Although vampires populated the pages and stages of the nineteenth-century, the most important literary contribution to the vampire myth in contemporary culture is Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. Despite being the most famous vampire novel, Dracula is not only a vampire novel. Published at the turn of the twentieth century, Dracula addresses typical fin de siecle (end-of-century) cultural anxieties about science, religion, modern technology, politics, socioeconomic class, and sexuality. The colorful cast of characters voice concerns about all of these issues throughout the novel.
Today’s reader may find the novel’s epistolary structure fragmented. However, the letters, diary entries, ship’s logs, and other documents that make up the narrative allow the story to be told from multiple perspectives and bring into relief the novel’s many themes and layers. The epistolary structure, coupled with the historical details that Stoker includes, also lend credibility to an otherwise implausible tale. The story of a centuries-old vampire hardly seems believable unless several people attest to its authenticity, and this is precisely why Stoker reveals his fantastic story through the combined voices of Mina Murray, Jonathan Harker, and John Seward, among others. This technique is not unique to Dracula; many nineteenth-century gothic thrillers were written in the same way. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Je-kyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) are two classic examples of epistolary gothic narratives that gave birth to some of the most famous monsters ever introduced to modern audiences. The structure of Dracula follows not only these, but many eighteenth - and nineteenth-century gothic thrillers.
The structural similarities between Dracula, Frankenstein, and other gothic novels of this time are one of many ways that Stoker’s undead villain had much in common with not only the vampires that came before him, but also the monsters that haunted nineteenth-century readers before the novel’s publication. Like Frankenstein’s monster and the one-man duo of Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula’s monstrous body is a site for the present struggle between the past and the future. This thematic struggle is also a generic convention of the gothic, in which present-day concerns are espoused and examined through a narrative set in the past and thus providing a safe critical distance from the anxieties that the work is trying to address. What exactly does this mean? To put it more simply, gothic novels that either are set in or heavily engage with the past often rely on a form of escapism. In order to address an issue that the author deems critical to his or her time, the author writes a similar struggle into a historical setting that, on the surface, appears to be very different from the present. The reader is asked to consider the implications of this struggle without directly criticizing his or her opinions about a similar issue in the present day. For example, among the many dangers that heroines of many early gothic novels faced, sexual threats were common. According to several twentieth-century scholars, the inclusion of a sexual threat in a gothic novel was one way that an eighteenth - or nineteenth-century author might criticize the cultural oppression of women in their day. (Another genre that often engages in this practice is science fiction, although in that case the present-day struggle typically plays out in the future. In this instance, one might consider how apocalyptic settings critique the massive use of weaponry in war or the misuse of technology.)
While it is tempting to read such narratives as classic tales of good versus evil, most texts or movies are multilayered, multithematic narratives that resist such a simple binary. Dracula is no exception. If a single binary could be identified as the power behind the narrative, then old versus new would more accurately describe the novel’s thematic catalyst. The clash between the old world and the new is evident in the novel’s premise. Count Dracula, an aging aristocrat, employs a young lawyer to help him move from a crumbling castle in the countryside to the modern city. Despite the safety of his old digs, Dracula is dying (figuratively speaking). His only chance of survival—of ensuring a continued lineage—depends on his ability to move into and adapt to the modern world.
Strangely, the premise of the most famous vampire novel of all opens with a real-estate transaction. Jonathan Harker travels by train to meet his client and seal the deal. The reason for Harker’s trip to Transylvania is banal at best; however, this mundane business deal perfectly sets the stage for the novel’s supernatural thematic struggles. In the old world, power was acquired through military conquests. In the modern world, power is defined by way of the acquisition of wealth through business transactions. Harker, the young English attorney, is acutely aware of the importance of this sale. His professional ambition and his desire to provide for his future wife are what put him on the train to Transylvania in the first place. These motivations keep him traveling despite the warnings of locals in Bistritz, who obviously know more about Harker’s strange client than they dare to say. Despite their vague yet energetic warnings, Harker reminds the reader of the trip’s importance: “there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it” (Dracula, ch. 1, 13). Financial interest before self-preservation—such are the demands of the modern world.
