Dracula was written in 1897, a time when manners were still very important. As is evident when Dr. Van Helsing asks Arthur Holmwood, “May I cut off the head of dead Miss Lucy?” after his fiancée is mysteriously bitten (by Count Dracula), and begins to become very sick, dies and later, appears to be rising from the dead to attack small children at night. As it turns out, according to Dr. Van Helsing, the best way to dispose of such a problem would be to cut off Lucy’s head and fill her mouth with garlic. At first, Arthur is appalled by this idea but soon comes to realize that its only way that Lucy can truly be laid to rest.
Afterwards Van Helsing, Arthur and Lucy’s two other suitors (she received marriage propositions from three men all together) Dr. Seward (the POV character in this portion of the novel) and Quincey Morris all descend into Lucy’s tomb to perform the beheading. Upon opening her coffin they find her appearance has changed in the sense that her teeth have become pointed and her mouth voluptuous describing it as “seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity.” Once again, sexuality coming into play with vampiric conditions, making me wonder if the novel is one that:
a) Views sex as a negative or
b) is providing commentary on sexual repression common in the 19th century.
This is followed by Arthur staking Lucy in the heart to “kill” her (or at least as dead as you can make the undead) while Van Helsing reads a religious missal aloud. As soon as the stake pierces her skin, Lucy screeches in a horribly demonic way and begins to writhe, twist and convulse but eventually lies still. As a result of being staked, Lucy’s body returns to as was in life “with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity.”
Dr. Van Helsing seems to be much more superstitious than those around him and it proves incredibly useful as he does see the true cause of Lucy’s sickness and is able to solve it with due to his great knowledge of the supernatural. His faith in magic and superstation is evident in that he uses religious items such as crosses and missals during his dealings with the supernatural and that he is willing to cut of the head off the body of a kind, sweet and deceased human being and fill the mouth with garlic because of the supernatural forces he believes are behind it. This is effective of course seeing as these magical elements in the world of the book are very much real. It would appear that perhaps one of the themes of the novel as expressed through this character would be that of the importance of faith. Van Helsing is perhaps the only character who is able to identify the true cause of Lucy’s failing health due to his vast knowledge of folklore while the other characters seek out a logical explanation.
It should also be noted that Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in the same half of the 19th century that Dracula was and people were still getting used to the ideas that it put forward. It could be that the almost animalistic behavior of the vampires (the drinking of blood, the climbing up walls) may have been a reflection on some peoples feelings towards the notion that human beings are after all animals and descended from them as well. What I like about Dracula so far is that, while it seems to promote faith and superstition over logic and fact in some cases, it still seems to embrace scientific ideas such as evolution as fact by presenting the animalistic behavior of the vampires as a reflection on these new ideas. It’s possible Bram Stoker is trying to communicate that, “yes human beings are animals in many senses but we should still always keep in mind what separates us from the rest of zoology”.
