Notes on Bram Stoker’s Dracula
By David Crews
The following are my personal notes on Stoker’s Dracula. Visitors to the site are
welcome to use them but with proper citation as to the source.
Overview
Stoker’s Dracula is essentially a gothic format story. It has all the essential elements of
this format as covered in the notes below.
This is a highly simplified definition of the gothic genre. I would suggest serious students
explore the subject in more depth but this information will provide a beginning
framework.
Basic Psychology:
The gothic story deals with our fear of death, of oblivion. The settings represent the
decay of order, of passing time, of our fear of a loss of control, the ultimate loss being
death. In opposition to these negative forces are the forces of life. The battle between
these two forces are carried out in symbolic terms in the gothic story and usually
interpreted in terms of good and evil.
Setting: an old decaying building(s) located in a remote location far from help. This
setting often has supernatural connections. The action takes place at night and/or in dark
places where the space is either very restricted(no place to run) or where there are open
spaces where there is nowhere to hide from forces that threaten. In this setting are often
placed things that are symbolic of death, skeletons, coffins, rats, snakes, spiders.
Characters: There are two sets of basic gothic characters:
1. Characters who are strange, eccentric, and have secrets they are willing to kill to keep.
It is these characters who represent death and decay and threaten the life of the young
woman. These characters are often male,old, ugly even, at times, physically deformed.
2. Characters who are relatively normal and who combat the forces of death and decay.
There are two main characters who represent this group: a young woman whose ability to
produce children represents the continuation of life. She is therefore threatened by the
forces of death and decay. To survive she must be rescued by a young man who, in
saving her, will ensure the continuation of life through their union. The young man
represents the forces of good(life) in active opposition to the forces of evil(death).
Plot:
The plot centers around the forces of life and order(good) being threatened by the forces
of death and chaos(bad). In other words, the old ugly characters try to kill the young
woman and she is eventually saved by the young man.The interaction between these two
forces revolve around supernatural powers that manifest themselves either overtly or
covertly as the plot unfolds. The supernatural represents threat of illogic, irrationality,
over order and logic.
Numbers in the gothic (and other literary genres)
Three: the number of completion usually associated with higher power, supernatural
power. The three relates to the union of male and female principles that produces an
offspring. Think of how often three occurs in literature-three wishes, three wisemen,
three muses, etc. This number is the number of spirituality.
Four: This is the earth number. The ancients believed all things were made of earth, air,
fire, and water. This is the material world in which we live. There is no magic here but
there is often strong earthly power.
Seven: This number is formed from three and four; the material world is connected to the
world of the spiritual. Seven is the number of connection, the bridge between the spirit
and the material. We see this in such things as the original seven Christian churches, the
seven seals in Revelations, the seven samurai, etc..
Context for the Story
As the notes on Dracula continue we will explore how Stoker uses these elements of the
gothic while mixing them into a world view that is particularly Victorian. This is a time
period when technology and the power it gave to Victorian England make technology
almost a religion for the British people believed science, logic and technology would
solve all of mankind’s problems. Here, within a short period of time came the steam
engine, electricity, the telegraph, the typewritter, the telephone and an increase in the size
of ships never before seen. The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 was not just a shock
because of the many lives lost, it was also a shock to the belief in technology. Man had
built the “unsinkable” ship and it sank. The arrogance of faith in our sophisticated tool
making would not be shaken so hard again until the Challenger disaster
Themes
It is this faith in technology that makes Dracula so interesting because Stoker will pit
technology against superstition and magic. Telegraphs, type writers, phonographs,
repeating rifles and steam ships will enable mere mortals to defeat the supernatural
powers of Dracula. The old world of magic and fear of things that go bump in the night
would be replaced by industry and electric lights. Even today humankind still straddles
that chasm between the mystery of the unknown and the hard world of science. Stoker
makes Dracula occupy that space in between but seems to come down on the side of
science as the more powerful of the two.
Along with increasingly rapid changes in science and technology there were sweeping
changes in society. The middle class was rapidly becoming the most powerful social
class, filling in that ancient gap between the very poor and the very wealthy. An educated
middle class would make a society that was upwardly mobile while the aristocratic upper
class would find it harder and harder to maintain their position in society. It is this society
of Stoker’s time that we find a strong women’s rights movement. Women are finding
they do not have to accept the old definitions of who they are and what they should be.
It is this rising awareness of women’s growing power that makes Mina Murray the actual
central figure in the book. Surprise, the book is not about the undead count Dracula.
While Dracula provides a strong threat to Mina, it is not Dracula that the story is really
about. It is Mina Murray, middle class woman, who will turn out to be the actual central
character of the story. It is Mina who will help Jonathan keep his sanity and inspire his
escape from castle Dracula. It is the danger to Mina brought on by Dracula’s attacks on
her that will cause the male characters in the story to risk more than just their lives to
destroy the vampire. To a surprising extent, the story is about the power of women along
with some undertones of how dangerous this trend is to the traditional patriarchal order of
Western society.
