Adaptation Displacement: Arguably why Jonathan Harker had a bad reputation for years after the book's release: Up until Dracula Daily kicked off, most people only knew of his character from the film adaptations (which frequently portray him in a negative light) instead of the original source material, where he is a much more sympathetic and caring person.
Aluminium Christmas Trees: Van Helsing, a Dutch doctor, often breaks out in Gratuitous German. Was Stoker getting the Dutch and German languages mixed up? Probably yes, but German was the major language of Western science in the late 19th century, particularly when it came to medicine, as well as being a lingua franca in much of Europe, so it's fairly likely that Van Helsing would have regularly spoken German.
How much of Jonathan's obliviousness and Skewed Priorities at the start of the novel is legit, and how much is him essentially going into survival mode in a very bad situation he can't easily get out of? Memes aside, his journals indicate that he has a sense something really isn't right very early, and he does hang onto the rosary the innkeeper's wife gives him. He says it's because she was so genuinely concerned and kind and he didn't want to discard her gift, but it could also indicate that deep down, he's not sure it wouldn't help to have a holy symbol on him. Later, when he realizes Dracula has no reflection, and the Count shatters his mirror, Jonathan's first reaction is to comment that it's annoying because now he can't shave properly... but the rest of that entry describes him realizing he's trapped in the castle, and he is clearly freaking the hell out. It's very possible Jonathan was honing in on irrelevant or silly details, like being able to shave or the food he's enjoying, and trying to ignore the increasingly-obvious bloodsucking elephant in the room, because his only other option was to panic and/or go insane. At least once, Jonathan writes in his journal that he feels like he's losing his mind, and that he's journaling for much the same reason as Mark Watney: to try and keep his head in a stressful, life-or-death situation, and have an outlet to talk himself through plans for survival.
Was Lucy unaware of Dr. Seward's feelings for her before he proposed? Or did she have some idea, but tactfully ignored them as long as she could so she wouldn't hurt him?
Lucy's genuine affection for all three of her suitors could be interpreted as her being polyamorous, especially her line that she wishes she could Marry Them All. Allegedly it's so she wouldn't have to make any of them unhappy by rejecting them, but you do have to wonder. While her sadness at rejecting both Quincey and Seward could be attributed to her being tender-hearted and not wanting to hurt two men she considers her friends, it could also be a hint that she actually does want to be with all three of them. If she is poly, that raises the question of why she chose Arthur over the other two. Because her feelings for him are stronger? Because she met him first? Because her family likes him? Because he's the most financially stable?
Americans Hate Tingle: In the first set of years after this novel's publication, it was heavily despised by Romanians as being a xenophobic "story made up by a foreigner to titillate other foreigners" which is not wrong since the novel's plot is largely about an evil Eastern European count coming to steal the pure and virtuous Anglo-Saxon women beloved of many Invasion Literature tropes. It is also disliked by others for more or less immortalizing and scapegoating Vlad the Impaler as a monster, and making the name of the Christian "Order of the Dragon" (which is what Dracula is supposed to mean) into a demonic being of low-grade pulp fiction. Romanian nationalism in the 19th Century also lionized and gave Vlad a Historical Hero Upgrade around the era when this book was publishednote Which was also a recent phenomenon. Since, the oral tradition among the peasants recorded by Archbishops in the seventeenth century was more or less negative, and the novel, to Romanians, seems like someone making a cheap propaganda about their Icon of Rebellion in the same period they were struggling against the Ottoman Turks and the Russian Empire. Granted, even though Romanians' loathing for Bram Stoker's Dracula has ameliorated and they have even been willing to capitalize on the fictional Count Dracula's association with the country by selling vampire related souvenirs, it is still not wise to talk about Dracula at length.
Anti-Climax Boss: The final confrontation with Dracula takes less than three pages, and that includes the heroes fighting off his mooks.
As noted by many followers of Dracula Daily, the actual climax is the race to catch up to Dracula and finish him off before he can wake up on his home turf. It isn't a classic battle of good and evil between the heroes and the villain, it's the heroes desperately trying to defuse a bomb before the countdown runs out. Dracula's shapeshifting powers are his main threat, and they're largely disabled during the day; if the group catches him before sunset, they can dispatch him with almost no effort. If the Count can evade them until sunset, he can dispatch them with almost no effort.
Base-Breaking Character: Lucy's mother, Mrs. Westenra repeatedly and unintentionally endangers her daughter at several points before her death. Fans debate over whether she's Too Dumb to Live or painfully Locked Out of the Loop, or even whether she truly cares about Lucy.
Van Helsing fills Lucy's room with garlic flowers to ward against vampires, but doesn't explain this to Mrs. Westenra out of concern for her weak heart, so she goes to Lucy's room and removes the smelly flowers and opens the window so Lucy can get some fresh air, meaning Dracula is able to feed on her yet again. Is this Van Helsing's fault for not being up front with Lucy and her mother about the situation? Or, since the flowers appeared shortly after two doctors visited the severely ill Lucy, should Mrs. Westenra have surmised that the flowers were part of the treatment (or at least, a well-intentioned gift)? It doesn't help that Mrs. Westenra must have removed the flowers without asking Lucy, who knew that the garlic flowers were for her health (and notes that she feels surprisingly better with them) and would have objected.
A truly cynical reading of the character would ask just how 'unintentional' Mrs Westenra's actions actually are. A woman in early middle age (Lucy herself is only nineteen) with some kind of imminently fatal medical condition (that she tells everyone but her daughter about) who time and again puts her daughter squarely in the path of Dracula's hunger. She's the one who just so happens to remove Lucy to Whitby in time for Dracula's arrival. She's the one who sabotages Van Helsing's early efforts to shield Lucy from Dracula. She's the one who pulls the garlic talisman from Lucy's neck just as the wolf breaks the window of Lucy's room, leaving Lucy defenceless as 'someone' has drugged the wine that their maids are known to purloin glasses of. Seward himself notes how blithely unconcerned Mrs Westenra is by her daughter's near-death condition. It's almost as though Renfield isn't the only person willing to work towards Dracula's aims in return for immortality...
