an act that carries all the implications of Fellatio, these vampires have a "deliberate voluptuousness that [is] both thrilling and repulsive" (34). Their dominance over Harker manifests in his feminized response, he awaits “a languid ecstasy” (35), and passes out into unconsciousness. THE