The Players in this Story
The heart of any good story is the list of characters both good and bad who compose the
actors who will enact the plot. Stoker does a good job of developing a group of characters
that engages us in the action of the story. A brief sketch of the cast of players;
Jonathan Harker
At the outset of the story we meet Jonathan Harker, a solicitor, or as we Americans would
say, a lawyer. He is a young man, engaged to Mina Murray, and on his way up the
corporate ladder. He is typical of his society and time, believing in the superiority of the
British culture and soundly grounded in the ideas of science and technological progress.
Initially, he is not very religious nor has he ever has his ideas about the world challenged.
All of this is about to change. It is his love for Mina that will see him through his ordeal
with the infamous count Dracula.
Count Dracula
The count is not really a man or a human being anymore. His strong personality
combined with a hint of dark occult knowledge and even some characteristics peculiar to
his native land have transformed him into a vampire. The count is now immortal,
possessed of great powers and this combined with his superior intellect makes him a
formidable adversary. The count has his weaknesses but a lack of planning is not one of
them. Dracula plans to invade England as it is the most powerful nation on earth while
being geographically rather small. Using his powers of conversion, he will gather
converts in the ranks of the powerful until it is he who rules the world. It will take a
strong willed and intelligent woman to stop him.
Mina Murray
An orphan, Mina is the typical quest hero. She seems , at first, insignificant, an assistant
teacher, a woman who has to work to support herself. A closer look, however, reveals a
woman of great ability and will power.This is a young woman who is facinated by
technology and the possibilities it offers. Mina is studying short hand, learning to use a
typewriter so she can be of help to her future husband, Jonathan Harker. She has studied
the law along side of Jonathan and one begins to suspect that she knows as much as he on
the subject. Here is a strong intelligent woman of great character.
Lucy Westenra
Lucy is a foil to Mina. Where Mina is self-supporting, strong willed and independent,
Lucy is none of these things. Lucy has had the advantages of great wealth as well as the
disadvantages of that wealth. Stoker seems to be making a case for the strength of the
middle classes, their ability to deal with whatever comes because they have the skills it
takes to weather whatever storm comes their way whereas the wealthy have been able to
have someone else do the hard work and therefore have nothing to fall back on should
wealth fail. Lucy is flighty, emotional and very much in the tradition of her class. The
only major deviation is that she is such close friends with someone of Mina’ class.
Arthur Holmwood
Arthur is an English aristocrat, a young man who will become Lord Godalming upon his
father’s death. Arthur is a well-educated, intelligent man who has traveled widely and
shown his valor in battle. He is Lucy’s choice between her three suitors who all turn out
to have been, and still are, the best of friends. Arthur will use his position, his wealth and
his courage to free Mina from Dracula’s curse but he will be too late to save Lucy.
Dr. John Seward
Dr. Seward is one of the trio of friends who will unite again to do battle. While Seward
does not seem to be a warrior type, the background Stoker provides for him indicates
otherwise. Seward will propose to Lucy but lose out to his friend, Arthur. Still, he will do
his best to save Lucy for his friend using his medical knowledge and finally calling in his
friend and mentor, Van Helsing.
Quincy Morris
Quincy is an American who uses the popular stereotype of Americans as rough and
unpolished much like Benjamin Franklin did when at the court of France. Like Franklin,
Quincy is anything but unpolished or badly educated as seen in his reference to the seven
women with the lamps. He is sincere, honest and resolute. He also carries a Bowie knife
and a Winchester repeating rifle. The rifle is a symbol of the growing industrial might of
post Civil War America as it is a mass produced, high precision implement recognized
for its accuracy, reliability and ruggedness, much like Americans themselves. Prehaps the
Bowie knife hints at the courage and violence present in the citizens of this new and
rapidly growing nation.
Van Helsing
Van Helsing is older than the three young warriors, a mature man who has great
knowledge but most importantly, an open mind. Van Helsing is the first to suspect what
is really causing Lucy’s strange disease but he is also aware of the skepticism that will
follow his diagnosis. Van Helsing has studied not only the science of modern times but
also the knowledge of the older world of dark magic, that world that stills lies beneath the
veneer of modern science and technology. Van Helsing will comprise the fourth member
of the team who will set out to destroy Dracula and save Mina.
R.M. Renfield
Renfield is a patient in Dr. Seward’s asylum, a man with fixations and obsessions that
fascinate the doctor. Renfield, it turns out, was a man of learning, of social position until
he was sent to do business with the count. Unlike Jonathan, Renfield’s mind could not
cope with what he found there and so now Renfield wants the immortality Dracula
promises but he does not want to commit murder to achieve it. In the end he contributes
to the knowledge needed to defeat Dracula, attempts to save Mina and thereby may have
saved his soul if not his life.
Plot Synopsis
Count Dracula plans to invade England, gather followers and eventually take over the
world. He uses English law, customs and society to attempt to this invasion beginning
with using Jonathan Harker as both lawyer and language teacher. His attempt at carrying
out his plan is foiled when he turns Lucy into a vampire and is discovered by Van
Helsing who has knowledge of vampires. Van Helsing, aided by the three men who were
Lucy’s suitors and the couple, Mina and Jonathan Harker as well as briefly aided by the
apparently insane Renfield comprise the seven characters who will unite to destroy the
count and bring his evil plans to nought.
