Other essays and articles in the Literature Archive related to this topic include : Elements of Romanticism in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley • Overview of Romanticism in Literature • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Morality Without God • Romanticism in Poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge
Bram Stoker’s most compelling thematic interest in Dracula is the conflict between familiar Western culture and an exotic Eastern realm. In the very beginning of the book, Jonathan Harker tells us early in one of the important quotes from “Dracula” by Bram Stoker that, “the impression I had was of leaving the West and entering the East” (9). It is from this early point that the dichotomy between the East and West is set up and throughout Dracula this theme builds. It is this conflict between East and West that dominates the novel, and a fascinating dynamic of West-East tension emerges between Dracula and his pursuers—although it is impossible to simply imagine Dracula as the “evil” East and the hunting party as the valiant “West.” This paper will show how language, technology, and narrative serve to complicate the politics ofDracula and highlight the differences between the two hemispheres.
Dracula presents a threat to the orderly Western-oriented Victorian world not only because of his hideous vampirism, but also because of the challenge he represents to an accepted notion of geography, culture, and history. At times, it seems he is working to actively undermine traditional Western European values, and the various forces that espouse them. Dracula tells Mina Harker in one of the meaningful quotations from Dracula, “Whilst they played wits against me – against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born – I was countermining them” (251-52). This quote highlights the fact that Dracula has for many years been considering the differences between East and West. Yet, Dracula has in the past proven himself a staunch defender of England (the powerhouse of the West, fighting for her against the Turks (who are symbolic of Eastern empires.) Dracula represents the kind of uncomfortable historical contradiction that Victorian England most despised. The hunt for him, then, is in part a mission to undo the damage he has done to the one-dimensional, progress-oriented and very Western version of history that dominated the period.
Dracula represents a vision of the East that is less the opposite than the mirror of Western society. His behavior is a perversion of British notions of good taste, yet many of the British in the novel display behavior so nefarious that it rivals the Count’s own. Lord Godalming, for instance, boasts that “My title will make it alright with the locksmith, and with any policeman that may come along” (261). He, too, believes himself above the morays of society and because of his convictions, which are borne out of a Western sense of propriety, this tension between East and West is made all the more clear.
It is tempting to think that Dracula’s greatest insult is the damage he does to pure English blood, as when he exchanges blood with Lucy, such that “the blood of four strong [English] men” is not enough to save her (138). Yet two members of the hunting party carry similarly impure blood, Van Helsing the Dutchman and the American Quincey Morris. These non-English characters do not escape notice; Van Helsing’s accent is thickly narrated and, as Lucy notes, “Mr. Morris doesn’t always speak slang—that is to say he never does so to strangers or before them, for he is really well educated and has excellent manners—but he found out that it amused me to hear him talk American slang…and he says such funny things” (59). In some ways as goes hand in hand with this thesis statement on this theme in “Dracula” by Bram Stoker, Dracula’s imperialistic attitude and aristocratic airs make him seem more English than these foreigners.
The Western characters increasingly rely on technology to distinguish themselves from the perceived primitivism of the East. Yet the journey East seems to entail abandoning the trappings of technology: “How I miss my phonograph!” declares Seward, “[T]o write a diary with a pen is irksome to me; but Van Helsing says I must” (291). Jonathan Harker is the first to note that technology alone cannot defeat the Count, and by extension, cannot head off the threat of Eastern values: “unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill” (40-41). Again, the problem seems to be one of similarity, not difference: in the absence of technology, the hunting party finds that their instincts are all too similar to that of their prey.
Highlighting this dangerous similarity is the character of Quincey Morris. There is reason to believe that Morris is himself a vampire and even the most basic character analysis of Quincy Morris will offer plenty of textual evidence for this. Lucy calls him, as she does Dracula, an “other,” and it is after she and Morris share blood that she becomes a vampire. Furthermore, he is remarkably adept at spotting evidence of vampirism, and the circumstances of his arrival at Lucy’s home are especially suspicious. Stoker deliberately leaves the nature of Morris’ character ambiguous. Note that it is probably the moral ambiguity of Dracula’s character that makes him most repellent to English society. If the fallen hero, Morris, and the supposed villain, Dracula, have so much in common, how can one draw a clear distinction between notions of good and evil, or, for that matter, East and West?
What finally distinguishes Morris from Dracula is history. Dracula is an ancient and brooding figure, and he represents something of the timeless but elusive quality attributed by Victorians to the Orient. Morris is a product of a still fertile America, a country with, in a relative sense, almost no past. The weight of history behind Dracula poses a kind of ideological threat to England that Morris, a mere mortal, cannot. Dracula’s immortality is what most separates him from natural reality, and it is why his appearance causes such anxiety in the Victorian mind. It had been easy enough to the subdue the East with colonialism, but how would immortal history record this conquest? It may be that the ambiguousness of Dracula’s character foreshadows the moral ambiguities that would eventually become such an obvious feature of the imperial project.
