Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Consequences of Modernity
Early in the novel, as Harker becomes uncomfortable with
his lodgings and his host at Castle Dracula, he notes that “unless
my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of
their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill.” Here, Harker voices
one of the central concerns of the Victorian era. The end of the
nineteenth century brought drastic developments that forced English
society to question the systems of belief that had governed it for
centuries. Darwin’s theory of evolution, for instance, called the
validity of long-held sacred religious doctrines into question.
Likewise, the Industrial Revolution brought profound economic and
social change to the previously agrarian England.
Though Stoker begins his novel in a ruined castle—a traditional Gothic
setting—he soon moves the action to Victorian London, where the
advancements of modernity are largely responsible for the ease with
which the count preys upon English society. When Lucy falls victim
to Dracula’s spell, neither Mina nor Dr. Seward—both devotees of
modern advancements—are equipped even to guess at the cause of Lucy’s
predicament. Only Van Helsing, whose facility with modern medical
techniques is tempered with open-mindedness about ancient legends
and non-Western folk remedies, comes close to understanding Lucy’s
affliction.
In Chapter XVII, when Van Helsing warns Seward that “to
rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all the knowledge and
all the help which we can get,” he literally means all the
knowledge. Van Helsing works not only to understand modern Western methods,
but to incorporate the ancient and foreign schools of thought that
the modern West dismisses. “It is the fault of our science,” he
says, “that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then
it says there is nothing to explain.” Here, Van Helsing points to the
dire consequences of subscribing only to contemporary currents of
thought. Without an understanding of history—indeed, without different
understandings of history—the world is left terribly vulnerable
when history inevitably repeats itself.
The Threat of Female Sexual Expression
Most critics agree that Dracula is, as much as anything
else, a novel that indulges the Victorian male imagination, particularly
regarding the topic of female sexuality. In Victorian England, women’s
sexual behavior was dictated by society’s extremely rigid expectations.
A Victorian woman effectively had only two options: she was either
a virgin—a model of purity and innocence—or else she was a wife
and mother. If she was neither of these, she was considered a whore,
and thus of no consequence to society.
By the time Dracula lands in England and begins to work
his evil magic on Lucy Westenra, we understand that the impending
battle between good and evil will hinge upon female sexuality. Both
Lucy and Mina are less like real people than two-dimensional embodiments
of virtues that have, over the ages, been coded as female. Both women
are chaste, pure, innocent of the world’s evils, and devoted to
their men. But Dracula threatens to turn the two women into their
opposites, into women noted for their voluptuousness—a word Stoker
turns to again and again—and unapologetically open sexual desire.
Dracula succeeds in transforming Lucy, and once she becomes
a raving vampire vixen, Van Helsing’s men see no other option than
to destroy her, in order to return her to a purer, more socially
respectable state. After Lucy’s transformation, the men keep a careful
eye on Mina, worried they will lose yet another model of Victorian womanhood
to the dark side. The men are so intensely invested in the women’s
sexual behavior because they are afraid of associating with the
socially scorned. In fact, the men fear for nothing less than their
own safety. Late in the novel, Dracula mocks Van Helsing’s crew,
saying, “Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through
them you and others shall yet be mine.” Here, the count voices a
male fantasy that has existed since Adam and Eve were turned out
of Eden: namely, that women’s ungovernable desires leave men poised
for a costly fall from grace.
