The Spiritual Status of Vampires in Bram Stoker's Dracula

I've been reading Bram Stoker's Dracula lately. I was never really able to get through the book so I went back to a childhood method I used as a very young girl to read 'Gone With the Wind'---- I started reading in the middle.

The portion I started with dealt with the illness and death of Dracula-victim Lucy Westenra. What particularly drew my attention was how vampire expert Van Helsing (the one Catholic in the book) described Lucy's spiritual fate once she died and rose as a vampire.

When alive Lucy was described as good and pure and kind. Everyone who knew her loved her. But as a vampire Lucy attacked young children--- drinking their blood, but not yet killing them.

Van Helsing said that in time Lucy would kill, and at that point her soul would be damned to hell. Her only hope was for Van Helsing and his allies to drive a stake through her heart and release her from her vampire state.

I found it troubling that a good moral girl, presumably a Christian, would be damned for something she could not help--- becoming a vampire. She did nothing to court the attention of Dracula, neither she nor anyone near her knew she was being preyed upon by the undead creature until it was too late. Against her will she was turned into a creature whose fiendish appetite for blood would in time make her into a murderer. Is it right for her to be consigned to hell's flames for that?

Possibly what Bram Stoker had in mind was his impression of Catholic doctrines--- during his lifetime a Catholic would have feared very much to die without a visit from a priest for the last sacraments. Catholics unlearned in the doctrines of their Church might well believe that if some accident deprived them of the chance for this priestly care, their souls would be consigned to hell. (Actually, the desire for a saving sacrament is enough in an emergency--- as in the Good Thief on the cross, who had no opportunity to be baptized, but who was promised Paradise by our Lord all the same.)

Perhaps also Stoker was somewhat influenced by the Protestant doctrine of predestination--- the idea that mankind is so wicked because of Original Sin that only the elect--- souls chosen by God without regard to their merit--- were able to repent and turn to God. Another version of this doctrine--- double predestination--- has it that the non-elect are predestined by God to hell fire. (Not all Protestants believe in predestination.)

Whatever Stoker's inspiration, he has created a fictional universe where a Christian person might be preyed upon by a vampire-fiend and turned into a similarly damned soul. The unfairness of this may be what bothers the modern Christian reader. But it also serves to make Dracula a far more fearsome monster--- one which not only can kill the bodies of the innocent, but can arrange for their souls to be consigned to hell. That ramps up the horror considerably.

One thing this brought to my mind was Dracula himself. As horrible as he was in the novel, could he have started out a bright and shining soul, a young person much like Lucy, beloved by all? And some cruel vampire preyed upon him, taking his life and consigning his soul to hell. And what was THAT vampire like, before he became a vampire?

Of the many writers that have written about vampires since Bram Stoker, few have given much consideration to their spiritual status at all. Of those that have, some have written of vampires who are like humans in that they can choose between good and evil. In other stories the vampires seem demonic, and it is not explained to us if they are corpses animated not by their original human spirit, but by a demon, or if they are human souls wholly corrupted as in Dracula.