Throughout Dracula, you somewhat get the feeling that science is being gagged. In the end of the Victorian period when Stoker was writing, science was starting to entrench itself as the accepted answer to life, the universe and everything. Science didn’t however allow for vampires who are effectively the dead, come back to life. To a Victorian reader it could easily have seemed somewhat far-fetched, so in order to be a decent story, Stoker had to provide answers for all the niggling scientific questions in the back of a reader’s mind.

One of the main ways he manages this is through the character of Abraham Van Helsing. Van Helsing is an example of a scientist who not only believes in vampires, but also knows that they exist - he quickly recognises Lucy’s wound as the sign of a vampire. Because he is both a scientist and a believer it makes the idea of vampires more believable - Victorian readers would be more likely to be willing to accept the word of a scientist rather than that of a plain old man.

The fact that Van Helsing does not blurt out his knowledge all at once creates a tension in the reader. It is as if he is able to save Lucy, but lets her die. There is (of course) method to his madness in his slow persuasion of the other characters that vampires must exist, he persuades the readers too to at least suspend their disbelief. “And prove the very truth he most abhorred,” (to quote Byron, via Stoker) is in a way suggesting that the reader may be siding with science simply because the thought of vampires existing in the world is too abhorrent.

Just as Van Helsing turns to old traditions to find the answer to things he doesn’t understand, Seward tries the scientific approach, with Renfield. Continuing the previous theme, science of course fails. He decides that Renfield is zoophagus, which he is, but it is Dracula’s influence that is causing this. It doesn’t get to the core of the problem - science is reduced to empiricism; it can see what’s happening, but it can’t explain it.

Mina’s position as a “New Woman” doesn’t help her either. She puts her faith, to a certain extent, in technology, and the rejection of old ideas. But she doesn’t reject the old customs completely - she writes “for him [Jonathan] on the typewriter…” showing how she embraces modern technology, but also does it “for him” - she is clearly subservient to Jonathan, even though she tends to be more of a man than he is. In this she has a similarity to Van Helsing, straddling the gap between the old and the new. It is perhaps this, combined with her “man’s brain,” that allows her to narrowly avoid the same fate as Lucy.

By defending the position of vampires, and also the culture of Eastern Europe (“bless that good, good woman who put the crucifix round my neck…”), Stoker seems in a way to be defending the old customs, and Christianity. It is this that eventually saves the characters - they finally put their faith in religion and trust the old ideas, and only then do they manage to mount an effective attack on Dracula.

At the same time, if Dracula represents the old customs of the East, then these beliefs are obviously not wholly good. But he wasn’t always bad, just as Lucy wasn’t. “…The whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity…” suggests that perhaps these customs were once pure and good and perfect, like Lucy was, like Dracula presumably was, and like the members of the group who eventually slay Dracula are. “Devilish mockery” suggests that again it was not the fault of the people themselves they were led astray by the Devil, who has a reflection of himself in each vampire, but they are not themselves bad.

In any case, science in Dracula seems to play the role of something that is necessary, but to be avoided and blocked and trodden on at every opportunity. It provides too narrow a view of the world, Stoker seems to be saying, and only by accepting both it and religion and the old customs and what your senses tell you, can you understand the modern world. Perhaps there are things that science can’t explain. “At first I could not believe my eyes,” says Harker. But by the end of the book he believes them all right. And perhaps the reader does too.

Perhaps not.