Introduction
Stoker makes the case early for this not being a work of fiction but a written record of
events that would seem to be impossible. However, he says, this is a written record of
events from that time that have not been embelished, merely recorded.
Chapter One
The book opens with Jonathan Harker in a state of transition both mentally and
physically. On a physical level, he is being transported into geography he is not familiar
with. Like a tourist, he compares what he sees with his previous experiences while having
the reassurance that he will return to a familiar and comfortable world. Jonathan is also
out of his comfort zone culturally. His comments about the cultures he encounters reveals
his feelings of cultural superiority. Could this be that this is a reflection of typical
Victorian British attitude toward non-western or less technologically advanced people?
It is this attitude, this logical, rational, scientific view of the world that will make it very
difficult for Jonathan to comprehend what is going to happen to him.
Jonathan’s comments about the trains not running on time as he moves further
and further into the East reveals his atitude toward non British culture. He also introduces
the character of Mina Murray very early into the story and hints that Mina will have a
powerful role to play in the story that will follow.
This transition from this “normal” world begins to speed up as Jonathan arrives at
the Golden Krone, the motel selected by count Dracula. The landlord and his wife are
obviously afraid of the count, introducing the beginnings of a feeling of anxiety that will
grown throughout the chapter.This mood is accelerated when the landlord’s wife begs
Jonathan to delaly his trip until after St. George’s Day, a day when evil is ascendant in
the world. Jonathan’s view is this is merely the superstition of the ignorant uneducated
peasant and is to be overlooked. Stoker uses Jonathan’s views to connect Jonathan’s
views with those of the reader.making the reader identify more closely with Jonathan. As
Jonathan is converted to believe in what he is seeing, so do we come to believe also.
Stoker uses little things like the landlady’s plea, the sound of dogs, the unease of the local
people to add to that early beginning of unease.
His use of setting is also very skillful as we experience Jonathan’s journey to meet
the count’s coach. We see the beauty of the countryside combined with a heightened
sense of time passing as the light of day fades and the darkness rises.
The passengers also add to that sense of rising unease as their conversations are
not completely understood by Jonathan who only catches a few words. These few words
do not bring a sense ease as they translate to mean such things as, “satan, hell, vampire”
etc. The explanation of the sign for the evil eye is yet another reason for Jonathan to feel
out of place here. Note that Jonathan is too polite to reject the offer of a cross by the
agitated landlady. It is this offer that begins to make Jonathan feel “uneasy in my mind”.
All of this is Stoker moving his reader into a world where science does not have all the
answers.
The coach driver attempts to arrive early, partly to try to save Jonathan from the
count and partly to avoid meeting the count himself. The attempt is a failure as the count
has apparently foreseen such an action. We see again the intelligence and high level of
awareness of the count.
At last we get an initial description of the count who has red lips, white sharp
teeth, red eyes and an obvious wicked intelligence. Stoker will be the first to define the
modern vampire. No more rotting bodies that terrify people when they appear. Here,
instead, is more of the influence of John Polidori, Byron’s doctor. Polidori used Byron as
a model for a vampire because Polidori did not like Byron. When Polidori sat down to
write a horror story one rainy summer while staying with Byron and the Shelleys at a lake
in Switzerland. Polidori wrote about a vampire that was handsome, polished and
sophisticated like Byron. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at this same time.
Initially, Jonathan is favorably impressed with the count’s coach and driver. The
driver seems friendly enough and the accommodations are good. Still, the supernatural
strength of the driver as he helps Jonathan into the coach is a bit unsettling. Against such
strength Jonathan would be helpless. It gives Jonathan a feeling of loss of control, a basic
element of the gothic. Jonathan is now feeling a bit strange and frightened ,beginning to
wish he had taken the earlier driver’s advice to wait.
Throughout the carriage ride Jonathan’s unease grows at the ride becomes
stranger and stranger. The coach seems to be going over the same road over and over
again until midnight arrives. At this point the howling of wolves begins and to make
things worse, the coachman stops and goes off in the direction of strange blue lights that
appear in the distance.(There will be an explanation of these blue lights as indicating
treasure later.) To make things worse, the coach seems surrounded by hungry wolves.
Fearing the driver will be attacked, Jonathan attempts to frighten the wolves by pounding
on the sides of the coach but it appears that the driver needs no help as he motions for the
wolves to depart and they do so. The ride ends with a classic stereotypical scene of a vast
dark ruined castle against a moonlit sky. Stoker is sticking to the gothic setting of a
decaying building far from help. Jonathan has been transported from the normal world he
has always know to one where he will have to revise his ideas about reality or perish.
It might be worth noting that this transformation from the ordinary world to one in
which strange and magical happenings occur could also be seen as part of the reaction to
the increasingly technological world of Victorian England. While many, like Mina, saw
the increase in technology as a brave new world, there were also those who saw it as a
strange landscape they did not understand nor wish to. Adjusting to the new machines
was, no doubt, difficult for some just as it will be difficult for Jonathan to adjust to a
world that contradicts what he has always known or experienced before.