iii

The Colonization of Quincey Morris:

The American Other in Bram Stoker's Dracula

By

Jessica Wojtysiak, B.A.

A Thesis Submitted to the Department of English

California State University, Bakersfield

In Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Masters of English

Spring 2015 ii

Copyright

by

Jessica Wojtysiak

2015 The Colonization of Quincey Morris:

The American Other in Bram Stoker's Dracula

By Jessica Wojtysiak

This thesis or project has been accepted on behalf of the Department of English by their supervisory committee:

Dr. Andrew Troup

Committee Chair

Dr. Glenda Hudson iv

Table of Contents

Introduction...... 1

Research Justification ...... 4

Review of the Literature...... 5

The Debate over Politics...... 5

Doubling in Dracula...... 14

Remembering Quincey...... 16

Stoker's Politics and Treatment of History...... 19

The Author's Background and Politics...... 19

Stoker's Play with History and Truth...... 22

Quincey and Dracula ...... 26

Vampiric America...... 26

Quincey: The Stoic Savage and The Seductive Socialite...... 30

Quincey's Attractiveness...... 30

Quincey's Stoicism...... 35

Quincey's Death and 'Resurrection'...... 44

A Brief Recap...... 44

Quincey's Sacrifice...... 45

Conclusion ...... 50

Works Cited ...... 53

1

The Colonization of Quincey Morris:

The American Other in Bram Stoker's Dracula

"A brave man's blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble. You're a man, and no mistake. Well, the devil may work against us for all he's worth, but God sends us men when we want them."1

Introduction

During the nineteenth century, British authors successfully appropriated Eastern and

Slavic folklore to craft vampire stories appreciated by their Western European and American

readers.2 John Polidori, James Malcolm Rymer, Sheridan Le Fanu and arguably Edgar Allan Poe

transformed the mindless revenant who plagued superstitious peasants into an aristocratic and

deadly seducer of the socially refined and innocent.3 Bram Stoker continued this revision of

myth by making his eponymous figure a proud member of Transylvanian nobility, but he also

offered his own unique contributions to the evolving vampire mythology. For example, Stoker

incorporated many conventions from the then popular travel literature genre into his novel,4 and

1Abraham Van Helsing to Quincey Morris. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002), 162.

2 For surveys of vampire folklore, see Jan Louis Perkowski's Vampire Lore and Alan Dundes' The Vampire A Casebook, especially chapters 1, 3, 4, and 8.

3 The authors of The Vampyre (1819), Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (1845-1847), Carmilla,(1871) and Berenice (1835), respectively. While the former three are explicit vampire tales, the fourth has been interpreted by several scholars as Poe's first attempt to recreate and elevate the vampire myth without explicitly using the term. In addition to James Twitchell's The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature, see Allen Tate's "Our Cousin, Mr. Poe" for the mention of Berenice prior to the identification of Morella and Madeleine Usher as vampires, D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature, Volume 2 for a brief paragraph on "Berenice" within the broader discussion of vampirism in "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." Twitchell, Bailey and Kendall all point to "Berenice" as the first of Poe's vampire stories.

4 Discussions of the influence of the travel literature genre upon Stoker's work include Brantlinger's "Imperial Gothic: Atavism and the Occult in the British Adventure Novel, 1880−1914" and Stephen Arata's "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization." 2

he expanded the international boundary of English-language vampire stories to incorporate

aspects of the Western hemisphere. Many of Stoker’s additions, such as the identification of the

vampire bat, an animal indigenous to Central and South America, as a favored form of the shape-

shifting monster,5 remain encoded within the contemporary cannon. However, another American aspect of Stoker’s novel has been largely ignored by both scholars and the public: Quincey P.

Morris, the cowboy hero who gave his life to destroy Dracula.

This thesis investigates the politics of Dracula by analyzing the character of Quincey

Morris, the novel's lone American character, as the embodiment of the threat posed by the

ascendant United States at the turn of the century. Late Victorian literature is often characterized

by anxiety over the gradual erosion of British cultural hegemony, particularly the view that the

English nation was suffering from a state of irreversible decline. In this case, Stoker's novel is no

exception. As Stephen Arata observes in the article "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the

Anxiety of Reverse Colonization," a political reading of Dracula provides insight into the mind of the author: "In the case of Dracula, the context includes the decline of Britain as a world power at the close of the nineteenth century; or rather, the way the perception of that decline was articulated by contemporary writers" (622). Specifically, this interpretation of the novel provides a mechanism for interrogating how Stoker transformed his own personal and social anxiety over

the future of the empire into a cogent horror narrative. Stoker's mother was Irish and his father

was Protestant English; as a youth, he expressed sympathy with those Irish who faced

discrimination within the empire but supported Irish Home Rule as a peaceful alternative to open

5 J. Gordon Melton identifies Stoker as the first to formally incorporate the vampire bat into the vampire literature, although the cover of the collected Varney the Vampire featured the image of a bat with no mention of the animal in the actual narrative. Melton subsequently discusses the effort by biologists to run a "public relations program" for the maligned mammal during the Post World War II vampire boon (51-52). 3

rebellion (Riquelme 16). Within this historic context, Quincey Morris represents the nation most threatening to the waning power of the declining Britain.

Morris serves as Dracula's light double, a peripheral figure that is both more civilized than the Transylvanian count but less civilized than the other protagonists. Quincey's sexual attractiveness, reticence, and predilection for decisive and often violent action, are all defining characteristics shared by the Count, and the cowboy’s aggressive actions are often contrasted with the intellectual pursuits of Mina Harker, Abraham Van Helsing and John Steward. Yet,

Quincey is also a wealthy gentleman capable of curbing his rough speech and traveling within distinguished social circles. Quincey invades the British community, demands the respect of its men and earns the love of its women in ways that Dracula could never hope to accomplish.

Quincey is both invader and friend, but he is never truly part of the inner circle. Quincey's reliance upon violence and firsthand knowledge of the vampire threat distance him from his more refined companions, and his failure to contribute any documents of substance to the novel's narrative relegate him to a more primitive, vampire-like state.

In addition to being the novel's only American character, Quincey is also the only hero to die at the novel’s conclusion, and his death conveys Stoker's solution to both the British Empire's decline and the rising threat of the United States. Dubbed "The Texan" in Bram Stoker's notes,

Quincey Morris represents the author's construction of the American West as a frontier that, like

Transylvania, must be civilized and ultimately conquered by the British Empire. Quincey's inevitable death and replacement via Mina’s newborn son conveys Stoker's ambivalence toward the United States, and suggests that Stoker viewed the re-assimilation of the United States as a mechanism for reinvigorating the declining British Empire.

4

Research Justification

The debate over the correct political interpretation of Dracula has been waged by critics

for decades. It is unlikely to achieve a clear resolution in the near future. However, one aspect of

the postcolonial question that has been largely ignored is the status of the United States as a

potential counterbalance or rival to British imperial authority. At least one critic, Joseph Valente,

suggested that Stoker and other British writers of his era would have viewed the United States as

a more serious challenge to the supremacy of the British Empire than Eastern Europe. However,

despite this perception of political tension, no critic has seriously considered how Quincey

Morris, the lone American hero within the text, fits within a postcolonial analysis of Dracula.

Rather, literary critics appear content to largely ignore Quincey Morris, just as the character is

often omitted from stage and movie adaptations.

Thus, the analysis of the character contributes substantially to the ongoing debate over

the text's political message by expanding the discussion to include the United States. Admittedly,

Quincey Morris is a relatively minor character. However, he is certainly an interesting one.

Initially, he is portrayed as a viable suitor for Lucy despite being American. Quincey is rough

around the edges. He brandishes a distinctive bowie knife and speaks in slang. He is often the

first to respond to a perceived threat, and he eventually proves himself adept at killing when he

assists in destroying Dracula; yet, he is also the only hero to die at the end of the novel. His name

is memorialized when Mina and Jonathan name their son after him, an act which suggests the

substitution of the more wild American with a suitable British replacement. The future of the

imperialist discussion of Stoker's Dracula should expand to consider the American threat to the empire.

5

Review of Literature

The Debate over Politics

The political message conveyed by Bram Stoker's Dracula is a critically contested

subject. Many literary scholars interpret Dracula as an imperial text that endorses the British

Empire as a necessary mechanism for controlling Eastern primitives and protecting British racial

purity. However, some critics reject this assessment. Instead, they argue that Dracula may be

read as a text critical of the British Empire, an endorsement of a multicultural alternative to

imperialism or simply a novel that ignores political arguments entirely. In "An Intertext that

Counts? Dracula, The Woman in White, and Victorian Imaginations of the Foreign Other,"

Katrien Bollen and Raphael Ingelbien sum up the status of this critical debate, explaining, "the

recent reception of Stoker's novel thus alternates between viewing Dracula as xenophobic or

tolerant, or as treading a fine line between those various extremes" (404). These binary opposites

apply the label of foreign other to Dracula liberally; he is the embodiment of invasive force that

must be repelled by the British. Finally, some critics contend that Dracula is a novel without a

political message. As Judith Wilt concluded in "The Imperial Mouth: Imperialism, the Gothic

and Science Fiction," "the truth is that Dracula is far more about religion and sex than about

politics" (662-623). This literature review presents in brief a discussion of the scholarly

treatment of the politics of Dracula.

For this literature review, the selection criteria focused upon collecting a diversity of

authors and critical interpretations, with the final number of articles roughly divided between the

two camps. Some articles were selected due to their influential status. For example, Stephen

Arata's article is a pivotal postcolonial reference for Dracula scholars, as evidenced by a Google

Scholar citator total of 221. Others were selected for their representative value. Joseph Valente 6

and Cannon Schmidt are both associated with the new historicist subgroup of Stoker scholarship particularly interested in dissecting the significance of his Irishness. Nevertheless, Valente and

Schmidt offer very different answers to the imperialist question, and the inclusion of both illustrates how even the Irishness scholars cannot agree on how to best interpret the novel's politics.

