Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897) extract # 9 pp.

262-268

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Chapter VIII extract #9

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PREVIOUS CHAPTERS
Chapter 19
The men make the journey to Carfax, arming themselves with holy objects for protection. no sign
of Dracula in the chapel, but there is a terrible stench, and the men find twenty-nine of the original fifty
boxes of earth. To the men’s horror, rats begin to fill the chapel.

twenty-one boxes are missing.

Mina IN THE ASYLUM
stares out the window at a thin streak of white mist that slowly creeps across the yard
She sees a “livid white face” bending over her, but assumes this figure is merely part of her dream.

Chapter 20
Harker’s investigations reveal that twelve of the remaining boxes of earth were deposited in two houses in
London. He traces the remaining nine boxes to a house in Piccadilly

Renfield found lying in his cell, covered in blood

______________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 21
Dying, Renfield admits to the other men that Dracula often visited him, promising him flies, spiders, and
other living creatures from which to gain strength in return for Renfield’s obedience. Later, when Mina
visited him, Renfield noted her paleness and realized that Dracula had been “taking the life out of her.” He
grew angry, and when the count slipped into his room that night, Renfield attempted to seize him. The
vampire’s eyes “burned” him, and he was flung violently across the room as Dracula slipped away into the
asylum.They go get their anti-vampire weapons and head to Mina and Jonathan's room.
They break down the door.
They find Jonathan unconscious on the bed, and Mina sitting up on the edge of the bed.
Dracula is standing next to her, holding her wrists in one hand and with the other, forcing her to drink his
blood from a cut in his chest.
Van Helsing and the others move forward, holding the sacred communion wafers and their crucifixes.
Dracula disappears as a mist, and Mina screams.
They wake Jonathan up from his vampire-induced trance and tell him what's going on.
Mina tells them everything: how she's had weird dreams lately and has felt weak.
Oddly enough, when Dracula was actually touching her, she didn't want to stop him from drinking her blood
—must be something about his powers.
And after making her drink his blood, Dracula told her that she was in his power, and that even from far
away he'd have the power to summon her and make her come to him.
Everyone, but especially Mina, is horrified.
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897) extract # 9 pp. 262-268

The Extract
Featured within Dr Seward’s diary, dated from the 3rd of October
Includes three narrations of the same event

• a really transgressive scene

- abhorrent (negative lexical field) Dracula’s violence is expressed through explicit verbs (gripping’,
‘forcing’ (2X)
Mina’s recollection of how she felt (‘I would have screamed out, only that I was paralyzed.’) seems to
articulate the very definition of horror.
- a rape scene
- devilish inversion of a nursing Madonna scene. a perverse form of eroticism in which familiar, normative
patterns/tropes are inverted. A parodic inversion, in which the count becomes feminised. A critic (C.M.
Bentley compared it to ‘a symbolic act of enforced fellation’ (Norton edition, p. 30)
Milk and blood associated in the simile that associates Mina and a kitten. ‘The attitude of the two had a
terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.’
Dracula perverts the Christian sacrament = communion and wedding
(takes the place of her husband)

- also an inverted version of a love triangle in a comedy.

the ambiguity is disturbing: ‘I was bewildered, and strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him. I suppose
it is a part of the horrible curse that such is, when his touch is on his victim.’ (Mina)
Yet, the two rivals are closely associated
. As Jonathan is listening to what happened to his beloved Mina, he is so described: ‘His nostrils twitched
and his eyes blazed’ (bot. 264) and that description is reminiscent of Dracula’s ‘nostrils of the great quinine
nose’ and his ‘eyes that flamed with passion’ ( 262)

• A paroxystic moment
which marks the climax of the Count’s ascendency on Mina

- Important because for the first time, the existence of Dracula as a maleficent, malevolent, but most
importantly, EXISTING creature turns out to be real = the characters see him with their own eyes. There are
spectators. The presence of a group substantiates the reality of the monster. ‘the instant we saw we all
recognized the Count, in every way, even to the scar on his forehead.’(262) The only time the reader /
characters actually see his flesh.
- theatricality spectators = a collective gaze
- everything adds up, they are sure that it is the same person
Mina’s description matches the others (‘the white mist’, ‘the red scar on his forehead’ (Mina) ‘even to the
scar on his forehead’(Seward) ‘a tall, thin man, clad in black.’ (Seward) ‘a tall, thin man, all in
black.’ (Mina)
a scene taken from a detective story: while the men are busy chasing the Count, Dracula is attacking Mina.

Explicit eroticism, violence, the supernatural and, of course, the blood, are all hallmarks of the horror
tradition of the Gothic

• The presence of spectators dramatises that moment

- overdramatises (emphasises the theatricality) a perverse form of eroticism in which familiar,
normative patterns/tropes are inverted. Contrasted colours contribute to render-ing this moment
even more dramatic ans striking
- A polyphonic narrative
is completed by other points of view
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897) extract # 9 pp. 262-268

- the scene is told by different characters, which replicates the polyphony of the novel, the fact that it
is made of heterogeneous elements. There is something musical to it:
- Seward’s line (like a “melodic/vocal line”) as he barges into the room where Harker lies
unconscious and where Mina was just attacked by Dracula.
- Briefly repeats the same story to Harker (present, but unconscious)
- Then, Mina’s point of view
- The light is important, as it would be on stage
The scene is lit by the moon (as if a lighting engineer was there to direct the attention upon the
important details) ‘The moonlight was so bright that through the thick yellow blind the room was
light enough to see’ (262)
- When a dark cloud momentarily hides the moon, the count disappears and morris’s flame only
lights
- As Mina describes her encounter with the monster, she mentions the bright light that falls upon
Dracula’s face ‘the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin white line’

In Seward’s narrative, the position of the two protagonists is precisely noted ‘beside’, ‘on the near edge’, ‘by
her side’, ≠ Mina’s story