In his novel Dracula, Bram Stoker's characters are deeply disturbed by the existence of the vampire. The notion of a creature both living and dead challenges their sanity by forcing them to question things they previously considered self-evident truths. Typically, these members of Victorian society would believe in being alive or dead, attractive or repulsive, masculine or feminine, sexual or maternal, or mentally stable or unstable. However, many characters in the story possess traits that cause them to embody the aforementioned impossibilities. The coexistence of these contradictory ideas causes an uncomfortable tension called “cognitive dissonance.” When characters experience this feeling of cognitive dissonance, rather than changing their worldview, they question their mindset. An intense fear of madness permeates this novel, therefore, the qualities that cause the characters to question their sanity must be reconciled before they can rest and the story can end. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Count Dracula is the most obvious example of a character who exists as two distinct and contradictory ideas. The vampire is a creature that has left human life, but is resurrected as a monster that walks, talks, and feeds on blood. As coined by Stoker, Dracula is a member of the "undead". This fact causes a lot of skepticism from all the characters except Professor Van Helsing, whose job it is to convince others that the vampire does indeed exist. The reluctance to believe that Dracula could be the cause of Lucy's problems is best illustrated during Van Helsing's conversation with Doctor Seward. The professor makes a list of things that have happened in the world, even though, before they happened, they would not have even been considered a possibility. “Here I interrupted him. I was becoming perplexed. It so occupied my mind with its list of possible eccentricities and impossibilities of nature that my imagination was inflamed. (Stoker 263) As soon as Seward's mind begins to question his current ideas about reality, the doctor abruptly ends the conversation for fear of having to change his preconceptions. Seward knows that Van Helsing is asking him to draw a parallel between such events and the possibility that Count Dracula is the true cause of Lucy's downfall, but he is afraid to entertain an idea that might be considered impossible, or even " crazy ". you are an intelligent man, friend John; you reason well and your mind is daring; but you have too many prejudices... Don't you think that there are things that you cannot understand, and which nevertheless are... Ah! it is the fault of our science if it wants to explain everything; and if he doesn't explain, then he says there is nothing to explain. (Stoker, 261) If a phenomenon cannot be explained by reason, characters tend to reject the event rather than question the limits of their own knowledge. This is the simplest solution. Humans do not like to deal with cognitive dissonance because it is an uncomfortable psychological experience. The three vampire sisters who inhabit Castle Dracula also possess the binary qualities of life and death, but they are also both seductive and repulsive. The vampires encounter Jonathan Harker while he is alone in the castle. “There was something about them that made me uncomfortable, a bit of nostalgia and at the same timetime a mortal fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire for them to kiss me with those red lips. (Stoker 51-52) Rather than act on his desires or face his fears, Harker simply remains still and allows the vampires to surround him and caress his body. Much like Seward's interruption of the conversation with Van Helsing, Harker's inactivity is another way of ignoring a situation he cannot understand. Jonathan is confused about the fact that he is sexually attracted to vampires even though, in his time, the blatant sexuality displayed by the three women would have been completely unacceptable from any other woman. So he tries to avoid the situation by acting like he's asleep, almost like he's hoping he can tell himself that this whole event was just a dream. Indeed, the next day, Harker questions the reality of the events of the previous night. “I woke up in my own bed. If I hadn't dreamed, it was the count who would have carried me here. I tried to satisfy myself on this subject, but I could not arrive at any incontestable result. (Stoker 55) Although the vampire's attack is remembered in great detail, Harker continues to question the accuracy of his memory by proposing the idea that all of these events could have occurred while he was sleeping. Because our dreams are often irrational and indecipherable, Harker's willingness to attribute his sexual encounter to such a hallucination would imply that he believes himself to be in a less than stable mental state. Thus, Jonathan chooses to question his sanity rather than accept that these "impossibilities" could have happened. Upon meeting the three females, Harker also becomes an anomaly by developing feminine qualities throughout the scene. “In the Victorian mind, men bore full responsibility for sexual depravity; a good woman only submitted to her husband’s