Introduction
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, English Gothic fiction underwent a significant evolution. One of the most highly acclaimed works of Gothic fiction is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which effectively “maps Victorian psychical derangements onto the Gothic East European vampire myth” (Houston 117). Stoker’s Dracula is profoundly anthropocentric; that is, the view which proposes that the outside world is only valued if it directly or indirectly serves humans (McShane 170), imbued with a deeply formidable outlook towards any creature that might pose a threat to humans. The novel is founded on the Victorian perspective on human knowledge and science as the means to quell any natural or unnatural menace. This perspective is the legacy of the Enlightenment’s central optimism concerning human rationality, where the ultimate solution to all human suffering is found in a rational worldview which celebrates knowledge. The novel’s anthropocentric view emerges from its anthropomorphising of the monster while depriving him and his kind of any moral consideration. In Stoker’s narrative, “nature and animals are monstrous and devoid of subjectivity” (Aroca 99), which ultimately leads to a radical encounter with Dracula. The encounter between Dr. Van Helsing and Count Dracula is a classic illustration of the encounter between light and darkness. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is conveyed through nearly all of the major characters except for Count Dracula. Neither Count Dracula nor any of the other vampires are ever given a voice in the narration, which accentuates the otherness of the non-human characters. As Dönmez puts it, “Dracula as a text continues to produce and reproduce the representations of nature as alien, monster, and other. The fear of the unknown, combined with the fear of nature, boosts this gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar, thus, the human and the nonhuman” (19).
Dracula scrutinises the inherent contextualisation of human-nonhuman relations within the novel, and it asserts the superiority of human rationality and knowledge over any natural or mythical existential threat. As with many gothic novels, any human encounter with a non-human threat mostly results in the eradication of the non-human threat, usually at the cost of losing loved ones or confidantes. The extreme reliance on human knowledge becomes the main source of superiority, ultimately leading to the demise of Count Dracula. Victorians were significantly optimistic about progressive knowledge, and “the actual time of modernity, represented as being standard, linear, and progressive, opposes the mythic time of prehistory and the Gothic romance” (Süner 3). The characters’ overconfidence in knowledge is rooted in the emergence of “new academic disciplines [and] the overwhelming amount of collected information” (Pinkerton 2), which gradually led to new technologies and tangible advancements in Victorian life. Human knowledge is wholeheartedly anthropocentric, and knowledge discourses are subjective in that they fail to contribute to the reality of the other, be it Frankenstein’s monster or Count Dracula. Accordingly, Dracula and other vampires are only the subject of interest as objects of study rather than subjects equal to humans.
The present article investigates the anthropocentric discourses that shape Victorian knowledge production, arguing that such knowledge is fundamentally ecophobic. Drawing on moral philosophy, the article demonstrates how contradictory discourses are mobilised to justify the mistreatment and extermination of figures such as Dracula and other vampires, while simultaneously condemning them as morally corrupt. The killing of Dracula and his kind ultimately represents the triumph of anthropocentric ideology: although human supremacy is momentarily challenged, it is decisively reaffirmed through violence against the non-human other.
In creating Count Dracula, Stoker confronts a profound moral contradiction. Victorian humanism traditionally locates humanity’s moral superiority in its capacity for rational thought and articulate language—abilities that purportedly grant humans “the right to exist” (Karahan 74). Yet Dracula himself is highly articulate, intellectually sophisticated, and capable of complex strategic thought. The novel must therefore reconcile Dracula’s evident cognitive parity with humans with the moral legitimacy of his extermination by the human alliance led by figures such as Van Helsing, Seward, Arthur, and Morris. Either the criteria that morally justify human life differ from those articulated within Victorian humanist discourse, or the narrative ultimately fails to provide a coherent moral justification for Dracula’s slaughter. This unresolved contradiction exposes a deep-seated prejudice against non-human life forms and reaffirms the anthropocentric worldview that underpins the novel’s ethical framework.
The article’s central intervention lies in its argument that vampires and humans share an inherent parasitic relationship with their environment and with other forms of life. While vampirism is explicitly framed as monstrous, exploitative, and unnatural, human parasitism—manifested through colonial expansion, resource extraction, and environmental domination—is normalised and rendered morally invisible. Victorian anthropocentrism strategically suppresses this shared parasitism in order to maintain humans at the top of the hierarchical order of being. By construing parasitism as morally abhorrent only when practised by vampires, the discourse excludes Dracula from ethical consideration while shielding human violence from moral scrutiny. This selective moral framing not only legitimises Dracula’s extermination but also reveals how anthropocentric ideology weaponises environmental and ethical discourse to preserve human supremacy.
