Dracula

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Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker flees after learning that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham 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 from folklore and history. Scholars have suggested various figures as the inspiration for Dracula, including the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler and the Countess Elizabeth 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 with Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1859) and a resemblance to the work of Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe. In the 20th century, Dracula became regarded as a seminal work of Gothic fiction. Scholars explore the novel within the historical context of the Victorian era and regularly discuss its portrayal of race, religion, gender and sexuality.

Dracula is one of the most famous works of English literature. The character of Count Dracula deeply shaped the popular conception of vampires and influenced future representations. With over 700 appearances across virtually all forms of media, the Guinness Book of World Records named Dracula the most portrayed literary character. The novel itself has been adapted many times, with new adaptations sometimes being produced as often as every week.

Plot

Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, visits Count Dracula at his castle in the Carpathian Mountains to help the Count purchase a house near London. Ignoring the Count's warning, Harker wanders the castle at night and encounters three 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 a Budapest hospital. Dracula takes a ship called the Demeter for England with boxes of earth from his castle. The captain's log 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 at Whitby.

Lucy Westenra's letter to her best friend, Harker's fiancée Mina Murray, describes her marriage proposals from Dr. John Seward, Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. Lucy accepts Holmwood's, but all remain friends. Mina joins Lucy on holiday in Whitby. Lucy begins to sleepwalk. 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 acute blood-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 Mrs. Westenra dies of a heart 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, Arthur 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 his Piccadilly 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.

In Galatz, 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 by Romani men; the hunters attack and rout the Romani. Harker decapitates Dracula as Quincey stabs him in the heart. Dracula crumbles to dust, freeing Mina from her vampiric curse. Quincey 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.

Background

Author

Bram Stoker was born in Clontarf, Dublin on 8 November 1842 as the third of seven children. A sickly child, he was homeschooled before attending a private day school.Template:Sfn Stoker attended Trinity College Dublin in the 1860s and began writing theatre reviews in the early 1870s. After Stoker wrote a review of a performance by stage actor Henry Irving, the two became friends. In 1878, Irving offered Stoker a job as the business manager of London's Lyceum Theatre, which he accepted. He married Florence Balcombe later that year.Template:Sfn Biographer Lisa Hopkins notes that this role required Stoker to be sociable and introduced him to the elites of Victorian London. Nonetheless, Stoker described himself as a private person who closely guarded his thoughts.Template:Sfn

He supplemented his theatre income by writing romance and sensation novels,Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Efn but was more closely identified during his lifetime with the theatre than he was with the literary world.Template:Sfn By the time of his death in 1912, Stoker had published 18 books.Template:Sfn Dracula was Stoker's seventh published book, following The Shoulder of Shasta (1895) and preceding Miss Betty (1898).Template:Sfn Template:Efn Stoker's grand-nephew, Daniel Farson, wrote that Stoker may have died from syphilis, but this is widely disputed by scholars.Template:Efn Novelist and playwright Hall Caine, a close friend of Stoker's,Template:Efn wrote in Stoker's obituary in The Daily Telegraph that—besides his biography on Irving—Stoker wrote only "to sell" and "had no higher aims".Template:Sfn

Inspiration

Drawing of Henry Irving on stage with right hand extended upright

Henry Irving is widely considered to have inspired Dracula

Folkloric vampires predate Stoker's Dracula by hundreds of years.Template:Sfn Stoker adopted some characteristics of folkloric vampires for his own, such as their aversion to garlic and staking as a means of killing them.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Sunlight is not fatal to Dracula in the novel—this was an invention of the unauthorised Dracula film Nosferatu (1922)—but it does weaken him.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Some Irish scholars have suggested Irish folklore as an inspiration for the novel,Template:Sfn for example the revenant Abhartach,Template:Sfn and the 11th-century High King of Ireland Brian Boru.Template:Sfn Template:Efn Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller notes that in his childhood Stoker was exposed to supernatural tales and Irish oral history involving premature burials and staked bodies.Template:Sfn

Count Dracula has literary progenitors. John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819) includes an aristocratic vampire with powers of seduction.Template:Sfn The lesbian vampire of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) can transform into a cat, as Dracula can transform into a dog.Template:Sfn Dracula resembles earlier Gothic villains in appearance,Template:Sfn with Miller comparing him to the villains of Ann Radcliffe's The Italian (1796) and Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk (1796).Template:Sfn

