Pornography of the period often depicted female defloration and rape. (Marsh and Delgado). Dracula featured many attacks on vulnerable women, particularly the two main female characters, Mina and Lucy. The blood was a metaphor for taking virginity, and Dracula taking Lucy and Mina's blood was like taking their virginity (Marsh and Delgado). In Dracula chapter 21, Mina was attacked by Dracula in the middle of the night. Dr. Seward says of Mina, “Her white nightgown was smeared with blood, and a thin trickle ran down [Dracula's] bare breast, as shown by her dress torn and opened” (Stoker 288). This scene symbolizes rape: her pure white dress, representing her virginity, is tainted with blood, and the damage to Dracula's clothes is a sign of a struggle, meaning that his attack was not consensual. Other subliminal sexual images include stakes stabbing Lucy in her vampire form, phallic, piercing symbols (Bomarito) and blood transfusion as a sexual act (Marsh and Delgado) featured many Victorian prudish themes, shunning women for practicing lovemaking free and dissolute sexuality (Nystrom 70). Dracula represents how resisting temptation and remaining pure will save one's life, while giving in to temptation could transform oneself, literally, into a sexual monster, respectively (Nystrom 70 survived Dracula because she resisted his tempting and seductive nature and let him men would destroy). him. However, Lucy's descent into vampirism transformed her into a voluptuous beast that had to be destroyed due to how terrible she had become. The temptation killed