Dracula Quotes - Count Dracula Flashcards
“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!” - Chapter 2
Dracula says this to Jonathan Harker commenting on the wolves which surround the castle.
“Courtly gesture… Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will” - Chapter 2
Dracula welcoming Jonathan into his castle - ambivalent character, whereby Jonathan has willingly entered and is now claimed by Dracula.
“Rather cruel looking with peculiarly white sharp teeth… ears were pale… general effect was one of extraordinary pallor” - Chapter 2
We get the impression that Dracula is not your average gentleman. Dracula’s smile reveals his sharp teeth showing how natural things become twisted around him - a smile usually connotes happiness but here it indicates danger. His physical appearance are parallel to the demonic figures in European myth and legend. Dracula’s “rank breath” could indicate that his insides are corrupt which is likely as he drinks blood.
“His eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury and he suddenly made a grab at my throat… held the crucifix” - Chapter 2
Stoker uses this account of violence from Dracula to show the extent of the threat of vampirism that Harker is under. Stoker may also be using the Christian symbol as a valuable talisman to show the significance of religion overpowering evil. Physical horror: Dracula being driven by his primitive and sexual desires for blood.
“You dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings of the hunter” - Chapter 2
Dracula describes himself as a hunter foreshadows the revelations that Harker makes of his true nature. By relating to wolves, Dracula paints himself as a wild, animalistic, instinctual creature. The “dwellers” could refer to humans who do not understand him.
“That you shall stay with me until a month from now… I will take no refusal” - Chapter 3
Stoker presents Dracula as a scheming, cunning and manipulative character as he forces Harker to write a letter to Mr Hawkins saying that he wishes to extend his stay with him. Both characters are aware of each other’s understanding of the situation yet they continue the pretence that this is a normal business interaction between solicitor and client: predator and prey.
“Crawl down the castle wall” “in his lizard fashion” - Chapter 3
First reference in the novel of Dracula’s superhuman abilities. Harker is starting to realise that there is a sinister element to Dracula. Animalistic imagery of being a lizard - cold-blooded killer.
“The agonised cry of a woman… voice laden with menace, ‘monster give me my child’… tore her hair and beat her breast… howling of wolves… licked their lips” - Chapter 4
Dracula’s control over wolves is confirmed emphatically through the obscene slaughter of the mother of the abducted child. Constructs our understanding of the vampires as evil beyond redemption. Destruction of mother and child here is emblematic of the terror that Dracula represents to Stoker’s society. The Victorian Age publicly idealised the innocence of childhood and the sanctity of motherhood. Partly related to the high infant mortality rate and uncertain risks of childbirth. In comparison to the reality of existence for the majority of women and children at the end of the 19th century such views may seem sentimental and judgemental.
“Howling wolves… louder and angrier… diabolical wickedness… red light pf triumph in his eyes” - Chapter 4
Harker’s attempt to challenge Dracula - we see a further dimension to Dracula’s cunning side as he seems courteous yet gives Harker the option to be devoured by wolves or the vampire women later on. Stoker invests his character with a ghoulish delight in tormenting the unfortunate Harker. Wolves are emblematic of Dracula’s terrible power over nature.
“His face was strong… aquiline… bushy hair… moved impulsively forward” - Chapter 2
The Gothic villain is rather an animal rather than human which is deceiving given his initial physique. defined by his primitive and animalistic qualities - not welcome in industrial London backdrop. There is a real physical threat in his presence and his abnormality strong appearance and overt physical power. Association of the villain having an eagle like face, there are connotations of his primitive and unforgiving nature as a predator.
“Protuberant teeth”, lips were of a “remarkable ruddiness”, “very red lips” - Chapter 2
The reference to his teeth being sharp enough for penetration, with a connotation to his blood-coloured mouths, introduces a sexual quality to Dracula. Written at a time of extreme sexual repression in the etiquette obsessed Victorian Era, the introduction of a sexual predator blending in to this backdrop is worrying to say the least.
“Tall old man… antique silver lamp… cold as ice - hand of a dead man” - Chapter 2
In fixing Dracula as an artefact of the past, he threatens the modernity of London. But also in his suspicious immortality and eternal life, there is a real worry that Dracula will infiltrate the civilisation of London and be a permanent part of society - spreading his degeneracy perversity and corruption through Britain.
