Upon reading the beginnings of Stoker’s Dracula I was immediately surprised at the religious aspects discovered early within the book. Once Harker tells his landlord that he is headed to Count Dracula’s castle the couple both begin to act anxious and seem to lean on God as a way to avoid any further conversation with Harker regarding the count.
The first moment the reader sees this is when Stoker asks if they’ve been to his castle, “When I asked him if he knew Count Dracula, and could tell me anything of his castle, both he and his wife crossed themselves….simply refused to speak further” (10). Rather than discuss the count it seems that the couple know something that Harker doesn’t, to the point in which they feel inclined to make the sign of the cross it order to connect to God. In doing the sign of the cross the couple ask for protection of God which means that there is something unsafe regarding the count. Furthermore the fear surrounding the count’s castle culminates when the Landlord’s wife begs Stoker to not leave by stating, “It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?” (pg 11) To this Stoker admits that he is now feeling rather anxious, ‘It was all very ridiculous, but I did not feel comfortable however’ (11) but he must go to the count on business to attend too. Ultimately the woman then pulls out a crucifix to which Stoker thinks, “As an English churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure of idolatrous…She saw, for I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put it round my neck, and said, ‘For your mother’s sake’ (11). Unbeknownst to Stoker, there seems to be something to fear surrounding the count to the point in which the woman finds it necessary to put the crucifix around his neck in order to keep him safe through the power of Christ.
The doubt in which Stoker portrays can align with the Victorian ideas surrounding the “crisis of religious doubt” upon the arrival of scientific studies such as Darwin, which denounced aspects of the bible. However, Stoker’s doubt, is contrasted with the fervor in which the woman portrays over religion. Upon reading the chapter, “Crisis of Faith” within The Victorian Age, there seemed to be a mix of emotions regarding religion especially within the coming of the Modern. The woman portrays the influential Evangelical religion of Britain during the time whom George Eliot “maintained that an Evangelical sense of duty and ethics was essential as a social “glue” to prevent the disintegration of society in the absence of religious authority” (1056). Thus upon the woman noticing the “doubt” on Stroker’s face she places the crucifix around his neck portraying the “sense of duty” to which she felt necessary in order to save him from “disintegration”.
Yet Stoker’s uncertainty surrounding the couple’s fear and viewing the crucifix as “idolatrous” conflicts with his previous statement saying that he is a “churchman”. Why then, if Stoker is a churchman, does he refuse to listen to the woman’s warnings as well as his own uncertainties surrounding his journey to Count Dracula?
While Harker is a churchman, one must also keep in mind the fact that he is in a country “that gather[s] every superstition in the world…as if it were the center of some sort of imaginative whirlpool” (8), while he comes from a more educated (that is, not superstitious) country. He seems to dismiss the woman’s fears as just that, mere superstition. He even describes himself as “having then reached my normal state” when he manages to ignore his own doubts and fears upon entering Dracula’s castle (23).
The intense religious fervor of the Transylvanians was something I noticed too, especially as the setting got closer and closer to the Count’s castle. First I thought this might just be a trademark of this Gothic-style novel, or of Stoker’s writing, but as I read more I formed a new idea. As the setting of the book switched from Transylvania to England, the tone went from religious and spooky to more medical and scientific. For example, in regards to talismans to ward off evil (vampires), we can compare the way the landlord’s wife in Transylvania insists Harker take her crucifix, blessing him and crossing herself, to the way Van Helsing uses garlic around Lucy’s room and on her person, as medicines. I wonder how these two different procedures will interact when they meet, how it will unfold with the Count in England.
While I agree that there is a sort of anxiety present in the novel regarding the old Castle Dracula which is influenced by the advent of more Modern innovations, it doesn’t strike me as religious quite so much. It seems more like a form of anxiety driven by the combination of scientific and technological change contrasting with the respect for old traditions such as the nobility- a contrast Dracula very well encapsulates.
Where do we draw the line between religion and superstition? The religious characters within Dracula seem melodramatic and their beliefs in blue flames that indicate the presence of treasures and the offence of rosary beads are a bit much, no? However, I do not perceive Jonathan Harker as an English churchman who fails to heed all of the signs (of the cross) (Stoker, 15), but I view him as someone who assumes the best in his current situation. If Harker had been skeptical of the Count from the get-go, Dracula’s descent from his window in a “lizard fashion” would not be as shocking as it appears to the reader in the instant of its occurrence. (Stoker, 42) Since our information is presented to us through Harker, it is imperative that he observes the townspeople’s’ warnings without resolving them fully before we are introduced to the Count. Similarly, isn’t it great when Harker asks “each passenger” what the heck is going on and no one answers him? (Stoker,15) It’s pure blue-flame-concealed-treasure!