Many imperialist readings of Dracula place the text into a wider genre of British literature concerned with promoting the superiority of the British Empire over foreign alternatives at the turn of the century. In "Imperial Gothic: Atavism and the Occult in the British

Adventure Novel, 1880−1914," Patrick Brantlinger used Dracula as an archetype for a new genre of literature he dubbed the imperial gothic. This genre combines general elements of gothic literature with a political message that endorsed the supremacy of the British Empire.

Specifically, Brantlinger identified two particular requirements for inclusion within this genre.

The first requirement involves the hero traveling into a wild territory, such as when Harker visits

Transylvania. The second characteristic of the imperial gothic involves the invasion of Great

Britain, which occurs when Dracula travels to England. This second feature highlights the need for good British heroes to defend their home from the invading force in order to reassert the supremacy of the empire.

The twin themes of invasion and expulsion are used by scholars identifying Dracula as an imperialist text. The colonizers did not wish to become the colonized, and Dracula is a novel about representatives of the empire repelling a foreign invader after the loss of one of their own.

Cannon Schmitt explicitly uses the terms "us" and "them" to explain the mindset of the British characters responding to the vampire threat from the East (136). Schmitt's use of the terms "Us" 7

and "Them" illustrates the cultural construction of Dracula as the foreign other, the empire's primary threat and enemy.

While she does not adopt Brantlinger's terminology of the imperial gothic genre, Patricia

McKee emphasizes mobility as the key factor contributing to Dracula's death. In "Racialization,

Capitalism, and Aesthetics in Stoker's 'Dracula,'" McKee's Marxist-feminist analysis contends that the Western heroes of the novel are able to exploit their economic and racial privilege to ensure superior mobility. Both Abraham Van Helsing and Quincey Morris were accomplished travelers, while both Mina and Jonathan Harker illustrate remarkable bravery when they travel unaccompanied into foreign territory. Their final pursuit of Dracula is successful in no small part due to the collective familiarity of these characters with the British Empire, McKee concludes.

They were used to the idea of travelling extensive distances efficiently, and their Western cultural privileging of timeliness is established within the first page of the novel when Harker complains about the transportation of the East being late. The capitalist heroes also enjoy an advantage associated with their technological sophistication, another capitalist privilege. They track their investigation of Dracula, learning his movements, through the use of new technologies. When Dracula retreats to Transylvania, they are able to catch him at a vulnerable moment before he reaches the safety of his castle.

Like Brantlinger, both Eleni Coundouriotis and Jason Dittmer also place Dracula into a wider literary genre that engenders imperial sympathy within turn-of-the-century readers by promoting a particularly British view of history. Coundouriotis and Dittmer place less emphasis upon the novel's gothic elements than Brantlinger, however. Instead, they each argue that

Dracula contributes to a wider historical effort to promote imperialism as the ideal political system. In "Dracula and the idea of Europe," Coundouriotis argues that the novel's narrative 8

engages in "repressing historical discourse and delegitimating historicity more generally" (143).

She interprets Dracula as an attempt to assert a British historical account of European history that undermines the legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire. To her, the character Dracula serves as a representative of the Ottoman Empire, and his defeat is presented as the triumph of the British

Empire over its political and cultural rival.

In ""Dracula and the Cultural Construction of Europe," Jason Dittmer agrees that

Dracula attempts to assert a particular narrative to shape the history of Europe. However, he criticizes Coundouriotis for focusing too narrowing upon the Ottoman Empire as the target for the novel's historic domination. As an alternative, he argues that Dracula bisects Europe in half, dividing the civilized West from the primitive and mystical East. Dittmer's article concludes with the identification and analysis of negative stereotypes about Eastern Europe as central to the novel's popular reception with readers. He claims that the count is "barbaric, pagan, dangerous" because he represents Eastern Europe, a region that the West constructed as "uncivilized, pagan, etc." (247). For both of these authors, the gothic elements of the story are less important and serve primarily as a mechanism through which the inferiority of the foreign other is illustrated.

Dittmer and Coundouriotis are not the only authors to identify Eastern stereotypes within the novel. Bollen and Ingelbien similarly emphasize the role of Eastern stereotypes in Dracula.

Their intertextual analysis contrasts Dracula with The Woman in White, a story written by

Wilkie Collins that Stoker referenced while writing his novel. They argue that Collins offered a far more favorable presentation of foreigners than Stoker. These foreign characters are fully fleshed out characters with positive characteristics, rather than the caricature of British fears that they argue Stoker presents. Bollen and Ingelbien conclude that this is a significant authorial 9

change suggesting that Stoker wanted to support British racial superiority in a way that Collins, who was sympathetic to the Italian independence movement, did not.

In Alien Nation: Nineteenth Century Gothic Fictions and English Nationality, Cannon

Schmidt also identifies the novel's integration of stereotypes to distance Dracula from his heroic

British pursuers. Schmitt's interpretation focuses upon how the British cultural identity was constructed around a belief that the British people were civilized and scientific, in contrast to the wild savagery and mysticism of those people living in the East. This binary opposition, according to Schmidt, legitimated the empire as a force for intellectual and cultural good.

In addition, Stoker's apparent inclusion of gendered stereotypes is often raised as evidence to support the interpretation of the novel as an endorsement of imperialism. Patricia

McKee argued that Dracula's invasion is both geographic and biological, with the female body serving as the battleground for racial prejudice. The villain invades England and then infects his female victims with the intension of conquering England from within. The heroes are not really motivated to act until Lucy is attacked, which McKee suggests is indicative with a preoccupation with racial purity. According to McKee, they viewed British racial purity as a virtue. This perspective prompted them to destroy Lucy when her blood was tainted and then further compelled them to destroy Dracula in order to prevent Mina from suffering a similar fate.

Therefore, McKee sees Dracula as a text endorsing the assertion of Western male power over the female body, a patriarchal belief that justified the perpetuation of the British Empire. Without imperialism, good Western women would be unprotected from the sexual advances of foreign men.

In "Vampirism and the Degeneration of the Imperial Race-Stoker's Dracula as the

Invasive Degenerate Other," Monika Tomaszewska agrees with the sentiment behind McKee's 10

feminist criticism of Dracula. However, she goes one step further when she observes that

Dracula continues to pose a threat to British racial purity even after his death because Mina gives birth to a son while her body still contains Dracula's blood. However, Monika Tomaszewska places greater emphasis upon the discussion of anti-Semitism within Dracula. She claims that

British anxiety over the future of the empire during Stoker's lifetime manifested within prevalent stereotypes identifying Jewish people with disease, criminality and greed. At that period of time, many Jewish people were migrating from Eastern Europe, electing to select in Great Britain.

Their growing presence created cultural and political concerns within the domestic population.

Tomaszewska also points to the emergence of new theories about degeneration and insanity at the time of the text's publication. She explains that Dracula manifests each of these characteristics while attempting to insinuate himself into English society by leveraging his wealth and education. To Stoker's readers, she concludes, Dracula represents many cultural and social fears directed toward the perceived invasion of the Jewish people.

The pro-imperial interpretation of Dracula is also supported by critical discussions of the violent and often xenophobic behaviors of the text's heroes. According to Cannon Schmitt,

Dracula is essentially a revenge novel in which the heroes reason "They caught one of Us, put her in a bed, and drank her blood; and now We have to pay Them back" (136). Schmitt's use of the terms "Us" and "Them" illustrates the cultural construction of the foreign other as the empire's primary threat and enemy. In "Insiders/Outsiders: Conrad's 'The Nigger of the

"Narcissus"' and Bram Stoker's 'Dracula,'" Michael Kane similarly expresses concern with the violent behavior of the novel's heroes. Despite professing a belief in science, they turn to acts that are decidedly unscientific. They appropriate savagery as a legitimate defensive strategy when their homeland is invaded, violently killing the infected Lucy before hunting down and 11

executing Dracula. Kane maintains that the need to expel the foreign threat is so great within the imperialist mindset that violence is justified and any pretense to rationality is dropped.

Opponents of the interpretation of Dracula as an endorsement of British imperialism offer diverse justifications for their position. Stephen Arata offered the first published challenge to this interpretation in his 1990 article, "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of

Reverse Colonization." Arata's article is treated by other scholars as a seminal postcolonial work.

Every other author rejecting the view of Dracula as an imperialist text presented within this project cites Arata as a reference.

Arata accepts the existence of Eastern stereotypes and confirms the xenophobic and violent behavior of the novel's protagonists. However, he interprets these arguments as evidence of Stoker's intent to criticize imperialism. Arata contends that Stoker wanted to expose British anxiety about reverse colonization, or the threat of the foreign other invading British soil and coupling with British women. His interpretation is justified through his view of Dracula as a piece of high literature, rather than a popular fictional text written to simply appease the masses.

Once Dracula is accepted as a piece of high literature, Arata reasons that it may be read ironically. He gives credit to Stoker for exposing the fears of imperialists through his protagonists, particularly Harker. In "Feminism, Fiction, and the Utopian Promise of Dracula," the looming threat of reverse colonization is echoed by Nancy Armstrong:

"By running roughshod over national differences, Stoker's vampire transforms the

utopian fantasy of universal hospitality into the xenophobic fantasy of a nation

that welcomes strangers only to become something other than itself, a colonizer

colonized from within" (269). 12

These interpretations suggest that Stoker was cleverly highlighting the decline of the empire by drawing upon the fears of those who most benefitted from is continuation.

Another strain of argument focuses upon the view of Dracula as a sympathetic member of a dying culture facing extinction through assimilation. Attila Viragh argues that Stoker presents

Dracula as a victim of the British empire. Viragh also highlights the fact that Dracula has no voice within the text's narrative. He is the only character to not offer an entry and is entirely constructed by the voice of the text's xenophobic imperialist protagonists. He reasons that

Dracula knows that his culture is dying due to the influence of the West and that Dracula has no other choice but to invade as a way to defend himself. Dracula attempts to infect the British women in a last ditch effort to create a future for his people.

The interpretation of Dracula as an endorsement of British imperialism is also refuted by the argument that Stoker's book is not a political text at all. Carol Senf expresses this perspective in her response to Eleni Coundouriotis' article. If critics want to interpret Stoker's political message, she argues they should look beyond Dracula to include his other works. For Senf,

Dracula is not a political text at all and it holds no clear political endorsement. Rather, it is a text that illustrates Stoker's consideration of social issues, particularly sex and religion.

