| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/97802414111551.jpg]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!... Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!"'' |
| 5 | -->-- '''Count Dracula''' |
| 6 | |
| 7 | The original Creator/BramStoker novel that the PublicDomainCharacter {{Dracula}} comes from. It was first published in 1897. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor about to be made partner, is sent out to Castle Dracula in Transylvania to assist a new client of his firm who's moving to London. Waiting for him back at home is his young fiancée, the schoolmistress Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray. Jonathan expects to be back home within a few weeks, but what he doesn't know is that Count Dracula is an ancient vampire, whose intentions are nothing less than a plan to rejuvenate himself with new blood from the teeming crowds of London. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | Meanwhile, back in England, Dr. John Seward, keeper of an insane asylum, notices a strange obsession of his patient Renfield: consuming live things, so as to absorb their life energy. Renfield also keeps trying to escape to the old abandoned house next door to the asylum, which seems to be seeing a lot of activity all of a sudden. And Lucy Westenra, Mina's beautiful best friend who has one fiancé and two men in unrequited love with her (Dr. Seward being one of the two), is beginning to fall ill... |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Concerned about Lucy's failing health, Seward summons his Dutch mentor, Professor [[AuthorAvatar Abraham Van Helsing]]. When Van Helsing recognizes Lucy's symptoms as the mark of the vampire, he gathers her loved ones around him to save the girl: her fiancé Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming; her American former suitor Quincey Morris; Jonathan Harker (who was found severely traumatized by Dracula, but alive); and Mina. Knowing that Dracula's power doesn't work during the day — although he can still move about, and ''fight'', quite well during these hours — they form a plan to hunt him down and rid the world of him forever. Although the men initially try to keep Mina out of the loop to protect her feminine sensibilities, she quickly proves herself a strong and thoroughly clever investigator... which Dracula himself is just as quick to notice. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | For its '''many''' media adaptions, see the {{Dracula}} page or the [[DerivativeWorks/{{Dracula}} Derivative Works page]]. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | This book is now in the public domain, and can be found [[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345 on Project Gutenberg.]] |
| 18 | ---- |
| 19 | [[AC:The main characters in the novel include:]] |
| 20 | * Count Dracula — the BigBad. He's AffablyEvil, at least at the beginning of the novel (though that might have been [[FauxAffablyEvil completely put-on]] for Harker's benefit). |
| 21 | * Renfield — [[SycophanticServant Dracula's pathetic yes man]]. This is usually only in the films though. Stoker's novel has him act as a kind of 'sensor' for Dracula, but no real explanation is given to how this is achieved. Renfield is simply shown to be an inmate at the asylum in the book. |
| 22 | * Jonathan Harker — TheHero, though often is downgraded to TheWatson for Van Helsing in adaptations. In the novel (and some adaptations), he [[TookALevelInBadass Takes A Level In Badass]], and spends the latter part of the story stalking Dracula through London ''with a [[KukrisAreKool Kukri knife]].'' |
| 23 | * Mina Harker (nee Murray) — DamselInDistress and VampireRefugee. She's the TropeMaker of the latter. She's also the TeamMom and TheHeart of the group who track down Dracula. |
| 24 | * Lucy Westenra — DamselInDistress, played dead straight. She becomes the first victim of the count upon his arrival on London shores. The men try to save her, fail, and she becomes a vampire with a taste for children. |
| 25 | * Abraham Van Helsing — HerrDoktor and TheProfessor, often promoted to BadassBookworm in adaptations. TropeCodifier of the modern VampireHunter...despite not really being one in the original novel. |
| 26 | * Dr. John Seward, Arthur Holmwood (later known as Lord Godalming), and Quincey Morris — LoveInterests for Lucy who become secondary heroes following her distress. In adaptations, likely to be either dropped entirely or combined in some fashion with the Harker role. If not, they are TheLancer to Harker. |
| 27 | * The Vampire Women — Three [[VampiresAreSexGods beautiful and seductive vampires]] who reside in Dracula's castle, desiring Jonathan's blood and welcoming Mina as their sister when's she's a VampireRefugee. Despite often being described as his [[CommonKnowledge Brides]] out-of-universe, due to their vague and short role, it's not made clear what their relationship to Dracula is. Theories include that they're his wife and daughters/sisters (the two who are stated to share resemblance to the Count), that they are all Brides/lovers, or that they are simply past victims he keeps for company (the tomb of their leader, the blonde one, seems to suggest she is of high status somehow). Their portrayal in various forms of media tend to shift on their behavior. Sometimes they are simply coquettish, while other times they are [[TheVamp sexually forward]]. Often fall victim to AdaptationDyeJob. |
| 28 | ---- |
| 29 | !!''Dracula'' provides examples of: |
| 30 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 31 | [[folder:A–H]] |
| 32 | %%* AbridgedForChildren: The 1901 Abridged Edition. |
| 33 | * ABNegative: Due to ScienceMarchesOn, Lucy gets whole blood transfusions from four separate men and doesn't seem to suffer any ill effects besides a failure to stop her from turning into a vampire. While blood types would not be discovered for another three years, it ''was'' known that about half of all transfusions failed for unknown reasons, adding a certain tension to the transfusion scenes. |
| 34 | * AcademyOfEvil: Dracula is mentioned to have studied at Myth/TheScholomance, which was known to be a school devoted to the black arts, leading into the theory it was the teachings he learned there that led to him turning into a vampire. Freda Warrington's unofficial sequel ''Dracula the Undead'' has the now-abandoned Scholomance play a big role in the plot. |
| 35 | * AccidentalTruth: When Mina Harker asks Dr. Seward to let her listen to his phonograph diary, he's worried that she won't be able to stand hearing what happened to her best friend Lucy and tries to deter her by saying he doesn't know how to go to any specific part of the recordings. No sooner are the words out of his mouth than [[OhCrap he realizes he really doesn't have any idea how to find any specific part of the diary, and they therefore can't use it to find clues about Dracula.]] He now has no choice but to grant Mina's request to listen to the whole thing and transcribe it on her typewriter. |
| 36 | * AdmiringTheAbomination: According to Van Helsing, the Count "must indeed have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land. If it be so, then was he no common man: for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest'." |
| 37 | * AffablyEvil: Dracula is a most polite and charming host. Although he [[FauxAffablyEvil loses the affability]] in his later encounters with the other characters. |
| 38 | * AffectionateGestureToTheHead: Van Helsing does this to Seward on a few occasions. When Seward is sleeping on the couch in Lucy's spare room, Van Helsing wakes him with a hand on his head to ask how their patient is this morning. Another time, he playfully pulls Seward's ear. When describing the secrecy in which they must work, he advises Seward to keep knowledge "here, and here," tapping him on the heart and forehead. On each occasion it serves as a reminder of how close they are, as the others do not tend to be so free with physical contact. |
| 39 | * AffectionateNickname: Van Helsing takes to Mina in a very fatherly sort of way, and consistently refers to her as "our dear Madam Mina." |
| 40 | * AgentMulder: It doesn't take much to convince [[SeenItAll Quincey Morris]] that there are vampires about. |
| 41 | * AgentScully: |
| 42 | ** Dr. Seward originally disbelieves in vampires since it sounds pretty fantastical. Van Helsing personally shows him first-hand by visiting Lucy's grave before showing the others. |
| 43 | ** Arthur Holmwood also doesn't really believe in the vampire story. At least until the confrontation with the vampirized Lucy later on. |
| 44 | * AlasPoorVillain: Renfield's death invokes this trope. He's mostly unsympathetic for most of the novel — he nearly beats a man to death and attacks one of the protagonists with a knife — but when he realizes that Dracula had lied to him, he attempts to defend Mina Harker from him and is fatally injured because of it. The graphic description of his injuries doesn't help. |
| 45 | * AllFirstPersonNarratorsWriteLikeNovelists: Pretty blatant example. The novel is presented as a collection of diaries, telegrams and newspaper clippings, the diaries being kept by characters like Jonathan (a lawyer), Mina (a lady of society), Seward (a psychiatrist), etc. Not only do all of them write in very much the same style, but all of them make use of [[SesquipedalianLoquaciousness florid, poetic language]], despite none of them being professional writers. They also include long pages of dialogue that any real journal keeper would simply summarize, and even official documents are phrased as prose. |
| 46 | * AmazonBrigade: As short a role as the vampire women had in the book, they certainly show they're fearsome creatures. It's only because of Dracula that they're prevented from feeding on Harker; it's clear if they had the chance, Harker would've been drained instantly and most likely turned into a vampire. And it's only due to Van Helsing's wafers that they were kept at bay from taking Mina. And even then, they don't give up on trying to get her till the sun rises, even killing the pair's horses. If it was anyone else looking after Mina, the women would've most likely overpowered her protectors and claimed Mina easily. |
| 47 | * AmericansAreCowboys: The one American character, Quincey Morris, is a wealthy Texas cattle rancher who carries a large bowie knife. In one moment, Morris leaves a meeting with other heroes where they're trying to figure out how to cope with vampires; a few seconds later, bullets come flying through the window. |
| 48 | -->'''Quincey''': I'm sorry, I thought I saw a bat out there. |
| 49 | * AnimalMotifs: Howling wolves are a sign of Dracula's presence, and he's repeatedly associated with (and has power over) wolves, bats, rats, and at one point [[WallCrawl lizards]]. However, horses are terrified of vampires. |
| 50 | * {{Animorphism}}: Dracula has the power to shapeshift into wolves, bats and smoke, and probably other things. |
| 51 | * AntagonistTitle: It sure ain't named after the old man who hunts him. |
| 52 | * ApocalypticLog: The journal of the captain on whose ship Dracula came over is ''chilling''. |
| 53 | * ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount: Of the four men trying to track down Dracula, three of them are extremely wealthy by last act (two of them having inherited large estates, the other being a wealthy ranch owner), which means they can spend money and hand out bribes freely without having to worry about the expense. |
| 54 | * AristocratsAreEvil: Except for Lord Godalming, AKA Arthur, who is one of the protagonists, but not treated any differently from the rest. Dracula, however, is ''dead'' straight. Conversely, every vampire is aristocratic. Lucy starts off as a subversion but obviously becomes a straight example once she's a vampire. |
| 55 | * ArtisticLicenceHistory: Stoker was clearly trying to imply that Dracula is the historical [[UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler Vlad III of Wallachia]], but has mixed him up with John Hunyadi, a contemporary and sometime enemy of Vlad. It was actually Hunyadi who ruled Transylvania (Vlad was from Wallachia), held the title of Count, and had connections to the Székely peoples. |
| 56 | * ArtisticLicenseMedicine: There are a metric ton of blood transfusions, which was the hot new technology at the time, but blood types were unknown, so there's no concern for bad transfusions; instead, it's assumed that strong young men have the best blood. |
| 57 | * AscendedFanboy: Van Helsing is either this or RetiredBadass, depending on how one reads the hints in his backstory. A "metaphysician and philosopher" who has spent a good chunk of his life gathering arcane knowledge on vampires, then throws himself enthusiastically at the chance to put that knowledge to practical use. |
| 58 | * AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: |
| 59 | ** Stoker uses the word "nosferatu" as an appealingly foreign-sounding synonym for "vampire", and identified as his source a work that cited it as the Romanian translation of "not living". Unfortunately, the word doesn't exist in Romanian, and no alternative etymologies (a Greek word meaning "disease-bearing," a Latin word meaning "you are our wild beast," or a mis-transcription of a legitimate, but unknown, Romanian or Slavonic word) have gained anything like consensus. |
| 60 | ** At times, Van Helsing's speech is just a random string of words without any resemblance to Dutch syntax. But every once in awhile, he sounds perfectly Dutch ("He infect you in such wise, that even if he do no more, you have only to live" is a very Dutch structure, for example). He occasionally slips some German into sentences, such as exclaiming "''Mein Gott!''" when shocked, but never once slips into Dutch. |
| 61 | * AuthorAvatar: There are three main candidates. It's been noted that Van Helsing has the same first name (Abraham) and same basic description (robust build, red hair) as Stoker himself, but those also apply to Stoker's father (who was also named Abraham), so it might be a case of WriteWhoYouKnow. Most critics tend to see Jonathan Harker as Stoker's AuthorAvatar, although Seward's relationship with van Helsing mirrors Stoker's own with his literary mentor Walt Whitman. |
| 62 | * AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Sort of a twisted version with Dracula and the vampire women - who it is said he held love for once, but no longer (accused by the blonde and affirmed by Dracula). They disobey him when it comes to Jonathan but otherwise there's a reason the vampire women stay in castle and serve Dracula (either from fear, respect for him, or just total control over them). Dracula bringing them a baby to eat shows he does somewhat still care for them. |
| 63 | * BabiesEverAfter: The novel ends with an epilogue set a few years after the main action, with the surviving heroes all together along with Jonathan and Mina's first child, who was born on the anniversary of Dracula's defeat. And they call him [[spoiler:[[DeadGuyJunior Quincey]]]]. |
| 64 | * BadassBookworm: Professor Abraham Van Helsing. The fact that he has "M.D., D.Ph., D.Litt., etc." after his name yet still helps defeat Dracula should attest to this. |
| 65 | * BadassNormal: Many adaptations, and by extension pop culture osmosis, imagines the protagonists as a crew of badass vampire hunters. In actuality they're an unlikely bunch of scholars, businessmen and socialites united by affection for Lucy and a heroic sense of responsibility. |
| 66 | * BadassUnintentional: Van Helsing isn't a VampireHunter or even an adventurer, but rather just some Dutch scholar who's knowledgeable enough about the natural world to come up with a way to defeat Dracula. |
| 67 | * BalkanBastard: The novel can be considered an UrExample of sorts of what’s generally a more modern trope. Dracula is from broadly the right part of the world, and is a deadly killer who travels west to carry out his evil schemes. And if he is correctly identified with the historical UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler, his ruthless personality was shaped by the brutal wars of that region... |
| 68 | * BatmanGambit: After being driven from London, Van Helsing is able to predict Dracula's plan for retreat and develop a counter-plan based on the count's previous actions during his battles with the Turks centuries before. |
| 69 | * BavarianFireDrill: While searching ships for Dracula's coffin Jonathan and Arthur notice that one crew becomes more compliant after mistaking them for government officials. The duo decide to take advantage of this by purchasing a Romanian flag for their ship. Jonathan states in his diary that every crew they met afterwards raised no objections to them searching the cargo. |
| 70 | * BeautyBrainsAndBrawn: A RareMaleExample with Lucy’s suitors. Arthur (beauty, the sensitive, romantic aristocrat), Jack (brains, the doctor and omnidisciplinarian scientist), Quincy (brawn, the gun-toting American cowboy). |
| 71 | * BeautyEqualsGoodness: |
