Mina Harker

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Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's horror novel Dracula.

She begins the story as Miss Mina Murray, a young school mistress (teaching etiquette and decourum) who is engaged to Jonathan Harker, and friends with Lucy Westenra. In some movie adaptions of Dracula, including the 1931 Bela Lugosi version, she is instead portrayed as being the daughter of Dr. Seward and lives at the sanitarium.

She visits Lucy in Whitby on 24 July of that year when schools would have closed for the Summer.

After her fiancé Jonathan escapes from Count Dracula's castle, Mina travels to Budapest and joins him there. Mina cares for him during his recovery from his traumatizing encounter and the two return to England as a married couple only to learn that Lucy Westenra has died.

Mina and Jonathan join the coalition around Abraham Van Helsing, who now turn their attentions to dealing with Dracula himself. After Dracula learns of this plot against him, he takes revenge by visiting — and biting — Mina at least three times. Dracula also feeds Mina his blood, destining her to become a vampire at her death. The only way to forestall this is to kill Dracula first and the rest of the novel deals with the main characters trying to achieve this. Mina slowly succumbs to the blood of the vampire that flows through her veins, switching back and forth from a state of consciousness to a state of semi-trance during which she is telepathically connected with Dracula. Mina then uses her inherent telepathic abilities to track Dracula's movements.

Dracula flees back to his castle in Transylvania, followed by Van Helsing's gang, who manage to kill him just before sundown. As a result, Dracula's spell is lifted and Mina freed from the curse of the vampire.

The book closes with a note about Mina's and Jonathan's married life and the birth of their first-born son, whom they name Quincey in remembrance of their American friend Quincey Morris, who was killed by Dracula's Szgany minions during the final confrontation.

Portrayal

Mina's character is a contrast to her friend Lucy. Lucy is vivacious, playful and upper class, while Mina is resolute, reasonable, modest and middle class. Mina is something of a dual character, in that she symbolizes Bram Stoker's idealized vision of Victorian era womanhood (virginal, gentle, and deferential) but at the same time she embodies most of the traits of the "New Woman" in a non-threatening way for the Victorian audience, doing many things considered "masculine" by Victorian standards: administration, shorthand and journalism.

Media appearances

Mina (or a similar character) has appeared in most film adaptations of Stoker's novel. Helen Chandler played her in Universal Pictures' 1931 film, directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the count. In this adaptation, Mina was Dr. Seward's daughter and so it is implied that her name was Mina Seward instead of Murray. This connection was incorporated into the parody Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Mina was portrayed by American actress Winona Ryder in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film adaptation of the book. (A minor but interesting detail is that in real life, Winona Ryder is a natural blonde and Sadie Frost is a natural brunette, and in the novel, Mina is blonde and Lucy is dark-haired -- yet in the Francis Ford Coppola movie, Mina is brunette and Lucy is a redhead. This, however, may be explained by the fact that Ryder has dyed her hair brunette ever since childhood, and Coppola did not want Frost's dark hair to compete with Ryder's.)

The same character also plays a major role in Alan Moore's comic series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Here, it was revealed that her husband, repulsed by the scars on her neck, divorced her. As a result, she returned to her former name, Mina Murray. She is recruited to lead the League, and forms a relationship with Allan Quatermain after she is attacked by the traitorous Invisible Man. However, following the death of Edward Hyde and the resignation of Captain Nemo, Mina left Quatermain due to her conflicted feelings about Hyde's death, ending the League. In the third volume, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, Mina is immortal after bathing in the Fire of Youth, and is active in 1957. Moore had originally considered making Irene Alder the League's female head before replacing her with Mina, due to the latter being more familiar to the public. In a deviation from the original novel, Mina is drawn with brown hair, perhaps due to Bram Stoker's Dracula. In Black Dossier, Mina has regained her blonde hair, although this is due to her going incognito to escape from the British Government after the end of World War II.

In the film adaptation of the first volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, she is portrayed by actress Peta Wilson and is depicted as still being a vampire, despite not having been one in the actual graphic novel; it is also stated that Jonathan is dead, although whether her vampirism is connected to this is unknown. Mina is no longer the leader of the League, that title falling to Quatermain, and instead serves as their chemist, as well as providing her vampire powers. She also has a past relationship with Dorian Gray, who subsequently betrays the League to regain his portrait, attracts the attention of Henry Jekyll, and it is implied that she develops an affection for Tom Sawyer.

Mina has appeared in music as well. On the British black metal band Cradle of Filth's album Thornography is a song named "Lovesick for Mina", dedicated to this character. The German singer-songwriter Ingo Pohlmann has a ballad titled "An Mina", where he makes reference to Bram Stoker's character.

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Last updated on Sunday March 09, 2008 at 15:47:17 PDT (GMT -0700)
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