Senf also casts Stoker as an author who explicitly rejected primitive stereotypes of the

East. In order to support this latter claim, Senf points to another of Stoker's works, The Lady of the Shroud. Stoker published The Lady of the Shroud in 1909, over a decade after Dracula, and this later novel features a utopian society, the Land of the Blue Mountains, a technologically sophisticated Eastern land. Senf contends that Stoker was clearly interested in Eastern Europe but his real political interest was reflected in Lady, not Dracula. 13

Senf's critical discussion of the Land of Blue Mountains in The Lady of the Shroud is consistent with Christine Ferguson's interpretation of Dracula as a text that endorses a multicultural utopia as the alternative to the British empire. In "Nonstandard language and the cultural stakes of Stoker's Dracula," Christine Ferguson uses linguistic analysis to argue against the view of Dracula as a foreign other pitted against imperial subjects. Ferguson's analysis highlights the role of language in the determination of insider/outsider status, or in the identification of the foreign other. She notes that Van Helsing in particular struggles to be intelligible, and his use of garbled English is, at times, intentionally humorous, while Dracula carefully practices the English language and accent from Harker in order to better subvert the empire from within.

Ferguson also discusses the diverse nature of the text's group of heroes. Dracula's enemies include a woman, three representatives of the British middle class and two foreign nationals. Ferguson argues that none of these characters perfectly fit the idealized British upper class. Ferguson does acknowledge the presence of Arthur and Lucy as representatives of the

British upper class yet concludes that they are the weakest of the heroes. Lucy succumbs to

Dracula's advances and Arthur, her intended husband, cannot save her despite his aristocratic pedigree. Ferguson also emphasizes Dracula's status as a member of the aristocracy. He is incredibly wealthy, lives in a castle and supports invasion as a legitimate political strategy. Using these arguments, Ferguson concludes that Dracula himself is more closely aligned with the

British Empire than the novel's heroes, who instead represent an idealized multicultural society.

When Dracula threatens to conquer the British Empire, he is defeated by a free multicultural association of heroes and not the Empire itself.

14

Doubling in Dracula

The idea that Dracula might have a heroic double has been explored previously. Carol

Senf's 1979 article, "Dracula: The Unseen Face in the Mirror" offers a psychoanalytic reading of

Dracula that highlights Dracula's status as Harker's dark doppelganger. Senf argues that Dracula is not, as popular opinion suggests, a novel about the struggle between good and evil. Rather, she views the novel as one which emphasizes the similarities between the heroes and the villains.

She contends that the behaviors of Dracula and his vampire minions reflect the fears and anxieties of the repressed British heroes. Psychoanalysis provides support for her literary interpretation.

Interestingly, Senf incorporates political analysis into her article while resisting the urge to explicitly label the text as politically motivated. While not strictly dealing with the issue of politics or British imperialism, Senf frequently illustrates how imperialist prejudice leads the heroes, particularly Harker, to dislike Dracula even before his revelation as a vampire. The mention of imperialism is merely part of Harker's character, not the focus of the piece, however.

She also emphasizes the novel's use of Dracula to represent the primitive and the mystical, elements of society that the rational British wanted to excise; these elements apply to the

American West as they do the European East. Furthermore, Senf's later work suggests that she does not intend her scholarship to be read politically. Senf later published an article in

Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate (Connotations) that directly addresses the topic of imperialism in Dracula. There, she explicitly referenced Wilt's claim that Dracula is a novel about sex and religion, not politics.

Later critics confirm Senf's identification of the Harker/Dracula doubling. In "Doubling and Repetition/ Realism and Closure in Dracula," John Paul Riquelme interprets this relationship 15

as one of many doublings which reinforce what he views to be the novel's awareness of the empire's decline: "The doublings in Dracula tend to undermine the putative differences that help maintain social hierarchies because those doublings frequently suggest that the supposedly contrasting groups and individuals resemble each other" (560). Harker's doubling with Dracula suggests that the barrier between good and evil, the civilized West and the barbaric East, and the middle class and the aristocracy, is not fixed. Conflation and change occurs on the social and racial periphery.

Riquelme acknowledges the Harker/Dracula doubling but also expands upon it by contending that Harker is also a double of Mr. Hawkins, his employer. Harker is subservient to his boss just as he is initially subservient to Dracula, the men he is ordered to serve by Mr.

Hawkins. Riquelme argues that the doubling is evidenced by Harker's imitation of both Hawkins and Dracula. In the case of Hawkins, Jonathon performs the same tasks that his employer might complete had he travelled to Castle Dracula. In the case of Dracula, on the other hand, Harker climbs down the wall of the castle to escape by imitating the strange crawling behavior of the count. More importantly, Harker serves as the bridge which connects Mr. Hawkins, a middle class businessman and civilized British citizen, with the Count, the primitive Eastern royal and vampire.

Riquelme's identification of Harker as a bridge between two worlds leads to the identification of two additional characters as significant bridges. First, he contends that Mina serves as a link between the vampire and the humans after being bitten. However, he then expands her role to include serving as a bridge between the characters and the reader: "Her role as a conduit between worlds is pervasive in the story, since it is through her work that the tale has been transcribed and, presumably, edited. She composes the link between the world of the 16

readers and that of the vampire and his antagonists" (Riquelme 561). Mina's status as the link between worlds is the result of her husband's subservience; once enslaved by Dracula at the behest of Mr. Hawkins, Jonathon loses his agency and acts as an extension of the vampire's will.

He executes Dracula's legal desires, aids him in learning the English language, and eventually shares his wife.

Remembering Quincey

Stoker created ample notes in the development of his novel, and recent access to these notes enables the scholar to better understand his mindset and intent in the development of his characters. Over a roughly 10 year period, Stoker compiled notes used to guide the development of his Dracula manuscript. Edited by Dr. Elizabeth Miller and Dr. Robert Eighteen-Bisang,

Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula; A Facsimile Edition (2008) is the first and only collection of

Stoker's full notes for his novel. Within this edition, the modern transcription is placed beside the facsimiles of the actual notes, allowing the reader to compare the original to the editor's comments. Annotations further clarify the content of the notes on some pages. This text provides considerable insight into Stoker's development of both plot and characters, including the character of Quincey Morris.

Stoker's notes illustrate a gradual development of nameless characters defined by their function to more fully fleshed out creations with distinctive names. For example, the notes demonstrate that Stoker called his vampiric antagonist the rather generic "Count Vampyr" for most of the 10 years prior to publication. A chance encounter with a text at Whitby led Stoker to appropriate the name "Dracula" because he liked the sound. However, by that time, Stoker's character was fully fleshed out. Similarly, Stoker used the term "The Texan," to describe the character that would be eventually named Quincey Morris. Stoker's use of the term "The Texan" 17

suggests that the author viewed this fictional character as an archetype representing a geographic location.

Stoker's creative notes show an intent to feature the Texan as a major character. In fact, the notes record several episodes involving the Texan that were not included in the final product.

In a note dated March 14, 1890, Stoker noted an intent to send the Texan on a solo expedition to

Transylvania. Eighteen-Bisang and Miller observe that this entry is "the first of many indications that the Texan, Quincey P. Morris, once played a more significant part in the novel" (29).

Subsequent notes plan an episode between the Texan and Dracula, a consultation with the Texan, and the Texan's eventual return to English which includes "new light on Dracula" (Eighteen-

Bisang and Miller 29). These early notes do not portray the Texan as a potential suitor to Lucy

Westenra.

As the literature review illustrates, both Morris and the American influence have been largely overlooked by Dracula literary scholars. To date, the two most extensive critical treatments of Quincey Morris have been offered by scholars outside of the field of English literature. In "Buffalo Bill meets Dracula: William F. Cody, Bram Stoker, and the Frontiers of

Racial Decay," Louis Warren, a historian, argues that Quincey Morris was based upon William

"Buffalo Bill" Cody. He bases this argument upon Henry Irving's friendship with Cody and evidence of Stoker meeting Cody on multiple occasions. While Warren contends that Stoker intended a negative depiction of Cody through Morris due to its jealousy over Cody's friendship with Irving, the historian falls short of considering how Quincey Morris might more broadly express Stoker's view of the United States.

In "The Dialectic of Fear," sociologist Franco Moretti makes the controversial claim that

Quincey Morris, like Dracula, is a vampire. He reasons that Quincey's death reflects Stoker's 18

view that all vampires needed to be destroyed as part of the story's resolution. Moretti's argument is similar to the Marxist criticism offered by Patricia McKee but lacks the feminist elements. His treatment of Morris is part of his broader argument that both Frankenstein and Dracula express anti-bourgeois sentiment. Within his interpretation, Morris is representative of American wealth and capitalism.

Of the many characters present within Stoker's texts, Quincey Morris is the one most frequently forgotten in the novel's many incarnations. For example, Morris is almost entirely absent within the plays inspired by Dracula. In those cases where Morris remains, the character is changed so substantially so as to appear almost unrecognizable. For example, Hamilton

Deane's play, the first and one of the most influential of the novel's innumerable adaptations for the stage, transformed the Texan into a female character of the same name in order to create another role for an actress (Melton 472). When the play was brought overseas, the character of

Quincey Morris was omitted entirely.

Quincey's character has fared just as poorly within movie adaptations. Most, including the seminal 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, the unauthorized and silent Nosferatu (1922), and the modern Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) repeat the decision to cut the character entirely from the story. A few films, including Count Dracula (1970), Count Dracula (1977), and El

Conde Dracula (1970), conflate the American with Arthur Holmwood by naming Lucy's fiancé

Quincey Morris. In these films, the cowboy is almost unrecognizable, retaining the characteristics and actions which the novel assign to Arthur; as a result, they present Quincey

Morris in name only.

Released in 1992, Francis Ford Coppola's film, Bram Stoker's Dracula, was to first to accurately represent Quincey Morris as the authentic cowboy character found within the novel. 19

The portrayal of Quincey Morris by Billy Campbell is generally faithful to the novel; Morris

woos Lucy, loses her to Arthur, and participates bravely in the quest to avenge her death, dying

at the movie's conclusion. However, that film substantially alters the manner of Dracula's death.

