imagoldfish

Indeed.

There are those times when I think I've hit rock bottom only to hear a little voice ask me if I'd like to see the basement. You have my sympathy for however things broke the wrong way for you this time.

I suppose it's easy to mistake Van Helsing for the scientific one because he's aligned so closely with Dr. Seward. Seward is our example of rational scientific thought; he's an Englishman fully entrenched in the ideas of the enlightenment. He cannot find a cause to Lucy's illness because it is not of a scientific origin.

Van Helsing, on the other hand, is Dutch and not bound by the same rigid constraints of englightenment logic (i.e. science can explain everything) and can thereful accept a supernatural explanation for what's going on. Van Helsing is a scientist and a rational person, but one who is capable of looking outside of science for explanations. This places him outside of the world of Seward & co. and halfway into Dracula's world.

I think one of the themes Stoker was trying to show was that, while the world was changing, it was foolish to believe everything could be explained. Van Helsing may have cost Lucy her life because he feared Dr. Seward would lose faith in him if he initially came forward with stories of vampires.

But it has been a while since I read the novel, so I may be misremembering.

(In the film, though, Van Helsing is a loon. He's a scientist, but he's so far out on the edge that it appears that madness is creeping in on his every action. Not sure why they portrayed him in that way but I like it.)