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Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
The subject of imposture is always an interes@ng one, and impostors in one shape or another are likely to flourish as long as human nature remains what it is, and society shows itself ready to be gulled. The histories of famous cases of imposture in this book have been grouped together to show that the art has been prac@sed in many forms — impersonators, pretenders, swindlers, and humbugs of all kinds; those who have masqueraded in order to acquire wealth, posi4on, or fame, and those who have done so merely for the love of the art. So numerous are instances, indeed, that the book cannot profess to exhaust a theme which might easily fill a dozen volumes; its purpose is simply to collect and record a number of the best known instances. The author, nevertheless, whose largest experience has lain in the field of fic4on, has aimed at dealing with his material as with the material for a novel, except that all the facts given are real and authen4c. He has made no aKempt to treat the subject ethically; yet from a study of these impostors, the objects they had in view, the means they adopted, the risks they ran, and the punishments which aKended exposure, any reader can draw his own conclusions.
(B. Stoker, “Preface”, in Famous Impostors, 1910)
“Here I am, siQng at a liKle oak table where in old @mes possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-‐spelt love-‐le;er, and wri@ng in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is nineteenth century up-‐to-‐date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere “modernity” cannot kill”.
(B. Stoker, Dracula)
-‐ The historical backdrop for DraculaThe emergence of comsumerist mass culturaThe rise of an English professional classThe brode-‐scale mobiliza@on of electrically driven forms of communica@onDracula as an allegory for economic, bureaucra@c, and technological changes in the
world.
CHAPTER IJONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
(Kept in shorthand.)
3 May. Bistritz.—Le^ Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-‐Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the liKle I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the sta@on, as we had arrived late
and would start as near the correct @me as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the tradi@ons of Turkish rule.We le^ in preKy good @me, and came a^er nighfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called “paprika hendl,” and that, as it was a na@onal dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smaKering of German very useful here; indeed, I don’t know how I should be able to get on without it.
Having had some @me at my disposal when in London, I had visited the Bri@sh Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known por@ons of Europe. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-‐known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.In the popula@on of Transylvania there are four dis4nct na4onali4es: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the laKer, who claim to be descended from AUla and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns seKled in it. I read that every known supers44on in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imagina4ve whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interes4ng. (Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.)
Later: the Morning of 16 May.—God preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place the Count is the least dreadful to me; that to him alone I can look for safety, even though this be only whilst I can serve his purpose. Great God! merciful God! Let me be calm, for out of that way lies madness indeed. I begin to get new lights on certain things which have puzzled me. Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say:—
“My tablets! quick, my tablets!’Tis meet that I put it down,” etc.,
for now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock
had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must help to soothe me.
The Count’s mysterious warning frightened me at the @me; it frightens me more now when I think of it, for in future he has a fearful hold upon me. I shall fear to doubt what he may say!It was by this @me close on morning, and we went to bed. (Mem., this diary seems
horribly like the beginning of the “Arabian Nights,” for everything has to break off at cockcrow—or like the ghost of Hamlet’s father.)
Count DraculaA centuries-‐old vampire and Transylvanian noblemanA crumbling castle in the Carpathian Mountains. He can assume the form of an animal, control the weather, and he is stronger than
twenty men. His powers are limited and is rendered powerless by daylight.“My revenge is just begun!”: Proud but disappoin@ng history of his family. The world around him has changed and grown significantlyWhen the count discusses “the crowded streets of your mighty London,” we sense that
he lusts for power and conquest: “I long . . . to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its
change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. But alas!” (Ch. II)Dracula becomes not simply a creature of evil. He is a somewhat sympathe@c and more
human [email protected] is determined to regain his family’s lost power and subject the world to his own dark,
brutal vision.Abraham Van Helsing
A Dutch professor: “a philosopher and metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scien@sts of his day.”
Called upon to cure the ailing Lucy Westenra Van Helsing’s contribu@ons are essen@al in the fight against Dracula. He is not blinded by the limita@ons of Western medicine: he knows that he faces a force
that cannot be treated with tradi@onal science and reason. Knowledgeable about vampire folklore. Van Helsing becomes Dracula’s chief antagonist and the leader of the group that hunts
Dracula down and destroys him.He is an experienced man, but due to the unfortunately unskilled manner in which
Stoker renders Van Helsing’s speech, he o^en comes across as somewhat bumbling.
A well-‐matched adversary to the count, he possesses a mind open enough to contemplate Dracula’s par@cular brand of evil.
He straddles two dis@nct worlds, the old and the new: the first marked by fearful respect for tradi@on, the second by ever-‐progressing modernity.
Unlike his former pupil, Dr. Seward (obsession with modern techniques), Van Helsing diagnoses the young girl’s afflic@on correctly, and offers her the only opportunity for a cure.
Van Helsing is rela@vely sta@c, as he undergoes no great development throughout the novel.
