Blinded by the Enlightenment

I recently read Bram Stoker's Dracula and found it not only "spookical," to use a Lewisian term, but also an interesting critique of the Enlightenment worldview. Count Dracula expands his hunting grounds by moving to London, which is the center of the industrial revolution and steeped in the age of reason. When solicitor, Jonathan Harker, traveled to Transylvania to help convey the Count to London, the rational young man found the Count's native land still submerged in old world superstitions. When the locals he meets along the way find out that he is traveling to Dracula's castle they seem dumbstruck. After recovering themselves they forcefully try to deter him, and when they cannot prevail, they insist that he accept their religious relics for protection. One night he sees the count descending the castle wall headfirst, and assures himself that he must be seeing things in the moonlight.

When the count arrives in London and begins his nightly reign of supernatural terror, no one knows how to explain what they see. A young women in the flower of youth drained of blood in single night without a drop in sight the next morning, puncture marks on her neck, bat noises outside the window, a wolf attack, and other strange animal behavior are all scientifically recorded in journals without an inkling of what's going on. The empirical evidence is there, but the worldview is found wanting. That is, until a real scientist shows up in the person of Abraham Van Helsing. Professor Van Helsing recognizes the signs but doesn't reveal anything until he can deliver the proof to his blinded young friends.

He soon takes them on a night errand to encounter the now undead Lucy Westenra, who three of the group had proposed to a short time before. The encounter with supernatural evil shatters the Enlightenment worldview of the young men who immediately transfer their loyalties to Van Helsing's Catholic Christian worldview and become vampire hunters. As soon as the truth dispels the Enlightenment perspective, Count Dracula is on the run. He has numerous hiding places but he knows it is only a matter of time before the team finds where he's entombed away from the daylight. 

It seems the vampire's success depended on the Enlightenment denial of the possibility of his existence. Now that Christendom is back at the helm, Dracula must flee back to his remote castle hideaway in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania before his spiritually awakened foes can intercept him. Jonathan Harker's wife Mina is almost completely under the vampire's sway however, as she had been his target prior to being put to flight. Dracula had mingled his blood and hers in an effort to control her. She begins to show aversion to holy objects such as the sanctified host (believed to be the transubstantiated body of Christ) that Van Helsing had acquired by a special dispensation of the Roman church. Despite what some critics say, it is the cross and supernatural good that poses a threat to the vampire, not modern technology. The real threat to Dracula is inexplicable by science and requires a return to the faith of Christendom in order to win the fight!