Character Perception Evolution: Jonathan Harker, as outlined in subsequent entries on this page, has not fared well in adaptations or the official sequel of the book. He's usually presented as the repressive and/or dull alternative to the mysterious, seductive Count. Ironically, when Dracula Daily kicked off and readers went back to the original source material, Tumblr users quickly embraced Jonathan as their new best friend, connecting with his open adoration of his wife and his struggles to survive an extremely traumatic situation as the Count's prisoner, neither of which get covered much, if at all, in the adaptations.
While sunlight is a weakness to Dracula in the original book, it wasn't the outright lethal weakness it became in adaptations like Nosferatu. It just weakened his powers and robbed him of his shape shifting abilities while exposed to it. The Count also seems to generally dislike bright lights of any kind rather than "just" sunlight.
Related, Dracula wasn't actually killed via stake to the heart - it was an iron bowie knife to the heart instead. The stake trope was one way to do it, and is used on Lucy after she's turned into a vampire, but it's not how Dracula himself is killed. Some speculate that Stoker intentionally had the characters use the wrong tool for the job so that he could write a sequel some day. (It's worth noting that the vampire was already being beheaded by Jonathan by the time Quincey stabbed him in the heart anyway, so the impaling was presumably more of an added precaution than a killing blow. And the fact that Dracula dissolves instantly into dust pretty much proves that he's gone for good.)
People have come to see the novel as a kind of egregious Malicious Slander on Vlad the Impaler (which Dracula Untold ran with). While the novel has the hypocritical xenophobia typical to all Victorian invasion literature (i.e. fears of foreigners invading the largest and most rapacious empire of the 19th century), the ameliorative reputation of Vlad the Impaler is very much Newer Than They Think. The oral tradition of Vlad the Impaler among the slavic peasantry was negative for most of its history, as chronicled by Romanian orthodox priests in the 1700s, so while Bram Stoker's novel is not especially flattering to foreigners and minorities (especially the Romanian people), its portrayal of Vlad the Impaler as a blood-sucking monster is actually far more consistent to the tradition than the Romanian nationalistic movement of the 19th Century (which like all romantic nationalism was a bourgeois phenomenon with invented traditions and little connection to the majority of the people).
While we're on the subject, there's no indication that Stoker actually based the character Dracula on Vlad the Impaler, let alone that he wanted to imply they were one and the same, and one would think that if he had intended as such either way, he would have been more obvious about it. By all accounts he only picked the name while doing research in Whitby's public library because it "sounded right", due to it being the Romanian word for dragon/devil. In fact, in the passage where Dracula regales Harker with his pride in his heritage, he firmly identifies himself as a Szekely. The Szekely people were neighbours of the Wallachs, but only in the same way that they are neighbours of the Slovaks or the Magyars. It's very odd that he claims to be a Dracula of the Draculesti line of the Basarabs while seemingly being a Szekely boyar whose family castle and own tomb lie far away from the land the Draculas actually ruled.
The Brides of Dracula are assumed to be the Count's wives and made up of a Blonde, Brunette, Redhead trio. Except they were never explicitly identified as his wives. If anything it's implied they are related by blood, especially two of them who are noted to share the same facial features as the Count. They are nicknamed by the characters in-universe the "Weird Sisters" and they are two brunettes and a blonde, the latter stated to be the youngest and the leader.
Anyone (in film, TV or anywhere) doing their impression of Dracula will adopt an outrageous, over-the-top accent that might be confused for Romanian. In the novel, Dracula's English is so good that Jonathan Harker can barely detect an accent at all. What those imitators are doing is an impression of parodies of Bela Lugosi's (Hungarian) accent from the film version. Though strangely enough in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, the Dracula homage character NOS4A2 actually employs a Truer to the Text English accent.
Any time the name 'Van Helsing' is mentioned in any form of media, it either depicts the character himself as a hardcore Vampire Hunter or gives the audience the heads up that the character in question is a Hunter of Monsters. In the original book Van Helsing is nothing of the sort; he has a wide range of accomplishments and interests, of which a knowledge of Balkan folklore is only one. Seward initially turns to him because he's an expert in rare diseases, so it takes him a fair while to realise that Lucy's condition is caused by a vampire, at first trying to cure her through scientific means before turning to more traditional methods of protection, and in the end his efforts to save her life are all in vain. Van Helsing is able to lead the group to the conclusion of vampires not because he is an vampire expert with experience slaying them but because he is an open-minded scholar willing to seriously consider folklore, myth, and ridiculous-sounding claims. Most of his hypotheses about vampires derive from comparing descriptions in various old stories and texts to his experience with Lucy and the observations Jonathan made in his journal, and he constantly needs to do further research on how to understand and defeat Dracula and the vampires created by him, basically adapting as he goes along and hoping desperately that his ideas work rather than knowing everything right from the start.
The Renfield is often depicted as a willing servant to their master, or simply too insane not to, and likely has a weasley appearance. The actual Renfield is a highly educated man of excellent breeding, is strong enough to break out of his cell and scale walls effortlessly, and recognizes when his delusions are being manipulated by Dracula to further his plans. When Dracula manipulates him to get into the asylum to attack Mina, Renfield sacrifices himself by nearly beating him in a fistfight.
To many familiar with modern vampire works, where vampirism, blood drinking, and vampires themselves are blatant (sometimes too blatant) metaphors for sex and sexuality, it can be surprising to find that the actual text of the Ur-Example vampire novel sports very little in the way of sexual subtext, and when discussed actually outright dismisses the idea. At her funeral Arthur suggests to Van Helsing that donating blood to Lucy symbolically married them in some way, and Van Helsing finds the suggestion literally laughable, breaking down into hysterics as soon as he's out of Arthur's earshot (though much of his mirth comes from, if the idea is carried to its logical conclusion, it means Lucy is a polyandrist and Van Helsing himself a bigamist). If they're metaphors for sex at all, Dracula and the other vampires are metaphors for rape, and the text treats vampirism more like the spread of an insidious and fatal disease than anything to do with sexuality. The closest thing to actual textual evidence for a sexual interpretation is vampire Lucy, reawakened as a hideous, distorted parody of the sweet, innocent girl she used to be, repeatedly described as having a kind of animalistic sexuality (emphasis on "animal," with her growling over a child like a dog over a bone), something which all the men react to in horror. Also in the "Weird Sisters" attacking Jonathan, mesmerizing him so that he's unwilling to resist them, willing to let them "kiss" him. Later generations sneering at Victorian repression ran with these scenes to equate vampirism with sexual liberation while leaving the children Lucy and the Sisters were preying on conveniently out of shot. The overall trend of vampire as sex metaphor more accurately originated in adaptations, derivative works, and adaptations incorporating elements from derivative works.
