FROM WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.^[1]

Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

Dracula has been assigned to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. The novel touches on themes such as the role of women in Victorian culture, sexual conventions, immigration, colonialism, and post-colonialism. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, he defined its modern form, and the novel has spawned numerous theatrical, film and television interpretations.

PLOT SUMMARY

The story is told in epistolary format, as a series of letters, diary entries, and ships' log entries, whose narrators are the novel's protagonists, and occasionally supplemented with newspaper clippings relating events not directly witnessed. The events portrayed in the novel take place largely in England and Transylvania during the 1890s.

The tale begins with Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, visiting Count Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains on the border of Transylvania, Bukovina, and Moldavia, to provide legal support for a real estate transaction overseen by Harker's employer. At first enticed by Dracula's gracious manners, Harker soon realizes that he is Dracula's prisoner. Wandering the Count's castle against Dracula's admonition, Harker encounters three female vampires, called "the sisters", from whom he is rescued by Dracula. After the preparations are made, Dracula leaves Transylvania and abandons Harker to the sisters. Harker barely escapes from the castle with his life.

Not long afterward, a Russian ship, the Demeter, having weighed anchor at Varna, runs aground on the shores of Whitby. The captain's log narrates the gradual disappearance of the entire crew, until the captain alone remained, himself bound to the helm to maintain course. An animal resembling "a large dog" is seen leaping ashore. The ship's cargo is described as silver sand and boxes of "mould", or earth, from Transylvania.

Soon Dracula is tracking Harker's fiancée, Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray, and her friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy receives three marriage proposals from Dr. John Seward, Quincey Morris, and the Hon, Arthur Holmwood (later Lord Godalming). Lucy accepts Holmwood's proposal while turning down Seward and Morris, but all remain friends. Dracula communicates with Seward's patient Renfield, an insane man who wishes to consume insects, spiders, birds, and rats to absorb their "life force", and therefore assimilate to Dracula himself. Renfield is able to detect Dracula's presence and supplies clues accordingly.

When Lucy begins to waste away suspiciously, Seward invites his old teacher, Abraham Van Helsing, who immediately determines the cause of Lucy's condition but refuses to disclose it. While both doctors are absent, Lucy and her mother are attacked by a wolf; Mrs. Westenra, who has a heart condition, dies of fright, and Lucy dies soon after. Following Lucy's death, the newspapers report children being stalked in the night by, in their words, a "bloofer lady" (i.e., "beautiful lady").^[2] Van Helsing, knowing Lucy has become a vampire, confides in Seward, Lord Godalming, and Morris. The suitors and Van Helsing track her down and, after a confrontation with her, stake her heart, behead her, and fill her mouth with garlic. Around the same time, Jonathan Harker arrives from Budapest, where Mina marries him after his escape, and he and Mina join the coalition against Dracula.

After Dracula learns of Van Helsing's plot against him, he attacks Mina on three occasions, and feeds Mina his own blood to control her. Under his influence, Mina oscillates from consciousness to a semi-trance during which she perceives Dracula's surroundings and actions. After the protagonists sterilize all of his lairs in London by putting pieces of consecrated host in each box of Transylvanian earth, Dracula flees to Transylvania, pursued by Van Helsing and the others under the guidance of Mina. In Transylvania, Van Helsing repulses and later destroys the vampire "sisters". Upon discovering Dracula being transported by Gypsies, Harker shears Dracula through the throat with a kukri while the mortally wounded Quincey stabs the Count in the heart with a Bowie knife. Dracula crumbles to dust, and Mina is restored to health.

The book closes with a note on Mina's and Jonathan's married life and the birth of their son, whom they name after all four members of the party, but address as "Quincey".

Deleted ending

The original final chapter was removed, in which Dracula's castle falls apart as he dies, hiding the fact that vampires were ever there.^[3]

CHARACTERS

• Jonathan Harker: A solicitor sent to do business with Count Dracula; Mina's fiancé and prisoner in Dracula's castle.
• Count Dracula: A Transylvanian noble who has purchased a house in London.
• Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker (née Murray): A schoolteacher and Jonathan Harker's fiancée.
• Lucy Westenra: A 19-year-old aristocrat; Mina's best friend; Arthur's fiancée and Dracula's first victim.
• Arthur Holmwood: Lucy's suitor and later fiancé.
• John Seward: A doctor; one of Lucy's suitors and a former student of Van Helsing.
• Abraham Van Helsing: A Dutch professor; John Seward's teacher; and, a vampire hunter.
• Quincey Morris: An American cowboy and explorer; and one of Lucy's suitors.
• Renfield: A lawyer whom Dracula turned mad.
• "Weird Sisters": Three siren-like vampire women who serve Dracula. In some of the plays, films etc. that came after the novel they are referred to as the Brides of Dracula.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Although Dracula is a work of fiction, it does contain some historical references. The historical connections with the novel and how much Stoker knew about the history are a matter of conjecture and debate.