While Morris does stab the vampire with his Bowie knife as Harker slits his throat; however, the

final death blow is delivered by Mina when she decapitates Dracula. The granting of this agency

to Mina undermines Quincey's ultimate sacrifice, and the character's limited lines and screen

time prevent his death from carrying much gravitas. His story is ultimately overshadowed by the

doomed love shared by Mina and Dracula, a romantic relationship that did not exist within

Stoker's original text.

The absence of Quincey Morris in stage and film adaptations of the novel helps to

explain the great omission of "The Texan" by contemporary literature scholars within the research literature. Dracula is a peculiar literary text in that its current critical interest is bolstered largely by its longevity and popularity among lay readers. Popular culture artifacts like film perpetuate interest in the character but feature the films characters in an uneven manner;

Dracula, Van Helsing, Mina, Lucy, and Harker have come to be featured as the primary characters, while Arthur and Quincey are often overlooked or conflated. The dearth of prior scholarship devoted to Morris creates a critical space for discussion that will be explored in the remainder of this thesis.

Stoker's Politics and Treatment of History

The Author's Background and Politics

The attempt to interpret Stoker's political message requires a familiarity with the man's life. Interestingly enough, while Stoker's novel has generated countless editions and adaptations, 20

scholarly discussions and published biographies of the man's life are limited. Bram (born

Abraham) Stoker was born on November 8, 1847 in Clontaft, a town outside of Dublin, Ireland

(Eighteen-Bisang and Miller 299). His father also named Abraham Stoker. He was an English

Protestant who worked as a civil clerk. Stoker's mother was Charlotte Thornley. Charlotte was

Irish. She was an ardent supporter of social reform. Stoker attended Trinity College and followed in the footsteps of his father by choosing a career as a civil clerk. While employed as a clerk,

Stoker began to dabble in writing theatre reviews. This hobby led to his friendship with renowned actor Henry Irving. After Stoker married Florence Balcombe in 1878, he accepted

Irving's offer to manage the Lyceum Theatre. Stoker and Irving maintained a very close friendship until the actor's death in 1905. One year later, Stoker suffered the first of two debilitating strokes. He died in London on April 20, 1912.

Stoker himself contributed little to the recording of his personal history. Bram Stoker did not write an autobiography and his letters have not been collected into a scholarly edition. His one published memoir, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, focuses upon the life of Henry

Irving, the most popular actor of his era and Stoker's business partner, rather than the life of

Bram Stoker himself.

Stoker wrote Dracula during a period of tremendous political and social upheaval. He began working on the manuscript in 1890. The process of writing and editing the book continued for seven years. During that period, Victorian England faced a serious of challenges that shook middle class sentimentality to its core: "mass migration from central and eastern Europe, challenges to traditional gender roles, conflicts between religion and the new science, and anxieties about atavism and criminality" (Eighteen-Bisang and Miller 300). Stoker appeared acutely aware that the world was changing around him. He created a villain migrating from 21

Eastern Europe, mentioned the New Woman, pitted the evil vampire against heroes fighting with holy water, and incorporated the teachings of criminologists like Lombroso. The author also incorporated new technologies into the novel's narrative to give it a modern feel. There can be no doubt that Stoker's changing political and social environment influenced the content of this novel.

Several literary critics have pointed to Stoker's mixed heritage in order to support their interpretations of Dracula. Within the context of the political debate, biographical descriptions of

Bram Stoker are raised to object to the view of Dracula as an imperialist text. Drawing upon her knowledge of Stoker's biographical details, Senf refutes Coundouriotis' argument that Stoker may have personally supported British imperialism or any negative stereotypes about Eastern

Europe. Senf instead argues that Stoker was a liberal Irishman who would have sympathized with Eastern Europe's struggle to avoid being dominated by Western Europe as his native Ireland had been.

Senf's personal defense of Stoker was supported by Joseph Valente. In his book

Dracula’s Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness and the Question of Blood, Joseph Valente emphasizes

Stoker's Irish ethnicity as a factor relevant to the correct political interpretation of Dracula.

Stoker was Irish and his parents were Protestants, but they were not part of the Irish ruling class.

Stoker’s mother was Anglo-Celtic, not Anglo-Saxon. Valente contends that Stoker would have sympathized with those Irish who sought independence, particularly since Stoker watched his parents slowly fall into a lower socioeconomic status precipitated by anti-Celt discrimination.

However, Stoker resisted revolutionary impulses and did not view violence as a practical means of securing independence, preferring instead to carve a privileged position for Ireland within the empire. Valente ultimately agrees with Arata's reading of Dracula as a text which undermines 22

the apparent supremacy of the British empire by exposing the growing fears of its British supporters.

These interpretations suggests that Stoker maintained a nuanced view of the British

Empire and Ireland's role within it. While he did not support revolution, he did want Ireland to improve its standing. He likely viewed the continuation of the empire as preferable to a world in which the empire did not exist, since membership within that empire afforded Ireland some status. He would have likely recognized that the growing international influence of the United

States, a nation that chose to revolt rather than remain under British rule, challenged his hopes for his native land. The waning of the British empire coincided with the ascendancy of the

United States, and those British civilians concerned with the repercussions of a diminishing empire could not ignore the nation most likely to assume the international leadership mantle. It is therefore plausible that Stoker addressed this political anxiety within his greatest novel by creating and slaying the embodiment of the United States: Quincey P. Morris.

Stoker's Play with History and Truth

Quincey Morris’s literary significance emerges from a dialectic context that challenges traditional notions of history. Stoker appeared cognizant of the possibility of his novel reading as historic; he incorporated explicit conventions which blur the boundaries between fact and fiction.

The first of these is presented on the first page. The novel commences with the presentation of an extended conceit claiming that the events detailed within the text actually occurred. The first paragraph of the 1897 edition claims that the compiled papers are ordered and preserved to fulfill a specific goal: “so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of later-day belief may stand forth as simple fact” (Stoker 26). This paragraph is the only note within the text without a clearly identified author, and readers are left to consider whether the paragraph should be read as 23

the words of Harker, Mina, Van Helsing or perhaps Stoker himself. Stoker was not content to leave just one claim of truth begin the story, and he furthered this conceit in at the novel's conclusion.

Stoker further advocated the veracity of the records in the preface of the novel’s condensed 1901 edition, in which he claimed that the characters were his real friends and acquaintances, their names changed to protect them from reprisal in a brief note that hints at

Dracula’s continued existence. These passages initiate a dialectic between those who relegate vampires to fiction and those who might accept their existence through the presentation of evidence. Further, by showing how initially rational and skeptical British citizens can be converted to belief in vampires through observation and evidence, the text explicitly attempts to blur the line between fiction and history through a careful weaving of the real world with the imagined.

Stoker also openly challenged deterministic views of history in his other publications while advocating positive change based upon example and evidence. Given the enduring popularity of Dracula, fans often forget that Stoker began his writing career in non-fiction. In the preface of his first formal publication, a manual detailing the duties of clerks, Stoker expressed a desire to see his recommendations, contained in over 2,000 pages of text, adopted throughout Great Britain. Stoker’s final work of nonfiction, the 1910 Famous Imposters, documented a series of notable historic hoaxes, including the view held by some that Queen

Elizabeth was actually a man.

In Dracula, this resistance of a strict bifurcation is further illustrated through his development of characters modeled after other fictional characters or real persons. Dr. John

Steward was likely based, at least in part, upon Dr. John Watson, the fictional companion of 24

Sherlock Holmes, while Mina Murray may have been modeled after Laura, the protagonist in

"Carmilla" (Eighteen-Bisang and Miller 284). Abraham Van Helsing shares his first name with

Bram Stoker and Stoker's father; Van Helsing has been suggested to be Stoker's "idealized self- portrait" (Miller and Bisang 283). Jonathan Harker's name is very similar to Joseph Harker, a friend of Stoker's who worked with him at the Lyceum Theatre. Van Helsing’s friend Arminius, who provides valuable information about the weaknesses of a vampire, was modeled after Armin

Vambery, a famous Hungarian scholar and linguist. The idea that Stoker’s titular villain was based upon Vlad the Impaler is well-known despite the appearance of the name “Count

Wampyr” in the author’s early notes, and scholars such as Elizabeth Warren have argued, with limited success, to undermine this view.

Quincey Morris appears to fit the latter mold. Louis Warren presents a strong case that

Buffalo Bill Cody, an acquaintance of Stoker’s, was likely the inspiration for the Texan; in Bram

Stoker's Notes for Dracula; A Facsimile Edition, Elizabeth Miller and Robert Eighteen-Bisang cite Warren's article, agreeing that his analysis is not only plausible but convincing (283).

Stoker's notes suggest that Quincey Morris was not one of Stoker's original characters, and his name emerged over time. Miller and Eighteen-Bisang contend that Quincey is "a tribute to

America and Americans" and that "there is no doubt that Stoker intended to include 'a Texan' from the beginning" (282-283). They note the existence of three progressively larger lists of characters among Stoker's notes. Stoker preferred to refer to his early characters according to their occupation, and the first list includes "Lawyer," "Lawyer's clerk," "Mad doctor," "Mad

Patient," "girl - dies," "Philosophic historian" and "German professor of history" (15). The first five characters on this list appear to correspond with Peter Hawkins, Jonathan Harker, Dr. John

Steward, R. M. Renfield, and Lucy Westenra, while the "philosophic historian" and "German 25

professor of history" were likely conflated to create Abraham Van Helsing. A character corresponding to Quincey Morris does not appear in this first list, but two American characters are found in the author's second character list.

In his second list, which Stoker titled the "Historae Personae," he added two American characters: an unnamed "American Inventor from Texas" and another Texan named Brutus M.

Marix (Eighteen-Bisang and Miller 26-27). The list also contains several characters who did not appear in the final novel, including a painter named Francis Aytown, a psychical research agent named Alfred Singleton and a friend of Mina's named Kate Reed. Stoker gradually culled this long list into his final roster. He condensed the two American characters into the sole character identified as “The Texan,” making this the first character to be solely identified by place of origin. Eventually, this amalgam American character was given a name, and Quincey P. Morris was born.

