Dracula is an 1897Gothichorror novel by Irish authorBram Stoker. The narrative isrelated through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitorJonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of aTransylvanian nobleman,Count Dracula. Harker flees after learning that Dracula is avampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town ofWhitby. A small group, led byAbraham Van Helsing, hunts and kills him.
The novel was mostly written in the 1890s, and Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes, drawing extensively fromfolklore andhistory. Scholars have suggested various figures as the inspiration for Dracula, including the Wallachian princeVlad the Impaler and the CountessElizabeth Báthory, but recent scholarship suggests otherwise. He probably found the name Dracula in Whitby's public library while on holiday, selecting it because he thought it meant 'devil' in Romanian.
Following the novel's publication in May 1897, some reviewers praised its terrifying atmosphere while others thought Stoker included too much horror. Many noted a structural similarity withWilkie Collins'The Woman in White (1859) and a resemblance to the work of Gothic novelistAnn Radcliffe. In the 20th century,Dracula became regarded by critics as a seminal work of Gothic fiction. Scholars explore the novel within the historical context of theVictorian era and regularly discuss its portrayal of race, religion, gender and sexuality.
Dracula is one of the most famous works ofEnglish literature and has been called the centrepiece ofvampire fiction. In the mid-20th century, publishers and film-makers realised Stoker incorrectly filed the novel's copyright in the United States, making its story and characterspublic domain there. Consequently, the novel has been adapted many times. Count Dracula has deeply influenced the popular conception of vampires; with over 700appearances across virtually all forms of media, theGuinness Book of World Records named Dracula the most portrayed literary character.
Plot
Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified Englishsolicitor, visitsCount Dracula athis castle in theCarpathian Mountains to help the Count purchase a house near London. Ignoring the Count's warning, Harker wanders the castle at night and encountersthree vampire women; Dracula rescues Harker, and gives the women a small child bound inside a bag. Six weeks later, Dracula leaves the castle, abandoning Harker to the women. Harker escapes and ends up delirious in aBudapest hospital. Dracula takes a ship called theDemeter for England with boxes of earth from his castle. The captain'slog narrates the crew's disappearance until he alone remains, bound to the helm to maintain course. An animal resembling a large dog is seen leaping ashore when the ship runs aground atWhitby.
Lucy Westenra's letter to her best friend, Harker's fiancéeMina Murray, describes her marriage proposals fromDr John Seward,Quincey Morris, andArthur Holmwood. Lucy accepts Holmwood's, but all remain friends. Mina joins Lucy on holiday in Whitby. Lucy begins tosleepwalk. After Dracula's ship lands in Whitby, he begins to stalk Lucy. Mina receives a letter about her missing fiancé's illness and goes to Budapest to nurse him. Lucy becomes very ill; Seward's old teacher—Professor Abraham Van Helsing—determines the nature of her condition, but he refuses to disclose it, instead diagnosing it as acuteblood-loss. Van Helsing places garlic flowers around her room and makes her a necklace of them. Lucy's mother removes the garlic flowers, not knowing they repel vampires. While Seward and Van Helsing are absent, Lucy and her mother are terrified by a wolf and her mother dies of aheart attack; Lucy dies shortly thereafter. After her burial, newspapers report children being stalked in the night by a "bloofer lady" (beautiful lady), and Van Helsing deduces it is Lucy. Seward, Morris, Holmwood, and Van Helsing go to her tomb and see that she is a vampire. They stake her heart,behead her, and fill her mouth with garlic. Jonathan Harker and his new bride Mina return and join the campaign against Dracula.
Everyone stays at Seward's asylum as the men begin to hunt Dracula. Van Helsing finally reveals that vampires can only rest on earth from their homeland. Dracula communicates with Seward's patient,Renfield, an insane man who eats vermin to absorb their life force. After Dracula learns of the group's plot against him, he uses Renfield to enter the asylum. He secretly attacks Mina three times, drinking her blood each time and forcing Mina to drink his blood on the final visit, cursing her to become a vampire after her death unless Dracula is killed. The men discover that Dracula has distributed his boxes of earth around various properties in London. After sterilizing most of the distributed boxes, the group fails to trap the Count in hisPiccadilly house and learns that Dracula is fleeing to his castle in Transylvania with his last box. Using hypnosis, Van Helsing exploits Mina's faint psychic connection to Dracula to track his movements and they pursue, guided by Mina.
InGalatz, Romania, the hunters split up. Van Helsing and Mina go to Dracula's castle, where the professor destroys the vampire women. Harker and Holmwood pursue Dracula's boat on the river, while Morris and Seward follow them on land. Dracula's box is loaded onto a wagon byRomani men; the hunters attack and rout the Romani. Harkerdecapitates Dracula as Morris stabs him in the heart. Dracula crumbles to dust, freeing Mina from her vampiric curse. Morris is mortally wounded in the fight against the Romani. He dies, at peace knowing that Mina is saved. A note by Jonathan Harker seven years later states that the Harkers have a son, named Quincey after their friend.
