Dracula by Bram Stoker is a work of horror published in 1897 that largely defined the semblance of the vampire. A creative, morbid work, Dracula should be enjoyable for those interested in genres that inspire terror.
The format of Dracula is that of a series of letters told from the perspectives of multiple characters. The first letters belong to the traveler Jonathan Harker, a businessman who went to Transylvania to oversee a large financial transaction: a man known as Count Dracula wants to buy an abandoned house in a large city. Harker is also engaged with a girl named Mina. On his way to Transylvania, he learned that people were horrified of Count Dracula, as they thought of him as some kind of supernatural being (and their suspicions were true). When Harker is about to go to his castle, Count Dracula sends him his own personal coach: the horses are abnormally strong and fast, and the driver is quite scary: “I could see from the flash of our lamps, as the rays fell on them, that the horses were coal-black and splendid animals. They were driven by a tall man, with a long brown beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide his face from us. I could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright eyes, which seemed red in the lamplight, as he turned to the driver. ‘You are early to-night, my friend.’ The man stammered in reply:-’The English Herr was in a hurry,’ to which the stranger replied:-‘That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on to Bukovina. You cannot deceive me, my friend; I know too much, and my horses are swift.’ As he spoke he smiled, the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory” (10). One of Harker’s fellow travelers (who was going somewhere else) recited from the poem “Lenore” by Burger that “Denn die Todten reiten schnell,” or “For the dead travel fast.” The driver, hearing the words, smiled mysteriously, and Harker climbed into the carriage. When they were traveling at breakneck speed towards the castle, some blue balls of flame appeared, shocking Harker. Later, some wolves surrounded the carriage, but the driver commanded them to leave, and they did: “I heard his voice raised in a tone of imperious command … As he swept his long arms, as though brushing aside some impalpable obstacle, the wolves fell back and back further still. Just then a heavy cloud passed across the face of the moon, so that we were again in darkness” (14). Harker eventually arrives at the castle, and notes that it was very decrepit and old, appearing to be on the verge of imminent collapse: “Suddenly I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky” (14).
Harker is helped down by the driver, and he notes that he has almost unimaginable strength: he states that if he so desired, he could’ve easily crushed his hand in his powerful grip. Harker proceeds to the castle, and meets Count Dracula, who appeared to be formal and polite: “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 antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long, quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation:-‘Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!’” (16). After greeting Harker, Harker, quite unnerved, saw that Dracula was like a statue: he didn't move forward. However, the moment Harker entered the interior of the castle, Dracula immediately went forward and shook his hand with a very strong hand that was also icy. Harker notes that the hand of Dracula was more akin to a dead man in its coldness than a living one. Dracula tells Harker that he has a meal prepared for him, and that he has his own room. He also informs him that he will give him some time to defecate (seeing that he probably needed to do so) before taking his luggage. While Harker ate his dinner (a roast chicken, cheese, salad, and two glasses of the wine known as Tokay), he noted Dracula’s physical features: “His face was strong-a very strong-aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with a lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with busy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed: the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor” (18-9). Harker also noted that Dracula’s fingers were broad and squat while his nails were long and sharp. When Dracula touched Harker, Harker shuddered for no discernable reason. When the wolves began howling, Dracula remarked that they were making music, as well as referring to them as the “children of the night.” When Harker awoke from his sleep, he found that Dracula was gone. When he investigated the house, he noted that there were immensely valuable things. However, there were some discrepancies: some fabrics were extremely old, and there were no mirrors. Harker also found that Dracula was extremely well-read, as he read books from every subject, including: “history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law” (20). In the evening, Dracula returned and had a hearty conversation with Harker, in which he explained his family history. He also said that the blue flames which he saw were rumored to be indicative of gold which had been buried underground: “‘That treasure has been hidden,’ he went on, ‘in the region through which you came last night, there can be but little doubt; for it was the ground fought over for centuries by the Wallachian, the Saxon, and the Turk. Why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders’” (22).