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,Template:Sfn with Dracula scholar William Hughes specifically citing the influence of Irving's performance as Shylock in a Lyceum Theatre production of The Merchant of Venice.Template:Sfn Stoker's contemporaries remarked upon the similarity.Template:Sfn 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".Template:Sfn Louis S. Warren writes that Dracula was founded on "the fear and animosity his employer inspired in him".Template:Sfn Template:Efn Miller contests this, describing Stoker's attitude towards him as "adulation".Template:Sfn

Historical figures have been suggested as inspirations for Count Dracula but there is no consensus. In a 1972 book, Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu popularised the idea that Ármin Vámbéry supplied Stoker with information about Vlad Dracula, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler.Template:Sfn Template:Efn Their investigation, however, found nothing about "Vlad, Dracula, or vampires" within Vámbéry's published papers,Template:Sfn nor in Stoker's notes about their meeting.Template:Sfn Miller calls the link to Vlad III "tenuous", indicating that Stoker incorporated a large amount of "insignificant detail" from his research, and rhetorically asking why he would omit Vlad III's infamous cruelty.Template:Sfn Template:Efn McNally additionally suggested in 1983 that the crimes of Elizabeth Báthory inspired Stoker.Template:Sfn Template:Efn A book used by Stoker for research, The Book of Were-Wolves, does contain some information on Báthory, but Stoker never took notes from the short section devoted to her.Template:Sfn Miller and her co-author Robert Eighteen-Bisang concur that there is no evidence Báthory inspired Stoker.Template:Sfn Template:Efn Template:Efn

Textual history

Composition

The author's handwritten notes about the novel's characters

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.Template:Sfn Template:Efn Stoker undertook some of his research at a library at Whitby in the summer of 1890 but most was done at the London Library.Template:Sfn The earliest dated notes are from 8 March 1890, comprising an outline of the novel's opening.Template:Sfn 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 word vampire 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".Template:Sfn Template:Sfn 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".Template:Sfn

Stoker's notes reveal other scrapped concepts. Bierman says that Stoker always intended to write an epistolary novel but originally set it in Styria instead of Transylvania.Template:Sfn 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 a werewolf.Template:Sfn Template:Efn Stoker biographer Barbara Belford notes evidence that Stoker intended to write a detective story, with a detective called Cotford and a psychical investigator called Singleton.Template:Sfn

Stoker took the name Dracula from William Wilkinson's history of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820),Template:Sfn which he probably found in Whitby's public library while holidaying there in 1890.Template:Sfn 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".Template:Sfn

Stoker stated that 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 in Cruden Bay, Scotland from 1893 to 1896.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Publication

Book cover of 1899 edition. It has the name and title of the novel on a yellow-orange cover, depicting Dracula's castle upon a hill

1899 first American edition, Doubleday & McClure, New York

Early Stoker biographer Barbara Belford noted the novel looked "shabby" because of a last-minute title change;Template:Sfn the printer's copy of the typescript, with hand-written amendments, is titled The Un-Dead.Template:Sfn Template:Efn The surviving typewritten publishing agreement was signed and dated 25 May 1897; Peter Beal of Sotheby's suggests its signing one day before the official publication date indicates that it was a formality.Template:Sfn To protect his copyright interest for adaptations,Template:Efn Stoker organised a reading of his stage adaptation of the novel in the week before publication in the Lyceum Theatre. A small group, primarily theatre staff, attended the reading, and Edith Craig played Mina.Template:Sfn

Bound in yellow cloth and titled in red letters, Dracula was published in May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company. It cost 6 shillings.Template:Sfn Uncertainty exists around the exact date of publication, but it was probably published on 26 May 1897. Stoker wrote to William Gladstone that the novel would be released on the 26th.Template:Sfn Template:Efn Paul McAlduff writes that it was published "on or about May 26".Template:Sfn Eighteen-Bisang states it could have been published anywhere from late May to June 1897.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn For the first thousand sales of Dracula, Stoker earned no royalties.Template:Sfn Following serialisation by American newspapers, Doubleday & McClure published an American edition in 1899 with some textual changes.Template:Sfn A cheaper paperback version was published by Constable in 1901, but few copies have survived.Template:Sfn The text is around 15% shorter than the original but it is not known if Stoker made the amendments.Template:Sfn Since its publication, Dracula has never been out of print.Template:Sfn

