Dracula, Ireland’s Vampiric Vector

Readers tend to interpret Dracula as an avatar of whatever most reflects their own anxiety, superimposing upon Stoker’s monster their various human fears of the unknown, the dark, and the hidden. Tuberculosis has numbered among these many anxieties, and has been examined through a Victorian English lens. I extend Dracula’s geographical reach, also arguing that Dracula is in most instances himself a metaphor for actual disease when considered in an Irish context, rather than vampirism or tuberculosis functioning allegorically as a vehicle for the expression of generalized anxiety. If we accept that contemporary concerns appear, intentionally or not, in fiction, we can perhaps view Dracula as tubercular vampiric vector in post-Famine Ireland. Moreover, the contagion lives on. The most advanced scientific methods available to the physicians of the 1890s proved unsuccessful in treating tuberculosis. If we also consider Mina as a vector, she is not so much a heroine as living evidence of the future potential spread of contagion, lurking in her blood, ready to re-erupt at any moment. How can we be certain that all that Dracula signifies will not return to haunt us? Dracula provides a reminder to readers that there is no more lingering condition than vampirism.