bestiality in order to reproduce” (Demetrakopoulos 106). When Harker stands still and allows the vampires to take complete control of him, he assumes the traditional sexual role of the Victorian woman. In Jungian terms, the vampire sisters act as an agent that brings out Harker's anima, or repressed feminine side. Later in the scene, Harker becomes so overwhelmed that he passes out. Fainting is another activity generally referred to as female action, leading Harker to reprise the female role. “Without a passive, clearly defined womanhood against which to define himself and his world, Jonathan Harker collapses into a nightmare of uncertainty, confusion, and vampiric 'brain fever.' (Prescott and Giorgio 490) Harker's slide into temporary madness offers him another way of denying what happened to him; he may have seen creatures both living and dead, or both attractive and repulsive, but it could also be a hallucination resulting from his "brain fever". As Harker recovers from a temporary illness, his fiancée, Mina, is there to take care of him. Throughout the novel, Mina resembles Jonathan in that she also assumes attributes of the opposite sex. When she vows to never open her journal unless it becomes absolutely necessary, Mina takes on the role of protector as she attempts to ward off any memories that could cause Jonathan to slip back into his mad state. In a sense, Mina becomes Harker's "knight in shining armor." Mina also becomes a saving grace for the rest of the men, as she learns to work with the latest technology and keeps accurate records of each person's encounters with the supernatural. When Dracula tries to destroy their archives, Mina had thewisdom to make multiple copies of the documents, thus allowing the "children of light" to continue and defeat the vampire. Van Helsing congratulates Mina on her great achievements and exposes her dual nature as both feminine and masculine. “Ah, this wonderful Madam Mina! She has the brain of a man – a brain that a man should have if he is very talented – and the heart of a woman. (Stoker 321) However, after making this statement, the Professor goes on to state that, despite his help, Mina must no longer aid in the battle against Dracula. This has to happen because Mina's feminine and masculine qualities cannot be tolerated when they exist in one person. Nonetheless, Mina keeps him going in battle against the monster and is arguably the most important key to discovering Dracula's whereabouts. Unlike Mina, Miss Lucy Westerna is depicted as the epitome of Victorian femininity, except that she is highly sexualized. This sexuality becomes more evident once Lucy undergoes her transformation into a vampire, but it is also expressed – in trust – to Mina before she becomes a creature of the night. “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as she wants, and spare her all the trouble?” (Stoker 81) Lucy is courted by several men at once and, although she does not accept every advance, she tends to flirt with each man and wishes to be with all of them. Once Dracula commits suicide and she becomes a vampire, Mina's sexuality is on full display and she no longer has the ability to be a wife or mother. When Arthur, Van Helsing, Quincey and Dr. Seward visit Lucy's grave to end her life as a vampire, they encounter a version of Lucy who is both sexual and, in a twisted sense, maternal. Lucy calls Arthur in a tantalizing manner, showing the fact that as a vampire, Lucy will no longer hide her sexual desires; she can never be a pure Victorian woman. Lucy preys on young children and enters her grave clutching a child tightly before knocking the young girl to the ground in one careless move. Lucy was a woman who wanted to marry and probably become a mother in order to fulfill her role as a wife, but the reality was that she could never have done so because of her sexuality. Dracula changed Lucy by exposing her inner self. The final character who possesses opposing qualities is Dr. Seward's patient, Renfield. Because he is an asylum patient, Renfield is considered the least sane of all the characters; he is what “the children of the light” fear to become. In fact, Renfield is one of the most informed people in the novel. He is aware of Dracula's presence and is able to accurately judge Seward's affections for Lucy and also tries to warn Mina that she should not stay at the asylum due to Dracula's impending attack. When his patient speaks to Mina, Doctor Seward is very surprised by her coherent language and apparent insight: "Here is my own pet fool - the most pronounced of his type I have ever met - talking about elementary philosophy and with the manner of a refined gentleman. (Stoker 319) Renfield challenges the characters' notions of what constitutes reason. It would seem impossible that the man who collects and consumes insects could see things more clearly than the other characters in the story, yet he manages to correctly assess the situation much more quickly than the others. However, his coherent moments are attributed to momentary lapses of sanity rather than indicators of his true mental state. In order to maintain their preconceptions, the opposing binary characteristics must be, 1994.