An edition of the novel edited by McNally and Florescu in 1979 was the first to include Dracula's "missing chapter", "Dracula's Guest".Template:Sfn Bram's widow Florence Stoker included the chapter as a short story in Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Tales (1914), two years after his death.Template:Sfn While some commentators have described the prose as DraculaTemplate:'s discarded first chapter, Clive Leatherdale contests this, arguing that the material was incorporated into the published novel.Template:Sfn

Style

Epistolary structure

Dracula is an epistolary novel.Template:Sfn Compared to other elements of the novel, critic David Seed writes that its epistolary structure has been neglected in analyses.Template:Sfn Critics note Stoker's decision to structure the novel this way may relate to a 19th-century trend of publishing diaries and travelogue accounts,Template:Sfn especially with Harker's account of the journey to Transylvania.Template:Sfn Seed writes that Harker's initial four chapters function as a "miniaturised-pastiche-Gothic novel"—replacing Radcliffe's use of the Apennine Mountains in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) with the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania Template:Sfn—and places this within the Gothic tradition of intertextuality.Template:Sfn

David Seed argues that the structure only provides a narrative voice to Dracula's opponents,Template:Sfn while Miller writes that the "collaborative narration" reinforces the idea that Dracula must be defeated by the combined effort of his opponents.Template:Sfn Allison Case says Seed views that Dracula's absence generates tension by offering only "tantalizing glimpses" of his activities,Template:Sfn while literary critic Franco Moretti writes that it highlights the power struggle between the vampire and his hunters.Template:Sfn Similarly, Allison Case views the structure as representing a power struggle between Mina and the male protagonists for "narrative mastery".Template:Sfn Seed notes that the narrative's style distances the reader from its plot. Dracula's journey on the Demeter is captured by the captain on the logbook, then "translated by the Russian consul, transcribed by a local journalist, and finally pasted by Mina into her journal".Template:Sfn

Gothic genre

Dracula is an enduring work of Gothic literature,Template:Sfn with some critics locating it within the traditions of Irish Gothic or Urban Gothic.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn John C. Tibbetts considers Dracula a prototype for later themes in the Gothic genre.Template:Sfn The novel is characteristically Gothic in its depiction of the supernatural, preoccupation with the past,Template:Sfn and embodying of the racial, gendered and sexual anxieties of fin de siècle England.Template:Sfn Count Dracula generally represents these tensions: cultural critic Jack Halberstam notes that he is masculinised and feminised;Template:Sfn Jerrold E. Hogle highlights his attraction to both Jonathan and Mina, and his appearance as racially western and eastern.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Dracula deviates from other Gothic tales before it by firmly establishing its time as the modern era,Template:Sfn a point raised by one contemporary reviewer.Template:Sfn Writers of the mode were drawn to the Eastern Europe setting because travelogues presented it as a land of primitive superstitions.Template:Sfn

Reception

Modern critics frequently write that Dracula had a mixed critical reception upon publication.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "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'".</ref> Carol Margaret Davison, for example, notes an "uneven" response from critics contemporary to Stoker.Template:Sfn John Edgar Browning, a scholar whose research focuses on Dracula and literary vampires, conducted a review of the novel's early criticism in 2012 and determined that Dracula had been "a critically acclaimed novel".<ref>Template:Harvnb: "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."</ref>Template:Efn Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu's In Search of Dracula (1972) mentions the novel's "immediate success".Template:Sfn Template:Efn Other works about Dracula 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",Template:Sfn and Anthony Masters mentions the novel's "enormous popular appeal".Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Publishers started creating editions aimed at classroom teaching in the 1980s, providing the novel alongside historical context and scholarly analysis.Template:Sfn The novel's complexity has permitted a flexibility of interpretation, with Anca Andriescu Garcia describing interest from scholars of psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, social class and the Gothic genre.Template:Sfn

Template:Quote box Contemporary reviewers frequently compared the novel to other Gothic writers. Comparisons to novelist Wilkie Collins and The Woman in White (1859) were especially common, owing to similarities in structure and style.Template:Sfnm Template:Efn A review appearing in The Bookseller notes that the novel could almost have been written by Collins,Template:Sfn and an anonymous review in Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art wrote that Dracula improved upon the style of Gothic pioneer Ann Radcliffe;Template:Sfn Radcliffe was also referenced by The Daily Mail,Template:Efn which also highlighted The Mysteries of Udolpho, Frankenstein (1818), and The Fall of the House of Usher (1839).Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Another anonymous writer described Stoker as "the Edgar Allan Poe of the nineties".Template:Sfn Other favourable comparisons to other Gothic novelists included the Brontë sisters and Mary Shelley.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "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."</ref>Template:Sfn Arthur Conan Doyle sent a letter to Stoker after reading Dracula, 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."Template:Sfn

