Where Did Dracula Come From?

Lucy Westenra is a vampire of Dracula’s making. By his persistent feeding on her over time she became corrupted and eventually became the Undead. The inevitable question of what made Dracula is revealed in the final pages of the novel by Van Helsing who recalls seminars held in ‘Buda-Pesth’.

In the rising age of science there was an air of discomfort about the disregard for the previous school of thought: Religion. Some people feared that by turning away from religious practice and engorging oneself on knowledge, one became corrupted.

In the beginning of the Bible, Eve is tempted by the serpent and on eating the ‘apple’ she becomes aware. Her self-knowledge causes her to become tainted in the eyes of God and she is cast out. Ever since humans have been doing whatever they can to get back … or so the story goes anyhow.

Gothic novels around the era of early science (post-Newton) have a recurring theme of associating too much scientific knowledge with ease of corruption. In Dracula, Van Helsing notes the intellect of Dracula and how it surpassed his contemporaries. He states: “… and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay. Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death…” (p. 335)

Van Helsing suggests that Dracula’s intellect was so powerful it managed to overpower death; synonymous with the power of God who can supposedly choose who lives and who dies. This disregard for God’s will is reminiscent of the rebellious angel, more commonly known as Satan.

Dracula was, then, the first vampire. The first of many as they continue to breed and evolve throughout literature alongside evolutions and variations in culture. In more modern novels the vampire adapts to remain in the decadent side of nature as science has become a part of accepted practice alongside (arguably overshadowing) religion.

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Renfield

“Why, I myself am an instance of a man who had a strange belief. Indeed, it was no wonder that my friends were alarmed, and insisted on my being put under control. I used to fancy that life was a positive and perpetual entity, and that by consuming a multitude of living things, no matter how low int he scale of creation, one might indefinitely prolong life. At times I held the belief so strongly that I actually tried to take human life. The doctor her will bear me out that on one occasion I tried to kill him for the purpose of strengthening my vital powers by the assimilation with my own body of his life through the medium of his blood – relying of course, upon the Scriptural phrase, “For the blood is the life.” Though, indeed, the vendor of a certain nostrum has vulgarized the truism to the very point of contempt.”

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Vintage: London, 2007. p.259

This extract is taken from a scene in Dr Seward’s diary when Mina Harker enters Renfield’s cell. Renfield is an inmate of Sewards Lunatic Asylum (a frequent location in Gothic novels) and regularly displays what the reader and the characters take to be insane behaviour. It is clear that Renfield is, or has been, visited throughout the novel by Dracula. Renfield often refers to him as ‘Master’ showing complete submission to the demonic predator.

Dracula chooses Renfield as a servant rather than prey. This is an important distinction as it suggests that the prey has to be of sound mind in order to be a fit ‘meal’ for the vampire. It also suggests that Dracula chooses his prey to be female as opposed to male. This suggests that there is something sexual about the attack. Not that that is a new idea; the act of vampirism has been heavily sexualised over time through literature and media.

Renfield is an interesting character as even though he is a deranged inmate, there is an absurd logic to his actions. Renfield is obsessed with consuming bodies, particularly the bodies of flies. Renfield then progresses to consuming spiders which, in turn, have consumed flies. The bodies become larger as Renfield progresses up the food-chain. This draws a parallel with Dracula. Dracula is obsessed with consuming the bodies of humans which have consumed the bodies of many animals over the years. Renfield is a type of vampire though he prefers to consume the whole rather than feeding off the body slowly over a number of nights.

Renfield’s idea that “the blood is the life” (p.259) gives the reader a little insight as to why Dracula might want to consume the blood of humans. Hitherto, Dracula’s actions have just been a given. He attacks and he is not-human, his reasoning seems irrelevant as humans are generally apportioned rationality. Animals etc. are just victims of instinct and evolution. Renfield, similarly, is not afforded rationality until very late in the novel. The idea that even a madman can have a sense of reality and intellect suggests that perhaps demons can reason and plot also, making them infinitely more dangerous: once they can claim to rationality they might incur a level of sympathy from their victims, leaving their victims even more vulnerable than they were before.

Although Renfield is not a main character in the story, a careful study of his behaviours and speech betray a lot about the psyche of vampires and the baser side of nature providing fruitful material for alternative essays.

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Confession

Dracula drips with religious iconography from the first meeting with the Transylvanian locals. As the story progresses one becomes desensitised to the imagery and so it may slip the general reader’s notice that Mina Harker takes on the role of the Priest in hearing everyone’s confession.