Almost all of the novel’s themes can be traced back to a struggle between the old world and the new, antiquity versus modernity. Dracula is old, as is the castle he lives in and the traditions that he holds on to. Despite his wealth, the count has no modern luxuries. Even his business sense is antiquated. When Harker explores the count’s castle, he is stricken by its barrenness and the following discovery:
The only thing I found was a great heap of gold in one corner—gold of all kinds, Roman, and British, and Austrian, and Hungarian, and Greek and Turkish money, covered with a film of dust, as though it had lain long in the ground. None of it that I noticed was less than three hundred years old. There were also chains and ornaments, some jewelled, but all of them old and stained. (Dracula, ch. 4, 50)
Count Dracula reeks of antiquity, especially when seen through the eyes of the modern narrator. The old world-new world dichotomy does not end there, though. This thematic tension is so crucial to the narrative that it distinctly and inextricably plays out through several cultural arenas—geographically, historically, politically, and socially—in Stoker’s novel.
The first way that old world meets new in Dracula is through geography. The novel opens with an entry from Jonathan Harker’s diary, cataloging the onset of his trip to meet the terrible count. Like many nineteenth-century novels, Dracula is preoccupied with the picturesque, even more so since the sensational story presented begins with a trip. Harker is traveling by train from England to Transylvania to meet his newest client. He is hyper-aware of leaving his homeland for a dangerous new terrain, and everything about his journey strikes him as strange and alien. Of course, the changes he describes (new terrain, new dress, new customs, new language) are wholly expected of travel to a new country. However, Harker notes that the changes are greater than those one would expect when crossing a national boundary. “The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East,” he writes in his diary (Dracula, ch. 1, 9). Thus, the novel opens with an awareness of difference that is defined regionally. There is a visible difference between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, and the first character that the reader encounters in the novel drives this point home. He is a stranger in a strange land who immediately realizes that the cultural norms of his homeland will do him no good in what is described as a wild, untamed region.
Harker’s descriptions of the obvious differences between England and Eastern Europe serve two purposes. First, setting a story in a foreign land immediately suggests to readers that the tale they are encountering contains elements that cannot be explained by conventional knowledge. This narrative technique has a long tradition in English literature, especially when the story involved the suspension of disbelief in order to make room for the supernatural. In this way, Dracula follows the conventions of fairy tales set in a land far, far away. However, the distant setting of the novel also serves another purpose—one that scholars rightly read as part of a troublesome tradition almost as sinister as the monster at the heart of the novel.
To some extent, the eastern setting of Dracula’s homeland is both expected and fair. As discussed in the previous sections of this essay, Eastern Europe was the regional birthplace of contemporary vampire legends and sightings, as well as the homeland of the historical Vlad Dracula. However, as many scholars have pointed out, the Eastern European setting is also problematic when approached from more comprehensive historical and cultural contexts. While the exotic setting that transports the reader to a faraway land may be read as an innocent convention to some readers, the novel relies heavily on Western traditions that sensationalize the Eastern cultures in order to perpetuate ideas about the superiority of Western cultures. This claim is a fundamental tenet of postcolonial studies, as provided by its foundational theorist Edward Said, whose books Orientalism (first published in 1979) and Culture and Imperialism (1993) argue that Western literature—specifically the British, French, and American traditions—cannot be properly read without acknowledgment and serious consideration of its imperial contexts. Moreover, he argues that nineteenth-century British writers were especially ingrained in an ongoing dialogue with imperial ideology, regardless of their personal politics. He argues, “nearly every nineteenth-century writer. . . was extraordinarily well aware of the fact of empire. . . John Stuart Mill, Arnold, Carlyle, Newman, Macaulay, Ruskin, George Eliot, and even Dickens had definite views on race and imperialism, which are quite easily to be found at work in their writing” (Orientalism 14). The nineteenth century is well known as the height of the British Empire; thus, any reading of its most popular works—especially one that explicitly engages in Eastern folklore and travel—cannot be divorced from an imperial context.