Background
Author
Bram Stoker was born inClontarf, Dublin on 8 November 1842 as the third of seven children. A sickly child, he was homeschooled before attending a private day school.[1] Stoker attendedTrinity College Dublin in the 1860s and began writing theatre reviews in the early 1870s. After Stoker wrote a review of a performance by stage actorHenry Irving, the two became friends. In 1878, Irving offered Stoker a job as the business manager of London'sLyceum Theatre, which he accepted. He marriedFlorence Balcombe later that year.[2] Biographer Lisa Hopkins notes that this role required Stoker to be sociable and introduced him to the elites ofVictorian London. Nonetheless, Stoker described himself as a private person who closely guarded his thoughts.[3]
Stoker supplemented his theatre income by writingromance andsensation novels,[4][5] but was more closely identified during his lifetime with the theatre than he was with the literary world.[6] By the time of his death in 1912, he had published 18 books.[7]Dracula was his seventh published book, followingThe Shoulder of Shasta (1895) and precedingMiss Betty (1898).[8] Stoker's great-nephew,Daniel Farson, wrote that Stoker may have died from syphilis, but this is widely disputed by scholars.[a] Novelist and playwrightHall Caine, a close friend of Stoker's,[b] wrote in Stoker's obituary inThe Daily Telegraph that—besides hisbiography on Irving—Stoker wrote only "to sell" and "had no higher aims".[13]
Inspiration
Henry Irving is widely considered to have inspired Dracula.
Folkloric vampires predate Stoker's Dracula by hundreds of years.[14] Stoker adopted some characteristics of folkloric vampires for his own, such as their aversion to garlic and staking as a means of killing them.[15] He invented other attributes—for example, Stoker's vampires must be invited into one's home, sleep on earth from their homeland and have no reflection in mirrors.[16] Sunlight is not fatal to Dracula in the novel—this was an invention of the unauthorisedDracula filmNosferatu (1922)—but it does weaken him.[17][18] Some of Stoker's inventions applied unrelated lore to vampires for the first time; for example, Dracula has no reflection because of a folkloric concept that mirrors show the human soul.[18] Some Irish scholars have suggestedIrish folklore as an inspiration for the novel,[19] for example the revenantAbhartach,[19] and the 11th-century High King of IrelandBrian Boru.[20][c]Dracula scholarElizabeth Miller notes that in his childhood Stoker was exposed to supernatural tales and Irish oral history involving premature burials and staked bodies.[22]
There is almost unanimous consensus that Dracula was inspired, in part, by Henry Irving. Scholars note the Count's tall and lean physique and aquiline nose,[27] withDracula scholarWilliam Hughes specifically citing the influence of Irving's performance asShylock in aLyceum Theatre production ofThe Merchant of Venice.[28] Stoker's contemporaries remarked upon the similarity.[29] Stoker had praised a performance of Irving as "a wonderful impression of a dead man fictitiously alive [with eyes like] cinders of glowing red from out the marble face".[30]Louis S. Warren writes thatDracula was founded on "the fear and animosity his employer inspired in him".[31][d] Miller contests this, describing Stoker's attitude towards him as "adulation".[33]
Historical figures have been suggested as inspirations for Count Dracula but there is no consensus. In a 1972 book,Raymond T. McNally andRadu Florescu popularised the idea thatÁrmin Vámbéry supplied Stoker with information aboutVlad Dracula, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler.[34][e] Their investigation, however, found nothing about "Vlad, Dracula, or vampires" within Vámbéry's published papers,[36] nor in Stoker's notes about their meeting.[35] Miller calls the link to Vlad III "tenuous", indicating that Stoker incorporated a large amount of "insignificant detail" from his research, andrhetorically asking why he would omit Vlad III's infamous cruelty.[37][f] McNally additionally suggested in 1983 that the crimes ofElizabeth Báthory inspired Stoker.[40][g] A book used by Stoker for research,The Book of Were-Wolves bySabine Baring-Gould, does contain some information on Báthory, but Stoker never took notes from the short section devoted to her.[43] Miller and her co-authorRobert Eighteen-Bisang concur that there is no evidence Báthory inspired Stoker.[44][h][i]
Textual history
Composition
Handwritten notes about the novel's characters
Prior to writing the novel, Stoker researched extensively, assembling over 100 pages of notes, including chapter summaries and plot outlines.[47][j] Stoker undertook some of his research at a library at Whitby in the summer of 1890 but most was done at theLondon Library.[49] The earliest dated notes are from 8 March 1890, comprising an outline of the novel's opening.[50] Joseph S. Beirman notes that it differs from the final novel "in only a few details": The Count and Harker are not given names. The wordvampire is not used explicitly, but it depicts the Count's possessive fury over Harker and a female who attempts "to kiss him not on lips but throat".[51][50] In February 1892, Stoker wrote a 27-chapter outline of the novel; according to Miller, "all the key pieces of the jigsaw were in place".[52]
Stoker's notes reveal other scrapped concepts. Joseph S. Bierman says that Stoker always intended to write an epistolary novel but originally set it inStyria instead of Transylvania.[51] Other concepts from the notes include a German professor called Max Windshoeffel confronting a "Count Wampyr" and one of the vampire hunters would have been slain by awerewolf.[53][k] Stoker biographerBarbara Belford notes evidence that Stoker intended to write adetective story, with a detective called Cotford and apsychical investigator called Singleton.[55]
