Analysis of Dracula by Bram Stoker
Summary of Dracula by Bram Stoker
Dracula begins with a young solicitor’s assistant, Jonathan Harker, traveling to Transylvania to meet Count Dracula at his castle. The locals are afraid of the Count and think he is odd because he does not eat during the day or come out in daylight. He only comes out at night.
Harker realizes that the strange driver who brought him to Dracula’s castle was, in fact, Dracula himself. He also discovers that he is a prisoner of Dracula and must escape from his clutches. Harker witnesses several bizarre occurrences while there; for instance, he sees Dracula crawl up the walls like a lizard. This leads Harker to believe that Dracula can turn into a bat. Meanwhile, Harker stumbles upon three demonic women in one room of the castle who appear as if they want to drink his blood but are stopped by Dracula saying “he” (Harker) belongs to him now and carries him back to his bedroom. In an attempt to flee from this prison-like setting, Harker finds what appears to be a basement chapel where he suspects that it is where Dracula sleeps at night in an earthen box filled with dirt and soil. After attempting unsuccessfully to kill Dracula by stabbing him with a shovel (it only seems superficially hurt), he manages finally after many attempts and escapes through the window bringing along his journal which contains all these experiences with Mina so she will believe them when reading them later on
Meanwhile, in England, two friends are on vacation at Whitby. One of them begins sleepwalking and the other one finds her bent over a grave. The first friend brings the second to her house. They notice that it’s getting worse day by day and call for help from some people who used to date this girl: an asylum doctor and his former professor from Amsterdam.
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Van Helsing believes he knows the cause of Lucy’s illness. He doesn’t explain it to Seward and the rest of the group, though, because that would be too difficult for them to understand. However, they do try different things in order to save her life. They give her transfusions but that doesn’t work so they try something else. In the end nothing works and she dies at night when everyone is gone except her mother who sees a wolf kill Lucy and then die from shock after killing his daughter.
Meanwhile, Mina has been taking care of Harker after he suffered a nervous breakdown from his time with Dracula. After returning to England, Van Helsing tells Harker that what he saw in Castle Dracula was real and not just a hallucination. He also tells the men that Lucy is dead but she’s really an Un-Dead vampire who preys on children at her grave site; the men go there and find this out for themselves, which shocks them all. They vow to track down Dracula because they believe he bit Lucy while they were in England.
As the group prepares to do this, however, Harker notices that Mina appears to be getting sick as well. One night he sees Dracula bite her and force her to suck his blood. She feels like she’s been poisoned by Dracula in the process. Dracula has also communicated with an insane man named Renfield who talks about wanting to gain life from animals he eats. He is discovered communicating with Dracula and allows him into the asylum so he can attack Mina and form a link between them through their shared blood.
The group finds out that Dracula sent 50 boxes filled with earth from Transylvania to England. He needs these boxes in order to sleep, so he can maintain his powers. The group realizes they need to destroy the power of those boxes by using holy communion wafers on them, thus destroying their special restorative properties and killing Dracula. However, they find 49 of the 50 boxes at various locations in London; but the last box is still in Transylvania. They track down Dracula and this final box back to his castle.
A group of people make a trip to find Dracula. They go with Mina, who is able to tell them where Dracula will be by using her connection with him through blood. The group believes that he’ll land at Varna, but he actually lands at Galatz. However, they still catch up to him and kill him while he sleeps in his coffin on the way back home. Morris dies during this attack from a gypsy, and Harker ends up marrying Mina as well as having their child named after Morris. Seward finds love and marries someone else too along with Arthur who also found love too (not specified). Van Helsing worries that no one would believe their story about Dracula even though they have compiled all of these accounts together just so that people can know the truth about what happened between them and Count Dracula because no one would believe it otherwise without proof or evidence which is why they put all these stories together for everyone else to read/hear about what really happened between them and Count Dracula since no one would believe it otherwise without any kind of proof or evidence whatsoever since nobody has ever heard anything like this before!
Plot Account
Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, travels to Castle Dracula in the Eastern European country of Transylvania to conclude a real estate transaction with a nobleman named Count Dracula. As Harker wends his way through the picturesque countryside, the local peasants warn him about his destination, giving him crucifixes and other charms against evil and uttering strange words that Harker later translates into “vampire.”