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 TelegraphTemplate:'s reviewer noted that while earlier Gothic works, like The Castle of Otranto, had kept the supernatural far away from the novelists' home countries, DraculaTemplate:'s horrors occurred in foreign lands and at home in Whitby and Hampstead Heath.Template:Sfn An Australian paper, The Advertiser, regarded the novel as simultaneously sensational and domestic.Template:Sfn One reviewer praised the "considerable power" of Stoker's prose and described it as impressionistic. They were less fond of the parts set in England, finding the vampire suited better to tales set far away from home.Template:Sfn The British magazine Vanity Fair found Dracula's disdain for garlic unintentionally funny.Template:Sfn

Dracula was considered frightening. A review appearing in The Manchester Guardian in 1897 praised its capacity to entertain, but concluded that Stoker erred in including so much horror.Template:Sfn Likewise, Vanity Fair opined that the novel was "praiseworthy" and absorbing, but could not recommend it to those who were not "strong".Template:Sfn Stoker's prose was commended as effective in sustaining the novel's horror by many publications.Template:Sfnm A reviewer for the San 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 as Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), had more restraint.Template:Sfn

Context and interpretation

Sexuality and gender

Sexuality and seduction are two of the novel's most frequently discussed themes,Template:Sfnm and modern critical writings about vampirism widely acknowledge its link to sex and sexuality.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Across the novel's critical history, Miller writes that theorists have collectively argued that the Count breaks virtually "every Victorian taboo", including non-procreative sex (including fellatio), transgressive sexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality.Template:Sfn

Transgressive or abnormal sexuality within Dracula is a broad topic. Some psychosexual critics focus on the disruption of Victorian gender 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".Template:Sfn Critics highlight the many places in which the novel disrupts these social mores: Jonathan Harker's excitement over the prospect of being penetrated;Template:Sfn Dracula's resulting anger and jealousy;Template:Sfn and Lucy's transformation into a sexually aggressive predator who drains "vital fluid".Template:Sfn Some critics, including professor Carol Senf, argue that the novel reflects anxiety about female sexual awakening as a threat to established norms.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Dracula contains no overt homosexual acts, but homosexuality and homoeroticism are elements discussed by critics.Template:Sfn Christopher Craft argues that the primary threat Dracula poses is that he will "seduce, penetrate, [and] drain another male",Template:Sfn and reads Harker's excitement to submit as a proxy for "an implicitly homoerotic desire".Template:Sfn Victorian readers would have identified Dracula with sexual threat.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Critics have variously linked these themes to homoerotic letters Stoker wrote to Walt Whitman, his friendship with Oscar Wilde,Template:Sfn Template:Efn his intensely emotional relationship with Irving, and contemporary rumours of Stoker's almost sexless marriage.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn David J. Skal acknowledged the letters' subtext but cautioned against applying anachronistic modern sexual labels to Stoker.Template:Sfn

Many critics have suggested that the novel reveals a "reactionary response" to the New Woman phenomenon.Template:Sfn This is a late-Victorian term used to describe an emerging class of women with increased social and economic control over their lives.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Several critics describe the battle against Dracula as a fight for control over women's bodies.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Senf suggests that Stoker was ambivalent about the New Woman phenomenon,Template:Sfn while Signorroti argues that the novel's discomfort with female sexual autonomy reflects Stoker's dislike for the movement.Template:Sfn Both Lucy and Mina have characteristics associated with the New Woman;Template:Sfn Template:Efn Mina, who plays an important role in Dracula's defeat, repeatedly expresses contempt for the concept.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn 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".Template:Sfn

