Introduction
It has been some time since I last wrote on my thoughts on Dracula. That essay’s main thrust, however, was the creative interest of using an unfamiliar mode of language unlocking interesting new possibilities. From speaking in the manner of a past era, or the ingenious device of conveying all through quotations from letters and papers, Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula excited the mind.
To-day, I shall hold forth concerning an element of the vampire mythology I feel is overlooked in modern depictions, replaced by an overwhelming focus on draining others’ life blood. This essay shall speak in detail, and in some cases, quote directly from the novel, and so those who wish to preserve the surprises are advised to blind themselves to this essay going forward, until they have experienced Dracula for themselves.
ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE, FOR BEYOND THIS POINT LIE SPOILERS FOR A WORK FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD EIGHTEEN AND NINETY-SEVEN. READ NO FURTHER IF YE WISH TO MAINTAIN SURPRISE AS TO THE CONTENTS OF DRACULA.
A Summary of Dracula
This will be quite the long summary, both because I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, and because the details will be important for later. While Wikipedia provides a summary that you can read, I will provide my own, that hopefully makes for more interesting reading.
Told in the form of reproduced letters and diary entries, the story of Dracula begins with the young solicitor[1] Jonathan Harker’s travels to Transylvania, to visit Count Dracula in his castle. His objective is to make arrangements with the Count to purchase an England house, and all the attendant details, such as travel, transportation of personal possessions, and the engagement of solicitors to serve as his representatives in these endeavors. He cannot help but notice, as he approaches the castle, that the people seem downtrodden and morose, and when they hear of his destination, they react as though he goes to his death. At his last stop, the innkeeper’s wife makes a tearful plea, begging him to forget his journey – but Jonathan refuses. With heavy resignation, the woman gives him a rosary, which he accepts to mollify her.
From there, things quickly become fantastical.
Jonathan is driven by a mysterious man with a tall hat and an ivory moustache, the only distinguishing feature of his being his bright eyes, though Jonathan describes them as glowing red. As the fog rolls in and a pack of wolves menace the carriage, the driver fends them off and safely conveys the solicitor to Count Dracula’s castle.
The castle is an odd affair. Count Dracula is personable and gregarious. He dines with Jonathan every night and shares cigars with him as they speak of England and the arrangements for the Count’s home in London. Letters are written for those who will represent the Count in England. Jonathan is planned to stay for some weeks before he is to return.
Jonathan notices oddities in the old man’s demeanor. Despite appearing quite healthy, if thin, the old man’s hands are clammy. The halls are empty of servants. As his suspicions rise, the old Count imprisons Jonathan and forces him to write letters to inform his superior and his fiancé of his whereabouts… dated in the future.
If the Count has his way, Jonathan will never return to his native land, and so the bizarre events begin.
By night, Dracula climbs on the walls like a lizard. Three women attempt to assault Jonathan, only to be stopped by Dracula. These three are later known as the Brides of Dracula, and, as we will learn, are his thralls – subordinate vampires that he himself created. A Romani woman is killed by wolves on Dracula’s orders, her child nowhere to be found. He finds in the Count’s quarters fifty boxes of common earth. Finally, on the day ordained for his death and the date of the last of the letters, Jonathan mounts an attempted escape, but fails. In desperation, and with the three women chasing him at the head of a pack of wolves, he takes a leap of faith, and appears, to the reader, to be dead.
Back in England, after months have passed, we assume the perspective of Jonathan’s fiancée, Mina Murray, and her best friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy receives marriage proposals from Dr. John Seward, the chief doctor at a local asylum, Quincey Morris, the rich Texan traveler, and Arthur Holmwood, the future Lord Godalming. Lucy flirts with them all but eventually accepts Arthur’s proposal, all remaining friends after. Mina joins Lucy on holiday in Whitby, but while on holiday, Lucy begins to sleep in the day and sleepwalk at night, her skin clammy and her constitution almost anemic. A ship, mysteriously carrying fifty boxes of earth, is found with all its crew dead, the captain lashing himself to the wheel to ensure the ship arrives. Mina receives news of her husband-to-be, convalescing in Budapest, so she goes to his side. With regards to Lucy’s illness, Dr. Seward is called, and he has no clues other than a pair of small circular wounds on the neck that do not seem to heal, so he calls for his old professor, Professor Abraham Van Helsing. From there, the treatments begin.
