Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Jonathan Harker character profile
Who?
● Jonathan Harker is a young solicitor from Exeter who is conscientious and
proud of his reputation for being a hard-worker
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● Harker is one of the novel’s main protagonists and is tasked by his boss - Mr
Hawkins - to travel to Transylvania and act as an estate agent for Dracula
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● Jonathan lives a simple life and is engaged to Mina Murray, who he hopes to
marry upon returning to England
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Analysis
● Jonathan Harker embodies the stereotypical, yet highly respected, Victorian
man
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Harker continuously ignores his
gut instincts throughout the first few chapters, as well as warnings from the
people of Bistritz
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This may reflect his
sedentary and comfortable lifestyle as a lawyer
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Whilst he knows that
he must stick by his Christian, monogamous morals, he also struggles to
control the sensual temptations of the ​“voluptuous” ​women
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● Unlike the eccentric Van Helsing, Jonathan is dismissive of the locals’
superstitions and gifts and fails to notice the motif of the supernatural
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It has
been suggested that Harker is the quiet, middle class man who balances out
the strangeness of the other characters
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● Dr
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● It is suggested that Jonathan speaks several foreign languages, perhaps
making him not so different from Dracula and Van Helsing after all
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researchgate
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● “With Dracula’s death, Harker’s proper masculinity – heterosexual, rational,
self- disciplined, professionally stable – is finally restored
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Of course, since Dracula’s blood runs through Mina’s
– and perhaps Harker’s – veins, Dracula is inside the boy as well
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It is
partly because of the strict demands of this particular kind of masculine
identity, because of its rigidity, that it remains so susceptible to – and indeed
in need of – an occasional crisis
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researchgate
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​
● Jonathan has a unique role in the novel, as he is both one of Dracula’s victims
and also one of his attackers
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● Some have suggested that Jonathan symbolises illicit homosexual desires in
the novel, due to the acute interest that he gains from Dracula (who,
interestingly, is not bothered by the women residing in his castle)
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Appearances in the novel
● Jonathan’s first person homodiegetic account of Dracula forms chapters 1 to 4
in the novel
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As he resumes the journey to Bistritz, he
remarks about the different ethnic groups and scenery outside the carriage
window
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The next afternoon he leaves for Dracula’s castle, but an
old lady begs him to wait and adorns his neck with a crucifix
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Near the end of the journey, many of his
fellow travellers offer Jonathan gifts and the weather worsens
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Although wolves start to circle the abandoned Jonathan,

the driver quickly makes them disappear on command and they pull up
outside the moonlit castle a short while later
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The Count does not eat with Jonathan and offers him a cigar after
the meal
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Jonathan retires to bed and after breakfast the next
day explores the Count’s library
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Dracula leaves Harker in the library where he discovers
a map with circles drawn on it depicting East London, Whitby and Exeter
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Harker starts to feel uneasy as Dracula creeped up on him whilst shaving, but
was invisible to the shaving glass
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Jonathan breakfasts alone
and starts to feel trapped by the castle’s abundance of locked doors
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He receives a
detailed history of Dracula’s people - the Szekelys - and the next day Dracula
questions Jonathan about how many solicitors he could have in England
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He also warns Jonathan not to stray
to any other parts of the castle as he will not be responsible for what happens
to him
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From a window, he
sees Dracula fly out of his window and crawl headfirst down the castle walls
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In a supposed dream, three sensual women visit Jonathan and are
about to suck blood from his neck when the Count storms in and tells them
off
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A few days later, Dracula asks him to write three letters - one
saying that his work there was nearly done, another that said he was leaving
the next morning and a third which said that he had left the castle and arrived
at Bistritz
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However, Dracula intercepts them and
burns the shorthand letter to Mina
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He later watches as
Dracula flies out of his window, posing as Jonathan, to go and post the letters
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​The next night Jonathan
hears the cries of a distressed woman pleading to have her child back and
Dracula’s wolves murder her
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After realising it's empty, he travels
down a steep passage and through a tunnel to an old, ruined chapel with a
dug-up graveyard
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The look of hatred in Dracula’s eyes terrifies
Harker and he runs back to his room
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However, as Dracula
opens the front door, a pack of wolves descend on Jonathan and cries that he
will wait until morning
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Unsuccessful, he plots his next move
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Jonathan solemnly offers Mina his notebook but tells
her never to speak of the things she reads in there to him
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Jonathan says that he would go through it all again to marry Mina
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It is Jonathan who is granted the pleasure of slashing Dracula’s throat with a
knife, moments before sunset
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