It seems superfluous to introduce the characters and plots as it seems that most are quite familiar with this tale, even though - depending on what adaptation one remembers - not all characters will be known. That said, the story of the vampire count Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing (or any lose derivation thereof) has been made into a film an estimated 217 times as of 2009.
So, I will limit myself to a very brief synopsis and then focus on two aspects that intrigued me: (1) Who was the Dracula character modeled on? (2) What leads a business manager for the world-famous Lyceum Theatre in London to write such a story, where did he get it from, and how was it interpreted in its time?
The novel, told as a series of letters, diary entries, ships' log entries, and so forth, begins with Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, traveling to Castle Dracula in the Eastern European country of Transylvania to conclude a real estate transaction with a nobleman named Count Dracula. First intrigued by Dracula's manners, he soon realizes that he is a prisoner and that that the count possesses supernatural powers and diabolical ambitions. 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.
Soon thereafter, a Russian ship, carrying fifty boxes of earth shipped from Castle Dracula, is wrecked on the English shore near the town where Lucy lives. Not long after, the visiting 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. Unable to arrive at a satisfactory diagnosis, Dr. Seward sends for his old mentor, Professor Van Helsing.
Harker reappears in the city of Buda-Pest, where Mina goes to join him. Van Helsing arrives and, after his initial examination of Lucy, orders that her chambers be covered with garlic—a traditional charm against vampires but their efforts ultimately come to nothing. After Lucy’s death, Van Helsing convinces the other men that Lucy belongs to the “Un-Dead”. They pledge to destroy Dracula himself and Mina and Jonathan return and join forces with the others. They track down the boxes of earth that the count uses as a sanctuary but Dracula himself starts preying on Mina at the same time.
As Mina begins the slow change into a vampire, the men manage to force Dracula to flee to the safety of his native Transylvania. They pursue the count, dividing their forces and tracking him across land and sea. They catch up with the count just as he is about to reach his castle, and Jonathan and Quincey use knives to destroy him.
So who was Count Dracula really? Pure imagination by Stoker? To achieve accuracy and creative depth, Stoker actually spent seven years researching European folklore and stories of vampires and and up until a few weeks before publication, the manuscript was titled simply The Un-Dead. Some aspects of the character are believed to have been inspired by the 15th-century Romanian general and Wallachian Prince Vlad Țepeș or Vlad the Impaler. The name "Dracula" is the given name of Vlad Ṭepeș' family, a name derived from a secret fraternal order of knights called the Order of the Dragons to uphold Christianity and defend the Empire against the Ottoman Turks. Vlad II, father of Vlad III, was admitted to the order around 1431 as a result of his bravery in fighting the Turks and was dubbed Dracul (Dragon), thus his son became Dracula (son of the dragon). Stoker came across the name Dracula in his reading on Romanian history, and chose this to replace the name (Count Wampyr) that he had originally intended to use for his villain. While Vlad was not a gentle soul (estimates of the number of the victims of this sadistic tyrant range from 40,000 to 100,000), similarities with the character end there. Ironically, Stoker uses the name of a defender of Christianity to paint a character that is the archetype of the paranormal, evil, and devil worship.
In the late 19th century, invasion literature was also at its peak in Victorian England with many of Stoker's now famous contemporaries, such as Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells inventing tales, in which fantastic creatures threatened the British Empire. What all of these novels share is a concern with themes that occupied the Empire, such as the role of women/sexual conventions, immigration, colonialism/post-colonialism, and the growing importance of science as a sign of modernity and in opposition to religion and tradition.
For one, 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. Not coincidentally, Count Dracula beats and outwits all modern attempts to understand his evil magic and beat ot and is only stopped by ancient ritual wisdom.
In addition, most critics agreed that Dracula is, as much as anything else, a novel that indulges the Victorian male imagination, particularly regarding the topic of female sexuality. This is illustrated by the stark contrast between the pure, chaste lead female characters of Mina and Lucy and the voluptuous and over-sexed vampire women as well as Lucy's fall from grace (she not only turns into a vampire but also loses in the process all of her cherished female Victorian qualities of purity and innocence to become a vampire vixen with open sexual desires). She is subsequently saved by being destroyed in order to return her to a purer, more socially respectable state.
The fight against Dracula, Stoker invokes symbols of good that take the form of the icons of Christian faith, such as the crucifix. Aside from the idea of garlic smell as a repellant for being bitten by a vampire, Stoker's Dracula highlights Christian icons (besides the crucifix, he lists holy water and communion wavers) as the best antidotes against vampires. The novel is not only heavily invested in the strength and power of these Christian symbols as a promise of salvation but Stoker presents in general quite a liberal vision of salvation whereby the saved need not necessarily be believers. In Dracula, all of the dead are granted the unparalleled peace of salvation—only the “Un-Dead” are barred from it.
Lastly, Dracula's existence in-between two popular genres made it interesting from both aspects. As part of the Gothic fiction, it feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time. As part of invasion literature, it also tapped into English fears of foreign forces arriving unopposed on its shores. Especially the latter genre was influential in Britain in shaping politics, national policies and popular perceptions in the years leading up to the First World War.
While I hadn't seen or read all 200+ versions of Dracula, I was sufficiently familiar with the story before I read the book, which ironically was among the versions I hadn't read before. Despite its "strange" epistolary style, which at times makes the plot appear to jump around, and its more antiquated language, it is a quite engrossing read. Having read a book that is most certainly a classic but among the ones one sort-of, kind-of knows about offered me the freedom though to think early about its meaning and ideas.
Why should you read it? If for no other reason, then to know how to defend yourself should you wonder upon an un-dead (I suppose they come more n the form of brainless, sloppy zombies these days rather than elegant aristocratic vampires). If you don't, then listen to Count Dracula's prophesy: "Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine.”
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