Dracula (1897) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Dr. Abraham Van Helsing: Dutch professor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments; leader of the group trying to destroy Dracula.
• Count Dracula: Count Dracula is a Transylvanian nobleman who inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains near the Borgo Pass.
• Jonathan Harker: Commissioned to help Count Dracula purchase an estate in London. Affianced to Mina Murray.
• Wilhelmina 'Mina' Harker nee Murray: Jonathan Harker's fiancée. She is a good friend of Lucy Westenra.
• Mr. R.M. Renfield: Dr. Seward's most interesting patient. An insane man who means to consume insects, spiders, birds, and other creatures — in ascending order of size — in order to absorb their "life force".
• Lucy Westenra: Mina's best friend, the 19-year-old daughter of a wealthy family. An aristocrat with a big heart who finds it hard to choose between eligible bachelors and suitors. She is engaged to Arthur (later Lord Godalming).
• Dr. John Seward: The administrator of an insane asylum and previous student of Dr. Van Helsing.
• Arthur Holmwood (later Lord Godalming): Lucy's fiance. Old friends with Dr. Seward, Quincy Morris, and Johnathan Harker.
• Mrs. Westenra: Lucy's mother with a weak heart condition.
• Quincey Morris: A rich young American from Texas, and one of the three suitors for the hand of Lucy Westenra. A hard-fighting cowboy.
• Skinsky: Transported Count Dracula's casket out of England
• Peter Hawkins: The man who usually deals with Count Dracula and whose place going to Transylvania to finalize a deal Jonathan Harker took.
• Mr. Swales: Old man who sometimes talks to Mina and Lucy before the great storm.

Quotes edit see section history

• “All I could do now was to be patient, and to wait the coming of the morning.”

  Jonathan Harker

• “The further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains.”

  Jonathan Harker

• “Judge Moneybag will settle this case, I think!”

  Jonathan Harker

• “Being proposed to is all very nice and all that sort of thing, but it isn’t at all a happy thing when you have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and looking all broken-hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may say at the moment, you are passing quite out of his life.”

  Lucy

• “Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pulls us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be.”

  Van Helsing

• “I suppose a cry does us all good at times – clears the air as other rain does.”

• “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. I never thought at the time how strange it all was.”

  Mina

• “A brave man’s hand can speak for itself; it does not even need a woman’s love to hear its music.”

• “I don't want to talk to you: you don't count now; the Master is at hand.”

  Mr. Renfield

• “The blood is the life!”

  Mr. Renfield

• “My revenge has just begun! I spread it over centuries and time is on my side.”

• “We learn from failure, not from success!”

  Van Helsing

• “Alone with the dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window”

  Lucy Westenra

• “I saw... Count Dracula... with red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.”

  Jonathan Harker

• “No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves.”

• “Whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in mind as usual.”

  Jonathan Harker

• “What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature, is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me. I am in fear, in awful fear, and there is no escape for me. I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of.”

  Jonathan Harker

• “I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief, no matter how strange it be. I have tried to keep an open mind; and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things. The things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”

  Van Helsing

• “You reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know – or think they know – some things which other men have told them. Ah, 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. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young – like the fine ladies at the opera.”

  Van Helsing

• “I suppose there is something in a woman's nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood.”

• “But we are face to face with duty, and in such case must we shrink?”

  Van Helsing

• “Listen to te children of the night. What sweet music they make!”

  Vlad Dracul in our tounge

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Transylvania: Location of Count Dracula's castle
• Carpathian Mountains: Location of Count Dracula's castle
• Purfleet: Location of the estate Count Dracula was buying in London
• Carfax: Name of the estate Count Dracula purchased in London
• London: Where Jonathan Harker is from and where the Count is buying another home

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Mamaliga: Porridge of maize flour
• Impletata: Egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat
• Silvoit: The plum brandy of the country

