Jonathan Harker: The Unsung Heroic Knight of Bram Stoker's Dracula
And Why he deserves Respect
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, there is no character more respected for his nerve, for his courage and for his ability to think and fight under pressure, than Jonathan Harker. There is no other character who could have survived as he did Dracula’s Castle, and no other who could have had after that the ability to summon up the bravery to not only defy but to scare of the Vampire.
It was Harker who slew Dracula in the novel. It is he who rescues Mina from the curse of the Vampire, and he whom, Dracula targets more than any other character throughout the novel.
And yet, there is no other character more despised in modern cinema where this story is concerned (save for perhaps Quincy Morris) and none more despised by Academia in my experience.
It is a very strange thing, just how divisive Jonathan Harker is. Likely it has to do with the fact that contrary to those who romanticise Dracula from the novel, it is Harker whom Mina chooses, and Harker whom she loves more than her own life. It is Jonathan Harker who is her soul-mate, and he who risks all for her.
What is even more remarkable is how even after Mina is raped- oh I mean bitten by Dracula (let’s be honest, the Vampire bite has always been a euphemism for rape at least in the context of this story), the truth is that Jonathan still stands by her, and she by him. Really the whole story is much more of a love-story than a horror one, and the love story at the heart of it is the Harker romance, and not that of Dracula who serves as the villain.
Really the turning of the Vampire into the hero, one who just needed love and who longed for it across centuries is the process by which this great classic novel was subverted across a century and deconstructed. It has flipped good with evil, and evil with good.
It has turned Harker into the villain somehow, and Dracula into the hero just as it has turned Mina from a victim who overcomes her own violation to become a faithful partner to her husband and the embodiment of every female virtue into something of a sex-kitten who rejects her husband for a quick night of pleasure with Dracula. Really, it romanticises the violation of women if one is honest, and I suppose this is why I’ve never liked any of the adaptations of this novel or most shows about Vampires as I am quite attached to the Harker marriage and to the themes as presented by Bram Stoker.
Honestly I’ve much more respect and appreciation for the Dracula Dead and Loving it Adaptation, for making fun of the other adaptations than I do the adaptations proper. If you like them though, love what you love, I do love the Hammer movies that follow after the first film, especially Brides of Dracula which in spirit seems the most faithful to the novel. I really do love the Universal & Hammer sequels to their respective Dracula movies. And their adaptations do have much that is worth boasting about, as they were pretty good films despite not being what I would have wanted of them.
Among those themes is the vow of knighthood to protect Mina from harm, that all the men swear. They all do so in the context of honouring the Queen of Love of sorts, but their love for her is that of a brotherhood for their sister, or in Helsing’s case of a doting father for his favourite daughter.
Jonathan though is a character in the novel who plays the role of ‘dashing hero’, he’s full of righteous fury on behalf of his violated wife, and struggles earnestly to take the fight to Dracula. This is the true nature of the character; he is a knight who struggles for love really, and who wishes to protect what is important to him. If this sounds romantic it is because it is supposed to.
Bram Stoker was a romantic, he married one of the most impressive women of his age, and did so for love. He lived well for an Irish-man (amazing when you consider how ill-treated the Irish were at that time), and was someone who evidently loved to write and create. Academia has spoken of repression as key to his character, but when you consider that Dracula’s castle is in a way a ‘castle of dreams’ or a ‘castle trapped in the past’, full of dark magic that nothing modern or urban can resist but that only the traditional faith, the old ways of Catholicism can resist or inspire fear in him, then it stands to reason that this isn’t about repression at all. But rather, it seems to be a commentary that there are forces within this world, more vulnerable to traditional ideals and faith than any modern science could possibly conjure forth.
There’s a great video essay about this very phenomenon by
where he analyses the very big differences that exist between the modern man’s perception of the world and that of Dracula. And the Castle trapped in the past as he puts it, is a haunting place full of magic, enchantment, and beauty is also a place of great peril. This is why it seems so different and foreign to us Westerners, we’re venturing into the past. The trouble is that it is not a past that might offer ‘safety’ so to speak to any modern man or woman, let alone one moulded after the knightly archetype like Jonathan. This is also why Helsing is so important also as a man rooted in the past, as modern science cannot possibly fight Dracula, quite so well as the old faith and traditions as represented by Helsing.Science is impressive especially in our era, but there is a nefariousness about it as well. In many ways it stands in complete defiance to how man was meant to live, and how traditional man has existed hitherto our own era. That said, Catholicism represents an ancient force in this case, in a way it is supposed to represent an older way of life, an older England or France, an older Europe for that matter. In this way, if Catholicism is the traditional, the next thing that one should consider is the classic knight or heroic cycle.
In this case a knight’s motivation would be love and what do knights’ fight? Dragons. And in this case given the very well known meaning of the term ‘Dracul’, and also the connotation of ‘son of the devil’, we need not really suppose why it was important that it be a Fellowship of men each bound by sacred oaths, armed with crosses and revering a kind of ‘Maternal’ figure fiercer and more beatific than any other woman alive is front and centre. Mina is not meant to be some sort of prize for Dracula, but rather she is supposed to be a princess in a way, or a saintly figure meant to be rescued by Jonathan who rides off into the sunset with her.
I may have complained about a few plot points in
’s Dracula sequel but I can at least say the prose is good, that he respected the union of Mina and Jonathan from what I can see, and portrayed the latter as intelligent and capable in contrast to how most adaptations depict the latter. Most don’t seem to like him, and propose he is incompetent, stupid or somehow wicked.It’s time we give the main character of Stoker’s novel some respect. The novel would not be what it is without him. Certainly there is something magical and haunting about the way Dracula speaks of the old world, that of the Slavs, back when they fought the Ottomans. There is something truly fascinating about his speech, but the trouble is much as there is good in traditions and good to be found in going back to some things, what Dracula’s morality in the story and what his Vampirism has come to represent in modern popular culture is honestly not only disgusting but regressive and immoral. The brutality of targeting women and children, and the manner in which Jonathan takes to combat, his classic styled heroism, his desperation to help the less fortunate, his desperation to save Mina. All this is a total contrast to not only the curse of Vampirism and the wickedness of Dracula.
What is also kind of funny is how Dracula seems to adapt so easily to urban society once in London, while the ‘knights’ who lead the charge against him seem to take up the advantage once out of England and in Transylvania it is only then that they get the upper hand.
Only in modernity could people romanticise a corpse- I mean a Vampire, and dream of sensual pleasure with it, whilst deriding a living man. But the reality is that there is a pre-modernity to an extent in the way the group of men is structured and the way their quest is structured. They seek to stop the dragon that has invaded the locality, and to save the lady fair. I do wonder if maybe at the time, 100 years ago if Jonathan, Quincy, Arthur & Seward were romanticised rather than Dracula, and if the shift is because we have become so upside down as to not see what is right and proper, and what isn’t.
There is more to the story, but for now I’ll let it be here, but do consider next time you crack open Stoker’s novel if maybe the Lover Archetype Jonathan, isn’t maybe the true hero of the story and his friends are his fellow knights rushing forward to help Sir Gawain- I mean Jonathan save his love, and if maybe there’s something of Merlin in Dr. Van Helsing. Maybe this last connection will merit such an article next week, when I next write about horror.
Great thoughts! And the Truth shall set you free. This is why I often have trouble with plots. They're false. Of course, in this modern culture that worships sexual pleasure as the highest glory, we warp the true, the good and the beautiful and miss the entire point. Surprise, not surprised.
This is what I love about horror, its a mask for social commentary. Really enjoyed reading this piece.