Dracula asks Harker to tell him of his house in London. Harker informs him that the house he has bought is named Carfax, and is twenty acres large. It is also surrounded by a solid stone wall, and it is extremely large and old. Dracula notes his satisfaction, as he said that he lived a long time and experienced much, which imbued him with a great appreciation for houses which have been lived in for long periods of time. He and Harker sup together. Later, Harker is bewildered and quite terrified while he was shaving: although Dracula was behind him, he possessed no reflection. Surprised by his presence (he didn't see him in the mirror), Harker cut himself. When Dracula saw the blood, he became full of bloodlust, and tried to grab at his neck. However, when he saw the crucifix on Harker, he retreated, but not before telling Harker that he should be careful while shaving, as shedding blood can be quite dangerous in the area. Furthermore, he grabbed Harker’s mirror and raged against it, saying that it is “‘a foul bauble of man’s vanity’” before throwing it out the window, causing it to shatter on the ground into numerous pieces (27). Harker eventually realizes that something is wrong, as he has never seen Dracula eat or drink anything. Upon examining his surroundings, he notices that it is almost impossible to escape from the castle due to the drop caused by the precipices: “The castle is on the very edge of terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! … 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!” (27). He barely manages to remain calm, and is told of Dracula’s family history: he belonged to the group known as the Szekelys, a very warlike people. Dracula also claims to be descended from Attila the Hun, and that he is proud to be descended from the people who sired him. He also states with a large amount of shame of the defeat of his people in war, and wished for adventure, for a chance to live and experience history once more. In his own words, “‘The war-like days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.’” (31). Later, Dracula told Harker to write letters to his solicitor and fiance, as he wanted him to remain there longer (as a prisoner) without causing suspicion. Harker, some nights later, sees the Count climbing over the surface of the castle, defying physics: “my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings … I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall” (35). Later, Harker decided to sleep in another room of the castle. He meets Dracula’s three brides (who, as expected, are also vampires) who want to drink his blood, seeing that he’s young and fit. Before they could do so, Dracula ferociously seized the one nearest to Harker and threw her off: “As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant’s power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even in the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them … With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back; it was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves” (40).
Dracula, in a soft yet deadly voice, demanded for his three wives to leave Harker alone, seeing that he “‘belonged to him’” (40). He threatens to punish them if they try anything, and the bride he had thrown off sarcastically laughed, saying that he never loved them. Dracula corrected them, saying that he did live them in the past, and that they can “kiss” (euphemism for “drink his blood”) him whenever they want after he outlives his usefulness. Dracula offers them a momentary replacement: a small child. Dissolving into the moonlight, they passed through the walls of the castle to devour the infant in private. Later on, Harker awoke in his bed. When he went to the room where he met Dracula’s brides, he found that it had been jammed shut, causing him to realize that it wasn’t a dream. Dracula prepares to leave for London. Before he does, the mother of the infant he had kidnapped and subsequently murdered screamed at him from the ground to give her back her child. Dracula, irritated, calls for wolves to devour her. Obeying, many of them entered the courtyard and made a meal out of her. Harker notes that “I could not pity her, for I knew now what had become of her child, and she was better dead” (which isn’t entirely true, seeing that the birth rate back then was quite high: furthermore, while it is true that Dracula is responsible for atrocities, humans do behavior much worse than him, seeing how animal agriculture sees the rapes, tortures, and dismemberments of tens of billions of animals a year for the sole sake of taste - while Dracula and other vampires drink blood out of necessity, humans inflict colossal needless suffering on other innocent beings out of tradition, selfishness, laziness, and convenience, which is arguably worse) (48). Harker later breaks into a room of the castle (he has lost all of his previous reservations upon realizing he’s basically been sentenced to death) and finds fifty coffins full of dirt. He spots Dracula in one of them, dormant: “He was either dead or asleep, I could not say which-for the eyes were open and stony, but without the glassiness of death-and the cheeks had the warmth of life through all their pallor, and the lips were as red as ever. But there was no sign of movement, no pulse, no breath, no beating of the heart … I saw the dead eyes, and in them, dead though they were, such a look of hate, though unconscious of me or my presence, that I fled from the place” (50). The night before Dracula leaves, Harker asks if he could leave. Dracula, feigning cooperation, “allows” him to do so: when he opens the door, however, Harker sees many ravenous wolves waiting for him. Realizing Dracula would have him die in the castle, he retreats into his own room, where he hears Dracula telling his brides to wait for the next night to devour him. In the morning, he went down into where Dracula slept, and decided to finish him to spare the world of his wickedness: “He might kill me, but death now seemed the happier choice of evils … There lay the Count; but looking as if his youth had been half-renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion” (53-4). Harker seized a shovel. However, before he could bring it down, Dracula’s eyes found him, freezing him in their hatred and intensity: “The sight seemed to paralyse me, and the shovel turned in my hand and glanced from the face, merely making a deep gash above the forehead. The shovel fell from my hand across the box … The last glimpse I had was of the bloated face, bloodstained and fixed with a grin of malice which would have held its own in the nethermost hell” (54). Harker fails to leave the castle while Dracula and his coffins are taken outside by gypsies, but he decides to risk his life that night in an attempt to escape by scaling the castle.