| 72 | ** Zig-zagged with Lucy. In life, she is notably gorgeous and very sweet and kind, and her beauty persists even after her death. Van Helsing explains that most vampires uncontrollably revert to a hideous appearance whenever they go to sleep because they're so malign, but because Lucy was a good person in life and was being hypnotized when she was turned, that doesn't happen to her. However, the "Bloofer Lady" ''is'' a monster, and her lovely, innocent appearance is only a reminder of who she was, which makes staking her emotionally difficult. |
| 73 | ** Throughout the novel, characters linger on facial features in particular and make judgments about an individual's character based on them. Nearly all of the positive assessments turn out to be on the mark. |
| 74 | * BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: |
| 75 | ** In her first letter to Lucy, Mina says that it must be ''so'' fun for Jonathan to see other parts of the world, and wistfully wonders if the two of them will ever get to travel to a foreign country together. Presumably a quest to kill a vampire that's killed her best friend and has tried to kill both her and Jonathan isn't what she had in mind. |
| 76 | ** While feeling depressed after Lucy decides to marry Arthur instead of him, Dr Seward says in his diary that he needs a good project to distract him: "a good, unselfish cause to make me work—that would be indeed happiness." He gets a good, unselfish cause in the form of helping track down and defeat Dracula, the murderer of his beloved Lucy. |
| 77 | * BedlamHouse: Averted. While a lot of Seward's knowledge might be outdated by today's standards, it would be highly scientific at the time, and from what we see of his clinic, it appears to be a genuinely well-equipped facility. Even Renfield, who's shown himself to be violent, is mostly kept in a clean, normal room, and only put in a straitjacket and secure cell when he becomes a threat to himself and others. |
| 78 | * BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: It's strongly implied that Dracula is UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler himself. Stoker changed his villain's name from "Lord Vampyr" to Dracula after researching Vlad's grim reputation as a torturer. |
| 79 | * BigGood: Abraham Van Helsing. The viewpoint characters do much of the action themselves, but it's clear that Van Helsing leads the fight against Drac and they would be helpless without him. |
| 80 | * TheBigGuy: Quincy Morris the BoisterousBruiser Texan is the Big Guy for Professor Van Helsing's vampire hunting team. |
| 81 | * BigOlEyebrows: |
| 82 | ** Jonathan Harker notes that the Count's eyebrows are |
| 83 | -->''"very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion."'' |
| 84 | ** Van Helsing's are described as very thick too. |
| 85 | * BladeEnthusiast: Quincey Morris carries around a large bowie knife as part of his characterization as an American cowboy. Later he's upstaged by Arthur Holmwood, who busts out a kukri from his days in the military. Though he doesn't use it for any fighting, but mostly as something to fiddle with when he's anxious, Seward carries a lancet - a small medical knife used for bloodletting. |
| 86 | * BlandNameProduct: The ''Dailygraph'' newspaper (''Daily Telegraph'') and Kingstead Cemetery (''Highgate Cemetery'', near Hampstead). |
| 87 | * BlindIdiotTranslation: In the German translation. In the pivotal scene where Mina is visited by the Count at night, she tells the reader that she "couldn't resist him." In the original, she says that she "didn't want to resist him" (she thinks that's part of his terrible power) — a small, but important difference. |
| 88 | * BloodLust: Count Dracula goes from being a charming gentleman to a raging fiend with the flip of a switch — and the switch is Jonathan cutting himself shaving. |
| 89 | * BloodMagic: In contrast to his animalistic thralls, Dracula was originally just as much a sorcerer as he was a vampire. |
| 90 | * BloodTransfusionPlot: Van Helsing attempts to treat Lucy's anemia from Dracula's feedings with transfusions from her three suitors and himself. When the book was written, the concept of blood transfusions was radical, cutting-edge science, and the possibility of an allergic reaction to someone else's blood wasn't known. Thus, Lucy can get transfusions from four different men without anyone worrying about blood type compatibility. |
| 91 | * BluntMetaphorsTrauma: As a result of his difficulties with English, Van Helsing's attempts at figurative speech are rather interesting. |
| 92 | -->'''Van Helsing:''' Well, the milk that is spilt cries not out afterwards, as you say. |
| 93 | * BoisterousBruiser: Quincey Morris fills this trope to a T. |
| 94 | * BrainFever: Jonathan Harker suffers from brain fever when Mina finally finds him after he somehow escaped the vampire's clutches. |
| 95 | * BreakTheCutie: Mina. Her best friend dies, then she's attacked by Dracula and terrified of the possibility of becoming a vampire. But she eventually subverts it and stays strong for the sake of the hunters. |
| 96 | ** Jonathan as well. He began as a naïve and eager to please employee of his law firm, taking his first business trip, and ends up thoroughly traumatised by his experiences in the castle. After this, he begins to recover, thanks to having the truth of his experience confirmed, but Mina's subsequent experience leaves both of them shaken in the extreme. |
| 97 | * BreakingAndBloodsucking: The TropeCodifier with a helping hand from PopCulturalOsmosis. Dracula never technically enters Lucy's bedroom the first few times he bites her. On the first occasion, he hypnotises her to leave the house and go down to the park. Thereafter, he goes to her bedroom window as a bat and she climbs partway out of it to be drained. Only when the escaped wolf breaks the window is he able to enter (presumably after hypnotizing Lucy's mother into inviting him in). When vamping [[spoiler:Mina]], he was able to enter because an inmate of the asylum she was sleeping in gave him leave. |
| 98 | * BuffySpeak: |
| 99 | ** Appears in the definitive vampire story: |
| 100 | -->'''Dr. Seward:''' [Renfield] seems so mixed up with the Count in an indexy kind of way... |
| 101 | ** Lucy's vampire self is known as the 'Bloofer Lady' by the children she feeds on, who can't quite say the word 'beautiful'. |
| 102 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: Vampire hunting expert Van Helsing has quite the disturbing sense of humour. |
| 103 | * TheCakeIsALie: Dracula's deal to get Renfield to invite him in. And the deal Dracula reneged on; he offered [[TheRenfield Renfield]] thousands of rats. To eat. Renfield's insanity was a fixation on eating living creatures to absorb their life. Dracula going back on this deal is part of what instigated Renfield's HeelFaceTurn. |
| 104 | * CannotCrossRunningWater: A stated weakness of vampires, except during "the slack or flood of the tide". It proves instrumental to slowing Dracula down near the end of the book. |
| 105 | * CassandraTruth: |
| 106 | ** The peasants in Transylvania beg Jonathan not to go to the castle. He pretty much laughs them off. |
| 107 | ** Averted by Professor Van Helsing, who doesn't tell anyone vampires are involved until they see incontrovertible proof, because he knows they'd never believe him. |
| 108 | * CassetteCraze: Probable the UrExample: Dr. Seward uses a phonograph to record his observations. |
| 109 | * CastsNoShadow: Just part of the creepiness of both Dracula and the vampire women is that they cast no shadows. |
| 110 | * TheCavalry: This role is played by [[ItMakesSenseInContext three terrier dogs]] when our heroes are attacked by a horde of rats. |
| 111 | * CentralTheme: |
| 112 | ** Love. Dracula is a sociopathic monsters who's "love" consists of forcing himself upon his victims, while the heroes are all bound together by love. Not just romantic either, though there's plenty of that, but the love that keeps three friends together even when they all fall for the same woman, the love of a teacher for the students under his care, and the love for someone long gone that keeps them fighting to avenge her. |
| 113 | ** More broadly, it's the classic Romantic VS Enlightenment argument; specifically "old world" (magic/superstition) VS "new world" (science/technology). Dracula is a gothic novel after all, which leans heavily towards romanticism. Dracula himself has the edge throughout most of the story because his existence is not even fathomable by members of this "new world." The most terrifying ability of Dracula (to a Victorian Brit) is his ability to cause sophisticated modern women to slip back into "savage" sexuality. |
| 114 | * CharacterTitle: Fittingly, too, since Dracula would eventually become the most famous vampire in all of fiction. |
| 115 | * ChekhovsGun: Arthur's dog whistle. |
| 116 | * ChildEater: Dracula's vampire companions and Lucy after she turned, though the latter never really fully drained her victims because circumstances would force her to leave them behind before she could. |
| 117 | * ChildrenAreInnocent: The vampire Lucy preys on children. Although she doesn't kill them, the children's innocent inability to understand that she was harming them — some even wish to meet her again — is horrific. |
| 118 | * ChristianityIsCatholic: Prof. Van Helsing, the one guy who knows how to deal with vampires, is a devout Catholic. Jonathan Harker, however, is at least nominal Anglican. This results in a few misunderstandings, when the Englishmen have a hard time taking Catholic crucifixes seriously and Van Helsing responds to their bemused surprise at his use of crushed communion hosts by explaining he has an indulgence. Although they are quite correct to be bemused, as indulgences don't work that way at all. |
| 119 | * CircularReasoning: "I am satisfied that Lucy's body is not in that coffin, but that only proves one thing: That it is not there." |
| 120 | * ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: By the time the book was written, vampire lore included an aversion to a cross. This, in different series, can be either the product of the vampire's belief in the cross, or the product of the wielder's belief in the cross. (Often, it also works with another strong symbol of belief — for example, a rabbi using a Star of David to hold a vampire at bay.) In ''Dracula'' itself, it only really works for the Catholic Van Helsing; the others, mostly Church of England members, just can't take the idea seriously. |
| 121 | * {{Clerk}}: Jonathan Harker is a clerk, though by the time the story starts, he has risen high enough in the company to be trusted with dangerous foreign missions, and he's made a partner in the firm on his return. |
| 122 | * ColdIron: Dracula is slain by a knife through the heart and decapitation by a second knife, drawing on the use of sharp iron and/or steel tools like knives and needles as protection against vampires. It's never stated that iron is important, though. |
| 123 | * CollateralAngst: Dr Seward observes several times that Jonathan seems to find Mina's metaphorical rape harder to bear than she does, and she, ironically, seems to be the one comforting ''him''. |
| 124 | * ComboPlatterPowers: [[OurVampiresAreDifferent This vampire]] can [[WallCrawl scale walls]] like ComicBook/SpiderMan, [[WeatherManipulation control the weather]], control wolves and rats, turn into a wolf and [[SuperSmoke a cloud of dust]] in addition to a bat, and has SuperStrength. |
| 125 | * ComicBookFantasyCasting: A rare pre-comic example: Bram Stoker previously worked as an assistant for stage actor Sir Henry Irving, and he based the Count's appearance and some of his mannerisms around Irving. Ironically, Irving never played the character onstage [[note]]he died 8 years after the novel's publication [[/note]]. |
| 126 | * ContrivedCoincidence: |
| 127 | ** The boat that Dracula is on arrives at Whitby, where Mina Murray, the fiancée of the man who's unwittingly helped him, is by a strange coincidence on holiday at the time; in a twist of fate, his first victim is Lucy, Mina's best friend. What's more, one of Lucy's admirers runs the lunatic asylum ''right next door'' to Dracula's new house. He also has a friend and mentor who, while not a vampire hunter, certainly knows a ''lot'' about how to deal with them or ward them off. Honestly, if Drac had landed anywhere else, his plan would've gone off without a hitch. |
| 128 | ** In Chapter 2, Harker notes that Whitby is circled on Dracula's map of England, implying that the Count's arrival there is not strictly coincidental; why he would have chosen that place, even before he learns of Mina, is a bit of a mystery (some adaptations, such as the 1970s [=BBC=] version, have Jonathan mentioning Mina staying at Whitby beforehand, so when he learns of Dracula circling it, he knows it was a deliberate choice, and otherwise it may be inferred that Dracula somehow knew about Mina beforehand and had already chosen her). |
| 129 | * CoolBoat: Not so cool by the time Dracula is done with it, though... |
| 130 | * TheCoronerDothProtestTooMuch: |
| 131 | ** After Lucy and her mother die during an attack by Dracula (Lucy for vampiric reasons, her mother by fright-assisted heart failure), Dr. Seward undertakes to sign the death certificates and fudge the circumstances enough to avoid an official enquiry, since it would hold up the hunt for Dracula and nobody would believe the truth anyway. |
| 132 | ** When Renfield is killed by Dracula, Seward does the same again. This is a more extreme example: Renfield suffers multiple cranial and spinal injuries, such that he'd have been paralyzed for life if he'd lived, but Seward marks down the maner of death as "misadventure in falling from bed". |
| 133 | * CovertPervert: Implied to be the case with Dr. Seward. While he's never anything but courteous and gentlemanly in his behaviour towards women, there are clues that he's kinkier than he lets on; [[NightmareFetishist he seems to be turned on by having his blood drawn]] and watching it enter the body of his love interest, Lucy. |
| 134 | * CreepyCemetery: Van Helsing and Dr. Seward keep vigil at the cemetery where Lucy is entombed (and from which her body has disappeared), discovering she has become a vampire, and ultimately dispatch her with a stake through the heart after she returns to her coffin. |
| 135 | * CrimefightingWithCash: While tracking down the Count, the private fortunes of the Harkers, Dr. Seward, Quincey Morris, and especially Arthur Holmwood (being, respectively, a partner of a law firm and sole inheritor of the estate of the other partner, a physician and sole owner of a mansion which he converted to an insane asylum, an American entrepreneur who regularly travels the world, and a British lord) are used to rapidly equip the entire party with whatever tools they need nearly instantaneously, as well as fund several necessary bribes both in England and abroad. At one point in the novel, Mina lampshades the incredible utility of cold, hard cash. |
| 136 | * CultureClash: Discussed; Seward is reluctant to have Van Helsing go over Lucy's papers, fearing that he may misinterpret English and Dutch legal requirements. It turns out that Van Helsing is completely aware of English legal practices, so there is little to worry about on this point. |
| 137 | * TheCutie: Lucy has three men ask for her hand in marriage in ''one day'', and they then all pledge to protect [[spoiler:and avenge]] her. |
| 138 | * [[DamselInDistress Damsels in Distress]]: Lucy and Mina. Mina, however, ''does'' something about it. |
| 139 | * DarkIsEvil: Dracula's castle is a dark and oppressively gloomy place, and the Count himself dresses in black. |
| 140 | * DastardlyWhiplash: Dracula's black attire and long moustache give him this appearance. |
| 141 | * DaywalkingVampire: Dracula walks freely during the day, though he's more powerful at night. This is something that was eventually lost in vampire lore and did not return until recent years. |
| 142 | * DavidVsGoliath: Dracula vs. Renfield |
| 143 | * DeadGuyJunior: Jonathan's and Mina's child is named after ''[[OverlyLongName all]]'' of the group, but goes by [[spoiler:Quincey]]. |
| 144 | * DeadpanSnarker: The "laconic" Quincey Morris. Van Helsing gets his fair share as well, and Seward has his moments (especially when describing Renfield). |
| 145 | * DeathOfAChild: Dracula has no compunction feeding a baby to his three vampire wives. Then the baby's mother to a pack of wolves. And one of his victims, Lucy Westenra, gains a reputation for preying on children. |
| 146 | * {{Deconstruction}}: The book takes several staples of the Gothic tradition and previous horror novels and reimagines them. Instead of CreepyCatholicism, the Romanian peasants whom Jonathan encounters while travelling to meet Dracula are aware of the danger he's in and try to warn him, when he manages to escape Dracula's castle he's nursed back to health by a hospital full of nuns, and the Roman Catholic Abraham Van Helsing is initially the only one of the main cast who has ''any'' inkling of what they're dealing with and how to fight it. John Seward, who is technically a 'mad doctor', is also one of the major protagonists. Rather than ScienceIsBad, as is the case with ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'' and ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde'', it instead gives the heroes an edge over their enemy. |