Complete Monster: Count Dracula himself is the Trope Codifier for the modern vampire. A hideous, blood-sucking monster, Dracula commits a number of crimes over the course of the novel, including keeping Jonathan Harker prisoner and trying to drive him insane; kidnapping a baby to feed to his fellow vampires, before sending wolves to kill the mother when she demands her baby back; driving his own servant, Renfield, to madness; sending a wolf after Lucy Westenra and her mother to gain entry to her house before draining her blood and turning her into a vampire (killing Lucy's mother through sheer fear at the wolf's appearance in the process); and turning Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker into a vampire to uncover his enemies' plans against him. Dracula ultimately plans to move to England so that he can feast on the people of London to his heart's content. Overall, the vampire Count is an undead abomination devoid of humanity and worthy of no sympathy.
Creepy Awesome: Dracula is largely responsible for launching a vampire fandom that has lasted over a century.
Diagnosed by the Audience: Jonathan is not explicitly identified as anything, but to a modern reader, his behavior after escaping from Dracula's castle (frequent nightmares, jumpy and easily frightened, needing Mina's comfort and support to get through his daily life, and has a panic attack upon seeing reminders of his experience) is very reminiscent of Post-traumatic stress disorder. It may very well be that Bram Stoker intentionally wrote Jonathan as suffering from trauma, but lacked the terminology to describe it ("Shell-shock" wasn't coined until 1915, but "soldier's heart" stretches at least back to the American Civil War and the phenomenon is as old as the human psyche).
Dracula has historically become a major pop culture character whose portrayal makes him out to be attractive, charming, and often with a tragic backstory to give him sympathy. Bram Stoker's original version is depicted much closer to a rapist, getting uncomfortably close to people and using superficial charm and violence to get what he wants.
Vampire Lucy Westenra is often painted as a victim of male oppression and even honor killing to 'rescue' her honor and purity. Even though she, uh, eats children, and there's no sign she was at all promiscuous when alive — three men propose to her on the same day, she chooses one (at worst a bit reluctantly because she didn't want to upset any of them), and she dies before her wedding.
While Lucy is an important character, she is largely secondary to the other leads and serves more of a cautionary tale of what Dracula's evil could do to Mina. However the character has proven to be one of the more popular aspects of the novel, and many adaptations like to explore her character much more than the novel ever does.
The vampire sisters likewise are well-liked by fans, largely for how mysterious they are and often wonder what their relationship to Dracula is, but they appear in exactly two scenes.
Evil Is Cool: Dracula is essentially responsible for the entire western world's vampire obsession. He's both refined and psychotic in equal measures and stands as the most memorable and enthralling part of the book.
Mina is actually quite a feminist character. Throughout the novel, the men behave foolishly, while Mina is the only one to be consistently intelligent throughout. When they exclude her from their councils on the grounds that as a woman, even an intelligent one, she's so fragile she'd be irreparably traumatized, this comes back to bite them in the ass in a big way; when they have an actually good reason not to tell her anything (Dracula's possible ability to mind-control her), she's thought of it first. Some later adaptations, especially Alan Moore's comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula center on Mina as the main character of the book and tend to dismiss the other male characters (save for the Count) to better emphasize the feminist subtext, which unfortunately also dismisses Jonathan despite 1) him being as much a victim as Mina — and a male one of what could be called sexual assault at that — and 2) him loving and respecting her. Also as noted under Values Dissonance, it has an inversion of the Sex Signals Death trope before it ever became a trope. Lucy becomes a vampire before her wedding, therefore dying a virgin. Mina however marries Jonathan in the course of the story — so is likely not a virgin by the end. Dracula even attacks them while they're in bed together. It's usually lost in adaptations that portray Lucy as the slutty one and Mina as the Shrinking Violet.
Lucy is also not treated as a 'bad' victim because she is different to Mina. She's a Spoiled Sweet angel who although not as smart as Mina, is still shown to have plenty of virtues of her own. Her death is not shown as anything but a tragedy. The reason she can't decide between the three suitors is that she loves each of them and doesn't want to break anyone's heart or lose any of them as friends. Her death is more of a symbol of the fading aristocracy than a statement about female sexuality.
By the end of the novel, Mina has technically committed more sins than Lucy. Lucy's worst actions were done under Dracula's influence, while Mina knowingly and willingly broke her vow to Jonathan about not opening his journal. Of course, it was all for the best, but still.
Quincey Morris' portrayal as a gun-toting cowboy from Texas is so outrageously stereotypical that it borders on being offensive to modern readers. Yet considering how British literature of the 19th Century tended to stereotype Americans as boorish and uncultured, the fact that Dracula includes an American character who's portrayed as not only sympathetic but heroic is notable in and of itself. Stoker was very enamored of American culture and included Morris specifically as a tribute to his American friends. In the book, Quincey also admits that he puts on a fake "cowboy" stereotype because Lucy finds it funny and tends to be laconic and pragmatic away from her. Lucy bluntly notes he has what a lady of her station considers at least passably proper education and manners.
The book's depiction of the Romanian peasantry owes a good deal to the exoticism and 'otherness' of the travel guides that Stoker used for his research — but they're also shown to be completely right in their superstitions and fears, compared to Jonathan's ignorance of the supernatural, and they give him plenty of warnings that he doesn't understand or heed. One woman even ends up saving his life, as the crucifix that she insists on giving him early in his journey later protects him from Dracula and keeps the vampire at bay. Despite Jonathan (and Bram Stoker) being Protestant, all Christian denominations and their emblems are shown as equal in affecting vampires and never criticized.
