Dracula

The final chapters of the book accelerate in pace, mimicking Dracula’s frantic attempt to escape.

Mina gains greater significance to the plot, but remains underdeveloped. Consider Jonathan’s description of her after she falls asleep: “Mina is sleeping now, calmly and sweetly like a little child. Her lips are curved and her face beams with happiness. Thank God there are such moments still for her” (343). Stoker does not portray her as having depth or ambitions beyond being a good wife and Christian. She is an infantilized prop and a plot device for the men to observe and protect in service of their own Christian glory.

Dracula knows that his dominion over Mina will give him power of the men who love her. On a macro level, given that the reader knows his plans for expansion, his conquest of Mina would be a prelude to his conquest of all English women. Mina intuits this as well, which is why she insists on her death should she become a vampire.

Driving Dracula out of England is the first major victory for the men. They have never seen the vampire on the defensive. Unfortunately, he remains a formidable opponent while on the run.

The female vampires make one last appearance to tempt Van Helsing and to recruit Mina. Like previous descriptions of them, they have “voluptuous lips” (387). Van Helsing is simultaneously beset with the urge to kill them and to give in to their seduction.

The gypsies protect Dracula because they are part of the old, superstitious world that aligns itself against Christianity. They rush Dracula’s coffin to his castle because he is the novel’s most potent symbol of Eastern European power. If they can help him survive, they can help prolong their way of life, thinking, and remain in a world with folk magic, instead of making peace with the modern areas of Europe.

The final chapters are the most suspenseful and fast moving. The men literally race against the setting sun to reach Dracula before he can become mobile at sunset. The weather worsens. This is a reminder that the weather in Eastern Europe is harsher than that shown in England in the novel. The Carpathians are all storms and wind, forces that cannot be restrained or controlled. They are natural phenomena that are presented as unnatural in the novel, because the weather in London—other than descriptions of sunny days—in plays little part in the plot. Outside of England the weather almost serves as another character, a malevolent force that aids Dracula.

When Van Helsing kills the female vampires, they are so beautiful in their repose that he grows weak and nearly feels remorse. He hesitates, but knows that when the first one wakes, “The beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss—and a man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold; one more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the Un-Dead!” (390). When he opens the coffin of the most beautiful vampire, “She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me, which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers, made my head whirl with new emotion” (391). Stoker uses Van Helsing’s momentary reluctance to show the consequences of giving in to temptation. If he allowed the seduction, he would become a “victim.” A Victorian man whose morals crumble under the weight of lust simply becomes another indulgent, wanton vampire. Van Helsing resists because the “instinct of man” is to protect women, even from their own sexuality. Rather than allow the temptation, he releases the souls of the female vampires by killing them and granting them peace.

When Dracula dies, he is also peaceful. Throughout the novel, he has been confident, driven, cruel, aggressive, and powerful. There has never been any indication that he is not at peace with his situation. But Mina’s observation holds greater weight since it is she that most often notices when men are calm—and is often responsible for that calmness: “A look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there” (397). Dracula can no longer harm anyone, and one can argue that the peace on his face—similar to that of Lucy’s face when she died—suggests that even his soul was redeemable.

The novel’s brief coda demonstrates that, having taken righteous action, the men all move on with their lives and all is well. Van Helsing suggests that the takeaway of the entire story is that men loved Mina enough to risk their lives for her. Mina represents everything the Victorians considered good and worthwhile: righteousness, chastity, an ability to bolster and embolden men, and the maternal instinct. The modern world has vanquished the old world, and the enlightened West has once again shown itself to be more than a match for the superstitious East.