{"id":1034,"date":"2023-09-27T16:26:35","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T20:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2023-09-27T16:26:35","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T20:26:35","slug":"draculas-not-so-sinister-motives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2023\/09\/27\/draculas-not-so-sinister-motives\/","title":{"rendered":"Dracula’s Not So Sinister Motives"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Gothic novel Dracula<\/em> 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\u2019t narrate a single line in the story (424). Along with this narrative bias, Senf shows that Stoker\u2019s young and inexperienced character with limited expertise are \u201cill-equipped to judge the extraordinary events with which they are faced\u201d (423). Taking on Senf\u2019s view that the narrators are unreliable, Dracula\u2019s motives throughout the book, while still a mystery, shouldn\u2019t immediately be assumed as evil.<\/p>\n

During his stay at Dracula\u2019s castle, Harker claims that he is a prisoner (33). The Count, however, tells Harker that \u201cNot an hour shall you wait in my house against your will\u201d (57). Dracula reassures Harker that he doesn\u2019t intend to keep him against his will, like a prison, but Harker doubts Dracula\u2019s good intentions every step of the way. Even at the door about to depart, Harker finds wolves with \u201cchamping teeth\u201d blocking the door. Since the Dracula commands the wolves, Harker assumes \u201cI was to be given to the wolves\u2026There was a diabolical wickedness in the idea great enough for the Count\u201d 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 \u201cwicked\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Throughout Harker\u2019s stay in the Transylvanian Castle, Dracula both warns and protects Harker from supernatural harm. Earlier, Dracula warned \u201clet 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\u2026there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely\u201d (40). When Harker disregards this warning and sleeps in a different room, three bloodthirsty vampires appear and Harker remarks \u201cI thought at the time I must be dreaming\u201d (44). Before they can suck Harker\u2019s blood, Dracula stops them and reminds them he had \u201cforbidden\u201d anyone to touch Harker (46). Here Dracula has saved Harker from supernatural harm he didn\u2019t know existed. Dracula\u2019s 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 \u201cbad dreams\u201d 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 \u201cdreamy fear\u201d (45). Even though Harker often finds his bedroom door \u201chad been locked after I left the Count\u201d (59), trapping him as if it were a prison, Dracula more likely locked the vampires out of Harker\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Yet Harker is convinced Dracula is planning to kill him purely on the basis that \u201cHe knows that I know too much, and that I must not live, lest I be dangerous to him\u201d (49). This basis is more of an assumption, since Dracula has constantly protected Harker from harm. Despite Harker\u2019s fears of murder, he returns home physically unharmed, but with mental shock. Shock is natural\u2014supernatural creatures don\u2019t 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\u2019s blood himself, nor did he kill Harker instead of releasing him. Harker\u2019s resulting mental shock relates to \u201cthe question of sanity,\u201d which Senf psychoanalyzes the many times the character question their own sanity, including that Harker suffered \u201ca nervous breakdown\u201d 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\u2019t conceive the possibility of a supernatural vampire simply acting friendly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Dracula’s Not So Sinister Motives<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}