Chapter 24

The group prepare to chase Dracula across Europe, Mina is changing.

Xenophobia 1. This very creature that we pursue, he take hundreds of years to get so far as
London; and yet in one day, when we know of the disposal of him we drive
him out.
Colonialism
2. Already the certainty that the Count is out of the country has given her
Reverse comfort; and comfort is strength to her.
colonialism 3. I have told them how the measure of leaving his own barren land—barren of
peoples—and coming to a new land where life of man teems till they are
like the multitude of standing corn, was the work of centuries. Were another
of the Un-Dead, like him, to try to do what he has done, perhaps not all the
centuries of the world that have been, or that will be, could aid him.

4. “But will not the Count take his rebuff wisely? Since he has been driven
from England, will he not avoid it, as a tiger does the village from which he
has been hunted?” “Aha!” he said, “your simile of the tiger good, for me,
and I shall adopt him. Your man-eater, as they of India call the tiger who has
once tasted blood of the human, care no more for the other prey, but prowl
unceasing till he get him. This that we hunt from our village is a tiger, too, a
man-eater, and he never cease to prowl. Nay, in himself he is not one to
retire and stay afar. In his life, his living life, he go over the Turkey frontier
and attack his enemy on his own ground; he be beaten back, but did he stay?
No! He come again, and again, and again. Look at his persistence and
endurance. With the child-brain that was to him he have long since conceive
the idea of coming to a great city. What does he do? He find out the place of
all the world most of promise for him. Then he deliberately set himself
down to prepare for the task. He find in patience just how is his strength, and
what are his powers. He study new tongues. He learn new social life; new
environment of old ways, the politic, the law, the finance, the science, the
habit of a new land and a new people who have come to be since he was.
His glimpse that he have had, whet his appetite only and enkeen his desire.
Nay, it help him to grow as to his brain; for it all prove to him how right he
was at the first in his surmises. He have done this alone; all alone! from a
ruin tomb in a forgotten land. What more may he not do when the greater
world of thought is open to him. He that can smile at death, as we know
him; who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole peoples.
Oh, if such an one was to come from God, and not the Devil, what a force
for good might he not be in this old world of ours.

5. “I understand that the Count comes from a wolf country, and it may be that
he shall get there before us. I propose that we add Winchesters to our
armament. I have a kind of belief in a Winchester when there is any trouble
of that sort around. Do you remember, Art, when we had the pack after us at
Tobolsk? What wouldn’t we have given then for a repeater apiece!”
 The other 1. Alas! how can I disbelieve! In the midst of my thought my eye fell on the
red scar on my poor darling’s white forehead. Whilst that lasts, there can be
no disbelief. And afterwards the very memory of it will keep faith crystal
Women clear.

2. Were another of the Un-Dead, like him, to try to do what he has done,
perhaps not all the centuries of the world that have been, or that will be,
could aid him. With this one, all the forces of nature that are occult and deep
and strong must have worked together in some wondrous way. The very
place, where he have been alive, Un-Dead for all these centuries, is full of
strangeness of the geologic and chemical world. There are deep caverns and
fissures that reach none know whither. There have been volcanoes, some of
whose openings still send out waters of strange properties, and gases that kill
or make to vivify. Doubtless, there is something magnetic or electric in
some of these combinations of occult forces which work for physical life in
strange way; and in himself were from the first some great qualities. In a
hard and warlike time he was celebrate that he have more iron nerve, more
subtle brain, more braver heart, than any man. In him some vital principle
have in strange way found their utmost; and as his body keep strong and
grow and thrive, so his brain grow too. All this without that diabolic aid
which is surely to him; for it have to yield to the powers that come from, and
are, symbolic of good. And now this is what he is to us. He have infect you
—oh, forgive me, my dear, that I must say such; but it is for good of you
that I speak.

3. “Madam Mina, our poor, dear Madam Mina is changing.” A cold shiver ran
through me to find my worst fears thus endorsed. Van Helsing continued:
—“With the sad experience of Miss Lucy, we must this time be warned
before things go too far. Our task is now in reality more difficult than ever,
and this new trouble makes every hour of the direst importance. I can see the
characteristics of the vampire coming in her face. It is now but very, very
slight; but it is to be seen if we have eyes to notice without to prejudge. Her
teeth are some sharper, and at times her eyes are more hard. But these are
not all, there is to her the silence now often; as so it was with Miss Lucy.