Frightened but no less determined, Harker meets the count’s carriage as planned. The journey to the castle is harrowing, and the carriage is nearly attacked by angry wolves along the way. Upon arriving at the crumbling old castle, Harker finds that the elderly Dracula is a well educated and hospitable gentleman. After only a few days, however, Harker realizes that he is effectively a prisoner in the castle.
The more Harker investigates the nature of his confinement, the more uneasy he becomes. He realizes that the count possesses supernatural powers and diabolical ambitions. One evening, Harker is nearly attacked by three beautiful and seductive female vampires, but the count staves them off, telling the vampires that Harker belongs to him. Fearing for his life, Harker attempts to escape from the castle by climbing down the walls.
Meanwhile, in England, Harker’s fiancée, Mina Murray, corresponds with her friend Lucy Westenra. Lucy has received marriage proposals from three men—Dr. John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and an American named Quincey Morris. Though saddened by the fact that she must reject two of these suitors, Lucy accepts Holmwood’s proposal.
Mina visits Lucy at the seaside town of Whitby. A Russian ship is wrecked on the shore near the town with all its crew missing and its captain dead. The only sign of life aboard is a large dog that bounds ashore and disappears into the countryside; the only cargo is a set of fifty boxes of earth shipped from Castle Dracula. Not long after, Lucy suddenly begins sleepwalking. One night, Mina finds Lucy in the town cemetery and believes she sees a dark form with glowing red eyes bending over Lucy. Lucy becomes pale and ill, and she bears two tiny red marks at her throat, for which -neither Dr. Seward nor Mina can account. Unable to arrive at a satisfactory diagnosis, Dr. Seward sends for his old mentor, Professor Van Helsing.
Suffering from brain fever, Harker reappears in the city of Buda-Pest. Mina goes to join him. Van Helsing arrives in Whitby, and, after his initial examination of Lucy, orders that her chambers be covered with garlic—a traditional charm against vampires. For a time, this effort seems to stave off Lucy’s illness. She begins to recover, but her mother, unaware of the garlic’s power, unwittingly removes the odiferous plants from the room, leaving Lucy vulnerable to further attack.
Seward and Van Helsing spend several days trying to revive Lucy, performing four blood transfusions. Their efforts ultimately come to nothing. One night, the men momentarily let down their guard, and a wolf breaks into the Westenra house. The shock gives Lucy’s mother a fatal heart attack, and the wolf attacks Lucy, killing her. After Lucy’s death, Van Helsing leads Holmwood, Seward, and Quincey Morris to her tomb. Van Helsing convinces the other men that Lucy belongs to the “Un-Dead”—in other words, she has been transformed into a vampire like Dracula. The men remain unconvinced until they see Lucy preying on a defenseless child, which convinces them that she must be destroyed. They agree to follow the ritual of vampire slaying to ensure that Lucy’s soul will return to eternal rest. While the undead Lucy sleeps, Holmwood plunges a stake through her heart. The men then cut off her head and stuff her mouth with garlic. After this deed is done, they pledge to destroy Dracula himself. Now married, Mina and Jonathan return to England and join forces with the others. Mina helps Van Helsing collect the various diary and journal entries that Harker, Seward, and the others have written, attempting to piece together a narrative that will lead them to the count. Learning all they can of Dracula’s affairs, Van Helsing and his band track down the boxes of earth that the count uses as a sanctuary during the night from Dracula’s castle. Their efforts seem to be going well, but then one of Dr. Seward’s mental patients, Renfield, lets Dracula into the asylum where the others are staying, allowing the count to prey upon Mina.