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• The Consequences of Modernity: 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 Threat of Female Sexual Expression: Most critics agree that Dracula is, as much as anything else, a novel that indulges the Victorian male imagination, particularly regarding the topic of female sexuality. In Victorian England, women’s sexual behavior was dictated by society’s extremely rigid expectations. A Victorian woman effectively had only two options: she was either a virgin—a model of purity and innocence—or else she was a wife and mother. If she was neither of these, she was considered a whore, and thus of no consequence to society.By the time Dracula lands in England and begins to work his evil magic on Lucy Westenra, we understand that the impending battle between good and evil will hinge upon female sexuality. Both Lucy and Mina are less like real people than two-dimensional embodiments of virtues that have, over the ages, been coded as female. Both women are chaste, pure, innocent of the world’s evils, and devoted to their men. But Dracula threatens to turn the two women into their opposites, into women noted for their voluptuousness—a word Stoker turns to again and again—and unapologetically open sexual desire. Dracula succeeds in transforming Lucy, and once she becomes a raving vampire vixen, Van Helsing’s men see no other option than to destroy her, in order to return her to a purer, more socially respectable state. After Lucy’s transformation, the men keep a careful eye on Mina, worried they will lose yet another model of Victorian womanhood to the dark side. The men are so intensely invested in the women’s sexual behavior because they are afraid of associating with the socially scorned. In fact, the men fear for nothing less than their own safety. Late in the novel, Dracula mocks Van Helsing’s crew, saying, “Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine.” Here, the count voices a male fantasy that has existed since Adam and Eve were turned out of Eden: namely, that women’s ungovernable desires leave men poised for a costly fall from grace.
• The Promise of Christian Salvation: The folk legends and traditions Van Helsing draws upon suggest that the most effective weapons in combating supernatural evil are symbols of unearthly good. Indeed, in the fight against Dracula, these symbols of good take the form of the icons of Christian faith, such as the crucifix. The novel is so invested in the strength and power of these Christian symbols that it reads, at times, like a propagandistic Christian promise of salvation.Dracula, practically as old as religion itself, stands as a satanic figure, most obviously in his appearance—pointed ears, fangs, and flaming eyes—but also in his consumption of blood. Dracula’s bloodthirstiness is a perversion of Christian ritual, as it extends his physical life but cuts him off from any form of spiritual existence. Those who fall under the count’s spell, including Lucy Westenra and the three “weird sisters,” find themselves cursed with physical life that is eternal but soulless. Stoker takes pains to emphasize the consequences of these women’s destruction. Though they have preyed on helpless children and have sought to bring others into their awful brood, each of the women meets a death that conforms to the Christian promise of salvation. The undead Lucy, for instance, is transformed by her second death into a vision of “unequalled sweetness and purity,” and her soul is returned to her, as is a “holy calm” that “was to reign for ever.” Even the face of Dracula himself assumes “a look of peace, such as <Mina> never could have imagined might have rested there.” Stoker presents a particularly liberal vision of salvation in his implication that 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.
• Blood: Blood functions in many ways in the novel. Its first mention, in Chapter III, comes when the count tells Harker that “blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonorable peace; and the -glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.” The count proudly recounts his family history, relating blood to one’s ancestry—to the “great races” that have, in Dracula’s view, withered. The count foretells the coming of a war between lineages: between the East and the West, the ancient and the modern, and the evil and the good. Later, the depictions of Dracula and his minions feeding on blood suggest the exchange of bodily fluids associated with sexual intercourse: Lucy is “drained” to the point of nearly passing out after the count penetrates her. The vampires’ drinking of blood echoes the Christian rite of Communion, but in a perverted sense. Rather than gain eternal spiritual life by consuming wine that has been blessed to symbolize Christ’s blood, Dracula drinks actual human blood in order to extend his physical—but quite soulless—life. The importance of blood in Christian mythology elevates the battle between Van Helsing’s warriors and the count to the significance of a holy war or crusade.
• Science and Superstition: We notice the stamp of modernity almost immediately when the focus of the novel shifts to England. Dr. Seward records his diary on a phonograph, Mina Murray practices typewriting on a newfangled machine, and so on. Indeed, the whole of England seems willing to walk into a future of progress and advancement. While the peasants of Transylvania busily bless one another against the evil eye at their roadside shrines, Mr. Swales, the poor Englishman whom Lucy and Mina meet in the Whitby cemetery, has no patience for such unfounded superstitions as ghosts and monsters. The threat Dracula poses to London hinges, in large part, on the advance of modernity. Advances in science have caused the English to dismiss the reality of the very superstitions, such as Dracula, that seek to undo their society. Van Helsing bridges this divide: equipped with the unique knowledge of both the East and the West, he represents the best hope of understanding the incomprehensible and ridding the world of evil.
• Christian Iconography: The icons of Christian, and particularly Catholic, worship appear throughout the novel with great frequency. In the early chapters, the peasants of Eastern Europe offer Jonathan Harker crucifixes to steel him against the malevolence that awaits him. Later, Van Helsing arrives armed with crosses and Communion wafers. The frequency with which Stoker returns to these images frames Van Helsing’s mission as an explicitly religious one. He is, as he says near the end of the novel, nothing less than a “minister of God’s own wish.”
• The Weird Sisters: The three beautiful vampires Harker encounters in Dracula’s castle are both his dream and his nightmare—indeed, they embody both the dream and the nightmare of the Victorian male imagination in general. The sisters represent what the Victorian ideal stipulates women should not be—voluptuous and sexually aggressive—thus making their beauty both a promise of sexual fulfillment and a curse. These women offer Harker more sexual gratification in two paragraphs than his fiancée Mina does during the course of the entire novel. However, this sexual proficiency threatens to undermine the foundations of a male-dominated society by compromising men’s ability to reason and maintain control. For this reason, the sexually aggressive women in the novel must be destroyed.
• The Stake Driven Through Lucy’s Heart: Arthur Holmwood buries a stake deep in Lucy’s heart in order to kill the demon she has become and to return her to the state of purity and innocence he so values. The language with which Stoker describes this violent act is unmistakably sexual, and the stake is an unambiguous symbol for the penis. In this way, it is fitting that the blow comes from Lucy’s fiancé, Arthur Holmwood: Lucy is being punished not only for being a vampire, but also for being available to the vampire’s seduction—Dracula, we recall, only has the power to attack willing victims. When Holmwood slays the demonic Lucy, he returns her to the role of a legitimate, monogamous lover, which reinvests his fiancée with her initial Victorian virtue.
• The Czarina Catherine: The Czarina Catherine is the name of the ship in which Dracula flees England and journeys back to his homeland. The name of ship is taken from the Russian empress who was notorious for her -promiscuity. This reference is particularly suggestive of the threat that hangs over Mina Harker’s head: should Van Helsing and his men fail, she will be transformed into the same creature of appetites as Lucy.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Oliver Twist, and followed by The Secret Garden.