Recent scholarship on Dracula has been mostly concerned with feminist analyses, colonial approaches, and Marxist readings in which, through the latter, Dracula becomes the epitome of Feudalism, failing to find his place within the new social system. Winandhini and Jatmiko investigate the characterisations of women in Dracula. They assert that Mina is “the ideal Victorian woman” (210), while the female characters enslaved by Dracula were conventional women for their “submissiveness and dependence on Dracula” (210). The missing point in Winandhini and Jatmiko’s analysis is the fact that while Mina and Lucy represent women in British Victorian society, Dracula’s brides are represented as highly domesticated creatures; this stands in opposition to the Victorian representation of women. While Victorian women are depicted as much more progressive than Dracula’s brides, they are both dominated by vehement patriarchal discourses. In contrast, Wyman and Dionisopoulos propose that all female characters within the novel are labelled in accordance with the needs of patriarchy. In this sense, they are depicted “as helpless (protected virgin), worthless (powerless whore), or evil (powerful whore)” (234). Unlike many of his contemporaries, like Oscar Wilde, Stoker presents a very traditional image of a Victorian woman, and his definitions fall into “the virgin and the whore, the saint and the vampire” (Domínguez-Rué 300) dichotomy.
The characterisation of the vampires and humans stresses a different dichotomy in which all human characters are innocent, rational, and sensible, while the vampires are tainted with fatal flaws like greed, lust, and pride. “The aggressive annihilation of the vampire” (Smith 128) does not clearly stem from the attributed characteristics. Throughout the novel, “both Lucy and the Count as the scapegoat figures” (Prescott and Giorgio 500), slaughtered for consuming the blood of humans, are treated as existential threats to the lives of humans. The vampires dismantle the food chain by forcing humans into the food chain and becoming themselves, predators, while humans become the prey. As Birge postulates, “alluring as some vampires might be, these are deadly, unnatural creatures of the night, preying and feeding on the lives of others” (23). Human beings, however, have not always been at the top of the food chain throughout history. Technological progressions and social life made it possible for humans to outgrow the food chain. Men were able to capture and domesticate many animals. Through captivity, fierce animals which were once a considerable threat to the lives of people become mere amusements. Yet, a different approach seems to be at work regarding the vampires. As Bassan asserts (19), the Victorians were considerably afraid of the reverse colonisation; that is, becoming dominated by another race or culture. This fear brought about a violent approach regarding any threats to the British Empire.
According to certain scholars, the animosity towards Count Dracula and his female companions may be attributed to “the apprehensions aroused by the prospect of Imperial and/or genetic decline” (Bollen and Ingelbien 403). During the era of British colonisation, there existed a pervasive concern regarding the possibility of reversed colonisation, thereby perpetuating a prevailing antipathy towards the East. Furthermore, portraying the foreigner as a villain has been a longstanding convention within Gothic literature. The Eastern foreigner becomes a terrifying monster primarily due to the incomprehensibility of the Western tradition with the mystical East, something Bennett regards as thing-power.1 Shortly after acquainting themselves with Count Dracula and his disposition, “the protagonists construe themselves as the antithesis of the malevolent Dracula” (McWade 53). The distinction between good and evil is unequivocally drawn, with human characters being perceived as virtuous and the Count as evil, necessitating his extermination. These delineations are legitimations that do not stem from an imaginary and implausible fear of reversed colonisation but are grounded in the anthropocentric worldview, which ascribes humans as superior and all other beings as inferior.
