Dracula

Dracula is a story built on lost love, love's labour, immortality and loneliness that comes with it. It is one man's struggle against nature. Though loathsome as the Count appears but he is so pitiful and desolate. He dreads time and the loneliness. It is a story built on life's fierceful loyalties. The unbelievable is presented as unacceptable. by the sane but yet to be confirmed.

The story spans almost five centuries telling us of the Count's doom. He lives in the time worn castle known appropriately as Castle Dracula whose walls hold so many screams and uncanny diabolical plans. The home of the undead,nosfratu and the ever hungry blood-lusting vampires.Here he lives with his three unmarried brides. As the story unfolds, we find Jonathan Harker, an employee of some property management firm who is sent to present Count the details of his brought estate in London. He is sent after Renefield, a former employee, who has returnedfrom Transylvania (sent for the same mission) as a lunatic. Renfield is now subjected to a lunatic asylum, situated close to Carfax, one of the estates brought by Count. The Count has some malevolent plan up his sleeve as he has brought ten houses in London in a distinct order but he won't reveal. While Jonathan is on his way to Transylvania he meets some very strange circumstances all insisting that he must change his mind about meeting the Count but he ignores them. He meets many people whom upon knowing his plan either give him sacred crosses or advise him to avoid evil eyes. He is perplexed. The Count arranges the coach from him to pick him from the station. While passing through the thick forests, accompanied by the grotesque, supernatural driver on St. George's he witnesses strange, preter natural infernos and ever closing wolf howls. As he approaches the grand castle, he is welcomed by the Count himself who appears suddenly when the giant driver disappears. What follows that so inviting gesture of welcome is beyond human perception. Jonathan then find himself amidst preter natural happenings. For starters the Count never eats and drinks, he cowers away whenever he catches sight of Harker's cross, he climbs and descends slants like a lizard, there's wailing of women beating their chests at the castle door, the Count knows a lot about England and of course as a rule, the Count only appears at night i.e. to say of the record that vampires are at their weakest in the sunlight but stand tall in the dark. The Count insists that Jonathan should stay a month and spookily enough bids him to write three letters __ one to his family,one to his beloved Mina and one to his firm all stating that he is alright and will be on his way in the couple of days. Smelling something fishy Jonathan suspects that he fate is sealed and he is infact a prisoner. The Count forbids him to look into any of his rooms saying it might become fatal. Jonathan then becomes subject of Vampire brutality at the hands of Count's three seducing, hell tient wives who sucks his blood just enough so as to keep him alive. The Count is now enroute to London, whit by to be precise strange enough he was carried along with himself with numerous huge boxes filled with earth. They are to serve as his graves while sunlight. Harker discovers the Count's identity one day when he is fast asleep in his coffin and becomes terrified so that he risks his life to get out of the loony bin and seeks refuge in the monastery.

Meanwhile in London Mina, his fiancé is staying with her rather flirtatious best friend Lucy Westenra. Lucy is loved by three men, one is a Yankee named Quincey Morris, a doctor who is looking after Renefield named Jack Sewerd and her to be husband Arther Holmod.The arrival of the Count Dracula in London is via ship Demeter and is marked by great storms and strange consequences. There are wolves escaping from the zoos and dogs and other domestic animals get restless. The Count himself escapes from Demeter as a wolf. Strange enough, nobody finds anyone on board but the diary of the skipper enlisting strange happenings and missing of his crew members.

Unfortunately late one night, Lucy, a chronic sleepwalker falls prey to Dracula's lust and is subject of rape by him while afterwards he sucks her blood. Unknown to Lucy, she is now becoming a vampire herself. She grows weaker and weaker day by day. Seeing her condition, Mina appoints Dr. Sewerd to look after her. He calls his mentor Dr. Abraham Van Helsing from Amsterdam. Van Helsing is an authority on many subject and ever unknown to Sewerd, his closest disciple was this close to become a vampire himself. Van Helsing at once recognises the symptoms, tries to save her but could not. Later on, although with much difficulty he convinces others i.e. Arthur, Sewerd and Quincey to cut her head and drive a stake through her to save her soul.

