Dracula: The Gothic Classic

By Bram Stoker and Tom Butler-Bowdon (Editor)

A classic masterpiece of gothic horror fiction

Dracula, Bram Stoker's chilling tale of disturbing events, dark desires and the harrowing world of vampires, has gripped audiences since it was first published in 1897. Reflecting the anxieties of late 19th-century Victorian society, this book explores the themes of superstition, sexuality and the fear of the unknown.

This epistolary novel conveys its narrative through letters, diary entries and newspaper articles as Jonathon Harker travels to Gothic Transylvania to assist the infamous Count Dracula with the purchase of an English house. The newly-qualified solicitor soon discovers the sinister truth about the Count's vampiric intentions and diabolical ambitions. The only thing standing in Count Dracula's way is a small group of people led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who know what he secretly is and have vowed to stop him.

Dracula remains a cornerstone of vampire lore, and has an ongoing influence on popular culture even today. This quintessential Gothic novel is perfect for horror fans, classic novel enthusiasts and fans of supernatural fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Sep 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9781907312595

Bram Stoker

Abraham Stoker was born near Dublin in 1847. He was virtually bedridden with an unidentified illness until the age of seven. After graduating from Trinity College, he followed his father into a career as a civil servant in Dublin castle, writing journalism and short stories in his spare time. In 1876 he met the actor Henry Irving and two years later became manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London. Through Oscar Wilde's parents, Stoker met his wife Florence Balcombe. He wrote many books of which only Dracula (1897) is widely remembered. He died in 1912.

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DRACULA

The Gothic Classic

BRAM STOKER

With an Introduction by

DR. CURT HERR

Series Editor

TOM BUTLER-BOWDON

Logo: Wiley

This edition first published 2025

Copyright © 2025 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Introduction copyright © 2025 Curt Herr

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available

ISBN 9781907312571 (Cloth)

ISBN 9781907312601 (ePDF)

ISBN 9781907312595 (ePub)

Cover Image: © Graphic Compressor/Shutterstock

TO

MY DEAR FRIEND

HOMMY-BEG*

NOTE

* Nickname of Stoker's friend Thomas Henry Hall Caine (1853–1931). Hommy is vernacular Manx for Tommy. Caine's grandmother was a Manx woman.

How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of later-day belief may stand forth as simple fact. There is throughout no statement of past things wherein memory may err, for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary, given from the standpoints and within the range of knowledge of those who made them.

AN INTRODUCTION

BY DR. CURT HERR

Dracula is one of the great Victorian novels. It has spawned hundreds of screen and stage adaptations, provided a foundation for the horror genre and is the most famous work in the vampire fiction subgenre.

But Bram Stoker's iconic work was not born in a vacuum. In this Introduction, I will try to paint a picture of the world that Stoker inhabited and the literary universe which the book grew out of. Each generation seems to find new interpretations of Dracula, and I argue that its theme of invaded intimacy and the reversal of gender norms is very relevant for our times.

I have also added factual and literary footnotes to the text itself where I think they may provide insight.

BRAM STOKER'S WORLD: SCIENCE AND SPIRIT

Late Victorian England prided itself on its rationality and scientific advances.

Yet this was also the golden age of Spiritualism, in which the Victorian version of ghost hunting became almost an official religion. At the same time as the middle and upper classes were benefitting from advances in medical science and marvels of engineering, there was a parallel imagined world of monsters, ghosts and vampires.

From the attics to the crypts, the forests to the sprawling cities, monsters lurked in the shadows, creating a rich tapestry of terrifying tales. The nineteenth century produced iconic literary monsters such as Frankenstein (1818), Varney the Vampire (1845), Sweeney Todd (1846), Dr. Jekyll (1886), Svengali (1894) and Dracula (1897).

Penny Dreadfuls (cheaply produced, serialized works of fiction) explored taboo topics including incest, insanity, cannibalism and murder, captivating audiences across all social classes. Christmas editions of popular magazines featured chilling ghost stories, offering a thrilling escape from the apparently ordered and rational Victorian world. Even Charles Dickens wrote the classic morality tale/ghost story A Christmas Carol as a holiday tale, complete with rattling chains, ghostly visitations and time travel.