AO3 (either WR inks or general contextual information)

Xenophobia

Colonisation/
Reverse
Colonisation

The other

Presentation of
women

https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/e-magazine/articles/40366
Interrogating the Other – Stoker, Bronte and Shelley
John Hathaway explores the way in which three seminal Gothic texts – Dracula,
Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein make use of the dangerous or different
character, either to reinforce or to unsettle the binaries of good and bad, human
and monster, them and us.
One universal aspect of Gothic texts is the way that they operate by ‘othering’ a particular person or group of people
by presenting them as in some way worse than the characters who perceive themselves to be ‘good’ and civilised. Yet
the very process of othering itself is incredibly problematic. Gothic texts in many ways problematise such simple
distinctions as ‘good’ and ‘evil’, suggesting that these binary oppositions are not as simple and clear cut as we would
like to think.

Dracula – ‘wipe this brute from the face of creation’

The eponymous vampire in Dracula, published in 1897, is a classic case of othering. He is perceived as the evil,
foreign aggressor who is presented as a threat to civilised English society, and particularly its women. From his very
first introduction in the novel, he is almost universally condemned by all of the characters, except for one section
where Mina feels pity towards him. His description emphasises his abhuman and supernatural qualities. He is
described as ‘this terrible monster’ whose ‘eyes flamed red with devilish passion.’ He is variously compared to a
‘filthy leech’, a ‘lizard’, a ‘basilisk’ and a ‘wild beast’ whose teeth ‘champed together.’ The description of Dracula as
a ‘filthy leech’ in particular is key to his othering: he is not only an evil monster, but one who feeds off others, a
parasite that grows younger and stronger as it sucks the blood of others, something that is disturbingly paralleled in the
text by Jonathan Harker’s premature aging and greying of his hair.

The narrative voice of this text presents Dracula as an uncomplicated example of the other: he is a source of
wickedness and immorality who is repeatedly likened to the devil and hell. The characters themselves interpret their
battle against Dracula as one that is spiritual: Van Helsing labels himself and the vampire hunters as ‘ministers of
God’s own wish’ whose religious duty it is to annihilate Dracula and not only eradicate the threat he presents but also
save Dracula himself from the living hell he is forced to inhabit as a vampire. Thus it is that by the end of the text, we
are meant to celebrate with the vampire hunters Dracula’s death. We are expected to rejoice in the restoration of
Mina’s purity as the mark on her forehead (symbolising her ‘unclean’ status after her vampire baptism) is removed.

However, from a modern day perspective, it is very difficult to accept at face value such othering, and we are far more
likely to position ourselves outside the world of the text and question the identity of both Dracula and his opponents.
Dracula has been read in a multitude of ways, and he has become something of a cipher for, variously, the fear of
immigrants, concerns about the voracious spread of STDs, worries about the decline of the British Empire as the end
of the century loomed and also questions relating to changing gender roles, to name but a few. Modern day readers are
far more likely to probe such statements as

‘We must hunt out his lairs and sterilise them’

seeing in such language uncanny and troubling similarities to, for example, the treatment of Jews by the Nazis.

Heathcliff – ‘Would that he could be blotted out of creation’

Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, features an othered character who bears many similarities to Dracula.
Heathcliff is a Byronic hero who is often described by those around him as monstrous: he has ‘basilisk eyes’ and is
‘not a human being’, rather behaving like an ‘incarnate goblin’, according to Isabella. He is presented in terms that
link him to hell and the devil. His eyes are metaphorically presented as ‘clouded windows of hell’ and from the outset,
the colour of his skin causes Mr Earnshaw to state that he is

‘dark almost as if he came from the devil.’

In her forward to her sister’s work, Charlotte Brontë herself supports this view of Heathcliff, portraying him as a
‘man’s shape animated by a demon life – a ghoul – an afreet’ who ‘stands unredeemed’ because of his evil actions and
how he plays the role of a ‘cuckoo’, entering a family as an outsider only to usurp the rightful place of firstborn.

