Title: Dracula
Author: Stoker, Bram
Date of First Publication: 26 May 1897
Publisher: Archibald Constable and Company: Westminster, England
Bibliographic Reference: isfdb
Type: Novel
Keywords: QUEER; BYRONIC HERO; RACE and POLITICS; WOMEN WRITING MONSTERS; POSTHUMAN
Critical Summary: Dracula begins with the story of Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor who is traveling across Europe to the Carpathians to meet a wealthy client who wishes to purchase land in England. Harker receives many warnings from the locals as he travels, but nevertheless continues onwards to Castle Dracula. He stays there for a period to conduct his business; though the Count is otherwise mannerly and gracious, he continually presses for details about England, expounds upon his own conqueror bloodline, and places strange restrictions upon his guest, notably not allowing him to wander the castle. Harker realizes that he is being held prisoner and, after a harrowing encounter with three female vampires, attempts his escape.
After several journals and articles strongly implying that Dracula has successfully established himself in England, the novel introduces Mina Murray, the fiancée of Jonathan Harker, and Lucy Westenra, her best friend. As Mina worries about Jonathan and why their correspondence has ceased, Lucy agrees to marry the aristocratic Arthur Holmwood after rejecting Dr. John Seward, the owner of an asylum, and Quincy Morris, a Texan. Soon, she begins to fall ill and have strange sleepwalking episodes. Dr. Seward is perturbed enough to request the aid of his mentor, Abraham Van Helsing, who determines that Lucy is being assaulted by a vampire – none other than Count Dracula himself. Though he and the other three men make attempts to save her, notably taking turns giving her blood transfusions, she eventually dies; at this point, the three are forced to brutally slay her in her vampirized form.
Meanwhile, Jonathan arrives back in England, traumatized and with only foggy memories of what occurred in Castle Dracula. He is reunited with and marries Mina. They, the three men, and Van Helsing begin to formulate plans to drive Dracula out of England. The vampire retaliates by forcing Mina to drink his blood, which creates a psychic connection between them and causes her to take on a partial vampirism. The group makes the most of this bad situation by utilizing this psychic connection to track Dracula’s movements, successfully driving him back to his homeland. The men finally destroy the Count once and for all, though Quincey Morris dies in the battle. Years later, Jonathan and Mina Harker have a son whom they name Quincey in their fallen comrade’s honor.
Dracula and Frankenstein both have their genesis in the same night of 1816. While Mary Shelley began work on her seminal novel, Lord Byron produced a fragment that became the inspiration for Polidori’s The Vampyre, which codified the modern Byronic vampire most famously exemplified by Stoker’s work. Dracula also draws upon the tradition of using Frankenstein’s creature as a stand-in for what is threateningly foreign. Less interested in creating a sympathetic monster than Shelley, Stoker elects to describe his villain in orientalist terms that emphasize his mixed and thus suspect heritage. The evolution of the foreign Frankenstein is apparent; originally associated with the troublesome Irish, the monster appears here as a manifestation of colonialist anxieties about racial purity and miscegenation (hence the Count’s proclivity for preying exclusively on young white women). Both novels also have shades of the queer mother as monster: Victor Frankenstein, in giving “birth” to his Creature and then abandoning it, becomes a monstrous mother of sorts, and Lucy Westenra, who dies while poised to procreate within the sanctioned context of marriage and preys upon children as a vampire, is transformed into a grotesque, aggressive, masculinized parody of motherhood. Dracula’s homosocial possessiveness of Harker and Victor’s powerful bond with the Creature also serve as reflections of each other.
Administrative Notes: Adriana Lora, CSUF. Edited by Gareth O’Neal and Melanie Yogurtian, CSUF