| 147 | * {{Dedication}}: "To my dear friend Hommy-Beg".[[note]]An {{affectionate nickname}} for Stoker's friend and fellow novelist [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_Caine Hall Caine]].[[/note]] |
| 148 | * DePower: This is the only effect of sunlight on Stoker's vampires. |
| 149 | * DemonicVampires: The eponymous Count himself started out as a mortal man who attended the Scholomance (basically [[Franchise/HarryPotter Hogwarts]] if it were run by the Devil). It's implied that it was through [[DealWithTheDevil Satanic]] [[EvilSorceror magic]], not a bite, that Dracula became a vampire (albeit after he died from his mortal death in the war, and resurrected as an walking undead later). |
| 150 | * DidWeJustHaveTeaWithCthulhu: Sure, there's clearly ''something'' creepy going on, but it takes a while before Jonathan Harker actually decides he wants to leave, and the Count remains friendly around him right up until he starts attempting escape. |
| 151 | * DiseaseBleach: Jonathan's hair begins to go grey after his imprisonment at the Count's castle. It's believed by some to be another way in which he grows to mirror Dracula himself, similar to his personality change and growing fixation on his weapons. Of course, this gets even more patently ridiculous later on: after Mina explains all the deprivations the Count has been secretly putting her through and the fact that he's setting her up to become another vampire thrall, Jonathan's hair is ''explicitly'' stated as going stark white right then and there, grown hair and all. |
| 152 | * DismemberingTheBody: Justified. [[spoiler:After Lucy Westenra dies, Van Helsing stabs her in the heart and cuts her head off so she stops being a vampire. Somewhat downplayed, as it is seems with Dracula's death that the head does not need to be completely severed i.e. the body could remain mostly intact.]] |
| 153 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: |
| 154 | ** The scene where [[spoiler:Dracula forces Mina to drink his blood]] reads like a rape scene. |
| 155 | ** Vampirism in general. It's especially obvious in the situation when [[spoiler:Lucy]] has been ravished and drained by the monster, and the men who love her have one option to restore her purity: to inject their own precious bodily fluids into her. This is lampshaded by one of the characters mocking the idea of the blood transfusion being a metaphorical sex act. |
| 156 | * TheDogBitesBack: Renfield, albeit at [[RedemptionEqualsDeath the cost of his life]]. |
| 157 | * DramaticIrony: When the heroes go on the offensive against Dracula, Van Helsing insists on leaving Mina out of it to protect her. Subsequently, there are diary entries from Mina and Jonathan each saying that they hate Mina being excluded and are only going along with it because (they think) the other agrees with it, and scenes where Van Helsing, Seward, and the others congratulate themselves on keeping Mina safe from the horrors they've been experiencing, even as it becomes apparent to the reader that by isolating her they've made her vulnerable to even worse horrors. |
| 158 | * DrivenToMadness: The Count leaves poor Jonathan a complete psychological wreck, [[{{Gaslighting}} convinced that what he'd seen couldn't possibly be real]]. |
| 159 | * DualAgeModes: Dracula appears much younger when he's recently fed. He also disguised himself with a fake beard, and claimed to be a just a coachman working for the count. |
| 160 | * DudeNotFunny: After Lucy is vamped, and subsequently staked, Arthur gives a heartfelt speech about how, though they were never married, the transfusion of his blood into her veins made them more than husband and wife. Doctor Van Helsing is [[{{Corpsing}} suddenly overcome with giggles]] and has to excuse himself. When Seward follows him out, Van Helsing giddily explains that since Lucy had transfusions from four men (including himself), then by Arthur's logic, Lucy was a bigamist. Doctor Seward finds it much less funny. |
| 161 | * DueToTheDead: What makes Seward so uneasy about investigating Lucy's vampirism. |
| 162 | * DungeonCrawling: There are some scenes reminiscent of this trope, although they omit the "and take the monster's stuff" step once the monster (Lucy) has been tracked to her underground crypt and dispatched. Amusingly, Jonathan finds a pile of gold coins (all of it at least 300 years old) in Dracula's room, and helps himself as he flees the castle in case he needs it on his journey. And this after he escaped a metaphorical dungeon (he'd been locked in his room in the castle), climbed a wall, explored a chapel converted for evil purposes, and attempted to kill a vampire. |
| 163 | * DyingAsYourself: This happens with each of the vampires, including Dracula himself (in the moment before he crumbles into dust). It happens in the first stage adaptation as well, but for some reason tends not to happen in movie versions. |
| 164 | -->"There was, on the face, a look of peace." |
| 165 | * {{Eagleland}}: Quincey Morris is presented as a cowboy-type from Texas, informal but friendly and honorable. Strangely, although repeatedly described by his friends as a man of action, he doesn't engage in all that much of it until he suffers a mortal wound fighting the Romani that protect Dracula's coffin at the end and striking one of the fatal blows to kill Dracula. |
| 166 | * EatsBabies: It's implied that the three vampire 'sisters' ate a baby: they're after Jonathan's blood, but Dracula tells them to leave him alone because he's still needed for the big real estate deal. One of them whines, "Are we to have nothing tonight?" and they are subsequently contented with a small, writhing bag. A peasant woman arrives at the castle gates later, screaming for him to return her child. And when Lucy Westenra rises as a vampire, she preys upon very young children, though thankfully none of them were seriously harmed before the heroes manage to put her to rest. |
| 167 | * EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette: Two of the vampire women are brunettes and Lucy, when she turns, has her hair color change from blonde to brunette as a sign of her corruption. Naturally, being undead, they all have pale skins. |
| 168 | * EloquentInMyNativeTongue: Van Helsing is an interesting quasi-example of this. He speaks the English in syntax quite broke, but he's really quite eloquent even then, in that he has a great vocabulary. |
| 169 | * EmpathicEnvironment: Immediately after [[spoiler:vampire Lucy is slain]], the weather is described as sunny and pleasant. |
| 170 | * EverythingIsBigInTexas: Lucy likes Quincey Morris' funny turns of phrase, so when he proposes to her, he consciously hams up the quaint cowboy-themed metaphors to an almost sickening degree. |
| 171 | * EvilCannotComprehendGood: Thanks to his royal lineage and centuries of isolation, Dracula is only able to view mortals as pawns or food, and he fancies himself [[AGodAmI a god made flesh]] whose destiny is to rule the entire Earth. This makes it inconceivable to him that anyone would be able to resist his will, let alone outsmart him. |
| 172 | * EvilDetectingDog: Dogs and horses are frightened by the Count's presence, but he can control wolves. |
| 173 | ** When he goes out to meet Jonathan Harker, the horses pulling Harker's cart panic, though the jet-black beasts pulling his own carriage obey him without hesitation. |
| 174 | ** At a funeral for one of Dracula's victims, a dog belonging to one of the guests refuses to go near the grave. |
| 175 | ** A wolf at a zoo in England snarls and lunges at the bars of his cage when the Count comes near, but calms down when he gets closer. And later escapes and breaks through Lucy's garlic-protected window. |
| 176 | * EvilSmellsBad: Dracula has foul breath, almost certainly due to his diet, and areas where he stays are, well, to quote the book: |
| 177 | -->But as to the odour itself, how shall I describe it? It was not alone that it was composed of all the ills of mortality and with the pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it seemed as though corruption had become itself corrupt. |
| 178 | * EvilSorcerer: Dracula is said to have been adept in the dark arts due to being trained as a Solomonari, a dark wizard from Eastern European folklore. It's heavily implied that he rose as a vampire in the first place through magic rather than being bitten like all of his victims, and his more famous powers like turning into mist, bats, wolves, or summoning storms are likely the product of his black magic rather than inherent vampire powers. |
| 179 | * ExpositionOfImmortality: In chapter III, Jonathan Harker converses with the Count on Transylvanian history, and observes that the Count speaks of "things and people, and especially of battles, [...] as if he had been present at them all." As the Count is really a centuries-old vampire, it is possible that he ''has'' been present at them all. |
| 180 | * ExtremelyDustyHome: Appears all the time, notably in the old wing of Castle Dracula and in the Count's purchased Carfax Abbey residence. |
| 181 | * FaintInShock: Jonathan Harker pulls one of these fairly early on. He has just been overtly harassed by three beautiful vampire-ladies ''and'' apparently his own host. |
| 182 | * FamousAncestor: Dracula namedrops nobody less than [[UsefulNotes/AttilaTheHun the Hun himself]] when describing his Székely heritage: |
| 183 | --> ''What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?'' |
| 184 | * {{Fanboy}}: Dracula is revealed to be one for his own homeland's history. When Jonathan asks him about the country, he gladly starts going on and on about how badass his people were way back when. |
| 185 | * FangsAreEvil: Well, sort of; while there's no mention of fangs as such (that came later, with the Film/{{Hammer|Horror}} movies), Dracula is described as having "peculiarly sharp white teeth". |
| 186 | * FauxAffablyEvil: The Count gives a polite and inviting first impression, if somewhat unsettling. The guest usually dismisses the last part under cultural/foreign differences. |
| 187 | -->''Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will. Go safely and leave something of the happiness you bring.'' |
| 188 | * FoeRomanceSubtext: Some interpret there to be romantic tensions between Dracula and Lucy, Dracula and Mina, and/or Dracula and Jonathan. Literary scholars regularly debate whether any of this was intentional or not. Not only was Stoker a rather old-fashioned type writing when the social and sexual liberation movements were just beginning to take off, but it is generally taken as fact by historians that Stoker himself was a heavily closeted [[InternalizedCategorism self-hating gay man]], and further, commonly assumed by literary scholars that Stoker used the story of ''Dracula'' to work through some issues, so the sexualized nature of the vampires took on a whole new meaning as an unsubtle appeal for restraint. (Scholars also note that while Dracula is knifed, [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything female vampires are killed by having something long and hard stuck in them]]. This is discussed in SERIOUS SCHOLARLY WORKS.) |
| 189 | ** When the female vampires in the castle attempt to "kiss" (read: bite) Jonathan, Drac shows up and chases them off, saying, "He belongs to me!" [[HomoeroticSubtext There is little to no heterosexual explanation for the passage that follows]]: |
| 190 | --->"How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me." The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him. "You yourself never loved. You never love!" On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear. It seemed like the pleasure of fiends. Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper, "Yes, I too can love." - ''Dracula,'' chapter 3, Jonathan Harker's Journal, 16 May. |
| 191 | * {{Foil}}: Van Helsing to Dracula: Both are confident, knowledgeable, and affable, with a slight hint of a [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign generic strange accent]], and refer to people as "friend". |
| 192 | * FoodPorn: Jonathan Harker devotes a lot of attention to what he's eating at the beginning of the book. |
| 193 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: The vampire women are a bit of foreshadowing in regards to the aftereffects of vampirism due to their seductive, beautiful, yet off-putting nature. Indeed, when Lucy turns, she's shown to have the same traits and Mina likewise starts exhibiting some of these after she's bitten. |
| 194 | * ForgetsToEat: One of the worrying symptoms Helsing notes of Mina after she's bitten by Dracula, due to the fact her appetite has suddenly disappeared during the journey to Castle Dracula. A sign that she's becoming closer to turning into a vampire. |
| 195 | * ForgottenTrope: Dracula is described as having [[SelfAbuse hairs in the centre of his palms]], which is an aspect of werewolf and vampire lore that has almost completely disappeared. |
| 196 | * FrequentlyFullMoon: The moon is dependably bright in all cases except when obscured by clouds, and it is explicitly described as "full" in two instances forty nights apart. |
| 197 | * FrozenFashionSense: {{Averted}}. Dracula's attempts to prepare himself for his move to England explicitly include acquiring clothes in the latest fashionable English style he can get his hands on in order to blend in better. |
| 198 | * FunetikAksent: The old Yorkshireman, various cockneys, and of course Van Helsing himself. Stoker prided himself (without much justification) on his ability to do these. |
| 199 | * FunnyForeigner: |
| 200 | %%** Van Helsing. %% Zero Context Example |
| 201 | ** Quincey Morris, to an extent, with his picturesque Texan slang. Lucy notes when she introduces him to Mina that he's playing it up because he knows it amuses her, and that he's perfectly capable of speaking standard English if the occasion calls for it. |
| 202 | ** Dracula himself defies it, stating that he is too proud to allow himself to be treated as such, and invites Jonathan Harker to his castle both to polish his accent and learn about everyday life in England, so he won't stick out like a sore thumb and be a target for mockery. |
| 203 | * FurAgainstFang: {{Inverted}}. Dracula can control wolves as well as all creatures of the night, and even turns into a wolf as a slightly less conspicuous way of breaching the English shore. |
| 204 | * {{Gaslighting}}: Whether it was his intent or not, Dracula did this to Jonathan Harker while he had Harker imprisoned in his castle. Harker was convinced he'd hallucinated the whole thing for a ''long'' time afterward. By the end of his stay, not only is Jonathan a psychological wreck, but he's practically become nocturnal to match the Count's own sleeping habits. |
| 205 | * TheGenericGuy: Jonathan Harker doesn't have an interest in science like Van Helsing or Seward, tragedy like Lucy and Arthur, madness like Renfield, or HeroicSacrifice like Quincey Morris, so he has historically been written off as merely a generic handsome guy who serves as the Count's [[TheChewToy Chew Toy]] in the first part of the book and a SatelliteLoveInterest to Mina after the Count becomes obsessed with her. Because of this many adaptations will either minimize his role, [[CompositeCharacter combine]] him with one or more of the other protagonists, or remove him completely. |
| 206 | * GenreRefugee: Quincey P. Morris. Nothing like the presence of an American cowboy in a GothicHorror story set in ''Britain'' to make you go "Say again?" |
| 207 | * GenreSavvy: Van Helsing is a scientist, but having recognized that they were fighting a monster out of legend, he goes to those legends to learn how to fight it. |
| 208 | * GenreShift: The novel changes rather drastically in its presentation as the story progresses. It starts as "straight" GothicHorror, with Jonathan trapped in an old, crumbling castle with mythological monsters. Then it becomes period drama as Lucy and Mina write each other about Lucy's love life and then vacation together in Whitby, then slams back hard into Gothic Horror when the ''Demeter'' lands in Whitby and Dracula encounters Lucy and starts feeding on her. Then Mina rushes off to see to Jonathan, Lucy goes back to London and Dracula moves there himself, and the novel becomes something of a medical drama as Seward and Van Helsing try to solve the riddle of her disease and save her life with cutting-edge medical treatments. Then it becomes a bit of a detective story as Van Helsing and Seward unravel the mystery of "The Bloofer Lady" and Mina compiles all the journals to finally form a coherent picture of what they're up against, and as the crew attempt to track down where Dracula's boxes of earth have moved to. Then it becomes something of a heist story as they try and figure out how to gain access to the houses Dracula has purchased to store his boxes in so they can destroy them. Then transforms into a SternChase as they try and track Dracula and get to him before he reaches his Castle, and before sunset when his full powers return. |
| 209 | * GentlemanAndAScholar: |
