Superstitious/Religious Themes in Dracula

We began the lesson by discussing Whitby Abbey and its relevance both to Dracula and to the gothic genre in its entirety (hence the picture of my cousin and I standing next to the Abbey looking scared while visiting Whitby last Summer...the cars in the background enhance the gothic feeling, don't you think?!). There's an element of mystery and intrigue surrounding Whitby Abbey as, in seeing the ruins of the abbey while still being able to appreciate how grand it once was (through structure and architecture), you find yourself drawn to the story behind the disrepair - how and why the abbey ended up in such a bad way. I think this idea of wanting to know stories behind ruins and disasters links with the gothic genre as, essentially, many gothic protagonists, such as Dracula are, in a way, 'ruins' of people. The 'shell' of the Abbey can be seen to reflect Dracula and his emptiness and inhuman nature. Despite being the ruins of an abbey, Whitby Abbey maintains its imposing, typically gothic qualities and it's easy to understand why Stoker was inspired by it - I've blogged about facades within Dracula before and I think Whitby Abbey is a really good image to associate with this idea - it's the facade of the Abbey that remains - although just stone ruins, it maintains a grand appearance and demands attention, like the Count himself. And although appearing grand from the outside (as Dracula does), it can just hold rats and boxes of earth! In a way, it tricks you into it's better and grander than it is when, inside, it's hollow.

We then attempted to define religion and superstition and distinguish between the two - while bearing in mind that, in Stoker's day, the two would have been more clearly defined and sepearate than they are in our minds today. One of the ideas that we discussed in relation to superstition was that it was like religion but pushed to excess and born out of fear - this was certainly something that is touched upon in the text, with Jonathan saying in relation to the superstitious people he comes into contact with on his way to Castle Dracula that 'it was all very ridiculous'...however...as he becomes more scared and suspicious of the Count and the goings on in the castle, he starts to buy into the superstitions and finds comfort in the crucifix given to him...'I suppose the general superstition about midnight was increased by recent experiences'. It's also suggested that superstition in some way linked to the idea of being in a foreign place - in England, Jonathan is able to dismiss superstitions and superstitious behaviour as 'ridiculous' and the stuff of imagination as opposed to reality - whereas, when he finds himself in the Carpathians, in a foreign country, he's left unsure as to what to believe and what's true and what's not ('I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool') - ties in with the conflict between logic and mysticism (and believing in the 'not possible') that runs throughout the novel. Interestingly, the superstitious inhabitants of Transylvania use religious symbols to fight against the the supposedly negative superstitious things...as Van Helsing does in using the crucifix to ward off Dracula and Seward ends up doing with the wafer and crucifix when he comes face to face with the Count - the battle between logic/mysticism is closely linked to the one of religion/superstition and we see this conflict played out between Van Helsing and Seward's differing opinions...VH spends the novel encouraging Seward that not everything can be explained logically and sometimes you just have to believe and not just dismiss things as silly superstitions and the sign that he learns this lesson is his use of wafer and crucifix as weapons in the first direct fight against Dracula. The science man...with the religious 'weapons'. Without the invest of belief in the 'impossible', the mystical and the fantastical, the technological weapons used against Dracula are nothing - they have to look to the past to fight him (typically gothic idea) - links with the reader's relationship to the novel as, as the characters do in order to fight Dracula, the reader must feel the fear and buy into the mysticism of vampires in order to get the full impact of Stoker's novel.