Following more recent traces, the 2024 movie Nosferatu is a perfect modern parallel to the ecophobic and anthropocentric anxieties buried in Dracula. If Stoker’s novel was, among other things, a Victorian meditation upon reverse colonisation and the predominance of the non-human, this new Nosferatu becomes an investigation of the parasitic use which humanity makes of nature in the Anthropocene. In framing Count Orlok as a liminal being caught between human and nonhuman realms, the film interrogates the moral implications of exterminating the ‘other’ when humanity itself reflects vampiric characteristics. This remake features ghostly shots of dying natural landscapes contrasted with industrial backgrounds to show how ecological imbalances result from human exploitation. Unlike the anthropocentric worldview of Stoker’s Victorian-era characters, which valorises knowledge and science as tools with which to dominate nature, Nosferatu positions these very tools as harbingers of ecological collapse. By giving Orlok subjectivity and a voice, this film rescripts conventional Gothic binary considerations into the thought-provoking question of whether monstrosity really emanates from the supernatural or if it is mankind and its self-destruction. The 2024 Nosferatu works poignantly in opposition to Dracula, uniting Gothics with current ecocriticism. It challenges the moral contradiction of the Anthropocene head-on by bringing human beings to positions of predator and prey within a far more tenuous ecosystem than hitherto conceived.
Humans and The Western Tradition
The Western tradition assimilates scriptural discourses to ontologically define the worldview of the West. Biblical texts propose that “humans are commanded to exercise dominion over all of nature, which God gave to them for their own benefits” (Simkins 398). Relying on the scripture, anthropocentrism becomes a vital asset in capitalist societies, which advocates “the belief that value is human-centred and that all other beings are means to human ends” (Kopnina et al. 109). Numerous philosophers have undertaken an epistemological examination of the anthropocentric worldview of the capitalist human being, contending that such a worldview creates a dichotomy between the subject and the other, wherein humans are the exclusive beings endowed with subjectivity, while all other beings are relegated to the position of the other. Baudrillard asserts that Judeo-Christian tradition creates “a dualism of Man and Nature” (63), which separates man from nature as a transcendental being capable of dominating the planet. The relationship between nature and humans underwent a significant transformation from the Enlightenment era onwards. With the rise of capitalist industrialisation, the gulf between humankind and nature deepened, and through technological progress, nature was subjugated as a means to serve the anthropocentric objectives of humans, which were further justified by rationalised discourses. Furthermore, while religious discourses were influential in enforcing the anthropocentric ideology, they were not the sole factors that could dominate the human worldview during the fin de siècle. At this juncture, capitalist societies began to redefine the purpose of knowledge.
The shift in the purpose of knowledge materialised when imperialism emerged as the chief preoccupation for the Western individual. The identification of copious resources in colonised nations necessitated the application of more sophisticated technologies for their extraction and exploitation. According to Lyotard, the dominant language game before the age of production was a “prescriptive game” that focused on distinguishing between what was just and unjust (46). With the advent of the age of production, a “technical game” emerged, which prioritised distinguishing between what was efficient and inefficient (46). The purpose of knowledge shifted towards facilitating efficient means for ensuring human dominance over whatever man encountered. Enlightenment thinkers posited that Reason was the key to achieving “total mastery over nature” (Garrard 62). Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, nature had already been culturally constructed, and the technical language game reduced nature to “a mere instrument for human use and value” (18). The combination of both definitions of nature established the concept of a useful nature, which had been given to man by divinity to be tamed and used efficiently for his own purposes. This definition of nature stood as “the other to culture” (Clark 57), rendering it impossible for humans to identify with nature, and vice versa.
Therefore, Nature is limited to a set of cultural and social meanings, which help tame and dominate the unknown. Since the anthropocentric viewpoint forbids attributing any intrinsic values to Nature, it is consequently “seen as having no agency, rights or need to be respected” (Washington et al. 289). The anthropocentric definition of Nature allows only instrumental values to be attributed to Nature, which directly contributes to social stability by empowering the economy and exploiting natural resources. In other words, utilitarian purposes define how Nature is to be treated. This system gives humans absolute authority to exploit, destroy, and overuse natural resources without being held responsible for the damage caused by humans. While “ecocritical treatments of British literature have gravitated toward the Romantics” (Carroll 93), this study seeks to investigate the significance of the Anthropocene in Victorians’ perception of non-human beings. Since “ecocritics and Victorianists have largely managed to ignore one another” (Taylor 877), this study bridges the gap between the two fields by representing Nature within Dracula as one of the most significant literary works of the late Victorian period.