The narrative further challenges the notion of the novel as purely fiction through the appearance and decisive endorsement of recent scientific research. For example, Van Helsing references the work of Cesar Lombrosco and Max Nordau to dissect Dracula’s criminal psychology. Stoker’s enthusiasm for modern technology is readily apparent throughout the narrative, which references and relies upon the use of recent inventions, such as the phonograph, to produce and compiles the notes and diaries tracking the vampire’s activities. In fact, it is

Jonathan Harker who uses technology to offer the first critique of the East when he states, “It seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?” (Stoker 5). Harker's rhetorical query breaks the distance between reader and fictional character. He encourages the reader to consider his cultural comment even while engaging in personal rumination. Harker's question leads to his ultimate conflation of the East 26

with the West through the figure of the cowboy, a perspective that is explored within the next

section.

Quincey and Dracula

"What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy's death as any of us; but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If American can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed."6

The Vampiric United States

Stoker's narrative creates multiple linkages between the United States and vampirism in a

manner that transforms prior folklore to incorporate the West in the novel's modernist retelling.

This relationship is established even before Quincey Morris is introduced to readers. One

example of this reappropriation of Eastern folklore has already been mentioned in this project's

introduction: the incorporation of the vampire bat into the gothic narrative.

The bat initially appears in dark moments involving the expression of character anxiety.

Dr. Seward is the first to observe a bat during a late night vigil in which he oversaw the sick

Lucy: "There was a full moonlight, and I could see that the noise was made by a great bat, which

wheeled round - doubtless attracted by the light, although so dim - and every now and again

struck the window with its wings" (Stoker 171). With this observation, Seward both notices the

bat and dismisses it as a dumb animal driven by instinct toward a source of dim light. Later,

Lucy also records seeing an errant bat but she similarly dismisses the creature as harmless

(Stoker 238). Both of these characters fail to recognize that the bat is likely Dracula using the

animal form for stealthy travel.

6 This is Dr. Seward's positive observation of Quincey Morris just following the death of Lucy Westerna, in Stoker, 184. 27

While the British characters remain oblivious to Dracula's use of the vampire as a

preferred form, the American cowboy recognizes the threat posed by the presence of vampire

bats. After seeing Lucy's terrible condition, Quincey confesses a firsthand knowledge of a

vampire bat which no other character can claim:

"I have not seen anything pulled down so quick since I was on the Pampas and

had a mare that I was fond of go to grass all in a night. One of those big bats thtat

they call vampires had got at her in the night, and, what with his gorge and the

vein left open, there wasn't enough blood in her to let her stand up, and I had to

put a bullet through her as she lay" (Stoker 164).

With the retelling of his personal experience, Quincey is the first to introduce the link between the vampire bat and the drinking of blood. The Europeans, including Van Helsing, are too

removed from the wild primitivism which is the home for the vampire myth to have this sort of

firsthand knowledge of the vampire. They must rely upon Van Helsing's book knowledge, Mina's

intuition and connection to the vampire, and Quincey's primary experience, which is essential to

understanding Lucy's situation, to win the day. The bat and Quincey's knowledge of it are not the

only factors which tie the Americas with the vampire, and the cowboy is also an archetype which

the narrative ultimately displaces geographically in order to identify it with the barbarians of the

European

Harker's visit to Castle Transylvania introduces the presence of cowboys living in Eastern

Europe. At the beginning of Stoker's novel, Jonathan Harker gently reminds the reader that the

Americas are found east of China while he conflates the identity of Eastern European peasants

with the American cowboy persona. During his journey to Castle Dracula, Harker observes

several peasant groups. He is particularly impressed by the Slovaks, "who are barbarian than the 28

rest, with their big cowboy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails” (Stoker 29).

While most of this description is found verbatim in Stoker’s copious research notes, the wearing of cowboy hats appears to be the product of the author’s imagination, as the original description only notes large nondescript hats. The transition from nondescript hats to cowboy hats suggests an authorial intent to connect the American West with the barbarian East.

Later, the cowboy Slovaks are identified as the most dangerous of human foes. While

Harker initially judges these cowboys “more barbarian than the rest,” he quickly corrects his initial impression and seems relieved to report that they appear “very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion” (Stoker 29). However, Harker’s condescending assessment is later proven false. When the heroes rally to confront Dracula, Van Helsing views the presence of

Slovak guards as a very real threat, calling them “strong and rough” (Stoker 347). The older man took care to prepare his companions for the vampire's human guards. Ultimately, these passages link the American cowboy image to the barbaric East and lay the foundation for Quincey to serve a Dracula’s light double long before the American is even mentioned.

Stoker's decision to connect vampirism to the New World may well have been influenced by his study of philosophy. Stoker attended Trinity College in Dublin, where he eventually became the president of the prestigious University Philosophical Society. In his 1795 essay

"Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch," Immanuel Kant identified cannibalism as the primary factor distinguishing American savages from Europeans:

"The chief difference between European and American savages lies in the fact

that many tribes of the latter have been eaten by their enemies, while the former

know how to make better use of their conquered enemies than to dine off them: 29

they know better how to use them to increase the number of their subjects and

thus the quantity of instruments for even more extensive wars" (Kant 17-18).

The vampire Dracula, of Transylvanian origin, assumes the American characteristic of feeding upon those he strives to conquer. Both of these groups are then contrasted with the European, presumably British conqueror, who elects to use their subjects for material gain rather than simply feed off them. Kant's analysis closely supports the contention that Stoker's British Empire should recognize the value of consuming the Americans in order to gain their strength and maintain the dominant culture's way of life.

Furthermore, Dracula’s own heritage ties him to the Western frontier that the cowboy

Quincey Morris represents, a narrative connection that further conflates the idea of an uncivilized frontier threatening the civilized world. Speaking to Harker, Dracula identifies himself as a member of the Szekelys tribe; the English translation of the tribe’s name means “frontier guards”

(Stoker 52). When the Magyars successfully invaded, they allied with the Szekelys and charged the tribe with the duty of safeguarding the nation’s border with Turkey. However, under

Dracula’s later leadership, the tribe successfully invaded its neighboring lands and expanded its sphere of influence: “In his life, his living life, he go over the Turkey frontier and attack his enemy on his own ground… He come again, and again, and again. Look at his persistence and endurance” (Stoker 317). Van Helsing recognizes that Dracula has an explorer’s spirit and a drive to conquer the unknown, granting to him those positively characteristics often associated with American pioneers.

In fact, when the heroes successfully destroy most of the vampire’s coffins and force him to flee London, Van Helsing surprises Mina when he insist that the heroes track down and 30

destroy Dracula in Transylvania. Van Helsing justifies his resolve with the contention that the temporary setback will not dissuade the Count’s intent to invade:

“He find out the place of all the world most of promise for him. Then he

deliberately set himself down to prepare for the task… His glimpse that he have

had, whet his appetite only and enkeen his desire. Nay, it help him to grow as to

his brain; for it all prove to him how right he was at the first in his surmises”

(Stoker 317).

In Van Helsing’s eyes, Dracula’s decision to invade London was a sort of Manifest Destiny, and his argument paradoxically places the British imperialists into the defensive role of the intended conquered.

Quincey: The Stoic Savage and The Seductive Socialite

Upon his introduction, Quincey is presented as a paradoxical figure; he is the hyper-

masculine specimen capable of attracting the admiration of both men and women. Quincey is

defined by three central characteristics: his attractiveness, his stoicism, and his mastery of

violence. These three features enable Quincey to readily maneuver between wild locations and the refined social space of upper-class British society. In this section, these three qualities are analyzed and discussed in comparison to Count Dracula. They demonstrate both Quincey's similarity to the vampire and his mastery over the Count, since only Quincey succeeds in fulfilling the count's ambition of invading British society.

Quincey's Attractiveness

The first characteristic shared by Quincey Morris and Dracula is a dangerous ability to seduce proper British ladies. The heroes of Dracula do not organize themselves to destroy the count until he has preyed upon and vamped Lucy Westenra. As Cannon Schmitt explains, "They 31

caught one of Us, put her in a bed, and drank her blood; and now We have to pay Them back"

(136). Dracula's seduction and murder of Lucy within her own bedroom has a strong sensual

undercurrent; the two engage in an intimate exchange of bodily fluids during which Lucy drinks

his tainted blood. Instead of producing a child, the fluid exchange enables Lucy's rebirth as an

undead vampire.

Lucy's seduction, murder, and ultimate staking highlight British anxiety concerning racial

purity. Prior to Dracula's intervention, Lucy planned to marry Arthur Holmwood. Arthur is the

more suitable match according to Victorian convention; he is a wealthy gentleman and the only

member of the aristocracy featured in the novel. Lucy is a fit wife for the future lord due to her

wealth, good birth, and purity. It is the duty of British men like Arthur to protect the innocence

of beauties like Lucy, and her vamping uncovers the vulnerability of the British culture to the

malevolent invasion of foreign influence.

Quincey, like Dracula, is a foreigner who fixates his attention upon Lucy. However, while Dracula's influence over Lucy is clearly horrific and resisted by both the young woman and her companions, Quincey's attention is received positively. In an early letter to Mina,

Quincey is initially defined by Lucy according to his attractiveness. he is one of the three men who propose to Lucy Westenra on the same day, yet he proves himself the only one capable of truly challenging Arthur for her affection.

The special status of Quincey Morris as a foreign suitor capable of seducing a British lady is illustrated by the unremarkable case of John Seward. In her description of Dr. John

Steward, Lucy suggests that the good doctor would be a strong match for her more serious friend

Mina, if Mina were not already engaged to Harker: "We met some time ago a man that would just do for you, if you were not already engaged in Jonathan. He is an excellent parti, being 32

handsome, well off, and of good birth. He is a doctor and really clever. Just fancy!" (Stoker 77).

Lucy's description of Seward betray her focus upon social class as a criterion for selecting one's husband. However, Seward's "good birth" and other positive qualities are not enough to make

Lucy love Seward. In recommending Seward to her friend as an ideal match, Lucy acknowledges that she has no romantic inclination toward the physician herself. She views him as a friend only.

Lucy subsequently refuses his proposal of marriage and shows him great pity as he breaks down in response to her rejection. Her later treatment of Dr. Seward suggests a strong sisterly affection, not a romantic attraction.

