The ancient stories of werewolves and vampires already existed in the psyche of Victorian society. Even twenty-six years before Dracula's 1897 publication, Victorians had already met Carmilla in the novel of the same name by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Carmilla, or Mircalla, which was her real name, was a female vampire in pursuit of a young woman named Laura. What Bram Stoker did was take that same idea of a pursuing vampire and add his own social commentary by creating characters and situations that were very representative of his time.
These characters and situations in Dracula drove conversations that connected the novel to the newsworthy events taking place in those days, ranging from the boom of psychology to Darwin to the Industrial Revolution, and even the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.
Also very prevalent was the topic of the incoming Aliens Act, which was officially approved in 1905. This was an Act that restricted immigration from Eastern Europe. This part of the world was once the land of Vlad the Impaler, who inspired the character of Dracula.
Judging by what critics said of the novel at the time, we can safely argue that people gave less importance to the vampire figure and focused more on the collateral things taking place in the novel. This is the reason why, upon reception, Dracula drew negative and positive opinion just like any other novel.
Remember also that Victorians, unlike us, did not possess the pre-conception that we, as modern readers, have of the iconic "Dracula." Being new to the idea of Count Dracula, Victorians embraced the character as another welcome addition to other newly-created mysterious characters that would become icons throughout the next 120 years in novels like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man, and Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, among others.
The Manchester Guardian published one of the first reviews of Dracula on June 15, 1897. We can argue that the critic represented the mainstream Victorian opinion about the novel:
The plot is too complicated for reproduction . . . In spite of its absurdities, the reader can follow the story with interest until the end.
The reviewer also said that Stoker made a mistake in filling the entire novel with "horrors" from start to finish. The review even suggests that, if Stoker had toned the horror down a bit, the novel would have been believable. This may seem comical to the twenty-first-century modern reader, who has seen Dracula in a variety of settings and automatically recognizes him as a scary fictional character.
The Spectator also published a review in July, 1897. This one also states that the novel was rather lackluster and that Stoker should have considered a more historical and less “modern” setting for his novel, by Victorian standards.
Mr Stoker has shown considerable ability in the use . . . of all the available traditions of vampirology, but we think his story would have been all the more effective if he had chosen an earlier period.
The up-to-dateness of the book—the phonograph diaries, typewriters . . . hardly fits in with the mediaeval methods which ultimately secure the victory for Count Dracula’s foes.
This is an amazing observation, because we draw our modern fascination for Dracula partly from its Victorian setting. What they considered too "up to date," we consider perfectly "antique," so to speak.
Therefore, Victorians did not see Dracula from our perspective, as readers who have gone as far as romanticizing vampire stories. We love the idea of the gothic vampire because it is so distant from our current reality.
To Victorians, however, this may have been yet another story about vampires that touched on social commentary. Interestingly, Dracula has survived the passing of time and seems to be more popular with readers almost 120 years after its publication than it was when it was first published.
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