Fandom-Specific Plot: A number of books (and also other mediums) that act as a sequel to the original tale almost always make the titular vampire resurrect from the dead, or he turns out to be Not Quite Dead after the heroes' attempt at killing him. Which often leads to either him getting his revenge, so they have to defeat him yet again for good, or him turning out to be not so bad after all and the whole story was just a huge misunderstanding.
Genre Turning Point: The book completely redefined what "horror" even means, in the process also making every prior incarnation of Gothic Horror obsolete - in large part due to being a Deconstructor Fleet of the genre.
Hard-to-Adapt Work: While there are many adaptations and many of them are perfectly good works, the book doesn't have that many outright scares. Instead, it has a feeling of slow-building dread that the adaptations lack, since the book is a Scrapbook Story made up of the letters, journals, and records of characters who, for the first half of the book, have no idea what's going on. Dracula is a complete Outside-Context Problem for them, and only Van Helsing has even the foggiest notion of what to do about vampires once he's aware one is in England. Even for a modern reader who knows exactly who Dracula is and what he's up to, it's still a very unsettling read because you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop and want to warn the characters somehow, but can only read on as they slowly put the pieces together themselves. The format of the book allows Stoker to build a great deal of atmosphere and ambiance, and give the reader insights into almost all the major characters, and the plot is a spooky slow-burn as you watch all these characters you like gradually realize the true nature of what they're up against. It's one of the book's greatest strengths, and it unfortunately can't really be adapated to any other medium. The adaptations have to take a different tactic entirely, either reworking the plot or going at it from a different angle (e.g., playing the situation for Dramatic Irony, showing it from Dracula's point of view, etc.).
When he and Seward are alone, Van Helsing bursts into laughter over Arthur absurdly treating blood transfusion as a metaphorical sex act, which, in hindsight, looks like a Take That!Leaning on the Fourth Wall. This, of course, does not deter some critics from interpreting vampirism in exactly that way.
Dracula (published 1897) has a major character called Van Helsing. Rupert of Hentzau, the sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda (written 1895, published 1898) has a minor character called Baron von Helsing. This can cause Double Takes when reading the latter for the first time.
As this Tumblr post points out, there is some unintentional hilarity in how Genre Blind the characters are, mostly because the genre wasn't invented yet.
As this tweet notes, although Dracula is often called a "count", that title was not used in Transylvania when Dracula reigned — as he himself notes, he is a boyar. And he signs his letters with his initial, "D". And he has no servants in the castle, so it must have been him cooking Jonathan's meals. Taken together, all this means that Dracula is Chef Boyardee.
Mina sure likes describing how pretty Lucy is. They even share a kiss in Bram Stoker's Dracula. The TV series outright makes Lucy a lesbian.
Mina also notices Dracula in London because they were both admiring the same pretty girl.
In the epilogue, it's mentioned that Dr. Seward and Arthur are happily married. Obviously, the text doesn't specify "to each other", but it also provides no indication that they aren't.
Van Helsing is incredibly touchy-feely with Seward, who worships him. At times they give off a borderline Lover and Beloved vibe.
Dracula is very interested in and possessive of Jonathan while Jonathan is at his castle, forbidding the sisters to touch him with such declarations as "This man belongs to me!" and "Yes, I too can love, you yourselves can tell it from the past" (more or less explicitly saying that he feels for Jonathan what he once felt for them).
Believe it or not, Dracula and Renfield get this sometimes, albeit with Dracula and Renfield recast as a pair of Bishōnen pretty-boys rather than the old man and the maniac from the book.
Considering "Dracula" is now practically synonymous with "vampire", the big revelation about the Count isn't nearly as shocking as it once was. Indeed, the surprising thing for readers is the Unbuilt Trope about how banal he comes off as being in Jonathan's first meeting with him, which gives readers the impression that this is a guy you can hang out with, at least once.
The Reveal that Lucy is a vampire and the Bloofer Lady that's been abducting children is easy to telegraph for fans.
Mainstream Obscurity: How large a percentage of the people who know about Dracula, have actually read the book? As Orson Welles noted:
"Dracula would make a marvelous movie. In fact, nobody has ever made it... all the movies are based on the play."
Memetic Mutation: Dracula DailyExplanationA project started in May of 2021, Dracula Daily sends daily chapters of Dracula according to their dates in the book, allowing readers to follow the story "as it happens". Its second run in 2022 exploded in popularity, bringing the old book a whole new audience and leading to users on various social media (particularly Tumblr) commenting on the day's chapter like they were reading a travel blog or new episode of a popular show. The result was practically a new meme every day.
Tumblr's best friend, JonathanExplanationSince the early chapters of the book are all taken from Jonathan's journal, the nature of Dracula Daily made it feel like he was personally emailing you, causing many to affectionately refer to him as "my friend Jonathan" or similar. The hilarity of a protagonist in a century-old gothic novel becoming Tumblr's new favorite character was quickly memed, and it became a Play-Along Meme to be excited for his next mail about his work trip.
PaprikaExplanationIn his first journal entry, Jonathan describes his comparably mundane trip so far, including a paprika hendl he had at a local inn that he enjoyed and hoped to get the receipe for. Paprika quickly became Jonathan's Trademark Favorite Food, along with many a joke about Jonathan being so Genre Blind that he was more interested in the food he ate along the way than the repeated warnings from weeping townsfolk giving him crucifixes
Jonathan and spicesExplanationIn the book, Jonathan remarks on the spicyness of the aforementioned paprika hendl. Some readers made fun of him for finding paprika spicy, which in turn led to others explaining that paprika hendl is actually a rather spicy dish. This ignited a huge conversation and several contradictory statements about Jonathan's tolerance for spices, with varying claims that paprika hendl was not made spicy until sometimes during the 1900s, that paprika hendl is actually a local name for a different and quite spicy dish entirely, that Jonathan only finds it spicy because he's british, et cetera. Consensus seems to be that regardless of the actual spicyness of the dish, the fact that Jonathan still went back for another serving has earned him some amount of respect
Jonathan just took the bar exam.note Readers who have taken the bar (or a similarly grueling professional exam) have defended his early actions by saying that nobody who recently qualified as a solicitor would be in a mental condition to think about anything but real estate law, no matter how fearful and outlandish everything else is.
