Count Dracula: Character Profile

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Count Dracula

Here's an analysis of Count Dracula's character:

Over the years, Stoker’s original description of Dracula as seen through the eyes of Jonathan Harker is sometimes overlooked in favour of a suaver, sexually-attractive depiction, typified by the actor Bela Lugosi who played the Count in the 1931 film adaptation.

Stoker’s vampire is repulsive and Jonathan is unable to “repress a shudder” in his presence.
Victorian society placed great faith in the pseudoscience of Physiognomy, believing a person’s physical appearance was a reflection of their moral-character.
One of the first observations Jonathan makes of Dracula is how “marked” his Physiognomy is.

Dracula is a parasite, feeding on the life of others to sustain his own in a foul-parody of immortality.
Even when rejuvenated, his appearance is intended to disgust - Jonathan notices how “on the lips were gouts of fresh blood” - the use of “gouts” alluding to the ancient practice of bloodletting using leeches.

Perhaps the true horror from Dracula is the threat he represents to the civilised British way of life.
He is the Gothic outsider - a hostile invader who must be eradicated before vampirism becomes a pandemic across the whole of the Empire.
Whilst at times his dialogue may be more befitting of a pantomime villain rather than the Prince of Darkness, Dracula does seem to revel in the act of evil, warning the band of heroes after their encounter in Piccadilly.

“You think to baffle me, you – with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher’s. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest; but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine – my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!”

Here's an analysis of Count Dracula's character:

Numerous characters encounter Dracula, but the description they give is almost identical: tall, thin, dressed in black with red eyes.
The repetition helps to create a sense of ubiquitousness - he has the potential to be anywhere and seen by anyone; equally, frightening is the potential for anyone to be his next victim.
The description aids with the reader’s suspension of disbelief: the more people who bare witness to Dracula and his uncanny appearance, the more plausible he becomes.

Unlike other famous Gothic doppelgangers such as Frankenstein’s creature, Count Dracula's ‘double’ is not limited to one character - just as he has the strength of twenty men, all of the male characters in the novel mirror him in some manner.
As is the case with other doubles in Gothic literature, to assign them as being simply ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is a gross oversimplification: those on both sides are capable of transgressing the boundary between the two.

Van Helsing exhibits the most commonalities with Dracula.
Jonathan Harker, in his desperation to escape Castle Dracula, crawls down the walls in the same lizard-fashion as the Count, a descent symbolising a trip into Hell.
Lucy is fascinated by Seward’s position as the director of the asylum and the “wonderful power he must have over his patients”.

Both Dracula and Arthur belong to their country’s aristocracy and use their influence (Dracula with the Romanian Gypsies) to aid their goals.
Both Quincey and Dracula are from the extreme east and west of the known world respectively, with England at the centre.