"Demythologizing Dracula"

by John F. Crossen


Dracula, like many public icons, has generated a fair share of myths to go along with the popularity. Whether speaking of the book, films, sources, and even those most associated with the character, there are myths that will sneak into our chatter... Here are ten common ones in the literature and discussion groups:

1. Stoker's Dracula IS Vlad Dracula. Not quite... It's true that Van Helsing describes the Count as "that voivode Dracula" who fought against the Turks, but equally true is the apparent fact that Stoker cribbed this verbatim from a travel book on Transylvania. In all likelihood, Stoker did not see any portraits of the historical Dracula and he certainly did not do exhaustive research. As Dracula scholar Clive Leatherdale notes, the "historical" Dracula in the novel is a cypher, more a literary device to give his novel a substratum of factual realism. The narrative does not give us any real data on the life of the Count... it seems made up after the "voivode" line. Even the use of "Count" is not a Romanian royal title. Vlad Dracula was a warlord prince, which is a rough translation of "voivode." More a popular leader than aristocrat. Moreover, nowhere in the novel is Dracula referred to as "Vlad" or "Tepes" (the Impaler).

Physically, Count Dracula is very different from the historical Vlad. The Count is tall, grossly thin, with a high forehead like a dome. He has a moustache, beak nose, and looks rather bestial. Vlad, on the other hand, was full-faced, with a large head that seemed to sit directly on his shoulders. Today he'd probably be teased as "No-Neck"--that is, safely in America. True, he had a moustache and rather long nose but he did not look bestial in appearance. One contemporary description said he was rather husky--broad shouldered and medium height--five feet, nine inches (which would have been "tall" in his day but not imposing). Some critics have suggested that Stoker could have seen German woodcuts of Vlad Dracula in the British Museum which picture him as severe, cruel-looking. Perhaps. But not bestial as in the literary portrait in the novel. Stoker was a believer in physiognomy--that one's physical looks reveal one's character. There was more of this ideology in his portrait of Count Dracula than anything else.

2. Stoker did exhaustive research for his novel. No. We have a list of the reference works he referred to (at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia) and it appears he used a few travel books, read one or two volumes on folkore and mythology, and filled in the rest with whatever he had picked up in his reading of classic horrors, including the work of J. Sheridan LeFanu. If he seemed careful about anything it was in making notes on train schedules, dates, and particulars in shipping. Anyone who has read the novel knows how driven by a timeline the novel is--and in this regard, Stoker was very meticulous (though not always consistent).

One odd bit of trivia: Stoker had planned to title his book, COUNT WAMPYR. This may have been a variation on Polidori's THE VAMPYRE--a sort of homage to that work. It was changed to DRACULA rather late in the writing, probably at the time he chanced on the name "Dracula" in a travel book on Transylvania.

3. Stoker got the idea for DRACULA in a dream after eating too much lobster for dinner. Every once in a while, this apocryphal story emerges in the literature (in my life, most recently in an article in the Bloomington Herald-Times on the centennial of the novel--I was interviewed for the piece and I told the writer that was just a story and not necessarily "factual"; she printed it as "fact" anyway!). Daniel Farson helped popularize this myth in a biography of Stoker and it seems members of the Stoker family enjoyed repeating it through the years. The fact is that this was a posture, a literary convention employed by Gothic authors to "explain" how they could have written such horrible things. Mary Shelley claimed the same source (the Dreamworld) for FRANKENSTEIN; Robert Louis Stevenson gave credit to indigestion-induced nightmares too for DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE. A classic story within a story scenario--and designed by the authors to deflect any negative assessment of their mental or spiritual health by genteel society. After all, a sound-minded person could never imagine such things on his or her own!

In all likelihood (based on the text itself and Stoker's working notes), DRACULA owes its inspiration to the vampire stories of Polidori and LeFanu (the latter another author who claimed dreams as his inspiration). As noted above, he even intended to title the book COUNT WAMPYR (a blending of Polidori's "The Vampyre" and LeFanu's COUNTess "Carmilla" Karnstein?); this was in the planning stages as far back as 1890. He may have been working on it for some seven to ten years before its publication in 1897!

As with lobster, we should consume the "dream" story with a grain of salt... but plenty of butter!

