When we think of science in the 21st century, we normally think of technological advancement and our civilization’s progress. However, in the 19th century, was it possible that the fast pace in which science and “modern” society was progressing may have shaken some people? Is it possible that science and technology’s progress to this day is scaring some people now?
Lo and behold, mankind’s monsters! What does it mean to be a monster? Within our own fiction, the monsters we create appear to behave and do the things that we ourselves are struggling with fear to consolidate and make peace with and for. During the 19th century this may have well been science; at least, science and its contradiction of traditional mysticism and religious practices held on to for ages before.
This is where we find Dracula, a figure shrouded in sheer scientific impossibility, and yet daunting to the very society considered so much modern and superior toward. Is this what we fear, a sensational vampire/illogical monster? Or is there something else…something that makes us make him our paradoxical figure of hope?
The following is an article I wrote assessing the book by Bram Stoker, Dracula, in a way that really looks at it in all its lore. I hope you enjoy it, let me know what you think!
~Dracula~
Eastern European mysticism and Christian religion’s stand against Western scientific indoctrination
The 19th century was a time known not only for the industrial revolution but also as a literary era when many science-fiction horror novels were written that are considered classics by the postmodern day. Among these, articles on mystical matters were also written including Unconscious Cerebration: A Psychological Study by Frances Power Cobbe and Mesmerism in India by James Esdaile that pried into matters of scientifically unexplained phenomena. The situations in these stories provided scenarios for the people of Western Europe and the United States to explore cultural topics that concerned them. It provided them an opportunity to approach their fears in a manner that allowed discussion to proceed more impersonally and freely and provided an arena where ideals in the guise of monsters challenged the accepted limitations of natural science as it was understood during that time. All of these involved controversial issues that stemmed in large part from new discoveries, many of which were based on information gathered from an increased technological ability to probe and from observations that did not always acquiesce to the standards of modern science, purported to be the main characteristic of a civilized world. During this age, there was one debate that predated the rest and stood dominant due to its pertinence not only as a questioning of man’s newfound confidence in Western science, but also in its stance in opposition to its efficacy. Through the turmoil of accepting its supernatural powers, witnessing inhuman behavior of mesmerism and effects on the unconscious soul, and finally having to resort to unscientific ways of destroying a creature that lived an unnatural existence, one industrial age author brought forward a monster that would test his generation’s belief in scientific methods on a cultural stage by presenting it in the literary. Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is a novel that exhibits the cultural questioning of the abilities of Western modern science by suggesting the usage and efficacy of religious Christianity and Eastern European mysticism during the 19th century, and by doing so, challenges our own viewpoints concerning science’s boundaries in the postmodern day.
The protagonists in Bram Stoker’s Dracula exhibit the cultural unwillingness of the West to believe in Eastern European superstition until they are unable to comprehend or defend against the supernatural actions of vampires through their standard scientific means. Before the Enlightenment, mysticism in medieval Europe and the Christian religion’s ideology were the primary influences over the populace of Western Europe and held much sway over society’s culture. However, with the advent of formal modern science, superstition and religion became replaced with a world view that discredited the supernatural from existing in the civilized culture of the West but not entirely in the East. This transition from different cultural concepts is portrayed in the novel by observations written in shorthand by the English businessman Jonathan Harker, the main protagonist in the beginning, who travels east through the European countryside to meet with the Transylvanian noble, Count Dracula. The Englishman mentions several accounts of superstitious behavior among the Eastern European peasants, inn keepers, and coach travelers and makes the observation that they seem to know something collectively that he does not (Stoker 11). Their actions are all focused against his insistence on meeting the Transylvanian Count for a business transaction toward which Mr. Harker dismisses as unfounded superstition. However, once living at Castle Dracula with the Count and three transformative women and gradually discovering more of Dracula’s and the ladies’ unnatural behavior and supernatural abilities, he finds himself at a loss as to how to take control of the situation and prevent himself from being “given to the wolves”(Stoker 58). After much duress, Harker gains some hope after seeing the Count’s repulsed reaction to the crucifix hung around his neck by an elderly lady at the Golden Krone Hotel before arrival at the castle and reminisces, “What meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash? Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! for it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it. It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavor and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help” (Stoker 35). Although originally disbelieving, the traveling businessman from England shows a change of heart toward Eastern European superstition upon witnessing its efficacy at repelling vampires. In a situation in which he is placed at the mercy of the supernaturally powerful Count Dracula, turning toward mystical methods appears more effective than the lacking explanations of Western science. This hesitation in believing in mysticism is found in Stoker’s characters hailing from continental Europe and the United States as well.
