Chapter 3
Taken from clippings in the local paper (pasted into Mina Murray’s journal). The clippings include the log of the Demeter; the ship is seen. Also taken from the August 8th entry of Mina’s journal. The Russian ship Demeter is washed ashore by a terrible and sudden storm, and it is discovered that the entire crew was missing. The only body found is that of the captain, tied to the wheel and grasping a crucifix. A huge dog is seen running from the ship; the animal escapes into the woods. The ship’s cargo, a great number of large wooden boxes, are handed over to a local solicitor. The log reveals an ill-fated journey; the ship started from the Russian port of the Varna, and ten days into the voyage a crew member disappeared without a trace. Another sailor claimed to have seen a tall man who was clearly not a member of the crew. The men searched the ship but could find no one, and a few days later another sailor disappeared. Sailors continued to vanish, one by one, and the first mate began to go mad. When they were within reach of England, an impenetrable fog enveloped the ship, causing the vessel to lose its way. Only four men were left by then, but the two sailors soon vanished and the first mate was driven completely mad. After an encounter with Dracula, he chose to die in the sea. The captain initially believed that the first mate was the murderer, but shortly afterward he saw the vampire and resolved to go down with the ship. He tied himself to the wheel and held on to a crucifix. He died long before the ship reached land. The people of Whitby who find the ship treat his body with reverence; they plan to give him a large funeral. The dog that ran from the ship is nowhere to be found, although a local dog has been found brutally killed by another animal.
In her journal Mina wonders about Jonathan’s fate and reports the events of the day. On the day of the sea captain’s funeral, Lucy is restless. She has been sleepwalking constantly, and is in a terrible state. Mr. Swales has been found dead, his neck broken, his face frozen in an expression of terror. At the funeral, the dog of one of the locals becomes furious and then terrified. Mina notes the strange behaviour, and the effect it has on the sensitive Lucy who looks at the dog in “an agonized way”.
Taken from the August 8th, August 11th, August 12th, August 13th, August 14th, August 15th, and August 17th entries of Mina Murray’s journal. Also includes correspondence between Samuel F. Billington and Son, Whitby solicitors, and Messrs. Carter, Patterson, and Company, of London, in business letters dated August 17th and August 21st. Taken again from the August 18th and August 19th entries of Mina Murray’s journal. Also contains the letter from Sister Agatha to Mina Murray, dated August 12th. Closes with the August 19th entry of Dr. Seward’s diary.
In the middle of the night, Mina wakes up with a sense of dread and finds Lucy’s bed empty. Frantically Mina searches for him, first through the house and then outside. She goes to the Church, thinking that Lucy might be at their favourite seat in the graveyard. From a distance, Mina sees her there: Lucy is half-reclining, while a shadowy figure with red eyes bends over her. When Mina reaches her, Lucy is alone, asleep, and breathing with difficulty. Later, Mina discovers puncture wounds on Lucy’s throat, but she believes the wounds were caused by her own clumsiness while fastening Lucy’s shawl. The next few nights, Mina locks their door so that the sleepwalking Lucy maynot get out. One day, while the two women are out on a walk, Lucy murmurs, “His red eyes again! They are just the same.” Looking out at the graveyard spot where Mina found Lucy, Mina thinks she sees a shadow with red glowing eyes, but after a moment it seems to be a trick of the light. That night, Mina comes home and from outside sees Lucy asleep at their window, sitting on the sill with the window wide open and something like a large bird sitting next to her. By the time Mina gets upstairs to their room, Lucy is sleepwalking back to bed, clutching at her own throat. Mina continues to worry: as the days pass, Lucy grows paler and weaker. Mina also learns that Lucy’s mother is dying. Mrs. Westenra reveals to Mina that her heart is weakening, but asks that Lucy not be told. Mina continues to find Lucy sitting on the sill at night, and the puncture wounds on Lucy’s throat grow larger.
Letters between solicitors in London and Whitby reveal that the fifty boxes of earth are to be delivered to Carfax. They are to be placed in the old ruined chapel of the mansion.
In Mina’s journal, she reports that Lucy grows more haggard, although her spirits are high. Lucy even speaks of the night that Mina found her in the graveyard, telling Mina that she had an out-of-body experience and a strange, blissful feeling. And finally, Mina hears the news of Jonathan. Sister Agatha of the Hospital of St. Joseph and St. Mary in Budapest sends a letter to Mina, reporting that Jonathan has been found and has been terribly sick with brain fever. He made it to Budapest by train, but has been ill and has ranted constantly of demons and wolves. Mina goes to join Jonathan and to help him return to England.
Dr. Seward reports that Renfield’s behaviour has been even more bizarre. He speaks constantly of a coming “Master,” in cryptic phrases that parallel many of the statements about Christ made in the New Testament. On a night when Dr. Seward, still depressed by Lucy’s rejection of him, is contemplating taking chloral hydrate to help him sleep; Renfield escapes. He is found at nearby Carfax, pressed against the door of the ruined chapel, pledging allegiance to his Master. They return him to his cell after a vicious fight. Amazed by Renfield’s ferocity and strength, Dr. Seward orders that he be chained and put in a straitjacket.