Stoker took the name Dracula fromWilliam Wilkinson's history of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820),[21] which he probably found in Whitby's public library while holidaying there in 1890.[56] Stoker copied the following footnote from the book: "Dracula means devil. Wallachians were accustomed to give it as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous by courage, cruel actions or cunning".[57]
Stoker stated that it took him about three years to write the novel, and it is likely that he wrote most of the manuscript during his summer holidays inCruden Bay, Scotland from 1893 to 1896.[58] Stoker generally wrote in spare time from his duties as Irving's business manager, and the long gestation of the novel is indicative of the importance he placed on it.[59][60]
Early Stoker biographer Barbara Belford noted the novel looked "shabby" because of a last-minute title change;[61] the printer's copy of the typescript, with hand-written amendments, is titledThe Un-Dead.[62][l] The surviving typewritten publishing agreement was signed and dated 25 May 1897; Peter Beal ofSotheby's suggests its signing one day before the official publication date indicates that it was a formality.[64] To protect his copyright interest for adaptations,[m] Stoker organised a reading of his stage adaptation of the novel in the week before publication in theLyceum Theatre. A small group, primarily theatre staff, attended the reading, andEdith Craig played Mina.[66]
Bound in yellow cloth and titled in red letters,Dracula was published in May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company. It cost 6shillings.[67] Uncertainty exists around the exact date of publication, but it was probably published on 26 May 1897. Stoker wrote toWilliam Gladstone that the novel would be released on the 26th.[68][n] Paul McAlduff writes that it was published "on or about May 26".[70] Eighteen-Bisang states it could have been published anywhere from late May to June 1897.[71]
Stoker's mother,Charlotte Stoker, enthused about the novel and predicted it would bring her son immense financial success. She was wrong: the novel, although reviewed well, failed to earn Stoker much money and did not establish his critical reputation until after his death.[72] For the first thousand sales ofDracula, Stoker earned no royalties.[5] Following serialisation by American newspapers,Doubleday & McClure published an American edition in 1899 with some textual changes.[61] A cheaper paperback version was published by Constable in 1901, but few copies have survived.[73] The text is around 15% shorter than the original but it is not known if Stoker made the amendments.[74] Since its publication,Dracula has never beenout of print.[75]
An edition of the novel edited by McNally and Florescu in 1979 was the first to includeDracula's "missing chapter", "Dracula's Guest".[76] Bram's widowFlorence Stoker included the chapter as a short story inDracula's Guest and Other Weird Tales (1914), two years after his death.[77] While some commentators have described the prose asDracula's discarded first chapter, Clive Leatherdale contests this, arguing that the material was incorporated into the published novel.[78]
Style
Epistolary structure
Dracula is anepistolary novel.[79] Compared to other elements of the novel, critic David Seed writes that its epistolary structure has been neglected in analyses.[80] Critics note Stoker's decision to structure the novel this way may relate to a 19th-century trend of publishing diaries and travelogue accounts,[81] especially with Harker's account of the journey to Transylvania.[82] Seed writes that Harker's initial four chapters function as a "miniaturised-pastiche-Gothic novel"—replacing Radcliffe's use of theApennine Mountains inThe Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) with theCarpathian Mountains ofTransylvania[83]—and places this within the Gothic tradition ofintertextuality.[84]
David Seed argues that the structure only provides a narrative voice to Dracula's opponents,[85] while Miller writes that the "collaborative narration" reinforces the idea that Dracula must be defeated by a combined effort.[81] Allison Case says Seed views that Dracula's absence generates tension by offering only "tantalizing glimpses" of his activities,[85] while literary criticFranco Moretti writes that it highlights the power struggle between the vampire and his hunters.[86] Similarly, Allison Case views the structure as representing a power struggle between Mina and the male protagonists for "narrative mastery".[87] Seed notes that the narrative's style distances the reader from its plot. Dracula's journey on theDemeter is captured by the captain on thelogbook, then "translated by the Russian consul, transcribed by a local journalist, and finally pasted by Mina into her journal".[88]
Gothic genre
Dracula is an enduring work ofGothic literature,[89] with some critics locating it within the traditions ofIrish Gothic orUrban Gothic.[90][91][92] John C. Tibbetts considersDracula a prototype for later themes in the Gothic genre.[93] The novel is characteristically Gothic in its depiction of the supernatural, preoccupation with the past,[94] and embodying of the racial, gendered and sexual anxieties offin de siècle England.[95] Count Dracula generally represents these tensions: cultural criticJack Halberstam notes that he is masculinised and feminised;[96] Jerrold E. Hogle highlights his attraction to both Jonathan and Mina, and his appearance as racially western and eastern.[97] Miller notes that the Count's physical characteristics were typical of Gothic villains during Stoker's lifetime, specifically citing his hooked nose,pallor, large moustache and thick eyebrows as influenced by his villainous predecessors.[98]Dracula deviates from other Gothic tales before it by firmly establishing its time as the modern era,[99] a point raised by one contemporary reviewer.[100] Writers of the mode were drawn to the Eastern Europe setting because travelogues presented it as a land of primitive superstitions.[101]