The Victorian era marked the nascent stage of the Anthropocene, which is a period in which “humans began changing the global climate measurably” (Hamilton et al. 3); when significant environmental changes transpired at a global level. Anthropogenic actions grew bolder during this era, engendering geological impacts on a planetary scale and prompting a reassessment of humankind’s position in the cosmos. The Industrial Revolution, for instance, engendered excessive confidence among the Victorians in their knowledge and technological prowess. Similarly, the colonisation of numerous countries reconfigured the image of the potent British Empire, fostering an overestimation of the power of the Victorians in interacting with human and non-human entities. Consequently, the Victorian period is when “literary and cultural spheres intersect with the Anthropocene” (Williams 667). Several literary figures of the Victorian era, including Charles Dickens, have extensively and explicitly explored the socioeconomic repercussions of industrialism. However, what continues to be significant is the depiction of humans as a dominant species during this epoch, interacting with both human and non-human entities.
Dracula: The Mirror of Humans in the Age of Anthropocene
The epistolary narrative of Dracula illuminates various characters from diverse perspectives. The story is fashioned via the letters and journals of Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray, Dr. John Seward, Lucy Westenra, and Dr. Van Helsing. The initial encounter with Dracula takes place when Jonathan, a solicitor, is dispatched to Transylvania to facilitate the relocation of a foreign client named Count Dracula to London. The apprehension of the unfamiliar swiftly becomes one of the most prominent themes in Stoker’s novel. Describing Transylvania in his journal, Harker asserts that it is “one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe” (Stoker 1). The unfamiliar setting, coupled with the peculiar conduct of the locals, terrifies Harker. Following several terrifying encounters, Harker eventually finds himself in the castle of Count Dracula. Once there, he discovers the castle’s library and is awed by the extensive collection of books covering a diverse array of subjects such as “history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law” (19). After engaging in conversation with Count Dracula, Harker swiftly discerns that Dracula is an erudite individual who is highly fluent in English. Harker acknowledges that Dracula is knowledgeable and keeps himself informed of contemporary events, despite not being English. Consequently, in addition to the gothic aspects associated with Dracula’s appearance and conduct, it may be inferred that he possesses rationality and comprehension and has mastered human capacities like language.
During their conversation, Harker comes to recognise that Dracula harbours an air of superiority, which he initially attributes to Dracula’s aristocratic lineage—a common trait among the Victorian upper class. Dracula’s intelligence and proficiency in various languages and subjects posed a potential threat to the standing of Victorian subjects as the dominant species on the planet. Dracula points out, “I have been so long master that I would be master still – or at least that non other should be master of me” (20). Dracula refers to a master/slave dichotomy that extends beyond the bounds of class struggle. He views himself and his species as superior to human beings. For the anthropocentric Victorians, this perspective is considered heretical and abhorrent. Dracula seeks to undermine humanity’s position and identity by enslaving them and establishing his dominance over them. Following his relocation to England and his selection of prey (Lucy), Count Dracula proceeds to challenge the strength of the Victorians by continually manipulating the characters and causing Lucy’s blood loss until she is on the brink of death. At this point, Dr. Seward asks his friend, Professor Van Helsing, for help. Lucy’s case and the “progress of her illness is being observed and investigated by a variety of participant characters” (Hughes 142). Van Helsing’s prior knowledge of vampires triggered his suspicion, leading to casting some spells and making some percussions, of which he said very little to Dr. Seward.
Despite several successful attempts at blood transfusions, Lucy eventually suffers a setback when news of a wolf’s escape becomes widespread. Using the wolf’s assistance, Dracula succeeds in draining Lucy of blood, rendering the final attempt at blood transfusion largely ineffective. It is in chapter eleven that, through the news report, it is revealed to the readers that Dracula is responsible for the wolf’s escape when the zookeeper attests that “close at hand was only one man, a tall, thin chap … He had a ’ard, cold look and red eyes” (Stoker 137). In the memorandum left by Lucy, she mentions the wolf which broke the window and left, “… pointing at the wolf, and there was a strange and horrible gurgling in her throat” (143). As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Count Dracula possesses psychic control over wolves, which he employs to manipulate them according to his will. In fact, Dracula uses a wolf to gain entry into the house and feed on Lucy’s blood, resulting in fatal consequences. “Seward’s reliance on scientific data and Van Helsing’s supernatural beliefs” (Wynne 59) fail to correspond to Dracula’s clever and manipulative plans. As the characters become aware of the powerful and threatening characteristics of Count Dracula, they become more determined to exterminate Dracula from the face of the planet.
