Abraham Van Helsing

Sigmund Freud was a great mind at its best. A medical genius who is father to one of the most important findings in history: psychoanalysis, and someone whose studies are immensely portrayed in the novel of Bram Stoker’s: Dracula. The novel is about a man named Jonathan Harker, a lawyer, who unknowingly takes a business trip to the devils house in Transylvania where he is held prisoner by his host: Count Dracula. Harker finally escapes his captor but is very ill and ends up resting in the…

Romanticism is something of a constant play, the pieces to me always seem so foreign given the leagues differences in what I am used to. Romanticism also seemed to me like it should be foreign to the vampire. Being a twenty-year old kid from America, I already had a preconceived idea on what a vampire should be, how it should act and look like etc, so seeing and reading these things act like a bunch of overdramatized bunch of actors I honestly couldn’t take many of the stories seriously. Nothing…

There nearly countless incarnations of the famous Count Dracula. Even today, just saying his name is more than enough to get people talking. Such is the staying power of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Originally published in 1897, Dracula has become an incredibly well known and beloved classic. Throughout the novel, the title character represents an inversion of typical Christian values, particularly the act of Holy Communion. This repeated inversion of common Christian beliefs and values are used to…

“A brave man’s blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble” (page 138). This quote, coming from the famous novel Dracula, captures the message Bram Stoker creates in the novel about the roles of men and women. In the story, solicitor and nobleman Jonathan Harker is invited to Castle Dracula to finish a real estate transaction. He quickly becomes unsettled during his travels due to warnings, crucifixes, and charms given to him by local peasants. Yet, the mission continues,…

The Victorian Era was a period during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), where England had an outreach across the world through the use of colonialization and their development of science and technology. Darwin’s evolutionary theory of humans coming from ancestors of apes caused huge uproar, which got people thinking about god and religion. Also, due to the new found industrial revolution causing a rapid growth of factories, mills, industries and the ever growing middle class caused people…

leads her to fall under Dracula’s spell. Bram Stoker makes it very clear that the two represent Victorian women, though what makes Mina the ideal one? Firstly, Stroker uses Mina to exemplify his idea of the perfect Victorian woman. In the novel, Van Helsing describes Mina, “She is one of God's women,…

is trying to locate Dracula they debate on whether or not they should allow Mina to come as well. However Mina is responsible for using her knowledge to determine where Dracula will be. On october 30th she writes in her diary: “ I have asked Dr. Van Helsing and he has got me all the papers I have not yet seen… whilst they are resting, I shall go over all carefully, and perhaps I may arrive at some conclusion” (Stoker 381). Mina goes over all of the maps and documents and eventually figures out…

The Depiction of Sinister Mankind Religion has always brought man great prosperity, or great agony. An example to support such a statement are vampires; vampires balance out the metaphorical scale as they eliminate those who are unfaithful or fall into the temptation of sin but are weak to religious objects. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, mankind’s sin is symbolized by one entity, the vampire.…

In Chapter Three of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster uses examples of novels in order to explain the difference between literal vampirism, such as Dracula, and symbolic vampirism, such as Daisy Miller. Throughout the initial pages of the chapter, Foster keeps a focus on literal vampirism, an extremely cliché concept. An attractive man laced with evil, bites and leaves a mark on a pure woman, taking away her innocence. Literal vampirism is a non-stop cycle of life. One…

In Chapter 21, Dracula is bolder than ever. I can now see why he is looked at as the enemy of the Christian church. He neglects traditional norms, in this case marriage, when it comes to preying upon women. As written in Dr. Seward’s diary, Dracula said to Mina “[a]nd you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and my helper…[n]ow you shall come to my call,” (Stoker p.…