Evil in the Worlds of D racula and The H istorian
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Gradually, she is changing into a vampire before her friends’ eyes. Van Helsing
wonders “God! God! God!”; why are they so beset by such evil (156).
Near death, Lucy attempts to bestow the vampire’s kiss on her beloved
Arthur, thus spreading this blood disease. But Van Helsing prevents the kiss.
After she is buried, Lucy walks at night as one of the undead, seducing small
children for their blood. Later, we will discuss how Van Helsing and Lucy’s
friends use Christian artifacts finally to release her from this vampiric horror. In
a letter to Van Helsing, Mina exclaims “what terrible things there are in the
world, and what an awful thing if that man [Dracula], that monster, be really in
London” (213). Through these words, Stoker has Mina voice the philosophical
problem of evil.
While sad about her friend Lucy, Mina is happy to hear that her fiance
Jonathan has escaped from his imprisonment and is recovering in the hospital
from “a violent brain fever.” She travels to Budapest where they are married and
then return to London. The second half of Stoker’s novel, therefore, deals with
the Mina-Dracula conflict. One day, Jonathan and Mina see a youthful-looking
Dracula in London, causing Jonathan to have a “slight relapse of his malady”
(198). Mina later dreams that she is encountering a face in the mist; this is
actually the evil Dracula coming after her in one of his shapes. Then we read
from Dr. Seward’s diary that Dracula is caught by Van Helsing actually drinking
from Mina in her room. Mina calls herself “Unclean! unclean!” (321). The rest
of the Mina-Dracula conflict—a conflict of good versus evil—takes us from
London back to Transylvania.
The Reach of Evil in Stoker’s Dracula
The reach of evil in Stoker’s Dracula is a function both of time and of
geography. Although geography receives the most focus, time receives some
coverage.
To begin, Jonathan has traveled from London to the Carpathians, called
there by Dracula to explain the count’s recent London estate purchase. In the
castle’s library, Jonathan sees many reference works on English life that Dracula
is studying, apparently as he transitions to the London area to spread his
vampiric evil. Dracula has maps of London, Exeter, Whitby, and the Yorkshire
coast. Significantly, Jonathan writes in his journal that the monstrous undead
Dracula, sleeping in the midst of his earth-filled boxes under the castle, is “the
being I was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps, for centuries to come
he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and crea FR