As Mina begins the slow change into a vampire, the men sterilize the boxes of earth, forcing Dracula to flee to the safety of his native Transylvania. The men pursue the count, dividing their forces and tracking him across land and sea. Van Helsing takes Mina with him, and they cleanse Castle Dracula by killing the three female vampires and sealing the entrances with sacred objects. The others catch up with the count just as he is about to reach his castle, and Jonathan and Quincey use knives to destroy him
Analysis of all Characters in Dracula
The Character of Dracula
Dracula is the vampire that has been “Un-Dead” for many hundred years and maintains his life by sucking blood from victims that are alive. He is the Count of Transylvania after whom Stoker named the book. Even if he is seen only on a few of the four hundred pages of this Gothic novel, his presence can constantly be felt throughout the entire work. He wants to move from the deserted Transylvania, which is barely populated, to England, the starting point of the novel, as a solicitor from England must travel to Dracula’s Castle to help with the transactions. Count Dracula is depicted as a “tall old man, clean shaven, save for a long white mustache and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of color about him anywhere.” Contrary to the popular belief, Stoker describes his Count Dracula wearing a large and bushy mustache and having an ample head of curly and dense hair, big eyebrows, and very sharp and white teeth, particularly the canine teeth. Count Dracula also has an amazing vitality, as can be seen, every time that he comes into sight in a difficult situation
The Character of Van Helsing
Old Professor Van Helsing is an experienced, competent man, but due to the unfortunately unskilled manner in which Stoker renders Van Helsing’s speech, he often comes across as somewhat bumbling. Nevertheless, Van Helsing emerges as a well-matched adversary to the count, and he is initially the only character who possesses a mind open enough to contemplate and address Dracula’s particular brand of evil. A doctor, philosopher, and metaphysician, Van Helsing arrives on the scene versed not only in the modern methods of Western medicine, but with an unparalleled knowledge of superstitions and folk remedies. He straddles two distinct worlds, the old and the new: the first marked by fearful respect for tradition, the second by ever-progressing modernity. Unlike his former pupil, Dr. Seward, whose obsession with modern techniques blinds him to the real nature of Lucy’s sickness, Van Helsing not only diagnoses the young girl’s affliction correctly, but offers her the only opportunity for a cure.
Like many of the other characters, Van Helsing is relatively static, as he undergoes no great change or development throughout the course of the novel. Having helped rid the Earth of the count’s evil, he departs as he arrived: morally righteous and religiously committed. Van Helsing views his pursuit of Dracula with an air of grandiosity. He envisions his band as “ministers of God’s own wish,” and assures his comrades that “we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more.” Hyperbole aside, Stoker portrays Van Helsing as the embodiment of unswerving good, the hero he recruits “to set the world free.”
The Character of Mina Murray Harker
Mina: so awesome that her dudely compatriots congratulate her on having a man's brain. (Raise your hand if you're glad you don't live in 1897.)
All snide, the-past-sucks remarks aside, Mina is probably the most complex character in the novel and vies with Dracula for the central role. Like Dracula, she becomes a unifying force in the story, binding the main characters together for a common purpose. But she's a lot more complicated than Dracula—we're given a glimpse of her past, and since we often get to read her journal and letters, we get to see things from her point of view. She's both incredibly feminine and described as having a "man's brain." She's both child-like and extremely maternal. She's described as "angelic" by several different characters, but once she's tainted with vampire blood, she's unholy and incapable of touching the Holy Wafer. With all those contradictions, Mina's character definitely needs a closer look
What is this "New Woman," Anyhow?
After going on a particularly long walk with Lucy, Mina says that they ate so much at tea time, they "should have shocked the 'New Woman' with [their] appetites" (8.1). Later in the same paragraph, she says that the "New Women" will introduce the
idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But […] the New Woman won't condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too! There's some consolation in that. (8.1)
So who is this "New Woman" that Mina keeps going on about?
Well, at the end of the 19th century, when Stoker was writing Dracula, the women's suffrage movement was starting to gain steam. The question of what women's roles should be in society was a biggie. Should they be allowed to vote? Should they be allowed to work in traditionally male jobs? How extensive should their education be? Should they go to college?
The "New Woman" was a term used to describe progressive women, who asserted their independence from men. The "New Woman" was not only more sexually independent, but also more physically independent in other ways—these progressive women actually exercised by cycling, playing tennis, or going on long walks, and ate as much as they felt like, instead of eating tiny portions to maintain their wasp-like figures.
So when Mina says that she and Lucy ate enough to "shock the 'New Woman,'" she means they ate a ton. It's like saying, "we ate more hot dogs than Takeru Kobayashi at an eating contest."
But why bring up the "New Woman" at all? It seems like a random reference, but it's important. Let's look at the second reference: It's about the power dynamics between men and women before marriage. Who should do the proposing? And how much should they see of each other before marriage? According to traditional Victorian social morality, men and women should only see each other in very controlled, chaperoned settings before agreeing to marry. The idea that men and women should see each other asleep is pretty risqué. And the idea that women should do the proposing is also mind-blowing for the time period.
Mina is a very intelligent, well-educated woman. She's a schoolteacher, which means she earns her own income before her marriage and is financially independent (her parents are dead, so she doesn't really have a choice in the matter). But even while working full time, she studies alongside Jonathan, who is working to become a lawyer. She says she "want[s] to keep up with Jonathan's studies" and that she has been "practicing shorthand" (5.1).
