Dracula

“There is a reason why all things are as they are.”

Dracula tells Jonathan not to try the locked doors in the castle, but his statement foreshadows his ability to plan meticulously. Dracula’s move to London requires great resources, coordination, and audacity. He believes in the predestination of his own success, and will model his takeover of London similarly to the control he exerts over his castle.

“Despair has its own calms.” 

Jonathan sleeps after the Count tells him to make the letters. He is beginning to accept his fate; he is trapped. He counts on his dreams to find peace. This foreshadows the importance of dreams to other characters, later in the novel. Their dreams are nightmarish, and they often confuse dreams with reality.

“I am alone in the castle with those awful women. Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is nought in common. They are devils of the Pit!”

Jonathan contrasts Mina with the women at the castle. The major difference as Stoker presents them is that the vampires are lascivious, while Mina is pure. Jonathan thinks of women in terms of their innocence, not of their features. The vampires are not women because they are sexually aggressive and corrupt.

“I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him. I know now what I would do if I were man and wanted to make a girl love me.” 

Lucy writes to Mina about her proposals. She is self-aware, and knows what her motivations for considering marriage are. She sees men as an instrument to reduce fears. Ironically, over the course of the novel it becomes clear that men see themselves that way as well. In Lucy’s case, she experiences horrific fear and the men fail to save her from Dracula’s advances.

“Some of the ‘New Women’ writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won’t condescend in the future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too! There’s some consolation in that.” 

Mina pokes fun at the progressive feminist writers who would like women to have more agency. She finds the idea of men and women seeing each other asleep before marriage as laughable as women proposing to men. The New Woman is not interested in equality between men and women, as far as Mina can tell. The New Woman wants to be in charge.

“I am here to do Your bidding, Master. I am Your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful.” 

Seward hears Renfield muttering in his cell. Renfield’s words show the depths of control that Dracula gains over his victims. His devotion implies that Dracula promises rewards to some of the people he manipulates. In this case, the reader learns later that Dracula has promised Renfield an endless stream of lives to consume.

“Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker.” 

Van Helsing explains the value of knowledge to Seward. Their own memories matter little in their struggle against Dracula, who can only be fought with knowledge. His statement also refers to the whole of scientific and anthropological record. Knowledge is preserved through writing, in part, as a bulwark against the decay of memory.

“We learn from failure, not from success!” 

Van Helsing tells Seward about the value of the scientific method. Every breakthrough is built upon failed experiments. Failure teaches more lessons than success. Failure against Dracula will result in their deaths, their enslavement in eternity, and possibly the corruption or destruction of the human race. Their fight against Dracula is an experiment that they will not have the chance to repeat.

“The blood is the life! The blood is the life!” 

Renfield shouts as he licks up the blood on the floor. Before Seward knows about Renfield’s connection to Dracula, he believes the behavior is insane. But blood is what sustains Dracula, and the blood of others is what gives him eternal life. For Renfield, consuming the human blood on the floor is a more potent version of the lives of the animals he consumes.

“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.” 

Van Helsing is grateful to Mina for the documents. Her resourcefulness helps them create a plan. The men in the novel typically describe Mina as a source of light, hope, and goodness. Van Helsing calls her the light of all lights, foreshadowing the gravity of Dracula’s eventual focus on her. If the light of all lights can be extinguished, no English women are safe.

“It is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”

Van Helsing is more open-minded than other doctors and scientists. He knows that science cannot answer all questions. The scientific method promises answers—or at least sound theories—for those who use it. Empirical evidence is not enough for Van Helsing. To fight Dracula, he cannot rely on science alone; he needs his belief in anecdotal evidence and his mastery of folklore.

“I want you to believe...to believe in things that you cannot.”

Because he was Seward’s teacher, Van Helsing understands Seward’s innate resistance to irrationality and untestable hypotheses. Seward must have faith to help Van Helsing—to believe, if only temporarily, in something that he cannot prove scientifically. But because he chooses to suspend his belief, he is able to witness, empirically and unequivocally, Lucy’s undead status.

