In Dracula, Bram Stoker Lays the Conventional Heroes to Rest

Spoilers within.

I would hate to spoil someone’s first-time experience reading Dracula. Please, if you haven’t caught up on Dracula Daily, or if you’re currently reading Bram Stoker’s book for the first time, save this one for later.

Unconventional Novel

Whether it’s the romance structure, choice of hero, or way that science and myth blend, Dracula is filled with unconventional aspects. I want to break down some of them.

Unconventional Romance Structure

First, I want you to try and think of any famous literary romantic couple from the 1800s where the book doesn’t end with the couple getting married. It’s difficult. Classic romantic novels have used this ending so often that the trope was given the name “the marriage plot.” The structure of the marriage plot, more or less:

• Man and woman meet each other

• Obstacles and hijinks that leads man and woman to test, prove, or realize their undying love for one another

• Man and woman marry

• Book ends

The romance ends in a marriage, and the book is done, letting the reader assume (perhaps with relief) that their relationship remains happy forever after. Life ends with marriage in the 1800s book world.¹

The marriage trope also unfortunately brings in the idea that once marriage hits, a relationship carries nothing too interesting to speak of. Marriage here represents the resolution of conflict, so there’s nothing else to mention once the couple resolves. There are no remaining stakes; no adventure remains.

Dracula flies in the face of this idea.²

Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray have extreme, terrible, famous conflicts in the beginning of Dracula, but these conflicts have little to do with each other. They begin as fiancés, marry at what feels like the exact midpoint of the book, and then defeat Dracula as a couple. In fact, it could be argued that their marriage is what allowed them to defeat Dracula—Mina, concerned about Jonathan, reads his journal, which he gifted her at their wedding. Based on this private account, she sends for Van Helsing, whose arrival sets the whole project in motion.

Throughout all of their ordeals after marriage, Jonathan and Mina act as a unit and continue to support each other through individual and joint trials. By focusing trials on external factors rather than the relationship in question, Stoker sidesteps the conundrum of making up conflict without ruining the established couple. Dracula asserts that there is life after marriage, and it is not stagnant.

Some marriage plot stories that vie for sequels sidestep the relationship by beginning the following book with a child, since this brings new, different issues for the couple to resolve. Dracula also ends with a child (and multiple other marriages), but it is a triumph and a fitting end for characters on whom you wish peace and laughter and someone to tell their story to when they grow older. Life does not end at the child and marriage; it simply goes on.

Unconventional Heroes

The heroes in this story are less classic hero types and more the kind you’d expect to die first in a horror film. You’ve got the real estate clerk, the schoolmistress, the foreign academic, the awkward doctor prodigy, the friendly aristocrat, and the traveling Texan.³ The heroes are different classes, different nationalities, different sexes, and generally not fitting the physical look of a hero. Members of the group lack confidence, refuse to believe in the existence of vampires, or generally strike roadblocks when mapping out a plan. Still, they form a tight-knit bond. When Jonathan transforms into a swashbuckling man of action, the others do not admire him for a heroic, positive turn; they are concerned because his change is fueled by hate and vengeance, and they fear it is beginning to consume him. The heroes are primarily men of thought, not action, but when they do act, they are determined to see it through to the end. The group’s unusual qualities give them an advantage against the vampire.

Unconventional Heroines

I would be remiss to not specially highlight Mina. Van Helsing initially treats Mina like someone from the era would be expected to—by shutting her out of the planning. The fault is wholly given to the men when Mina suffers for it. Before and afterwards, Mina applies her unique talents and abilities alongside the others to help save the day.

Her mix of traditional and capable reminds me of Evie Carnahan from The Mummy (1999), which may be the closest in feeling to an accurate Dracula adaptation that we will ever get. Unlike Evie, though, Mina does eventually get a gun, which, well, good for her. Evie doesn’t need one, but Mina shouldn’t be left out during the gun-giving exchange.

Unconventional Planning

Despite being published in 1897, Dracula includes what would then have been surprisingly modern references, especially in light of the monster’s nature. Scientific reasoning is emphasized to help defeat a creature whose existence flies against reasonable belief. New inventions are incorporated alongside hypnosis. Portable typewriters and cutting-edge phonographs are used alongside shorthand journals and newspaper clippings. Blood transfusions are mixed with old folk remedies. The new and old combine, and science does not work against the folk stories—modernity is simply viewed as a new toolbox with which to defeat the ancient.