“Saying in excellent English” - Chapter 2
In Stoker’s portrayal of Dracula being an “excellent” speaking tourist wishing to come to London, there is a disturbing suggestion that he will be able to invade London and spread his corruptive depravity through the streets of the highly industrialised and civilised heart of the British empire.
“Vast number of English books… history, geography, politics…” - Chapter 2
Dracula’s exploration of all aspects of society is immediately shocking as there is a pathos in his entrance into London as he aims to infiltrate all aspects of a highly established Victorian society. Published at a time with vast scientific advances and also cultural progressions with artistic upheavals in literature, art and music - there is a worrying sense that Dracula will somehow reverse these advancements in his perversity and associated antiquity.
“Surrounded by a solid stone wall… heavily barred with iron… close to an old chapel or church.. close to a private lunatic asylum”
Dracula seems to have his property well guarded from the London population which is worrying as he cannot be closely monitored. There are disturbingly some parallels to the setting of Castle Dracula including the imagery of darkness and constant references to the place being “gloomy”. There are also references to religion which brings about the worrying suggestion that Dracula may try and intrude religion. While the Victorian society was indeed deviating away from religion and becoming increasingly secular or at least embracing the more Protestant moderate faith, the fact that the devil is intruding notions about faith and religion is certainly shocking.
“Something dark stood behind the seat… man or beast… red gleaming eyes”
Fears of reverse colonisation are reinforced in this passage where Dracula is physically tainting the bloodline of the aristocracy and ruining it permanently. This is heightened in the very gender of Lucy being a female. Contrast between Lucy’s delicate femininity and Dracula’s “red gleaming eyes” creates a horror, exploitation like image.
Dracula’s comparison to St George
On one level, the novel is appealing to the national myth of St George and the dragon. Dracula is derived from the Romanian word for dragon. Lucy is easily seen as the damsel in distress and this role is shared with Mina. Only one of them will be saved from the encounter with the dragon. The role of St George, the dragon slayer is taken at different times by Arthur, Van Helsing and Jonathon.
“Forcing her face down on his bosom… the attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk… right hand gripped her by the back of the neck”
Dracula is taking on the mother role - this is a feature of much late Victorian Gothic literature such as ‘Frankenstein’ - there is a horrible resonance to breast feeding in the physical description of the posture of the two characters, which further enforces the twisted parody of the mother. Dracula is staining Victorian values and ideals by removing ‘The Angel in the House’ role from women. This is the overt illustration with their being a clear transgression of boundaries in Dracula’s actions of mistreating and violating Mina. Repulsive depiction is one of the suggestively insinuated scenes relating to the concept of rape and sexual violation. Through Dracula ‘forcibly’ exchanging blood (bodily fluid) with Mina combined with the sexual symbolism of the blood forms an exaggerated portrayal of how men in the Victorian Era attempted to force emotional and physical bonds with women.
“It was like a miracle… body crumbled into dust… look of peace” - Chapter 27
When the ‘crew of light’ (Christopher Craft) kill Dracula. All aspects of society revert back to innocence as Dracula was the embodiment of everything that Victorian society was threatened by. Despite his overt religious corruption, there is a sense of salvation in Dracula’s death. Dracula personified the threats to the moral and social expectations of fin de siècle London. Perhaps appropriate given the symbolic associations of the vampire with spiritual corruption or the tangible dangers of contagion or venereal disease.
“Opened a vein in his breast… blood began to spurt out” - Chapter 21
When exchanging blood with females, Dracula takes on the exaggerated ‘male dominance’ persona. Use of extreme intentional force upon the ‘weaker’ features of a susceptible woman can constitute a form of rape. Stoker presents him as a irruptive foreign and supernatural force whose arrival in England threatens the values of late Victorian society.
“I want you to believe… to believe in things that you cannot” - Chapter 14 - Van Helsing
Van Helsing wants Seward to believe in things that seem to defy scientific fact - in things supernatural - he then suggests that the small holes on the children’s necks were made by Lucy.
“Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things”
As a resident of Eastern Europe, Dracula is portrayed as significantly different from his English, American and Dutch enemies. His national origin is a significant part of what makes him threatening to the other characters.
“Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and other shall yet be mine” - Dracula
He makes himself feel powerful by taking and harming women whom he sees as belonging to other men.
“By way of women Dracula attacks men; through women he will contaminate and colonise the teeming metropolis of London”. In the name of women the good men respond to the threat. Women constitute the objects and supports for male exchanges and identities, supports that are narcissistic in their reflections on and between men.
