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Abraham Van Helsing
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Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character and a protagonist from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula.
Van Helsing is a Dutch doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "M.D., D.Ph., D.Litt., etc., etc." The character is best known as a vampire hunter, and the arch-enemy of Count Dracula.
typically Dutch prefix "van" gives the name a Dutch appearance.
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Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character and a protagonist from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula.
Van Helsing is a Dutch doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "M.D., D.Ph., D.Litt., etc., etc." The character is best known as a vampire hunter, and the arch-enemy of Count Dracula.
Name
The typically Dutch prefix "van" gives the name a Dutch appearance. Nevertheless, the surname "Van Helsing" does not exist within the Dutch language area. However, similar names such as "Hell", "van der Hell", "van Hell", "Helsen" and "Helsinger" do. Also, in Finland there are a few hundred people who have the last name "Helsing". In Finland this surname probably originates from the name of Finland's capital, Helsinki (Helsingfors in Swedish). This would seem to indicate that the doctor's ancestors emigrated to the Netherlands from a Nordic country (perhaps even narrowed down to ethnic Swedes from Helsinki), just as the Dutch surname, "van Praag," indicates ancestral emigrants from the city of Prague in what is now the Czech Republic. The fact the doctor was Catholic might even suggest that although his father was a Nordic immigrant, his mother was ethnic Dutch Catholic (with German being used by his parents to communicate with each other).
Also, the character uses German words instead of Dutch, such as "mein Gott" and "toll", which translate in English to "my God" and "great" respectively. At the time, German was a lingua franca throughout most of northern and central continental Europe, including the Nordic countries and Transylvania, a fact Stoker uses in the story when Van Helsing's friend Jonathan Harker and the locals of Transylvania talk to each other using German.
The character shares the same first name, Abraham, as the character's creator, Abraham "Bram" Stoker and his father, Abraham Stoker Senior.
Dracula
In the novel, Van Helsing is called in by his former student, Dr. John Seward, to assist with the mysterious illness of Lucy Westenra. Van Helsing's friendship with Seward is based in part upon an unknown prior event in which Van Helsing suffered a grievous wound and Seward saved his life by sucking out the gangrene. It is Van Helsing who first realizes that Lucy is the victim of a vampire and he guides Dr. Seward and his friends in their efforts to save Lucy.
In the novel, from the annotations of Leonard Wolf, it is mentioned that Van Helsing had a son who died. Van Helsing says that his son, had he lived, would have had a similar appearance to another character, Arthur Holmwood. Consequently, Van Helsing developed a particular fondness of Holmwood. Van Helsing's wife went insane after their son's death, but as a devout Catholic, he refuses to divorce her. ("with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by
Church's law, though no wits, all gone, even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife...")
Van Helsing is one of the few characters in the novel who is fully physically described in one place. In chapter 14, Mina describes him as:
- "a man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of thought and power. The head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart, such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods."
Van Helsing's personality is described by John Seward, his former student, thus:
- He is a seemingly arbitrary man, this is because he knows what he is talking about better than any one else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day, and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, and indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats, these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind, work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy. [Dracula, ch.9]
In addition to this, Van Helsing has a well-developed, albeit ironic sense of humor. When Arthur Holmwood/Godalming mournfully proclaims that the transfusion of his blood into the dying Lucy made her truly his bride, Van Helsing laughs (though not in Arthur Holmwood/Godalming's hearing) and tells Jack Seward that if such is the case, both Van Helsing and Lucy are guilty of adultery. Arthur was not alone in donating blood; Seward, his friend Quincey Morris, and Van Helsing himself have done it as well.
Adaptations of the novel have tended to play up Van Helsing's role as the vampire expert, sometimes to the extent that it is depicted as his major occupation. In the novel, however, Dr. Seward is unaware of this side of his old friend, and requests Van Helsing's assistance simply because Lucy's affliction has him baffled and Van Helsing "knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world."
Count Dracula, having acquired ownership of England’s Carfax Abbey through solicitor Jonathan Harker, moved to the abbey and began menacing England. His victims included Lucy Westernra, who lived in Whitby. The aristocratic girl had suitors such as John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris, and had a friend in Mina Murray, Jonathan Harker’s fiancée. John Seward, who worked as a doctor in an insanity asylum - where one of patients, the incurably zoophagous Renfield, secretly served Dracula - contacted Van Helsing about Lucy Westernra’s peculiar loss of blood. Van Helsing, recognizing the mark of the vampire, tried to save Lucy, but she died, returning as a vampire. Eventually, Van Helsing and Arthur destroyed the vampiric Lucy.