The characters of the protagonist’s group, Quincey Morris and Professor Abraham Van Helsing, express the West’s collective disbelief in mysticism and religious ideology’s efficacy until no other means are available to explain and use against a vampire’s unnatural actions and abilities. Hailed from Amsterdam for his extensive amounts of esoteric knowledge by his friend, Dr. John Seward, to attend to the case of Lucy Westenra’s inexplicable ailment, Prof. Abraham Van Helsing unexpectedly meets up with American Quincey Morris at the Westenra’s house to see what can be done to help the sick lady. After providing another transfusion of blood to the deathly ill Lucy, Quincey asks about the events taking place with her and after being briefed expresses, “Then I guess, Jack Seward, that that poor pretty creature that we all love has had put into her veins within that time the blood of four strong men. Man alive, her whole body wouldn’t hold it” (Stoker 163). The two then discuss how no one has been able to provide a scientific explanation as to what could be taking it out of her. Despite all their reasoning and Dr. Seward and Prof. Van Helsing’s collective knowledge of medicine, no effective cure or method of recuperation could be given to this nor explanation of the observed subtle changes in her physical appearance and behavior between the normal “innocent” human self she appeared to be while weakly waking in contrast to the more predatory malicious one she exhibits while unconscious. In these final throes, Van Helsing makes a grim but laden comment to Seward pertaining to the immortal human spirit and the unconscious mind, and Lucy’s condition affecting her even into the afterlife. Observing that the disappearance of the bite wounds on her neck meant the inevitability of death, Van Helsing comments “She is dying. It will not be long now. It will be much difference, mark me, whether she dies conscious or in her sleep” (Stoker 171). This belief in the unconscious mind being representative of the immortal human spirit is similar to that expressed by Frances Power Cobbe in his discussions of the subject in Unconscious Cerebration: A Psychological Study. Cobbe describes the observation of the existence of a difference between the behaviors of a person when conscious in contrast to them when unconscious as proof of an intangible immortal human spirit represented as the unconscious side that will return to God upon an individual’s physical death (Cobbe 424-427). In the case of Miss Lucy, it would appear that the exhibiting of two separate appearances and personalities is representative of her resisting the gradual changing of her soul from one that would “return to God” to one that would become another vampire (Cobbe 427). The existence of an immortal human spirit, the idea of changes being affected on an unconscious that is somehow seemingly infecting this spirit, and the possibility of these changes even occurring to begin with is unsupported by modern science. In contrast, mysticism and the Christian religion offer an explanation and a cure for this though.
In contrast to Western science, the superstitions of mysticism supported by the ideologies of Christianity offer an explanation and solution to the effects of vampirism. Although Lucy Westenra dies, she does not remain dead and the open-minded Van Helsing helps the group of mourning Englishmen and an American discover the continued un-deathly existence of Lucy and accept her inhuman-like predatory harming of children and attempt at seducing her former fiancée Arthur Holmwood (Stoker 232). After using “Host” or holy wafers to keep her in her tomb, based on the Christian ideology of Jesus’s body represented in bread making it holy and therefore anathema to undead creatures, the group helps Arthur deal the final death blow to the vampire Lucy by hammering a wooden stake through her heart, another resemblance to Jesus Christ being crucified on the cross, while the others cut her head off and stuff it with garlic, a practice based on pre-Christian Eastern European mysticism (Stoker 227-232;Luke 19; John 18 ; Methven). After this act, Lucy’s devilish features change back into the “unequalled sweetness and purity” that she had been known to show physically and socially in life resulting in Van Helsing exclaiming, “No longer she is the devil’s Un-Dead. She is God’s true dead, whose soul is with Him” (Stoker 231-232). Once again, this change in disposition after death and determination of an immortal soul is scientifically unsupported, but is witnessed as a real phenomenon and believed by the protagonists. The team later meets up with Jonathan Harker and his new wife Mina with the intent to pool the group’s collective knowledge and experiences together to combat this supernatural foe. Through Jonathan Harker’s telling of his nightmarish time in Transylvania, and Van Helsing’s understanding of how “nosferatu” are spread from a single “King-Vampire”, the protagonists identify Count Dracula as their main target and source of the vampirism whose end will cause the cessation of all other vampires made to exist because of him (Stoker 231, 394). Before discussing his abilities, weaknesses, and tools effective against him, Van Helsing addresses everyone first by expressing, “All we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions. These do not at the first appear much, when the matter is one of life and death – nay of more than either life or death (…) A year ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific, matter-of-fact nineteenth century? We even scouted a belief that we saw justified under our very eyes. Take it, then, that the vampire, and the belief in his limitations and his cure, rest for the moment on the same base” (Stoker 254). With modern science failing to present any form of medical explanation, effective method of treatment, and even a means of defense, the protagonist characters turn toward mysticism and religious practices to prevail against a foe that successfully invades the most cherished place of the West’s industrial lands, the domestic home.