So Mina works full time and has been staying caught up with Jonathan's law school reading? Does the woman never sleep? But she's not doing it because she wants to be a lawyer herself, she's doing it so that she'll "be able to be useful to Jonathan" after they're married (5.1).
So Mina is a strange, contradictory combination of strong intellect and submissiveness—she's the one who figures out where Dracula's likely to go next (26.37) and Van Helsing says that she has a "man's brain" (18.22), but she's also always talking about how brave the men are: "a brave man's hand can speak for itself; it does not even need a woman's love to hear its music" (18.34). She's financially and intellectually independent, but not really sexually independent—we hardly ever hear her described physically, and her relationship with Jonathan seems strangely sexless.
If Mina seems to be sexless, maybe it's because everyone is too busy thinking of her as a mother figure. Mina's admiration for the men who help kill Dracula is pretty extreme—she frequently remarks on how lucky she is to have so many good, strong men to look out for her. But she looks out for them, too—just after meeting Arthur Holmwood, she lets him have a good cry on her shoulder:
He stood up and then sat down again, and the tears rained down his cheeks. I felt an infinite pity for him, and opened my arms unthinkingly. With a sob he laid his head on my shoulder, and cried like a wearied child, whilst he shook with emotion.
We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child. (17.58-59) Mina is like everyone's mother—not five minutes after she allows Arthur to cry on her shoulder, she invites Quincey Morris to do the same (after all, he loved Lucy, too). She's always fixing tea for people, or offering to comfort them. Mina is an intellectual equal to the men around her, but physically and emotionally submissive to them. She's everyone's momma and seems almost saint-like… until, of course, she's infected by Dracula's blood. Many readers and critics think of the scene in which Mina is forced to drink Dracula's blood as a kind of rape scene. After all, the scene takes place on her bed, both of them are partly undressed, and Dracula is holding her and forcing her to have intimate contact with him against her will. But there are other possible interpretations, especially given Mina's role as a kind of universal mother figure.
The fact that Dracula is forcing her to drink blood from his "bare breast," like a "child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk" is strange. His blood is compared to "milk" through the kitten simile, and he's making Mina drink from his breast. This could suggest that Dracula himself has assumed a mother-like role… but it's a perverted, diabolical motherhood. Mina's own saint-like maternity is polluted by Dracula's contact with her. The whole scene is full of symbols of sin and purity, like the red blood staining her white nightdress and the red blood on her white hands. Later, when Mina's face is scarred by the Holy Wafer, it's no accident that it leaves a red mark on her white forehead. But although Mina's physical body is polluted, stained, and scarred by her contact with Dracula, her soul remains pure. And at the end of the novel, when Dracula's body is destroyed, Mina's body regains its natural purity, as well
The Character of Abraham Van Helsing
An eminent professor from Amsterdam, and a learned "man of science," Van Helsing was Seward's former teacher; Seward calls him to England to help with the case of Lucy. Van Helsing later leads the group, including Seward, on the hunt to "truly kill" Lucy and track down and truly kill Dracula. Van Helsing speaks a kind of non-idiomatic, "choppy" English.
The Character of Miss Mina (Wilhelmina) Murray
The fiancée of Jonathan Harker; she will become a "persecuted maiden" during the latter part of the story. She is quite young, and her job is that of an assistant schoolmistress. She is also an orphan. She will later become Mina Harker and will assist in tracking down Count Dracula.
The Character of Jonathan Harker
The first character to encounter Dracula. At the start of the novel, Jonathan is on a business trip to Transylvania to help Count Dracula to purchase an estate in England. At the time he is unaware of the Count's true nature‹and it takes an awfully long time, many readers complain, for him to catch on. He is fiercely devoted to Mina, and after Mina is polluted by the Count, Jonathan is obsessed with destroying him. His letters and journal entries make up a substantial part of the novel.
The Character of Lucy Westenra
Everyone loves Lucy. Seriously: Quincey Morris, Jack Seward, and Arthur Holmwood all propose to her; Van Helsing thinks she's the sweetest thing ever; and even Mina can't stop talking about how gorgeous Lucy is.
Lucy's like a child: She's blonde and innocent and seems very vulnerable, which inspires everyone around her to protect her. But this raises some questions: Why is Lucy so vulnerable? What makes Dracula choose her as his first victim in England?
