History Literature / Dracula

** Harker at first thinks the village is just being superstition despite being an outsider to Transylvania (though they don't ''really'' tell what the danger is, just that it's a really bad idea to go to Dracula's castle). But after meeting the count, finding how strange he and his dwelling are and ultimately nearly being bitten by three vampires, it doesn't take long for him to become a believer.

* {{Sleepwalking}}: Lucy is a chronic sleepwalker who sleepwalks all the way across Whitby to the cemetery overlook the night she's first bitten by the eponymous vampire.

* SympathyForTheDevil: Mina mentions that she does pity Dracula. Not the monster that he is, but rather for his soul and how it could be looking for peace from his curse.

* TheRenfield: TropeNamer, but is actually an UnbuiltTrope here, seeing as he attempts to foil Dracula twice, the second ending with the loss of his own life. While he certainly seems ''willing'' to become Dracula's slave, being locked in at Dr. Seward's sanatorium rather limits his options and the Count seems to more or less ignore him throughout. (Until he finally visits him in his cell and kills him.) Renfield at one point demands that he be moved so that Dracula will not compel him to let him into the house to attack Mina. When this fails, the second time Dracula enters, he ''grabs Dracula and tries to kill him with his bare hands'', while the Count is in mist form. And he would have succeeded, too, if Dracula hadn't used his HypnoticEyes. The novel never makes clear where Renfield's madness comes from or why he seems to be, as Seward says, "mixed up with the Count in an indexy way." It appears that Renfield just spontaneously developed this unusual, vampire-tangiential madness, and Dracula has some passive, perhaps even unintentional, influence over him, which Dracula fails to exploit until well into the book. [[AdaptaionOriginConnection Adaptations usually explicitly make Dracula the cause of Renfeild's madness, and have the Count deliberately cultivate Renfield as an agent.]]

* TheRenfield: TropeNamer, but is actually an UnbuiltTrope here, seeing as he attempts to foil Dracula twice, the second ending with the loss of his own life. While he certainly seems ''willing'' to become Dracula's slave, being locked in at Dr. Seward's sanatorium rather limits his options and the Count seems to more or less ignore him throughout. (Until he finally visits him in his cell and kills him.) Renfield at one point demands that he be moved so that Dracula will not compel him to let him into the house to attack Mina. When this fails, the second time Dracula enters, he ''grabs Dracula and tries to kill him with his bare hands'', while the Count is in mist form. And he would have succeeded, too, if Dracula hadn't used his HypnoticEyes.

* ThePowerOfBlood: Types A (binding), B (symbolic), and O (''disturbing'').

* PaintingTheMedium: The book is a series of letters between many of the characters. The reader is intended to interpret the novel as a bound collection of letters, and each includes headers with dates and signatures. It's very effective at drawing some readers in, especially since the viewpoints sufficiently show different characters' personalities, but it can also seem disjointed, since it switches around a lot and (usually) looks like normal fonts pretending to be letters.

* NonPOVProtagonist: Dr. Abraham Van Helsing is the BigGood who leads the manhunt for Dracula, but we never get to see his POV, except from brief glimpses of it from the narrators' accounts and his sparse letters.

* OneSteveLimit: Dr. John Seward is often called Jack by the other characters so as not to be confused with Jonathan Harker. Of course, it doesn't help that Van Helsing still refers to him by his given name.

* NonActionProtagonist: While the narrative gives the male protagonists plenty of action scenes, Mina Harker's primary contributions to the plot come in the form of developing a psychic link with Dracula after she's bitten by the count and helping riddle out his route across Europe.

* NoImmortalInertia: Dracula rapidly dissolves into nothing when stabbed in the heart. Notably, none of the other vampires in the story did this, and although it isn't explicitly stated the implication is that it's because he was so much older than them, and that when he was stabbed centuries of decay instantly caught up with his body.

* NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead: During one of Mina's entries, she records a long rant by an old man concerning the practice of this. Remarking the grave (which the girls are close to, having to decide to picnic in the church yard) belongs to a sorry sourpuss and wasn't even missed by his "hellcat of a mother."

-->Whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be quick--with blood--for that his ship will leave the place--of blood--before the turn of the tide--with blood. Then the thin man smile and say that of course he must go when he think fit; but he will be surprise if he go quite so soon.

* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: Dr. Seward and Quincey lose to Arthur in wooing Lucy, but they're good sports about it. Both of them give blood to save Lucy without hesitation.

* HypocriticalHumor: Mina mocks the "New Woman" a few times in her journal. For those that don't know, "New Woman" at the time was when women were starting their movement for independence and becoming more assertive which was a big deal at the time. The reason it's ironic is because Mina becomes assertive after her encounter with Dracula and is both able to resist his influence (with some help) and coming up with the idea to use her newfound psychic link with Dracula to lead the hunters to him.

** Sexual predation and the conflict between lust and repression.

* NoOntologicalInertia: Killing the original vampire before its bitten victims die (and subsequently resurrect as vampires) returns them to normal. Otherwise it's permanent (Can't exactly bring a walking corpse back to normal after all). Justified, in that bitten victims will simply heal naturally. Mina was bitten a few times and survived, and even Lucy required multiple, increasingly violent visits from Dracula, thanks to Doctor Van Helsing successfully resuscitating her.

* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: By the time the book was written, vampire lore included an aversion to a cross. This, in different series, can be either the product of the vampire's belief in the cross, or the product of the wielder's belief in the cross. In ''Dracula'' itself, it only really works for the Catholic Van Helsing; the others, mostly Church of England members, just can't take the idea seriously. Often, it also works with another strong symbol of belief — for example, a rabbi using a Star of David to hold a vampire at bay.

* BatmanGambit: After being driven from London, Van Helsing is able to predict Dracula's plan for retreat based on the count's previous actions during his battles with the Turks centuries before.

* BatmanGambit: The Count's master plan to infiltrate England and spread his vampire curse is only foiled by the DeusExMachina of asylum doctor John Seward just happening to be the former student of Professor Van Helsing, the only person who'd recognise a vampire attack and know exactly what to do. Dracula's meticulous setup and coverup of his lairs and his later manipulation of Mina as a weapon against his pursuers is only matched by Van Helsing's hypnotising Mina to deduce the Count's location, which he did on her insistence.

Concerned about Lucy's failing health, Seward summons his Dutch mentor, Professor [[AuthorAvatar Abraham Van Helsing]]. When Van Helsing recognizes Lucy's illness as the mark of the vampire, he gathers her loved ones around him to save the girl: her fiancé Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming; her American former suitor Quincey Morris; Jonathan Harker (who was found severely traumatized by Dracula, but alive); and Mina. Knowing that Dracula's power doesn't work during the day — although he can still move about, and ''fight'', quite well during these hours — they form a plan to hunt him down and rid the world of him forever. Although the men initially try to keep Mina out of the loop to protect her feminine sensibilities, she quickly proves herself a strong and thoroughly clever investigator... which Dracula himself is just as quick to notice.

* TeamMom: Mina. It's a little muddled at times, what with her also being the DistressedDamsel, but it really shows at the beginning of the third act. With team morale failing, Mina talks to each of the men and convinces them to keep fighting, not just for her sake, but to avenge fallen friends and to cleanse the world of evil.

* RobbingTheDead: A thief steals the crucifix placed over Lucy's mouth, disrupting one of the plans Van Helsing had.