This widespread fascination with supernatural tales suggests that many Victorians sought the exhilaration of momentarily losing control. The more rational their culture became, the more they seemed to need an outlet in the otherworldly, subhuman and unnatural. Indeed, the Victorian infatuation with the fantastic and the macabre advanced in step with rapid changes in technology, and the emerging horror literature sought to make sense of it all. Almost magically, in the 1840s, messages were being sent through electric telegraphs, and thirty years later, with the invention of the telephone, the human voice was being sent through wires.

At the same time these astonishing advances were being made, a serial killer prowled the streets of London, hacking up prostitutes, piquing Victorian fascination with the grotesque and the murderous. The development of railroads allowed news and people to travel faster than ever before, yet it wasn't just messages in print that gained speed. Popular séances and celebrity spiritualists aided in communication between the living and the dead. While life-saving vaccinations were being administered, literary vampires consumed the very vaccinated blood that kept society safe and healthy.

The golden age of spiritualism reached a peak in the 1870s, when Bram Stoker was in his twenties. Psychics and mediums seemed to appear on every street corner, and membership in neighbourhood spiritualist societies was highly sought after. Organisations such as the Charing Cross Spirit-Power Circle, the East London Association of Spiritualists and the Christian Spiritual Enquirers rapidly spread throughout England. The Victorians’ obsession with séances, the monstrous and hidden horrors extended for decades, influencing popular culture in stage shows, literature and popular Spiritualist newspapers such as the British Spiritual Telegraph, Spiritual Magazine, and the widely acclaimed Medium and Daybreak.

A number of female spiritualists became celebrities. Figures such as Victoria Woodhull (who also ran for the presidency of the United States in 1872, despite not having the right to vote), medium Cora Scott and the Fox sisters gained widespread recognition on both sides of the Atlantic. Their abilities as powerful mediums reportedly allowed some to produce spectral hands and faces and speak to the departed. Ghostly rappings and tappings haunted the Fox sisters’ home and performance spaces.

As a young man during this era, Stoker was surely aware of the supernatural's popularity — for it was all around him. A keen observer of his culture and fascinated by the high creative arts, he also displayed the grounded logic of a business manager. It is this combination of logic vs. the fantastic, reason vs. the supernatural that would result in his famous creation, Dracula.

A photograph of a Bram Stoker.

Bram Stoker, 1906

Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

STOKER: EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Abraham Stoker was born on 8 November 1847, in the Dublin suburb of Clontarf. From infancy, he was very ill and was not expected to survive his childhood. This unnamed illness rendered him bedridden until he was finally able to attend school at seven years old. Entertained by his mother's Irish folk tales and horror stories and homeschooled by the local Reverend William Woods, Abraham made an astonishing, albeit unexplained, full recovery. He carried the experiences of childhood illness through his life, and they feature heavily in many of his novels and short stories. Mysterious microorganisms and pathogens, and entrapped and isolated individuals who struggle to walk and are unable to heal or save themselves, haunt his prose. Sickbeds and mysterious illnesses are major plot points in his early short story, The Chain of Destiny, and his most popular novels, The Lady of the Shroud and Dracula.

As he grew into his teens and early adulthood, Stoker became surprisingly healthy and robust. In 1864, when he was 17, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, and became a popular athlete and dedicated student. He graduated with honours in science, but his heart was in letters. Infatuated with the American poet Walt Whitman, Stoker described himself in an 1872 fan letter* to Whitman:

[I] have been a champion at our athletic sports and have won about a dozen cups. I have also been president of our college philosophical society and an art and theatrical critic of a daily paper. I am 6‘2 high and 12 stone weight naked and used to be 41 or 42 inches around the chest. I am ugly but strong and determined, and have a large bump over my eyebrows. I have a heavy jaw and a big mouth and thick lips, sensitive nostrils, a snubnose and straight hair. I am equal in temper and cool in disposition and have a large amount of self-control and am naturally secretive to the world. I take delight in letting people I don't like – people of mean or cruel or sneaking or cowardly disposition – see the worst side of me. I have a large number of acquaintances and some five or six friends – all of which latter body care much for me. Now I have told you all I know about myself. I know you from your works and your photograph and if I know anything about you I think you would like to know of the personal appearance of your correspondents."