Race

Dracula, and specifically the Count's migration to Victorian England, is frequently read as emblematic of invasion literature,Template:Sfn and a projection of fears about racial pollution.Template:Sfn In an influential postcolonialist analysis,Template:Sfn Stephen Arata describes the novel's cultural context of mounting anxiety in Britain over the decline of the British Empire, the rise of other world powers, and a "growing domestic unease" over the morality of imperial colonisation.Template:Sfn Arata regards the novel as an instance of "reverse colonisation": fear of other races invading England and weakening its racial purity.Template:Sfn Patricia McKee writes that Dracula represents a negation of white culture while Mina represents "pure whiteness".Template:Sfn Dracula can be said to both kill white bodies and turn them into the racial Other in death.Template:Sfn Some critics connect the racialisation of Dracula to his depiction as a degenerate criminal.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Critics frequently identify antisemitic themes and imagery in the novel. Between 1891 and 1900, the number of Jews living in England increased sixfold, mainly due to antisemitic legislation and pogroms in eastern Europe.Template:Sfn Examples cited by Jack Halberstam of antisemitic connections include Dracula's appearance, wealth, parasitic bloodlust, and "lack of allegiance" to one country.Template:Sfn Template:Efn Dracula's appearance resembles some other cultural depictions of Jews, such as Fagin in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838), and Svengali of George du Maurier's Trilby (1895).Template:Sfn Jewish people were frequently described as parasites in Victorian literature; Halberstam highlights fears that Jews would spread diseases of the blood, and one journalist's description of Jews as "Yiddish bloodsuckers".Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

The novel's depiction of Slovaks and Romani people has attracted limited scholarly attention.Template:Sfn In the novel, Harker describes the Slovaks as "barbarians" and their boats as "primitive", reflecting his imperialistic condescension towards other cultures.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Religion, superstition and science

Dracula is saturated with religious imagery. Christopher Herbert regards the novel as a parable about conflict with an enemy who opposes Christ and Christianity.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Stoker himself had a lifelong interest in supernatural inquiry,Template:Sfn 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".Template:Sfn Herbert notes that the blood of Christ is important to Christian ritual and imagery,Template:Sfn and Richard Noll notes that actual consumption of human blood is one of the oldest Judeo-Christian taboos.Template:Sfn

The vampire hunters use many weapons—including Christian practices and symbols (prayer, crucifixes and consecrated hosts), folkloric practices (garlic, staking and decapitation) and contemporary technology (typewriters, phonographs, telegrams, blood transfusions and Winchester rifles)—in their battle against Dracula.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Sanders argues that Stoker presents Christianity as a religion that can be instrumentalised and incorporated into scientific knowledge.Template:Sfn 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 of deviancy".Template:Sfn

Political and economic

Critics discuss the novel in relation to British rule in Ireland and Irish nationalism. Considerable debate exists over whether Dracula 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.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Though born into a Protestant family, he was distanced from the religion's more conservative factions.Template:Sfn

Ralph Ingelbien notes that "recognizably nationalist" critics like Terry Eagleton and Seamus Deane favoured readings of Dracula as "a bloodthirsty caricature of the aristocratic landlord" where the vampire represents the death of feudalism.Template:Sfnm Bruce Stewart changes the focus to the lower classes,Template:Sfnm suggesting Dracula and his Romani followers more likely represented violence by Irish National Land League activists.Template:Sfn Michael Valdez Moses compares Dracula to the disgraced Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Home Rule movement from 1880 to 1882.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Robert Smart argues that Stoker's experience during the Great Famine (1845–1852) influenced the novel,Template:Sfn with Stewart also noting this as historical context.Template:Sfn

Some critics discuss Count Dracula's noble title. Literary critic Franco 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.Template:Sfn More generally, Moretti argues the novel evinces cultural anxiety about foreign capitalist monopolies functioning as a return of feudalism.Template:Sfn 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".Template:Sfn Mark Neocleous writes that Dracula symbolises the victory of the bourgeoisie over feudalism.Template:Sfn In Das Kapital, Karl Marx compared the bourgeoisie's exploitation of workers to a vampire draining blood.Template:Sfn He uses vampires as a metaphor three times in Das Kapital, but these predate the writing of Dracula.Template:Sfn

Disease

Contagious disease was a topic of social and medical concern in late Victorian England.Template:Sfn Vampirism can represent disease, being both an initial infection and the resulting illness.Template:Sfn The novel characterises vampirism with terms from social degeneration theory,Template:Sfn an 18th- and 19th-century social and biological concept arising from fear over the deterioration of the "human condition";Template:Sfn Victorian psychiatry, known then as "alienism";Template:Sfn and anthropology.Template:Sfn Theories of degeneracy propagated Victorian-era beliefs about poor moral character being transmissible like a pathogen.Template:Sfn Jack Halberstam writes that Dracula and Renfield's relationship suggests that vampirism is "a psychological disorder, an addictive activity".Template:Sfn He notes that Renfield, and by association Dracula, is described by doctors using terminology more appropriate for describing animals.Template:Sfn Brian Aldiss writes that Count Dracula represents the initial disease while Renfield's madness is a symptom of advanced infection.Template:Sfn Halbertstam highlights that disease was frequently associated with Jews during the period.Template:Sfn Sexually transmitted infection, particularly syphilis, is a frequent topic.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Legacy