Van Helsing and his band of vampire hunters pursued Dracula back to Transylvania. There, they chased him down and cornered him. Armed with knives, Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris decapitated Dracula and impaled his heart. Dracula's body then crumbled to dust.
Later, Van Helsing took an elder's role in regard to the young Quincey Harker, who was the son of Jonathan and Mina.
Character inspirations
There are several possible sources for the character of Van Helsing as described by Bram Stoker. German historian Max Muller is one possible suggestion, as an early draft of Dracula features a version of Van Helsing called Max Windshoeffel. Another is Theodore Roosevelt's uncle, Robert Roosevelt, who was a popular author, of Dutch descent, a scientist, and broadly matched Stoker's description in image and character. He was also a member of Stoker's group of friends, which included Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman. Arminius Vambery, a Hungarian professor who helped Stoker with his research into vampirism, is another likely source for at least part of the character. Another possible source for Van Helsing was Stoker's brother Thornley. This theory is based on Thornley's assistance in the writing of the novel evident in Stoker's notes and on his having a mentally ill wife, like Van Helsing in the novel.
Another source of inspiration is probably Gerard van Swieten.
A possible fictional role-model is Dr. Hesselius, an occult doctor, some of whose cases, including that of the vampire Carmilla feature in J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 story collection In a Glass Darkly.
Film adaptations
Notable actors to have portrayed Van Helsing in film adaptations of Dracula include:
Cushing's character in the Hammer movies was named J. Van Helsing, as seen in Brides of Dracula. In the contemporary series of Hammer Dracula films the character of Van Helsing is named Lawrence Van Helsing and is seen in the prologue (set in 1872) of Dracula AD 1972. These movies had Dracula resurrecting in the 1970s, only to meet Lawrence Van Helsing's grandson, Lorrimar Van Helsing, a "different" vampire hunter also played by Cushing. It is unclear in The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires if Cushing is playing Van Helsing or a descendant, though the 1904 setting suggests the former. (Since Horror of Dracula was set in 1885, a 19 year gap between the settings corresponds roughly with the 16 year gap between the films, and the consequent difference in Cushing's appearance matches the ageing Van Helsing would have undergone.) However, the character is identified as Lawrence Van Helsing on the LP record of the movie, narrated by Peter Cushing and released to tie-in with the film's opening.
In Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror, due to the copyright issues surrounding the film, the character is renamed Professor Bulwer, and plays a much more minor role, to the extent he only appears in a few scenes. Unlike the book, he is a friend of Thomas Hutter (the film's version of Jonathan Harker) before he meets Count Orlok (a renamed Count Dracula) and never meets the vampire face to face.
Van Helsing (2004)
Hugh Jackman played Gabriel Van Helsing, the eponymous hero of Van Helsing (2004), loosely based on Bram Stoker's character. The name was changed from "Abraham" to "Gabriel" for two reasons: because the writer/director/producer, Stephen Sommers, did not feel that "Abraham" was an appropriate name for an action hero, and because Universal wanted copyright privileges to the character. The name change is accounted for in the story of the film, in which it is implied that Gabriel Van Helsing is actually the Archangel Gabriel in human form. Evidence supporting this implication include Gabriel's memories of participating in ancient battles (including fighting the Romans at Masada in 73 A.D. - although this was in fact a siege as opposed to a pitched battle), references to him as the "Left Hand of God" (traditionally an epithet of the angel Gabriel), and, according to the film's novelization, a triangular scar on his back (a possible indication that he once had wings). As a man, Gabriel hunts monsters for the Catholic Church, and in the movie is sent to Transylvania to kill Count Dracula. When he arrives, Dracula tells Gabriel that they have already met and have quite a history together. In the video game adaptation of the movie, it is suggested that they once fought for the same side, but eventually parted ways for an unknown reason (Dracula's story makes it seem as though Gabriel betrayed him, but since Gabriel cannot remember these events, Dracula's story may be biased and remains unconfirmed). At the movie's climax, Dracula reveals that it was Gabriel who killed him, leading him to make a Faustian bargain and become a vampire. This ironic twist makes Gabriel Van Helsing the inadvertent creator of his own archnemesis.
Although it received generally negative reviews (sometimes criticized as a tactless, big-budget amalgamation of classic horror films) the film was much more of a box office success than it is typically given credit for, grossing $100 million+ in the U.S. and $300 million+ worldwide.
Appearances in comics/manga
The Tomb of Dracula
Abraham Van Helsing was also portrayed in the The Tomb of Dracula Marvel Comics series, which was based on the characters of Bram Stoker's novel, but the chronology slightly differs from Bram Stoker's.