Reception
Modern critics frequently write thatDracula had a mixed critical reception upon publication.[102] Carol Margaret Davison, for example, notes an "uneven" response from critics contemporary to Stoker.[67]John Edgar Browning, a scholar whose research focuses onDracula and literary vampires, conducted a review of the novel's early criticism in 2012 and determined thatDracula had been "a critically acclaimed novel".[103][o] Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu'sIn Search of Dracula (1972) mentions the novel's "immediate success".[105][p] Other works aboutDracula also published in 1972 concur; Gabriel Ronay says the novel was "recognised by fans and critics alike as a horror writer's stroke of genius",[106] and Anthony Masters mentions the novel's "enormous popular appeal".[107] Since the 1970s,Dracula has been the subject of significant academic interest; the novel has spawned many nonfiction books and articles, and has a dedicated peer-reviewed journal.[46] Publishers started creating editions aimed at classroom teaching in the 1980s, providing the novel alongside historical context and scholarly analysis.[108] The novel's complexity has permitted a flexibility of interpretation, with Anca Andriescu Garcia describing interest from scholars ofpsychoanalysis,postcolonialism, social class and the Gothic genre.[109]
It is said ofMrs. Radcliffe that, when writing her now almost forgotten romances, she shut herself up in absolute seclusion, and fed upon raw beef, in order to give her work the desired atmosphere of gloom, tragedy and terror. If one had no assurance to the contrary, one might well suppose that a similar method and regimen had been adopted by Mr. Bram Stoker while writing his new novelDracula.
Contemporary reviewers frequently compared the novel to other Gothic writers. Comparisons to novelistWilkie Collins andThe Woman in White (1859) were especially common, owing to similarities in structure and style.[111][q] A review appearing inThe Bookseller notes that the novel could almost have been written by Collins,[112] and an anonymous review inSaturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art wrote thatDracula improved upon the style of Gothic pioneerAnn Radcliffe;[113] Radcliffe was also referenced byThe Daily Mail,[r] which also highlightedThe Mysteries of Udolpho,Frankenstein (1818), andThe Fall of the House of Usher (1839).[110][114] Another anonymous writer described Stoker as "the Edgar Allan Poe of the nineties".[115] Other favourable comparisons to other Gothic novelists included theBrontë sisters andMary Shelley.[116][67]Arthur Conan Doyle sent a letter to Stoker after readingDracula, writing: "The old Professor is most excellent and so are the two girls. I congratulate you with all my heart for having written so fine a book."[117]
Many of these early reviews were charmed by Stoker's treatment of the vampire myth.The Daily Telegraph called it the best vampire story ever written.The Daily Telegraph's reviewer noted that while earlier Gothic works, likeThe Castle of Otranto, had kept the supernatural far away from the novelists' home countries,Dracula's horrors occurred in foreign lands and at home in Whitby andHampstead Heath.[100] An Australian paper,The Advertiser, regarded the novel as simultaneouslysensational and domestic.[118] One reviewer praised the "considerable power" of Stoker's prose and described it asimpressionistic. They were less fond of the parts set in England, finding the vampire suited better to tales set far away from home.[119] The British magazineVanity Fair found Dracula's disdain for garlic unintentionally funny.[120]
Dracula was considered frightening. A review appearing inThe Manchester Guardian in 1897 praised its capacity to entertain, but concluded that Stoker erred in including so much horror.[121] Likewise,Vanity Fair opined that the novel was "praiseworthy" and absorbing, but could not recommend it to those who were not "strong".[120] Stoker's prose was commended as effective in sustaining the novel's horror by many publications.[122] A reviewer for theSan Francisco Wave called the novel a "literary failure"; they elaborated that coupling vampires with frightening imagery, such as insane asylums and "unnatural appetites", made the horror too overt, and that other works in the genre, such asStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), had more restraint.[123]
Context and interpretation
Sexuality and gender
Sexuality and seduction are two of the novel's most frequently discussed themes,[124] and modern critical writings about vampirism widely acknowledge its link to sex and sexuality.[125][126] Across the novel's critical history, Miller writes that theorists have collectively argued that the Count breaks virtually "every Victorian taboo", including "non-procreative sexuality, abnormal sexuality, fellatio, bisexuality, incest and the abuse of children".[127]
Transgressive or abnormal sexuality withinDracula is a broad topic. Some psychosexual critics explore the novel'sdisruption of Victoriangender roles; within the Victorian context, Christopher Craft writes males had "the right and responsibility of vigorous appetite" while women were required to "suffer and be still".[128] Critics highlight the many places in which the novel disrupts these social mores: Jonathan Harker's excitement over the prospect of being penetrated;[129] Dracula's resulting anger and jealousy;[130] and Lucy's transformation into a sexually aggressive predator who drains "vital fluid".[131] Some critics, including professorCarol Senf, argue that the novel reflects anxiety about female sexual awakening as a threat to established norms.[132][133]