Back at home, Harker’s fiance, Mina, had a friend, Lucy (who was basically viewed only as a sexual object by her suitors - she had been stripped of every attribute save her appearance and “purity”/innocence/ignorance, seeing how she displays no other personality traits or strengths) who was being asked to marry by three suitors. One of them, Dr. Seward, is a kind-hearted doctor who runs an insane asylum. Another, Morris, is a handsome and daring man (seeing that he’s an American from Texas). The third, Arthur, comes from a rich family, and she marries him (expectedly, as money is one of the best ways to guarantee finding a mate when it comes to humans, alongside physical attractiveness and other measurements of status). Dr. Seward has a patient, Renfield, who is quite insane: he goes on long rambles, is frequently confused, devours small animals, and raves of Dracula’s arrival. Renfield is implied to have been driven insane by Dracula, as not long after, the ship carrying Dracula and his many coffins arrive at shore: all of the crew had vanished, save the body of the captain, who was dead on deck trying to guide the ship to mast. The ship arrived in an extremely powerful storm, and not long after it docked, a huge dog ran out (Dracula, as a vampire, could shapeshift) and seemingly disappeared. The captain’s diary was found, and it confirms that Dracula was on the ship. Furthermore, it is revealed that Dracula mercilessly devoured most of the crew. One of the crew mates who survived the encounter was so terrified that he threw himself into the ocean: drowning seemed like a better option than being callously murdered. The captain decides to die getting the ship to port, as that is his job - he does eventually perish of exhaustion. Lucy starts to waste away, and there are bite marks on her neck (Dracula was drinking her blood on a nightly basis, hence her weakness and poor health). After growing weaker and weaker, Dr. Van Helsing, a doctor, is called to see her recovery. Immediately suspicious of something abnormal, he gives her immediate blood transfusions from Dr. Seward, Arthur, and Morris (at the time of the book’s publication, the importance and relevance of blood types - A, AB, O - were not known yet, so Stoker can be forgiven for failing to include it in the details). While Lucy seemed to make a healthy recovery, it was also thanks to the efforts of Van Helsing and the others (they kept night-watches over her, seeing that Van Helsing silently worried about a vampire) that prevented Dracula from feeding on her momentarily. However, things crumbled down when Lucy’s mother, Mrs. Westerna, took down the garlic placed around her room due to it smelling bad (I know this sounds like a bad joke, but this is actually what happens in the book - Van Helsing literally saves her daughter’s life, and she repays him by throwing his advice into the trash for the sake of a minor inconvenience). When this happens, Dracula bursts into the house (he got permission to enter by Lucy some time ago) in his dog form and gives Mrs. Westerna a heart attack (she already had cardiac issues). He drinks Lucy’s blood, killing her. Harker meets with Mina and they decide to get married, and he is still suffering from trauma regarding his experience with Dracula. He becomes even more terrified upon seeing Dracula (albeit in a much younger form) at London: “He kept staring: a man came out of the shop with a small parcel, and give it to the lady, who then drove off. The dark man kept his eyes fixed on her, and when the carriage moved up Piccadilly he followed in the same direction … Jonathan kept looking after him, and said, as if to himself:-‘I believe it is the Count, but he has grown young. My God, if this be so! Oh, my God! my God! If I only knew! If I only knew!’” (180).