This excerpt reveals Stoker's confidence in his physical, moral and intellectual powers. He describes what he sees as his physical flaws and his personality traits with frank and intimate details. It's the voice of a secure young man, not a sickly child.

Following university, Stoker worked in the Irish Civil Service and wrote short stories in his spare time, some of which were published. In 1878, when he was 31, Stoker became the well-paid business manager for London's Lyceum Theatre, owned by the famous Shakespearean actor Sir Henry Irving (whom some believe is the inspiration for Dracula himself). Stoker was thrust into an exciting world of actors and impresarios. He arranged touring productions through Britain and Canada and made several tours through the United States.

Adding to this career success, Stoker wed Florence Balcombe, whom he had known from Dublin University; Oscar Wilde had been one of her suitors. The couple settled in Chelsea, a neighbourhood popular with theatrical and literary types. The couple soon had a child, Henry (who preferred to be called Noel) and enjoyed a life surrounded by writers, artists, poets and philosophers. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a neighbour, as was the painter James McNeill Whistler.

Yet there was a dark side to London. Jack the Ripper was spreading terror, and Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, was shocking the masses. Both (albeit for vastly different reasons) aroused horror, disgust and a deep fascination with the flipside of Victorian values and aesthetics. It would have been impossible for Stoker to be ignorant of these two men, whose lives and actions made headlines. Indeed, the themes they inspired would infect Stoker's writing for decades.

BEFORE DRACULA: THE BEGINNING OF GOTHIC LITERARY OBSESSIONS

Many scholars believe the Gothic novel began in 1764 with Horace Walpole's nightmarish fantasy, The Castle of Otranto. This novel captivated readers with its tale of ghosts, giants, familial curses, haunted paintings, secret passages and forbidden lusts. These were the staple ingredients for every Gothic novel to follow.

The genre exploded over the next century. Countless novels, Penny Dreadfuls and blue books popped up like fast-growing vines feeding on the undercurrent of London's working-class neighbourhoods. Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796), and George Brewer's The Witch of Ravensworth (1808) set the stage for many Victorian tales of horror that hoped to mimic these early successes.

These works contain an abundance of gothic tropes, including ruined castles filled with rotting corpses and evil monasteries hiding sexually perverse monks and sadistic nuns. Tales of trapped heroines and trapdoors held readers spellbound. The newly literate working classes of early nineteenth-century England discovered the thrilling escape that horror literature could offer, and publishers were ready to fulfil this demand. For those who could not afford to purchase the novels, subscription-based lending libraries became popular. For 4 pounds and 4 pence a year, subscribers were entitled to 12 to 24 sets of books. For the poorer still, a new industry developed around the Penny Dreadful. Printed on cheap paper in newspaper or booklet format, these weekly tales of blood and horror costing mere pennies became instantly accessible to an audience with minimal reading skills. Even better, they were convenient, being sold alongside newspapers on nearly every corner. Penny Dreadful writers wrote single-issue stories or lengthy serials. Publishers pirated and plagiarised any popular tale or novel that featured gore, murder, sex and cannibalism.

In 1845, a hack writer with the uncanny ability to write and publish dozens of serials simultaneously with several publishers struck literary gold. It would earn his publisher a small fortune and enable him to save a small inheritance for his children — a rare feat in the Penny Dreadful industry. James Malcolm Rymer (1814–1884) began a new serialised horror tale that resurrected the vampire from the grave of overlooked monsters. Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood, debuted in August 1845 and ran for an astonishing 237 chapters. Its initial three chapters were so vivid and intricately described that Rymer earned a steady income by continuing the serialised tale for the next two years. (At the same time, Rymer was also writing the serial The String of Pearls, which would become known as the sadistic barber tale Sweeney Todd).