One possible answer is Lucy's natural sexiness. She's innocent and virginal, but she's naturally much more sexy and voluptuous than Mina is. If Mina is everyone's mother, Lucy is everyone's wife: At one point, she says to Mina, "Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?" (5.11). Though Lucy wouldn't mind marrying all three of the men who propose to her, she chooses Arthur because she loves him best.
Later, Lucy's wish sort of comes true. After Lucy dies, Arthur says that he feels like he was really married to her by sharing his blood with her in a blood transfusion. Of course, he doesn't realize that Jack Seward, Quincey Morris, and Van Helsing all gave her blood transfusions, too. So if sharing blood with Lucy means being married to Lucy, Lucy got her wish after all, as Van Helsing remarks later to Dr. Seward (13.85). And as a vampire, Lucy's natural physical attractiveness comes out: Her "purity" is turned into "voluptuous wantonness" (16.17). Although she was never as maternal as Mina, any maternal instincts Lucy had before she was a vampire are perverted—she clutches a child to her chest, but instead of feeding the child, she feeds on it. And when she is interrupted by the men in the graveyard, she "fl[ings] [the child] to the ground, callous as a devil" (16.19).
There are other possible explanations as to why Dracula attacks Lucy and why she's more vulnerable than anyone else. Perhaps it's a result of her passivity, rather than her natural voluptuousness. After all, she's easier for Dracula to influence and control when she's passively sleepwalking than when she's conscious and awake. Why do you think Dracula goes for Lucy? What makes her so appealing to the vampire?
The Character of Dr. Seward
The head of an insane asylum in London, which happens to sit next to Dracula's first English estate at Carfax, Seward was a former suitor of, and current friend to, Lucy, before her death. With Van Helsing and the others, Seward then tracks down Dracula in England, and follows him to Romania, where Dracula is "truly killed."
The Character of Arthur Holmwood
Arthur Holmwood is Lucy’s fiancé, and after Lucy’s death, Holmwood becomes a faithful participant in the fight against Dracula. He is also an English aristocrat who inherits his father’s title as Lord Godalming. Holmwood’s aristocratic heritage is important because it positions him in direct contrast to Count Dracula and shows that not everyone with a title and hereditary position is evil. Since Lucy chooses Holmwood over the other men who also woo her, Holmwood seems to be a devoted lover, and he later shows his courage and integrity by carrying out the awful task of driving a stake through the evil-possessed Lucy’s heart in order to save her soul. In addition to this traditionally heroic type of bravery, Holmwood shows vulnerability when he mourns Lucy, “cr[ying] like a wearied child, whilst he [shakes] with emotion.” At the end of Dracula, Holmwood is described as “happily married,” implying that he ultimately recovers from the trauma of losing Lucy
The Character of Quincey Morris
The third of Lucy's suitors. A rich Texan adventurer with a big bowie knife, he eventually gives his life in the battle against Dracula. Quincey's speech fluctuates between an overdone approximation of Texan English and Victorian-sounding speech no Texan would be caught dead using. He is a gallant and manly idealization of the American male.
The Character of The three vampire women
Seductive and sinister, these three female undead are in the first few chapters of the novel and the last. Jonathan finds them terrifying and alluring at the same time, and he narrowly escapes becoming their prey.
The Character of Mr. Swales
An old man who befriends Lucy and Mina at Whitby, site of the landing of Count Dracula's ship. He is an archetypal figure, the one person who senses and articulates the approaching horror of Dracula, but, Cassandra-like, he is not believed.
Themes in Dracula
The Theme of Modernization
Early in the novel, as Harker becomes uncomfortable with his lodgings and his host at Castle Dracula, he notes that “unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill.” Here, Harker voices one of the central concerns of the Victorian era. The end of the nineteenth century brought drastic developments that forced English society to question the systems of belief that had governed it for centuries. Darwin’s theory of evolution, for instance, called the validity of long-held sacred religious doctrines into question. Likewise, the Industrial Revolution brought profound economic and social change to the previously agrarian England.
Though Stoker begins his novel in a ruined castle—a traditional Gothic setting—he soon moves the action to Victorian London, where the advancements of modernity are largely responsible for the ease with which the count preys upon English society. When Lucy falls victim to Dracula’s spell, neither Mina nor Dr. Seward—both devotees of modern advancements—are equipped even to guess at the cause of Lucy’s predicament. Only Van Helsing, whose facility with modern medical techniques is tempered with open-mindedness about ancient legends and non-Western folk remedies, comes close to understanding Lucy’s affliction.
