Abstract
The paper argues that historic events in the western Irish town of Sligo were more substantial in shaping Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897) than previously thought. Biographers of Stoker have credited his mother, Charlotte Thornley Stoker, for influencing her son’s gothic imagination during his childhood by sharing tales of the Sligo cholera epidemic she had witnessed in 1832. While Charlotte Stoker’s written account of Sligo’s epidemic Experiences of the Cholera in Ireland (1873) influenced Bram Stoker, it is argued that as a voracious library researcher he is likely to have cross-referenced it with other historical accounts. Furthermore, by viewing the text of Dracula through the lens of Charlotte Stoker’s account and the historical reportage of the epidemic, clear parallels emerge. Ultimately, the striking similarities between Sligo’s cholera are marshaled to argue that Count Dracula may be read as the personification of Sligo’s cholera.
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The author would like to thank the research office at Atlantic Technological University (Galway) for its assistance. I also wish to acknowledge the Special Collections Department at the Library of Trinity College Dublin for assistance in accessing their collections.
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Endnotes
1 In Experiences (C. Stoker 1873), she refers to “our long street” and that Dr. Little was their near neighbor, which matches with Old Market Street.
2 The cabins would have had a pile of waste located outside that contained the domestic rubbish from the home.
3 This is quite similar to how Dracula’s countenance is described in the novel. For example, in Chapter XXI of Dracula, Renfield described how “his white face looked out of the mist with his red eyes gleaming” (B. Stoker 1897a). Throughout the novel, the Count is frequently described as having red eyes.
4 Stoker admitted that Van Helsing was founded on a real character (B. Stoker 1897b), and it has been speculated that this is older brother Thornley, largely due to the intimation that Van Helsing’s wife is not mentally well in the novel. Thornley, too, had a wife who suffered severe mental health issues.
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McGarry, M. Dracula as Cholera: The Influences of Sligo’s Cholera Epidemic of 1832 on Bram Stoker’s Novel Dracula (1897). J Med Humanit 44, 27–41 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-022-09763-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-022-09763-0