In lizard fashion Explanation how Jonathan describes Dracula climbing the outer walls of his castle and later Jonathan himself as he attempts the feat to sneak into Dracula's room.
The mention that Dracula is doing all the upkeep of the castle himself to fool Jonathan spawned a lot of fanart of Dracula doing his chores at Super-Speed.
Terrible roommates note The implication that Dracula does all the work around his castle himself despite having three women living there with him has led to a lot of jokes about the Weird Sisters being Pretty Freeloaders.
Dogcula Explanation Dracula leaping off the Demeter in the form of a large dog leads to the townspeople and the local SPCA trying to catch him as a pet. Many people found this hilarious and relatable and started memeing about the townspeople trying to catch him, how mean Dracula was for depriving them of a town pet, and mourning the poor mastiff who tried to kill Dracula.
English violence Explanation When Jonathan is found alive in Budapest, Sister Agatha says that they could tell he was English by his violent demeanor, and so they bought him a ticket as far west as possible for when he got out of the hospital. While the tone of it is compassionate, it was jokingly interpreted it as English people being naturally violent and the locals trying to get him as far away as possible.
The Book/The AdaptationsExplanationWith many now reading the actual book for the first time, they are also noticing the many instances of changes made from the book to the various adaptations it's had over the years, especially the Adaptational Jerkass treatment Jonathan gets in nearly every adaptation, not to mention the Adaptational Consent between Mina and Dracula. Most fans find these changes in poor taste and take great joy in dunking on them by comparing them to the Values Resonance of the original book.
Voluptuous Explanation Bram Stoker uses the word "voluptuous" no less than five times in the final climax with Vampire Lucy, leading readers to snark about its overuse and compare it to modern authors dwelling on their female characters' bodies too much. This continued with the three vampire women.
Count Dracula is clearly meant to be an ancient, evil, crazy walking corpse creature. His fashion sense and tendency to be played by sexy European actors made him beloved, and nearly single-handedly launched the Vampires Are Sex Gods trope. If the sexual overtones weren't intentional, it would be almost literally the sole example of Victorian horror literature that didn't. The man was never taken for anything but human, described as a consummate noble (also a literal noble, being landed gentry) with a commanding presence, and his most frequently-used power made him more personally compelling. Much of the book was written through the perspective of a woman partially under his spell, and it was made pretty explicit that he was very seductive despite not being traditionally attractive.
Nausea Fuel: Renfield's attempt at aping vampirism, involving him feeding flies to spiders, spiders to sparrows, then devouring the sparrows raw and barfing up feathers. And he wanted a kitten or a cat, and would presumably have fed the birds to the cat then ate it. And he continues in cycles, catching, feeding, then devouring flies and spiders. At one point, when he first meets Mina, asks for "a minute to tidy up" before she's shown into his cell, and does so by eating the flies and spiders he's collected.
One True Threesome: One True Foursome, actually. Many readers have interpreted Lucy's line about wishing she could have three husbands as her being polyamorous, and given how well her suitors get along with each other and how they all love Lucy dearly and want her to be happy, some have wondered if they couldn't have worked something out. As a result, all four are often shipped together in a happy poly foursome.
Paranoia Fuel: While Jonathan ignored the villagers' warnings and went to visit his client anyway, and Mina got targeted by Dracula for joining the group that wanted to hunt him down, most of the vampires' victims simply end up that way because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time:
Lucy had gotten into the habit of sleepwalking and unknowingly went outside, where Dracula came across her.
The unlucky children playing near the graveyard who then got lured away by the Bloofer Lady
Mina notices Dracula staring very hard at a woman who's simply out shopping in London, and how he gets into a cab to follow her, all without the woman ever realizing that she's being stalked.
Play-Along Meme: With the "Dracula Daily" newsletter exploding in popularity in 2022, the subscribers receive email updates with the sections of the book that correspond to that day's date (for example, the first chapter begins with Jonathan's journal entry on May 3, so subscribers got that entry emailed to them on May 3). This has resulted in many readers reacting to the story in "real time," especially on Tumblr, and many react as if they're all following the same blog or getting emails from the same friend about events that are currently happening to them. Cue countless posts about how glad everyone is to hear from their good friend Jonathan, and how they hope his work trip goes well for him and he can see his girlfriend Mina soon. And doesn't that Count Dracula fellow he's working with seem nice! Similarly, "dark days" (days when there are no updates) lead to posts of people fretting and hoping Jonathan is doing okay, while others say that they're sure Jon's just busy with his job, and everything's probably fine.
Praising Shows You Don't Watch: Some people call Sadly Mythtaken on many things saying that "Dracula never sparkled" or "Dracula never went out into the sunlight". The former is more or less common sense, but the latter pretty much shows how much they read Dracula. This is probably due to Lost in Imitation, a good number of adaptations are based on either Nosferatu (where sunlight killed him) or the play.
While the main threat of the novel is obviously the vampire, a supernatural being, many modern readers have found that the opening chapters become allegorical for an abusive relationship. Dracula acts kind and courteous towards Jonathan, but does everything to control him, ranging from limiting his movement, preventing him from leaving, and going through his belongings and throwing them away when they're not to his liking. While Jonathan initially makes excuses for him, once he actually realizes that something is wrong and starts fighting back, the Count becomes more directly hostile and even violent. Like many people in abusive relationships, Jonathan can't leave, as he's stuck in a situation where his abuser is his only source of safety, and once he finally gets to safety, he is clearly deeply traumatized and suffers symptoms of PTSD. While in London, a single glimpse of his abuser in a place where he thought he was safe and away from him spirals him into a panic attack.
Lucy's fate is likewise allegorical for being stalked, abused and murdered by a total stranger. Lucy is assaulted and injured while sleepwalking, very akin to being drugged and date raped and exactly the same as being attacked while simply walking home at night, and Dracula then proceeds to continually return and feed on her while she's unconscious, all while she and the people around her have no idea what's happening and grow more concerned and afraid. Finally, Dracula bursting into the Westenra house to make his final attack reads very like a home invasion.