| 210 | ** Despite being "one of the most advanced scientists of his day", Abraham Van Helsing has nerves of steel, an open mind, a kind heart, and a wry sense of humour. |
| 211 | ** John Seward is a doctor by profession, although he is implied to be independently wealthy and does not need to work for money. |
| 212 | * GhostShip: The ''Demeter'' runs aground at Whitby with all the crew missing except the captain, whose corpse is found lashed to the helm. However, a ship's log is found which provides clues as to what happened aboard the vessel. |
| 213 | * GirlPosse: The three vampire women always work in a unit. |
| 214 | * AGlassOfChianti: Dracula doesn't eat or drink, but Harker comments very favourably on the food and wine the Count serves. |
| 215 | * GoodScarsEvilScars: Mina gets an evil one that the Transylvanians recognize. Dracula gets one from Jonathan early on, but it's inconsistently described in the text. |
| 216 | * GoOutWithASmile: |
| 217 | ** Vampirism is a curse, so vampires who are killed are implied to be relieved. |
| 218 | ** [[spoiler:Quincey also seems remarkably chipper for one who has thirty seconds to live — but he dies knowing Dracula is dead and Mina is saved.]] |
| 219 | * GottaKillThemAll: The heroes have to track down and destroy Dracula's lairs so he will have no place to go to change shape or rest in his native soil. |
| 220 | * GratuitousGerman: Van Helsing sometimes offers examples, though he is a Dutchman rather than a German. Some of it may be justified, however, since German was famously the great language of science (and medicine, especially) in the late 19th century, so a learned professor should be quite familiar with it no matter his own national origin. |
| 221 | * GraveRobbing: Committed a couple times by the protagonists, since vampires sleep in their coffins. Some of them really take issue with it at first. |
| 222 | * GreaterScopeVillain: It is openly stated that Dracula's vampirism is the result of a damning DealWithTheDevil and part of the dark sorcery that he was taught as a disciple of Satan in the occult academy of Myth/TheScholomance. This black magic that has transcended the natural limits of life and death makes him come across as a mere sinner who was tempted into becoming one by the powers of darkness and still serves them by crawling in the shadows of his hideous unlife. |
| 223 | * HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Interesting variation. Lucy, befitting her treasured EnglishRose status, is described as blonde (Seward refers to her hair lying on her bed pillow in "sunny ripples"), but as a vampire, is described by eyewitnesses as having dark hair. Especially fitting as her childlike innocence before getting attacked by Dracula is absent from her vampire form. |
| 224 | * HauntedCastle: Dracula greets Jonathan Harker: "Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!" |
| 225 | * HaveAGayOldTime: |
| 226 | ** "As he did so he started back, and I could hear his ejaculation, “Mein Gott!” as it was smothered in his throat". |
| 227 | ** When the letters between Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra contain such titillating turns of phrase as ''"I am longing to be with you", "We have told all our secrets since we were children; we have slept together...", and "I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, as we used to sit"'', it's very easy for modern readers to get the wrong idea about the nature of their relationship. They're just good friends. Honest. Specifically it's a devoted PseudoRomanticFriendship quite normal for those days. There were Romantic Two-Guy Friendships too and even church services to solemnize these unions. |
| 228 | ** Lucy is in "gay spirits" at one point using the old meaning of the word. |
| 229 | ** van Helsing's remarks about the "smuts of London" i.e. the dirty marks on buildings etc. from soot caused a fair bit of amusement on Tumblr during the 2022 'Dracula Daily' run. |
| 230 | ** "Poor fellow. He looked desperately sad and broken. Even his stalwart manhood seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of his much tried emotions." |
| 231 | * TheHeart: Mina keeps the men's morale high and reminds them of why they're fighting. |
| 232 | * HeartIsAnAwesomePower: The heroes bring a lot of different skills and resources to the table: Lord Godalming is a wealthy heir who also lets them use the cultural weight of his noble title, Dr. Seward brings his medical and psychological expertise, Professor Van Helsing knows a great deal of vampire lore, Quincey Morris is an excellent shot and accomplished traveler, John Harker brings his investigative skills and knowledge of law as an attorney, and his wife brings...extremely good secretarial skills? This last skillset proves surprisingly crucial, in that, before they start working together, they have a ''lot'' of disconnected knowledge about Dracula's movements and activities; once she compiles their journals and lets them read the now-organized information, they ''all'' have a much better idea where he is and what he's up to, which gives them a head start in countering him. |
| 233 | * HeartIsWhereTheHomeIs: Quincy Morris (a Texan), Dr. Jack Seward (an Englishman), and Lord Arthur Holmwood (another Englishman) fight over Lucy Westenra (an Englishwoman). Holmwood wins, but then Lucy turns into a vampire. And then, of course, on the more analytical level, it's the whole team competing with Dracula (a grade-A Scary Foreigner) over their love interests. |
| 234 | * HemoErotic: A rather vague passage suggests that a new vampire can only be created if a bite victim somehow ingests vampire blood. Then again, the book was criticized for its "sucking sounds" which many readers interpreted as suggestive of oral sex rather than blood drinking. |
| 235 | * HeroicBSOD: Jonathan Harker suffers one after his imprisonment in Dracula's castle and no wonder. His physical health breaks down right along with the mental, and he doesn't even know if everything he saw was real or in his head until Van Helsing confirms it. |
| 236 | * HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Quincey Morris.]] |
| 237 | * HerrDoktor: Professor Van Helsing is Dutch, but constantly peppers his English with German. |
| 238 | * HideYourOtherness: Count Dracula poses as an ordinary human nobleman for most of the first half of the story, as part of his evil plot to get some Londoners to nosh on. |
| 239 | * TheHilarityOfHats: Dracula turns up to book passage on a ship out of England wearing a straw hat in October, a major fashion faux-pas at the time and utterly unsuited for the climate at that time of year. It's a very odd image that has yet to appear in any adaptation. |
| 240 | * HissBeforeFleeing: When confronted by Van Helsing and company and beginning to feed on a small boy, the newly turned Lucy throws the child to the ground, "growling over it as a dog growls over a bone." Shortly afterwards, the vampiric Lucy is driven back by Van Helsing's crucifix. She isn't described as hissing at this point, but does have a mouth grown "to an open square, as in the passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese." |
| 241 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Surprisingly not Dracula (in Stoker's original he's only named after Vlad III), but rather the minor character Arminius Vambery whom Professor van Helsing consults. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Vambery Ármin Vámbéry]] (1832-1913) was a Hungarian linguist who was one of the founders of the science of Turkology, the study of Turkic languages and ethnic groups. |
| 242 | * HistoricalInJoke: Protestant England is saved from Dracula in part thanks to the use of Catholic paraphernalia such as crucifixes. During his stay at Castle Dracula, Harker notes the irony of seeking solace in a crucifix having been taught since childhood that it is a symbol of idolatry. |
| 243 | * HolyBurnsEvil: Crosses and communion wafers (the Host) repel vampires. Dr. van Helsing seals up a vampire's tomb by filling in the cracks of the door with putty containing ground up Host. After Mina is forced to drink Dracula's blood, van Helsing attempts to bless her by placing a wafer on her forehead, but it burns her skin, leaving a scar that remains until the Count is slain. |
| 244 | * HollywoodHeartAttack: How Mrs. Westenra dies in the story; as the wolf Dracula sent bursts through the window, the shock of the attack gets to her heart. Lucy tries to get help, but the maids have been drugged and Dracula soon descends on her. |
| 245 | * HookedUpAfterwards: The epilogue, set seven years after the rest of the story, mentions in an aside that Lucy's remaining suitors are all married now. There's no detail given about who they married, or how they met their wives, or whether their wives know about the history of Lucy and Dracula: just the bald assertion, as the minimum necessary compliance with contemporary audiences' expectations that a man's happy ending must include a wife. |
| 246 | * HopeSpot: When Jonathan Harker demands to be permitted to leave Castle Dracula, the Count tells him that ''of course'' he won't be kept one minute longer, and even opens the front door for him... only for a pack of [[SavageWolves ravenous wolves]] (obviously summoned by Dracula) to immediately show up at said door. Harker has to beg Dracula to close the door and "let" him remain. |
| 247 | * HumanMail: When he travels to England, Dracula avoids any issues with customs and immigration by arranging to have himself transported as cargo inside a sealed crate, taking advantage of the fact that he doesn't need to breathe and can mist in and out of the crate whenever he needs a snack. After Lucy's friends make London inhospitable to him, he returns home using the same method. |
| 248 | * HypocriticalHumor: Mina mocks the "New Woman" a few times in her journal. For those that don't know, "New Woman" at the time was when women were starting their movement for independence and becoming more assertive which was a big deal at the time. The reason it's ironic is because Mina becomes assertive after her encounter with Dracula and is both able to resist his influence (with some help) and coming up with the idea to use her newfound psychic link with Dracula to lead the hunters to him. Throughout the book, Mina is an intelligent, competent, strong, heroic, and admirable female character by ''modern'' standards. |
| 249 | * HystericalWoman: There aren't any in the book, but Dr. Seward certainly believes in this trope. At one point he remarks, "Men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness!". Mina seems to exist to defy this trope, as no matter how distressed she gets, she has it together ''better'' than her husband. She does go into hysterics at one point, but it's for a ''very'' good reason and she gets over it with amazing quickness. Several of the men also have brief hysterical episodes. |
| 250 | [[/folder]] |
| 251 | |
| 252 | [[folder:I–Y]] |
| 253 | * ICannotSelfTerminate: After Mina is infected by Dracula, she contemplates suicide, but is dissuaded by Van Helsing because she'll only become a vampire if she dies while Dracula still lives. So instead she makes all the men promise that if she becomes a vampire, they'll [[StakingTheLovedOne kill her.]] [[spoiler:Fortunately, this never needs to happen, as they kill Dracula first.]] This is also a possible interpretation of [[spoiler:Lucy's dying words before becoming a vampire, as she begs Van Helsing to protect her fiancé Arthur and "...give me peace!"]] |
| 254 | * IdiotBall: |
| 255 | ** [[spoiler:The main characters know that a vampire can only enter a house into which he is invited, but they still keep his victim in a house that they know Dracula can already enter. Also, they know that Lucy died and rose as a vampire after becoming paler and weaker over many days. When Mina's not feeling well and looking rather pale, they write it off as a simple illness.]] |
| 256 | ** [[spoiler:Luckily, Dracula has it too. Van Helsing concludes that Dracula is doing what he did when he was a mortal man — raising an army and invading another country, only it's England this time and not the Ottoman Empire. Dracula goes about this by attacking and attempting to turn a grand total of two women. He fails miserably with both. And once Harker, Seward, Van Helsing, and the rest of the party learn of Dracula and start taking steps to thwart him, he doesn't bother to do anything but attack Mina to use her as a spy ([[NiceJobFixingItVillain which backfires spectacularly because she can spy on him]]) and to burn their notes while they are all sleeping when he could have killed them.]] |
| 257 | * IDoNotDrinkWine: While the famous line doesn't appear in the novel (it was invented for the [[Film/Dracula1931 1931 film]]), Jonathan Harker does notice that he never sees the Count drink or eat... food. The line that does appear in the novel is "I have dined already, and I do not sup", meaning that he has already partaken of an early evening meal, and does not eat late. However, Dracula does apparently keep a good wine cellar for guests, as Harker comments very favorably upon the "excellent bottle of old Tokay" he is served with his first supper at Castle Dracula. |
| 258 | * IHaveYouNowMyPretty: Dracula's attack on Mina in her bedroom reads very much like a rape scene, particularly when he reveals that this isn't the first time she has... sated his thirst. |
| 259 | * IMadeCopies: The Count breaks into the heroes' headquarters and burns the ScrapbookStory they've been keeping of the ordeal. How is the reader still able to read it? They had a backup copy in a safe. All this before the days of hard drives! |
| 260 | * ImmortalImmaturity: Dracula is a bit complicated in this respect. As explained by Professor Van Helsing: "Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death. Though it would seem that memory was not all complete. In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child. But he is growing, and some things that were childish at the first are now of man's stature. He is experimenting, and doing it well." |
| 261 | * InformedAbility: Vampirism is really vague in this story and it's not really clear what it does besides what's shown. Most known is that it turns the victim into a monster, they gain a few powers, and they drink blood. Okay, fine, but outside that, we only get hints that it's the worst thing ever for the victim, because apparently their souls are either trapped in their bodies or taken over by the monster they become (Lucy's sudden shifts in demeanor as she's dying lends some credence to this). Or the person becomes corrupted and evil just from turning. Outside of feeding on humans, it never really goes into too much detail on the specifics of what's causing the change. But that might just add to the mystique for the sake of horror. Dr. Van Helsing also mentions a few vampire powers that are never used, like using a victim's tomb as an alternative sanctuary or animating normal corpses to do their bidding. |
| 262 | * InsaneTrollLogic: One of the things that clues Jonathan in that the good count might be a ''little'' eccentric is when he cuts himself shaving. Dracula goes on a sweeping monologue about how the mirror that Jonathan was using to help shave caused Jonathan to cut himself (one point of using a mirror is so you DON'T cut yourself), and then throws it out a window. |
| 263 | * InstantSedation: [[AvertedTrope Averted]] when Van Helsing gives Lucy a sedative before her first transfusion. Seward states in his journal that it actually took longer than he expected for the sedative to work, which he takes as a sign of just how weakened Lucy has become. |
| 264 | * ItsASmallWorldAfterAll: The Count's identity and nature are exposed because his lawyer's wife's best friend's ex-suitor's one-time mentor ''just happens'' to be an expert on vampires. |
| 265 | * IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: Dr. Seward and Quincey lose to Arthur in wooing Lucy, but they're good sports about it. Both of them give blood to save Lucy without hesitation. When Lucy turns down their proposals, they both ask if it's because there's someone else she loves, when she replies yes, they wish her and him all the happiness (and Quincey adds that whoever it is best get on with asking her!). |
| 266 | * JoinUsDrone: |
| 267 | ** Lucy, after having been turned, beckons this to Arthur when Helsing, Seward, Quincy, and he confront her vampire form in a graveyard. |
| 268 | --> '''Lucy:''' Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come! |
| 269 | ** Near the end of the book, the three vampire women happen upon the camp where Van Helsing and Mina are stationed. A makeshift holy barrier Helsing made keeps them from getting near the two. But this doesn't stop them from calling out to Mina and trying to appeal to her growing vampire transformation to join them, citing her as their "sister". |