It is worth understanding how Rymer's creation provided a template for, or differed from, Stoker's later vampire. Varney is a repulsive figure, resembling a revolting corpse who has clawed his way above the ground from a mud-soaked grave. His unkempt appearance, damp and rotting clothes and horrifically bad breath shocked readers. Unlike the elegantly upper-class Lord Ruthven and the suave intelligence of Dracula, Varney possesses rodent-like features and an emaciated, filthy body. Long, grotesque fingernails hang from his nearly fleshless fingers and his fangs are described as ‘otter-like’. His pallid, bloodless skin and unsettling appearance are only alleviated by predatory feeding. Yet Varney's thirst for blood is nothing like the dashing vampires that Hollywood would later portray. He is a monstrous, disturbing predator. And while Stoker's vampire would feed with highly charged, erotic overtones and his teeth penetrate with precision, leaving merely two small pin pricks on the neck and very little left-over blood, Varney fed like a feral rat. He sloppily rips and tears flesh, leaving a terrible mess of shattered windows, broken crockery and flattened shrubbery in his wake.

Yet Rymer's Varney the Vampire is a complex figure — a mix of a forlorn romantic yearning for acceptance, a pervasive sense of self-hatred and ruthless, bloodthirsty predation. He stands out as the earliest literary vampire to possess conflicting emotions of desire and hunger, guilt and culpability. These character traits reveal psychological depth. Rymer's vampire is a symbol of a society grappling with conflicting urges of social acceptance and deeply buried desires — as we would see in Dracula.

According to Barbara Gates (Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories), Victorian society concealed a profound sense of alienation and estrangement, with people who avoided acknowledging their inner demons eagerly seeking tales of external monsters. Varney embodied both the voracious aristocrat and the hunted victim burdened with a dreadful secret: vampiric blood thirst. Sir Francis Varney embarks on an existential quest for purpose in the dimly lit streets of London. He is a meticulously crafted symbol of the cultural conflicts, fears, desires and eroticism of his time. Varney's nocturnal visit to Flora Butterworth's bedroom shattered the barriers of Victorian repression and respectability, leaving an indelible mark on numerous authors, filmmakers, researchers and scholars for years to come. While there is no actual evidence that Bram Stoker read Varney the Vampire, there can be little doubt that its tropes and imagery were a strong background influence, as they would be on all Gothic-vampire writers.

As the Victorian era progressed, the lurid prose of the Penny Dreadful shifted into what would become known as Sensation Fiction, the publishing powerhouse of the 1860s. The novels of this subgenre featured the same content as Penny Dreadfuls (insanity, murder, mystery and horror) but were created by writers with more leisurely time to write, making them capable of complex, intricately developed plots and more deeply effective character development. The bestsellers of the nineteenth century were the sensation novels The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood's East Lynne and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret. Gothic literature was growing up, and this more advanced type of novel paved the way for Dracula.

A photograph of the cover of the book “Dracula” by Bram Stoker appears to be a vintage edition.

First edition, 1897. Archibald Constable and Company, London.British Library Board/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

A photograph of the cover of Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula. The cover art depicts a dark figure with outstretched wings, possibly representing Dracula in bat form, looming over a castle or fortress at night. The subtitle reads An Introduction, and the price is listed as 1/6 Net. Dracula has had a significant impact on vampire lore and popular culture.

1919 edition, William Rider & Sons, London. Cover illustration by Edgar Alfred Holloway.Edgar Alfred Holloway/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

DRACULA: INVADED INTIMACY

One of the many powerful and thrilling aspects of Stoker's Dracula is its ability to be both grand and epic in scope, yet minutely intimate and personal. It reaches back to the origins of the eighteenth-century Gothic novel while adding the lurid details of the mid-Victorian Penny Dreadful and the highly developed plots of the sensation novel. It sweeps across continents and cultures, blends modern technology with old-world folk tales and customs, yet remains grounded in late nineteenth-century points of view and prejudices. Dracula is also exceedingly personal in feel, incorporating intimate letters, diary entries and first-hand accounts of the events. Each character's voice is paramount and is heard through these accounts (except, ironically, the title character, Dracula). These voices and their experiences reveal a treasure chest of Victorian anxieties and moral ambiguities.

