The reason for this claim concerns what I'll call Dracula's "Christian realism." By Christian realism I mean that the Christian faith provides the novel's account of reality. God, evil, heaven, the human soul, prayer, and the spiritual power of sacred things are all treated as objectively real.
The Christian realism of Dracula is especially evident in the tension between faith and modernity. The novel sits at the cusp of the Old World and the New, poised between ancient superstition and scientific progress. The story dances between 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 anticipates that Seward will be skeptical about his diagnosis of the problem. Consequently, as things unfold, it is 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 ailment, 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.”
Later in this same conversation, Van Helsing asks Seward to open his mind, to set aside his scientific prejudices, so that Van 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 which 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 exchange 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 realities.
To be clear, Van Helsing 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.
In short, in the novel Dracula Van Helsing presents us with an epistemological ideal. As a man of science, he 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.
The Christian realism of Dracula is also evident in the understanding of the characters about what is at stake. The Harkers, the couple at the center of the drama, are Protestant. Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a devout Catholic. Consequently, the group trying to defeat Dracula pray together and explicitly view their battle against Dracula as a spiritual conflict. As Van Helsing says:
“Thus are we ministers of God's own wish. That the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise. And like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause.”
Before the climactic encounter with Dracula, the group prays with Van Helsing: “O God, give me light in the darkness!”
The reality of heaven also plays a key role in the drama of the story. The status of Lucy Westenra's soul is at risk if the group cannot free her from the curse. As Van Helsing explains, “When this now Un-Dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free.” When Lucy's soul is freed, Van Helsing declares, “No longer she is the devil's Un-Dead. She is God's true dead, whose soul is with Him!”
The stakes of the story, then, are not merely biological. Dracula is not simply killing people. He is violating and corrupting human beings who belong to God.
And finally, Christian realism shows up in the weapons used against Dracula: holy water, rosaries, crucifixes and, most importantly, the Consecrated Host. The use of the Host might be surprising. In modern vampire stories you often see crucifixes held aloft. But in Stoker's story, the Host is Van Helsing's weapon of choice. The Host is used to repulse a vampire from attacking. The Host is used to despoil tombs and coffins so they cannot be used by vampires. The Host is used to determine if someone has been tainted by Dracula's blood. And crumbled bits of the Host are used to create protective circles that Dracula cannot enter.
In short, Christian realism suffuses the book. There are real spiritual powers at work, for both good and evil. Very early in the novel, before Jonathan Harker goes to Dracula's castle, a peasant woman, fearing for his safety, gives him a crucifix. Later on, upon finding himself trapped in the castle, Jonathan finds comfort in the crucifix. And its comfort causes Jonathan to question his Protestant misgivings about the object:
“It [the crucifix] is an odd thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavor and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort? Some time, if it may be, I must examine this matter and try to make up my mind about it.”
Jonathan is standing here, early in the novel, in that liminal space between the old, traditional faith and scientific modernity. He wonders if the crucifix possesses spiritual potency—“something in the essence of the thing itself”—or if it's just a comforting memory. And as the story progresses, Jonathan's doubts will be dispelled. The crucifix, along with other holy and consecrated objects, does possess spiritual power. There is, truly and powerfully, “something in the essence of the thing itself.”
This is what I mean by the Christian realism Dracula. Christianity provides the ontology of the novel, sets the definitions of the real.
Simply put, in Dracula the Christian faith is true.
