The Enchantments of Bram Stoker's Dracula: Part 2, In Praise of Van Helsing

As I mentioned in the last post, Bram Stoker's Dracula is a liminal book, in plot and when it was published. The book sits at the cusp of the Old world and the New, poised between ancient superstitions and scientific progress. The novel dances been skepticism and faith.

That dance is mainly played out between Dr. John "Jack" Seward and his former professor Abraham Van Helsing. Seward, as a psychiatrist, is a modern man of science. But when he is stumped by Lucy Westenra's symptoms, he calls upon Van Helsing, his former professor. Van Helsing soon begins to suspect that something occult is going on, but he refrains from disclosing his thoughts to Seward. Knowing him to be a modern, scientific man, Van Helsing knows Seward will be skeptical about Van Helsing's diagnosis of the problem. Consequently, as things unfold it's between Van Helsing and Seward where the issues of faith and doubt in the modern world come out in the novel. 

For example, early on, in discussing Seward's perplexity at Lucy's aliment, Van Helsing says to him:

"You are a clever man, friend John. You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's eyes, because they know, or think they know, some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain."

Such a great line: "It is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain."

Later in this same conversation, Val Helsing asks Seward to open his mind, to set aside his scientific prejudices, so that Val Helsing can disclose what he thinks is happening:

"Well, I shall tell you. My thesis is this, I want you to believe."

"To believe what?"

"To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an American who so defined faith, 'that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.' For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe."

This passage captures how Van Helsing is a man of two worlds, a man of science and a man of faith. Seward's epistemology, by contrast, is small and asymmetrical. Science, for Seward, has collected a pile of pebbles we call "facts." But he lets those small truths, even a single pebble, derail the entire train. The granular, factual, and small blinds Seward to larger realties. 

Van Helsing also values science. All those facts, those small truths, we keep and value them. But we don't let this handful of facts trick us into thinking we have in our possession all the truth in the universe. 

If you like the work of Iain McGilchrist, Seward is left-hemisphere dominant. Seward can see the granular but he can't see the larger whole, pattern, or Gestalt. Seward's attention is too narrow. He can't see big pictures. Van Helsing, by contrast, is more balanced in his cognitive processes, able to let his right-hemisphere piece together a mosaic from the bits of the factual. 

In short, in the novel Dracula Van Helsing, as the hero of the story, presents us with an epistemological ideal. As a man of science, Van Helsing is firmly planted in the modern world and is at home there. But as a man of faith, Van Helsing is also able to perceive larger and greater realities that his more modern student, Dr. Seward, cannot. Seward can only see illness. Van Helsing can see both illness and evil, and this greater perceptual range makes him the champion of the story.