The social movement of the New Woman was being explored around the time that Carmilla and Dracula were written. Readers will note that both works feature women in prominent roles. In Carmilla, both the villain and the narrator are women, and, in Dracula, the characters of Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra are integral to the plot of the story.

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In a 2014 piece for the website The British Library, Greg Buzell writes, "The New Woman was a real, as well as a cultural phenomenon. In society she was a feminist and a social reformer; a poet or a playwright who addressed female suffrage. In literature, however, as a character in a play or a novel, she frequently took a different form – that of someone whose thoughts and desires highlighted not only her own aspirations, but also served as a mirror in which to reflect the attitudes of society" ("Daughters of Decadence"). Other characteristics of a New Woman includes that she be unmarried (or uninterested in marriage), never given birth (or does not intend to), comes from a reasonably wealthy or upper-class family, curates a persona of social independence, and is uninvolved with men, often assuming power in traditionally masculine roles. New Women were also known for their untraditional attitudes toward sex and relationships. Buzell argues that, in Dracula, Lucy Westenra is Stoker's example of a New Woman because she "is expressing a desire for three husbands (and thus, of course, three sexual partners)" and, after being turned into a vampire, "becomes a voluptuous, unnatural parody of the New Woman as sexual decadent; a figure who preys upon children, exhibiting no maternal instincts whatsoever." Mina, conversely, "is independent and intelligent, but with her marriage to Jonathan and her willingness to play the dutiful wife, she escapes punishment [being turned into a vampire and subsequently killed]" ("Daughters of Decadence"). 

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But, the women can be read oppositely, too. On one hand, there is Lucy, who doesn’t seem to do anything to warrant 3 proposals, but nevertheless gets them and now doesn’t have to worry about the “marriage game.” She even mentions that she “will be twenty in September, and yet [have] never had a proposal till to-day” (Stoker 90-91), making her a little older than the average young woman in the marriage game (compared to other Gothic heroines like Isabella and Matilda from Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, who are 15 and 18, and Catherine Moreland from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, who is 17/18). Lucy may have waited to play the marriage game, but she is playing it quite successfully nevertheless, which seems to indicate her place as a traditional woman. Mina, on the other hand, is developing professional skills in teaching and shorthand, an attitude that aligns her somewhat with the New Woman ideals. Though, she admits to only practicing shorthand and stenography to “be able to be useful to Jonathan” (86), an idea that seems to contradict some elements of the New Woman movement.