In Chapter XVII, when Van Helsing warns Seward that “to rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all the knowledge and all the help which we can get,” he literally means all the knowledge. Van Helsing works not only to understand modern Western methods, but to incorporate the ancient and foreign schools of thought that the modern West dismisses. “It is the fault of our science,” he says, “that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.” Here, Van Helsing points to the dire consequences of subscribing only to contemporary currents of thought. Without an understanding of history—indeed, without different understandings of history—the world is left terribly vulnerable when history inevitably repeats itself.
The Theme of Salvation and Damnation
As several characters note in the novel, a person's physical life is of secondary importance to the person's eternal life, which can be jeopardized if the person is made evil by a vampire like Dracula. Professor Van Helsing says, when he is explaining why they must kill the vampire Lucy, "But of the most blessed of all, when this now Un-Dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free." Even characters that are of questionable goodness, such as the mental patient, R. M. Renfield, realize that, although they can find immortality by being a vampire, they cannot find salvation. Renfield says, when he is begging Dr. Seward to let him go, not explaining that he is afraid of his master, Dracula: "Don't you know that I am sane and earnest now; that I am no lunatic in a mad fit, but a sane man fighting for his soul?" When Mina is distraught after realizing that Dracula has started to turn her into a vampire, Van Helsing warns her to stay alive if she wants to achieve her salvation. "Until the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not die; for if he is still with the quick Un-dead, your death would make you even as he is." The novel underscores the expected roles of men and women in Victorian times. Women were expected to be gentle and ladylike and, most of all, subservient to men. For example, in one of her letters, Lucy notes, "My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them?" Lucy is frustrated that she has to choose between her three suitors and does not wish to hurt any one of them by saying no. Lucy says, "Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it." Women are expected to live for their husbands, so much so that Mina practices her shorthand while Jonathan is away so that she can assist him when he gets back. Mina says, "When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan."
Even more important than a woman's devotion to her husband was the idea that women, at least gentlewomen, should be pure. As part of this, men were expected to respect a woman's privacy and never burst in on her when they might catch her in an undressed state. Quincey notes this when Professor Van Helsing says they need to break down the door to Mina's room. Quincey states, "It is unusual to break into a lady's room!" However, as Van Helsing notes, in situations where the woman might be in mortal danger, this rule should be broken. Van Helsing is worried, rightly so, that Dracula might be attacking Mina. So he replies to Quincey, "You are always right; but this is life and death." In fact, the role of men as saviors of their women, which is underscored again and again in the novel, was another aspect of Victorian life. When it came to danger, especially physical danger, women were expected to act like damsels in distress. Mina fulfills this role after she is bitten and looks to Jonathan for support. Notes Mina of Jonathan's hand, "it was life to me to feel its touch—so strong, so self-reliant, so resolute."
The Theme of Writing, Journaling, and Messaging
Dracula isn't really a "novel" at all; it does not present itself as the work of a single author or narrator. Instead, Dracula consists of series of diary entries, letters, telegrams, memoranda, and occasional newspaper clippings, assembled and typed up by Mina Harker, with help from Seward, Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Quincey Morris, and Arthur, Lord Godalming. In a sense, then, Mina is the "author" of the book: she knits together these various accounts. This creates an intriguing "meta-narrative" effect: the characters in the novel are reading "the novel" as we, the reader, are making our way through it.
The novel is, essentially, a detective story, as the group finds out the nature of Dracula's violent activities and attempts to track him down and destroy him. The accounts knit together by Mina show how the group goes about catching the Count. Jonathan Harker's journal tells of his arrival to Transylvania, location of Castle Dracula; his eventual imprisonment there; his attempts to ward off Dracula and the Three Sisters; and his eventual escape to Budapest. Letters between Lucy and Mina track, primarily, the slow "illness" overtaking Lucy, which results in her becoming a vampire. Seward's diary contains information about the patient Renfield, an accomplice and acolyte of Dracula's, who refers to him as "lord and master." Mina's journal details Mina's own illness and refers to her hypnotic visions, which serve as a "conscious link" between the Count and Mina. Van Helsing notes down several events toward the end of the novel, including the final pursuit of Dracula; newspaper reports of supernatural events fill out the uncanniness of the narrative, from perspectives beyond those of Mina and the rest of the group. These accounts serve a central purpose in Dracula. Journals, diaries, and other first-person accounts lend credence to events that, if they were narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, might seem too fantastical for the reader to accept. When the novel's characters make sense of the events they have seen, and relay these events to others, via their own writing and messaging, though, it puts the characters and the readers in the same position. Van Helsing therefore comments, in a quotation referenced by Harker in the novel's Closing Note, that because these are all "accounts" and not "objectively validated" by other persons, one still must, at the end of Dracula, take the characters' word for what has happened. Despite this almost obsessive reliance on the truthfulness of the information being reported, what we have, here, is nevertheless subject to embellishment and fantasy. It is up to the reader to judge if and when such fantasy has been inserted into the narrative.