Dracula contains no overt homosexual acts, but homosexuality andhomoeroticism are elements discussed by critics.[134] Christopher Craft argues that the primary threat Dracula poses is that he will "seduce, penetrate, [and] drain another male",[135] and reads Harker's excitement to submit as a proxy for "an implicitly homoerotic desire".[135] Victorian readers would have identified Dracula with sexual threat.[136] Some critics note that changes made to the 1899 American version of the text reinforce this subtext, wherein Dracula states he will feed on Harker.[137][138] Critics have variously linked these themes tohomoerotic letters Stoker wrote toWalt Whitman, his friendship withOscar Wilde,[139][s] his intensely emotional relationship with Irving, and contemporary rumours of Stoker's almostsexless marriage.[139][141][142]David J. Skal acknowledged the letters' subtext but cautioned against applyinganachronistic modern sexual labels to Stoker.[143]
Many critics have suggested that the novel reveals a "reactionary response" to theNew Woman phenomenon.[87] This is a late-Victorian term used to describe an emerging class of women with increased social and economic control over their lives.[144][145][146] Several critics describe the battle against Dracula as a fight for control over women's bodies.[147][148] Senf suggests that Stoker was ambivalent about the New Woman phenomenon,[149] while Signorroti argues that the novel's discomfort with female sexual autonomy reflects Stoker's dislike for the movement.[145] Both Lucy and Mina have characteristics associated with the New Woman;[150][t] Mina, who plays an important role in Dracula's defeat, repeatedly expresses contempt for the concept.[152][149] Senf notes that Lucy is punished for expressing dissatisfaction with her social position as a woman. After her transformation into a vampire, her defeat by the vampire hunters symbolises the re-establishment of "male supremacy".[153]
Race
Dracula, and specifically the Count's migration to Victorian England, is frequently read as emblematic ofinvasion literature,[154] and a projection of fears about racial pollution.[155] In an influentialpostcolonialist analysis,[156] Stephen Arata describes the novel's cultural context of mounting anxiety in Britain over the decline of theBritish Empire, the rise of otherworld powers, and a "growing domestic unease" over the morality of imperial colonisation.[157] Arata regards the novel as representing "reverse colonisation": fear of other races invading England and weakening its racial purity.[158] Patricia McKee writes that Dracula represents a negation of white culture while Mina represents "pure whiteness".[159] Dracula can be said to both kill white bodies and turn them into theracial Other in death.[160] Some critics connect the racialisation of Dracula to his depiction as adegenerate criminal.[161][162]
Critics frequently identifyantisemitic themes and imagery in the novel. Between 1891 and 1900, the number of Jews living in England increased sixfold, mainly due to antisemitic legislation andpogroms in eastern Europe.[163] Examples cited by Halberstam of antisemitic connections include Dracula's appearance, wealth, parasitic bloodlust, and "lack of allegiance" to one country.[164][u] Dracula's appearance resembles some other cultural depictions of Jews, such asFagin inCharles Dickens'sOliver Twist (1838), andSvengali ofGeorge du Maurier'sTrilby (1895).[166] Jewish people were frequently described as parasites inVictorian literature; Halberstam highlights fears that Jews would spread diseases of the blood, and one journalist's description of Jews as "Yiddish bloodsuckers".[167] Daniel Renshaw writes that any antisemitism in the text is "semi-subliminal"; he writes that Dracula is not Jewish but does reflect the 19th-century conception of Jewish people. Renshaw frames the novel more broadly as a general suspicion of all foreigners.[168]
The novel's depiction ofSlovaks andRomani people has attracted limited scholarly attention.[169] In the novel, Harker describes the Slovaks as "barbarians" and their boats as "primitive", reflecting his imperialistic condescension towards other cultures.[170] Peter Arnds writes that the Count's control over the Romani and his abduction of young children evoke folk superstitions about Romani people stealing children, and that his ability to transform into a wolf is related to xenophobic beliefs about the Romani as animalistic.[171] Croley argues that Dracula's association with the Romani made him suspect in the eyes of Victorian England, where they were stigmatised owing to beliefs that they ate "unclean meat" and lived among animals.[172]
Religion, superstition and science
Dracula is saturated with religious imagery,[173] but this has traditionally been explored with less frequency by critics.[174] Christopher Herbert regards the novel as aparable about conflict with an enemy who opposes Christ and Christianity,[173] and argues that Van Helsing is characterised as more of a priest than a scientist, "and the novel's main religious authority".[174] Scholars discuss the novel's depiction of religion in relation to late Victorian anxieties about the threat which secularism, scientific rationalism and the occult posed to Christian beliefs and morality.[175] Stoker himself had a lifelong interest insupernatural inquiry,[176] and Herbert writes that he mixes the supernatural and superstitious beliefs with religious elements, resulting in metaphors about moral uncleanness becoming literal elements of the text's "occult reality".[177] Herbert notes that theblood of Christ is important to Christian ritual and imagery,[178] and Richard Noll notes that actual consumption of human blood is one of the oldestJudeo-Christian taboos.[179]