The exertion of control over the wolves, emblematic of the fearsome forces of nature, is not the solitary matter which instils fear in the characters of Stoker’s Dracula. The peculiar and enigmatic case of Renfield amplifies the animosity and unwavering determination of the crew to vanquish the titular character. Renfield, a patient of Dr. Seward’s at the lunatic asylum, evinces behaviour which is decidedly aberrant when compared with other patients. He exhibits a predilection for consuming insects and espouses views on immortality. Despite having escaped from the asylum on several occasions, Renfield is closely monitored and swiftly returned to custody. On one such occasion, Dr. Seward clandestinely shadows him in order to uncover the rationale behind his actions. As they enter the inky darkness, Renfield commences an exchange with an unseen entity. Renfield says, “I am here to do your bidding, Master. I am your slave, and You will reward me, for I shall be faithful. I have worshipped you long and afar off” (Stoker 102). The binary of master and slave existing between Dracula and Renfield metamorphoses into an existential peril for the human characters, serving as an emblem of the identity and sanity of the white, male, Christian, and European man in the Victorian era. The prospect of subjugating a man of European origin, long deemed superior by virtue of his lineage, engenders a challenge to their established position and identity. The anthropocentric perspective, which previously guaranteed man’s ascendancy over all other living beings through biblical literature and the Enlightenment, could have been upended had Dracula triumphed. With each successive revelation of Dracula’s dominion and authority, the human characters become more resolute in their determination to eradicate him and his progeny.
The peculiarity of Dracula’s case is not limited to the mere existence of such a creature, but extends to his capacity to subvert humanity’s entrenched position in the hierarchy of dominion and authority, thereby engendering disbelief among the characters. Van Helsing confessed that “madness were easy to bear compared with truth like this” (194). The anthropocentric dogma espouses the entirety of its power to impede any potential threats that may undermine humankind’s position within the universe. Dracula’s actions further exacerbate this state of affairs in two distinct ways. Firstly, he coerces Renfield into granting him access to the asylum and subsequently manipulates him into feeding Mina his blood, thus initiating the process of vampirisation. While vampires are known to be endowed with considerable power, they are seemingly impeded from entering a space without express permission. This act of transgression incites ire amongst the characters, given that Mina serves as the quintessential representation of the ideal Victorian woman, subservient to the control and dominance of Victorian men. Furthermore, Dracula’s act of compelling her to ingest his blood serves to ridicule Jonathan’s virility, who lies inert and impotent beside them. Dracula’s actions also serve to undermine the supposed supremacy of men over their most valuable asset: the female body. Thus, “Dracula asserts his power over the male characters by seducing and assimilating the female characters” (Mewald 3). Dracula’s actions not only disrupt the established order of power but also dismantle the dominant gender relations inherent within the Victorian family structure. The second factor that exacerbates the situation is Dracula’s direct verbalisation of his thoughts on humanity while he is being assailed and injured by the characters.
You think to baffle me, you – with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher’s. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them you and others shall yet be mine – my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah! (Stoker 306)
Despite his resilience, Dracula remains in peril, and his monologue serves to further challenge humanity’s standing within the universe, thereby undermining the anthropocentric doctrines that have hitherto served as a justification for their actions. Dracula’s prediction of a future in which the entire crew will be transformed into his pets and slaves underscores the reason behind their extensive travels across Europe to annihilate him. Stoker’s characters rationalise the extermination of Count Dracula, as he finds the prospect of subversion of Western man’s position intolerable. The creature that fails to identify with humans or regard them as equals now encroaches upon the anthropocentric ideology, which has historically been the basis for all of humanity’s self-serving actions. While the characters are aware that Dracula is very strong, they largely rely on a specific form of power, “a power denied to the vampire kind; … the resources of science” (238). As the foundations of anthropocentrism teeter on the brink of collapse due to Count Dracula’s repeated triumphs, the crew strives to amplify what is uniquely human. Knowledge and science emerge as the final bastions of anthropocentric discourse in opposition to Count Dracula. By nature, Dracula is very powerful, clever, and above all, immortal and “cannot die by mere passing of the time” (239). Also, “he can transform himself to wolf” (Stoker 239). With many other abilities, human science and technology become the only threatening factor which Dracula fails to consider.