His first appearance is in Dracula Lives #3, in which a first encounter between a younger Van Helsing and Dracula is set up. A few days after marrying a woman named Elizabeth, lawyers informed Van Helsing that he had inherited land from a distant relative in Wallachia. Traveling to Romania, Van Helsing had a long conference with some lawyers in Bistritz. Elizabeth went ahead to the manor to set it up for the night.
One lawyer whom Van Helsing talked to had a collection of Hun and Magyar artifacts, and Van Helsing lost track of the time studying them. When he arrived at the manor, he found his wife missing, but did discover several corpses, with "XXX" burned underneath bite marks on their necks. Armed with a gun from his brother Boris, who lived in the U.S., Van Helsing left, frantic.
Returning to Bistritz, a frenzied Van Helsing discovered the existence of the Children of Judas, a vampire coven that served Dracula. He also discovered the location of the Grand Sabbath of the vampires. (Van Helsing assumed that the Children of Judas were human, and merely occultists rather than vampires.) He went there, and found Elizabeth bound on an altar with thirteen Children of Judas and Dracula present.
Armed, Van Helsing opened fire with normal bullets - only to see them have no effect. A group of priests and soldiers saved him, but they could not save Elizabeth. Van Helsing refused to allow Elizabeth’s corpse to be beheaded or staked. Reluctantly, they allowed Van Helsing to bury Elizabeth in the manorial vault - but informed him of what to do in three days. Standing watch in the vault, Van Helsing saw her return as a vampire. He destroyed her, and swore revenge against Dracula, setting the stage for his role in Stoker's novel.
In the twentieth century, Dracula, having undergone many deaths and returns over the years since his struggles with Van Helsing, traveled back in time to the 19th century via an enchanted mirror, attempting to prevent his destruction at the hands of Van Helsing. Instead of arriving before the staking, however, he arrived after, but still tried to kill Van Helsing. However, Van Helsing had left the area of the Borgo Pass and Castle Dracula.
Dracula killed a young woman, and villagers stormed Castle Dracula. Dracula repulsed them, and then discovered that Frank Drake, one of his descendants, and Rachel Van Helsing, Abraham's great-granddaughter, had followed him from the 20th century. Determined to destroy Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula had a subordinate vampire named Lenore battle Drake and Rachel as he sought to find Abraham Van Helsing.
Dracula discovered Abraham Van Helsing’s lodgings elsewhere in Romania. Stunned and confused as he had just driven the stake through (the native temporal counterpart of) Dracula’s heart a short time ago, Van Helsing was unprepared to face the 20th century Dracula. However, Rachel Van Helsing saved her great-grandfather, forcing Dracula to flee. Dracula escaped back into the time stream, with Frank Drake, Rachel Van Helsing, and their ally Taj Nital in pursuit.
Abraham Van Helsing then trained Mina and Jonathan Harker’s son, Quincey, in vampire lore, but in 1899, thinking that by staking Dracula he had destroyed him for good, he received a rude surprise when Dracula returned years later and killed him.
Hellsing
Abraham Van Helsing has also made a cameo appearance in the Japanese manga Hellsing. The first time he appeared in one of Alucard´s dreams, Van Helsing made many allusions to Dracula when referring to Alucard e.g. "So what are you going to do now, No Life King?". At the end of this dream, Alucard seems to cry blood. The second time Van Helsing appeared as a silhouette after Alucard transforms into the "Count", this last one is the most direct reference to the novel in the manga, since this time besides Van Helsing, Alucard mentions Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood and Dr. Seward, although, mysteriously, not Jonathan Harker. He appeared for a third time in a flashback showing Alucard's previous deaths.
Apocalypse vs. Dracula
In the Marvel Comics miniseries X-Men: Apocalypse vs. Dracula, Van Helsing joins forces with the immortal mutant Apocalypse and his worshipers, Clan Akkaba, in order to destroy Dracula, their common enemy. It is noted that Van Helsing had encountered Apocalypse before and previously believed him a vampire. Even despite doing things that angered the mutant, Apocalypse allowed Van Helsing to live, in the end, as he knew that Van Helsing had aided him in his creed.
Media involving descendants of Van Helsing
In addition to adaptations of Dracula itself, there have been numerous works of fiction depicting descendants of Van Helsing carrying on the family tradition.
Comics
- The comic book series, The Tomb of Dracula featured Rachel van Helsing, granddaughter of Abraham, as a major member of the principal hunters. Minor characters were Abraham's wife Elizabeth and his brother Boris.
