For example, blood often symbolizes money (and the reverse is also true, money can symbolize blood). The English language is full of expressions that connect blood and money. For example, “blood money” is (1) money in payment for causing the death of another or, (2) money paid in compensation to a family or tribe for causing the death of another”. The thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas was “blood money” for betraying Jesus to the Romans (leading to his execution by crucifixion). Another example is the expression “blood and sweat”. “Blood and sweat” refers to labor (for which one is supposed to be paid money). However, in feudal systems where nobles ruled over the peasants, the peasants would often work in the fields (giving their “blood and sweat”) but were usually unpaid. In fact, the crops they worked so hard to grow would be taken from them as “taxes” to the nobleman. Of course, if they resisted these confiscations they would “pay in blood” when the nobleman sent his soldiers to punish them with torture and death. Dracula drinks the peasants’ blood while the Marquis taxes them almost to the point of starvation. It amounts to much the same thing. In both cases, the nobleman in the castle is the source of the sufferings of the people he rules over. Blood and money (or taxes in the form of crops) represent the two ways in which noblemen cause misery to their subjects; through violence and/or through confiscatory taxation.

Hollywood did not invent violent, greedy noblemen. They really existed throughout the history of Europe, Japan, and everywhere else where feudal systems existed. But what Hollywood did do in its horror films was depict these violent and greedy nobles as “monsters”. Dracula is the perfect example because he was a real figure in history. Bram Stoker may have been the first to transform him from an evil man into a supernatural monster, but it is Hollywood that gave us the image of this monster we all recognize. But as a real figure in history who was a noble “monster”, Dracula is hardly alone. For example, Countess Elizabeth Bathory was a Hungarian noblewoman believed to have tortured and killed as many as six hundred and fifty young girls and women between 1590 and 1610. Dracula’s excuse for his mass killings was that he was enforcing the laws of his kingdom, Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed because she enjoyed it.

Among the legends about Bathory were accusations that she killed young virgin girls in order to bathe in their blood to keep herself looking young — blood as a symbol of eternal youth.

Blood is also a metaphor for lineage (family heritage). In English when we say, “you are my blood”; it means that we are from the same family. Among the European nobility, there was an obsessive desire to make sure that their bloodlines remained “pure” and “untainted” by marrying people they considered their inferiors. No self-respecting noble would ever have dreamed of marrying a peasant. Moreover, the European nobility was very conscious of their stature within the nobility. No princess could be asked to marry a mere Baron, for example. This meant that the higher in rank you were as a noble the fewer and fewer people were considered eligible for you to marry. This led to the practice of “inbreeding” (that is marrying members of one’s own family). Every student who has studied basic biology knows that this leads to all kinds of genetic diseases and abnormalities. Among the European nobility, inbreeding led to cases of inherited hemophilia, insanity, facial deformities, dwarfism, hunched backs, and in one family, hypertrichosis (extreme hairiness that makes men look like werewolves).

In fact, it is now believed that Countess Bathory was the product of inbreeding, which may have caused her to be insane, contributing to her monstrous behavior. We should recall our earlier definition of what a “monster” is. A monster is a human or animal of extreme ugliness or evil. By that definition, many European nobles were “monsters” in more than one sense; they were extremely ugly, and/or extremely evil. Recall what the word “curse” means. A “curse” is something that in some cases can be passed down from one generation to the next — just as genetic diseases such as hypertrichosis are passed on through DNA. The greatest irony in the history of the European nobility is that their attempts to keep their “bloodlines” pure was what led to so many of them becoming “monstrous”.

Above, you see the image of the nobleman Petrus Gonsalvus, and below are his daughter, Madelene and son, Henry.

In the film Dracula (1931), we know that Dracula is about four hundred years old when the film is set (1890). But in both the novel and the film, Dracula only has three “wives” (other vampires) in the castle with him. Surely, he must have had hundreds if not thousands of victims over the past four hundred years, but he only chose three of them to become vampires like himself.

Why did he choose them? Look at the clothes the women were buried in. These are not the clothes of peasant girls. They were buried in flowing silk gowns, which would have been much too expensive for peasants to afford and certainly far too expensive to bury their daughters in.

These are noblewomen Dracula has chosen as his “wives”. Remember that a vampire can simply drain all the blood from his victim and kill them…or the vampire can force the victim to drink his blood and transform them into new vampires. Dracula, a great prince of his time, would certainly not have offered the “gift” of becoming a vampire to anyone who was not of “noble blood”. In fact, as a high-ranking prince, he would probably only have accepted women of similar rank to become his “wives”. No wonder there are only three of them.

However, after hundreds of years of preying on the local peasants, Dracula can no longer easily find victims. The peasants know where he is and they know what he is. They are very careful to lock themselves in at night, say their prayers, and wear their crosses. This is why Dracula is moving to London. With a population of almost seven million in 1890, London was the richest and most modern city in the world in 1890. Dracula will find it much easier to find victims among these millions of city dwellers than in the mountains of his homeland.

Dracula may have moved to London, but he retains his old ideas about social rank as you will see in the following excerpts