Not long after Lucy’s death, children started getting attacked by a “bloofer lady” (“pretty lady”). When they were recovered, bite marks were found on their necks. Van Helsing, terrified, firmly believes that vampires are to blame, and that Lucy had become one herself after being murdered by one. He tells the others to trust him and to go to Lucy’s mausoleum, where they exhume her corpse. When they opened her coffin, they were terrified to see that Lucy’s corpse was missing: they then saw Lucy (who had indeed become a bloodthirsty vampire) descend into her tomb while holding a young child. Stoker writes that Lucy had changed for the worse (reflecting the common attitude of the day that women should be as chaste, controlled, and ignorant as possible, seeing how Stoker focused heavily on Lucy’s sexuality): “My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur as we recognised the features of Lucy Westerna … but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. Van Helsing stepped out, and, obedient to his gesture, we all advanced too; the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. Van Helsing raised his lantern … by the concentrated light that fell on Lucy’s face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe … When Lucy-I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her shape-saw us she drew back with an angry snarl … Lucy’s eyes in form and colour; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew … As she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it!” (221-2). Lucy proceeded to throw the child she had just recently grasped to her chest to the ground, and she said “‘with a languorous, voluptuous grace’” that Arthur should come rest with her, as her “‘arms are hungry’” for him (222). Van Helsing intervenes with a crucifix, causing Lucy to retreat into her tomb: “Then she turned, and her face was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no quiver from Van Helsing’s iron nerves. Never did I see such baffled malice on a face; and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of flesh were the coils of Medusa’s snakes, and the lovely, bloodstained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death-if looks could kill-we saw it at that moment” (222). Arthur tells Van Helsing to finish the vampire off, and Lucy temporarily escapes by phasing back into her coffin. Van Helsing tells the others to bring the child back to its parents, and that they will finish their work later when everyone gets their bearings. Later, Lucy’s physique and newfound personality is described while she is dormant: “She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there; the pointed teeth, the bloodstained, voluptuous mouth-which it made one shudder to see-the whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity” (224). Van Helsing takes out the materials needed to kill a vampire, and tells the characters around him of the lore of the vampire (or “Un-dead”). In his own words, the ancients and those in the present realized that the Un-Dead, becoming so, suffer “‘the curse of immortality; they cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world; for all that die from the preying of the Un-Dead become themselves Un-Dead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water’” (225).
Van Helsing describes that Lucy has become a vampire by Dracula, and that if she is allowed to live, she will continue to prey on children, turning them into vampires. However, if she is killed for good, their lives will be spared, and she will return to her regular form and truly rest in peace. Van Helsing asks Arthur to free her, and Arthur agrees, saying that he doesn’t want her to remain in her current state. Arthur takes the stake in his hand and kills the vampire. Stoker writes in graphic detail: “The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, bloodcurdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together like the lips were cut and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his trembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake [phallic imagery], whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it” (226-7). Finally, the body stopped writhing and convulsing, and it returned to the Lucy everyone in the mausoleum knew in life: “There in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity. True that there was there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of care and pain and waste; but these were all dear to us, for they marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign forever” (227). Arthur thanks Van Helsing for freeing her, and Van Helsing tells the others that to make sure she won’t return as a vampire, they will have to cut off her head and stuff it with garlic. After doing so, they left the mausoleum, and Van Helsing says that their next task is to find Dracula, “‘the author of all this our sorrow and to stamp him out’” once and for all (228). Later on, Van Helsing forms a group with Morris, Dr. Seward, Harker, Mina (whom they decided to no longer shelter from the truth), and Arthur. Van Helsing explains in detail the power of the vampire. In his own words, “‘The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the time; he can flourish when that he can fatten on the blood of the living. Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow younger; that his vital faculties grow strenuous, and seems as though they refresh themselves when his special pabulum is plenty. But he cannot flourish without this diet; he eat not as others. Even friend Jonathan, who lived with him for weeks, did never see him eat, never! He throws no shadow; he make in the mirror no reflect … He has the strength of many in his hand … He can transform himself to wolf … he can be as bat … He can come in mist which he create … the distance he can make this mist is limited, and it can only be round himself. He come on moonlight rays as elemental dust … He become so small … He can, when once he find his way, come out from anything or into anything, no matter how close it be bound or even fused up with fire. He can see in the dark-no small power this is, in a world which is one half shut from the light … He can do all these things, yet he is not free. Nay, he is even more prisoner than the slave of the galley, than the madman in his cell. He cannot go where he lists; he who is not of nature has yet to obey some of nature’s laws-why we know not’” (251-2). That is, Dracula and other vampires can’t go to places where they don’t have permission to enter (ex. if they want to enter a house, an inhabitant inside has to let them in), they lose all their powers during the daylight (thereby making them basically powerless and vulnerable), they have to sleep in a coffin with dirt from the place where they originally lived and died (hence why Dracula bought fifty coffins of earth from Transylvania with him), they can only rest in places which have a negative history (ex. graves of those who had taken their own lives), they are terrified of crucifixes and religious imagery, a branch of a wild rose can keep them in their coffins, a sacred (potentially silver) bullet shot into them will kill them, a stake through the heart is guaranteed to put them to sleep, and decapitation is also a viable option.