4. "Dracula's Guest" is the deleted first chapter of DRACULA. Apparently not... And scholar Clive Leatherdale has studied Stoker's notes to prove it. Nowhere in the notes does Stoker mention the events of the so-called "cut" chapter, later published posthumously by the author's widow in 1914. Internal evidence in the text supports Leatherdale's doubts: for example, in the novel, Jonathan Harker speaks a passable German; in the story, the unnamed narrator (believed in the past to be Harker) can hardly understand German... He insists his coachman speak English! The style of writing differs from the novel--it is more compact, faster-paced, much better actually! It reads as if it was intended to be a short story and not a chapter in a long novel. We base the belief that "Dracula's Guest" is a deleted chapter on the supposition of Florence, Stoker's widow, who found it among his papers--SHE and not Stoker claimed it was a chapter removed from the book to shorten it. Leatherdale believes that Stoker wrote the story in the early 1890s, the period of his greatest short story writing, including "The Squaw". After writing it, he decided to scrap it and develop it into a full-blown novel. Only later, after DRACULA was an international bestseller, did Stoker dust it off, alter a few details and put the title "Dracula's Guest" on it. He may have intended it as a "prequel" to the action in the novel, but we'll never know for sure... But Dracula scholars seem more and more unanimous: it is NOT a deleted first chapter to DRACULA.

5. Dracula wears a long cape. The only place in the book where the Count is described as wearing a cape is in the zoo scene, when he is visiting the wolf "Bersicker" and speaks to the keeper. At the castle, Harker says he was dressed in black from head to foot--but not specifically in a cape. Most readers assume he is wearing a long coat. At one point, Harker discovers the Count stretched out on a couch reading--the Vampire King leaps up to salute the young man. To try and do this in a floor-length cape would not only be a feat but a chore!

Capes were stage conventions, worn by dozens of villains in melodramas and adapted by actors to portray a threatening Dracula. The cape shielded the audience's eyes from the nasty (and presumably naughty) goings on as he molested the poor girl victim. In addition, a stage Dracula could spread the cape and create the illusion of an enormous predatory bat--the vampire's earthly cousin.

6. Dracula cannot survive in sunlight. One of the most amazing revelations to first-time DRACULA readers is that Count Dracula walks about at night... and in the daylight! He is seen in broad daylight in Picadilly Circus in one section, for example. Professor Van Helsing tells us that the vampire is most powerful at night but that in the sunlight his powers wane. He can move about, he just can't transform into bats, mists, or break your arm as if it were a twig. Stoker is being a bit footloose and fancy free with the folklore on this point but it is true that vampires are not confined to their graves during the hours of the sun--generally speaking. Regional legends vary on when vampires must return to their graves but strictly speaking they're not on some fixed timeline; they do not need to keep looking to the horizon to be sure a ray of light doesn't turn them into burnt toast.

The visual media have propagated the myth of a terminal allergy to the sun. Crosses, garlic, even holy water are not dramatic enough in modern vampire films. For a bloodsucker to exit with a bang, a fiery or explosive climax in the sun seems more "cinematic", visually satisfying. Hammer Films' HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), for example, shows Christopher Lee's Count literally crumbling in the sunlight--as if a corrosive acid is breaking apart his tissues and bone. Other vampires have gone out in gory glory, thanks be to Helios, in such films as NEAR DARK, FRIGHT NIGHT, BLADE, INNOCENT BLOOD, and John Carpenter's VAMPIRES. The FX may be neat but they ain't Stoker!

7. Movie myth: Max Schreck is not the name of the actor who plays the vampire in NOSFERATU (1922); it's "Aristid Olt". Not true. Schreck really was a guy named Schreck! And yes, the name means "terror" in German, which may have been one reason F.W. Murnau chose him to play his "Dracula." David Skal has a rare non-NOSFERATU photo of Max Schreck in his book, HOLLYWOOD GOTHIC.

8. In his last days, Bela Lugosi believed he was Dracula; this is why he was buried in his cape. The true part--Lugosi was buried in his Dracula garb, cape and tux. The false part--that he was crazy or delusional. A great many myths persist about Lugosi's later years and this is one of the most "romantic"--an actor who is so identified with a role he ends up believing it... and dies this way. It's also very insulting to the man and his family. As far as we know, from accounts by Ed Wood and Lugosi's widow and son, Lugosi was feeling well in his last days following a recent recovery from an addiction to pain killers; he was reading scripts and planning to work on a film called THE GHOUL GOES WEST. He died of a sudden heart attack (not a drug overdose, as another pop myth-insult alleges).