In contrast, Quincey’s affection generates a sense of reciprocity within Lucy Westenra despite her avowed love of Arthur. In a letter to her friend and confidante, Mina Murray, Lucy acknowledges the inherent danger of a relationship with the American while confessing her affection:

"He is such a nice fellow, an American from Texas, and he looks so young and so

fresh that it seems almost impossible that he has been to so many places and has

had such adventures. I sympathise with poor Desdemona when she had such a

dangerous stream poured in her ear, even by a black men... I know now what I

would do if I were a man and wanted to make a girl love me" (Stoker 79).

In her description of Quincey, Lucy omits a mention of social class. Instead, she focuses upon nationality as the basis for an underlying threat despite the young man's other positive qualities.

In this passage, Lucy is clearly likening Quincey Morris to Shakespeare's Othello, the Moor who seduced, married and eventually murdered the gentile white lady, Desdemona. The poisonous stream is an allusion to the murder of Hamlet's father by his brother. In both cases, trusted family members destroyed their loved ones, and Lucy's words suggest that a relationship with Morris 33

might prove similarly damaging due to their different cultural backgrounds. Lucy, like Stoker in his notes, identifies Quincey initially not by his name but by his place of origin, which creates a distancing effect that identifies the American as a foreign other interacting within the British social realm.

In fact, Lucy appears to be at least partially infatuated with Quincey because he is not a proper gentleman of good birth. Quincey’s willingness to flaunt convention is one of his more attractive qualities. Lucy confesses:

"Mr. Morris doesn't always speak slang - that is to say, he never does so to

strangers or before them, for he is really well educated and has exquisite manners

- but he found out that it amused me to hear him talk American slang, and

whenever I was present, and there was no one to be shocked, he said such funny

things" (Stoker 79).

In this letter, Lucy concedes that Quincey’s willingness to use American slang to amuse her when they are alone provides her a source of amusement even though she knows that he is being inappropriate. Lucy does not record explicit examples of Quincey's American slang, but Mina later notes the man's use of the term "blowing my trumpet" to describe Van Helsing's praise of

Mina's character (Stoker 235). Like Lucy, Mina appears to appreciate Quincey's turn of phrase, since she considers it important enough to include in her record. In the estimation of both Lucy and Mina, Quincey possesses the educational and social abilities required to easily navigate

English society, yet he also flaunts convention when it suits his purpose.

As Lucy continues her letter to Mina, her narrative suggests that Quincey's presence threatens to undermine the proper Victorian lady's morality. Quincey's marriage proposal prompts Lucy to wish she could marry more than one man: "Why can't they let a girl marry three 34

men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it"

(Stoker 80). Lucy’s letter to Mina suggests that she would have loved and married Quincey had

she not encountered Arthur first. When the American proposes to her, Lucy is moved to tears. He

comforts her and she, despite the impropriety of the situation, kisses him in consolation. She then

asks Mina "why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of girls about who

would worship the very ground he trod on? I know I would if I were free" (Stoker 81). This last

statement is particularly important because it again emphasizes Lucy's preference for Quincey

over the other rejected suitor, Seward. Despite being British and a better social match due to his

high birth, Seward is unable to compete against the cowboy for Lucy's affection, and the option

to marry Seward is only the briefest of possibilities within a hypothetical world in which Lucy could marry all three men.

Furthermore, Quincey possesses the charisma necessary to befriend the novel's male characters. If only Lucy, a young and naive woman, loved Quincey, then the character might appear to be a threatening foreign other out to prey upon a British lady, like Dracula. However, she is not Quincey's only admirer, and Quincey's charisma is particularly highlighted by his ongoing relationship with Arthur Holmwood and John Seward. Since Arthur, Quincey, and

Seward all loved the same woman, they shared a common and expected motivation for jealousy and dislike. However, no undercurrent of discord can be found. Once Lucy chooses her future husband, they three men continue as close and caring friends as if their prior romantic rivalry did not matter. The extraordinary bond of love shared by these men is difficult to believe, but as the next sections will illustrate, Quincey irrevocably won the loyalty of his male friends through his decisive and capable behavior.

35

Quincey's Stoicism

Quincey’s first meeting with Lucy illustrates his stoicism, a core component of his

masculinity. Unlike the emotional Seward, Quincey handles her refusal unemotionally, and even

convinces her to kiss him before they part. It is Quincey’s proposal and subsequent behavior, not

Seward’s, which prompts Lucy to ruminate about marrying more than one man. Lucy’s

consideration of Quincey’s proposal, appreciation for his emotional control, and their underlying

sexual tension, creates a potentially scandalous situation: a common, admittedly “rough”

American man competed against an English aristocrat for an English lady’s hand and almost

won. Timing, not breeding, was the decisive factor in the lady’s decision, and the text's later

characterization illustrates the significance of emotional control to Quincey's character.

In fact, Morris demonstrates the ability to remain in quiet control of his emotions when

the other male characters break down. For example, when Arthur, known as Lord Godalming,

shares his grief over the death of Lucy to Mina, Quincey comforts the man silently before

leaving the room:

"I know you loved my poor Lucy-" Here he turned away and covered his face

with his hands. I could hear the tears in his voice. Mr. Morris, with instinctive

delicacy, just laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly

out of the room. I suppose there is something in woman's nature that makes a man

free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional

side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood" (Stoker 235).

In this passage, Quincey showed remarkable constraint. He focused upon the needs of his friend instead of his own emotions over the death of the woman he loved. Further, this passage shows

Quincey's respect for the other man's dignity. Recognizing that seeing his friend cry might 36

undermine the young lord's masculinity, Quincey quietly excuses himself in order to permit

Arthur to freely share his emotions with Mina. In this case, Quincey can control himself when

Arthur cannot.

Quincey’s stoic nature draws textual comparisons to two famous warriors and conflates

American masculinity with reticence. Throughout the text, he is described as speaking

“laconically” at least four times: the word conjures not only the image of man of few words but also a Spartan warrior. If Quincey is the Spartan, then Seward and the other English men, more refined and less rough, may be representative of ancient Athens. The two Greek city-states viewed the other as a rival, yet they banded together to face Eastern invaders, just as Quincey and the English work together to combat Dracula.

Quincey further distinguishes himself as the only man who does not cry. While Steward and Van Helsing may cry over Lucy, and Arthur and Harker fall prone to fits of hysterics,

Quincey exerts a warrior’s control over his emotions. As Steward observes, “I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy’s death as any of us; but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking (Stoker 184).” Seward's likening of Quincey to a viking is an evocation of the image of the gentle savage. By describing Quincey a moral Viking, even

Steward, one of Quincey’s closest friends, recognizes that they are socially and culturally divided.

Quincey is physically stronger and more capable than the other men during times of extreme duress, and Quincey uses his stoicism to compensate for the British men's weaknesses.

For example, during the nightly vigils watching over Lucy, only Quincey stays up all night while the other men take turns sleeping. As Dr. Seward explains, "The Professor and I took it in turns to watch, and we never left her for a moment unattended. Quincey Morris said nothing about his 37

intention, but I knew that all night long he patrolled round the house" (Stoker 165). Lucy's murder occurs only after Quincey is called away, so he is not available to keep watch all night.

Later, when other men break down, Quincey frequently appears to physically catch them. For example, he prevented Arthur from collapsing in Lucy’s tomb. In these instances, Quincey's ability to control his emotions appears to grant him an almost supernatural strength. His resolve and physical strength is greater than that of the other men as a result, and the British men come to rely upon him physically.

It is important to note that Quincey's stoicism is not the result of any communication impairment. On the contrary, in Dracula, language use is an important marker of national status, and Quincey Morris proves himself more adapt at traversing the language gap than both Dracula and Van Helsing. Ferguson reasons that the language used by Van Helsing, the group's leader, identifies him as a foreign other. Tomaszewska offered a similar reading of Van Helsing, stating

"Van Helsing's imperfect, often unintentionally comic English marks him as an outsider" (4). In contrast, Ferguson notes that Dracula's command of the English language surpasses that of

Jonathon Harker, an English native, a point that Harker himself grudgingly acknowledges. Based upon this observation, Ferguson contends that Dracula is more closely aligned with the idealized notion of empire than his opponents.

However, Quincey’s reticence also removes him from his companions. While he may read the diaries of Seward, Mina, Harker and Van Helsing, and through that process gain insight into how they think and perceive the world, they cannot similarly read him. Mina, Seward,

Harker and Van Helsing all contribute copious notes, but Quincey contributes just one brief telegram to the collection of paper that forms the novel narrative. 38

Quincey's sole contribution to the collection of letters and journals is only noteworthy for itslong status. The content of his note involves a friendly invitation to Arthur to enjoy dinner and celebrate the British man's impending marriage to Lucy:

"My dear Art, -

We've told yarns by the camp-fire in the prairies, and dressed one another's

wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas; and drunk healths on the shore of

Titicaca. There are more yarns to be told, and other wounds to be healed, and

another health to be drunk. Won't you let this be at my camp-fire tomorrow

night? I have no hesitation in asking you, as I know a certain lady is engaged to a

dinner party, and that you are free. There will only be one other, our old pal at the

Korea, Jack Seward. He's coming, too, and we both want to mingle our weeps

over the wine-cup, and to drink a health with all our hearts to the happiest man in

all the wide world, who has won the noblest heart that God has made and the best

worth winning. We promise you a hearty welcome, and a loving greeting, and a

health as true as your own right hand. We shall both swear to leave you at home if

you drink too deep to a certain pair of eyes. Come!

Yours as ever and always,

Quincey P. Morris" (Stoker 83).

This note has nothing to do with the plans to hunt and kill Dracula. It could have easily been

excised from the text without substantially altering the plot. Its contents confirms the

longstanding relationship between the three men and positive appeal of the cowboy. Despite

losing the woman he loved to another man, Quincey is light-hearted, and he expresses his

ongoing loyalty to Arthur and Seward despite their mutual love for Lucy. 39

Quincey's otherwise absence from the broader narrative contribution marks him as an

outsider. Dracula, like Quincey, does not contribute to the collection of compiling notes or

narrating the action. The vampire's speech is literally silenced, and he is presented through the

filtering eyes of the English writers. While these writers claim to fulfill their narrative duty with

great care and attention to detail, they are still human and vulnerable to error. It is possible that

some or all of the narratives offered by Mina, Harker, Van Helsing or Seward contain unintended

mistakes or exaggerations. This filter renders both the vampire and the cowboy unknowable to

the reader; the reader can understand how both are viewed by the narrators, but the reader cannot

verify the veracity of the descriptions because neither Dracula or Quincey exercise their own

voice.