Having helped rid the Earth of the count’s evil, he departs as he arrived (morally righteous and religiously commiKed)
Van Helsing views his pursuit of Dracula with an air of grandiosity. He envisions his band as “ministers of God’s own wish,” and assures his comrades that “we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more”:
Thus are we ministers of God’s own wish: that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise; and like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause.”
Stoker portrays Van Helsing as the embodiment of unswerving good, the hero he recruits “to set the world free.”
Jonathan Harker A solicitor, or lawyer, sent to Transylvania to conclude a real estate transac@on with
Dracula. Young and naïveA prisoner in the castleFierce curiosity to discover the true nature of his captor and a strong will to escape.Later, a^er becoming convinced that the count has moved to London, Harker emerges as
a brave and fearless fighter.
Mina Murray
Jonathan Harker’s fiancée. A prac@cal young woman who works as a schoolmistress. Eventually vic@mized by Dracula herself, Mina is also the best friend of the count’s first
vic@m in the novel, Lucy Westenra. Mina is in many ways the heroine of the novel, embodying purity, innocence, and
Chris@an faith.Intelligent and resourcefulHer research leads Van Helsing’s men to Castle Dracula. The ul@mate Victorian woman: the embodiment of the virtues of the age. She is “one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other
women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble. . . .”
The model of domes@c propriety, an assistant schoolmistress who du@fully studies newfangled machines.
Unlike Lucy, she is not most noteworthy for her physical beauty, which spares Mina her friend’s fate of being transformed into a voluptuous she-‐devil.
Mina’s sexuality remains enigma@c throughout the whole of Dracula. She never gives voice to anything resembling a sexual desire or impulse and she retain
her purity.
Second half of the novel concerns the issue of Mina’s purity. Stoker creates suspense about whether Mina, like Lucy, will be lost.
Mina sympathizes with the boldly progressive “New Women” of England: doomed to suffer Lucy’s fate as punishment for her progressiveness.
A goddess of conserva@ve male fantasy. Mina is far from a “New Woman” herself. Rather, she is a du@ful wife and mother in the service of men.
Mina’s moral perfec@on remains stainless.Lucy Westenra
Mina’s best friend and an aKrac@ve, vivacious young woman.The first character in the novel to fall under Dracula’s spell. Lucy becomes a vampire,
which compromises her much-‐praised chas@ty and virtue,.Van Helsing’s crew hunts down the demon she has become and kills it, following the
rituals of vampire slaying, and thus restoring Lucy’s soul to her body and to heaven. In many ways, Lucy is much like her dear friend Mina. A paragon of virtue and
innocence: three suitors to her. Difference from her friend in one crucial aspect: she is sexualized. In an early leKer to
Mina, Lucy laments, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?”
This “heresy” indicates that she has desires that cannot be met.Stoker amplifies Lucy’s insa@ability describing the undead Lucy as a wanton creature of
ravenous sexual appe@te. Lucy stands as a dangerous threat to men and their tenuous self-‐control and she must be
destroyed. Death returns her to a more harmless state, fixing a look of purity. This assures men that
the world and its women are exactly as they should be.
John Seward A talented young doctor, Van Helsing’s pupil. Administrator of an insane asylum not far from Dracula’s English home. Ambi@ous interviews with one of his pa@ents, Renfield, in order to understand beKer
the nature of life-‐consuming psychosis. Lucy turns down Seward’s marriage proposal, but his love for her remains, and he
dedicates himself to her care when she suddenly takes ill. A^er Lucy’s death, he remains dedicated to figh@ng the count.
Arthur Holmwood -‐ Lucy’s fiancé and a friend of her other suitors. Son of Lord Godalming and inherits that @tle upon his father’s death. In the fight against Dracula’s dark powers, he does whatever circumstances demand: he offers Lucy a blood transfusion and he agrees to kill her demonic form.
Quincey Morris -‐ An American from Texas, another of Lucy’s suitors. He proves himself a brave and good-‐hearted man. Quincey sacrifices his life in order to rid the world of Dracula’s influence.
Renfield -‐ A pa@ent at Seward’s mental asylum. A refined gentleman, he indulges a habit of consuming living creatures—flies, spiders, birds, and so on—which he
believes provide him with strength, vitality, and life force. He is Dracula’s servant. Mrs. Westenra -‐ Lucy’s mother. A woman of failing health, who sabotages her
daughter’s safety by interfering with Van Helsing’s folk remedies. She dies of shock when a wolf leaps through Lucy’s bedroom window.
Chapter I Dracula begins with the diary kept by the solicitor Jonathan Harker on his way from
England to Eastern Europe. Harker is traveling to the castle of Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman to sell him a
residence in London. Harker plans to take copious notes to share his adventures with his fiancée, Mina Murray.
In his first diary entry, on May 3, Harker describes the picturesque countryside of Eastern Europe and the exo@c food he has tasted at the roadside inns.
Harker arrives in the northern Romanian town of Bistritz and checks into a hotel Count Dracula has recommended to him.