Lucy's slow death from Dracula's predations looks much more like watching a loved one slowly slip away from a terminal illness. Especially after Dracula's final attack, where both Van Helsing and Seward agree, after Quincey donating blood to her fails, that there's nothing more they can do and Lucy is going to die, but hangs on for a full day. It's horrific and tragic watching the characters watch Lucy's last hours, everyone knowing they're completely helpless to do anything to save her. A feeling many who've lost loved ones can share.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: For years and years and years, Jonathan Harker was disliked as Vanilla Protagonist at best and an outright Designated Hero at worst, with many people preferring Dracula to him and even shipping Drac/Mina instead of Jon/Mina. This is largely due to the original book being overshadowed by adaptations that, while often good, kind of gave Jonathan the shaft, either by writing him poorly, giving him a dose of Adaptational Jerkass or even Adaptational Villainy, combining him with one or more of Lucy's suitors, or straight-up removing him. Him almost always having a less charismatic and memorable actor than Dracula didn't help, either. But with the explosion of popularity that Dracula Daily enjoyed in 2022, the actual book got a Colbert Bump, with many people reading it for the first time... and they found they were actually rather charmed by Jonathan, who they found to be engaging and sympathetic, and his sweet relationship with Mina. Now, "our good friend Jonathan" is beloved by the Dracula Daily circles, and Jonathan/Mina is likewise more popular than before.
Van Helsing tends to be portrayed as this in re-tellings from Dracula's point of view, where he's seen as radical and clueless. He particularly gets flak for the transfusions that, admittedly, could have killed Lucy in real life — leading to said re-tellings claiming that Dracula turned Lucy in order to save her life — but at the time the book was set/written, neither he, Stoker nor even the most educated of the book's readers would have known that (blood groups and the rhesus factor were only discovered in the following century, and blood transfusion was more or less luck of the draw for doctors at the time. It was cutting edge and exciting at the time of the book's publishing, which is why it appears). Also, while unlikely, it's not impossible that the suitors all had Lucy's blood type, or more likely, that Lucy was a universal receiver. At any rate, in the story the transfusions work, and Lucy only gets worse and dies because Dracula persists in feeding on her.
Van Helsing doesn't get it as bad as Jonathan Harker, who is often written off as boring and uninteresting when compared to characters like Dracula, Van Helsing and Mina. At least half of adaptations treat him as a disposable and unimportant character and tend to simply kill Jonathan off in Transylvania — he is either killed by Dracula or his brides (in such versions he either becomes a vampire himself only to be promptly mercy-killed later or he just dies). He also often loses his role of slaying Dracula — while in the novel he beheads Dracula, the majority of adaptations make Van Helsing kill Dracula. Modern adaptations also tend to interpret Harker as a stuffy Victorian male whose marriage to Mina will make a working schoolteacher into a home-maker, often giving adaptation!Mina a conflicting allegiance between Dracula and Jonathan and making this representative of a conflict between sexual liberation vs. conformity to society and a loveless marriage. The idea that Jonathan is weak can even cross over into some offensive implications considering that Jonathan's main moments of weakness in the novel are very much characterized like PTSD episodes originating from his months-long captivity in Dracula's murder castle, despite Stoker writing Dracula before PTSD was a diagnosable disorder. Jonathan is canonically characterized as kind, gentle, and incredibly brave though thoroughly traumatized by his captivity by Dracula; writing him off as weak or ineffectual or "a milk-sop" implies an equation between being traumatized and being cowardly, and reflects a sadly common attitude towards men who show any reaction to suffering beyond stoical endurance or anger.
Van Helsing, Seward, Holmwood and Morris are often vilified for their attitude towards, and dispatching of, the undead Lucy. Vampire Lucy is regularly interpreted as having broken free from the constraints of Victorian society to become a more liberated and sexual being; consequentially it's argued that she's being cruelly repressed by her three love interests and Van Helsing, who seek to forcibly restore her purity and innocence and viciously punish her for being 'wanton' and 'voluptuous'. However, people who make this argument seem to forget that when the heroes track her down she's already attacked and fed on several very young children (which would have led to their own infections, deaths and transformation into vampires if she'd been allowed to continue unchecked; and if you continue with the 'blood drinking is a metaphor for intercourse' argument, she's also been sexually abusing them), growls over her latest victim like a dog over a bone, throws the child hard to the ground when she spots a better meal, and would have fed on Arthur if Van Helsing hadn't warded her off. The disgust that the heroes feel for her is more than justified - because it isn't the real Lucy, it's a monster who looks like her. Moreover, her death isn't framed as a punishment, but as a Mercy Kill to set her spirit free from the vampire curse.
Dr. Seward gets a lot of flak for his treatment of Renfield, due to dissonance between Victorian and modern standards of mental health care. Seward is more interested in observing Renfield's madness than helping him recover, and encourages his behavior for better observation (for example, letting him escape from the asylum to see what he does). For this, some modern readers label him as a bad psychiatrist and a potential sadistic Mad Scientist. While Seward does commit malpractice by modern standards, he doesn't let curiosity compromise his morals. He regrets pushing Renfield too far and is disturbed to know that satisfying his curiosity would come at the cost of Renfield's insanity, and when Renfield requests a kitten to eat, he refuses. In comparison to a lot of real asylums in the 1890s, Seward's is also presented as well-equipped, clean, and pretty humane.
Rooting for the Empire: Some folks actually wouldn't have minded seeing Dracula beat the main characters. The book goes out of its way to make vampirism seem like the worst thing in the world. But outside from limited powers in sunlight and the inhuman hunger for blood, receiving the powers of the night and immortality doesn't seem like a bad trade-off as long as you discard morality from the equation. According to them, the heroic characters are too bland, forgettable, and one-note to become invested in, with the only interesting characters being Dracula for his evil and his powers, Mina for her smarts, Lucy for her fate, Renfield for his madness, and Van Helsing for his mad science. Seward and Quincy in this view have no character traits beyond being a psychiatrist and from Texas respectively, and Arthur's only defined by his Trauma Conga Line. The character that suffers most from people doing this is Jonathan, who has the most antagonistic interactions with "the empire" in this allegory; Jonathan was unsympathetic to earlier readers because he complained about being sexed up by the the vampire sisters, which paradoxically makes him more sympathetic to modern audiences on account of the criticism of the trope.
