Are the Villains in Bram Stoker's Dracula Really Villains?

Dracula Writing Prompt

Everywhere, something is seen by someone to be villainy. Determining who or what a villain differs in every case. In Dracula by Bram Stoker, it seems that the villains in the story are not truly villains, but rather a victim infected by others and forced to become a vampire, as if it is a sickness or disease and because of this all, some characters receive sympathy from the other characters. It is a loss of control, something that they cannot handle. For Lucy, dealing with this sickness was rather difficult.

Lucy is a beautiful and gifted young lady, she has never had to work a day in her life and men were lining up at the door for her. She is a part of the typical Victorian era, upper class women, believing that men are the ones that do everything. She was a very innocent woman (perhaps the reason why the she was infected by this disease), so as she enters the house she is the first one actually bitten. After she was bitten, everyone started feeling sympathy for her because she becomes pale and sick. Van Helsing and Seward both give her blood transfusions every time she becomes weak and ill, ". . . and we are about to preform what we call transfusion of blood to transfer from full veins of one to the empty veins which pine for him" (Stoker 124). Even then, they still could not save her. When she is dying, Van Helsing and Seward call Athur Holmwood over to say final goodbyes. Lucy begs Arthur to kiss her, "Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me" (Stoker 161). Her true plan though was to bite his neck and consume his blood and when that is obvious to Van Helsing, he pulls Arthur back. This quote explains a different side of Lucy, a side she cannot control.

Lucy was a victim of evil, to where she had the fate of death. However, she still had sympathy given to her through their hardship of being a villain. She could not control what she had become. Lucy is just one example of someone having a loss of control that is present.