Although Stoker does not make it into this list of nineteenth-century writers or into Said’s broader analysis, it is fairly easy to see how Dracula fits into the same imperialist cultural tradition. The opening chapters of the novel are all set outside of England, and Harker spends the first four chapters repeatedly pointing out the cultural differences that he encounters both on his journey to Dracula’s castle and during his stay at what almost literally becomes his final destination. The battle between Harker and Dracula eventually moves to England, where the count wreaks havoc in the west. Eventually, the clever count forces his foes to battle in his home territory, where he erroneously believes he will have a clear advantage over his human enemies. The shifting setting of the novel is clearly a moving war that is fought in two different regions. The battle for Mina’s soul forces the moral vampire-hunters to invade a foreign land; their invasion is justified much like imperial invasions were rationalized by invading armies.
The imperial subtext of Dracula operates more than just geographically. When Stoker borrowed the name of a historical ruler to imbue his vampire story with an air of authenticity, he simultaneously situated his novel within the history of empire, whether intentionally or not. The historical Vlad Drac-ula’s reign is a quintessential example of the violence and thirst for power that underlies imperial ideology. The fact that the historical Vlad Dracula was on the defending side of this struggle for power is irrelevant to the novel. Despite the considerable research that Stoker completed in order to describe the scenery of the opening chapter accurately, he does not extend this accuracy to the history of the novel’s title character. Even when the count attempts to relate and defend the history of the Dracula brood to Harker, he sounds like a narcissist and a warlord:
“They said that he thought only of himself. Bah! What good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders,
For our spirit would not brook that we were not free..... The warlike
Days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace, and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.” (Dracula, ch. 3, 35)
The count claims that the Draculas were motivated by more altruistic aims; however, this defense is hard to believe given the tone of this passage. The history that he relates to Harker is not one of family pride, but instead a boastful monologue, considering that he is speaking about himself (unbeknownst to his
Naive English guest). His tone implies hostility toward the peasantry that is not wholly consistent with the historical Vlad Dracula’s relationship to his people.
The historical references in Dracula serve two purposes. First, they lend credibility to the narrative. The fact that Stoker borrows the name of a real person and includes a few historical details about his life sets his novel apart from earlier vampire literature. More importantly, however, the historical references bring the imperial backdrop of the novel to the narrative’s foreground. Stoker’s vampire is not scary just because he is a bloodsucker—that fact alone would not make him any different from the dozens of vampires that came before him. Instead, Count Dracula is terrifying because he is a bloodthirsty fiend who is intelligent and conniving and can potentially outsmart and outfight the English characters. Take for example one of the most-quoted passages of the novel:
“And so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine.....
They should have kept their energies for use closer to home. Whilst they played wits against me—against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born—I was countermining them.” (Dracula, ch. 21, 251-52)
The novel’s vampire-hunters have their work cut out for them. Not only must they eliminate the threat and make sure that Mina does not meet the same fate as Lucy, but they must also do so while battling an enemy whose experience trumps their own. Sure, Harker, Seward, Morris, and Van Helsing are both brave and determined to defeat the count, but determination alone seems to be unlikely to win a war.