The Theme of Sex
If you think that some of the descriptions of vampirism in Dracula seem creepily sexy, you're not alone. The characters in Dracula are simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by the idea of having their blood sucked. Most of them are able to repress that desire most of the time, although they acknowledge the desire later in their journals. There aren't any actual sex scenes in the novel, but the blood-sucking scenes are close enough: They're described in terms of illicit desire and sexual repression.
The Theme of Reason and Madness
The novel also explores the ideas of reason and madness. In the beginning, Jonathan believes that he is going mad when he sees the three women vampires appear out of thin air. Later, he thinks that all of his experiences were the result of hallucinations brought on by madness. Seward works at an insane asylum, so he is exposed to madness every day. As a result, Seward tends to always follow his scientific reasoning, a fact that Van Helsing notes, "You are a clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear." Because of this, Seward does not believe in the vampire Lucy, even after seeing her the first time. His mind is unable to reconcile the supernatural things that he has seen, and so it simply blocks them out, at least temporarily. He is the type of man who would rather base his life on hard facts and hard science and who likes to use the newest technologies like the phonograph. His mentor, Van Helsing, is also an accomplished scientist, but he realizes that sometimes it is necessary to forget what one has been taught and believe in something else, even if it seems mad or heretical. Van Helsing says "it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain."
The Theme of Fear of Outsiders
While Dracula is undoubtedly a menacing and dangerous figure, his national origin is a significant part of what makes him threatening to the other characters. As a resident of Eastern Europe, Dracula is portrayed as significantly different from his English, American, and Dutch enemies; as he himself explains to Harker, “Our ways are not your ways and there shall be to you many strange things.” On his last night at the castle, Harker looks at the sleeping count and thinks with horror that “This [is] the being I [am] helping to transfer to London.” He is less worried about Dracula’s existence than about the threat of national contamination. The fear of Dracula as a type of foreign invasion also explains why the men are so determined later in the novel to drive Dracula back to Transylvania, and stage their final battle with him there. Dracula poses the threat of literally contaminating local bloodlines with a foreign influence, and this threat reveals a deep-seated fear of outsiders gaining power and using it for evil means.
The Theme of Christianity, Science, and the Occult
The novel also considers the interactions of Christian belief, superstitious or "occult" practices, and rational science. The tracking of Dracula requires methodical investigations in each of these fields, and the fields themselves, by the end of the novel, appear very much interrelated, even entirely entangled. Most of the characters in the group profess a serious and proper Christian belief. The Harkers are observant Protestants, and God-fearing people; their love is made permanent in the eyes of God through their speedy marriage. Arthur has special Christian scruples about the discretion of Lucy's body, in order to save her from her undead status; he eventually acquiesces and aids in her "true killing," thus releasing her soul. Dr. Seward professes a similarly orthodox understanding of God's goodness, and all characters typically end their conversations by saying that their group's success is in God's hands.
But superstition and occult practices become interwoven with these Christian beliefs. Harker sees, in Transylvania, that many of the peasant-folk have special charms to ward off the evil eye. All the preparations designed to ward off vampires—garlic, the wooden stake, decapitation—come from Transylvanian superstition dating back to the Middle Ages. The group's efforts to fight Dracula draw on these superstitions, which prove "real," inasmuch as they work, eventually, to kill the Count.
The novel draws out a tension, therefore, between rational, scientific thought and irrational belief that was very much a part of Victorian society in England. These religious attitudes, Christian and occult, are married to a procedural, rational, scientific frame of mind, most unified in Van Helsing, the universal "man of learning." Van Helsing is an ardent, believing Christian, but also a man who collects, with great rigor, superstitious practices from central Europe. Van Helsing and Seward also have an intimate knowledge of medicine and biology. All this knowledge, centered on Van Helsing, is brought to bear in the capture of Dracula. Van Helsing—as a man of science, religion, and collector and believer in superstition—is therefore the "cure" for a problem Stoker identifies in Victorian society: a belief, among many Victorians, that rational, scientific knowledge might not be sufficient to overcome the dangers of superstition, those areas of human life not immediately explained by science. Dracula is not only a devil walking the earth; he is not only a mythical monster, foretold in Romanian legends. And he is not explained fully by testable scientific hypotheses. Dracula is, instead, a human embodiment of the very human beastliness that Victorians feared and hoped to destroy. And only a combination of religious, ritualistic, and scientific modes allows the group to track and kill Dracula.