Lucy’s room is adorned with garlic flowers, and she herself given a necklace of them. Three times the doctors attempt to treat her with blood transfusion – once from each of her three suitors – and yet she returns to anemia over and over. One night, Lucy’s mother removes the necklace of garlic from her daughter’s neck, and the next day, both are dead – the mother of a heart attack from seeing a wolf, the daughter of loss of blood and a stopped heart.
As this is a horror novel, she does not stay this way for long.
After her burial, there are reports of children being abducted by a beautiful lady at night. Van Helsing is convinced it is Lucy, proving it to the three suitors with repeated visits to the grave. When they finally prepare to go out at night, they confirm – it is the corpse that was once Lucy, animated with the vampire’s curse, happily abducting and feeding off children, tempting her husband-to-be-were-she-not-undead Arthur. In response, he recoils, and agrees that she needs to be put down.
Her heart is staked through with a wooden stake, she is beheaded, and her mouth filled with garlic. From here, Jonathan and Mina return from Budapest, now married, and Lucy’s erstwhile saviors now go on campaign against Count Dracula.
Van Helsing then reveals all he knows about vampires – that they are repelled by crucifixes and crumbs of sacramental bread, that they can only rest in the soil of their native land, and that they possess supernatural powers, such as becoming large bats, moving with the fog, and amazing strength. The group now deploys to find the fifty boxes of earth that Dracula imported, to deny him a resting place by consecrating them with sacramental bread. The party succeeds in consecrating all but one, however, Mina’s blood is drained thrice, and she is forced to drink the Count’s blood, cursing her to become a vampire after her death unless Count Dracula is killed. When he is found doing so, Jonathan cuts the Count open, gold and sterling bills spilling out and betraying his motive. The Count now wishes to sail back to his native land, in order to evade the vampire hunters.
Mina, however, now has a faint psychic connection to Dracula, and in combination with some detective work, the hunters track Count Dracula to his native land. The novel seamlessly shifts gears into an action setting, the group splitting up to defeat Dracula’s brides, find his river route, and then intercept his coffin, carried by a Romani caravan. They attack the convoy, kill the vampire, and free Mina from the curse – at the cost of the life of Quincey Morris.
The novel ends with a note from Jonathan and Mina, speaking of their seven year-old son, Quincey.
On Vampirism
Wikipedia holds that the major themes of Dracula are gender and sexuality, race, and disease. I do not disagree – these are things that feature heavily in the work, particularly in contravention of common attitudes of the time. Certainly, all these elements play into the work – Jonathan’s near-vampirization by the Brides of Dracula at the castle, Lucy’s coy flirtations with her three suitors, and Dracula’s assault of Mina for sexuality, the Count’s Romanian origins and the role the Romani played for race, and the almost clinical description of Lucy’s illness for disease. However, I consider all of these only partial diagnoses, failing to strike at the mother issue – the metaphor of vampirism.
In order to plead my case, I will refer to the book, as well as remind the reader of details I brought up in the previous summary. I begin with a quote from Abraham Van Helsing, the vampire hunter, speaking about vampires.
…A year ago, which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific, skeptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century? We even scouted a belief that we saw justified under our very eyes[2]. Take it, then, that the vampire and the belief in his limitations and his cure, rest for the moment on the same base. For, let me tell you, he is known everywhere that men have been. In old Greece, in old Rome, he flourish in Germany all over, in France, in India, even in the Chersonese, and in China, so far from us in all ways, there even is he, and the peoples fear him at this day. He have follow the wake of the berserker Icelander, the devil-begotten Hun, the Slave, the Saxon, the Magyar. So far, then, we have all we may act upon; and let me tell you that very much of the beliefs are justified by what we have seen in our own so unhappy existence… (Dracula, pg. 213-214), emphasis mine
We see here the author’s intention – that the vampire represents not the mores of the time, but an eternal phenomenon that is universal across human history. By digging further into Professor Van Helsing’s lecture to prepare the neophyte vampire hunters, we can further see into what the vampire truly is. Here he is, speaking to the vampire hunters, after having just rattled off a rather extensive list of powers that Count Dracula has at his disposal[3].