Preceded by The Beach, and followed by Point Blank.

Preceded by The Good Soldier Švejk, and followed by The Three Musketeers.

Preceded by The Stand, and followed by Eleven Minutes.

Preceded by The Island of Dr. Moreau, and followed by The Turn of the Screw.

Preceded by Fruits of the Earth, and followed by Quo Vadis.

Preceded by Brighton Rock, and followed by The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Preceded by Eon, and followed by Sojourn.

Preceded by Brisingr, and followed by The Tipping Point.

Preceded by The Hound of the Baskervilles, and followed by The Stand.

Preceded by Crime and Punishment, and followed by Where the Wild Things Are.

Preceded by This Charming Man   [THIS CHARMING MAN] [Paperback], and followed by 61 Hours.

Preceded by Harry Potter Boxed Set (Books 1-7), and followed by The Joy Luck Club.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Bram Stoker (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Ben Templesmith (Illustrator)
2. David J. Skal
3. Elizabeth Kostova (Foreword)
4. Maurice Hindle (Introduction)
5. Tania Zamorsky
6. Christopher Frayling (Preface)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Copyright Status: Public Domain
• Library of Congress: PR6037.T617
• Dewey: 828'.8

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Difficult, at times, to follow. Suggested for teens 15 years and up.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Authors, A-Z › ( S ) › Stoker, Bram
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Vampires
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( S ) › Stoker, Bram
• Books › Literature & Fiction › History & Criticism › Criticism & Theory
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• SparkNotes: Table of Contents; Context; Plot Overview; Character List; Analysis of Major Characters; Themes, Motifs & Symbols; Summary & Analysis (by chapter); Important Quotations Explained; Key Facts; Study Questions & Essay Topics; Quiz; Suggestions for Further ReadingSparkNotes Editors. (2003). SparkNote on Dracula. Retrieved August 1, 2010, from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dracula/
• Project Gutenberg: eText

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Dracula (IMDb): (1931), Starring Bela Lugosi
• Dracula (IMDb): (1979), Staring Frank Langella, Kate Nelligan. Directed by John Badham
• Dracula (IMDb): (1992), directed by Francis Ford Coppola
• Dracula 2000 (IMDb): (2000), Starring Gerard Butler, directed by Patrick Lussier

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Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

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