The vampire hunters use many weapons—including Christian practices and symbols (prayer, crucifixes andconsecrated hosts), folkloric practices (garlic, staking and decapitation) and contemporary technology (typewriters,phonographs, telegrams, blood transfusions andWinchester rifles)—in their battle against Dracula.[180][181][182] Sanders argues that Stoker presents Christianity as a religion that can be instrumentalised and incorporated into scientific knowledge.[183] Herbert describes Van Helsing's "Christian purification" of Lucy as punitively addressing her promiscuity, and the resulting framing of Christianity as a means towards the "eradication ofdeviancy".[184]
Political and economic
Critics discuss the novel in relation toBritish rule in Ireland andIrish nationalism. Considerable debate exists over whetherDracula is an Irish novel; while it is largely set in England, Stoker was born in British-ruled Ireland and lived there for the first 30 years of his life.[185][186] Though born into aProtestant family, he was distanced from the religion's more conservative factions.[187]
Raphaël Ingelbien notes that "recognizably nationalist" critics likeTerry Eagleton andSeamus Deane favoured readings of Dracula as "a bloodthirsty caricature of the aristocratic landlord" where the vampire represents the death offeudalism.[188] Bruce Stewart changes the focus to the lower classes,[188] suggesting Dracula and his Romani followers more likely represented violence byIrish National Land League activists.[189] Michael Valdez Moses compares Dracula to the disgracedCharles Stewart Parnell, leader of theIrish Home Rule movement from 1880 to 1882.[187][190] Robert Smart argues that Stoker's experience during theGreat Famine (1845–1852) influenced the novel,[191] with Stewart also noting this as historical context.[185]
Some critics discuss Count Dracula'snoble title. Literary criticFranco Moretti writes that he is an aristocrat "only in a manner of speaking", citing his lack of servants, simple clothing, and lack of aristocratic hobbies. Moretti suggests that Dracula's blood thirst represents capital's desire to accumulate more capital.[192] More generally, Moretti argues the novel evinces cultural anxiety about foreigncapitalist monopolies functioning as a return of feudalism.[193] Chris Baldick maintains this line of analysis, describing Dracula as an undead symbol of feudalism but concluding that the novel is more concerned with "sexual and religious terrors".[194] Mark Neocleous writes that Dracula symbolises the victory of the bourgeoisie over feudalism.[195] InDas Kapital,Karl Marx compared thebourgeoisie's exploitation ofworkers to a vampire draining blood.[196] He uses vampires as a metaphor three times inDas Kapital, but these predate the writing ofDracula.[197]
Disease
Contagious disease was a topic of social and medical concern in late Victorian England.[198] Vampirism can represent disease, being both an initial infection and the resulting illness.[199] The novel characterises vampirism with terms fromsocial degeneration theory,[200] an 18th- and 19th-century social and biological concept arising from fear over the deterioration of the "human condition";[201] Victorian psychiatry, known then as "alienism";[202] and anthropology.[203] Theories of degeneracy propagated Victorian-era beliefs about poor moral character beingtransmissible like a pathogen.[200] Halberstam writes that Dracula and Renfield's relationship suggests that vampirism is "a psychological disorder, an addictive activity".[204] He notes that Renfield, and by association Dracula, is described by doctors using terminology more appropriate for describing animals.[204]Brian Aldiss writes that Count Dracula represents the initial disease while Renfield's madness is a symptom of advanced infection.[205] Halbertstam highlights that disease was frequently associated with Jews during the period.[206]Sexually transmitted infection, particularlysyphilis, is a frequent topic.[207] Literary critic Martin Willis writes that the novel depicts Victorian discourse over the origin, cause and treatment of disease, especially in the context of Lucy's treatment and eventual death.[199]
Dracula has been adapted many times across virtually all forms of media. ScholarsJohn Edgar Browning andCaroline Joan S. Picart note that the novel and its characters have been adapted for film, television, video games and animation over 700 times, with nearly 1000 additional appearances in comic books and on the stage;[208] in 2015, theGuinness Book of World Records named Dracula the most portrayed literary character, noting he had appeared almost twice as much as Conan Doyle'sSherlock Holmes.[209] Literary criticRoberto Fernández Retamar deemed Count Dracula—alongsideFrankenstein's monster,Mickey Mouse andSuperman—to be a part of the "hegemonic Anglo-Saxon world['s] cinematic fodder".[210] Across the world, new adaptations can be produced as often as every week.[211]
Adaptations were produced during Stoker's lifetime. Stoker's first theatrical adaptation (Dracula, or The Undead); was read once at the Lyceum Theatre. While the manuscript was believed lost,[212] theBritish Library have extracts of the novel'sgalley proof with Stoker's handwritten stage directions and dialogue attribution.[65] A Swedish newspaper serialised an adaptation from June 1899 to February 1900 asMörkrets Makter ("Powers of Darkness"). This version is almost twice as long as Stoker's novel, containing elements included in Stoker's notes but not in the published novel. The adaptation contains an author's preface signed "B. S", which Eighteen-Bisang and Miller conclude was not written by Stoker. Although believed lost, the Swedish adaptation was rediscovered and published in 2017.[213] In 1901,Valdimar Ásmundsson translated a heavily abridged version of the Swedish adaptation intoIcelandic under the titleMakt Myrkranna ("Powers of Darkness"). The adaptation included an abridged author's preface, purportedly by Stoker.[214] Scholars knew the Icelandic version had existed since the 1980s because of the preface attributed to Stoker. When the Swedish translation was rediscovered, scholars learned that the Icelandic version had been translated from it rather than Stoker'sDracula.[213]