Count Dracula invades the West’s foundations and takes a domestic woman hostage, and although science offers no explanation or solution, mysticism and the Christian religion provide recourse. After the team decides upon the course of action of preventing Dracula from utilizing any of the numerous earth bearing boxes he has brought and distributed across England, the Count decides to invade the Harker’s household and begin converting Mina to vampirism and by doing so have her at his command (Stoker 254-307). The process used to prevent her from resisting and even from her husband Jonathan from defending is detailed by Van Helsing upon their sighting after they are found unconscious in their home, “Jonathan is in a stupor such as we know the Vampire can produce. We can do nothing with poor Madam Mina for a few moments till she recovers herself” (Stoker 301). James Esdaile writes of a human being placed in a similar trance-like state in his recollections of how a boy was suggested to have been stolen by a barber in Mesmerism in India. Mr. Esdaile, who had an interest in mesmerism originally, was somewhat pushed to present the possibility of it occurring in court in order to lend evidence toward the barber’s guilt or innocence by producing before a judge a demonstration of successfully entranced individuals (Esdaile 424-427). Mr. Esdaile claimed to have succeeded at this, and the effects seem to be similar in the manner in which Mina explains how she was mesmerized by the Count (Stoker 305-307). The further use of this unobservable connection made to her by the Count is realized when Mina suggests to Van Helsing that she herself be used as a tool by being hypnotized and then be allowed to speak the whereabouts and surrounding status of Count Dracula (Stoker 332-334). This idea that a mesmerized individual could be utilized as a psychic link between one person and another is also proposed in the 19th century English periodical “Animal Magnetism”. On the second page of The Penny Satirist, the writer states that if mesmerism were used on an individual, a person could accomplish “unveiling the wonders and miracles, the dreams and prophecies of all nations” (Animal Magnetism 2). The possibility of an individual being induced into a state of unconsciousness where they are voluntarily under another’s suggestions and capable of psychically attuning themselves to another’s mind so that they may speak as if they saw through the other physically and then wake up unaware of what they have done is not supported by 19th century scientific methods. However, this mystical field of abilities is what is used successfully against the vampire Count by Van Helsing and Mina. Through her telling of what the Count could hear or see, she was able to help the protagonist group pinpoint the location of him traveling through Europe in a wooden box (Stoker 382). Finally, her husband Jonathan and Quincey Morris utilize a previously shown effective method of vanquishing a vampire, cutting off the head and a wooden stake through the heart. Once they finish destroying Dracula and watching his unnaturally long-surviving body crumble into dust, highly metaphorical symbolism toward the Christian Bible’s book of Genesis reading of how man came from and will return to dust, the men see that the burn mark of the Holy Wafer placed on Mina’s forehead by Van Helsing in an attempt previously to protect her after being mesmerized by Dracula, disappears (Stoker 400-401). There is no scientific explanation for how a wooden stake driven through the heart of a man with no pulse and separating his head from his body would cause his physical body to decompose so rapidly as to turn instantaneously to dust or how a piece of bread that has been verbally blessed could burn a woman’s forehead to only have the mark disappear directly after the decomposition of the dead man who bit her and supposedly even fed her some of his own blood. However, these are the events that take place in the novel with the protagonist characters, and although it was originally difficult for them to accept any other means than those set forth by the standards of modern science, the methods of mysticism and religious ideology are portrayed to be far more useful than that of Western science.
The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, exhibits the 19th century’s cultural questioning of the efficacy of Western scientific methods by portraying the effectiveness of those of the Christian religion and Eastern European mysticism in dealing with the inexplicable. In similar concordance to ideas and observations written by James Esdaile and Frances Power Cobbe in their articles Mesmerism in India and Unconscious Cerebration: A Psychological Study respectively, the ideas and techniques used in the unscientific field of mysticism is spoken of in a validating light and even suggested to be useful. Perhaps science, as it was developed during the Enlightenment and further purported as civilization’s foundation during the 19th century, is too limited in its Western methodological context. The array of practices and ideology of mysticism and Christianity were systematic in their own methods utilized by the protagonist group in the vanquishing of the vampire Count Dracula and preservation of their female member. Such coinciding of the same goals and systematic methods employed by both realms of worldly perception, of defeating the unclean and protecting the pure, brings forth the question: must the two ideals conflict? It is possible to argue that science itself could benefit from the superstitions of Eastern European mysticism and its idiosyncratic techniques and be aided in understanding the intangible by the religious ideology of Christianity. Bram Stoker certainly did so when he set forth in his novel that presented on the literary stage of the West’s 19th century a monster whose effects on people could not be medically explained, and whose supernatural existence science could not defeat.
Interested in owning Bram’s Stoker’s infamous book or an ethnography on vampires for yourself?
Check out the original version here
and a good cultural ethnography on vampiric lore here
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Works Cited
“Animal Magnetism.” The Penny Satirist. September 9, 1837: Issue 21. Pg. 2. Print.
Cobbe, Frances Power. “Unconscious Cerebration: A Psychological Study.” Literature and
Science in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Laura Otis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 424-427. Print.
Esdaile, James. “Mesmerism in India.” Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century. Ed.
Laura Otis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 410-414. Print.
Methven, Sarah. (2009). History of garlic. Helium. Retrieved October 30, 2012.
http://www.helium.com/items/1479192-the-history-of-garlic-against-vampires
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London, England: Penguin Group. 2003. Print.
The Holy Bible. King James Version. 2011. Oxford University Press. Print.
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