Meanwhile Mina has to go to Harker who in the letter urges to marry him. He has become very weak and is in the monastery since past few weeks. Mina returns home now as Mrs. Harker. A few weeks later Harker spots the Count at Piccadily. He recognises him at once although he has become much younger.

Van Helsing via Mina's and Lucy's correspondence to each other comes to meet Mina who shows Jonathan's account of his horrible expedition to Transylvania. This convinces Van Helsing that the Count was in London and that then was the time to finish him. All of these six people now join forces to end this miserable life. Mina is to stay at Sewerd's asylum while the men go in search of his property and destroy his "graves". One night when the men are away Mina herself becomes a victim of the Count's lust who forces her to suck his blood through a cut vein in his chest and bids her to come when he calls. As the men approach the room, he flees but a link is now established between Mina and him.

Since the men have now destroyed all his coffins and only one is left, the Count escapes England via a ship and goes back to Transylvania. Mina tells all of his proceedings under hypnosis. They all go back in Transylvania and wait near his castle. When his cargo arrives they are ready so that as soon as he arises from his coffin at Sunset they shoot and kill him by driving a stake through his heart and see before their eyes his body crumbling to dust. And with his death, Mina's free from his spell.

"Dracula" by Bram Stoker was infact a revival. Many a same stories were alive in 14th and 15th century forming a so called horror culture. But during Bram's time i.e. 1847-1912 covering the Victorian era and the modern era's beginning, the legends were dying. So he wrote Dracula in 1897 that is now considered a masterpiece. Ironically every one knows but a little about the creator i.e. Bram himself and a lot about his creation i.e. Dracula. He was this one character up his sleeve that overshadowed him from the rest of his life. He was born in Dublin. Throughout his childhood he was entertained by his mother who told him ghoulish stories. His whole life is full of contradictions and reversals. He was sickly in his childhood but became an athlete during his college days. He in 1908 wrote a series of columns to eradicate eroticism in literature but his Dracula is full of erotic implications. Similarly though he backed from feminism, a revolution during his time but when he came to practice it he backed off.

Vampires in Stroker's version are puritan Christianity's demonic underside, its negative image, just as Dracula is a parody of Christ, whom he quotes :-
"Except ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him. The blood in the life".
"Dracula is an apparition of what we repress, particularly eros. He is the projection of beholder's lust and desires. After he gets Mina to drink his blood from his breast he says to his male pursuers :-
"Your girls that you love are mine already, through them you and others shall be mine".
He is the symptom of a wish, largely sexual that we wish we did not have.

Bram a Victorian gentleman although presents many sexual implications in his novel was hesitant in drawing a clear picture as to a late Victorian, in any case sex was likely to seem bestial, polluting and depleting, deathly and satanic, a fever in the blood, the theme of dreams. To a woman in a Victorian state of mind Dracula's kiss is but a scratch where she itches.

Bluntly Victorians were very prudish about sex. Even a trivial impropriety of dress was not tolerated and would send the Victorian martinets into paroxysms of rage. They were very touchy about sex which they treated with a hush-hush, in commodiousness. Even Thackery, Dickens, George Elliot and others who were Stark realists in everything did not lift the lid off the sexual animality of their characters. They approached the beast of sex very gingerly and with gloves on. In his "Vanity Fair", Thackery does not show he little nymphomaniac animal within Becky Sharp in search of some heavy petting. Victorian parents were quite domineering. Mr. Murdoch's cruelty to David Copperfield is an instance of the authority which a Victorian father exercised. Even Tennison in his treatment of love and sex has no frank conviality of Fielding or Morlowe or Spencer or Chaucer. He does not think of love in terms of palatonic transcendentalism of Shelly, he does not think of it as an earthly passion but refuses to excoriate it not to speak of exploring its interior unbridled passion he looks down upon, especially when it is non conjugal. Such passion would be destructive of social order and has to be viewed as a disintegrating and mischievous force.

