Stoker's other works, most notably "Dracula", are heavily critical of the New Woman, rebuking the characters' progressive sexuality, as in the case of the female vampires in "Dracula": "the female vampires in "Dracula" are way of responding to the growing equality of men and women, in particular their sexual equality. Not only does he emphasize their voluptuousness and sexual aggression and contrast their behavior to that of his chaste and sexually timid heroine but he has his male characters destroy these threatening women and reestablish a more traditional order". As the New Woman became more prevalent in society, however, Stoker continued to feature independent female characters in his works, balancing an exploration of the possibility of feminine power with a patriarchal discourse: "[Stoker’s heroines frequently display both a degree of personal assertion and a sexual precocity which at first sight distances them from the patriarchal ideal of female passivity and subservience…even though by the end of each work the suggestion is implicitly made that biological difference, the destiny invested in gender, is the most powerful force of all".