Van Helsing writes of Dracula’s identity: he asked his friend Arminius (a professor of Buda-Pesth University) to do some research, and it turns out that Dracula “‘must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkeyland. If it be so, then was he no common man … he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the ‘land beyond the forest.’ That mighty brain and that iron resolution went with him to his grave, and are even now arrayed against us. The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the Devil claims the tenth scholar as his due. In the records are such words as ‘stregoica’-witch; ‘Ordog’ and ‘pokol’-Satan and Hell; and in one manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as ‘wampyr,’ which we all understand too well’” (253). Van Helsing declares that they will destroy Dracula by destroying his coffins with the dirt of his native land by putting religious ornaments in them (ex. holy water and wafers, thereby rendering them useless), forcing Dracula to escape. They will then track him down and put an end to his reign of terror. Seward is notified that Renfield wishes to see him. As he entered the room with the others, Renfield elegantly begged him to let him out of the lunatic asylum, even if he is to be dragged out in chains, as he is terrified of Dracula coming to kill him (for blood). Seward and Van Helsing leave him there despite his desperate begging. Sneaking into Carfax (Harker told them that Dracula was hiding there), they render Dracula’s coffins useless. They notice that not all fifty of the coffins are there: Dracula, being a sentient and intelligent being, divided his fifty coffins over multiple houses in London in an attempt to place his eggs among various baskets. He was also enraged and terrified that he was being hunted, seeing that he was used to being the hunter, not vice-versa. In revenge, he tried to turn Mina into a vampire while her friends were trying to hunt him. That is, Seward was notified that Renfield was half-dead in his cell, as blood was everywhere (he was grievously injured, with his skull fractured and throat constricted). Van Helsing, seeing Renfield, knew that he wasn’t going to live much longer. Asking Renfield what he had seen, he responds by telling him that Dracula came to him in his cell and summoned a large number of rats, flies, and other organisms in an attempt to get Renfield to give him entry into the building he was in (Mina was in the said building, and Renfield was obsessed with consuming living beings in an attempt to live forever, to gain their life force). As Renfield attested, “‘Rats, rats, rats! Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every one a life; and dogs to eat them, and cats too … He beckoned me to the window. I got up and looked out, and He raised His hands, and seemed to call out without using any words. A dark mass spread over the grass, coming on like the shape of a flame of fire. And then He moved the mist to the right and left, and I could see that there were thousands of rats with their eyes blazing red-like His, only smaller. He held up His hand, and they all stopped; and I thought He seemed to be saying: ‘All these lives will I give you, ay, and many more and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!’ And the red cloud, like the colour of blood, seemed to close over my eyes; and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself opening the sash and saying to Him: ‘Come in, Lord and Master!’ The rats were all gone, but He slid into the room through the sash, though it was only open an inch wide’” (295).
Dracula sneered at Renfield, and proceeded to find Mina. Renfield, full of rage at not being given his due and for Dracula’s desire to prey on Mina, attacked him with all his strength. Despite his best efforts, Dracula trounced him, fatally injuring him before turning into mist and going into Mina’s room. Van Helsing, Arthur, and Quincey leave Renfield on the floor and enter Mina’s room. They find Harker unconscious and Dracula forcing Mina to drink his blood (to turn her into a vampire): “By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black. His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw it we all recognised the Count-in every way, even to the scar on his forehead. With his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood … The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink” (297). Dracula, noticing them, changed his appearance into the same demonic one which Harker saw in the castle. Throwing Mina onto the bed, he malevolently made his way towards Van Helsing and the others. However, they came ready with crucifixes. Dracula, terrified, changes his form into a dark vapor and fleas through a crack in the door. Mina, coming to, tells the others (including Harker, who awoke) that Dracula came into her room in the night. Harker was asleep due to his taking sleep medication: Dracula threatened Mina, telling her that he would break Harker’s head open if she makes any noise or resists. He says that he is going to punish her for working against him, and brags of his various experiences: he has commanded many armies and nations centuries before she and her friends were even born, and he isn’t going down without a fight. He decides to turn her into a vampire to make her his servant, which will cause emotional turmoil for the others. He proceeds to open a vein on his chest by using his long nails, and forces her to drink his blood: if she refuses, she will suffocate. Mina is devastated upon learning that she had drunk his blood, as she reprimands herself, saying that she is unclean and is a danger to those around her. She also says that she did nothing to deserve this fate, as she has tried to pursue meekness and righteousness (basically, she was indoctrinated from her youth to be subservient to men, to not speak up for herself, and to deprive herself of various things on the basis of superstitious ignorance and foolish dogma). When Van Helsing tests if she is truly unclean, his worst fears are proven to be accurate: the wafer he placed on her head acted like a hot iron; it burned its shape onto her forehead. Mina, heartbroken, curses herself for bearing “‘this mark of shame upon my forehead’” as the Abrahamic god will supposedly send her to hell for it on the Day of Judgement (313). I would like to point out that this mindset of hers is utterly erroneous and stupid: why would she choose to believe and revere a god who would sentence her to eternal damnation for something that was completely outside of her control? Why would an “almighty” god allow vampires to exist in the first place? Furthermore, what kind of a deity would punish someone for merely being victimized by another being? Regardless, Van Helsing and the others went to an estate named Piccadilly, another house bought by Dracula. After neutralizing the coffins within in their usual manner, they waited for Dracula’s arrival: he had only one box left, seeing that the other forty-nine had been dealt with.