Victorians regarded marriage as symbol of order and human immortality. But licentiousness is to be eurbed as it is symptomatic of disorder.

Bram himself here is too much a puritan as he presents sex in an "awkward" manner. There are two details as to how Lucy falls a prey to the Count's hungry desires. Lucy and Mina discuss marriage in such a giggling manner that it looks very unreal. Moreover people seem very reserved and introvert as far as showing one's love is concerned.

Even too much drinking was held culpable by the Victorians. The days of coffee-house boozing. So rampant in the 18th century of which such lovers of wine as Addison, Steele and Dr. Johnson were long gone. Dr. Johnson wrote :-
"He who aspires to be a hero must not drink brandy".

As far as history is concerned, Dracula was real. Most of the events that Dracula speaks of as his history are infact history. The events also seem real because Transylvania also exists as such. It is a part of Romania alongside Maldovia and Wallachia. The town in the story Bistrista and Klausberg now called Cliy are also real. Transylvania was dominated by Hungary for 1000 years. The rail road timings written in the novel are exact as they tally the past schedules. Historical references are also upto the mark.

There in an authentic 15th century script in possession of archives of St. Petersberg which tells us about the atrocities of Dracula. But ironically most Russian scholars scoff it as false.

Stories tell us that Dracula was better known as "impaller" due to his fondness for that particular form of punishment. He tied the victim's feet to two different horses and stuck an oiled spear up his spread-eagled body's anus. Then he united his feet and stuck him up as a popsicle. The unfortunate victim died slowly. No wonder order reigned.

There is an actual historical connection between Dracula and Transylvania. Vlad Dracula was born in 1431 in Sighisoara, although he later ruled Romania. He kept his contacts with Transylvanian towns until his death in 1476. He has distinctly and clearly signed Dracula on two manuscripts to the citizens of Sibiu in Transylvania.

The name Dracula has its origin in the order of dragon, which was conferred on Vlad's father by the Holy Roman emperor, King Sigismund at Nurenburg castle in 1431. He thus came to be known as Dracule. Vlad was so proud of his father's honour that he proclaimed himself as Dracula meaning "Son of the one who had the order of dragon". "Dracul" is a common Roman name for Satan. So Vlad later on came to be known as the "son of the devil". The order had winged serpent for its insignia __ a common symbol for devil in Romanian folklore. The order was not evil though but the legend has it that when Vlad's father returned having the symbol on his cloak and shield, the peasants thought of him as evil and the word then spread.

Long before Stoker the historical Dracula was the subject of horror stories that were bestsellers as early as the 15th century. Monks used to tell these stories to the people during those cold nights in monasteries. One of these tell how Dracula loved to dine surrounded by the dead and the dying. Thus establishing the link between historical and vampire Dracula. Dracula would slurp and blurp blood.

Once he ordered a great meal for the people of his town and when they ate whole heatedly he asked them what more could they want and they said, "if only we could be relieved of our daily duties". So, Dracula blocked all doors and burnt them alive saying, "You don't have to anymore".

Once he nailed some ambassadors caps to their heads just because their customs did not allow them to bare their heads in any man's presence.

He sometimes showed black humour. Once he was dining with some one as usual surrounded by the dead, his visitor could not bear the stench so he impaled him high in the air as the air above was clearer from that below.

Dracula was one of the first male chauvinists. He once impaled a woman because she forgot to sew her husband's torn shirt who was a hard working peasant. Dracula never wanted any heirs. One of his mistresses was torn apart from her womb up as she jokingly said she was pregnant by him.

A key to his strange and unstable behavior is found in his difficult childhood. He was raised as a Christian but when he was left by his father as a hostage with Turks at thirteen, he was surrounded by strange Moslem traditions. He was held as insurance that Vlad's father won't attack Turkey. His parents returned home leaving him in alien surroundings. He was shipped to inaccessible mountains of Asia Minor. He was kept there from 1444 to 1448. Then his father shamelessly attacked Turkey. This betrayal of his father's promise had put him in great danger and told him that life was cheap. But he was not killed and used by his hosts as a pawn for diplomatic relations.

