Dracula Study Notes

[Dona Vansoest]

Draculais a gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker, published on 26 May 1897. An epistolary novel, 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 escapes the castle after discovering 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, investigate, hunt and kill Dracula.

Dracula was mostly written in the 1890s. Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes for the novel, drawing extensively from Transylvanian folklore and history. Some scholars have suggested that the character of Dracula was inspired by historical figures like the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler or the Countess Elizabeth Bthory, but there is widespread disagreement. Stoker's notes mention neither figure. He found the name Dracula in Whitby's public library while on holiday, thinking it meant devil in Romanian.

Dracula is one of the most famous pieces of English literature. Many of the book's characters have entered popular culture as archetypal versions of their characters; for example, Count Dracula as the quintessential vampire, and Abraham Van Helsing as an iconic vampire hunter. The novel, which is in the public domain, has been adapted for film over 30 times, and its characters have made numerous appearances in virtually all media.

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. Harker awakens in bed; soon after, Dracula leaves the castle, abandoning him 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 fiance 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 sleepwalking. After his ship lands there, Dracula stalks Lucy. Mina receives a letter about her missing fianc'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 Lucy's condition, but refuses to disclose it. He diagnoses her with 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. The four 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 now-wife Mina have returned, and they join the campaign against Dracula.

Everyone stays at Dr. 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. She is cursed to become a vampire after her death unless Dracula is killed. As the men find Dracula's properties, they discover many earth boxes within. The vampire hunters open each of the boxes and seal wafers of sacramental bread inside them, rendering them useless to Dracula. They attempt to trap the Count in his Piccadilly house, but he escapes. They learn that Dracula is fleeing to his castle in Transylvania with his last box. Mina has a faint psychic connection to Dracula, which Van Helsing exploits via hypnosis to track Dracula's movements. Guided by Mina, they pursue him.

In Galatz, Romania, the hunters split up. Van Helsing and Mina go to Dracula's castle, where the professor destroys the vampire women. Jonathan Harker and Arthur Holmwood follow Dracula's boat on the river, while Quincey Morris and John Seward parallel them on land. After Dracula's box is finally loaded onto a wagon by Romani men, the hunters converge and attack it. After routing 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 from his wounds, at peace with the knowledge that Mina is saved. A note by Jonathan Harker seven years later states that the Harkers have a son, named Quincey.

Many figures have been suggested as inspirations for Count Dracula, but there is no consensus. In his 1962 biography of Stoker, Harry Ludlam suggested that rmin Vmbry, a professor at the University of Budapest, supplied Stoker with information about Vlad Drăculea, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler.[9] Professors Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu popularised the idea in their 1972 book, In Search of Dracula.[10] Benjamin H. LeBlanc writes that there is a reference within the text to Vmbry, an "Arminius, of Buda-Pesh University", who is familiar with the historical Vlad III and is a friend of Abraham Van Helsing,[11] but an investigation by McNally and Florescu found nothing about "Vlad, Dracula, or vampires" within Vmbry's published papers,[12] nor in Stoker's notes about his meeting with Vmbry.[11] Academic and Dracula scholar Elizabeth 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.[13][c]

Aside from the historical, Count Dracula also has literary progenitors. Academic Elizabeth Signorotti argues that Dracula is a response to the lesbian vampire of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872), "correcting" its emphasis on female desire.[25] Bram Stoker's great-nephew, broadcaster Daniel Farson, wrote a biography of the author; in it, he doubts that Stoker was aware of the lesbian elements of Carmilla, but nonetheless notes that it influenced him profoundly.[26][e] Farson writes that an inscription upon a tomb in Dracula is a direct allusion to Carmilla.[28] Scholar Alison Milbank observes that as Dracula can transform into a dog, Carmilla can become a cat.[29] According to author Patrick McGrath, "traces of Carmilla" can be found in the three female vampires residing in Dracula's castle.[30] A short story written by Stoker and published after his death, "Dracula's Guest", has been seen as evidence of Carmilla's influence.[31] According to Milbank, the story was a deleted first chapter from early in the original manuscript, and replicates Carmilla's setting of Styria instead of Transylvania.[32]

Irish folklore has been suggested as a possible influence on Stoker. Bob Curran, a lecturer in Celtic History and Folklore at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, suggests that Stoker may have drawn some inspiration for Dracula from an Irish vampire, Abhartach.[33][34]

Prior to writing the novel, Stoker researched extensively, assembling over 100 pages of notes, including chapter summaries and plot outlines.[35] The notes were sold by Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, in 1913, to a New York book dealer for 2. 2s, (equivalent to UK208 in 2019). Following that, the notes became the property of Charles Scribner's Sons, and then disappeared until they were bought by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia in 1970.[36] H. P. Lovecraft wrote that he knew "an old lady" who was approached to revise the original manuscript, but that Stoker found her too expensive.[37] Stoker's first biographer, Harry Ludlam, wrote in 1962 that writing commenced on Dracula around 1895 or 1896.[38] Following the rediscovery of Stoker's notes in 1972 by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu,[39] the two dated the writing of Dracula to between 1895 and 1897.[40] Later scholarship has questioned these sets of dates. In the first extensive study of the notes,[41] Joseph S. Bierman writes that the earliest date within them is 8 March 1890, for an outline of a chapter that "differs from the final version in only a few details".[42] According to Bierman, Stoker always intended to write an epistolary novel, but originally set it in Styria instead of Transylvania; this iteration did not explicitly use the word vampire.[42] For two summers, Stoker and his family stayed in the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in Cruden Bay, Scotland, while he was actively writing Dracula.[43]

Stoker's notes illuminate much about earlier iterations of the novel. For instance, they indicate that the novel's vampire was intended to be a Count, even before he was given the name Dracula.[44] Stoker likely found the name Dracula in Whitby's public library while holidaying there with his wife and son in 1880.[41] On the name, Stoker wrote: "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".[45] Stoker's initial plans for Dracula markedly differ from the final novel. Had Stoker completed his original plans, a German professor called Max Windshoeffel "would have confronted Count Wampyr from Styria", and one of the Crew of Light would have been slain by a werewolf.[46][f] Stoker's earliest notes indicate that Dracula might have originally been intended to be a detective story, with a detective called Cotford and a psychical investigator called Singleton.[48]

3a8082e126