“There in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity.” 

Stoker emphasizes that Lucy’s purity is restored when the vampire version of her dies. Her face is sweet and bright, not flushed and aroused. Her death restores her soul to a peaceful state. Van Helsing will witness the same phenomena when he kills the three female vampires at the castle, and Mina will make a similar observation when Dracula dies.

“I suppose there is something in woman’s nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood.”

Mina lets Arthur sob and knows that her presence comforts him. She does not view herself as a powerful figure, but as someone who can assist a man with his grief. Stoker shows that men need to be able to express their grief, but that they are uncomfortable doing it in each other’s presence, because emotional comfort is not one of the men’s duties.

“We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man’s head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that may someday lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child.” 

It is not only the men who characterize women in the novel as having different attributes than men. Mina sees herself as playing a maternal role and being someone who dispenses with petty troubles when men cannot. Many aspires to motherhood, to being a useful wife, and to helping the men in their quest. Her own needs align with their, which is typical of the Victorian ideal of women.

“No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.” 

Quincey Morris sees Mina after she has been comforting Holmwood. When women in the novel are essential, it is only because of the effect they have on men, or as avatars of goodness for men to protect. Mina and Lucy exist only in states of needing protection, offering comfort, or attempting to seduce their victims.

“A year ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific, matter-of-fact nineteenth century?” 

Science can give one the impression that they already know enough about a subject. The achievement of knowledge can diminish the desire to understand. This attitude leads to less progress. It would also make them less safe. To fight vampires, Van Helsing says that they have nothing except superstition and tradition to learn from.

“I am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations. It is too great a strain for a woman to bear. I did not think so at first, but I know better know.” 

Harker watches Mina sleeping. It is ironic that, even though Mina will play a pivotal role in finding and defeating Dracula, her husband does not think she can be included in their planning. In fact, he admits that his mistake was in giving her too much credit, and viewing her as more resilient than has proven to be the case.

“Doctor, as to life, what is it after all? When you’ve got all you require, and you know that you will never want, that is all.” 

This is Renfield’s view on life, when he still hopes that Dracula will grant him eternal life. He corrupts the cheery axiom that a man who has everything he needs is already a rich man. Renfield has life, but he does not have the undead, eternal life that he craves. He will never want, because he will have eternity to pursue his desires if Dracula makes him a vampire.

“I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.”

Dr. Seward’s conversations with Renfield—combined with the fight against Dracula—make Seward question his sanity. He knows that he is abandoning rationality to fight against a being that science dictates should not exist. His confusion is similar to that of the other characters who convince themselves that they are dreaming when they experience something uncanny.

“Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear.”

After being forced to drink Dracula’s blood, Mina’s only thought is that she is ruined for Jonathan. She doesn’t see her defilement as an act perpetrated against herself but rather against Jonathan and their marriage. She is unclean, traumatized, but speaks as if the greatest wrong has been done to her husband. Once again, a Victorian woman’s torment serves as a plot device in a story about heroic Victorian men.

“My revenge is just begun! Your girls that you all love are mine already; and though them you and others shall yet be mine—my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed.” 

Dracula reveals that he planned on using Lucy and Mina as weapons against the men. If he can corrupt women, he knows that their sexual allure will be irresistible to many men. They can help Dracula compound his victims, create more vampires, and spread across England. This is another example of women being used as props. In this case, they are bait for men.

“I want you to bear something in mind though all this dreadful time…That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he too is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality.” 

Mina realizes that Dracula must have also been someone’s victim. She reminds the men that, just as Lucy had no peace while she was driven by pure appetite, Dracula must feel the same way. He is powerful but wretched. Christianity insists that sins can be forgiven and that no souls are beyond salvation. Despite being one of Dracula’s victims, she still views their pursuit of him as a chance to bring him eternal peace.