| 270 | * KissOfTheVampire: Deconstructed. While being fed upon is arousing for the victim, this is explicitly a kind of MindRape and the kiss/bite of the vampire is an analogy for sexual assault. Dracula tricks Renfield into inviting him in and physically forces Mina to drink his blood against her will, leaving the traumatized girl to go through periods of denial, anger, and depression while viewing what she suffered that night as a FateWorseThanDeath than which nothing could possibly be worse. Since most Gothic literature of the 18th and 19th centuries used the word "seduce" where we would use "rape", Stoker gets major points for being possibly the first author since Edmund Spenser to recognize the difference between seduction and force. Jonathan is appalled by the fact that his attack by the Brides turned him on, and feels tremendous guilt about how this might affect Mina. |
| 271 | * KukrisAreKool: Jonathan Harker wields a kukri and attacks with enough ferocity to force Dracula to retreat. Then decapitates the Count with it after Quincey Morris stabs him in the heart with a Bowie knife. |
| 272 | * LanguageFluencyDenial: When he's at the inn on the last stage of his journey to Castle Dracula, Jonathan has no trouble communicating with the innkeeper until he starts asking questions about the Count, at which point the innkeeper suddenly can't understand him. |
| 273 | * LeanAndMean: Dracula himself. For adding slimming power he could slip through the cracks of doors if necessary. |
| 274 | * LipLosses: When she gets staked, Lucy wildly gnashes her teeth, resulting in her fangs tearing up her lips. |
| 275 | * LiquidAssets: The Count starts off as an elderly man and becomes younger in appearance over time through drinking blood. Also, when Lucy becomes a vampire, she looks healthier "dead" in her coffin than she did alive. |
| 276 | * LoveDodecahedron: Arthur and Lucy become engaged, but Dr. Seward and Quincey Morris are in love with her as well. Van Helsing seems to grow to love both Lucy and Mina, and there's plenty of chemistry between him and Dr. Seward. Seward also has a MeetCute with Mina, and the two quickly bond, displaying so much chemistry that Renfield calls them out on it. Mina is in love with and marries Jonathan, and the surviving six form a [[TrueCompanions True Companionship]] where they all love everybody. |
| 277 | * MadnessMakeover: Lucy gets all slinky and sensual as she falls under Dracula's spell. Oddly, this is not considered an improvement by her faithful suitors. |
| 278 | * MadonnaWhoreComplex: |
| 279 | ** Lucy fills the role of the Madonna — a sweet pure girl who is beloved by all for her innocence. When she becomes a vampire, she's now a Whore — described as voluptuous and far more sexual. |
| 280 | ** Overall, the novel averts this big time (though [[CommonKnowledge later critics would frequently miss the subversion entirely]]). Lucy, the sweet and innocent girl who doesn't have a flaw other than naïveté, ends up killed by the monster, which her virginity and purity did not protect her from. Mina, the more liberated and independent woman who's also not a virgin (she's married and most likely had a wedding night), on the other hand, survives, and is vital to taking down Dracula. |
| 281 | * MadwomanInTheAttic: Doesn't appear, but Van Helsing reveals he's married to a madwoman. Well, [[{{Troperiffic}} what would a Gothic horror novel be without one]]? |
| 282 | * MagicVersusScience: One of the themes in the novel is the old age of superstition and magic embodied by Dracula versus the new age of science embodied by the protagonists. Initially, magic aka Dracula has the edge because the scientific worldview has no place for him and refuses to accept that vampires exist. Dracula does not work the way science says the world works so he can act with impunity. Ironically, only by getting rid of the conflict and combining the two in Van Helsing is Dracula defeated. Van Helsing accepts things outside of the scientific worldview and uses those unorthodox methods to fight Dracula. At the same time, he uses modern scientific advances such as technology and criminal theory to predict Dracula's movements and eventually defeat him. |
| 283 | * MakeSureHesDead: After staking Vampire-Lucy, Van Helsing has her head removed and her mouth filled with garlic. It appears, given later Vampire-deaths, that removing the head of a dead vampire removes their [[NoImmortalInertia immortality]] and they revert to a human corpse of appropriate age. Since Lucy's corpse was too fresh to immediately rot (as, for example, Dracula himself did), filling the mouth with garlic is probably a way of making sure it doesn't come back as something undead in the meantime. |
| 284 | * ManipulativeBastard: Dracula gets very far on nothing but his charm. He's so good at it that its all but stated that he has some sort of hypnotic powers. |
| 285 | * ManlyTears: The men in this novel cry as much as, if not more than, the women: |
| 286 | ** Jonathan Harker cries when trapped in Dracula's castle (after seeing a baby being devoured by the three monstrous women) and then cries a lot after Mina is attacked. |
| 287 | ** Arthur Holmwood breaks down several times during Lucy's illness and when grieving for her, including one memorable scene where he becomes hysterical and is comforted by Mina. |
| 288 | ** Van Helsing also has crying fits including an episode of hysterics after Lucy's funeral. |
| 289 | ** Seward and Morris are relatively stoic. But both shed tears after Mina is attacked, and Seward has to pause his recording at one point because he chokes up while describing an emotional scene: |
| 290 | --> '''Seward''': I cannot go on...words...and v-voices...f-fail m-me! |
| 291 | * ManOfWealthAndTaste: This was one of the first stories to treat vampires in this way, as opposed to the earlier depictions of them (from various myths and legends), in which they were more animalistic and demonic in nature. |
| 292 | * MercyKill: The staking of Vampire-Lucy is framed this way by Van Helsing: not only will it stop her from harming anyone again, it will free her spirit from corruption and send her to heaven. This is why the group agrees that her fiancé Arthur should do the deed, because he was the one who loved her best. |
| 293 | * MindControl: Dracula intends to do this with Mina, [[spoiler:but it backfires on him once he realises that if she can show him whatever the heroes are up to, she can also show them whatever Dracula is up to.]] |
| 294 | * MindRape: Dracula is never openly shown sexually assaulting his victims but his invasion of their mind through hypnosis, rendering them powerless to resist his bite, is portrayed much the same way. |
| 295 | * MissingReflection: The TropeMaker. Soon after his arrival at Castle Dracula, Harker observes that the building is devoid of mirrors. When Dracula silently comes into Harker's room while he's shaving, Harker notices that Dracula, who is standing behind him, does not appear in the shaving mirror as he should. The Count reacts violently and flings the mirror out a window. The missing reflection is the first solid evidence of his vampiric nature that Harker directly observes. |
| 296 | * MonsterLord: Dracula is a count, and the other vampires mentioned in the book clearly view him as superior... but this may be less to do with his title and more to do with the fact he's implied to be their husband and/or father and also happens to be a badass. |
| 297 | * MonsterMisogyny: Dracula feeds on men to survive, but the only new vampires he creates are women. Many critics note the sexualized nature of the violence between men and women throughout the story, with blood-sucking and stalking being seen as metaphors for sex. |
| 298 | * MonsterProgenitor: Dracula is this, of course. It's known he's the original vampire of ''his'' line of vampires, but not if he is the first vampire ever. |
| 299 | * MonstrosityEqualsWeakness: While never exactly weak, Dracula is an unnatural and horrifying old man in the first act when all he had to feed from were slaves and Transylvanian commoners that were in low supply. After gorging on the blood of the crew of the ship he stowed away on, and several weeks of terrorizing Londoners, he became stunningly attractive and seductive. |
| 300 | * MoreDakka: When the crew start pursuing Dracula as he flees England, Qincey, saying he understands the Count comes from "wolf country" and might call on wolves to defend him, recommends everyone arm themselves with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_rifle Winchester repeating rifles]], which were the gold standard in volume of fire at the time. |
| 301 | * {{Motif}}: The imagery of red-against-white is repeated over and over again -- wolves with red tongues and white teeth, Dracula's red blood-stained lips against his pale white skin, a red wound on a [[WhiteShirtOfDeath white shirt]], etc. |
| 302 | * MultinationalTeam: The group protecting Lucy and Mina from Dracula consists of three Englishmen (Harker, Seward, and Holmwood), a Dutchman (Van Helsing), and an American (Morris). |
| 303 | * MustBeInvited: |
| 304 | ** Tricking one of the inmates of an insane asylum into inviting you in apparently counts. |
| 305 | ** Also Inverted: The Count is apparently forbidden from doing anything that could be construed as forcing Jonathan Harker to enter his castle or forbidding him from leaving, so stays firmly behind the threshold until he chooses to "Enter freely and of your own will," and when Jonathan insists on leaving, Dracula is quite willing to open the gates, but when Jonathan hears the wolves outside, he asks Dracula to close the doors again. Or Dracula could've just been a dick on a power trip. |
| 306 | ** Another possibility is that since it's ambiguous whether Dracula (at this early stage of the book) is genuinely AffablyEvil or FauxAffablyEvil, his invitation might be some form of courtesy that modern readers don't get; while his famous invitation may stand out a lot nowadays, Jonathan does not seem to think there is anything strange about it. |
| 307 | ** It's possible that Dracula doesn't realise that humans are not bound by similar rules about invitations; Van Helsing talks at some length about how Dracula is ignorant about the full extent of his own abilities (something which never seems to make it into the films), so maybe this applies to his limitations equally and Dracula thought Jonathan required an invitation just like he would. |
| 308 | ** Dracula's invitation to Jonathan is never brought up again, not even in the form of Jonathan lamenting the irony that he willingly entered the castle, so it might not have been intended to be particularly important. As noted in the intro, the idea that TheFairFolk etc. could not exercise their full power over humans without some kind of consent is OlderThanDirt, so maybe Stoker was deliberately trying to [[InvokedTrope invoke this trope.]] Dracula has certain other traits normally associated with TheFairFolk, and it's apparent between this and other elements of subtext that the Dracula story is in at least some part an allegory of the relationship between imperial England and Ireland. |
| 309 | * NaiveNewcomer: Jonathan starts the story as a simple solicitor on a business trip, unaware that the supernatural even exists. Naturally he's horrified that he practically gave Dracula a pass to spread his evil to modern day society. |
| 310 | * NameOrderConfusion: The Count accidentally calls Jonathan Harker "Harker Jonathan" and explains that he slipped into his country's tradition of giving the family name first. Transylvania was part of Hungary at the time, and Dracula claims to be a Székely [[note]]Székelys are a Hungarian ethnic subgroup[[/note]] in the same chapter. |
| 311 | * NarrativeProfanityFilter: A scene where the team questions a group of foul-mouthed dock workers is narrated by Van Helsing, who remarks whimsically that "they say much of blood and bloom, and of others which I comprehend not, though I guess what they mean", and paraphrases their replies. |
| 312 | -->Whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be quick—with blood—for that his ship will leave the place—of blood—before the turn of the tide—with blood. ''(snip)'' Final the captain, more red than ever, and in more tongues, tell him that he doesn't want no Frenchmen — with bloom upon them and also with blood — in his ship — with blood on her also. |
| 313 | * NeverASelfMadeWoman: The only women in the main cast are the fiancées to others in the team. Also something of an inversion in that most of the team is composed of "Lucy's suitors" and in most of the bits of the book happening after Transylvania, Jonathan appears as "Mina's husband" rather than the other way around, even though Mina does first appear as "Jonathan's fiancée". |
| 314 | * NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead: During one of Mina's entries, she records a long rant by an old man concerning the practice of this. Remarking the grave (which the girls are close to, having to decide to picnic in the church yard) belongs to a sorry sourpuss and wasn't even missed by his "hellcat of a mother." The old salt also reveals the epigraph is true only in the strictest sense -- the body in question did fall from the cliff, but only after he shot himself in the head. [[spoiler:This proves foreshadowing, as Dracula can only rest in specially consecrated soil, such as that he brought with him, or the grave of one who committed suicide.]] |
| 315 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: The five male members of the party insist that Mina Harker stay home while they do the dangerous work and frequently talk about what a relief it is that she's safe at home while they're hunting down the vampire because a woman surely couldn't handle it. Dracula deliberately takes advantage of this as an opportunity to bite Mina and metaphorically rape her. Nice job with the chivalry, heroes! |
| 316 | * NiceJobFixingItVillain: Nice job giving the heroine a VIP pass to your mind, Dracula. |
| 317 | * NoBodyLeftBehind: Dracula and the female vampires are said to crumble into dust on death. Justified in text as a side effect of their unnatural preservation being removed and [[NoOntologicalInertia centuries of decay catching up with them]]. Averted with Lucy, whose body remains intact, as her mortal death had occurred only a few days before her Vampiric one. This opens a plot hole that dozens of stories by other authors are built on: turning into a dust cloud or mist and traveling in that form is explicitly one of Dracula's powers. |
| 318 | * NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The name Dracula is derived from the family name of the 15th century nobleman Vlad III Drăculești, Voivode of Wallachia off and on between 1448 and 1477 and better known by his sobriquet [[TheButcher "Vlad the Impaler"]], but other than that, the Count actually has very little in common with him: Stoker apparently didn't know very much about the historical Vlad III beyond his reputation for cruelty. Adaptations of the novel usually make them one and the same person. |
| 319 | * NoImmortalInertia: Dracula and the "Weird Sisters" dissolve almost instantly to ash and dust, which Van Helsing attributes to centuries of decay catching up with them instantly. Lucy's corpse remains intact, though Seward notes she immediately loses her unnatural beauty, looking as she did just before death: sickly and wasted from Dracula draining so much blood from her and the resulting stress on her body. |
| 320 | * NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine: Dracula plays host (and after Jonathan realizes he's a prisoner) and jailer to Jonathan Harker, and provides him with delicious meals. Although it's more than likely that Dracula does not eat... food, he's apparently a SupremeChef (or else the women in the castle are), since there are no human servants at the castle. |
| 321 | * NoOntologicalInertia: Killing the original vampire before its bitten victims die (and subsequently resurrect as vampires) returns them to normal. Otherwise it's permanent (can't exactly bring a walking corpse back to normal after all). {{Justified|Trope}}, in that bitten victims will simply heal naturally. Mina was bitten a few times and survived, and even Lucy required multiple, increasingly violent visits from Dracula, thanks to Doctor Van Helsing successfully resuscitating her. |
| 322 | * NonActionProtagonist: While the narrative gives the male protagonists plenty of action scenes, Mina Harker's primary contributions to the plot come in the form of developing a psychic link with Dracula after she's bitten by the count and helping riddle out his route across Europe. She is given a revolver to defend herself, and while she draws it at the climax in anticipation of helping fight off the Count's guards, she never fires it. |
| 323 | * NotAfraidOfHell: According to one of the old sailors that frequented the cemetery, one of the tombs was built for someone who was more afraid of his mother than of Hell: "I've often heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't want to addle where she was." |
| 324 | * NoTimeToExplain: Prior to needing to stake [[spoiler:Lucy]], Van Helsing's answer for everyone's confused questions amounts to, "I can't explain now, just trust me. You'll know everything soon enough, but you'll wish you didn't. Did I mention within the last five seconds that you just need to trust me?" |