Spiritual Successor: Has been compared to Frankenstein from the time it was published, as both of them are Scrapbook Stories that took old-school horror tropes and placed them in modern (at the time) settings with modern (at the time) technologies, to great effect. This comparison, as well as Universal's and Hammer's movies, have ensured that the two works remain widely associated with each other to this day.
Lucy's gums turn pale from Dracula's blood-sucking.
Dracula cuts open his chest and forces Mina to drink from it, almost as if he is nursing her. There's a reason future stories to use this method of vampirization tend to have the victim drink from the wrist or neck.
Some readers often wondered why Dracula never brought the other vampires with him to London. Wouldn't that have given the heroes more of a challenge. They get their roles expanded in the film Van Helsing and are an Ensemble Dark Horse for many fans.
In a meta sense, most adaptations tend to underuse characters like Jonathan Harker, Quincy Morris, John Seward, and Arthur Holmwood. While it's true that characterization for some of them can be sparse on the ground, their situation is rife with potential for interesting conflicts and exploration in adaptation. Jonathan, for example, is a young, naive, later PTSD-ridden Action Survivor desperate to protect his wife and his friends from the supernatural serial killer-style predator that held him captive for two and a half months in his murder castle and has now followed him home (and Jonathan is partially responsible for helping the monster move from his remote, crumbling castle to the middle of London, having finalized the papers for Dracula to purchase and move into Carfax, as well as giving advice for shipping his boxes of earth and setting up his alternate resting places). Morris, Seward, and Holmwood are all longtime friends who evidently have quite the adventurous history together and are all in love with the same woman (Lucy), and each is doing their best to support the others so she can be happy regardless of what she chooses to do, but then she dies and becomes a vampire and they end up having to kill her. Any and all of this is potential for great plots in adaptations, but rarely if ever makes it into those adaptations.
Van Helsing, maybe the second most frequently adapted character besides Dracula, falls prey — his character as "badass monster hunter with a possibly-fanatical hatred for the undead" is hugely played up, while the fact of his wife being in an asylum (and therefore unable to raise a biological family) and his subsequent almost-adoption of a group of terrified young people into a family that he protects goes unexploited.
Threesome Subtext: Foursome subtext occurs between Lucy and her suitors. Despite ultimately choosing Arthur, she remains good friends and Lucy even tells Mina that she wishes she could marry all of them, just to make them happy.
Originally, the "hook" as a novel was that Stoker was taking the old, medieval, Eastern European legends of the vampire and setting them in the modern day and, eventually, in modern London — essentially, he was doing "Urban Fantasy" well before White Wolf. As what's "modern" inevitably changes, it has instead become an iconic bit of Victoriana, and a snapshot of the time period in which it was written.
Mina scoffs at the whole fad of the "new woman" culture which was arising in London at the time focusing on women becoming more independent. Of course, Bram Stoker is using it as an allegory to the subject, including being more sexually forward, which likewise ties to vampirism and its lack of morality as demonstrated by the vampire sisters earlier in the story. Although this is often pegged as Hypocritical Humor; Mina is by far the most proactive and competent of the hunters, and every time the party tries to restrict her to a traditionally feminine role, it backfires horribly.
Part of the "modern" feel is maintained by having the English and American characters use then-advanced new technologies: audio diaries recorded by phonograph, shorthand writing, repeater rifles, a mobile typewriter, Kodak cameras, and, infamously, blood transfusion. Of course, Technology Marches On, and what was then state-of-the-art is now quaint and antique.
The casual antisemitism displayed by Harker, the sexism, the xenophobia, and such would have been seen as perfectly normal and cultured for the well-to-do British reading this novel when it first was published.
In the novel, Dracula is Mina Harker's metaphorical rapist and is more or less presented as a foreigner from a backward part of Eastern Europe with gypsies as his Mooks and the novel claims that he wants to take over The British Empire, which is more or less not far from "foreigners want to take our women and government". Most adaptations modify this by making Mina and Lucy consensually respond to the Count, and make the story about women's sexuality, but this comes with the issues of Adaptational Consent.
Nearly every adaptation turns Lucy into a sexually promiscuous and flirty girl, with the exception of the 2013 television series (which turns her into a lesbian instead). In the novel she's a pure maiden who loves multiple men, but this gets turned into her lusting after all her potential suitors. Her sole ambition is to marry before she turns 20, though an upper class Victorian woman wouldn't be expected to have more ambition than that. The novel makes a point that Lucy cares for and possibly loves all her potential suitors, but that normally gets lost in adaptations that portray her as a shameless flirt. Kate Beaton, author of the webcomic Hark! A Vagrantcited this incident, noting:
Here we have Bram Stoker's Dracula, a book written to tell ladies that if you're not a submissive waif, society goes to hell and ungodly monsters are going to turn you into child killing horrors and someone is going to drive a bowie knife through your heart/cut off your head/etc. As you deserve!
The story is rife with the casual sexism of the time: for instance, when Mina has a bright idea, Van Helsing remarks that she has "the brain of a man". However, an open-minded reading will show a deconstruction with a strong feminist leaning, as the men are perpetually useless at anything except a straight fight, while Mina is the only character to be consistently intelligent and useful throughout.
Values Resonance: While dated, many points of the original novel are just as salient today as they were then, perhaps more so.
Increased understanding and acceptance of mental health issues makes Jonathan's "fragile" mental state after finally escaping the castle land better for readers. Jonathan isn't "weak" for suffering from his ordeal, he's incredibly strong to have survived it at all.
Similarly, advances in the understanding of consent, especially the deprecation of the Double Standard Rape: Female on Male trope, makes Jonathan being attacked by the "Weird Sisters" as horrific as Stoker likely originally intended.note Remember, this was aimed at the Victorian English audience, for whom even sex within the bounds of marriage would be questionable except for the purpose of reproduction. To be irresistibly seduced by women who aren't the woman a man plans to marry would have been horrifying to the moral sensibilities of the time.