Mina's account of Quincey helps to verify both Lucy's observation of his attractiveness

and the manifestation of his emotional resolve. Mina records Quincey's bravery within a context

of observing the cowboy's control after Lucy's death. She likens his control over his emotions to

a form of bravery. When Quincey ignores his own pain to inquire after the grieving Arthur, Mina

observes, "he bore his own trouble so bravely that my heart bled for him" and Mina soon follows

with judging him "so brave and unselfish a soul" that she kisses him (Stoker 236-237). Mina's

demonstration of affection is sympathetic rather than sexual. She seeks to comfort the cowboy

despite his best efforts to hide his sorrow over Lucy's death. But the moment is also impulsive,

and it echoes Lucy's own impulsive decision to kiss the Texan after rejecting his marriage

proposal.

Stoker clearly intended to have Mina's kiss of Quincey parallel his kiss with Lucy. In

response to the gesture, Quincey says, "Little girl, you will never regret that true-hearted kindness, so long as ever you live!" (Stoker 237). This line is Quincey's only comment before he 40

retreats to the male space of the study, a place inhabited only by Arthur where Quincey would presumably feel more comfortable sharing his grief outside of the feminine gaze. But, his one comment is enough to remind the reader of Quincey's own words to Lucy: "Little girl, I hold your hand, and you've kissed me, and if these things don't make us friends nothing ever will"

(Stoker 81). Mina herself remarks upon the similarity of speech used by the cowboy (Stoker

237). In both cases, Quincey's guard is lowered for a moment to express devotion to a woman who shows him kindness before the resuming his stoic posture. Mina's conflation of emotional bravery and self-control as encapsulated within the cowboy hints at the man's physical bravery in the face of violence, the characteristic that is explored in the next section.

Quincey's Bravery

The trait of bravery distinguishes Quincey from his human friends. Quincey's special bravery is established by Van Helsing during the process of transferring blood from the young suitors to Lucy. In the case of Arthur, Van Helsing emphasizes the young gentleman's pedigree:

"He is so young and strong and of blood so pure that we need not defibrinate it" (Stoker 138). In contrast, Quincey's blood is identified by the man's bravery. In response to Quincey's offer to act as donor, Van Helsing states, "A brave man's blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble. You're a man, and no mistake. Well, the devil may work against us for all he's worth, but God sends us men when we want them" (Stoker 162). Similarly, Dracula has "more iron nerve, more subtle brain, more braver heart, than any man" (Stoker 545). The parsing of

Van Helsing's exact words identifies an important similarity between the two characters while also carefully distinguishing the vampire from the man. Quincey appears to be the bravest of the human companions, but Dracula is braver than any man, including the American. This subtlety 41

of description supports the interpretation of Quincey's status as the vampire's lighter, human counterpart.

The bravery of both Dracula and Quincey lead them to be the leaders of men. In the case of Dracula, he proved himself a brave military leader even before his transformation into one of the undead. Harker generously records the count's rant about his family's considerable bravery as proven by their prior military achievements:

"We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many

brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship... Who more gladly than we

throughout the Four Nations received the 'bloody sword,' or at its warlike call

flocked quicker to the standard of the King?... Was it not this Dracula, indeed,

who inspired the other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his

forces over the great river into Turkey-land; who, when he was beaten back, came

again, and again, and again, though he had come alone from the bloody field

where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could

ultimately triumph?" (Stoker 52-54).

In this speech, Dracula shows his pride at being a part of a brave race of people who demonstrated their bravery through conquest and violence. As the recorder of this scene, Harker notes Dracula's enthusiasm for the discussion of his nation's history and his obvious enjoyment of the opportunity to share his memory of the long past events. Dracula's speech ends in a lamentation over the recent state of peace: "The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told" (Stoker 54). With this statement, Dracula clearly longs for a time when bravery was valued as the mechanism for savage conquest. 42

Quincey’s bravery breeds a capacity for savagery which engenders a begrudging respect and even domination of the more civilized gentlemen. As Steward admits, “In all our hunting parties and adventures in different parts of the world, Quincey Morris had always been the one to arrange the plan of action, and Arthur and I had been accustomed to obey him implicitly” (Stoker

303). Like a ranking officer, Quincey commands authority during tense situations and even Lord

Godalming, the novel’s primary representation of English aristocracy, depends upon Quincey’s leadership during crisis. Steward’s assessment suggests that Quincey enjoys a superiority in tactics and strategy that the English cannot match.

Quincey’s aggressive masculinity, and his status as representative of a United States capable of challenging British authority, is explicitly discussed by two English characters. In both cases, superficial comments mask underlying tension and suspicion. First, in admiration of his friend’s stoicism, Steward observes, “If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power indeed” (Stoker 184). Steward’s words, when applied to Quincey’s proposal to Lucy, take on a more menacing suggestion: that American men could successfully seduce and woo proper English ladies, drawing them away from their more socially acceptable male suitors. By breeding with Britain’s best women, American men could strengthen their own nation while simultaneously weakening the British Empire.

With a more decisively critical tone, Renfield also remarks upon the Texan’s homeland to offer a political commentary: “Mr. Morris, you should be proud of your great state. Its reception into the Union was a precedent which may have far-reaching effects hereafter, when the Poles and the Tropics may hold allegiance to the Stars and Stripes. The power of Treaty may yet prove a vast engine of enlargement, when the Monroe Doctrine takes its true place as a political fable”

(Stoker 248). Renfield’s criticism of American foreign policy is bound within the speech of a 43

mad man, and his insane permits Renfield the freedom to express fears that the sane English know but will not express.

Riquelme's deconstructionist interpretation of both Harker and Mina as important bridges between world create a precedent for the identification of a similar role played by Morris. The presence of multiple doubles within Dracula undermines the stability of knowing and challenges the reader to reconsider how he or she evaluates reality:

"Vivid passages and enigmatic details that are difficult to ignore press us to

consider the bases on which we think of our world and ourselves as well-ordered,

sane, and safe. By suggesting that the monster is not outside but within, they

create alternatives for self-understanding. Stability of an inflexible kind limits

what can be thought, experienced, and created. The instabilities and uncertainties

in Dracula are simultaneously threatening and potentially liberating" (Riquelme

560).

Quincey Morris also plays the role of bridge by connecting the primitive East to the wild West; he is the sole representative of the United States and his presence within the group reflects positively upon his nation. However, he simultaneously the violent potential invader who aids the colonizers in resisting Dracula's intended reverse colonization. His participation in the effort to kill the vampire both illustrates the usefulness of the United States to the British Empire and the capability of the rival nation in undermining the empire's authority.

As both savage and socialite, Quincey serves as the bridge between the savage and the civilized. Throughout the novel, Quincey Morris demonstrates remarkable knowledge of the vampire myth, and his knowledge extends to firsthand experience gained prior to the initiation of the novel. Morris first shares his knowledge of vampires when he learns of Lucy's condition. 44

Based upon her symptoms, he suggests that she might have been bitten by a vampire bat. This moment is important because Quincey, not Van Helsing, is the first to introduce the idea of the vampire as the cause for Lucy’s decline, despite the popular view of Van Helsing as the group's intellectual leader and vampire expert.

Quincey's Death and 'Resurrection'

A Brief Recap

The novel closes with a surprisingly brief description of the death of Count Dracula.

Time is a major concern as the sun threatens to set before the count's caravan can be stopped.

Using horses, the heroes manage to confront the count and his guards during the day before they can enter the safe confines of the castle. Mina narrates her fear as Dracula awakens from his sleep. The setting sun suggests his inevitable victory. Yet, Jonathan and Quincey fight their way through the horde of guards to confront the vampire before he is ready. Mina observes, "on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat; whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart" (Stoker

367). The combination of wounds prove fatal to Dracula and his body crumbles to dust. Mina calls the event a miracle and the vampire's guards flee.

Tragically, before the heroes can enjoy their victory, Quincey Morris collapses. He suffers from a deep wound. The ministrations of Mina and the two physicians cannot save his life, and the "gallant gentleman" responsible for striking the vampire's heart dies as he had lived,

"with a smile and in silence" (Stoker 368).

Mina's account ends with Quincey's death but her passage is followed by a brief note penned by her husband. In it, Harker recounts the birth of his son by Mina on November 6th of 45

the following year: "It is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy's birthday is the same day as that on which Quincey Morris died" (Stoker 368). The two heroes use the occasion of their son's birth to remember their fallen friend. The child is named after each of the heroes, but

Harker explains that he is called "Quincey" to further honor the cowboy.

Quincey's Sacrifice

Quincey's life is offered as a direct trade for the soul of the aggrieved Mina Harker. With his dying words, Quincey acknowledges that he is happy to sacrifice his life for the British lady.

With his friends gathered around him, he cries out, "I am only too happy to have been of any service! Oh, God!" (Stoker 368). Quincey is the first to see that Mina has received grace through the elimination of the stain from her forehead. The dying cowboy urges his friends to thank God for their victory with his final breath: "Now God be thanked that all has not been in vain! See! the snow is not more stainless than her forehead! The curse has passed away!" (Stoker 368).

Quincey's joy at Mina's salvation prevents his death from being too tragic. He dies, but his heroism presumably enables him to enjoy a place in heaven with the knowledge that Mina, upon her death, will also be saved.

Quincey's role in Mina's salvation cements his place as a bridge between the civilized and the savage. The savage Dracula sought to steal Mina from her family and enslave her to his will.

He viewed her as an object, the next plaything to grab his attention after losing Lucy to the heroes. In contrast, Quincey places the lady on a pedestal. He has no romantic intentions, and does not express any regret in losing his life in the battle to save her. Quincey cannot be a full savage, therefore, because he still values the lady in a manner consistent with the empire.

