Dracula and the Problem With Modern Morality

Claes Bang as Dracula (left) and John Heffernan as
Jonathan Harker, in Moffat and Gatiss’ Dracula

Audiences who have read Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula will notice something about Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ 2020 adaptation: the Count is on screen a lot. Count Dracula is absent from over three-quarters of Stoker’s original novel, a looming presence whose terror grows more ominous because he could be literally anywhere. By contrast, Moffat and Gatiss foreground the character, who remains present and amorally aggressive even when characters (and viewers) need their rest.

Moffat and Gatiss are the creative team behind Sherlock. Yes, *that* Sherlock, the one that kickstarted Benedict Cumberbatch’s career and revitalized TV mysteries. The show was a rollicking success until it overstayed its welcome by one season, and the meme-driven zeitgeist turned against it. Steven Moffat previously paid his dues in contemporizing Victorian literature with Jekyll, which postulated a high-tech corporation wanting to harvest Mr. Hyde for profit. These guys know their modernized Victoriana.

All three original properties withheld information from readers, information which today’s audiences already have. Pretending that, for instance, Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde aren’t manifestations of the same person, would be naïve and coy nowadays. While some Massively Online Critics still complain that Sherlock suffered because the viewpoint characters withhold information from the audience, this overlooks that all three original properties did this regularly. Victorian audiences apparently loved last-minute reveals: “The killer was here the whole time squeeeee!!!”

Dracula isn’t mysterious anymore, as he was in 1897—though admittedly, more audiences probably know Todd Browning’s version than Stoker’s. Therefore withholding Dracula from audience view makes little sense. Instead, Moffat and Gatiss reveal him early, showcasing his rapacity, his sexual appetite, and his lack of common morals. Instead of making the well-known vampire appear falsely mysterious, our creative team must instead convince us why everything we believe about the famous story is wrong.

Therein lies the problem. As Susannah Clements writes, Dracula represents a specific Victorian Christian morality. Van Helsing presents himself as a “man of science,” a much less precise term than we’d accept nowadays, whose scientific acumen hoovers up any stray evidence it encounters; yet in fighting Dracula, Van Helsing reverts to the language and doctrines of Christianity. The monster fears churches, crosses, and vicars. Fundamentally, he affirms that modernity cannot survive without ancient religious truths.

Dolly Wells as Agatha Van Helsing

Except, the longer I live with Clements’ thesis, the less airtight it becomes, because that Christian morality was window dressing. Victorian England required a strong state to maintain the appearance of public virtue. William Blake’s “dark Satanic mills” had become Britain’s background noise. Sherlock Holmes shot intravenous cocaine to control his moods. At this point, it’d be disingenuous to deny that Bram Stoker was probably a closeted homosexual; his schoolfriend Oscar Wilde was jailed in 1895.

Abraham Van Helsing (rendered by Moffat and Gatiss as Agatha Van Helsing, a Carmelite nun) didn’t restore foundering Victorian Christianity; he enforced a specific kind of moral vestment on a largely secularized, industrialized nation. He encouraged the cadre of men driving the story to punish Lucy Westenra, who had, in coded language, been sexually liberated enough to choose her own lovers. As punishment, the men took turns, ahem, driving their wooden stake into her.

Agatha Van Helsing, opposite her literary ancestor, has no patience for public morality. Though a nun, she’s substantially secularized; she describes her holy orders as “a loveless marriage.” Her Dracula reacts with the same vehemence as Stoker’s to crosses and other religious appurtenances, but Agatha rejects the religious explanation. She accuses Dracula of retroactively constructing a moral explanation for his abilities and weaknesses—then she does the same. For her, morality is as morality does.

The lack of underlying morality—even one the characters only observe for ceremonial purposes—is the defining difference between this Dracula and Stoker’s. Unfortunately, without such an underlying morality, the story has nothing to be about. Van Helsing speculates aimlessly about why medieval European morality still has power over Dracula, and reaches a resolution that satisfies her only in the closing minutes. For us peons watching, however, the explanation raises more questions than it answers.

Nobody could rewrite Dracula for modern audiences and retain Victorian morality. In Britain, Christianity has retreated to the second most common religious identity, after “none”; and even in America, which (unlike Europe) emerged from two world wars more religious rather than less, Christianity has fallen below two-thirds of the population. Our vampires today are Lestat and Edward Cullen, not Dracula. Yet as with Van Helsing’s religion, the premodern story keeps intruding on our modern world.