Lecture Notes for Dracula , Bram Stoker
10/25/09Transylvania Is Not England Dracula's Plan for Overthrowing the English Empire The Idle Rich and the Hard Working Middle Classes Silence Equals Death Vampirism and Sexual Deviance Turn of the Century Xenophobia Dracula and Religion The Vampire Hunters are the New Guardians of Their Culture Dracula and Anti-Semitism Religion and Knowledge Technology Suspension of Disbelief Male vs. Female Vampires Dracula and Vlad Tepes Other Information
Transylvania Is Not England: Dracula and Transylvania are the antithesis of Victorian England. Dracula is an Eastern European aristocrat, at the top of the food chain (pun intended) in a medieval economic system unlike the advanced capitalist, alleged meritocracy of Victorian England. Someone like Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming, can be forgiven his aristocratic lineage as he demonstrates middle class morality in that he doesn't attempt to use his position to garner unearned privileges. And he uses his money for good, not for evil, as evidenced by how often he resorts to bribing subordinates or officials in other countries when he wants information.In England, the trains run on time and everything is familiar. In Transylvania, people aren't even on capitalist time, and the inhabitants are mainly superstitious peasants wanting in self assertion. Even their food is "funny."
Dracula is a polygamist. He has three wives (as opposed to the mistresses a civilized Victorian gentleman might have).
Dracula's Plan for Overthrowing the English Empire: Dracula begins his attempted conquest of England by polluting the women. Lucy and Mina are used as objects of exchange in this battle. He can achieve victory if he can appropriate the vessels of the English race. (This is the same logic employed by armies when they rape the daughters, sisters, wives and mothers of the losing troops.) The female vampires Dracula creates further assist him in undermining English civilization. The female vampires are the inversion of Victorian womanhood. They turn to children for sustenance rather than nurturing them, squandering future generations of English citizens for food rather than allowing them to grow up and propagate the values of their culture.
The Idle Rich and the Hard Working Middle Classes: Mina and Lucy offer a comparison of the idle rich and the hard working middle class. It is Mina's middle class morality that gives her the strength to overcome her "uncleanliness" after she's bitten by Dracula, and to help send him to his maker.
Lucy's morality is questionable. While Mina is working hard for her fiancé, learning shorthand and memorizing the train schedules, Lucy is receiving 3 marriage proposals in one day, planning how she'll arrange her furniture, and not writing to her friends.
Dracula himself is a member of the idle aristocracy. He's (literally) a bloodsucking aristocrat, living off the labor of peasants in life, living off their blood in his undeath.
But unlike Lord Godalming, Dracula is an aristocrat from a time when there was no middle class, when aristocrats truly controlled all a country's wealth. And while the world is on the brink of the 20th century, Dracula's Transylvania is an underdeveloped third world country that hasn't changed much in the past 500 years.
Silence Equals Death: Dracula is never allowed to speak for himself. We only know of his through the vampire hunters' collective journal. The vampire's power lies in the disbelief of others. Van Helsing, the Harkers, Godalming, Seward, and Morris all attempt to snare him in a web of words to dispel this disbelief. In this group of people we see a picture of middle class respectability legitimated by the presence of the aristocracy. Godalming is a titled Peer of the Realm, and the other men practice the "new" professions (law, medicine) that have replaced older professions which seek to order and control the world. It's as if this is a group of primitive "spin doctors" who are able to successfully get their version of events out to the media and defeat the other side in a war of public opinion.
The vampire hunters' ability to contain and silence Dracula is facilitated through their use of modern communication technologies such as the typewriter, the wax cylinder phonograph, stenography and the telegraph.
Vampirism and Sexual Deviance: Vampirism is a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases. In Dracula, vampirism can be likened to syphilis. The curse of undeath can be transmitted through pseudo-sexual means--penetration with teeth and an exchange of bodily fluids all done during relatively intimate contact. When this novel was written (1897) syphilis ran rampant through Victorian England. However, at the time, people didn't have a firm understanding of how diseases are transmitted. It was believe that the "dirty" lower orders were responsible for spreading illnesses, and that it was impossible for a gentleman infect someone. Laws in England that briefly regulated prostitution locked up any prostitute suspected of having a venereal disease, but left her mainly middle class clients alone.
Later, when Mina is bitten, she describes herself as being unclean (tainted with a venereal disease). Like a rape victim of the time, Mina is ashamed for allowing Dracula to compromise her virtue.
For vampires, the act of feeding is an intimate act involving penetration and the exchange of bodily fluids. And female vampires are more wanton than they're male counterparts.
Dracula has three wives who try to seduce Jonathan, and they would be successful if not for their husband's interference. And Lucy goes from being a flirt to a vamp after she rises from her grave. Her sexual insatiability is implied earlier when Van Helsing and Seward marvel that she has taken the blood of four healthy men and still needs more to save her.The Vampire Lucy is killed through a sort of rape committed by her fiancé as her two would-be fiancés look on. As they drive the stake through Lucy's heart, her face is a rictus of sexual ecstasy and pain.
More frightening still, men are not easily immune from the vampire's charms. Jonathan has a secret desire that they would kiss him with those red lips. And Arthur has to be prevented from kissing the poisonous lips of his undead fiancé.
When the Count bites Mina, she's forced into a sort of ménage with her unconscious husband in the room.
And there are hints of the Count's own bisexuality. Dracula saves Jonathan from the clutches of his wives because he has other plans for him. And one can only wonder how Renfield became so devoted to the Count.
