Dracula

A novel in documents

Dracula by Bram Stoker came out in 1897. Stoker was an Irish writer who worked as the business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. He spent years researching Eastern European folklore and took the name Dracula from Vlad III, a fifteenth-century prince of Wallachia, though the novel uses little of Vlad's history. Vampire stories existed before Stoker, but his book fixed the image of the vampire for the next century.

The novel has no single narrator. It is a collection of documents: the journals of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray, the letters of Lucy Westenra, the phonograph diary of Dr. John Seward, telegrams, a ship's log and newspaper reports. Mina later arranges them in order. The method makes the story feel like evidence and lets the reader know more than any one character.

The main themes are modern science and technology against ancient evil, the fear of invasion from the East, sexuality and its control in Victorian England, and the power of a group working together.

Jonathan Harker in Transylvania

Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified solicitor from Exeter, travels by train across Europe to arrange the sale of a London estate, Carfax Abbey, to a nobleman in Transylvania. At an inn in Bistritz, the local people are frightened when they learn where he is going. An old woman gives him a crucifix. A mysterious coach meets him at the Borgo Pass, and wolves follow it through the night.

At the castle, Count Dracula welcomes him warmly. He is a tall old man with a white mustache, pointed ears, sharp teeth, hairy palms and very cold hands. He speaks excellent English and questions Harker closely about London. He never eats with him and is never seen by day. When Harker cuts himself shaving, the Count lunges at his throat, then pulls back from the crucifix. Harker also notices that the Count has no reflection in his mirror.

Harker soon realizes that every door is locked and that he is a prisoner. From his window he sees the Count crawl head first down the castle wall like a lizard. One night he falls asleep in a forbidden room and three beautiful women with red lips approach him. As one bends to bite his neck, the Count bursts in and drives them off, saying that Harker belongs to him. He gives them a bag that holds a child.

Harker climbs down the wall into the Count's chamber and finds him lying in a box of earth in the chapel, looking younger, with blood on his lips. Gypsy workers load fifty such boxes onto carts for shipment to England. Harker understands that the Count will soon be among the millions of London. He decides to escape down the castle wall. His journal breaks off.

Lucy and Mina in Whitby

In England, Mina Murray, Harker's fiancée, is a schoolteacher who is learning shorthand and typing to help her future husband. Her close friend, Lucy Westenra, writes that she has received three proposals in one day: from Dr. John Seward, who runs a lunatic asylum; from Quincey Morris, a cheerful Texan; and from Arthur Holmwood, son of Lord Godalming. She accepts Arthur. The three men remain friends.

Dr. Seward keeps a diary on phonograph records. His most interesting patient is Renfield, a man who eats flies, then feeds the flies to spiders and the spiders to sparrows, and asks for a kitten. Seward calls him a zoophagous, or life-eating, maniac. Renfield grows excited and speaks of his Master coming.

Mina joins Lucy in the seaside town of Whitby. During a great storm, a Russian ship, the Demeter, drives into the harbor with its dead captain lashed to the wheel. A huge dog leaps ashore and vanishes. The ship's log tells how the crew disappeared one by one during the voyage, as a tall, thin stranger was seen on deck. The cargo is fifty boxes of earth.

Lucy begins to sleepwalk. One night Mina finds her on a bench in the churchyard on the cliff, with a dark figure with red eyes bending over her. Lucy has two small marks on her throat. She grows pale and weak. Mina receives news that Jonathan is in a hospital in Budapest with brain fever. She goes to him, and they marry there. Jonathan gives her his journal and asks her never to read it unless she must. She seals it.

Lucy's death

Lucy returns to her home near London and grows worse. Arthur asks Seward to examine her. Seward finds nothing physically wrong except great loss of blood. He sends for his old teacher, Professor Abraham Van Helsing of Amsterdam, a doctor, scientist and student of the occult.

Van Helsing suspects the truth but says little. He gives Lucy blood transfusions from Arthur, Seward, himself and finally Quincey. He fills her room with garlic flowers and hangs a garland around her neck. Each time she improves, something undoes the protection. Her mother removes the garlic to let in fresh air. One night a wolf breaks the window, and the shock kills Lucy's mother. Lucy dies a few days later, with Arthur at her side. Van Helsing stops Arthur from kissing her in her last moments.

Soon the newspapers report that a woman in white, whom the children call the bloofer lady, has been luring children on Hampstead Heath and leaving small wounds on their necks. Van Helsing takes Seward to Lucy's tomb at night and shows him that her coffin is empty. Then he shows Arthur and Quincey. They watch Lucy return from the Heath with a child, her face cruel and voluptuous. She calls to Arthur to come to her. Van Helsing holds up a crucifix and she shrinks back into the tomb.

The next day, with Van Helsing's guidance, Arthur drives a wooden stake through Lucy's heart while the others read prayers. Her body writhes, then grows still, and her sweet face returns. They cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic.

The hunters gather

Jonathan has recovered. In London he sees Dracula, now looking young, in Piccadilly. Van Helsing reads Jonathan's journal and Mina's notes, and the group combines everything they know. Mina types all the documents and puts them in order, which helps reveal the pattern. The Count owns several houses in London and has hidden his boxes of earth in them. Carfax Abbey, which Harker sold to him, stands next to Seward's asylum.

Van Helsing explains what he knows. The vampire is strong as twenty men, can change into a wolf, a bat or mist, commands rats and wolves, and casts no reflection. He cannot enter a house unless invited, has power only at night and must rest in his native earth. Garlic, the crucifix and the sacred wafer repel him. A stake through the heart and cutting off the head destroy him.

The men decide to keep Mina out of the hunt to protect her. It is a mistake. Renfield, who earlier invited the Count in, now tries to stop him and is fatally injured. Before he dies, he tells the men that the Count has gone to Mina. They break into the Harkers' room and find Jonathan in a trance and the Count forcing Mina to drink blood from a cut in his chest. The Count escapes as mist. When Van Helsing touches Mina's forehead with a sacred wafer, it burns a red scar into her skin. She cries out that she is unclean.

The men find and sterilize the boxes of earth by placing a sacred wafer in each. They corner the Count in his house in Piccadilly. Jonathan slashes at him with a knife and cuts his coat, and gold coins spill out. The Count escapes through a window, mocking them. One box remains.