Another myth is that Boris Karloff went to the funeral, leaned over the body of Lugosi and whispered, "Come now, Bela, rise up! We all know it's an act." Karloff was in England at the time of the Hungarian's death; he did not attend the funeral.

9. BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA is Stoker's DRACULA. Wrong! I still hear people who claim, "But that film is the most faithful to the novel!" Sorry. Its correct title should be: RICHARD MATHESON'S DRACULA as directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Though it is true that ALL major characters (including the vampire hunters Harker, Quincey, Arthur, John Seward and Van Helsing) are represented in the film, the basic storyline (a quasi-reincarnation/lost love story) owes more to Richard Matheson's script for the Jack Palance DRACULA (1974, itself originally titled BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA). In a note to me, author Matheson was not "pleased" that neither screenwriter James Holt or Coppola credited him with inspiration.

Other non-Stoker elements in the film: the opening narrative set in 15th century Wallachia; the oriental dress and look of the Count when Harker first meets him; Dracula's transformation into a wolf-beast that rapes (!!!) Lucy; Lucy's blatant sexual suggestiveness--not the way she is portrayed at all in the novel (she is more like a too-good little girl); Van Helsing is presented as a scarred reprobate--he even succombs to Mina's sexual allure towards the end and buries his face in her breasts!!!; Mina is the one who "releases" poor Prince Vlad by doing him a favor and cutting off his head... From little to major details, the film is not Stoker's novel. Nor is it Stoker's conception.

To date, probably the most faithful film version of the novel itself, plot and character relationships: COUNT DRACULA (1978), starring Louis Jourdan.

10. Stoker used Countess Erzebet Bathory, the "Blood Countess", as a model for Dracula. In his book DRACULA WAS A WOMAN, Raymond T. McNally argues that Stoker must have known the stories of Countess Bathory of Hungary (1586-1614) and her legendary thirst for blood; he made her male in order to unite her with Vlad Dracula in one character. "Must have" and "did indeed" are not synonymous. Stoker does not mention Bathory in either his notes or the book. It is more likely that if there was a "Countess" that inspired him, it was Mircalla (Carmilla) Karnstein, the titular vampire of the LeFanu story (1871).

Bathory herself may be the subject of more myths than facts. The most famous being that she bathed in virgins' blood to sustain her youth (a legend that McNally also claims Stoker adapted in his novel--thus explaining Dracula growing younger as he feasts on blood). The sensationalistic author Valentine Penrose popularized this story in his book on Bathory in 1962 (published in Paris, which in turn inspired a novella in Spanish by Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, LA CONDESA SANGRIENTA). As far as we know, this is a smear cooked up by her detractors to make Bathory look even more monstrous. The court records do not indicate this as a charge against her; and Bathory herself never said she needed to bathe in blood to stay young. What we do know is that Bathory was horrendous in other ways as noted in the court records of 1610: she was a practitioner of Satanic rites; she loved to watch girls being tortured; she would have the girls' corpses placed in her bed where she would often go into strange fits and bite and chew the necks, arms, or other body parts. The image of Erzebet Bathory having the blood drained into large tubs so that she could bathe in the rejuvenating fluids is a later invention, and one exploited by filmmakers in COUNTESS DRACULA (1970).

For an excellent account of the Bathory trial, see McNally's DRACULA WAS A WOMAN.

There are many more myths to take an oath to never repeat but the above are some of the most common. Be on guard against them as you discuss and read about the origins of Stoker's novel and the films it has inspired. And remind your associates: Truth is indeed more scary than fiction.


Bio: John F. Crossen is a doctoral candidate in Spanish American literature at Indiana University... and a dedicated Draculaphile! He is a member of the Lord Ruthven Assembly and the Transylvania Society of Dracula. He is an associate editor of "The Journal of Dracula Studies" and has published essays on Dracula in AUTOGRAPH TIMES and the book DRACULA--THE SHADE AND THE SHADOW, edited by Elizabeth Miller. His chapter-essay "Dracula at the Drive-In" will be published in the forthcoming book from McFarland, DRIVE-IN HORRORS, edited by Gary Don Rhodes.