| 325 | * NonPOVProtagonist: Dr. Abraham Van Helsing is the BigGood who leads the manhunt for Dracula, but we never get to see his POV, except from brief glimpses of it from the narrators' accounts and his sparse letters. Though he does get one of the climactic entries, as he and Mina draw closer to Dracula's Castle, where they are menaced by the Wierd Sisters before Van Helsing dispatches them. |
| 326 | * NotHimself: [[spoiler:Lucy when she becomes a vampire. It's implied she is even aware of it when the transformation nears completion and the vampire part of her briefly surfaces to try and seduce Arthur as she's dying.]] |
| 327 | * NotThatKindOfDoctor: Dr. Abraham Van Helsing is that kind of doctor (and a professor of medicine), and ''not'' a vampire hunter, as adaptations often turn him into; he's just smart enough to know enough about them to improvise. |
| 328 | * OccultDetective: Dr. Abraham van Helsing is the TropeCodifier. Although he doesn't start this way, he quickly becomes one. Yet while most adaptations portray Helsing as an adventuresome monster hunter, in the book he is just a doctor with very eclectic experience, who approaches vampirism as he would any other disease, albeit one that has symptoms including supernatural belligerence and fantastic powers and weaknesses. |
| 329 | * OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler:Jonathan Harker's]] escape from [[spoiler:Dracula's castle]]. Justified because [[spoiler:Jonathan was in no condition to write about that experience in his diary afterward, and nobody else was there to write about it either. The only snippets he manages to reveal is that he got out by crawling down a castle wall and was chased by something (either the vampire women or wolves in the area or both) before managing to elude them.]] |
| 330 | * OldSchoolChivalry: Van Helsing and the rest of the heroes decide it's best if Mina Harker stays safe at home while they go out each night vampire-hunting. They do it because they think it's for her own good, in her best interest, the right/gentlemanly thing to do and they'd be cruel and reckless if they included her. It backfires and they learn their lesson. |
| 331 | * OmnidisciplinaryScientist: |
| 332 | ** Van Helsing is a doctor, scientist, occultist, detective, lawyer and holy man. This all comes in handy for hunting vampires. It's also stated that he has at least three doctoral degrees, one of which is an MD. |
| 333 | ** Dr. Seward is a general practitioner, ''every'' type of surgeon and a psychiatrist to boot. |
| 334 | * {{Omniglot}}: When semi-delirious and first approached by the three women, Harker can fully understand their language, as they speak to each other, and the Count's furious rebukes. Harker is said explicitly to know good German, but no mention of him knowing either literary Romanian or Hungarian, let alone an ancient dialect spoken between themselves by beings undead for 400 years. Also when Mina is approached in the forest by the same women calling her "sister", both she and Dr. van Helsing understand their speech with no effort. |
| 335 | * OneDegreeOfSeparation: Dracula's first victim just happens to be Lucy Westenra, the best friend of the fiancée of Jonathan Harker, who is probably the only living human who's seen him for what he really is. Not only that, but Dr. Seward, one of Lucy's former suitors and the good friend of her husband, not only owns the mental institution ''right next door'' to Dracula's new house, but is also the protegé of Dr. Van Helsing, perhaps the only practitioner of modern medicine who can recognize vampirism and knows how to treat it. Also, one of Dr. Seward's patients, Renfield, happens to have a strange psychic connection to Dracula. |
| 336 | * OneSteveLimit: Dr. John Seward is often called Jack by the other characters so as not to be confused with Jonathan Harker (and to show how close he is to Quincey and "Art," who most commonly call him "Jack"). Of course, it doesn't help that Van Helsing still refers to him by his given name. Then again, Jonathan Harker is never referred to except as Jonathan. |
| 337 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Van Helsing is a FunnyForeigner, but when all matters vampire come up, he drops the act and becomes deadly serious. |
| 338 | * OrientExpress: When Dracula escapes from England to Varna by sea, the cabal sworn to destroy him travels to Paris and takes the Orient Express, arriving in Varna ahead of him. |
| 339 | * OurVampiresAreDifferent: |
| 340 | ** Dracula does not follow the standard rules, largely because he [[UnbuiltTrope predates most of them]]. The Count is stated to be a student of {{Satan}}, having been turned into a vampire through his own necromancy rather than through TheVirus, and his classic vampire powers are implied to all be more black magic rather than innate to the vampire's body. |
| 341 | ** Dracula establishes the idea of vampires mixing blood with humans à la ''Film/InterviewWithTheVampire'', ''Film/TheLostBoys'', and ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', though this is bastardised by them into becoming the method of turning a victim into a new vampire. In the novel, blood mixing is purely for Dracula to be able to link his mind directly with Mina's. What is actually stated in the book by Van Helsing is that all it takes for a vampire to make more vampires is to bite a victim and their death whether swift or eventual [[TheVirus will be enough]] to make them rise again, which is the version seen in ''Film/FromDuskTillDawn'', ''Film/JohnCarpentersVampires'' and ''{{Film/Blade}}''. |
| 342 | * PaintingTheMedium: The book is a series of letters between many of the characters. The reader is intended to interpret the novel as a bound collection of letters, and each includes headers with dates and signatures. It's very effective at drawing some readers in, especially since the viewpoints sufficiently show different characters' personalities, but it can also seem disjointed, since it switches around a lot and (usually) looks like normal fonts pretending to be letters. This is actually a ''plot point''; Van Helsing has his hypotheses after Lucy's death, but it isn't until he gets his hands on Mina and Jonathan's journals, detailing the first incidents of Lucy's affliction and Jonathan's time in Transylvania respectively, along with his and Seward's own observations, that he comes to a solid conclusion. Mina then assembles all the relevant letters, journal entries, telegraphs, newspaper clippings, and so on into one coherent manuscript, which then forms the foundation of the group's game plan to defeat Dracula. Copies are distributed to and read by the hunters so everyone can literally be on the same page. |
| 343 | * ParentalSubstitute: Mr. Hawkins for Mina and Jonathan. |
| 344 | * PoirotSpeak: Van Helsing's style of Poirot Speak is more the "Dutch grammar, English vocabulary" type. |
| 345 | * PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Not to any malicious degree, and really only noticeable to modern readers, but Dracula waxes philosophical about how his ProudWarriorRaceGuy ancestors routed foreign invaders and insists that peasants need to be led by the nobles. This showcases how out of touch with the times he is due to having led an unnaturally long life and apparently having never attempted to leave his land before now. His attempt to spread his vampirisim is to keep his sense of monarchy alive. |
| 346 | * PoorCommunicationKills: The characters come up with lots of logical reasons to ''not'' tell each other things, which always ends up biting them in the...neck. |
| 347 | ** In the first section of the novel, the locals very clearly do ''not'' want Jonathan going anywhere near Castle Dracula, but don't explain exactly ''why''. Even without getting into the matter of whether or not Jonathan would believe them if they explained, a lot of this can be chalked up to a language barrier. The locals are mostly speaking a language Jonathan doesn't recognize (presumably Romanian or Hungarian), and don't speak any English. Jonathan, a native English speaker, speaks rather good ''German'', and most of the locals he meets do know enough German to talk with him, but some of them don't know enough to articulate what exactly is going on and why he should be scared. |
| 348 | ** Van Helsing is understandably reluctant to tell anyone his theory that Lucy is being attacked by a living corpse each night, and additionally doesn't want to let on to Mrs. Westenra how serious things really are due to the fear it will spook her into a heart attack, but she surely wouldn't have tossed out the garlic had she known the stakes. |
| 349 | ** Had the gang seen fit to include Mina in their conferences, she might have been saved from Dracula's attacks. The moment she is included in the discussions, she puts the pieces together that leads the group to finally confronting Dracula. AnAesop on the importance of including women in important conversations? |
| 350 | * PowerBornOfMadness: Renfield tries to exploit this. "It is said that madmen have incredible strength. I am mad, or was, and I resolved to use all of my mad strength to attack him". |
| 351 | * ThePowerOfBlood: Types A (binding, Dracula binds Mina to him psychically by making her drink his blood, and the vampires he makes through draining the blood of a living person are bound to him), B (symbolic, Lucy's fading from Dracula's attacks is played like a terminal illness, his forcing Mina to drink his blood reads like rape), and O (''disturbing'', if you didn't guess from the previous examples). |
| 352 | * PoweredByAForsakenChild: Dracula — and most other vampires since him — have to drain the blood, or life force depending on variation, of living people just to survive. |
| 353 | * ThePrecariousLedge: How Harker gets into Dracula's room at the castle. |
| 354 | * TheProfessor: Van Helsing. Is there nothing he doesn't know about? Could also be seen as a forerunner of the idea of the genius with the funny foreign accent (he's Dutch) as well as a medley of eccentricities. |
| 355 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Dracula boasts about his warrior heritage to Harker, saying how his family [[TruthInTelevision historically defeated the Turks in combat]]. |
| 356 | * PseudoRomanticFriendship: In the early chapters of the novel, the private correspondence between Mina and Lucy are very passionate, they almost read like love letters, as both girls express their love and adoration for one another. In one letter Lucy writes: "Mina, we have told all our secrets to each other since we were children. We have slept together and eaten together, and laughed and cried together..." and "I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, as we used to sit, and I would try to tell you what I feel." Later in the novel, when Mina and Lucy are together, they sit on a bench by the seaside and are so moved by the beautiful view that they hold hands. |
| 357 | * PsychicLink: Dracula forms one of these with Mina Harker as a step towards MindControl. Unfortunately, he's forced to block the link himself when he realizes that, if he can spy on the heroes through Mina, Mina can spy on him and share information with the rest of the heroes, which is how she eventually leads them to him. |
| 358 | * PsychicRadar: This goes both ways with the link between Mina and the Count. He can use it to spy on and know the movements of the heroes, but they can do likewise if they place Mina into a hypnotic trance; so she can sense the Count and his surroundings and roughly how far away he is. |
| 359 | * PsychopathicManchild: Mina Murray draws upon the new science of Criminology to profile Count Dracula and describes him of being of the "typical" criminal mind--childish, in thought and behaviour. |
| 360 | * RailEnthusiast: Mina Harker describes herself as a "train fiend". |
| 361 | * ReadingAheadInTheScript: A variation. After Mina transcribes everyone's notes and voice recordings, Van Helsing orders the vampire hunters to read the compiled book. Because the book is epistolary at that moment, the reader and the characters have both read the same 2/3 of the novel. |
| 362 | * RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: Count Dracula has black and red. He's the TropeCodifier for what the description talks about this trope and vampires in their capes. |
| 363 | * RedEyesTakeWarning: Dracula has red eyes. His houseguest, Jonathan, being British, does not comment on this. |
| 364 | * RedRightHand: [[spoiler:When Van Helsing tries to set a holy wafer to Mina's forehead, it burns her and leaves a red mark. When Dracula is defeated, the mark vanishes.]] |
| 365 | * RefugeInAudacity: Van Helsing tells of a burglar in Switzerland who broke into a house while its owner was away on holiday, walked straight out the front door in full view of the police, auctioned off everything within, and arranged to have it demolished, all by simply [[BavarianFireDrill letting everyone assume he was the owner himself]]. This, he explains, is also how the vampire hunters will get into Dracula's houses without drawing attention -- by calling a locksmith during the busiest and most awake hours of the day, they will avoid suspicion by acting like they don't need to avoid suspicion. |
| 366 | * RejectedMarriageProposal: Lucy Westenra gets ''three'' marriage proposals in one day from Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood and Dr John Seward. Although she's fond of all her suitors, she declines Morris and Seward's proposals and chooses to marry Holmwood; unfortunately, she dies and [[CameBackWrong comes back as a vampire]] before the wedding can take place. Even though she rejected them, Morris and Seward still love Lucy; Seward does what he can to nurse Lucy when she falls gravely ill after being fed on by Count Dracula, and Morris also donates blood to her. Seward and Morris join forces with Holmwood and Van Helsing to kill the vampirized Lucy so her soul can rest (they let Holmwood be the one to stake Lucy as he was her betrothed). The three suitors then help hunt down Dracula partly to avenge the woman they all loved. |
| 367 | * RemovingTheHeadOrDestroyingTheBrain: Decapitation is actually the only way to kill a vampire. Driving a stake through the heart is used to immobilize the vamps so it's easier to take the head off. |
| 368 | * TheRenfield: TropeNamer, but is actually an UnbuiltTrope here, seeing as he attempts to foil Dracula twice, the second ending with the loss of his own life. While he certainly seems ''willing'' to become Dracula's slave, being locked in at Dr. Seward's sanatorium rather limits his options and the Count seems to more or less ignore him throughout. (Until he finally visits him in his cell and kills him.) Renfield at one point demands that he be moved so that Dracula will not compel him to let him into the house to attack Mina. When this fails, the second time Dracula enters, he ''grabs Dracula and tries to kill him with his bare hands'', while the Count is in mist form. And he would have succeeded, too, if Dracula hadn't used his HypnoticEyes. The novel never makes clear where Renfield's madness comes from or why he seems to be, as Seward says, "mixed up with the Count in an indexy way." It appears that Renfield just spontaneously developed this unusual, vampire-tangiential madness, and Dracula has some passive, perhaps even unintentional, influence over him, which Dracula fails to exploit until well into the book. [[AdaptationOriginConnection Adaptations usually explicitly make Dracula the cause of Renfeild's madness, and have the Count deliberately cultivate Renfield as an agent.]] |
| 369 | * RevengeByProxy: Dracula goes after Mina when he realises her husband and friends are hunting him. |
| 370 | * RobbingTheDead: Van Helsing puts a gold crucifix and some garlic flowers in Lucy's coffin after she's been killed by the Count; however, [[TheHelpHelpingThemselves a servant steals the cross]], which allows Lucy to rise from the dead as a vampire. |
| 371 | * RoguishRomani: Romani form the majority of Count Dracula's villainous retinue, which was par for the course in most of Victorian media, but particularly appropriate in a work predicated upon the fear of evil Eastern Europeans invading Good Ol' England. |
| 372 | * RousingSpeech: There's a speech from the Count himself. Though the context is wrong for this trope, the content is certainly worthy of a particularly good one. Plus, after the discovery that Dracula used to be a human lord who was also a great general, one can very easily imagine him giving a true Rousing Speech that could have said many of the same things. |
| 373 | * SanitySlippage: Jonathan Harker and Renfield both experience this thanks to the Count. Harker recovers; Renfield, not so much. Renfield starts out as a mental patient with a fixation on eating live creatures to extend his own life. Dracula makes him considerably worse, but Renfield does recover enough to try and save Mina from Dracula, though he's killed for his trouble. |