The opening chapters, some of the most terrifying in nineteenth-century literature, are comprised of Jonathan Harker's travel diary. As he moves from London to Transylvania, he reveals himself to be an excellent observer of the local customs and unique landmarks of his journey. While in Buda-Pesth, he notes to himself to get his betrothed the recipe for the national dish, paprika hendl, and complains that the further away from England he travels, the less punctual the trains are. A keen reader can spot something problematic in Jonathan's thoughts: under his good-natured British cheer there is the troubling tone of the patronising colonial gent. He baulks at the local customs and finds the vernacular religious traditions to be quaint and backward. This flaw comes close to destroying his life.

The entries in Jonathan's diary are personal observations never intended to be read or discussed out loud. Because there is no audience, Jonathan is not trying to impress a listener. Like all of the letters and journal entries in the novel, we are reading uninterrupted and unedited ideas — highly intimate and private notions that were never intended to be made public. To the Victorian reader, this is scandalous. The private being made public?! And yet, readers ate up every word.

Not only is the novel's epistolary format founded upon this idea of invaded intimacy, but so too are the physical structures in the story. Readers are frequently taken into spaces that Victorians rarely explored in nineteenth-century literature: bedrooms and boudoirs, madhouses and mausoleums. These spaces were taboo, for they revealed the secret world of intimacy, sex and death — spaces far too personal and gruesome to be fit for public consumption. For example, after being in Dracula's castle for a little over a week, Jonathan is told by Dracula to avoid roaming the endless corridors in the castle:

Let me advise you, my dear young friend — nay, let me warn you with all seriousness, that should you leave these rooms you will not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle. It is old, and has many memories, and there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely. Be warned! Should sleep now or ever overcome you, or be like to do, then haste to your own chamber or to these rooms, for your rest will then be safe. But if you not be careful in this respect, then’ — He finished his speech in a gruesome way, for he motioned with his hands as if he were washing them. I quite understood; my only doubt was as to whether any dream could be more terrible than the unnatural, horrible net of gloom and mystery which seemed closing round me.

These are threatening instructions from a host. However, Jonathan is a terrible house guest. His ego and belief in his westerner's privilege to roam freely enable him to ignore his host's request. He does exactly what the Count asks him not to do: explore the ruined sections of the castle and close his eyes in any room other than his own. Thus, Jonathan becomes the unintentional aggressive invader in Dracula's intimate spaces, putting his own life at risk.

In his diary entry dated 15 May, Jonathan notes the deeply unnatural ways of his host, including a food-free, nocturnal existence and an astonishing, lizard-like way of scaling down the castle's exterior walls rather than simply using the front door. Planning his escape, Jonathan searches the castle for a way out — as any trapped person would. He pushes open rotting wooden doors that have not been moved in centuries and forces his way into the forbidden hallways and wings of the castle. He is desperate, and attempting to escape is the natural choice.

However, Bram Stoker does something remarkable and unexpected here. He reverses gender expectations. When Jonathan discovers a large ladies’ boudoir, he decides to relax and hang out for a while. After all, its massive windows offer a great view of the Carpathian Mountains, and the lovely (albeit dusty) writing desk offers him a chance to catch up on his diary entries. Let that sink in. Jonathan knows he is trapped, knows his life could be at stake, and yet rather than continuing his search for a way out of the Count's trap, he chooses to relax and write his journal. But why? To make a break for freedom seems like a no-brainer for any contemporary fan of horror movies. Instead, he writes, Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where, in old times, possibly some fair haired lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter.

This is a fascinating passage for many reasons. Firstly, Jonathan-the-trapped becomes Jonathan-the-luxuriant. He chooses to sit, relax and write while imagining himself in the position of the passive female writing to her lover. He romanticises the surroundings, creates two distant lovers and equates his personal journal with the woman's poorly spelled love letter. His patronising attitude towards the women he emulates is clear when he assumes they cannot spell. While positioning Jonathan's imagination in the faraway and distant past, Stoker also seeks to make his character seem ‘modern’. Jonathan writes that he is notating his diary in shorthand. It is nineteenth-century up-to-date with a vengeance, he writes. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ can not kill. Here, through Jonathan, Stoker is informing the observant reader that his novel will pit ancient beliefs regarding the supernatural against modernity — an intriguing task.