The fact that the count has also penetrated their home territory without their knowledge is incredibly disconcerting. His move to England thus becomes a tactical move reminiscent of a military conquest. This is a frightening prospect both for the novel’s characters as well as for anyone cognizant of Britain’s declining status as the world’s premier military power at the turn of the twentieth century. This historical context lies at the heart of Arata’s reading of the novel:
Stoker thus transforms the materials of the vampire myth, making them bear the weight of the culture’s fears over its declining status. The appearance of vampires becomes the sign of profound trouble. With vampirism marking the intersection of racial strife, political upheaval, and the fall of empire, Dracula’s move to London indicates that Great Britain, rather than the Carpathians, is now the scene of these connected struggles. The Count has penetrated to the heart of modern Europe’s largest empire, and his very presence seems to presage its doom. . . . (Arata 629)
Butler agrees with Arata’s reading: “[Count Dracula’s] wily command of international affairs rivals the collective intelligence of those in the land he
Invades. Dracula, written on the eve of the twentieth century, augurs the sunset of British power over the globe” (Butler 103). Out with the old and in with the new. Modernity’s displacement of tradition is the biggest threat voiced in the novel. However, the new is not wholly a source of negativity. Dracula suggests that modernity is necessary and even healthy. After all, Count Dracula is the epitome of antiquity in the novel, and he is purely evil. The goal of the narrative, then, is to find a happy medium between the two—a way to preserve the most important aspects of the old while accepting the fact that times must change and that we must all accept and adapt to the modern world.
Another arena where the old world-new world dichotomy plays out in Dracula is technology. Dracula is obsessed with technology. The count himself may prefer to travel and communicate via traditional methods such as cargo ships and handwritten letters; however, every other character in the novel uses modern technology to move around the world and record what they see. Harker uses a Kodak camera (introduced to the commercial market in 1888) to aid him in his legal career. Mina makes use of the typewriter for letter-writing and journal-keeping; she also has thorough knowledge of train schedules, which enable Van Helsing to travel from Amsterdam to England very quickly. Dr. Seward keeps an audio journal through his phonograph.
The contrast that Stoker depicts between old and new technology may be unnoticed by today’s reader; however, it was striking for the novel’s first readers. Consider the following comments from an early reviewer, which appeared in the July 31, 1897, issue of the Spectator:
Mr. Stoker has shown considerable ability in the use that he has made in all the available traditions of vampirology, but we think his story would have been all the more effective if he had chosen an earlier period. The up-to-dateness of the book—the phonograph diaries, typewriters, and so on—hardly fits in with the medieval methods which ultimately secure the victory for Count Dracula’s foes. (quoted in Dracula 365)
The reviewer’s observation is an important one. For all of their modern tools, the group of vampire-hunters must learn to negotiate the old and the new in order to defeat Dracula. Van Helsing and his group use trains, steamboats, and guns to help them reach Count Dracula in the novel’s final showdown; however, they are able to defeat the vampire only through traditional hand-to-hand combat as Dracula is killed by the deadly combination of Hark-er’s kukri to the throat and Morris’s bowie knife to the heart.
The novel’s incorporation of technological advances also highlights the shifting ideological wars of the late nineteenth century. Scientific reasoning clashes with superstition, and the presence of the ancient vampire forces the modern characters to rethink their relationship to traditional modes of thinking. Again, the novel does not pick out a single winner in this ideological war. In this case, Van Helsing, the learned professor who both understands the latest scientific advancements in medicine and is well versed in history, religion, and regional folklore, holds the key to defeating the evil threat. Overall, Van Helsing represents salvation by simultaneously showing the reader that one can embrace the modern world while still retaining respect for the wisdom that comes with age and all that tradition has taught us to value.
Van Helsing’s successful negotiation of tradition in the modern world brings us to the final arena of Dracula’s thematic struggle between the old and the new—sexuality. Dracula’s conquest of England not only plays out via the geographic landscape of the novel, but also takes place through the bodies of several of the main characters including Harker, Lucy, and Mina. The novel repeatedly sexualizes the vampire threat, be it male or female. Harker almost falls victim to the hypersexualized weird sisters that live in Castle Dracula. Disoriented and searching for his host, Harker stumbles upon three vampire women whose grasp he cannot (or does not want to) resist:
I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal. . . . I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart. (Dracula, ch. 3, 42-43)
We could have lost our protagonist in the novel’s first 50 pages were it not for the count’s interruption. Although there is nothing sexy about the count when he appears as an old man, his home is the setting for the novel’s sexiest scene and foreshadows his own sexual conquests once he travels to England and assumes a more youthful appearance.