Various characters over the chapters approach Mina with their deepest thoughts or intimate writings and she compiles everything in her mind or on paper. Mina knows the most about all of the characters, perhaps as much as Stoker himself, and with all this knowledge she becomes vulnerable to corruption. It is not for a human to have access to all this knowledge but instead for God. What would Dracula do with access to such intimate information on all his potential victims? He would become the most effective of all predators, able to hunt his prey on a psychological and physiological level.

When Mina listens to the character’s grievances and fears they open up something of their soul that they would not usually apportion. Mina draws out the weaknesses of each character who speaks at length to her and exposes them to potential attack. Lord Godalming for example, after the second death of Lucy, breaks down in front of her and cries and length in Mina’s arms. The scene is distinctly maternal but it exposes the weaker side of Godalming who, for his title, should show the stereotypical ‘Brittish Stiff Upper Lip’ when it comes to grief and death – particularly in front of a woman who is not related to.

When confession is taken away from Mina, she becomes weakened. Her husband is struck with guilt: “it wrung my heart to think that I had had to keep anything from her and so caused her disquietude”. (p. 296) Throughout Dracula each character is obsessed with their own emotions and carry around a strong sense of guilt and arrogance that each of their tiny actions should affect another person so completely. Mina’s weakness comes from her lack of knowledge about the situation.

If the ‘strong men’ had been open about what happened the night they went to Dracula’s abode in Carfax then Mina would have been more open about what happened to her whilst they were away. The symptoms of Mina’s condition echo clearly so that the reader is fully aware of her situation. Through the agonising naivety of the broken narratives a sense of hopelessness is achieved. Dracula is inescapable once his eye is fixed on his prey.

Mina is representative of a strong female, unlike Lucy Westenra who is portrayed as more romantic. Van Helsing describes Mina as having “a brain that a man should have were he much gifted” (p. 260) thus exemplifying Mina’s strength and place within a man’s esteem. In the mid-nineteenth-century women will still subservient to males though their value was beginning to assert its equality. Before Mina becomes a complete victim to Dracula her preemptive feminist strength is first stripped away in her appearance. Where before she was full of vitality she begins to appear frail and pale.

Confession at first fed Mina and made her stronger. Cut of from her supply of knowledge, Mina also becomes essentially ‘useless’. With no information to compile she has nothing to give back to her male protectors and they become engrossed in their own adventure. Mina becomes vulnerable to attack and with the men distracted, she returns to the stereotypical Gothic Female: white (pale), frail, doomed.

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Monstrosity Incarnate

Lucy Westenra is the anchor of purity. From her, various comparisons of the extent to which other characters are compliant or deviant from the ‘ideal’ member of society, can be drawn.

Lucy is beset upon first by three suitors, all of whom desire to marry her. She is sympathetic to each and wishes she could make them happy. Her unselfish fixation on the emotions of people around her exemplifies the Christian teachings of ‘Love Thy Neighbour’. The sobriety with which she regards the situation of having three suitors highlights how chaste she is.

When Dracula begins to feed on Lucy she becomes faint and weak. As a Gothic Victim she is an exaggeration of how pure and vulnerable one would expect of a female her age and size. Thus Dracula’s attacks on Lucy are presented as more horrific compared to the attacks made on Harker by the female vampires.

Lucy’s transformation into a vampire is a stark contrast to the emblem of purity she is portrayed as in the first half of the novel. Her ‘wanton’ appearance contradicts her chastity with which she regards men. The vampiric attacks draw out the monstrosity in her nature and symbolises how even the most pure and idealised woman can become corrupted by the Eastern or unreligious influence that hitherto protected her reputation.

The vampire represents the opposite of Christianity and in allowing herself to be seduced by such a figure, Lucy becomes demonised and irretrievable.

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Dislocation in the East

The beginning of Dracula sets out to dislocate the reader from what they are familiar with. Away from the dusty cosmopolitan streets of London, improbable things begin to happen.

Firstly there is the superstitious regard the locals show towards the Castle. Superstition is a more medieval attitude towards things we cannot understand. In an era of logic and the ‘Age of Reason’, the reaction of the locals to Jonathan Harker’s attempts to reach the castle seems absurd. Harker disregards them and continues on his errand, putting their behaviour down to foreign culture. This propels Harker into a dangerous situation that he possibly would not have encountered if someone had given him a more reasonable reason not to approach the Count.

Dracula himself highlights the abyss between English and Transylvanian culture. He studies the English culture very thoroughly and invites Harker to inform him on the subtleties one cannot gain from a textbook. Dracula’s desire to fit in with English culture is reminiscent of a tourist who wishes to fit in and experience a foreign culture from an insider’s perspective. However, Dracula’s motive for this studious nature is somewhat more malicious than pure interest in culture.