Ah, but hear me through. He can do all of these things, yet he is not free. Nay, he is even more prisoner than the slave of the galley, than the madman to his cell. (Dracula, pg. 214), emphasis mine
This before Van Helsing proceeds to list many of the vampire’s common weaknesses – sunlight, crossing running water, being unable to enter a household unless invited, garlic, and sacred symbols such as crucifixes and sacramental bread. One may ask, however – with what do our intrepid heroes plan to combat the Count’s power? Professor Van Helsing also has an answer:
Well, you know what we have to contend against; but we, too, are not without strength. We have on our side power of combination – a power denied to the vampire kind; we have resources of science; we are free to act and think; and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally. In fact, in so far as our powers extend, they are unfettered, and we are free to use them. We have self-devotion in a cause, and an end to achieve which is not a selfish one. These things are much. (Dracula, pg. 213), emphasis mine
When one places the powers of humans in opposition to the vampires, a pattern emerges. Vampires have great power as creatures of the night, but are fettered by many natural laws, and are not free of whatever dark master they serve. Humans, however, have the powers of cooperation, freedom of action and thought, and the ability to serve causes other than their own. While the humans are weak, they are unbound by many of the laws that govern the vampire’s powers, almost as if vampires are enslaved by something. This raises an obvious question.
What on earth could possibly enslave something as powerful as a vampire?
Three Cases of Vampirism – Renfield, Lucy, and Mina
Other than Count Dracula and the Brides of Dracula, there are three characters who we can study to gain a greater understanding of the vampire world – Renfield, the half-formed vampire, Lucy Westenra, the Willing Vampire, and Mina Harker, the Vampier that Never Was. We begin with Renfield – I have omitted him from the summary for brevity, but he plays a pivotal role in the plot, and one that is most instructive for our purposes.
Renfield, the half-formed vampire
Renfield begins the story as an inmate in the asylum managed by Dr. John Seward. Described as having a sanguine temperament, great physical strength, and very excitable. Selfish, secretive, and with a hidden purpose, he also possesses a very disturbing hobby that has landed him in the asylum in the first place. He uses his ration to raise flies, followed by raising spiders on the flies, then raising a sparrow on the spiders, ending with a flock of sparrows. He petitions Dr. Seward for a cat – just a small kitten, to continue the cycle. When refused, he flies into a rage, and when next the doctor sees Renfield, he has started again, from the flies. When he is asked where the birds are, he simply says that they have flown away.
All that is left of them is a few feathers, and on the pillow, a drop of blood. Renfield has eaten the birds – for what reason, we turn to Dr. Seward’s papers, writing from the pocketbook that Renfield keeps.
… I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac; what he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider, and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps? (Dracula, pg. 69)
Renfield then turns a dangerous prisoner. Attempting to escape the asylum multiple times, breaking out in the night to meet his master Dracula, he at one point gets in a fight with Dr. Seward, cutting the doctor’s arm and drinking his blood. He later appears to recover, and pleads his case. The Doctor, now joined by his vampire hunter companions, is almost convinced by his pleas, but decides not to. This sends Renfield into a rage, until he comes face-to-face with Mina Harker, who, at the time, was Dracula’s obsession. Suffering from an attack of conscience, he attempts to kill Dracula that night when he arrives, narrowly escaping death, and tells the vampire hunters of the Count’s night-time visits to Mina, before being killed by the same Count that he once served.
Renfield shows us both how one becomes a vampire, and how one fails to become a vampire. Due to his belief that consuming other life prolonged his own, he became obsessed with raising and eating animals, and struck a deal with Dracula to be fed with rats, birds, and dogs, such creatures that the Count has power over. He was never made a vampire, though – thanks to his betrayal spurred on by Mina Harker, the Count’s obsession. As we have heard from Professor Helsing, the power of combination – of teamwork – is banned to the vampire kind, and so by this act of caring for another over himself, he was redeemed.