Visual representations of the Count have changed significantly over time. Early treatments of Dracula's appearance were established by theatrical productions in London and New York. Later prominent portrayals of the character byBéla Lugosi (ina 1931 adaptation) andChristopher Lee (firstly inthe 1958 film and later its sequels) built upon earlier versions. Chiefly, Dracula's early visual style involved a black-red colour scheme and slicked back hair.[208] Lee's portrayal was overtly sexual, and also popularised fangs on screen.[221]Gary Oldman's portrayal inBram Stoker's Dracula (1992), directed byFrancis Ford Coppola and costumed byEiko Ishioka,[222] established a new default look for the character—a Romanian accent and long hair.[208] The assortment of adaptations feature many different dispositions and characteristics of the Count.[223]
Dracula is one of the most famous and influential works ofEnglish literature.[224] Although not the first novel to depict vampires,[225] the work dominates both popular and scholarly treatments ofvampire fiction.[75] For many people, Count Dracula is the first character to come to mind when discussing vampires.[226]Dracula succeeded by drawing together folklore, legend, vampire fiction and the conventions of the Gothic novel.[225] Humanities scholarWendy Doniger described the novel as vampire literature's "centrepiece, rendering all other vampires BS [Before Stoker] or AS [After Stoker]".[227] William Hughes argues that the Count's cultural omnipresence negatively impacted academic analyses of the undead; Dracula is "the reference point" to which all other vampires are compared.[228]
It profoundly shaped the popular understanding of how vampires function, including their strengths, weaknesses, and other characteristics.[229] Bats had been associated with vampires beforeDracula as a result of thevampire bat's existence—for example,Varney the Vampire (1847) included an image of a bat on its cover illustration—but Stoker deepened the association by making Dracula able to transform into one. That was, in turn, quickly taken up by film studios looking for opportunities to usespecial effects.[230] NovelistPatrick McGrath notes that many of the Count's characteristics have been adopted by artists succeeding Stoker in depicting vampires, turning those fixtures into clichés. Aside from the Count's ability to transform, McGrath specifically highlights his hatred of garlic and crucifixes.[231] William Hughes writes critically of the Count's cultural omnipresence, noting that the character of Dracula has "seriously inhibited" discussions of the undead in Gothic fiction.[232]
In the 1930s,Universal Studios initiated development on aDracula film and learned Stoker failed to comply with United States copyright law. This prematurely placed the novel into thepublic domain in the United States.[233][x] It was not until the 1960s that publishers recognised the novel's copyright status. Coinciding with themass-market paperback's rising popularity, publishers began to produce their own versions.[234] Stoker's mistake prevented his descendants from collecting royalties but provided ideal conditions for the novel to endure because writers and producers did not need to pay a licence fee to use the character of Count Dracula.[235]
Notes and references
Notes
^Stoker's great-nephew provided Bram's death certificate to hisgeneral practitioner, who said the cause of death and medical language used was consistent with syphilis.[9] Miller and scholarRobert Eighteen-Bisang said that the language was inconclusive.[10] The syphilis theory was rejected by Stoker scholarsLeslie Shepard andWilliam Hughes and by Stoker's descendant, Ivan Stoker Dixon.[11]
^Dracula is dedicated to Caine using his nickname: "To my dear friend Hommy Beg".[12]
^Jarlath Killeen disparages an "endlessly repeated" and "extremely unlikely" claim that Dracula's name was inspired bydroch fhola, an Irish phrase meaning 'bad blood'.[21]
^Warren replicates an argument by Barbara Belford, writing that Irving was "a self-absorbed and profoundly manipulative man" who "[cultivated] rivalries between his followers", and made Stoker jealous by turning "his gaze to other men, as he did by 1885".[32]
^There is a reference to Vámbéry in the novel, an "Arminius, of Buda-Pesh University", who is familiar with the historical Vlad III and is a friend ofAbraham Van Helsing.[35]
^Miller presented this article at the second Transylvanian Society of Dracula Symposium,[38] but it has been reproduced elsewhere; for example, in theDictionary of Literary Biography in 2005.[39]
^Bathory's crimes might have been exaggerated by her political opponents,[41] as very little is known about her life.[42]
^In 2000, Miller's book-length study,Dracula: Sense and Nonsense, was said by academic Noel Chevalier to correct "not only leadingDracula scholars, but non-specialists and popular film and television documentaries".[45]
^Other critics have concurred with Miller. Mathias Clasen describes her as "a tireless debunker of academicDracula myths".[46] In response to several lines of query as to the historical origin ofDracula, Benjamin H. Leblanc reproduces her arguments in his critical history on the novel.[38]
^The notes were sold by Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, in 1913, to a New York book dealer for £2.2s, (equivalent to UK£208 in 2019). Following that, the notes became the property ofCharles Scribner's Sons, and then disappeared until they were bought by theRosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia in 1970.[48] For a list of works that use Stoker's notes, seeDracula#Studies on Dracula's notes.