Following the publication of In Search of Dracula by Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally in 1972, the supposed connections between the historical Transylvanian-born Vlad III Dracula of Wallachia and Bram Stoker's fictional Dracula attracted popular attention. During his main reign (1456–1462), "Vlad the Impaler" is said to have killed from 40,000 to 100,000 European civilians (political rivals, criminals, and anyone he considered "useless to humanity"), mainly by impaling. The sources depicting these events are records by Saxon settlers in neighbouring Transylvania, who had frequent clashes with Vlad III. Vlad III is revered as a folk hero by Romanians for driving off the invading Ottoman Turks, of which his impaled victims are said to have included as many as 100,000.

Vlad the Impaler; also known as Vlad Dracula.

Historically, the name "Dracula" is derived from a Chivalric order called the Order of the Dragon, founded by Sigismund of Luxembourg (then king of Hungary) to uphold Christianity and defend the Empire against the Ottoman Turks. Vlad II Dracul, father of Vlad III, was admitted to the order around 1431, after which Vlad II wore the emblem of the order and later, as ruler of Wallachia, his coinage bore the dragon symbol. The name Dracula means "Son of Dracul".

Stoker came across the name Dracula in his reading on Romanian history, and chose this to replace the name (Count Wampyr) originally intended for his villain. Some Dracula scholars, led by Elizabeth Miller, argue that Stoker knew little of the historic Vlad III except for the name "Dracula", whereas in the novel, Stoker mentions the Dracula who fought against the Turks, and was later betrayed by his brother, historical facts which unequivocally point to Vlad III:

Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkey-land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! (Chapter 3, pp 19)

The Count's identity is later speculated on by Professor Van Helsing:

He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land. (Chapter 18, p 145)

Many of Stoker's biographers and literary critics have found strong similarities to the earlier Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu's classic of the vampire genre, Carmilla. In writing Dracula, Stoker may also have drawn on stories about the sídhe,^{[citation needed]} some of which feature blood-drinking women. The folkloric figure of Abhartach has also been suggested as a source.^[33]

In 1983, McNally additionally suggested that Stoker was influenced by the history of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who tortured and killed between 36 and 700 young women.^[34] It was later commonly believed that she committed these crimes to bathe in their blood, believing that this preserved her youth.^[35]

In her book The Essential Dracula, Clare Haword-Maden opined the castle of Count Dracula was inspired by Slains Castle, at which Bram Stoker was a guest of the 19th Earl of Erroll.^[36] According to Miller, he first visited Cruden Bay in 1893, three years after work on Dracula had begun. Haining and Tremaine maintain that during this visit, Stoker was especially impressed by Slains Castle's interior and the surrounding landscape. Miller and Leatherdale question the stringency of this connection.^[37] Possibly, Stoker was not inspired by a real edifice at all, but by Jules Verne's novel The Carpathian Castle (1892) or Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).^[38] A third possibility is that he copied information about a castle at Vécs from one of his sources on Transylvania, the book by Major E.C. Johnson.^[39] A further option is that Stoker saw an illustration of Castle Bran (Törzburg) in the book on Transylvania by Charles Boner, or read about it in the books by Mazuchelli or Crosse.^[40] Many of the scenes in Whitby and London are based on real places that Stoker frequently visited, although in some cases he distorts the geography for the sake of the story. One scholar has suggested that Stoker chose Whitby as the site of Dracula's first appearance in England because of the Synod of Whitby, given the novel's preoccupation with timekeeping and calendar disputes.^[28]

Daniel Farson, Leonard Wolf, and Peter Haining have suggested that Stoker received much historical information from Ármin Vámbéry, a Hungarian professor he met at least twice. Miller argues "there is nothing to indicate that the conversation included Vlad, vampires, or even Transylvania" and that, "furthermore, there is no record of any other correspondence between Stoker and Vámbéry, nor is Vámbéry mentioned in Stoker's notes for Dracula."^[41]

ADAPTATIONS

 

The story of Dracula has been the basis for numerous films and plays. Stoker himself wrote the first theatrical adaptation, which was presented at the Lyceum Theatre under the title Dracula, or The Undead shortly before the novel's publication and performed only once. Popular films include Dracula (1931), Dracula (alternative title: The Horror of Dracula) (1958), and Dracula (also known as Bram Stoker's Dracula) (1992). Dracula was also adapted as Nosferatu (1922), a film directed by the German director F. W. Murnau, without permission from Stoker's widow; the filmmakers attempted to avoid copyright problems by altering many of the details, including changing the name of the villain to "Count Orlok".

The character of Count Dracula has remained popular over the years, and many films have used the character as a villain, while others have named him in their titles, including Dracula's Daughter and The Brides of Dracula. As of 2009, an estimated 217 films feature Dracula in a major role,^[42] a number second only to Sherlock Holmes (223 films).^[43]

Most adaptations do not include all the major characters from the novel. The Count is always present, and Jonathan and Mina Harker, Dr. Seward, Dr. Van Helsing, and Renfield usually appear as well. The characters of Mina and Lucy are often combined into a single female role. Jonathan Harker and Renfield are also sometimes reversed or combined. Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood are usually omitted entirely (Bram Stoker's Dracula being a notable exception).