We shall recount Lucy’s tale, to see what happens when that does not occur.
Lucy, the Little Vampiress
Lucy’s story, already told in the summary, offers an interesting contrast to Renfield. At first disinterested in marriage, having not received a proposal at the age of twenty, suddenly receives three serious ones from Dr. John Seward, Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. Rejecting the former two proposals and accepting the third, she laments that she could not marry all of them, for she knew they all loved her for true. Mina accompanies her to Whitby, where her troubles begin.
Stalked by Dracula and bitten, she falls sick - anemic, sleeping in the day, and sleepwalking at night, all without explanation. Dr. Seward, unable to diagnose the disease, consults Professor Van Helsing, who begins the cure. He gives her a blood transfusion from Arthur, before adorning her room and giving her a necklace of garlic flowers, as a repellent. Her mother, removing the flowers out of concern, has allowed Dracula in, necessitating another transfusion, this time from Dr. Seward. However, Dracula, as cunning as he is, waits a week for Dr. Seward to leave, takes the form of a wolf and breaks in through Lucy’s window, shocking her mother into a heart attack as she rips the garlic garland from her daughter’s neck, allowing Dracula to enter her room and drain her once more. This is incredibly important, as we later find that the vampire cannot enter a house where he has not been invited – meaning he has been invited before. Only an emergency transfusion of blood, this time from Quincey, saves her life for now, but it is too late.
They soon find that the wounds on her neck have healed, and that Lucy is dreadfully sick. Attempting to kiss her husband-to-be, Van Helsing forbids it, because he knows that she wishes to drain his blood and make him a vampire too. Her heart stops, and Lucy Westenra dies, followed by the funeral for both her and her mother.
Lucy does not stay buried for long.
A week after, reports surface of a beautiful lady abducting children by night, leaving them with hazy memories of what happened and bite marks on the necks. Those reports are enough for the professor, who brings the vampire hunters to combat Lucy. She is changed by her vampirism, her sweetness now adamantine, heartless cruelty, and wanton voluptuousness. All work together to put her down.
Lucy succeeded where Renfield failed. She rejected her humanity and love for others and reveled in the attention of her four suitors – the three future vampire hunters, and likely Dracula himself. She drank of their lifeblood via transfusions, attempted to turn her husband, and in the end, even rose from the dead to live on and feed on children. Her selfishness, visible already when she spoke of marrying all three of her suitors, came to the fore in her desire to feed on Arthur in her dying moments, and to feed on children long after she has died.
Her death kicks off the hunt for Dracula, and she hands off the baton to her best friend in life, Mina Harker.
Mina, the Vampire that Never Was
Up to this point in the story, Mina has been in the background – writing to Dr. Seward of Lucy’s illness and traveling to Budapest to find her husband occupied her for the first half of the novel. In the second half, she and Jonathan return and join the plot against Count Dracula, beginning by tracking down the earthen boxes. Mina chronicles their adventures and assists them in any way she can. They base themselves out of Dr. Seward’s asylum, where, unbeknownst to them all, Renfield has already welcomed Dracula and allowed him into the home. Just as the group succeeds in denying Dracula the use of his boxes of earth, Mina’s blood is drawn thrice by Dracula, and on the fourth time he forces her to drink his blood. This will doom her to becoming a vampire when she dies, if Dracula himself is not killed.
This leads to a hunt, where Mina is once again of great help. Connected to Dracula telepathically by the curse, she helps the vampire hunters track him down, all while still chronicling the adventure. Her iron will is expressed here in her words, which I repeat both as a credit to her, and to show what set her apart from the others.
