Beyond Belief:

The Role of Science and Modernity

“Why, as science becomes more cock-sure, have men and women become more and more fond of old follies, and more pleased with the stirring of ancient dread within their veins?” – Andrew Lang

       At a time when modernity and science began to intrude inextricably upon the consciousness of Victorian society, a parallel movement towards the old faith and superstitions reared its head.  Today, the notion of the Gothic novel naturally evokes in the reader images of a now-defunct era of archaic customs and beliefs.  Indeed, it is this primeval world that Count Dracula appears to embody, and, as Van Helsing and his band of civilized world-wise men vanquish the Count, so too are we led to believe that the modern world has triumphed over the ancient.  However, the relationship between science and superstition – or less pejoratively, faith – is not one of binary opposites.  In fact, Bram Stoker portrays the extremes of each in a similar light, and offers science, not as a discipline diametrically opposed to faith-based belief, but as the evolutionary successor to it.  Not only does Van Helsing serve as the paradigm for the equilibrium maintained between the two worlds, as the sought-after professor and expert, he attempts to perpetuate and reproduce this model of belief in others.

            It is not a matter of coincidence that the iconic imagery most immediately associated with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (after the figure of Dracula himself) is that of the primitive and seemingly backwards society of his homeland.  The mythicized Transylvania, where the trains never run on time and the common folk speak in whispers about werewolves and ghosts, represents the ever-present susceptibility of mankind to the lure of the unknown.  And yet, for all its seeming incongruity, science is pursued for precisely the same reason.  The allure of the unfamiliar and the strange is at once both exhilarating and terrifying since the pursuit of knowledge simultaneously fills the perilous void as it widens the breadth of what is the unknown.  Stoker illustrates, however, that the eventual reliance on science and empirical learning only augments the discomfort and horror that is experienced when confronted with something that cannot yet be explained.  Whereas Jonathan Harker “was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact location of the Castle Dracula,” the West – and London in particular – is characterized as a place of precision where the minutiae of every facet of life is documented and classified (Stoker 1).  Interestingly, this dependence on learned truths and expected outcomes gained through knowledge effectively mechanizes and eliminates the need for human thought.  This latent fear of mechanization and dehumanization emerges as a familiar theme in many other works of the period.

The penetration of Darwinian theory into the awareness of Victorian society predates Stoker’s novel by less than forty years.  Both the basics of evolutionary theory and the notion of natural selection occur in Dracula and, furthermore, the novel hints at the consequences of these premises.  Indeed, “anyone aware of what was moving in the intellectual currents of the age, as Stoker was, could not well help knowing…of the fundamental objection that [Darwin’s concepts] might encourage vice” (Blinderman 421).  Here, not only are the ethical questions posed by human research at issue, but the very question of what constitutes humanity is at stake.  As Renfield methodically consumes life, and as Dracula targets man’s mental strength and will, “the basic categories that separate rational human beings from the irrational instincts of beasts” are blurred (Frost 7).  The horrifying prospect that man can revert to beast, or worse, that beast can masquerade as man, is at the heart of Dracula’s power to terrify. 

If reproduction can be achieved asexually through vampiric feeding and immortality can also be achieved, the crux of Darwinian theories can be reinterpreted in a chilling, new light.  Renfield is diagnosed by Dr. Seward as “a zoophagous madman, but actually his condition represents natural selection gone mad” (Frost 8).  The struggle for dominance between human beings and vampires (or simply the non-human) can be read as a contest in evolutionary terms.  To reconcile these unsettling possibilities, the cold objectifying lens of science is countered with the humanizing beliefs of tradition.  While “[Dracula] embraces Darwinism [as a truth], Van Helsing’s science and parapsychology seeks to promote human values in the face of Darwinian theory” (Frost 8).  In this manner, Van Helsing, in occupying the interstitial space between the two ideologies of possibility voices Stoker’s intent to illustrate the ability of two apparently dissimilar belief systems to co-exist.

          Although Dracula is not as ostensibly involved with the concept of science as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, both of which are frequently referenced to indicate society’s fascination with experimentation, science’s deep involvement in Stoker’s text is exposed through the language of the characters.  The form of science and learning that is apparent throughout the novel is a very stark confidence in empiricism and “bare, meagre facts, verified by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt” (Stoker 30).  Harker insists that he “must not confuse [facts] with experiences which will have to rest on [his] own observation or [his] memory” (Stoker 30).  This over-reliance upon empiric observation is, as Stoker sets out to illustrate, just as dangerous as a blind faith in the supernatural.  Here, we are presented with a specific kind of learned thought that can be differentiated from the general notion of science as a discipline that values systematic thinking and seeks duplication of outcomes through experimentation. 