Adaptations

Template:Further

Man with dark hair, pale skin and wide eyes

Bela Lugosi as Dracula in a 1931 adaptation

Dracula has been adapted many times across virtually all forms of media. Scholars John Edgar Browning and Caroline 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;Template:Sfn in 2015, the Guinness Book of World Records named Dracula the most portrayed literary character, noting he had appeared almost twice as much as Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.Template:Sfn Literary critic Roberto Fernández Retamar deemed Count Dracula—alongside Frankenstein's monster, Mickey Mouse and Superman—to be a part of the "hegemonic Anglo-Saxon world['s] cinematic fodder".Template:Sfn Across the world, new adaptations can be produced as often as every week.Template:Sfn

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,Template:Sfn the British Library have extracts of the novel's galley proof with Stoker's handwritten stage directions and dialogue attribution.Template:Sfn A Swedish newspaper serialised an adaptation from June 1899 to February 1900 as Mörkrets 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.Template:Sfn In 1901, Valdimar Ásmundsson translated a heavily abridged version of the Swedish adaptation into Icelandic under the title Makt Myrkranna ("Powers of Darkness"). The adaptation included an abridged author's preface, purportedly by Stoker.Template:Sfn 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's Dracula.Template:Sfn

The first film to feature Count Dracula was a Hungarian silent film—Károly Lajthay's Drakula halála (Template:Translation). The film allegedly premiered in 1921 but this release date has been questioned by some scholars.Template:Sfn Very little of the film survives, and David J. Skal notes that the cover artist for the 1926 Hungarian edition of the novel was more influenced by the second adaptation of Dracula, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922).Template:Sfn Critic Wayne E. Hensley writes that the narrative of Nosferatu differs significantly from the novel, but that characters have clear counterparts.Template:Sfn Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, initiated legal action against Prana, the studio behind Nosferatu.Template:Sfn The legal case lasted two or three years,Template:Efn with Prana agreeing to destroy all copies in May 1924.Template:Sfn Template:Efn

Man with bloodshot eyes and a wide-mouthed and bloody smile, showing exposed fangs

Christopher Lee as the title character in Dracula (1958)

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 by Béla Lugosi (in a 1931 adaptation) and Christopher Lee (firstly in the 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.Template:Sfn Lee's portrayal was overtly sexual, and also popularised fangs on screen.Template:Sfnm Gary Oldman's portrayal in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), directed by Francis Ford Coppola and costumed by Eiko Ishioka,Template:Sfn established a new default look for the character—a Romanian accent and long hair.Template:Sfn The assortment of adaptations feature many different dispositions and characteristics of the Count.Template:Sfn

Influence

Graffiti image of Dracula, with large fangs, spray-painted onto a shutter

2019 graffiti of Dracula, the archetypal vampire

Dracula is one of the most famous and influential works of English literature.Template:Sfn Although not the first novel to depict vampires,Template:Sfn the work dominates both popular and scholarly treatments of vampire fiction.Template:Sfn For many people, Count Dracula is the first character to come to mind when discussing vampires.Template:Sfn Dracula succeeded by drawing together folklore, legend, vampire fiction and the conventions of the Gothic novel.Template:Sfn Humanities scholar Wendy Doniger described the novel as vampire literature's "centrepiece, rendering all other vampires BS [Before Stoker] or AS [After Stoker]".Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

It profoundly shaped the popular understanding of how vampires function, including their strengths, weaknesses, and other characteristics.Template:Sfn Bats had been associated with vampires before Dracula as a result of the vampire 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 use special effects.Template:Sfn Novelist Patrick 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

In the 1930s, Universal Studios initiated development on a Dracula film and learned Stoker failed to comply with United States copyright law. This prematurely placed the novel into the public domain in the United States.Template:Sfn Template:Efn It was not until the 1960s that publishers recognised the novel's copyright status. Coinciding with the mass-market paperback's rising popularity, publishers began to produce their own versions.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Notes and references

Notes

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References

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Bibliography

Books

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Journal and newspaper articles

Contemporary critical reviews

Websites

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External links

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Dracula at Standard Ebooks
Template:Gutenberg, text version of 1897 edition.
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Journal of Dracula Studies

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