When Dracula showed up, he became full of rage after seeing that Harker, Seward, Van Helsing, and Morris were trying to stop him. Expectedly, Harker made the first move: “Harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great Kukri knife, and made a fierce and sudden cut at him. The blow was a powerful one; only the diabolical quickness of the Count’s leap back saved him. A second less and the trenchant blade had shorn through his heart. As it was, the point just cut the cloth of his coat, making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank-notes and a stream of gold fell out … It would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity-of anger and hellish rage-which came over the Count’s face. His waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound” (323). Dracula, after noticing that the protagonists had crucifixes and were armed (not to mention that he was outnumbered), escaped by throwing himself out the window. Landing on the ground unharmed, Dracula threatens the protagonists by telling them that they are inexperienced compared to him, and that Mina is his. He sprints away, and Van Helsing tells his comrades that Dracula’s very tone betrays him: he is angry and threatening precisely because he’s afraid of what they can do. His actions are also indicative of his true feelings: why would he run away speedily if he wasn’t scared? Later, Van Helsing determines that Dracula is probably on the run, seeing that all but one of his coffins were destroyed. He pragmatically uses Mina as a way to see where Dracula is: even though she is heavily influenced by him (and has become physically weak) and is in danger of becoming a vampire, she can still provide a link to where he is. Using hypnosis, Mina tells Van Helsing that even though she can’t see anything, she can hear unimpeded from Dracula’s perspective: waves can be heard, as well as the sounds of people above deck who are preparing to leave port. Van Helsing states with finality that Dracula is indeed trying to escape: “‘We can know now what was in the Count’s mind when he seize that money, though Jonathan’s so fierce knife put him in the danger that even he dread. He meant escape … He saw that with but one earth-box left, and a pack of men following like dogs after a fox, this London was no place for him’” (330-1). Van Helsing asks for Harker, Mina, Morris, and Seward to come with him to finish their journey by tracking down and destroying Dracula. That is, if they don’t utilize the opportunity to finish Dracula off, he will continue to victimize people over the ages, and once Mina dies, she will become a vampire due to having been bitten by one, as well as ingesting its blood. The group swiftly chases Dracula, and are constantly on their toes: they embark on a ship to follow him to Transylvania, and split up to find him. Van Helsing and Mina are the first to reach Dracula’s castle. During the night, Dracula’s three brides try to prey on them, as they entreat Mina to not resist the process of vampirism. Mina, horrified, tells Van Helsing to slay her and do what has to be done if she does become an undead herself. Van Helsing promises her to do so, and, to protect them from the vampires, made a circle around them (in mythology, circles generally represent inclusion and exclusion: supernatural beings cannot enter the circle due to it having no opening). The circle proves effective, and they remain safe for the entire night from the vampires.