^In their annotated version of Stoker's notes, Eighteen-Bisang and Miller dedicated an appendix to what the novel might have looked like had Stoker adhered to his original concept.[54]
^As the typescript under the titleThe Un-Dead bears the copyright date 1897 and the first known advertisement for the novel under the titleDracula appeared on 8 May 1897, Paul McAlduff concludes that the title was changed sometime between 1 January and 8 May that year.[63]
^TheDaily News said it was "published to-day" in an article published May 27.[69]
^Browning identified only three as "wholly or mostly negative"; four as "mixed" in their assessment; ten as "generally positive"; and the rest as positive and possessing no negative reservations. Among the positive reviews, Browning writes that 36 were unreserved in their praise, including publications likeThe Daily Mail,The Daily Telegraph, andLloyd's Weekly Newspaper.[104]
^This footnote provides the page number for the 1994 edition;In Search of Dracula was first published in 1972.
^The full text of all contemporary reviews listed in the bibliography's "contemporary critical reviews" can be found, faithfully reproduced, in John Edgar Browning'sBram Stoker's Dracula: The Critical Feast (2012).[104]
^While some write that Stoker started writing the novel after Wilde'simprisonment for homosexuality in 1895,[140] Stoker had been writingDracula from as early as 1890.[51]
^Allison Case writes that Lucy is "ambiguously linked" to the concept through her "sexual assertiveness", while Mina is connected to the idea through her professional occupation and skills.[151]
^For further reading on the last point,Zygmunt Bauman writes that the perceived "eternal homelessness" of the Jewish people has contributed to discrimination against them.[165]
^Some sources say the legal battle lasted only two,[216] while others give the number as three.[219][220]
^Some sources say that "all prints were ordered destroyed".[219]
^Stoker was required to purchase the copyright and register two copies, but only registered one.[61]
^Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception: "That the sample of reviews relied upon by previous studies [...] is scant at best has unfortunately resulted in the common misconception about the novel's early critical reception being 'mixed'".
^Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception: "Rather, while the novel did receive, on the one hand, a few reviews that were mixed, it enjoyed predominantly a critically strong early print life. Dracula was, by all accounts, a critically-acclaimed novel."
^abBrowning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception.
^Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception: "Dracula's writing was seen by early reviewers and responders to parallel, if not supersede the Gothic horror works of such canonical writers as Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, and Edgar Allan Poe."
Nystrom, Lisa. "Blood, Lust, and the Fe/Male Narrative in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and the Novel (1897)". InBrowning (2009), pp. 63–76.
Browning, John Edgar; Picart, Caroline Joan, eds. (2011).Dracula in Visual Media: Film, Television, Comic Book and Electronic Game Appearances, 1921–2010. McFarland & Co.ISBN978-0-7864-3365-0.OCLC664519546.
Eighteen-Bisang, Robert; Melton, J. Gordon. "Appendix 1: Dracula in Print. A Checklist". InBrowning & Picart (2011).
Davison, Carol Margaret (1997). "Introduction". In Davison, Carol Margaret (ed.).Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking through the Century, 1897–1997. Dundurn Press.ISBN978-1-55488-105-5.OCLC244770292.
Herbert, Christopher (2019).Evangelical Gothic: The English Novel and the Religious War on Virtue from Wesley to Dracula. University of Virginia Press.ISBN9780813943404.
Kord, Susanne (2009).Murderesses in German Writing, 1720–1860: Heroines of Horror. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-51977-9.OCLC297147082.
Leblanc, Benjamin H. (1997). "The Death of Dracula: A Darwinian Approach to the Vampire's Evolution". In Davison, Carol Margaret (ed.).Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking through the Century, 1897–1997. Dundurn Press.ISBN978-1-55488-105-5.OCLC244770292.
McGrath, Patrick (1997). "Preface: Bram Stoker and his Vampire". In Davison, Carol Margaret (ed.).Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking through the Century, 1897–1997. Dundurn Press.ISBN978-1-55488-105-5.OCLC244770292.
Noll, Richard, ed. (1992).Vampires, Werewolves, and Demons: Twentieth-Century Reports in the Psychiatric Literature. Brunner/Mazel.ISBN978-0-87630-632-1.
Skal, David J. (2016).Something in the Blood: the Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula (1st ed.). Liveright Publishing Corporation.ISBN978-1-63149-010-1.
Tibbetts, John C. (2011).The Gothic Imagination: Conversations on Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction in the Media (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-0-230-11816-4.OCLC704384802.
Moses, Michael Valdez (1997). "The Irish Vampire: Dracula, Parnell, and the Troubled Dreams of Nationhood".Journal X: A Journal in Culture and Criticism.2 (1).
Houston, Gail Turley (2005).From Dickens to Dracula: Gothic, Economics, and Victorian Fiction. Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-511-12624-7.OCLC61394818.
Hughes, William (2000).Beyond Dracula: Bram Stoker's Fiction and Its Cultural Context. Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-1-349-40967-9.OCLC1004391205.
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