| 374 | * SatelliteLoveInterest: Lucy's suitors function in the story as little more than that. Arthur (who is the one that gets the girl) only hopes for Lucy's affections and then mourns her death. Quincey doesn't get the girl and only contributes owning a hunting knife to the fight with Dracula and getting killed off so Dracula could kill someone. Lucy's third suitor Jack avoids this. He is more developed, as he works in a mental hospital where the patients sense Dracula's presence and it's he who first notices something wrong with Lucy. |
| 375 | * SavageWolves: Made even more threatening by being at Dracula's command. |
| 376 | * ScarpiaUltimatum: Although Dracula can put women in a trance before he bites them, the third time he bites (and metaphorically rapes) Mina, he leaves her completely aware and instead threatens to kill her unconscious husband lying next to her if she resists or screams for help. ForTheEvulz? |
| 377 | * ScienceHero: Van Helsing is an eminent scientist and a makeshift VampireHunter. Rather than the action-hero he's portrayed as in other media, he approaches the conflict like a clinician encountering a new disease. |
| 378 | * ScrapbookStory: The book is presented as a collection of letters, diary entries, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, compiled by Mina. |
| 379 | * SexIsEvil: The story is often interpreted as a metaphor for female sexuality and how a sexually active woman is dangerous to civilized Victorian society. |
| 380 | * ShapedLikeItself: When Van Helsing opens Lucy's coffin, revealing it empty, to try to prove to Dr. Seward that she's now a vampire: |
| 381 | -->'''Dr. Seward:''' I am satisfied that Lucy's body is not in that coffin, but that only proves one thing.\ |
| 382 | '''Van Helsing:''' And what is that, friend John?\ |
| 383 | '''Dr. Seward:''' That it is not there.\ |
| 384 | '''Van Helsing:''' That is good logic, so far as it goes. |
| 385 | * ShapeshifterModeLock: Dracula, unlike modern vampires, is not killed by sunlight. However, he is unable to change shape from sunrise to noon, and from noon to sunset. He can only change shape at noon exactly and, of course, any time at night. |
| 386 | * ShootTheDog: Quincey mentions that he had to shoot his horse when he was in the Pampas after vampire bats drained its blood. |
| 387 | * ShovelStrike: Jonathan Harker strikes the Count with a workman's shovel while he is sleeping in his coffin. This proves ineffective at slaying the vampire, merely creating a large scar on Dracula's forehead. |
| 388 | * ShownTheirWork: Few books in Victorian England covered Eastern Europe with any kind of precision, so some of the details revealed about the region in the novel display Stoker's efforts to research on it (having never traveled there) - especially the extended speech of the Count revealing his connections to Vlad the Impaler and the House of Draculesti. |
| 389 | * SirSwearsalot: The captain of the 'Czarina Catherine', who reportedly used the words "bloody" and "blooming" quite a bit in his dealing with the Count. Made somewhat amusing by the fact that his antics are being told secondhand by Van Helsing, who, being Dutch, doesn't manage to pick up on the intent of the words. |
| 390 | -->'''Van Helsing:''' Whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be quick—with blood—for that his ship will leave the place—of blood—before the turn of the tide—with blood. |
| 391 | * SizableSemiticNose: One minor character is a Jewish merchant named Hildesheim who is described as having "a nose like a sheep". |
| 392 | * SkeletonCrew: The ship that transports the Count to Whitby runs into the docks with its crew missing and the captain's decomposed body lashed to the wheel by his hands, while holding a crucifix. |
| 393 | * SkepticNoLonger: |
| 394 | ** Harker at first thinks the village is just being superstitious despite being an outsider to Transylvania (though they don't ''really'' tell what the danger is, just that it's a really bad idea to go to Dracula's castle). But after meeting the count, finding how strange he and his dwelling are and ultimately nearly being bitten by three vampires, it doesn't take long for him to become a believer. |
| 395 | ** Later after Lucy dies from Dracula succeeding in draining her blood, Van Helsing tries to convince Seward, Arthur and Quincy that she will become a vampire and be a danger to all. Naturally they think he's cuckoo, so Van Helsing decides he needs to show them first. He starts with Seward, his trusted student, as they watch Lucy's coffin and indeed find it initially empty then after waiting a bit, find it filled again with her body, only to discover she hasn't decayed since she was interred and in fact much more beautiful then ever. The following night, Van Helsing gathers the rest of the men and confront Lucy directly as she prowls the night. Indeed, seeing her bearing fangs with bits of blood on her lips, acting not at all like the Lucy they know (feral and seductive instead of kind and caring), acting fearful of a cross and using her powers to flee back to her coffin is more than enough proof to the men that vampires, and the threat they pose, are real. |
| 396 | * SlashedThroat: [[spoiler:Half of Dracula's fate (the other half is being stabbed in the heart.)]] |
| 397 | * {{Sleepwalking}}: Lucy is a chronic sleepwalker who sleepwalks all the way across Whitby to the cemetery overlook the night she's first bitten by the eponymous vampire. This particular episode is unusual; Mina notes that Lucy is pretty easy to get to give up on sleepwalking and go back to bed, and she dresses herself appropriately for wherever she decides to go in her sleep. When Mina wakes to find Lucy gone, she notes that Lucy has left both her dressing gown (which would indicate she's in the house) and her dress (which would indicate she's outside) in the bedroom. She went out and all the way across town in only her nightgown. |
| 398 | * SlowTransformation: Due to Dracula's nightly visits to feed on Lucy, she becomes weaker over time and observes that her senses have suddenly become keener but she continues to have nightmares of dark beings. By the third visit, she's lost so much of her blood that her bite wounds eventually close up on their own, she gains fangs and her demeanor is uncharacteristically more seductive, signifying to Van Helsing it's too late to save her from becoming a vampire. Mina's transformation is slightly different due to Dracula feeding her his blood, cursing her to turn regardless if she stays alive or dies as long as he's alive. Indeed, she starts showing signs due to losing appetite for food, her canines slowly turning into fangs, sharing a psychic connection to Dracula and being unable to stay awake during the day but being much more lively at night. |
| 399 | * SmallRoleBigImpact: Dracula himself. He actually only appears in person in a handful of scenes, but he dominates practically everything that happens in the novel. |
| 400 | * TheSoulsaver: The vampire-hunting protagonists are said to be saving the souls of the undead from a presumably rather uncomfortable state of limbo. Granted this is just what they believe, it's never really stated as fact. |
| 401 | * SouthernGentleman: Quincey Morris, [[EverythingIsBigInTexas Texan]], and a very positively portrayed American; typical in British works of the day but surprising today. |
| 402 | * StakingTheLovedOne: Van Helsing shows the men first hand of Lucy's undead form after she "dies" and seeing she's more monster then human. Although he notes that he ''is'' willing to deal the final blow himself, he offers her fiancé Arthur the chance to do so instead, rationalizing that if Lucy were able to, she would have wanted Arthur to do it as well. All three suitors agree, and Arthur thanks Van Helsing for this once the deed is done. |
| 403 | * StayInTheKitchen: The males think it's best if Mina is shielded from knowledge of their plans to kill the villain. This enforced ignorance means she's a sitting duck for the very man they wanted to protect her from. After their actions lead to Dracula attacking her, they quickly change their philosophy. (This, after Seward and Van Helsing have ''already'' witnessed how keeping one of Dracula's targets in the dark ended up costing her life, as Mrs. Westenra unwittingly makes it easy for Dracula to attack Lucy again.) |
| 404 | * TheStrengthOfTenMen: The Count himself is said to have the strength of twenty men as one of his many powers. |
| 405 | * SuperWindowJump: Dracula only does this once despite his preference for windows above doors. In other instances, he either slides into cracks between the window and frame, or he has something else break the glass for him. In the example of this trope, however, it's daytime and he can't change forms, but is still tough enough to just leap through the pane. |
| 406 | * SupremeChef: When Harker is staying at Castle Dracula, he notes in his journal that the food is very good. Later, it's revealed that there are no servants (it would be tough to get people to work for a, y'know, ''vampire'') and Dracula has been doing all the work, such as cooking. Apparently, when you're an undying abomination you have time to pick up a culinary hobby. Either him or his wives. |
| 407 | * SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: During the trip to Dracula's castle, Mina shows Van Helsing a shortcut trail towards it. When Van Helsing asks her how she knew, she claims it was in Jonathan's journal. But Van Helsing severely doubts that since Jonathan was in the castle most of the time and never took note of which specific way he went. And what's more the trail hardly seem used at all, leading Van Helsing to believe the vampire change is growing in her and giving her information to reach her "master". |
| 408 | * SwitchingPOV: The novel is composed of a collection of journals. It slips up in one case, where Mrs. Harker refers to herself in third person in chapter XXVI (where she is writing a journal but mentions the others made details that she didn't hear.) |
| 409 | * SympathyForTheDevil: Mina mentions that she does pity Dracula. Not the monster that he is, but rather for his soul and how it could be looking for peace from his curse. She also briefly considers sympathy for the monster himself, given how dedicated the men are to hunting him, then dismisses that thought, as the Count is no man, not even a beast, and ''must'' be hunted down and destroyed. |
| 410 | * TheTeamBenefactor: Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming, aids in funding the hunt for Dracula by providing transportation, lodging, and the like. While Abraham van Helsing helps with his knowledge of vampire lore. |
| 411 | * TeamDad: Van Helsing. It helps that he's the oldest by a fair bit. |
| 412 | * TeamMom: Mina. It's a little muddled at times, what with her also being the DamselInDistress, but it really shows at the beginning of the third act. With team morale failing, Mina talks to each of the men and convinces them to keep fighting, not just for her sake, but to avenge fallen friends and to cleanse the world of evil. |
| 413 | %%* TeamSpirit |
| 414 | * TermsOfEndangerment: Even when threatening him, Dracula refers to Jonathan as "my friend". |
| 415 | * ThisIsMyNameOnForeign: The Count poses as a Count de Ville (Dracula = "son of the Dragon", de Ville = Devil - get it? |
| 416 | * ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: There are a couple long stretches that read like this. Notably, Jonathan's diary entries get like this, especially if read taking into consideration exactly how his sense of time passing has been screwed up. It's definitely a viable interpretation that the main cast are all pretty cracked. |
| 417 | * TokenSuper: Mina is the only member of Van Helsing's VampireHunter crew who has supernatural powers, due to an, uh, close encounter with the title villain half-way through the book. These allow her to "tune in" into Dracula's head, letting Van Helsing track his movement. |
| 418 | * TokenWizard: Mina Harker is the only member of Van Helsing's VampireHunter team who has supernatural powers, owing to her unpleasantly close encounters with the title villain. |
| 419 | %%* TooDumbToLive: The Heroes. %% Zero Context Example |
| 420 | * TookALevelInBadass: [[spoiler:Jonathan goes from terrified vampire victim to hunting Dracula with a {{kukri|sAreKool}}.]] |
| 421 | * TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Mina is a "New Woman" of the times of emerging feminism, while Lucy is far more sweet and girly. They're best friends. |
| 422 | * TongueTied: This is one of the things Count Dracula does to Mina Harker after biting her and forming a PsychicLink so he can spy on the heroes (Dr. Seward observes that her "tongue seems tied" and she seems desperately to want to speak at certain times but can't), undoubtedly to prevent her from turning the tables on ''him'' and sharing his plans with ''her'' teammates. Unfortunately for the Count, Mina finds a way to break his control during the magically-critical times of sunrise and sunset and provides very helpful PsychicRadar. |
| 423 | * ToThePain: Dracula's speech to Mina. |
| 424 | * TragicallyMisguidedFavor: Seward, Holmwood, Quincey, and Van Helsing stretch their limited time and resources to the breaking point to protect Lucy from vampire attacks, and restore her strength from the previous attacks. Keeping watch over her at night, giving her blood transfusions when necessary, making sure all the windows are sealed tight, etc. When Van Helsing procures some garlic flowers, they can relax a little, because the garlic will protect Lucy without anyone having to watch her. Unfortunately, Lucy's mother — kept in the dark due to a heart condition, [[PoorCommunicationKills and thus completely unaware of the gravity of the situation or the importance of the garlic]] — removes the flowers because they're making the room stuffy, and also opens the windows to let fresh air in. This leaves Lucy with absolutely no protection that night, and she gets attacked again, requiring yet another blood transfusion. After all the setbacks they've faced already, to be set back again by Mrs. Westenra's well-meaning interference is so frustrating that for the first time in his life, Dr. Seward sees Van Helsing break down. |
| 425 | -->'''Van Helsing:''' This poor mother, all unknowing, and all for the best as she think, does such thing as lose her daughter body and soul; and we must not tell her, we must not even warn her, or she die, and then both die. Oh, how we are beset! How are all the powers of the devils against us! |
| 426 | * TranshumanTreachery: |
| 427 | ** Defied. The vampires try to force Mina to help them, but she refuses. Albeit with a little help from Van Helsing via his charms (she's still under Dracula's spell after all and the charms counteract his hold on her). |
| 428 | ** Van Helsing presumes that Dracula initially was looking into occult magic to help his country during the war and turned himself into an undead. But as time went on, forgot the reason he did so, became corrupted and now seeks to spread the vampirisim. |
| 429 | * {{Trope Maker|s}}[=/=]TropeCodifier: Defined most of the standard vampire tropes; vampire folklore varies wildly throughout the world, but Stoker's winnowing of these inconsistent myths results in the standard set of vampire powers and weaknesses. However, some of Dracula's attributes didn't catch on, most notably his unhandsome appearance and weakness to ColdIron (probably cribbed from Irish vampire-like [[TheFairFolk fey]] the dearg-due). |
| 430 | * TrueCompanions: Jonathan and Mina Harker, Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Lord Godalming, and Quincey Morris form one when they vow to slay the vampire that killed Lucy. Later, after Mina gets an evil scar following her own encounter with the Count, as Jonathan embraces her in her anguish, their friends silently join them: |
| 431 | -->"Then without a word we all knelt down together, and all holding hands, swore to be true to each other." |
| 432 | * TryToFitThatOnABusinessCard: '''Abraham Van Helsing, M.D., D.Ph., D.Litt., etc., etc'''. |
| 433 | * {{Uberwald}}, with tastes of {{Ruritania}}, and even a bit of {{Oireland}}. |
| 434 | * UnbuiltTrope: |
| 435 | ** The book was published when "vampires" were ghoulish specters of Satan rather than rape allegories, and Stoker was more than happy to deconstruct both at the same time; as such the Count bears little resemblance to the vampires we know and love today. Dracula is less suave master of the night and more [[EvilOldFolks old cranky warlock]]. He was only handsome if he could be arsed enough to shapeshift; his default form was a wrinkled hairy man. He was bad at seduction and resorted to hypnosis or kidnapping for most of his food, and his female victims were setups for [[VictorianNovelDisease tuberculosis imagery]] instead of anything sexual. He was a DaywalkingVampire. His vulnerability to the old medieval superstitions (requires soil from his homeland to rest in, cannot cross running water without a boat, MustBeInvited, etc) leaves him easy pickings for Van Helsing and makes him easy to track when he tries to flee back to his castle. Most egregiously, he's not killed by impaling stake or silver, but an (admittedly pretty cool) beheading by kukri knife! |