Van Helsing’s reference to science pertains solely to the means of Count Dracula’s and his ilk’s destruction, as opposed to an objective inquiry that would apply to other non-threatening creatures. Van Helsing’s studies confirm that “there are things which so afflict him that he has no power, as the garlic that we know of, and as for things sacred, as this symbol, my crucifix” (240). It can be argued that knowledge and science are inherently anthropocentric in nature, as they are geared towards discovering ways for humans to dominate, subdue, and enslave the other. The nature and origins of the vampires do not pique the interest of the crew; their empirical knowledge is merely a tool to aid in slaughtering Count Dracula. It is through reliance on this knowledge and Victorian technology, such as weapons, that the characters ultimately succeed in exterminating Count Dracula and his brides. The anthropocentric epistemology that underpins their worldview allows the characters to exert absolute control over whatever they perceive as the other. This mindset generates specific discourses that justify the extermination of Dracula and his kind while simultaneously fuelling their anthropocentric obsessions with dominance and control.
The narrators position themselves as the guardians of light and virtue and recognise Count Dracula as a symbol of darkness and evil. Mina Harker observes, “the Count is a criminal and of criminal type … and qua criminal he is of imperfectly formed mind” (312). These discourses help to rationalise the justification for eradicating a creature from existence. Furthermore, Van Helsing reinforces the importance of their mission and the dire consequences of failure. He asserts, “to fail here is not mere life or death. It is that we become as him; that we henceforward become foul things of the night like him … To us forever are the gates of heaven shut” (237). The juxtaposition of various discourses indirectly strengthens the anthropocentric worldview. These characters define themselves as the defenders of light and virtue, and their purpose of exterminating Count Dracula and his kind becomes a transcendent issue that contributes not only to their own lives but also to the lives of others and future human generations. While capturing the creature could have been an alternative, the threat caused by Dracula is too great a risk to bear upon anthropocentric Victorians. Fear of domination and enslavement persuades all the characters to contribute to Dracula’s murder.
The characterisation of Count Dracula is conveyed through the narrations of the characters, whose perspectives are influenced by anthropocentric biases. Dracula’s physical appearance and his capacity for reason are not the only human-like traits he possesses. He shares a common language and dress style with humans, but the primary similarity lies in his method of survival. Dracula and his vampire brethren subsist on human blood, not for pleasure or malevolence, but as a vital means of sustenance. Despite Dracula’s antagonism towards the narrators, his consumption of blood is instinctual rather than calculated. While the consumption of blood may seem overly literal, humans themselves are equally culpable for endangering the lives of other creatures. In fact, as Timothy Clark asserts in Ecocriticism on the Edge (2015), “the emergent effects of the Anthropocene may include the notion that the human is inherently parasitic and polluting” (153). During the Victorian era, characterised by industrial expansion and the Anthropocene, humans were reliant upon other organisms for their survival, much like vampires. Despite this similarity, humans have not been held morally accountable for their parasitic behaviour, which has resulted in the widespread extinction of various species, while vampires are ruthlessly eradicated.
Both species’ survival depends upon the “robbing and destruction of life that is not its own” (Clark 153). The most significant affinity between humans and vampires, therefore, lies in their shared parasitic mode of existence. Yet this affinity is systematically denied within the novel through an anthropocentric worldview that insists upon human supremacy over all other forms of life. The dominance of this ideology deprives Count Dracula and his kind of moral consideration, rendering their survival ethically inconceivable while simultaneously naturalising human exploitation as necessary, inevitable, or even virtuous. Crucially, the narrators refuse to acknowledge that Dracula’s continued existence is contingent upon human blood in the same way that human civilisation depends upon the consumption, extraction, and destruction of non-human life. By suppressing this parallel, the narrative preserves a moral asymmetry that legitimises the extermination of vampires while shielding human parasitism from ethical scrutiny.
Carol Senf argues that the narrators mask their opposition to Dracula by constructing a rigid dichotomy of Good and Evil, aligning themselves with moral virtue while positioning Dracula as the embodiment of absolute Evil. This moral framing functions less as an ethical evaluation than as a narrative strategy designed to conceal the true source of their anxiety. Senf contends that Dracula’s primary threat does not lie in criminality, political subversion, or overt violence; rather, his danger emerges from his destabilising sexual influence over other characters, particularly women. As she observes, “neither a thief, rapist, nor an overtly political threat, Dracula is dangerous because he expresses his contempt for authority … through his sexuality” (166). Dracula’s erotic power disrupts Victorian norms of sexual restraint, patriarchal control, and gender hierarchy, rendering female bodies sites of transgression and contagion. The narrators’ moral outrage thus operates as a defensive displacement, transforming sexual anxiety into a struggle between good and evil in order to legitimise violent intervention. By moralising Dracula’s sexuality, the narrative avoids confronting its own fear of destabilised authority—sexual, social, and epistemological—thereby reinforcing dominant Victorian structures under the guise of ethical necessity.
