Stoker’s Dracula is divided into clear villains and heroes. Characters such as Harker, Van Helsing, Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood, and Mina are the civilized English citizens and Dracula’s is the violent, animalistic, outlandish villain.
However, in her article Dracula: the Unseen Face in the Mirror, Carol Senf argues that the body of “good” characters and the character of Dracula are more similar than they appear at first read, the difference in perspective being that “Stocker’s narrative technique does not permit the reader to Enter Dracula’s thoughts…”(Senf 427). Dracula’s behavior seems evil, but in reality, the Protagonists echo the exact same behavior. Their saving grace in the eyes of the reader is that the readers get an inside look at the logic behind their actions, while readers are left to assume the worst of Dracula’s.
Senf notes that “behavior generally attributed to the vampire—the habit of attacking a sleeping victim, violence, and irrational behavior—is revealed to be the behavior of the civilized Englishman also” (Senf 427). In fact, the protagonists might even commit more of these behaviors than Dracula himself, yet they are justified because the believe that they are doing it for the sake of ridding the world of evil. Among the first shows of rationalized violence comes when Harker is staying at Dracula’s castle and comes across Dracula lying in his coffin. Harker says, “A terrible desire came upon me to rid the world of such a monster. There was no lethal weapon at hand, but I seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases, and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face” (60). It is difficult to distinguish the sudden urge to hack at a body with a shovel as anything but grossly violent and wild, yet it is forgiven because the reader can see that Harker’s purpose in doing it is in the interests of saving the world. The most violent and graphic scenes in Dracula are carried out by the protagonists; Arthur Holmwood kills the now evil undead version of Lucy while she lies in her tomb, ambushing her in the same way the Dracula does to his own victims. “[Arthur’s] untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it” (230). The graphic imagery of Lucy’s violent death is more disturbing than any scene in which Dracula They later kill Dracula in the same way, stabbing him while he lies in his box at sunset.
Although one party commits the same acts of violence as the other, the narration of the protagonists’ thoughts and logic behind these acts allows them to be excused from the consequences that Dracula faces for doing the same things. Dracula is given characteristics that highlight his “otherness”—his foreignness, his animalistic physical features, the quaint beliefs of his home country—in order to disguise the fact that he is no worse than the narrators themselves. It is simply a matter of perspective.