- In the manga and anime, Hellsing, modern day descendant Integra Hellsing leads a British government strike force against supernatural menaces. The story also includes her father Arthur and uncle Richard.
- The DC comic Night Force features Abraham's granddaughter Vanessa Van Helsing.
- Sword of Dracula is a comic book with Veronica "Ronnie" Van Helsing.
- Helsing (not to be confused with Hellsing) is a Caliber Comics title about a Samantha Helsing and a John Van Helsing.
Movies
- Dracula 3000 features Captain Abraham Van Helsing (played by Casper Van Dien), a descendent of the original Van Helsing and the captain of a spacefaring salvage ship. A twist is that this Van Helsing is killed unceremoniously by Dracula mid-film.
- Hammer Films' Dracula series features a whole dynasty of Van Helsings: "J." (equivalent to Abraham); Lawrence, older than J., relationship unspecified; J.'s son Leyland, Lawrence's grandson Lorrimar, and Lorrimar's granddaughter Jessica. Peter Cushing played J. in Horror of Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960. Lawrence in a brief opening segment of Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), and Lorrimar in Dracula A.D. 1972, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974)and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974); Robin Stewart played Leyland in The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires; and Jessica was played first by Stephanie Beacham in Dracula A.D. 1972, then by Joanna Lumley in The Satanic Rites of Dracula.
- In the Disney movie, Mom's Got A Date With A Vampire, Malachi Van Helsing is hunting the vampire Dimitri, who is preying on the mother of the main characters.
- In the Movie Love at First Bite, Dracula falls in love, and Jeffrey Rosenberg, grandson of Fritz Van Helsing tries to kill him.
- 2004 direct to video film "The Adventures of Young Van Helsing" depicts Abraham Van Helsing's great grand son Michael saving the world from Simon Magus.
- The 2006 film Bram Stoker's Dracula's Curse features a character named Jacob Van Helsing, who is inferred to be a descendant of the original Van Helsing, although this is never actually stated outright.
Television
- A humorous British TV series, Young Dracula, featured Mr. Eric Van Helsing — presumably the descendant of his more famous predecessor, though with none of his competence — trying to exterminate a family of vampires living in rural Wales. Eric lives in a travel trailer with his son Jonathan. There are also references made to previous Van Helsing vampire slayers, such as Manly, Porphyria, Abraham III and Norris.
- The 2009 ITV series Demons follows a modern-day teenage descendant of Van Helsing.
Books
- The short story Immortal Hunters by Suz deMello feauters a John Van Helsing whos son has been kidnapped by vampires.
- In Tales of the Slayer story "House of the Vampire", part of an unofficial series of short stories based on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Peter Van Helsing (cousin to Abraham) is a Watcher (an advisor and trainer of vampire Slayers.) Within the Buffy canon, Dracula is a real vampire but a charlatan and Van Helsing is unmentioned.
- The short story Abraham's Boys by Joe Hill is about the retired Abraham von Helsing and his two sons, and how he passes along his knowledge to them...
- According to The Vampire Hunter's Handbook, Abraham was not the first Van Helsing to encounter vampires. The book is supposedly written by Raphael Van Helsing in the eighteenth century. It has also been prequeled by The Demon Hunter's Handbook by Abelard Van Helsing (sixteenth century) and The Dragon Hunter's Handbook by Adelia Vin Helsin (fourteenth century). The supposed writers refer to each other (in the cases where it makes sense) and other Van Helsings.
- Similar to the above mentioned handbooks is Vampyre: The Terrifying Lost Journal which is written by Mary-Jane Knight but credited to dr Cornelius Van Helsing. The book implies that Cornelius is the brother of Abraham.
Audiobooks
- Faith - The Van Helsing Chronicles is a German series of audiobooks by Simeon Hrissonmallis. The main character is Faith van Helsing, daughter of Adam and Melissa van Helsing. Other van Helsings mentioned include Michael, John and Samuel.
Parodies and homages
Parodies of Dracula usually include a Van Helsing character. In many cases he gets to keep his name, but in others the name is changed as a part of the parodizing. Examples of this are:
The character is paid homage in many stories involving vampires, most often as a source of information about how to destroy them; such as Matt Burke in 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
This carries through even to roleplaying games. The Dungeons & Dragons Ravenloft campaign setting, which pits heroes against various gothic horror villains, features a prominent character named Rudolph van Richten, a physician and monster-slayer who is clearly modeled after Van Helsing. Elements of various movie depictions of Van Helsing are incorporated into the character, who is the "author" of various sourcebooks detailing iconic creatures such as vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, and similar monsters.
External links
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