News of Harker’s near-fatal encounter with the vampire women in Drac-ula’s castle does not reach England in time to ensure the safety of the novel’s two human women. Lucy—the novel’s most overtly sexual character—is slowly seduced by the count. His nightly visitations gradually drain her of her humanity, eventually transforming her into a vampire—the “bloofer lady” who feeds primarily on children and infants, reminiscent of the stories of Lilith and Lamia from ancient mythology. Lucy’s demise has been the target of many feminist readings of the novel, and rightly so. Her tragic fate is troublesome because throughout the novel she is depicted as a sexually aggressive, improper woman who enjoys being pursued by potential suitors. In this regard, Lucy’s demise is a consequence of her adoption of modern ideas about women’s sexuality, especially when she is compared to her best childhood friend, Mina, the angelic female protagonist.
Lucy is not the count’s only sexual conquest in the novel; she is just the most obvious. Dracula’s climactic transgression is his seduction of Mina. Throughout the novel, Mina is the epitome of female virtue. Like Van Helsing,
Mina embodies the ideal negotiation of past and present. Specifically, she exemplifies the modern woman who has not let herself bow fully to new, loose sexual standards. Mina is characterized as a rational person, in stark contrast to Lucy, who is seen as an overly emotional and physical being. Mina takes an active role in assisting her husband with his business, knows how to use modern technology in order to aid the band of vampire-hunters, serves as a voice of reason throughout the novel, and preserves the narrative through her detailed journal entries and recordkeeping.
Dracula’s seduction of Mina in chapter 21 (in front of her husband, no less!) is the climactic moment because it symbolizes not only the susceptibility of modern English womanhood, but also the susceptibility of England’s future. The scene is often discussed in Dracula scholarship because of its inversion of gender roles. Instead of acting as heroic husband, Harker lies motionless near his wife as they both fall under Dracula’s spell. Dracula also plays a passive role in the scene by feeding Mina instead of feeding himself. Despite being in Dracula’s thrall, Mina actively feeds from him, making her the aggressor, if only momentarily. If the novel’s plot has felt disjointed until now, this scene is the turning point. For the remainder of the novel, the plot revolves exclusively around saving Mina from Dracula’s thrall. The last quarter of the novel focuses on righting the wrongs done to the Harkers by eliminating the unnatural threat and reestablishing the natural order of things, symbolized by the restoration of gender roles that Dracula has subverted.11
By saving Mina, the vampire-hunters restore not only female chastity, but also English respectability. The novel closes with the restoration of order via the preservation of the English family. The final words of the novel are Van Helsing’s address to Mina’s and Harker’s infant son: “This boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake” (Dracula, ch. 27, 327).
In summary, Stoker’s novel sensationalizes the vampire by downplaying the supernatural threat and making the invasion of foreign power and the inversion of traditional gender norms the major source of terror. Through this setup, Stoker engages past and present. As a result of this endeavor, he ensured a fascination with vampires that would last for generations. With regard to both of these themes, one can easily see how Stoker’s Dracula paid homage to all of the vampires that preceded his late-nineteenth-century contribution to the vampire’s immortality in popular culture, while anticipating the major themes that would characterize most vampire narratives well into the twenty-first century. Stoker’s Dracula simultaneously embodied the past, the present, and the future. By tying his novel’s villain to a historical figure, Stoker tied the past to the present nineteenth-century fascination with vampire narratives. He likely did not know what relationship his novel would have to future audiences, but his professional occupation as a theater manager may have given him some idea about where popular culture was heading. As it turns out, Stoker was right on all accounts.
World History