John Rawls, the American moral philosopher, develops the concept of the veil of ignorance in A Theory of Justice (2013), arguing that “the principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance” (253). For Rawls, the veil functions as a methodological tool for evaluating the moral legitimacy of social arrangements, as it requires individuals to design the basic structures of society without knowledge of their own position within it (Davies 92). Applying this framework to Dracula, one may imagine a hypothetical world inhabited by both humans and vampires in which individuals are unaware of whether they will emerge as humans or vampires. Given the equal probability of becoming either—and given that both species are fundamentally parasitic in their modes of survival—it becomes necessary to ask whether a rational moral agent would consent to a social order that grants absolute moral privilege to humans while sanctioning the extermination of vampires.
The novel itself exposes the ethical violence of such a system through moments of unrestrained human aggression. Harker, for instance, upon recognising Dracula’s true nature, admits, “A terrible desire came upon me to rid the world of such a monster… . I seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases, and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face” (Stoker 58). Significantly, this impulse occurs while Dracula is asleep and entirely defenceless, underscoring the asymmetry of power and the pre-emptive nature of human violence. Under the veil of ignorance, such an act would be morally indefensible, as it legitimises extermination based solely on species identity rather than reciprocal threat or ethical wrongdoing. A rational agent, therefore, would reject the anthropocentric assumptions upon which Stoker’s world is structured, since they entail the risk of total moral exclusion and annihilation. This Rawlsian thought experiment exposes the ethical instability of the novel’s moral economy and demonstrates that the extermination of Count Dracula and his kind cannot be justified within a framework of justice, revealing it instead as a fundamentally immoral act.
Conclusion
Bram Stoker’s Dracula stages a confrontation between Victorian humanity and a form of non-human life that exposes the limits and contradictions of anthropocentric knowledge. The encounter with Dracula—figured as an unfamiliar, ecologically entangled mode of existence—produces not ethical reflection but a desire for domination, control, and eradication. The knowledge generated through this encounter is thus ecophobic rather than illuminating, reinforcing humanity’s self-appointed position as the supreme form of life within a rigid hierarchical order. Dracula’s non-human ontology destabilises this hierarchy by revealing uncomfortable continuities between humans and vampires, particularly their shared parasitic dependence on other forms of life for survival. The violent response of the human protagonists is driven not solely by fear of physical threat but by anxiety over the collapse of anthropocentric distinctions that sustain Victorian identity. Vampires do not merely threaten to invert the power hierarchy; they expose its artificiality. Their existence challenges religious, moral, and epistemological discourses that define humanity through superiority, self-restraint, and moral entitlement. Figures such as Renfield reveal the fragility of these constructs by embodying the permeability of human identity and the possibility of enslavement within a supposedly dominant species. In this context, Western science—represented by Van Helsing—functions not as an impartial mode of inquiry but as an ideological instrument that legitimises extermination. Although Dracula displays intelligence, rationality, and linguistic mastery, scientific knowledge is mobilised against him to reaffirm Victorian confidence in progress and human exceptionalism.
Crucially, this article has argued that the most destabilising threat posed by Dracula lies in the shared parasitic relationship that humans and vampires maintain with their environment. While vampirism is framed as monstrous exploitation, human parasitism—expressed through colonial expansion, resource extraction, and ecological domination—is naturalised and rendered morally invisible. Victorian anthropocentrism depends upon the suppression of this parallel to preserve human supremacy. By denying vampires moral consideration, the narrative forecloses any ethical framework in which coexistence might be imaginable. When assessed through a Rawlsian lens, particularly the veil of ignorance, the moral economy of Dracula collapses: no rational agent would consent to a world in which one species’ survival is guaranteed through the absolute annihilation of another. Ultimately, the extermination of Dracula and his kind represents not a triumph of justice but the violent enforcement of an anthropocentric worldview incapable of accommodating ecological interdependence or ethical plurality. The novel’s resolution exposes Victorian hypocrisy, revealing how moral discourse is selectively deployed to justify domination while disavowing shared vulnerability and responsibility. In this sense, Dracula offers not a reaffirmation of human superiority but an unsettling glimpse into the ethical costs of maintaining it.