Taken from letters between Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra, dated August 24th and August 30th; the August 20th and August 23rd entries of Dr. Seward’s diary; the August 24th and August 25th entries of Lucy Westenra’s journal; letters and telegrams between Arthur Holmwood and Dr. Seward, dated August 31st, September 1st, and September 2nd; a letter from Abraham Van Helsing to Dr. Seward, dated September 2nd; a letter from Dr. Seward to Arthur Holmwood, dated September 3rd; the September 4th entry of Dr. Seward’s diary; telegrams from Dr. Seward to Abraham Van Helsing, dated September 4th, 5th, and 6th.
Mina writes to Lucy, telling her that Jonathan can remember almost nothing of what happened to him in Transylvania. He believes his journal contains the secret of the origins of his brain fever, but he is afraid to read it. He gives Mina the journal, giving her permission to read it but asking that she never tell him what is written there. Jonathan and Mina decide to marry immediately. Mina wraps Jonathan’s journal, ties it, and seals the knot with wax, resolving to never read the book unless for Jonathan’s sake or because of “some stern duty”. Lucy sends a letter congratulating Mina and telling her that Arthur has joined her at Whitby.
In Dr. Seward’s diary, we learn more about Renfield. Locked up, he continually murmurs to himself, “I can wait.” He escapes again, and is found once more at the door of the chapel of Carfax. As the attendants try to subdue the enraged madman, Renfield grows suddenly calm at the sight of a giant bat flying across the sky.
Lucy begins to keep her own diary. She is back from Whitby, but her health is still failing. At night, her sleep is disturbed by the sound of something scratching at her window. Her throat hurts terribly.
Arthur writes to Dr. Seward, asking that he comes and sees Lucy. Her health is deteriorating, and Arthur is worried. Although concerned about his fiancée, he is suddenly called away to the side of his father, who is very ill. Dr. Seward goes to Lucy and reports to Arthur that he can find no cause of her illness. Dr. Seward writes a letter to his old mentor Abraham Van Helsing, a brilliant doctor with a vast knowledge of obscure diseases. Van Helsing makes a brief visit, unable to pinpoint the cause of Lucy’s illness but visibly disturbed by Lucy’s symptoms. He tells Dr. Seward to alert him to any changes in Lucy’s condition.
Renfield is back to catching flies and eating them, using sugar as bait. But then he has a sudden change of heart, saying that he is sick of his old peculiar behaviours.
On September 4th and 5th, Dr. Seward sends telegrams saying that Lucy’s condition is improving. On September 6th, he sends an urgent telegram saying that there has been a terrible change. He tells Van Helsing to come right away.
Analysis
Dracula’s portrayal of women makes the novel seem like a fantasy of the Victorian male imagination. Women are primarily objects of delicate beauty who occasionally need to be rescued from danger—a task that, more than anything else, ends up bolstering the ego of their male saviours. Indeed, among the female characters in the novel, only Mina exercises any considerable strength or resourcefulness. The other women are primarily two-dimensional victims, pictures of perfection who are easy for Dracula to prey upon. Both Lucy and her mother are helplessly weak, and the latter is too delicate to bear even the suggestion that something is amiss with her daughter’s health.
Despite the profound political and social change that crossed England in the late nineteenth century, Stoker displays little interest in the advancement of women. Though Mina brightly—albeit briefly—considers one of the promises of feminism yet the novel as a whole does not align itself with her cause. In reference to Lucy’s recent engagement, Mina writes,
“Some of the ‘New Women’ writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won’t condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too!”
While Mina herself approaches this kind of self-reliance—after all, it is her research that later leads Van Helsing’s band to the count’s castle—she never fully graduates into the new womanhood she describes here.
Given Stoker’s obsessive concern with female chastity and virtue, it is hard to imagine him granting his female characters the degree of sexual freedom necessary to become “New Women.” In fact, it makes the erotic nature of Dracula’s attacks even more obvious. Lucy’s wounds suggest a virgin’s first sexual encounter: she escapes into the night and is attacked in a way that makes her bleed. After this initial encounter, Lucy hungers for more, attempting to steal out of the house and return to the graveyard.
Although Mina does not yet realize the nature of her friend’s sleepwalking excursions, she is filled with anxiety not only for Lucy’s health, but also for “her reputation in case the story should get wind.” Already viewed to some degree as a dangerous sexual adventurer, Lucy begins her transformation from a pure maiden into a figure of female wantonness. In this sense, Dracula threatens not merely a single girl, but also the entire moral order of the Victorian world and its ideals of sexual purity.
The epistolary form of the novel allows Stoker to maintain suspense throughout, not only keeping us in the dark, but also keeping his own characters guessing at the nature of their own predicaments. Indeed, at this point in the novel, we know much more than any one individual character does. Though we understand the implications of the shipment of earth that arrives at Carfax, Dr. Seward does not, which means he has no way to explain the increasingly drastic behaviour of his patient, Renfield. Continuing with this technique and permitting the events to unfold in the present tense allows Stoker to achieve an impressive amount of suspense.