In Dracula, invention is as lauded as innovation. The characters use any resources they have been given, new or old. It is unclear when the book is set (at least 1893, though any specific year is somewhat contended), but the book easily ends in 1900 or beyond, bringing with it a rapidly changing culture. The epilogue is set seven years after Dracula’s defeat, and in a letter, Jonathan makes peace with the past and looks forward with optimism. Jonathan’s view complements the excitement for newness that has permeated the entire account.

Unconventional Survivors

Of the large group of narrators in this epistolary novel, almost all of them survive. I would like to focus on two who don’t.

Lucy Westrena dies after several nights of Dracula draining her. Lucy is a cheerful and wealthy but very sheltered young lady—compared to Mina, a much more conventional version of a young British woman. She eventually transforms into a vampire that her fiancé must destroy. In an early part of Lucy’s sickness, Van Helsing arrives and places garlic all around Lucy’s room to keep Dracula away. Overnight, Lucy’s mother removes the garlic, believing it strange and unnecessary. Lucy gets killed by Dracula, but oversight due to conventional thinking definitely doesn’t help. Other characters respond to Lucy’s death with frustration, regret, and disappointment—it is viewed as something that might have been avoided.

Unlike Lucy, who died before concrete plans against Dracula were formed, Quincey P. Morris is an active member of the heroic group. Compared to the other unlikely heroes, Quincey probably has the best chance in a fight. He is an excellent gunslinger and a man of few words, young, handsome, rich, well-traveled, gentlemanly. Jack Seward praises Quincey frequently, and Quincey is the first of the suitors to connect Dracula to vampire bats. He’s a shoot first, explain later kind of gent.

Quincey doesn’t quite fit into the world of Dracula. He’s not from Europe, he’s the one “strong” guy in a room full of nerds (though he also offers good insights), and he’s occasionally so quiet that, if you aren’t paying attention when you read, you might forget whether he’s in a scene. He’s often left out of film adaptations.

Quincey alone holds the honor of defeating Dracula with Jonathan. Jonathan severs Dracula’s head, and Quincey stabs Dracula’s heart. Quincey is the only one of the group to die.

Although Lucy’s death is viewed with regret, Quincey’s death is as stoic and noble as he was in life. He is surrounded by friends, and he is given a legacy in Jonathan and Mina’s son’s name. Still, he leaves the story. Though unfortunate, it seems fitting that the most conventional female and most conventional male hero are the two who cannot make it to the end.

Unconventional Faith

Dracula is about allowing oneself to believe in a monster that reason and conventionality claws against, and using nontraditional, innovative, modern methods to block it, even while this method is useless without the underlying necessity of faith. All the movies had focused on lust and forbidden romance, on calling for Van Helsing the vampire slayer, and on defeating the creature. The book instead invokes the most unappealing aspects of lust, and Stoker counters it by emphasizing the group’s friendship, loyalty, and the understanding that some things are out of one’s control and, consequently, one must submit to God’s will. The novel’s emphasis on powerlessness and trusting fate to God repeats throughout the second half of the novel to a degree that surprised me greatly the first time I read it.

On a similar note, although many movies play with the idea of forbidden romance between Mina and Dracula in a Phantom of the Opera-esque way, presenting it as an appealing counter to the stuffy conventional relationship of Mina and Jonathan, the book never dabbles with anything so twisted. Mina finds Dracula repugnant upon first sight, and Dracula never loves; he possesses. The ugliness is made bare.

Dracula is a full story, and its blatant oddities are perhaps why every adaptation and derivation has never quite been able to truly portray it. Still. Maybe someday, someone will make an accurate translation of Dracula for the screen. Until then, the book has lasted 127 years, and it still holds up.

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1. A surprising number of rom-com films also follow this plot, or in the case of screwball comedies from the 1930s, there is a phenomenon that some have classified as the “remarriage plot” - where one couple breaks up and then falls back in love right before their divorce finalizes.

2. Pun intended.

3. In order: Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray, Van Helsing, Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming), Quincey Morris