“This is what I can give into the hotch-pot.” I could not but note the quaint legal phrase which she used in such a place, and with all seriousness. “What will each of you give? Your lives, I know,” she went on quickly; “that is easy for brave men. Your lives are God’s, and you can give them back to Him; but what will you give to me?” She looked again questioningly, but this time avoided her husband’s face. Quincey seemed to understand; he nodded, and her face lit up. “Then I shall tell you plainly what I want, for there must be no doubtful matter in this connection between us now. You must promise me, one and all – even you, my beloved husband – that, should the time come, you will kill me.” (Dracula, pg. 293)
Even though she is the one going through the greatest burden of the group, with Dracula’s curse hanging over her like the Sword of Damocles[4], she thinks first of the others, rather than herself. In this passage she proves Professor Van Helsing’s speech about the powers of humanity right – by doing this, she freely, unselfishly asks her companions to kill her before she be allowed to become a vampire, in preparation for the worst case where she begins to turn and her allies will be naturally racked with indecision. That, I believe, is what sets Mina apart from Renfield and Lucy, both of whom succumbed to their selfishness in the end.
With this, I believe I have my diagnosis for Dracula’s disease.
Dracula’s Disease
In short, I believe the only thing powerful enough to enslave a vampire is themselves.
From Renfield, we learn that the vampire must be greedy, avaricious, and desire something so deeply as to break taboo for it – in his case, eternal life. In Lucy’s case, we learn that the vampire must be selfish, willing to drain the life of others in order to achieve their goal. In Mina’s case, we learn that the vampire must callously use and dispose of others, or makes them his thralls as with the Brides of Dracula, but never consider others as equals, or friends.
Dracula himself exhibits all of these, lording it over with the Brides of Dracula, using Renfield and the Romani to do his work for him, and terrorizing the people of his native Carpathian Mountains, leading them into the state of fear they have. His wanton desires and hatred for the plotters lead him to curse Mina, but his fear for his life makes him escape London not long after, returning to his mountain castle to let the curse do its work. Going far beyond his need for blood, the Count drinks as much of it as he can, and were it not for the hunters, he would have a long life in London feasting on the many people that live there – if he did not use them all up first.
My diagnosis is that the root of vampirism is addiction, and by the back door, evil. Addiction to life and attempting to prolong it, as in Renfield’s case, addiction to love, as in Lucy’s case, or addiction to the powers of vampirism, as in Dracula’s case, addiction refactors one’s frame of mind into a single overwhelming directive – slake the addiction with the drug of choice.
For vampires, it is blood, and by metaphor, life itself. Renfield reveled in this, symbolically consuming the lives of little creatures as a method of prolonging his own life, reveling in the power this gave him, in his own mind, over death. Lucy reveled in the attention of her suitors, the draining of their blood to feed her reminding me of the behavior of an addict, manipulating friends and loved ones and making the relationship subservient to their addiction. One imagines a modern Lucy living in their parents’ basement, living off their largesse and using it to buy her substance of choice, even as they remortgage the house and dig into their savings accounts for her sake. Dracula reveled in his powers, lording over his brides when they wished to prey on Jonathan and taking every opportunity to use his powers on the unsuspecting people of London and Whitby. It is most ironic, then, that he died in his coffin in the Romani convoy, without getting to use a sliver of his power. One sees in him a crooked politician, bureaucrat, or corporate officer, with a massive bank account and decades to enjoy it ahead of him, only to die to a heart attack.
That decision, nay, enslavement to one’s urges and doing harm rather than good because of it - that is evil.
Looked at from this lens, the three key implements the vampire hunters used take on new symbolic weight. The stake through the heart represents control of one’s passions – not allowing the euphoria of indulgence to blossom into an addictive need. The flowers of garlic, a common herb, represent the enjoyment of simple pleasures – those that do not compel us to do evil to achieve. Finally, the sacred implements, the host and the crucifix, are there to remind us of our duty to others, and therefore, to God. For harm and evil require selfishness as Renfield and Lucy showed, and Mina Harker did not as Mina Harker did. Instead of choosing an empty life of evil, needing to fill her life with the blood of others, she chose to do good - even at risk of her own death.
In this world of constant informational and sensory overload, where we no longer fear for our survival and instead seek greater and greater pleasures, where we have the freedom to pursue whatever we wish, even the pernicious, the danger of vampirism is stronger than ever. To learn from these vampire hunters is paramount, for you may soon find yourself in a similar battle.