Pushback against "toxic masculinity" makes the male characters more aspirational, especially the trio of Quincy, Seward, and Arthur, who repeatedly profess to love each other, comfort each other through Lucy's declining health, and openly mourn for her when she passes. Even as Van Helsing extols their virtues as "strong young men," they are unafraid to be emotional, to offer and receive comfort. After Lucy dies, Arthur immediately sits down to have a good, long cry, and Seward stays by his side, offering support, and no one thinks Arthur is less of a man for weeping at his fiancee's passing. After Lucy rejects Quincy and Seward's proposals but accepts Arthur's, Quincy sends Arthur a telegram asking him to meet Quincy and Seward and celebrate his engagement. Instead of wallowing in anger and angst, they celebrate their friend's happiness. Even their insistence on remaining friends with Lucy reads less like the Dogged Nice Guy and more genuinely appreciating her as a friend first. There is a bit later in the novel where Arthur pours his grief out to Mina, Quincy leaves the room, and Mina reflects that men do have to put up a brave front around other men to preserve their manliness, but can be free to let their emotions out around a woman. But when Mina checks in with Quincy immediately after, he recognizes that Arthur deserves to let his emotions out, that his friend has been through hell, and doesn't think less of him for it.
Mina and Lucy are never victim blamed/slut shamed for getting (metaphorically) sexually assaulted by Dracula. Arthur and Johnathan never once start treating their significant others as less than, or consider them to be "dirty/not pure". Jonathan's first response to seeing Mina victim blame herself is to continuously affirm his love for her. When modern victims of sexual assault are constantly attacked and degraded, it's nice to see a novel where that doesn't happen.
Relatedly, while we never see Mina's reaction specifically to Jonathan being attacked by the Weird Sisters, she's nothing but mournful that her husband had to go through his ordeal at Dracula's Castle and supportive of his attempts to recover from it. She never blames him for cheating on her, seeming to recognize that he had no control over the matter, and this is well before her own encounters with Dracula. Say what you will about the gender politics of the novel, but men and women are treated equally in the lack of victim-blaming.
When the guys realize that their sexism led to Mina getting attacked, they actually own up to their mistake and work to improve their behavior.
Sir Arthur Holmwood, despite being the one Lucy ultimately chooses to marry, is generally seen as the least interesting of her three love interests. He doesn't have Quincy Morris's rough American charms or Dr. Seward's dark, moody intellectual expertise. He's just a wealthy British nobleman and Nice Guy. While this makes him slightly more of an everyman (wealth and status aside) so the audience can relate better when his beloved perishes, turns into a vampire child-predator, and needs be impaled to prevent her harming more people and children (a duty that's given to him), poor Arthur is still given the least to distinguish him from the rest of the main cast. Not helping is that Arthur provides very little in the way of documents that make up the novel (only a few letters and telegraphs), about as much as Morris, but as mentioned, Morris has "American cowboy in a Gothic Horror story" going for him. Even during the final expedition to kill Dracula, he doesn't get to avenge his fiancee himself and his primary means of supporting it is through his money and connections.
It's a bit of a Discredited Meme in the years since, but Jonathan Harker tends to get a fair bit of flak from this direction, partly because of the strong impression his naive early adventure leaves and partly because decades of Audience Coloring Adaptations tend to leave out the more interesting parts of his story, make him more boring so the Count can stand out more, and/or make him a lot less likable so that Mina/Dracula makes more sense.
Viewer Name Confusion: Van Helsing's actual first name (Abraham) does not come up often when he gets referenced outside the original story, so a lot of people who haven't read the book think Van is his first name rather than part of his surname.
Vindicated by History: Due to his behavior in many adaptations Jonathan Harker was generally unknown among the cast of the book compared to characters like The Count, Dr. Van Helsing, and even Renfield. As of the resurgence of the original story thanks to Dracula Daily, however, he has come to be one of the most beloved characters in the book for his idealistic Everyman charm at the beginning and absolute, steadfast love for Mina throughout the story.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: This book's probably been analysed more than there are vampires. Fear of the foreign and foreigners, capitalism and Jewish stereotypes, maternity and acceptance of motherhood (is Mina a strong or weak character?), Christianity and Holy Communion, political repression, homosexuality, you name it; it's been analysed. And of course, blood-drinking equals symbolic sex and/or rape. That's a staple of every vampire book now.
Arthur. He loses his dad, his fiancee, and his soon-to-be mother in law in less than a week of each other. And then he has to kill his undead fiancee, who's turned into an unholy abomination against nature. And then his best friend dies.
Jonathan as well. His very first client is a supernatural serial killer that imprisons him in his murder castle for two and a half months, he's manipulated and assaulted physically, psychologically, and emotionally, forced to witness copious atrocities while helpless to stop them, suffers from what seems to be PTSD (before PTSD was a diagnosable disorder) as a result, his Parental Substitute dies as soon as he returns home, and then the supernatural serial killer comes back and targets his wife.
Mina, to the fullest extent. She is assaulted by Dracula, who forces her to drink his blood. Taking into the account the interpretation of blood-drinking as a metaphor for sex, one could interpret this scene as a metaphor for rape. If that's not bad enough, Mina begins to exhibit traits of vampirism which is very upsetting for her. Taken up to eleven in Count Dracula (1977), where she's Lucy's sister, meaning she loses her mother and sister — the only family she had.
In the grand scheme of things, Lucy is a tragic character. She was once an innocent young woman, but has now been changed against her will into something else entirely, something that stalks the night and eats children. And until she's laid to rest by Van Helsing and the group, her soul couldn't find rest.
The Frank Wildhorn musical:
Ho Yay: Strangely enough for a production that mainly ships Dracula/Mina, the music video for Fresh Blood with the cast of the 2016 production provides a ton of fuel for Dracula/Jonathan shippers. note And there's plenty of Brides/Jonathan action for those so inclined, too...
Tumblr post points out, there is some unintentional hilarity in how Genre Blind the characters are, mostly because the genre wasn't invented yet.