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From A Bite of Theology: The Catholic Aesthetic and Bram Stoker's Dracula

(To be published in the StAR)

The use of the crucifix and the consecrated host in particular is deeply bound up with the theoretical basis of the vampire’s habits of consumption. Blood is the source and summit of Dracula’s (and all other vampire’s) existence: “he cannot flourish without the diet; he eat not as others [sic].” Stoker never clearly defines the process by which certain individuals are transformed into vampires and others are not, but blood remains as the most relevant attribute of vampiric existence. Ironically, the clearest presentation of the novel’s underlying sanguivorous theory is exemplified in a character who is not technically a vampire: Renfield, Dracula’s self-proclaimed disciple. Renfield, a lunatic in the asylum over which Dr. John Seward, of the anti-vampiric force, presides, interests Seward early in the novel because of the oddity of his maniacal practices, particularly the collection and consumption of flies, the collection of spiders to which he feeds the flies, and birds to which he feeds the spiders. Renfield eventually begs for a kitten to “feed—and feed—and feed!” At times Renfield consumes his various pets—including the birds—raw. This “zoophagous (life-eating) maniac” wants to “absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way”. Dracula promises him flies, moths, rats, dogs and cats—“All these lives will I give you, ay, and many more and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!” The lunatic looks to the vampire with a sense of assurance of “some higher life” through the consumption of “lives! all red blood, with years of life in it”.