As Stoker continues Jonathan's experience in the massive ladies’ boudoir, he explores the transgressive topic of sexualities and reverses Victorian gender norms with startling effect. Jonathan writes:

When I had written in my diary and had fortunately replaced the book and pen in my pocket I felt sleepy. The Count's warning came into my mind, but I took a pleasure in disobeying it. The sense of sleep was upon me, and with it the obstinacy which sleep brings as an outrider. The soft moonlight soothed, and the wide expanse without gave a sense of freedom which refreshed me. I determined not to return tonight to the gloom haunted rooms, but to sleep here, where of old ladies had sat and sung and lived sweet lives whilst their gentle breasts were sad for their menfolk away in the midst of remorseless wars. I drew a great couch out of its place near the corner, so that, as I lay, I could look at the lovely view to east and south, and unthinking of and uncaring for the dust, composed myself for sleep.

This is troubling for several reasons. First, Jonathan's British-colonial sense of privilege overrides his common sense. He takes pleasure in disobeying the Count's warnings and feels entitled to behave as he sees fit, no matter what the host asks or warns. Jonathan feels secure in his staunch Victorian beliefs — which are not necessarily the beliefs of Transylvania. Secondly, Stoker feminises Jonathan's behaviour. According to Victorian gender stereotypes, he should be actively exploring the castle, fighting the foe and escaping. Instead, Jonathan imagines the ancient female occupants of this space from centuries before him. He thinks of the women who sang and lived sweet lives, whose gentle breasts ached for their men at war. Jonathan puts himself in the place of the women whom he describes with typical Victorian stereotypes, romanticising their passive and highly emotional lives — something he will soon embody.

Next, in an anti-typical heroic move, Jonathan rearranges the furniture! He moves a bed (couch) from the wall into the centre of the room so he can have an even better view of the mountains while he falls asleep. He literally puts the bed and himself centre stage in the imagined drama of these fictional women. Now he becomes the focal prop, a prop that, as the novel progresses, will be very much used.

Upon waking from his luxuriant nap, Jonathan is shocked to find three women standing at the foot of his bed. He notices they do not cast a shadow, and [a]ll three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time, some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips.

Stoker accentuates the ironic reversal of gender codes in this passage with stunning results. First, Jonathan is in the passive position, prone on the woman's bed and sleepily observing them. He objectifies the women, reducing them to their teeth and their lips. And he sexualizes them, for he acknowledges his desire to be kissed. At the same time, he is highly aware that this desire is wicked and wrong — so he does nothing but wait for them to make the first move.

They speak: He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all. Their sexual appetites for sharing Jonathan's ‘kisses’ explode the Victorian notions of a woman's chastity. They become the sexual aggressors. I lay quiet, Jonathan states, looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me…I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The fair girl went on her knees, and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck, she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth…I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited — waited with beating heart.

Jonathan is conflicted. He pretends to sleep, viewing the seducers under his fluttering eyelids — a very feminine description. Stoker reverses the tradition of the male gaze in this moment. The women become aggressive seducers, wicked and dominant, while they gaze upon Jonathan, who feigns sleep and innocence. He passively waits, both fearing the contact and longing for it with a beating heart.

While he invades the private spaces of the Count's castle, Jonathan's sense of intimacy and his own body are soon invaded as well. It is the male who will bleed on this marriage bed.

In sum, throughout Dracula, Stoker relies on the reader's sense of Victorian decorum and traditional gender roles. He shocks the reader by delivering the opposite of what they expect: sexually aggressive women and passive men, the glories of technological advance and its inability to protect us. As the novel progresses, Stoker continues this theme of invading intimate spaces. Even motherhood isn't safe in his world.

Perhaps what makes Dracula so remarkably influential is Stoker's ability to combine the modern day with ancient fears. The Victorians relied upon social rules to contain their world. Any reader of the Gothic knows that walls built to retain proper behaviour will soon come crashing down.

SOURCES

Arata, Stephen. "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization" Victorian Studies 33 (1990): 621–645.

Craft, Christopher. "Kiss Me with Those Red Lips: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula." Dracula: Contemporary Critical Essays. New York: St. Martin, 1999.

