Drac

In chapter eight of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, Mina Harker’s journal entry serves to illustrate using the rational mind to combat the supernatural. In Mina’s entry, she recounts the strange event that has just occurred to her and caused her not to be able to sleep. In times of stress, Mina translates everything into analog, which is a familiar and understandable medium for her. After the events of the evening, instead of going into a dream state where she would be met with irrational dreams fueled by her subconscious, she chooses to write, which, unlike her dreams, she can control. The precise nature of writing is a comfort to Mina.

In her journal, Mina recounts that there was “undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure." Mina sees Lucy at the climax of Dracula's attack, and when she calls for Lucy, "something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes.” Unknown to Mina, the figure bending over Lucy is Count Dracula, and his attack on Lucy, in Victorian culture, is sexual assault. Stoker plays with the underlying sexual theme by positioning Lucy reclined on the seat with Dracula bending over her as he "penetrates" her neck with his teeth. Even the bite marks on Lucy’s neck serve as a sexual innuendo of a virgin’s first sexual encounter: Lucy escapes into the night and bleeds after a man penetrates her.

The idea of Victorian womanhood is extremely sacred, especially to a woman like Mina, who primarily wishes to be of use to her husband. Dracula’s penetrating the West and his actions are threats to female purity, and so they are threats to Victorian culture and order of England (Western world). Dracula is penetrating the entire nature of Vi...

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...t, and by entering the West, has created a backwards colonialism that opposes the precise nature of the Western world. Mina attempts to combat this destruction as she runs up the “endless steps to the abbey.” Instead of thinking about Lucy, she concludes that “[she] must have gone fast,” which is her attempt at categorizing the unknown time it took her to run up the steps. This void of the unknown that surrounds Dracula is extremely threatening to Mina, and her actions throughout the chapter are overly rational as a way to make up for not knowing. The supernatural is too far out of her comprehensible understanding, and thus, Mina has to break every detail down and assume there is an explanation for all of it. Although Lucy is in danger, Mina would rather think about the world in comprehensible terms than have to admit that it was a beast that she saw, not a man.