When the morning comes, Van Helsing leaves Mina in the circle and goes to Dracula’s castle to make preparations. That is, he breaks down the doors with a blacksmith hammer, and enters the rooms of the three female vampires. Once inside, he slew them all to free them from the state of existence they were currently in: “I knew that there were at least three graves to find … She lay in her Vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder. Ah, I doubt not that in old time, when such things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine, found at the last his heart fail him, and then his nerve. So he delay, and delay, and delay, till the mere beauty and the fascination of the wanton Un-Dead have hypnotise him; and he remain on, and on, till sunset come, and the Vampire sleep be over. Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss-and man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold; one more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the Un-Dead!” (390). After a brief period of deliberation, Van Helsing gathers his nerves and does what has to be done. He repeats the process for the other two vampires, remarking that they truly gave off a feeling of beauty: to deal with this, he refrains from looking at them, and thinks of Mina, who requires his help. He eventually comes across Dracula’s tomb, which was the largest, seeing how it had his name emblazoned upon its surface. Van Helsing recounts that he “Then began my terrible task, and I dreaded it. Had it been but one, it had been easy, comparative. But three! To begin twice more after I had been through a deed of horror; for if it was terrible with the sweet Miss Lucy, what would it not be with these strange ones who had survived through centuries, and who had been strengthened by the passing of the years; who would, if they could, have fought for their foul lives … Oh, my friend John, but it was butcher work” (391). However, after he finished the dreadful deeds, he saw that their faces were at peace, as their existence as vampires had ended: “Had I not seen the response in the first face, and the gladness that stole over it just ere the final dissolution came, as realisation that the soul had been won, I could not have gone further with my butchery. I could not have endured the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writing form, and lips of bloody foam. I should have fled in terror and left my work undone. But it is over! And the poor souls, I can pity them now and weep, as I think of them placid each in her full sleep of death, for a short moment ere fading. For, friend John, hardly had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole body began to melt away and crumble into its native dust, as though the death that should have come centuries agone had at last assert himself and say at once and loud, ‘I am here!’” (392). Before leaving the castle, Van Helsing makes sure that Dracula cannot enter it again by taking the appropriate measures (probably using religious ornaments and garlic as disincentives). After doing so, he goes back to Mina.
Sometime later in the same day, Van Helsing and Mina saw a band of gypsies furiously riding horses with Dracula’s body (in his coffin). It was almost sundown, and it is then described that Harker, Morris, and Seward were chasing after them. Moreover, Mina and Van Helsing had been hiding near Dracula’s castle: when the gypsies drew closer, they emerged from their hiding place with weapons. The gypsies, seeing that they were surrendered, fought fiercely: Quincey was stabbed and bled furiously. However, the protagonists were still able to get to Dracula’s coffin. Prying it open, they found Dracula resting inside: “He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the terrible vindictive look which I knew too well. As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph” (397). However, Dracula was finally ended by Morris and Harker: Harker used his dagger to cut his throat while Morris pierced him in the heart with his bowie knife. In Stoker’s own words, “But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Harker’s great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat; whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris’s bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there” (397). The gypsies, seeing that Dracula was dead, fled. The wolves which were close to them also left them alone. Morris bleeds to death, but not before saying that he’s at peace with dying, seeing that the burn mark of the wafer was no longer on Mina’s forehead - she’s finally free of the curse. Sometime after Morris’s death, Mina and Harker had a child who was born on the day Morris died. They name him “Quincey” in his honor. When they went back to Transylvania, they found the castle still standing there, alone in its magnificence, desolation, and age. Arthur and Seward later married (their marriages were said to be successful), and the book ends with the acknowledgment that the “proof” of their experiences were seen only in documents, with no authentic evidence. Van Helsing summarized this phenomenon by saying (with baby Quincey on his knee): “‘We want no proofs; we ask none to believe us! This boy will someday know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake’” (399).
Note: when it came to the page citations, I referred to the collectible edition from Barnes and Noble.
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Personal thoughts:
Dracula by Bram Stoker is an entertaining, powerful novel that is a major influence when it comes to the modern-day vampire, seeing how it largely defined many of their characteristics. Historically, Dracula is based on Vlad the Impaler, an effective but extremely cruel and sadistic ruler of Transylvania: while he managed to protect his country while he was alive from vast armies, he would put down all resistance by having his enemies (as well as criminals) horrifically impaled in various ways (one of the worst involves the stick being forced into their anus and out of their mouth: the victim is then left to die, which usually takes a few agonizing days). I find it a good touch that Stoker describes that vampires have a look of peace upon their dissolution, as this really demonstrates the theme of redemption and freedom from earthly confinement. One of the biggest questions I have for this book is Dracula’s eventual fate: it is quite clear that the Abrahamic god exists in Dracula, so where will Dracula be sent after his death? Personally, I believe he was sentenced to purgatory for quite a while to atone for centuries of misdeeds. I highly recommend Dracula to anyone interested in classics, horror, adventure, and the concept of the vampire.
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