Gates, Barbara T. Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories. Princeton: Princeton University, 1988.

Haining, Peter. The Penny Dreadful, London: Victor Gollancz, 1975.

McNally, Paymond T., and Radu Florescu. In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

Roth, Phyllis. "Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula." Dracula: Contemporary Critical Essays. New York: St. Martin, 1999.

Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Perilous Nature of the Penny Periodical Press. Privately printed in 1852.

Curt Herr is a Professor of Victorian, Queer and Gothic Literature at Pennsylvania's Kutztown University and has a PhD from New York City's Fordham University. He has written several critical editions of Penny Dreadfuls, including Varney the Vampire, The Feast of Blood, The Black Monk and The Secrets of the Grey Turret. Other research interests include Victorian Spiritualism, Victorian Sensation novels and the works of Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood, Marie Corelli and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. He is co-editor of The Journal of Dracula Studies.

NOTE

* Full text of the letters between them: https://lettersofnote.com/2013/11/11/you-are-a-true-man/

CHAPTER I

JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

(Kept in shorthand.)*

3 May. Bistritz†. — Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth‡ seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called paprika hendl, and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it.

Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.

In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys* in the East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it. I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.)

I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping soundly then. I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was mamaliga, and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call impletata. (Mem., get recipe for this also.) I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move. It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?

All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods. It takes a lot of water, and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear. At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets and round hats and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque. The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist.

They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them. The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion.

It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier — for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina — it has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease.

My Friend. —

Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well to-night. At three to-morrow the diligence will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.

Your friend,

DRACULA.

Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country. I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress — white undergarment with long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty. When I came close she bowed and said, The Herr Englishman? Yes, I said, Jonathan Harker. She smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white shirt-sleeves, who had followed her to the door. He went, but immediately returned with a letter: —

4 May. — I found that my landlord had got a letter from the Count, directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on making inquiries as to details he seemed somewhat reticent, and pretended that he could not understand my German. This could not be true, because up to then he had understood it perfectly; at least, he answered my questions exactly as if he did. He and his wife, the old lady who had received me, looked at each other in a frightened sort of way. He mumbled out that the money had been sent in a letter, and that was all he knew. When I asked him if he knew Count Dracula, and could tell me anything of his castle, both he and his wife crossed themselves, and, saying that they knew nothing at all, simply refused to speak further. It was so near the time of starting that I had no time to ask any one else, for it was all very mysterious and not by any means comforting.

Just before I was leaving, the old lady came up to my room and said in a very hysterical way:

Must you go? Oh! young Herr, must you go? She was in such an excited state that she seemed to have lost her grip of what German she knew, and mixed it all up with some other language which I did not know at all. I was just able to follow her by asking many questions. When I told her that I must go at once, and that I was engaged on important business, she asked again:

Do you know what day it is? I answered that it was the fourth of May. She shook her head as she said again:

Oh, yes! I know that! I know that, but do you know what day it is? On my saying that I did not understand, she went on:

It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to? She was in such evident distress that I tried to comfort her, but without effect. Finally she went down on her knees and implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting. It was all very ridiculous but I did not feel comfortable. However, there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it. I therefore tried to raise her up, and said, as gravely as I could, that I thanked her, but my duty was imperative, and that I must go. She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to me. I did not know what to do, for, as an English Churchman*, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well and in such a state of mind. She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round my neck, and said, For your mother's sake, and went out of the room. I am writing up this part of the diary whilst I am waiting for the coach, which is, of course, late; and the crucifix is still round my neck. Whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual. If this book should ever reach Mina before I do, let it bring my good-bye. Here comes the coach!

* * * * *

5 May. The Castle. — The grey of the morning has passed, and the sun is high over the distant horizon, which seems jagged, whether with trees or hills I know not, for it is so far off that big things and little are mixed. I am not sleepy, and, as I am not to be called till I awake, naturally I write till sleep comes. There are many odd things to put down, and, lest who reads them may fancy that I dined too well before I left Bistritz, let me put down my dinner exactly. I dined on what they called robber steak — bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the London cat's meat! The wine was Golden Mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable. I had only a couple of glasses of this, and nothing else.