          The danger, however, materializes when esteem for pragmatic knowledge goes beyond simply a matter of placing value upon scientific methodology, and mutates into scientism.  Scientism is defined as “the belief that the assumptions, methods of research, etc., of the physical and biological sciences are equally appropriate and essential to all other disciplines, including the humanities and the social sciences”.  It is a belief system in itself that proposes that any and every one of “nature’s eccentricities and possible impossibilities” can be eventually explained by science (Stoker 193).  It is, in fact, closer to the unwavering belief that is generated by superstition than to the rigid doctrine of science.  One of the many questions that Stoker poses, then, is if we accept science as the end and method of unearthing truth, are there still ethical limitations of experimentation?

          The fascination of Dr. Seward with the newly-termed zoophagous madman, Renfield, is a further illustration of the obsession with classification and experimentation.  William Hughes writes that “Dracula is a novel preoccupied with pathology rather than health, and in particular with morbid and abnormal states whose boundaries become increasingly nebulous as the narrative progresses” (qtd. in Smith 37).  Seward’s interest in his patient Renfield is exactly one of morbid objectivity.  He goes so far as to consider granting Renfield’s requests for a kitten, simply in order to pursue his academic curiosity.  He only just stops himself, writing that he “must not think too much of this, or [he] may be tempted” (Stoker 71).  More chilling, perhaps, is his appeal to Van Helsing to halt his plans for the un-dead form of Lucy.  He poses the question:

“If there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing to gain by it – no good to her, to us, to science, to human knowledge – why do it?  Without such it is monstrous.” (Stoker 165)

It is not his reluctance that is significant; rather, it is his willingness to transgress those moral and ethical boundaries and desecrate the body of a former loved-one if such a condition existed to further cold, clinical knowledge.  Although Seward ultimately avoids personally facing the dilemma, led as he is by the authority of Van Helsing, this premise emerges in much of the gothic literature of the era, and in the gothic off-shoot of science fiction.

          The reason the gothic genre has arguably persisted in popularity among readers, is the fact that science does not – as we might think – consign the genre to the past.  Victorian writers “introduced new forms of horror drawn not merely from eighteenth-century novels, but from contemporary experience, [extracting] ideas…and facts generated by the clash of scientific and religious opinion” (Block xviii).  By utilizing the new, equally unfathomable technologies and schools of psychological thought, the gothic is able to transcend the boundaries imposed upon it and perpetuate itself.  Indeed, “science not only furnishes us with extraordinary situations, but also gives us an excellent excuse for believing anything, however incredible” (Pendzolt 50).  Fittingly, science offers a “compensation for the imaginary world it has destroyed,” and provides new possibilities in the stead of the traditional superstitions it has dispelled (Pendzolt 50).

          Rather than the methodology of science itself, it is scientism and this unquestioning attitude towards knowledge that Stoker seeks to discredit in his portrayals of Count Dracula and Dr. Seward.  Both characters possess a voracious appetite for knowledge and are essentially controlled and systematic in their interpretations of the world around them.  Tellingly, neither viewpoint is entirely successful.  The Count, of course, is defeated, and Seward is carefully led by Van Helsing to a new, more forgiving perception of the world order.  Despite their seeming differences, Van Helsing “with his claims on leadership and associations with different knowledges (legal, historical and medical), seems like a modern version of the Count” (Smith 35).  Similarly, he can be seen as a version of Dr. Seward, one that is more inclined to accept possibilities that fall outside the range of academic education.  Occupying this middle-ground, Van Helsing reasons:

“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot?  But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know – or think they know – some things which other men have told them.  Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.” (Stoker 191)

The words of Van Helsing draw attention to the limitations of science, but Stoker indicates that the importance lies in adaptability.  Van Helsing holds an obvious respect for Count Dracula, one that he does not even possess in the same manner for his closest confidante and pupil Seward.  Van Helsing repeatedly belittles the narrow-mindedness of the Doctor – albeit good-naturedly – but in regards to Dracula, his admiration is evident.  He discerns that the Count is “experimenting, and doing it well,” and advises his band of men that they, too, must experiment and adapt (Stoker 302).

To this day, the relationship between modern science and superstition is balanced in an uneasy tension.  Bram Stoker depicts the extremes of each – both the blind faith associated with religious and non-religious superstitions and the dogmatic acceptance of scientism – as either negative or simply unproductive.  Practically, the infusion of scientific thoughts and theories into fiction has generated questions of ethical responsibility and of moral restraint on the potential of experimentation.  Left unfettered, both science and superstition are able to vampirically feed upon the human psyche, strip away humanity, and reproduce armies of the faceless and powerless to further fuel their perpetuation.  However, in maintaining the balance of the two in fiction, the gothic genre has been able to exploit the new developments of technology and scientific discovery for its own gain.  This ability to adapt to the modern world, has allowed the genre to persist even in the literary and popular culture of contemporary society, much in the way that Dracula has managed to evolve and thrive in new forms and mediums while maintaining its historical and supernatural roots.