The innkeeper gives Harker a leKer from the count, welcoming Harker to the beau@ful Carpathian Mountains and informing him that he should take the next day’s coach to the Borgo Pass, where a carriage will meet him to bring him to the castle.
An ominous warning by the innkeeper’s wife: it is the eve of St. George’s Day, when “all the evil things in the world will have full sway.” She puts a crucifix around his neck. He is a prac@cing Anglican, but he accepts the crucifix. He is somewhat disturbed and his uneasiness increases when a crowd of peasants gathers around the inn as he boards the coach. “Queer words” he translates to mean “were-‐wolf” or “vampire.”
The crowd makes the sign of the cross in his direc@on, a gesture that a fellow passenger explains is meant to protect him from the “evil eye.”
The journey to the Borgo Pass takes Harker through incomparably beau@ful country. As darkness falls, the other passengers become restless, One by one, the passengers begin to offer Harker small gi^s and tokens that he assumes are also meant to ward off the evil eye.
The coach arrives at the Borgo Pass, but there is no carriage wai@ng. A small, horse-‐drawn carriage arrives. Harker boards it and con@nues toward the castle. He has the impression that the carriage is covering the same ground over and over again, and he grows increasingly fearful as the ride progresses. Harker is spooked several @mes by the wild howling of wolves.
Outside he sees a flickering blue flame burning somewhere in the distance. Harker recounts several more stops to inspect similar flames and notes that at one point, when the driver gathers a few stones around one of the flames, he seems to be able to see the flame through the driver’s body.
Eventually, Harker arrives, paralyzed by fear, at the dark and ruined castle.Chapter II
Outside Dracula’s remarkable castle. A^er a long wait, the count appears and welcomes Harker:
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an an@que silver lamp, in which the flame burned without chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man mo@oned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intona@on:— “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!” He made no mo@on of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice—more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said:— “Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!” The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had no@ced in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking;
Harker no@ces what calls Dracula’s “marked physiognomy”: the count has pointed ears, excep@onally pale skin, and extremely sharp teeth. Harker’s nervousness and fears return.
The next day, Harker wakes to find a note from Dracula, excusing himself for the day. Le^ to himself, Harker enjoys a hearty meal and, encountering no servants in the castle, explores his bedroom and the unlocked room adjacent to it. He sees expensive furniture, rich tapestries and fabrics, and a library filled with reading material in English—but notes that there are no mirrors to be found anywhere.
That evening, Dracula joins Harker for conversa@on in the libraryThe men discuss the pervasiveness of evil spirits in Transylvania. Harker describes the house (Carfax) that the count has purchased: quite isolated, with
only a luna@c asylum and an old chapel nearby.Dracula draws out the conversa@on long into the night, but abruptly leaves his guest at
daybreak. The count’s strange behavior increases Harker’s sense of uneasiness.The next day, Dracula interrupts Harker shaving. Harker accidentally cuts himself.
Glancing at his shaving mirror, he no@ces that the count has no reflec@on. Harker is also startled by Dracula’s reac@on to the sight of his blood: the count lunges for his guest’s throat, drawing back only a^er touching the string of beads that holds Harker’s crucifix.
A^er warning Harker against cuQng himself in this country, Dracula throws the shaving mirror out a window. Le^ alone, Harker eats breakfast, no@ng that he has never seen his host eat or drink. His suspicions aroused, he once again goes exploring, only to discover one locked door a^er another.
Harker realizes he is a prisoner in the count’s castle.
The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is
a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep ri^ where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view I explored further; doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit.The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!
Chapter IIIThat night, Dracula speaks enthusias@cally of the country’s people and baKles, and he
speaks of the glories of his family name. Over the course of the next several days, the count grills Harker about maKers of
English life and law. He tells Harker to write leKers to his fiancée and employer, telling them that he will extend his stay by a month.
Harker agrees. Preparing to take his leave for the evening, Dracula warns his guest never to fall asleep anywhere in the castle other than his own room.
Harker hangs his crucifix above his bed and sets out to explore the castle. Peering out a window, Harker observes Dracula crawling down the sheer face of the castle.
One evening soon therea^er, Harker forces a locked room open and falls asleep, not heeding the count’s warning. Harker is visited—whether in a dream or not, he cannot say—by three beau@ful women with inhumanly red lips and sharp teeth. The women approach him, filling him with a “wicked, burning desire.”
I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it; I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumula@on of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the @me that I must be dreaming when I saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some @me, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great wavy masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connec@on with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same @me some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed—such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the so^ness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, @ngling sweetness of water-‐glasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coqueUshly, and the other two urged her on.
One of the voluptuous women bends and places her lips against his neck, Dracula sweeps in. He ordering the women to leave Harker alone: “When I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will,” the count tells them.
To appease the disappointed trio, Dracula offers them a bag containing a small, “half-‐smothered” child (Lamiae). The terrible women seem to fade out of the room as Harker dri^s into unconsciousness.
“I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloa@ng. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck, she actually licked her lips like an animal. . . . Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. . . . I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with bea@ng heart”.