When I got on the coach the driver had not taken his seat, and I saw him talking with the landlady. They were evidently talking of me, for every now and then they looked at me, and some of the people who were sitting on the bench outside the door — which they call by a name meaning word-bearer — came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them pityingly. I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd; so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out. I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were Ordog — Satan, pokol — hell, stregoica — witch, vrolok and vlkoslak — both of which mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian* — for something that is either were-wolf or vampire. (Mem., I must ask the Count about these superstitions)

When we started, the crowd round the inn door, which had by this time swelled to a considerable size, all made the sign of the cross and pointed two fingers towards me. With some difficulty I got a fellow-passenger to tell me what they meant; he would not answer at first, but on learning that I was English, he explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil eye. This was not very pleasant for me, just starting for an unknown place to meet an unknown man; but every one seemed so kind-hearted, and so sorrowful, and so sympathetic that I could not but be touched. I shall never forget the last glimpse which I had of the inn-yard and its crowd of picturesque figures, all crossing themselves, as they stood round the wide archway, with its background of rich foliage of oleander and orange trees in green tubs clustered in the centre of the yard. Then our driver, whose wide linen drawers covered the whole front of the box-seat — gotza they call them — cracked his big whip over his four small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on our journey.

I soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly fears in the beauty of the scene as we drove along, although had I known the language, or rather languages, which my fellow-passengers were speaking, I might not have been able to throw them off so easily. Before us lay a green sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank gable end to the road. There was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossom — apple, plum, pear, cherry; and as we drove by I could see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals. In and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the Mittel Land ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the hillsides like tongues of flame. The road was rugged, but still we seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste. I could not understand then what the haste meant, but the driver was evidently bent on losing no time in reaching Borgo Prund. I was told that this road is in summertime excellent, but that it had not yet been put in order after the winter snows. In this respect it is different from the general run of roads in the Carpathians, for it is an old tradition that they are not to be kept in too good order. Of old the Hospadars* would not repair them, lest the Turk should think that they were preparing to bring in foreign troops, and so hasten the war which was always really at loading point.

Beyond the green swelling hills of the Mittel Land rose mighty slopes of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathians themselves. Right and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly. Here and there seemed mighty rifts in the mountains, through which, as the sun began to sink, we saw now and again the white gleam of falling water. One of my companions touched my arm as we swept round the base of a hill and opened up the lofty, snow-covered peak of a mountain, which seemed, as we wound on our serpentine way, to be right before us: —

Look! Isten szek! — God's seat! — and he crossed himself reverently.

As we wound on our endless way, and the sun sank lower and lower behind us, the shadows of the evening began to creep round us. This was emphasised by the fact that the snowy mountain-top still held the sunset, and seemed to glow out with a delicate cool pink. Here and there we passed Cszeks and Slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but I noticed that goitre was painfully prevalent. By the roadside were many crosses, and as we swept by, my companions all crossed themselves. Here and there was a peasant man or woman kneeling before a shrine, who did not even turn round as we approached, but seemed in the self-surrender of devotion to have neither eyes nor ears for the outer world. There were many things new to me: for instance, hay-ricks in the trees, and here and there very beautiful masses of weeping birch, their white stems shining like silver through the delicate green of the leaves. Now and again we passed a leiter-wagon — the ordinary peasant's cart — with its long, snake-like vertebra, calculated to suit the inequalities of the road. On this were sure to be seated quite a group of home-coming peasants, the Cszeks with their white, and the Slovaks with their coloured, sheepskins, the latter carrying lance-fashion their long staves, with axe at end. As the evening fell it began to get very cold, and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness the gloom of the trees, oak, beech, and pine, though in the valleys which ran deep between the spurs of the hills, as we ascended through the Pass, the dark firs stood out here and there against the background of late-lying snow. Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness, which here and there bestrewed the trees, produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening, when the falling sunset threw into strange relief the ghost-like clouds which amongst the

Reviews for Dracula

[Zahra Batool · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The ending I loved the most. It shook me a bit.