Closing Thoughts
I am likely going to close the book here on Dracula, but perhaps not on vampires as a whole. While this is essentially the basis for most modern vampires, fiction writers love to play with concepts, and I may analyze some fictional vampires along this framework, if the mood strikes me. In particular, I find that some works starring vampire protagonists despite this theme quite interesting – to see if they are indeed vampires, or merely heroic bloodsuckers.
I would also like to appreciate the beauty of the novel Dracula. In my mind, good fiction is fiction that does not lead the reader by the hand to a single conclusion, as one of Aesop’s fables might. It is a complex roller-coaster of emotions and events, signs and symbols, all of which should ignite in the reader a curiosity – both as to what will follow, and what it all means. Standing opposed to this is the essay, which is an attempt to clearly articulate an argument and bring the reader to a particular conclusion.
This may go some way to explaining my difficulties in writing fiction. I have always preferred to be clear in mind and clear in thought, so all the complication seems to me unnecessary. Perhaps I shall try my hand at it again, one of these days.
[1] I was unfamiliar with the word solicitor, that word being familiar in the sense of one who solicits – in other words, a panhandler. A quick Google search quickly disabused me of this notion, providing me with the intended meaning, that of a legal representative.
[2] Referring to Lucy walking out of the coffin right before the eyes of her three ex-suitors and the Professor.
[3] This list includes, but is not limited to: The strength of 20 men, immortal cunning, necromancy, or divination via the dead, appearing in the form of animals, directing the elements, seeing in the dark, and vanishing.
[4] It took some restraint not to write “The Curse of Dracucles” here, but it would have been difficult to understand.
OK, so I need to read the book, having seen the 1931/2 movie. Interesting and appreciative thesis and very apt. BUT, there were vampire stories before this one and their vampire lore was somewhat different. I will mention the existence of two stories and one opera you should take a look at. Dr. John Polidori wrote the first vampire story ca. 1819 which is the OTHER book from that famous night where Lord Byron, Shelley and his wife, and Dr. Polidori agreed to each write a horror story. Lord Byron and Shelley quickly abandoned their efforts, but Mary Shelley wrote her "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" and Dr. Polidori wrote his vampire story; the last two were published.
Polidori's story was used in 1828 as the basis for an opera "Der Vampyr" (The Vampire) by Heinrich Marschner (1795-1861) with its setting changed from the original Greece to the British Isles with strong hints of Scotland or Wales. In these early tales there is no garlic--but vampires can be revived from certain death by the moon's beams falling on their eyes. There are other requirements/limitations on their actions; unfortunately the big aria that covers these is in German and I have no text. The vampire is named Lord Ruthvyn; he takes on the body of the Earl of Marsden somehow. The big difference in this story is that to keep existing he must produce three bridges "fresh and clean" (zart und rein). Ultimately Lord Ruthvyn fails in killing the third. This is a different take on Vampirism; the work in recent years has been done in this country and there are recordings.
Finally, in 1873 Joseph Sheridan LeFanu published his vampire story "Carmilla" possibly the best vampire story ever with its strong overtones of Lesbianism. Yes, it has a Van Helsing-type character; its addition to vampire lore is in the Vampire's having to use anagrams of the same name, so Carmilla was an earlier Countess Millarca and a Mircalla. At 99 pages it's a Good Story, set in the Austrian Empire province of Styria. For several years I had a tradition of reading it every Hallowe'en.
No, I've never read Dr. Polidori's story; so I don't know if its vampire is based on Lord Byron the way Dr. Frankenstein's monster is very much like Lord Byron.
Vampires, as they exist now, are no longer restrained by daylight. The MSM, as one example, feeds on blood and fear 24/7 via the airwaves. The migrant invasion, another example, also feeds day and night via direct contact with physical violence and indirectly through economic means. Our "elected officials" also feed day and night through financial/legal corruption, satanic blood rituals and simple murder to eliminate evidence and opposition.