Quincey's death personifies the assimilation of the United States back into the fold of the

British Empire. His is a sacrifice that is symbolically necessary to purge the burn caused by the 46

communion wafer touching Mina's forehead. Quincey's end makes him an almost Jesus figure except that he is not necessarily blameless. Joseph Valente contends:

"the fate of Quincy Morris may be seen as the terminal and summary instance of

the mirroring of vampire and vampire fighters. Received in the very act of slaying

Dracula, Morris' death wound serves as a ritual token of Dracula's symbolic value

for the members of Little England: it signifies that their effective extermination of

the vampire and what he represents can only transpire through the eradication of a

blameworthy part of their collective self" (139).

According to Valente, that blameworthy part of the collective is the Anglo-American ethnic identity, which was emerging at that time as the primary challenge to the international domination of the British. While plausible, Valente's analysis fails to consider how Stoker's endorsement of Ireland's decision to remain within the empire might have influenced his work.

In Stoker's mind, the United States might have been guilty of disloyalty due not to simply the contemporary status of the nation as an impediment to continued British supremacy, but more important due to the American revolution. After all, Stoker defended the Irish decision to remain in the empire and would not support those who argued for a similar Irish revolution. Therefore, the American Revolution might have been viewed as an act which necessitated a rejoining with the empire enabled through sacrifice. Quincey, the American, is sacrificed within the narrative to make way for the survival of England through the cured body of Mina, just as the United States might need to sacrifice its autonomy to enliven the waning British Empire through an extended

Anglo presence in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres.

Furtherore, the death of Quincey Morris is intimately tied to Stoker's redefinition of family over the course of the novel. As Nancy Armstrong contends, "the novel begins by 47

proposing an ideal family and concludes with a family that has incorporated certain qualities of

the vampire" (264). Prior to their encounter with the vampire, Jonathan and Mina become

engaged, and the end of the novel announces the birth of their son. While Jonathan is the formal

father, the child's blood contains the blood of Dracula. Yet, Armstrong overlooks the infusion of

American influence over the life of the middle class young man. While Quincey gave his blood

to Lucy, he gave his life to Mina. The child bears Quincey's first name, just as he bears his

father's last name. The complex relationship between child, father, and namesake points to the

fluidity of relationships and uneasy collapse of borders within the British Empire. The American,

both a child due to its status as a former colony and a father due to its military might, sacrificed

himself to enable a rebirth that would continue the British legacy.

This interpretation is supported by the problematic final narrative offered by Jonathan

Harker. At the end of the novel, Jonathan Harker's narration repeats the claim that the novel is

true as first articulated at the beginning of the text. Harker's tone is indignant when he declares in

the first line of the novel's final paragraph, "We want no proofs; we ask none to believe us!"7

(Stoker 369). With this statement, Harker continues the claim initiated in the novel's first

paragraph that the story is true; yet, he paradoxically says that he does not care if anyone

believes in the truth even while participating in its recording. The combination of Harker's status

as the text's final narrator and his confirmation of the truth of the novel's events suggest that he

may have been the intended narrator of the declaratory paragraph which opens the novel.

However, at the close of the novel, the man appears to protest too much; Harker seems to

really want the reader to believe him, but covers up the truth of his desire with bravado even

7 This line, when included in film adaptations, is typically attributed to Van Helsing, not Harker. For example, see Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). 48

while declaring how the truth will be preserved within the mind and body of his son. Harker's next line further betrays his true intent by commenting upon the development of his son by Mina, who was born one year after Quincey's death and is affectionately nicknamed "Quincey" in honor of the deceased cowboy: "The boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake" (Stoker 369). With this statement, the narrator transforms his own child into the depository of the truth. Harker's desire for others to understand the true events are imposed upon his son as a sort of duty. The boy Quincey will be charged with remembering events he did not himself witness, and he will presumably also be responsible for the protection of the manuscript.

But the child Quincey is valuable not only has a historian charged with the protection of the truth but as the symbol for a future empire bolstered by the blood of the tamed Americas. The death of Quincey enabled the birth of the boy and the British imperialism he represents. Stephen

Arata acknowledges the presence of Dracula's blood within the child of Mina: "the position of vampire and victim have been reversed. Note it is Dracula whose blood is appropriated and transformed to nourish a failing race" (631 ). While compelling, Arata's analysis overlooks the instrumental role played by Quincey Morris in the appropriation of Dracula's blood. Without

Quincey's intervention in killing Dracula, Mina would have shared Lucy's fate as a vampire.

Since vampires cannot bear children, Mina would have never conceived her beloved child.

Quincey's sacrifice enabled Mina's son to be born; the English race is reinvigorated with the blood gained by Dracula and the sacrifice of the Americans.

The novel's characters do not explicitly interpret this political message, yet Harker's final narrative suggests that both he and Mina are aware of Quincey's lasting influence over their 49

child's blood. Mina maintains "the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has passed into him" (Stoker 368). This hope echoes the real knowledge that the vampire's blood passed into

Mina's body. Quincey's spirit might purge the vampire's taint through his ultimate sacrifice.

Harker, like his wife, is aware of the tainting of his child's blood. His careful acknowledgement of the steps taken to maintain the veracity of the account contained in the novel demonstrate that he is aware of the contents. He knows that his wife drank the vampire's blood, and he knows that the blood was still in her body at the time of his son's conception. While he does not say it explicitly, Harker appears to have accepted his son as a mixed blood creation forged by their encounter with the vampire.

Quincey’s rebirth as the son of good English citizens suggests a means of bolstering the empire through appropriation and assimilation. Both savage and civilized, Quincey’s body serves as a strange hybrid that destroys the easy civil/savage binary that characterizes postcolonial and other critical readings of the novel. Quincey possesses the ability to pass in English society that

Dracula so craves, and his successful infiltration of the English world poses a direct threat to those already concerned, at that time, with English racial purity. By placing Quincey Morris within the inner circle of heroes, and imbuing Quincey with the characteristics of a savage,

Stoker complicates the empire’s simple civilized/savage binary. Quincey the savage must die at the novel’s conclusion, such as Dracula must die, so that overarching social order may be restored.

The ending of the novel might then be read as a reconciliation between the savage and sensual threat posed by the American West, as well as Stoker’s own attempt to reinforce Irish exceptionalism through a solution to the American challenge. Stoker revised Vampire mythos to reflect his own ambivalence toward a nation he recognized as both a growing rival of the empire 50

and a counterargument against the historic decision made by his own nation. While Stoker carefully eschewed the advocacy of those who endorsed violence as a mechanism for Irish independence, he nevertheless endorsed a view of Ireland as special, more and better than those simply colonized by force.

The legacy of the Harker family is the horror story that will ultimately be read and loved by generations. Yet, these readers will regard Stoker's story as a fiction despite his open efforts to claim it otherwise. The novel's adaptations in film and stage overlook the significant political and social issues raised by the life and death of Quincey Morris. In the future literature, scholarly critics would be wise to accept Stoker's argument and explore the text further for its political and social messages.

Conclusion

Bram Stoker maintained a complicated political perspective. As a person of mixed Irish-

English blood, he understood the prejudice directed toward the Irish and sympathized with those

Irish who desired independence. However, he also enjoyed the privileges of his English heritage, and resisted the call for violent revolution. Instead, Stoker struck a compromise that kept Ireland tied to Britain, but as a special part of the empire. Stoker's political solution unfolds in the pages of his greatest novel, a work that plays with the boundary between fiction and history. Within

Dracula, he explored the growing threat of the United States to British domination, and through

Quincey Morris, he proposed a dual solution to both eliminate the American threat and reinvigorate the waning empire. As the vampire's light double, Morris was still violent and dangerous, but he was also effective and useful in defeating the vampire. The wild America 51

represented by Quincey could be brought back into the fold and sacrificed if needed to usher in the next generation of loyal British subjects.

Stoker's presentation of "The Texan" provides ample room for a political interpretation of the novel which incorporates the author's own personal and political leanings. Through his personal interactions with "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Stoker saw in the American West a fertile and wild landscape filled with the threat of the uncivilized, a Western counterpart to the frontier of

Transylvania. In both the East and the West, Stoker appeared to advocate the conquest of the

British Empire as a needed civilizing force, a political message that tacitly endorses the decision of Stoker's native Ireland to remain a willing part of the British Empire. To further his political message, Stoker linked the characters created to represent their nations.

The American Morris represents the light double of Dracula himself: a handsome and wealthy personage whose knowledge of the wild could be harnessed to further to imperial mission of conquest. Quincey shares several important attributes with the count. Like Dracula, he is uncharacteristically brave, and Quincey exhibits his bravery through a unique combination of emotional stoicism and martial prowess. Furthermore, Quincey evinces the ability to pass between worlds. His charismatic speech and physical beauty enables him to pass within the

British realm in a manner that Dracula can only dream of emulating. The cowboy is the successful foreign other, and he serves as the bridge between the uncivilized frontier and the civilized parlor.

However, Quincey's success is fleeting. While his bravery and attractiveness is praised by the British men and women alike, the cowboy is doomed to a demise at the close of the novel.

He performs his service to the empire by saving Mina with his own sacrifice. Quincey the man had to die, just as Dracula had to die; the two characters represent the other which the empire 52

sought to conquer. Quincey's continued existence would only challenge the supremacy of the

British men and remind them of the looming ascendancy of the growing superpower that he represented.

Nevertheless, this text cannot be read as a simple endorsement of the British Empire because Quincey lives on through the son of Mina and Harker. The author's inclusion of the birth of Mina Harker's son, a child called Quincey whose body contained the blood of Dracula, points to the author's complex ambivalence about the United States. While respecting the independence and strength of the nation, Stoker feared it; the nation represented a challenge to the historical decision of Ireland to leave the United Kingdom, and also challenged Stoker's view of Irish exceptionalism. By killing Quincey and creating a child born into the middle class to loyal imperial parents, Stoker replaced the threat while suggesting that the British child might thrive by encapsulating the American's strengths. One is left to wonder, therefore, if the child Quincey may be the novel's final and ultimately only triumphant vampire, one whose hybrid birth promised to reinvigorate the declining British Empire by drawing sustenance from the United

States.

53

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