The Death of Dracula: Weaponry in Stoker's Writing

Dr Matthew Crofts

Abstract

While the Victorian period saw near-constant wars across the British Empire, many readers would
have had knowledge of exotic weaponry only from fiction. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) gives pride
of place to specific weapons, enthusiastically endorsed by certain characters. These include the
Winchester repeating rifle, which the Texan Quincy Morris states he has ‘a kind of belief in […] when
there is any trouble of that sort around’. The specify of this weapon stands apart from the numerous
vague references to guns throughout the text, raising questions of how familiar knowledge of this
rifle would have been to a late Victorian readership, and the cultural associations it would have
brought with it. The use of two particular styles of knife is also instructive, with each signalling an
interaction across geography and culture. The American Bowie knife comes with a very specific
history, as well as some modern mythologizing, while the inclusion of Harker’s ‘great Kukri knife’
results from Britain’s colonial endeavours. The kukri actually appears in Stoker’s fiction consistently,
being described not only in his mummy novel The Jewel of Seven Stars, The Lair of the White Worm
and even in his short story ‘The Gypsy Prophecy’. This paper will explore not only the
appropriateness of these weapons being employed in the vampire hunter’s arsenal, but also their
familiarity to the reading public.