The Gothic novel Dracula is often praised for its fearsome nature, for its terrible monsters aimed to both horrify and terrify the audience. Bram Stoker translates this horror through the collection of documents and diaries that the main characters narrate together. As Senf points out, all of the narrators are human and they band together against the evil Count Dracula, but the vampire himself doesn’t narrate a single line in the story (424). Along with this narrative bias, Senf shows that Stoker’s young and inexperienced character with limited expertise are “ill-equipped to judge the extraordinary events with which they are faced” (423). Taking on Senf’s view that the narrators are unreliable, Dracula’s motives throughout the book, while still a mystery, shouldn’t immediately be assumed as evil.
During his stay at Dracula’s castle, Harker claims that he is a prisoner (33). The Count, however, tells Harker that “Not an hour shall you wait in my house against your will” (57). Dracula reassures Harker that he doesn’t intend to keep him against his will, like a prison, but Harker doubts Dracula’s good intentions every step of the way. Even at the door about to depart, Harker finds wolves with “champing teeth” blocking the door. Since the Dracula commands the wolves, Harker assumes “I was to be given to the wolves…There was a diabolical wickedness in the idea great enough for the Count” and Harker decides not to leave until morning. (58). Despite Dracula promising to let Harker leave whenever he wanted and constantly calling him a friend, Harker believes the Count would be “wicked” enough to feed him to wolves. But what if Harker gave up too early, right before Dracula had the chance to call off the wolves? The wolves may be bloodthirsty by nature, but Dracula never let any harm come to Harker while he stayed in the castle.
Throughout Harker’s stay in the Transylvanian Castle, Dracula both warns and protects Harker from supernatural harm. Earlier, Dracula warned “let me warn you with all seriousness, that should you leave these rooms you will not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle…there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely” (40). When Harker disregards this warning and sleeps in a different room, three bloodthirsty vampires appear and Harker remarks “I thought at the time I must be dreaming” (44). Before they can suck Harker’s blood, Dracula stops them and reminds them he had “forbidden” anyone to touch Harker (46). Here Dracula has saved Harker from supernatural harm he didn’t know existed. Dracula’s warning, as well, guides Harker to the safest parts of the castle without explicitly stating the terrifying truth of the existence of vampires. Dracula claims “bad dreams” come to those who sleep outside their room, and the three vampires are dream-like in their vampiric beauty and how their trance connected to some “dreamy fear” (45). Even though Harker often finds his bedroom door “had been locked after I left the Count” (59), trapping him as if it were a prison, Dracula more likely locked the vampires out of Harker’s room rather than lock him in. Similar to how Dracula commands the wolves, he commands the other vampires, and he let neither harm Harker at any time.
Yet Harker is convinced Dracula is planning to kill him purely on the basis that “He knows that I know too much, and that I must not live, lest I be dangerous to him” (49). This basis is more of an assumption, since Dracula has constantly protected Harker from harm. Despite Harker’s fears of murder, he returns home physically unharmed, but with mental shock. Shock is natural—supernatural creatures don’t exist in the everyday world, and Harker just met multiple vampires. Still Harker survived his visit to the castle, mostly thanks to the Count. Dracula never let the wolves or other vampires touch Harker at any point in the visit, nor did he suck Harker’s blood himself, nor did he kill Harker instead of releasing him. Harker’s resulting mental shock relates to “the question of sanity,” which Senf psychoanalyzes the many times the character question their own sanity, including that Harker suffered “a nervous breakdown” after leaving the castle (424). Perhaps Dracula was self-aware to know that humans would go mad if they knew of blood-sucking vampires, and so he hid the truth from Harker. But the human narrators, too mentally unstable to face supernatural terrors, couldn’t conceive the possibility of a supernatural vampire simply acting friendly.