Dracula

Dracula (1897) is a Victorian gothic novel by Irish writer Bram Stoker. Though the novel is by far his best-known, other significant works include The Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903), The Lair of the White Worm (1911), and the short story collection Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914). Like Dracula, many of these works—written at the peak of the British Empire’s power—reveal an Orientalist fascination with regions outside Western Europe.

In Dracula, Stoker tells the story of the fight against the eponymous vampire in epistolary format; the novel comprises various letters, telegrams, journal entries, and newspaper articles written by the main characters. Dracula explores the classic theme of good versus evil, but the novel also illuminates the relationships between religion and reason, the “East” and the “West,” modernity versus tradition, and liberation and repression (particularly for women). The novel’s influence on the gothic, horror, and romance genres was profound, and the character of Count Dracula became one of the most influential and recognizable figures in literature, film, television, and even video games.

Plot Summary

Dracula is set during an unnamed year in the last decade of the 19th century. The action begins with an English solicitor named Jonathan Harker traveling to Transylvania (a region in Romania) to help a count named Dracula with legal matters concerning his immigration to London. Dracula is gracious and charming but also unsettling. He never seems to eat, he has pointed ears and teeth, and he always ends their conversations just before sunrise.

Jonathan eventually finds himself trapped in the castle, which is also inhabited by three female vampires who attempt to seduce him and drink his blood before Dracula stops them. However, Jonathan escapes and returns to England. Soon after, Dracula travels to London on a ship called the Demeter. The ship carries 50 boxes of soil that Dracula will use for his coffins as he hunts new victims in England.

Dracula first pursues Lucy Westenra, the best friend of Mina Murray, Jonathan’s fiancée. Lucy begins sleepwalking at night and grows pale and weak; there are small puncture wounds on her throat one morning. Mina and Lucy’s fiancée, Arthur Holmwood, are worried but cannot help her.

Dr. Seward, the administrator of a psychiatric hospital, is a former suitor of Lucy’s. When Seward hears of her case, he summons his mentor, Abraham Van Helsing. Van Helsing deduces that a vampire is preying on Lucy but does not tell anyone until he is sure. By then it is too late: Lucy dies of blood loss after several transfusions spread across several days.

After Lucy’s death, Van Helsing takes Holmwood, Seward, and Harker to Lucy’s tomb. Holmwood pounds a stake through her heart after seeing her carrying an abducted child after rising from the dead. Meanwhile, another of Seward's patients, a man named Renfield, has been consuming insects and birds in his room at the asylum; it ultimately emerges that he is secretly in league with Dracula.

After Lucy is killed, Dracula turns his attention to Mina. He forces her to drink his blood and threatens to kill Jonathan. This links Mina to Dracula, though she has not yet become a vampire. The men locate the boxes of earth Dracula uses for shelter and cover them with communion wafers, but Dracula transports himself and the final box back to the Carpathians on a ship called the Czarina Catherine.

The men pursue Dracula to the European continent, finding him by using Mina as a sort of tracking device: Her link with Dracula gives them clues to his location. Ultimately, they find Dracula before sunset and kill him, though Morris, another of Lucy’s suitors, dies during the attack. Jonathan and Mina marry, and a note appended seven years after the novel’s main action reveals that they have had a son