Bride of Dracula
| Brides of Dracula | |
|---|---|
| Dracula character | |
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| First appearance | Dracula |
| Created by | Bram Stoker |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | The Sisters Weird Sisters Dracula's Brides |
| Species |
Undead human Vampire |
| Gender | Female |
| Spouse(s) | Possibly Count Dracula (unclear) |
| Nationality | Romanian |
The Brides of Dracula are characters in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. They are three seductive female vampire "sisters" who reside with Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania, where they entrance male humans with their beauty and charm, and then proceed to feed upon them. Dracula provides them with victims to devour, mainly infants and children.
Like Dracula, they are the living dead, repulsed by religious objects. In chapter three of the novel, two are described as dark haired and the other as blonde.
In the novel the three vampire women are not individually named. Collectively, they are known as the "sisters", and are at one point described as the "weird sisters".
The origin and identity of the Sisters, as well as the true nature of their relationship with Count Dracula, is never revealed. One of the three may have been identified in the short story Dracula's Guest as the vampire named Countess Dolengen of Gratz. Since Jonathan Harker is suggested to be the protagonist of the story he encounters her at her tomb in Munich which Dracula protects him from; saving his life from the vampire as well as, in the form of a great wolf, keeping him warm from the cold and yelping for nearby soldiers to come to their location. In the Dracula novel Harker writes about one of the female vampires in the moment he is with them stating, "I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where."
Although the three vampire women in Dracula are popularly referred to as the "Brides of Dracula", they are never referred to as such in the novel, instead referred to as the 'sisters'; whether they are married to Dracula or not is never mentioned, nor are they described as having any other relation to him. Though it is mentioned by the sisters that Dracula does not love, nor has he ever loved them, the count himself claims he too can love and asked them if they remember his love from the past. The two dark-haired women, however, are described by Jonathan Harker to have "high aquiline noses, like the Count's".
It has been suggested from this that it may have been Stoker's intent that these two are Dracula's daughters, extending the sexuality metaphor of vampirism to incest. Even though it is never specified/made clear, it is possible that the term "sister" wasn't meant in the literal sense and is, instead, more comparable to the relationship of the women and not as they are to Dracula. As they are also depicted in the novel calling Mina Harker their sister after she was forced to drink the blood of Dracula and being afflicted with signs of vampirism herself. Mina and Lucy also call each other sisters in the novel despite not having any blood relation. Despite their words, the sisters have oddly never been recorded by the protagonists of the novel to have followed Dracula's orders without question. Dracula is angry at them for disobeying his commands by trying to feed on Jonathan, but he does show that he cares somewhat for them by offering them something to eat in the form of the contents of the "wiggling bag", and honors his promise to give them Harker when he leaves, though it is not revealed why he leaves them behind in Transylvania rather than taking them to London with him.
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