| 436 | ** A lot of media paints Abraham Van Helsing as a hardcore expert in vampires and knowing how to deal with them. In truth in the novel, while somewhat composed, even he knows he's in a bit over his head since the supernatural isn't something simple that medical science will explain or have a concrete solution to. When he sees Lucy, it takes a while for him to come to the conclusion that she's being attacked by a vampire and, by then, Dracula has bitten her twice. His counteractions are just simple wards at best and it doesn't take much for his efforts to be ruined and Dracula to finish feeding on Lucy. Van Helsing is just as horrified when Lucy starts turning on her deathbed and even more so when having to actually confront her vampire form in the cemetery, just barely preventing Arthur from being bitten by her (twice!). He's likewise just as shaken when he finally confronts Dracula at night and does indeed become scared for Mina during the trip up to Dracula's castle. Heck, the whole encounter with the vampire women when they attack the camp Mina and he were in was an on-the-fly plan since he wasn't really sure if the makeshift holy circle of wafers he made would really protect the two of them, which luckily for him, it did. The point of all this is that, at the end of the day, Van Helsing ''isn't'' a professional vampire hunter; he's just a simple doctor trying hard to keep up with the situation as best he can. |
| 437 | * UndeathAlwaysEnds: Dracula, the vampire "sisters" (who were probably turned years beforehand) and Lucy Westenra (changed into a vampire) are all killed. |
| 438 | * UnreliableNarrator: Within the context of the novel, the story exists as a series of ''transcriptions'' of letters and newspaper clippings about the eponymous vampire; about midway through the novel, Dracula destroys the originals by tossing them into a fireplace in order to discredit the protagonists should they ever wish to make their story public. The transcriptions are kept by Mina Harker, a trained secretary, who foresees the usefulness in keeping backups. However, Mina herself undergoes some pretty severe trauma throughout the course of the novel; apart from the whole vampire-hunting thing, her best friend is turned by Dracula (and then staked by her friends), and she very narrowly escapes being ''turned into a vampire herself'', which brings her mental state and her reliability as a recordkeeper into question. Many film adaptations, unofficial sequel novels and fanfics take this idea and run with it, presenting the 'official" version of events from the novel as having been an alteration or straight-up fabrication of what "really" happened. |
| 439 | * UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Lucy's mother is partly responsible for killing Lucy by opening the window and removing the garlic garland so that Dracula can get into the room. |
| 440 | * TheVamp: Dracula's three vampire companions, and [[spoiler:Lucy when she becomes a vampire.]] |
| 441 | * VampireHickey: |
| 442 | ** When Mina finds Lucy outside after she sleepwalks from their bedroom. She barely catches a glimpse of Dracula hunched over her before he flees, not knowing what he is at the time. So when she retrieves Lucy and brings her back, she sees the marks on Lucy's neck and assumes she pricked her with a safety pin though Lucy notes she doesn't feel any pain. As she starts to fall ill from later attacks, Seward can't make the connection that the mark is related to her declining health and it's only till Van Helsing is brought in, that mark signal him of a vampire attack. Alas, when Lucy is drained too heavily a third and final time, the marks heal on their own, which Van Helsing cites is too late for her. |
| 443 | ** Mina gains her own when Dracula bites her after forcing her to drink his blood, this combination is so she'll turn regardless if she's alive or not as long as Dracula lives. The book downplays this though for the imprint wafer that's burned into her skin, but the bite marks are likewise noted to be a sign of if she's in danger of turning if they close. |
| 444 | * VampireHunter: Van Helsing is never described as a vampire hunter; he's merely a doctor with knowledge of exotic diseases. It's never explicitly said, but Van Helsing clearly demonstrates perfect knowledge of vampire weaknesses and is instantly willing to make use of his knowledge after noting that Lucy's symptoms match those in the legends, without so much as a hint of skepticism. This would seem to imply that he has some previous experience with vampires or other supernatural phenomena, even in the original novel. On the other hand, he doesn't recognize Lucy's symptoms on sight, he has to periodically return to Amsterdam to do more research, and it takes him a while -- too long, in fact, to prevent Lucy's death -- to understand what's going on. |
| 445 | * VampireMonarch: Count Dracula is described as the "King Vampire", with direct control over other vampires. While this nobleman only has three other vampires in his castle, it is beyond doubt all vampires in the story only answer to Count Dracula, and the fact that the person whom he was named after, Vlad the Impaler, was ''an actual monarch''. |
| 446 | * VampireProcreationLimit: The exact details are unknown, but it seems that, contrary to popular belief, not every victim from a vampire bite becomes a vampire him/herself since none of the ship's crew Dracula ate on his journey to London rose as vampires. The Count forces Mina to drink his blood, forming a mental link between them, but he's not shown doing this to any of the other women he turned. |
| 447 | * VampireRefugee: Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker. For Lucy, it wasn't known what was weakening her till Van Helsing was called in. She would've probably been cured were it not for a few too many bad circumstances. Mina is a bit more fortunate, since Dracula has to flee before he can fully transform her. She feels his presence within her spying on the hunters. And, when confronted by the vampire 'sisters' near the end of the story, senses the vampirism welling up in her. |
| 448 | * VampireVannabe: Renfield seems to be trying to emulate vampirism, though with less understanding of the mechanics as we know it today... by eating flies, spiders, and small birds. [[KickTheDog And at one point he asks for a kitten...]] |
| 449 | * VampireVords: Averted. Dracula speaks excellent English, and has called Harker to his castle to, more than anything, help him get rid of his accent so that he won't be seen as another FunnyForeigner when he has moved to England. |
| 450 | * VampiresAreRich: Count Dracula is the go-to example. Dracula lives in a big castle and summons Jonathan Harker to Transylvania to help him buy land in England. Harker notes that Dracula doesn't have any servants, but we later find out that it's because no local will come near the place. Dracula's continuing source of income seems to be buried treasure that is marked by Will-o'-the-Wisps one night out of the year. |
| 451 | * VampiricWerewolf: Bram Stoker himself had turning into a wolf as just one of Dracula's many powers in the original Dracula, and many of the early theatrical plays extrapolated on this by having Dracula be able to transform into a werewolf on top of being a vampire. |
| 452 | * VampiresAreSexGods: While Dracula is more of a personified venereal disease, his wives seem to become impossibly beautiful and [[TheVamp seductive]]. |
| 453 | * VampiresHarem: Dracula is the TropeCodifier, though it's something of an UnbuiltTrope since the three female vampires are merely implied to be his wives, but never outright confirmed. If anything, it's heavily implied they might be blood-related since two of them share the same physical resemblance to him. Of course, this doesn't cancel out the other alternative, since vampirism is used as an metaphor for sexual deviancy in the book. |
| 454 | * VampiresHateGarlic: Van Helsing attempts to protect Lucy from Dracula by giving her a garland of garlic flowers to wear, and rubbing garlic around all the entrances of her bedroom. Unfortunately Lucy's mother, who wasn't informed of why it was there, removes the garland leaving her daughter vulnerable again. |
| 455 | * VampiresSleepInCoffins: The rules in Bram Stoker's original novel were actually way more complicated. Dracula lost his powers in the daylight and still had to rest sometime. He could only do so in a coffin containing soil from his homeland, and leaving a fragment of blessed Communion wafer in the coffins ruined them for his use. A large part of the early hunt for Dracula was eliminating all his coffins and safehouses in England. |
| 456 | * VasquezAlwaysDies: Inverted. The sexually curious yet feminine Lucy is killed by the eponymous villain. However, [[LoveInterests Mina]], the maternal yet logical wife of Jonathan Harker, survives. Indeed, Van Helsing even describes Mina as having a [[AuthorTract 'man's brain']]. |
| 457 | * VictorianNovelDisease: Parodied, or PlayedForDrama, or used as a RedHerring, depending on how you read the novel. In classic literature, tuberculosis was used as a stock disease. It was rarely referred to by name, but the symptoms were always the same: a young lady would become pale and sleepy, and a blush would show on her sickly face. When Van Helsing refuses to name Lucy's illness, the reader of the era would have assumed that she has tuberculosis. [[spoiler:But actually, Van Helsing realizes that she's becoming a vampire.]] |
| 458 | * ViewersAreGeniuses: Stoker seemingly overestimated widespread knowledge of vampire lore, creating a situation where the fandom rather than the author is widely SadlyMythtaken. Dracula is destroyed by a knife through the heart rather than a stake. [[ColdIron Sharp steel or iron objects like needles or knives]] are effective vampire kryptonite in Slavic mythology, yet adaptations, sequels, and even "scholarly" annotated versions of the novel jump on the lack of a wooden stake as proof that Dracula is NotQuiteDead. |
| 459 | * VillainousIncest: Dracula has three companions called "sisters": one blonde and two brunettes. The two brunette vampires are described as having facial features similar to Count Dracula. Meanwhile, the blonde bride is described as having authority over the other two. Many readers have speculated that the blonde bride is the mother of the two brunettes, and that Dracula is the father. |
| 460 | * VillainousRescue. Jonathan is almost bitten by one of the vampire women, when Dracula arrives to stop them. Of course, Dracula has has no intention of letting Jonathan live, but he still needs him. |
| 461 | * VillainousWidowsPeak: Dracula does have one, though it's given less attention than his other, more strange features. |
| 462 | * VirusVictimSymptoms: We see it gradually with Lucy as more of her blood is taken. Starting with becoming weak and pale, then becoming susceptible to Dracula's power. [[spoiler:And finally, as she dies the first time, the bite marks on her neck suddenly heal, her canines become sharper and her demeanor suddenly becomes more lustful.]] |
| 463 | * WackyAmericansHaveWackyNames: Quincey P. Morris. Although he isn't exactly comic, he is a rootin', tootin' and shootin' American man of action. |
| 464 | * WallCrawl: One of the first obvious hints that Dracula is something other than human occurs when Jonathan Harker witnesses the Count crawling ''down'' the castle walls face first. In a twist of irony, it's implied Jonathan actually escaped from Castle Dracula the same way (although probably ''not'' face first). |
| 465 | * WeakenedByTheLight: {{Averted}}. Dracula is weak only at sunup and sundown. Being in sunlight has no direct ''harmful'' effect on him (he's seen approaching Lucy before the sun goes down), though he does suffer from ShapeshifterModeLock during daytime. However since he's weak at sunup and sundown they use this to great effect when they open his coffin just as the sun sets. |
| 466 | * WeaksauceWeakness: The book averts most of the popular traditional vampire weaknesses; for example, Dracula can't be killed by most conventional means, and can use his shapeshifting powers during dawn, noon, and dusk. However, he does have unique weaknesses; he can only cross running water during high or low tide (this amounts to 12 hours and 25 minutes per day), needs to keep a small amount of Transylvanian soil in his home, and needs to be invited inside before he can enter a building (considering this is Victorian era England and he is a noble, this is a non-matter). |
| 467 | * TheWeirdSisters: Invoked by Jonathan Harker in his journal, when he refers to the three vampire women as "those weird sisters". |
| 468 | * WhoYouGonnaCall: Van Helsing, though originally as a consultant on abnormal medical phenomena rather than a vampire hunter. Luckily, he also happens to be the latter, too, and formally initiates his 5 new friends into a team of vampire busters. |
| 469 | * WickedCultured: Dracula comes across as a fairly refined, rich old gentleman before he's revealed as a vampire. |
| 470 | * WineIsClassy: Dracula [[IDoNotDrinkWine does not drink... wine]]. He does serve it to his guests, however. Jonathan Harker even comments on the "bottle of excellent Old Tokay"[[note]]More commonly spelled Tokaji, it's Hungary's largest and best-known wine district.[[/note]] he is served with his first dinner in castle Dracula. |
| 471 | * WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: All the vampires, whose souls are unable to find peace until their bodies are destroyed, and who are described as bearing tranquil expressions once they have been "purified". Mina even grows to pity Dracula, and to consider his destruction a mercy. |
| 472 | * WorthIt: Two of the protagonists' group of TrueCompanions rush at Dracula's coffin in the climax in a risky bid to finish him off before he has a chance to regroup. They succeed, but Dracula's hired goons fight back before scattering, mortally wounding one of them. His last words were declaring that it was worth dying to see that killing Dracula successfully removed a vampiric curse on one of his friends. [[spoiler:Quincy and Jonathan are the men who rush the coffin, Mina has her curse removed, and Quincy is the one who dies, with Mina and Jonathan naming their children after him.]] |
| 473 | * WouldHurtAChild: |
| 474 | ** After Lucy was turned into a vampire, children were her favorite targets. |
| 475 | ** One of Dracula's most monstrous actions in the book is feeding a child he has just abducted to the vampire women of the castle. The child is even kept in a sack. |
| 476 | * WoundThatWillNotHeal: The wound to the forehead that Harker gives the Count early in the novel never heals. Whether this is because Dracula, being already dead, cannot heal wounds, or simply because not enough time passes, or something else, is never made clear. |
| 477 | * WritersCannotDoMath: Most of the dates in the journal entries make no sense when compared with characters' descriptions of events in the text. |
| 478 | * YouAreACreditToYourRace: Van Helsing, after being surprised by Mina's intellect, praises her for combining a woman's heart with a man's brain. Van Helsing later praises Seward not for his taken-for-granted masculine intellect, but for his feminine-coded tenderheartedness. |
| 479 | * YouAreTheTranslatedForeignWord: One extract has ''four'' of them. In this case though, he's not saying the same thing twice himself, just reporting something he heard and providing a translation, presumably for his own future reference. |
| 480 | -->''"I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were "Ordog" — Satan, "Pokol" — hell, "stregoica" — witch, "vrolok" and "vlkoslak" — both mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either werewolf or vampire. (Mem., I must ask the Count about these superstitions.)"'' |
| 481 | * YouAreTooLate: When Seward summons Van Helsing, he notices the bite marks on Lucy's neck getting bigger (due to Dracula exacerbating the wound with his bites). After his third attack, they try to give her a blood transfusion but by then they notice she's much paler then usual. When Arthur comes near her, her demeanour changes to being uncharacteristically lustful and Van Helsing notices her bite marks have vanished and fangs have formed in her mouth. This confirms, to his dismay, that she is beyond saving and is becoming a vampire. |
| 482 | * YouAreWorthHell: Vampirism is considered inevitably a FateWorseThanDeath (becoming undead, change of personality to evil, feeding on living blood, etc). Which makes it a rather disquieting when Jonathan Harker, faced with the possibility that his VampireRefugee wife might not be saved, resolves that, no matter what, she will not meet that fate alone. |
| 483 | * YouCalledMeXItMustBeSerious: Mina knows something is wrong when Jonathan calls her Wilhelmina. |
| 484 | * YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: This, along with HeKnowsTooMuch, is presumably why Dracula keeps Harker prisoner in the castle and then leaves him there to his (presumed) demise at the hands of the vampire women that he also leaves behind. |
| 485 | [[/folder]] |
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