However, we might question whether this was Emily Brontë’s intention. Fundamental to the narrative is the identity of
Heathcliff. Whereas Stoker presents us with a rather simplistic dichotomy in his text, Brontë is far more nuanced.
Whilst Heathcliff as a character is certainly othered throughout the text, one feature of the narrative is the recurring
questions concerning his status. Isabella asks at one stage ‘Is Mr Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a
devil?’ Nelly Dean likewise questions if he is a ‘ghoul or a vampire’ as she muses on Heathcliff’s life and actions. Mr
Earnshaw’s description of Heathcliff as ‘from the devil’ is balanced by his presentation of him as a ‘gift of god’, and
Nelly’s assurance that Heathcliff has ‘a heart and nerves the same as your brother men’ is matched against Isabella’s
description of his inhumanity. Catherine’s passionate feelings for Heathcliff also clearly position him very differently
from a character like Dracula, who has no-one on his side, least of all the heroine of the novel, and the stories of his
early life and rescuing also put him more in the position of victim than of aggressor. Equally, in the scales of right and
wrong, his impoverished background and lack of power, counterposed against the Linton’s comfortable wealth, cause
some sympathy in readers. Brontë seems to want her readers to, at the very least, question the othering of Heathcliff
and resist the easy dichotomy that we find in Dracula. In the light of this, Charlotte Brontë’s foreword might suggest
her anticipation of a shocked and outraged response to Heathcliff and an attempt to defuse this.

Arguably, key to this presentation of Heathcliff is also Nelly Dean’s description of him as he mourns the death of
Catherine Earnshaw. Nelly states that he

‘howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears.’

This simile is worthy of attention because it both dehumanises Heathcliff as a ‘savage beast’ but also presents a
justifiable reason for his behaviour by comparing him to an animal who is cruelly tortured. This introduces a
psychological interpretation of Heathcliff’s behaviour that moves beyond a simple supernatural view of his identity.
Rather than simply labelling him as ‘a lying fiend, a monster, and not a human being’, Brontë wants the reader to find
it difficult to answer the questions that are posed about his identity. He undeniably transgresses accepted codes of
behaviour, but at the same time he is an orphaned, abused and ostracised individual. As critic James Twitchell
declares, he is both

parasite and host, oppressor and victim, vampire and vampirised.

Frankenstein – ‘I will devote myself to his destruction’

The creature in Frankenstein – interestingly only ever referred to as the ‘monster’ by his creator, Victor Frankenstein –
is systematically othered by Victor: he is compared to a ‘vile insect’ and repeatedly called a ‘filthy mass’ of ‘unearthly
ugliness’. He is described in terms that present him as abhuman, with his ‘yellow eye’ and ‘shrivelled complexion’.
He, like Heathcliff and Dracula, is called a ‘devil’ and a ‘cursed and hellish monster’ of ‘unparalleled barbarity’. This
allows Frankenstein to view his task of ‘extinction’ as ‘assigned to [him] by heaven’, seeing himself much as Van
Helsing frames the identity of the vampire hunters: righteous agents of God pitted against unspeakable evil.

Where this text differs from both Dracula and Wuthering Heights is that the creature himself is given a sustained voice
to defend himself and rail against his mistreatment. The narrative structure of Frankenstein places the creature’s
account at the centre of the text, emphasising its importance. The creature explicitly addresses his othering, howling
against the injustice of how he has been treated and questioning the supposed humanity of humans:

Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove
his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his
child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be
spurned at, kicked, and trampled on.

Shelley, by privileging the voice of the creature and allowing him to directly confront his treatment, profoundly
unsettles the reader. It is interesting to note that the creature himself admits that he has moved from the status of a
‘fallen angel’ to a ‘malignant devil’: he makes no defence of his heinous crimes and abhorrent deeds. Yet, surely, we
as readers are meant to feel the heat of his wrath as he sarcastically points out our double standards in viewing Felix
and the peasant as ‘virtuous and immaculate beings’ rather than fellow ‘criminals’ like him. In a similar vein to
Wuthering Heights, Shelley confronts her audience with the disturbing possibility that the creature was not born evil
but made evil by his mistreatment at the hands of humans.

‘A fatal prejudice clouds [our] eyes’

An exploration of othering in Gothic fiction reveals an undeniable tension between what we can safely call human and
what is undeniably monstrous. Although some texts, like Dracula, lend themselves to a rather simplistic view of the
other as an evil creature deserving of its fate, it is perhaps more accurate to recognise the profound ambiguity that
othering should induce in us as readers of the Gothic. Arguably, the true lesson of othering is to expose in us the same
tendency that the creature in Frankenstein makes explicit: so often othering allows us to label ‘others’ as evil whilst
safely blinding ourselves to any moral culpability.

Article Written By: John Hathaway is Head of English at Glenalmond College.

This article was first published in emagazine 88, April 2020.

AO1 What high level vocabulary/knowledge of the gothic can you take from this article?

AO2 Are there any aspects of the ‘other’ being analysed here that you could take to aid you in your unseen
exam essay?

AO3 Wider reading/Gothic context/Victorian context

AO5 Interpretations