Seeing Dracula’s attempt to recreate English culture in his Transylvanian castle further dislocates Harker and the reader as their is familiarity in unfamiliarty. This English haven should not exist so far abroad in the East where the idea of ‘Western Civilisation’ becomes more diluted. Familiarity becomes a trap where Harker is reluctant to betray his own customs in order to defend his own life.

After Harker is beset upon by monstrous entities, his mind becomes unbalanced and he is able to further rebel against his own customs and trespass in his host’s property. The more he discovers about the illusion of ‘home away from home’ the more he realises he has been tricked and is a prisoner. When he eventually he manages to escape he is derranged and takes a long time to recover.

If Dracula had not embraced the English culture so fully, Harker would not have so readily accepted Dracula as a gentleman. Though Dracula was a ‘nobleman’, Harker could have seen more of his true nature if he was not blinded by his own expectations of what a nobleman should be like, perpetuated by Dracula’s echo of English customs surrounding such types.

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Is Dracula the Angel of Death?

Who determines which book is a classic and which is ‘trash’? Where does the value of a book come from? I personally believe that the value and meaning of a book originates from what the reader gets from it, not what the author intended the reader to find.

Recent books are more easy to validate as one can simply ask the author what they meant if there is a particularly elusive character or phrase. One example that sticks out in my mind is when J.K Rowling revealed post-publication that Dumbledore was gay. I had never ascertained this from my own private reading of her books though others clearly had. As far as I am concerned, he is not gay until I find such evidence. Does that mean, then, that I am wrong?

With older books it is easier to hold onto your own meaning of the novel; there is no author to come down on one side or the other. As long as you can argue your point, and find enough evidence, you are free to think as you wish.

I have been re-reading Dracula over the winter which I studied at Uni in my second year. I have enjoyed it more this time around as I have had no predefined parameters of what sort of ‘reading’ I should gain. I was determined not to read it academically but to enjoy it for what it was: a novel. I am now only at half-way, slow progress I know, but I wanted to absorb everything rather than skimming the way I used to when I was expected to read 2-3 books a week.

Half-way through I met an astounding line which I never noticed before, nor one which came up in seminars as there is so much other imagery and Gothic terms to digest when studying this novel. The line read: “I would not care if I heard this moment the flapping of the wings of the angel of death,” (p. 175) which is a clear echo of the “scratching or flapping at the window” (p. 120) that Dracula makes when transformed into a bat outside of Lucy Westenra’s window. Lucy makes several references to the sound which indicates it is frequent and troubling.

The use of the word ‘flapping’ may arguably be coincidental but it invokes a clear allusion to the idea that Dracula is the angel of death who appears in religious lore. I tried, briefly, to research the angel of death’s function but there are so many varying forms across different religions that I would need a brain far larger than the one I have to pinpoint the exact comparison that is being drawn. Instead I took Dr Seward’s expression of the angel of death to be the more common supposition that when one’s time of death is upon them, an angel (or the “grim reaper”) comes to take them away.

For Dracula to be the ‘angel of death’ is ironic as angels have a reputation for being good and doing God’s bidding. Dracula however was written in or around the modern period (late nineteenth century, 1897) where notions of religion were being question in the dawning of the scientific era. Some people feared that by meddling in experiments they were going to incur the wrath of God for interfering in his work. People were straying from faith and devout religious practise into a new territory of logic with unknown consequences. Dracula, the hideous demon that he is, is a reflection of the grotesque evolution of religion. As the followers become corrupted, so too do the religious icons.

Lucy is portrayed as the pure, innocent woman that religious doctrine reiterated was the correct way to be. I could find evidence for this but it would take a few hundred words on its own and is an aside to my point! Her descent into something monstrous is then even more dramatic. Her ‘angel of death’ killed her purity which was the soul of her nature.

On the other hand, at the beginning of the novel, she is entertaining three different proposals. There is nothing to say that she did anything untoward, however the volume of male attention she received would lead some to question whether her nature is truly ‘innocent’. Was her angel then a messenger from hell rather than heaven coming to take her away to her punishment?

Religious imagery is overflowing throughout this novel but the idea that Dracula is a variation on the angel of death is new to me. I will no doubt later investigate if this is worthy of an extended essay, but for now I will try to concentrate on just reading the book again!

I just thought I would share my idea in case anyone else has noticed this or could tell me if I am chasing a wild tangent! As Bram Stoker is no longer alive, I cannot inquire of him if I am right. This makes it more interesting as I now have to investigate it myself and will probably gain something more from a book which I already believed I had squeezed dry of imagery and allusions!

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REFERENCES:

Bram Stoker, Dracula. (Vintage: London, 2007)

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