Analysis of Major Characters
Count Dracula
Late in the novel, when Dracula escapes from Van Helsing
and company at his Piccadilly house, the count declares, “My revenge
is just begun!” It is not immediately clear for what offense Dracula
must obtain revenge, but the most convincing answer comes in the
opening chapters, when Dracula relates the proud but disappointing
history of his family. In Chapter III, he speaks of the “brave races
who fought as the lion fights, for lordship.” The count notes the
power his people once held, but laments the fact that the “warlike
days are over.”
Although he retains his lordship in Transylvania, the
world around him has changed and grown significantly—the “glories”
of days gone by now belong to other families and other races. Indeed, when
the count discusses “the crowded streets of your mighty London,”
we sense that he lusts for power and conquest: “I long . . . to be
in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life,
its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. But alas!”
In this light, Dracula becomes not simply a creature of fathomless
evil. Rather, he is a somewhat sympathetic and more human creation, determined
to regain his family's lost power and subject the world to his own
dark, brutal vision.
Van Helsing
Old Professor Van Helsing is an experienced, competent
man, but due to the unfortunately unskilled manner in which Stoker
renders Van Helsing's speech, he often comes across as somewhat
bumbling. Nevertheless, Van Helsing emerges as a well-matched adversary
to the count, and he is initially the only character who possesses
a mind open enough to contemplate and address Dracula's particular
brand of evil.
A doctor, philosopher, and metaphysician, Van Helsing
arrives on the scene versed not only in the modern methods of Western medicine,
but with an unparalleled knowledge of superstitions and folk remedies.
He straddles two distinct worlds, the old and the new: the first
marked by fearful respect for tradition, the second by ever-progressing
modernity. Unlike his former pupil, Dr. Seward, whose obsession
with modern techniques blinds him to the real nature of Lucy's sickness,
Van Helsing not only diagnoses the young girl's affliction correctly,
but offers her the only opportunity for a cure.
Like many of the other characters, Van Helsing is relatively static,
as he undergoes no great change or development throughout the course
of the novel. Having helped rid the Earth of the count's evil, he
departs as he arrived: morally righteous and religiously committed.
Van Helsing views his pursuit of Dracula with an air of grandiosity.
He envisions his band as “ministers of God's own wish,” and assures
his comrades that “we go out as the old knights of the Cross to
redeem more.” Hyperbole aside, Stoker portrays Van Helsing as the
embodiment of unswerving good, the hero he recruits “to set the
world free.”
Mina Murray
Mina Murray is the ultimate Victorian woman. Van Helsing's
praise of Mina testifies to the fact that she is indeed the embodiment
of the virtues of the age. She is “one of God's women, fashioned
by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where
we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true,
so sweet, so noble. . . .” Mina stands as the model of domestic
propriety, an assistant schoolmistress who dutifully studies newfangled machines
like the typewriter so as to be useful to her husband. Unlike Lucy,
she is not most noteworthy for her physical beauty, which spares
Mina her friend's fate of being transformed into a voluptuous she-devil.
Mina's sexuality remains enigmatic throughout the whole
of Dracula. Though she marries, she never gives voice to anything resembling
a sexual desire or impulse, which enables her to retain her purity.
Indeed, the entire second half of the novel concerns the issue of
Mina's purity. Stoker creates suspense about whether Mina, like
Lucy, will be lost. Given that Dracula means to use women to access
the men of England, Mina's loss could have terrifying repercussions.
We might expect that Mina, who sympathizes with the boldly progressive
“New Women” of England, would be doomed to suffer Lucy's fate as
punishment for her progressiveness. But Stoker instead fashions
Mina into a goddess of conservative male fantasy. Though resourceful
and intelligent enough to conduct the research that leads Van Helsing's
crew to the count, Mina is far from a “New Woman” herself. Rather,
she is a dutiful wife and mother, and her successes are always in
the service of men. Mina's moral perfection remains as stainless,
in the end, as her forehead.
Lucy Westenra
In many ways, Lucy is much like her dear friend Mina.
She is a paragon of virtue and innocence, qualities that draw not
one but three suitors to her. Lucy differs from her friend in one
crucial aspect, however—she is sexualized. Lucy's physical beauty
captivates each of her suitors, and she displays a comfort or playfulness
about her desirability that Mina never feels. In an early letter
to Mina, Lucy laments, “Why can't they let a girl marry three men,
or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?”
Although she chastises herself for this “heresy,” her
statement indicates that she has desires that cannot be met. Stoker
amplifies this faint whisper of Lucy's insatiability to a monstrous
volume when he describes the undead Lucy as a wanton creature of
ravenous sexual appetite. In this demonic state, Lucy stands as
a dangerous threat to men and their tenuous self-control, and therefore,
she must be destroyed. Lucy's death returns her to a more harmless state,
fixing a look of purity on her face that assures men that the world
and its women are exactly as they should be.