Vlad seized power in South Romania with Turkish support in 1456 and ruled till 1462. He killed 100000 people in his reign. Because he fought a crusade against the Turks most of his heinous crimes are so neglected. Even after 1462 when he was imprisoned, he could not give up his habit of impaling. He did it with mice!

It was Hungarian king Matthais who imprisoned him in Budapest. Matthais jailed him not because of Vlad's cruelty but to hide his own crimes because he had forged letters that declared inappropriate management of crusade funds on behalf of Vlad. By 1476 Matthais decided to put Vlad back on throne of South Romania. During one battle with Turks he dressed up as a Turk to see their strategy. His men mistook him as a spy and killed him. The warriors gave his head as a souvenir of victory to Turkey. They displayed it near Topkapi castle in Istanbul. Romanian legend has it that Dracula never died and will come back to rule.

The legend was very popular in 15th and 16th century but fell into the oblivision during the 19th century. It was then that an Irish Bram Stoker revived it as a Count "vampire" Dracula.

At first, Stoker was going to call it "Count Wampyr", a serious mistake for the most part. But later on after reading a book by William Wilkinson he became fascinated by the Prince's grispy deeds that he called his character Dracula. Stoker derived vampire characters from the works of Emily Gerard. Most of the superstitions presented in the book are still believed in, in Transylvania.

Like most of the characters written in those times, Harker as well as others very must like to work hard. Infact they are the part of the Industrial revolution so much in progress at those times. Most of the equipments such as Dr. Sewerd's phonograph were but one of the things coming in fashion. The rapid development of sciences transformed the environment of people, both directly and indirectly and made itself felt in literature also. That age saw the great outpouring of scientific literature, such as the epic "Origin of Species". It all affected the intellectual abilities of the writers. Commercialism of all human activity soon followed, accompanied by a marked shift in the values of life. Materialism led man to restlessness as much as hectic activity.

Literature is the record of the nation's consciousness and changes like the nations change themselves. Victorian age was an age of sharp flux, generated mainly by development of science and literature of this age mirrors this flux quite authentically. In this age the science expanded in all of its departments as geology, anthropology etc. Scientific proof was the only valid proof accepted. This progression of scientific thought was one of the major aspects of the Victorian age. e.g. Darwin theory shocked the "Genesis" believers.

The industrial revolution ushered an era of unprecedented prosperity, whereas it also converted the "merry England". The revolution gave rise to a number of social problems. With the conversion of agrarian economy, two classes were created. A privileged and a class of huge horde of ill housed, ill-fed labourers. Who virtually had no right to live. There was a virtual exodus of rurals to cities which had started resounding with the grinding and buzzing of heavy machines. The whole of the era started with the advent of queen Victoria to the throne of England, the old Hanovar dynasty disappeared as the law of Hanover excluded female rulers. So Germany separated from the crown.

Meanwhile Canada revolted and confirmed into a domain itself. Durham report was published later on. Chartist revolution sprang. A uniform system of penny post was adopted.

In 1870 when country was divided into school districts. Each district was provided with an elected school board. This later on introduced free education. Local self-governments were expanded. The Mines Act was passed in 1842 prohibiting the employment of women and children below ten years in the mines. Free trade began with other countries. Navigation Act was repealed in 1849.

The Victorian age was singularly unemotional and stood for balance, order and discipline. The radicalism, revolutionism of romantics like Shelley had already become a thing of the past. Enthusiasm was looked upon with anarchy. Evolution no revolution was the slogan of the Victorian age.

The themes that Bram Stoker touches in this epic are complex and timeless, the loneliness of the immortality, the appeal of endless love, the struggle between twisted evil and plain virtue, sexual power and control, the sensuality of women, the fear of death and what lies beyond.

As we look the wishy washy character who fills the world around us, it is no wonder that many admire Dracula. He is consistent, you know what to expect from him. Dracula is evil but it is easier to handle him than some typically vacillating leader of today. Today, no one would impale but see as they burn by their own bites. Sadly they don't make them like him anymore. As a Romanian poem puts :-