Turn of the Century Xenophobia: Dracula's menace echoes xenophobic fears at the dawn of the 20th century. During this time, many Eastern Europeans immigrated to England and the United States. These immigrants came from underdeveloped rural areas, and were perceived as backward and dirty by Western Europeans and Americans. They were further Otherized because they were often Catholic and Jewish rather than Protestant. These people also reproduced more prolifically (at least, during the first generation) than did their counterparts in industrialized countries. It was thought that white women (that is, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant women) were committing race suicide by not having lots of children, and that these "savages" from Eastern Europe would overrun the "naturally superior" WASPS. Dracula is the embodiment of this alleged menace.
Dracula and Religion: Dracula is a parody of Christ. Drinking his blood (usually by force) bestows a sort of eternal life, and can be compared to the Catholic mass where, through the miracle of transubstantiation, one partakes of the actual body and blood of Christ.
The vampire is connected to the old pagan religions suppressed by Christianity. Dracula's name comes from a title possessed by Vlad Tepes, one of the actual historical figures on which the Count is very loosely based. Hungarian war lord Vlad Tepes was a member of the Order of the Dragul (the dragon). Dragons themselves were symbols of good luck and fertility in the old pagan religions. Dragons are also related to serpents, which were a symbol of the goddess' power to heal and predict the future. It is significant that Jonathan Harker begins his journey to Transylvania on St. George's Day. St. George is the patron saint of England who allegedly slew the last dragon. He also "converted" many pagan infidels, so it is no surprise he is famous for having slain a dragon, one of the symbols of the old Celtic religions. St. George's Day is also near another pagan holiday, Beltane or Mayday, an old fertility festival.
Dracula himself arrives in England aboard the Demeter a few days after another pagan festival, Lammas or Lughnassadh. Demeter is the goddess of the grain and is responsible for the change of the seasons. Her daughter Persephone is doomed to spend half of the year in Hades with the lord of the underworld, and when she's away from her mother, Demeter refuses to allow the earth to produce and we have fall and winter. But when Persephone returns from the underworld to visit her mother, spring, and later summer arrive. Persephone departs again around Lammas, a major harvest festival. For Pagans, Lammas is when the goddess takes her leave for the next six months and the god arrives to rule the world. The goddess is associated with fertility, while the god is associated with death.
The novel concludes around Samhein, or Halloween, the day when the barriers between this world and the afterlife are lowered and the dead visit the living.
The Vampire Hunters are the New Guardians of Their Culture: Mina, Jonathan, and Lord Godalming all find themselves alone in the world without parental guidance. Arthur's father has just died, and Mr. Hawkins, Jonathan's employer and a father figure to both he and Mina, has also passed away. Now it is up to them to make sure their civilization survives another generation.
Dracula and Anti-Semitism: Dracula himself has characteristics found in anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews--aquiline nose, hairy ears and palms, love of money (in Chapter XXIII when Jonathan stabs Dracula near the heart, gold spills out, and Dracula tries to collect it all before he runs away from the vampire hunters).
Religion and Knowledge: Religion and superstition have more meaning in the underdeveloped east than they do in the developed west. The inhabitants of Transylvania (the East) whose knowledge is based on instincts rather than rational thought are represented in the text as feminine. Early on they're described as appearing fierce, yet wanting in self assertion. The inhabitants of the West employ knowledge based on science and rational thought in their defense.
Technology: While the people of Transylvania readily accept the existence of vampires, witches, and devils in their world, their lack of technological innovation leaves them powerless to fight such monsters. And while the vampire hunters have superior technology, they lack the belief necessary to fight Dracula. Once they can believe in him, and use their communications technologies to get others to believe in him, they can fight him.
Suspension of Disbelief: Dracula is composed of several eye-witness accounts written by the vampire hunters and later put in order, allowing the reader to somewhat suspend disbelief. If more than one person saw the vampire, and the strange occurrences are somewhat corroborated by newspaper accounts, then it must be true.
And Van Helsing himself argues for a sort of suspension of disbelief. He is the most authoritative voice of reason in the text, since he is both a doctor and a lawyer, and knows what's going on. He was also John Seward's teacher, and as such, encourages him to not automatically rule out the existence of vampires because some smaller truth known to him tells him that their very existence is impossible.
Male vs. Female Vampires: Dracula, the only male vampire in this novel, is hideous and animal like in appearance and must use supernatural powers to enthrall sufficiently to get his prey. Female vampires are always beautiful and made more so when they're undead. Their beauty and sexuality is their main power. Women are monsters because they are women--because they're reproductive. Men are monsters because of their reactions to women's bodies (serial killers, for example).
Furthermore, we can view Dracula in this novel as the disease itself, since he is the original vampire, or the oldest of all we are shown in the narrative. Female vampires are the vector for this disease. They are the ones that Dracula has infected and sent out to taint others. Perhaps one reason that women are represented as the vector of infection in thsi novel is because women are frequently perceived as more "open" than men due to their unique role in reproduction.
Dracula and Vlad Tepes: Dracula is based loosley on Vlad Tepes and the folklore surrounding him. Vlad Tepes was a 15th century Hungarian warlord capable of savage brutality, even against his own people, but is much revered in Romania today because he kept others from invading this country. Vlad Tepes is also a distant forbearer of Elizabeth Bathory, better known as the Blood Countess.
Other Information: For more information consult these websites:
- A Comparison of Lillith to Dracula, Carmilla and "Christabel"
- Bram Stoker, Dracula's author.
- Biography of Bram Stoker
- Nosferatu vs. Bram Stoker's Dracula, a comparison of Stoker's novel to the first film version.
A Comparison of Bram Stokers Dracula to Francis Ford Coppola's Film
- A Comparison of Hamilton Deane's play Dracula and the 1931 Universal Studios Film Dracula
vampires and vampire literature.
vampire folklore.A Synopsis of the 1931 Movie Dracula with a Biography of Star Bela Lugosi and Producer Tod Browning