The Theme of Gender
There's a lot of talk in this novel about the ideal roles of men and women. Men are supposed to be strong, brave, and decisive, and women are supposed to be sweet, pure, and innocent. Of course, those roles get mixed up on occasion (as hard-and-fast gender roles tend to do). Sorting through what Dracula is really suggesting about ideals of masculinity and femininity is part of the fun of reading this novel
The Theme of Money
Count Dracula is equipped with many supernatural powers that make him a formidable enemy. However, Stoker is also quite pragmatic about the fact that part of what makes Dracula dangerous is his wealth, and his ability to engage in systems of economic exchange. Dracula buys his new home in England through a perfectly legal and commonplace financial transaction, and he pays for his voyages to and from England, rather than using any sort of magical ability to travel. When Harker is imprisoned in the castle, he observes finding “a great heap of gold in one corner,” evidence of Dracula having the money he needs to carry out his plans. While Dracula’s ancient origins and supernatural powers seem to make him a figure from the past, he is able to seamlessly navigate the modern cash economy and use it to his advantage. So long as he has the money to pay, many characters, including Harker himself, are willing to overlook his eccentric and menacing behavior.
The Theme of Good vs. Evil
The vampire Dracula is pretty unambiguously evil. The members of the Crew of Light, the group dedicated to destroying Dracula, are unambiguously good. Sure, each of them makes mistakes—they're only human. But their intentions are always good. In short, Dracula is a classic story of good versus evil. You know when you start reading the novel which side is going to win (the good guys!), but the question is how great the cost will be. How many of the good guys are going to have to sacrifice themselves in order to conquer the evil Dracula?
The Theme of Life and Death
All the above lead into the final, and perhaps most important, theme of the novel: that of the relationship between life, death, and the state in between these two, known by Van Helsing as "undeadness." Dracula is a creature of the undead. He sleeps during the day and lives at night; he is of incredible strength when awake, but must be invited into one's room in order to begin his "seduction." But the touchstone of Dracula's undeadness is his inability actually to die—his soul is trapped in a kind of prison, and must be released by the cutting off of Dracula's head, or the driving of a wooden stake through his heart. In this sense, to kill Dracula is to allow him to live—to free his soul from the prison of his body.
Other characters in the novel hover between these categories of living and dying. Harker's swoon, upon leaving Dracula's castle, nearly kills him, and he spends many months regaining his full health, only to find that Mina has been afflicted by Dracula's bite. Mina, then, is hypnotized by Van Helsing, later on, to provide information on Dracula's whereabouts. This "in-between" hypnotic state is a kind of undeadness. Lucy's sleepwalking, too, is an "in-between state," not waking and not sleeping, which allows Dracula to find her, bite her, and eventually make her a vampire. Both Harker and Van Helsing appear to go gray and age as the book progresses—they near death, physically, as they endanger their lives, and only once Dracula is fully killed do they regain their total health. Renfield is obsessed with the life-giving energies of the animals he eats—flies, spider, birds, cats—and these animals must die to give him life. Renfield wishes to gain the special knowledge of undeadness from Dracula, but is eventually killed by his would-be master. Interestingly, undeadness seems to diametrically oppose the Christian notions of resurrection, or life after death. In the former, the soul is given immortal life in heaven, in nearness to God, once it has been released from the earthly body, which passes from living to dying. But in the case of undeadness, the living body seems almost to die, but maintains a kind of purgatorial state in which it feasts on the blood of the living, and the soul, trapped inside, cannot abide with God in heaven. The body becomes a parasite, eking out an existence stolen from the vital energy of others. The novel seems to argue that, in order to continue the normal biotic processes of living and dying, and the normal, moral, "Christian" processes of death and resurrection, undeadness must be eliminated. Souls must be allowed to rise to heaven. Thus Mina rejoices even when Dracula, the villain of the novel, has his soul released from his terrible body. In this way, even Dracula, the evil one, is saved.