A key character and narrator in the novel, Harker represents the ideal Victorian middle-class man. His travels to Eastern Europe reinforce the presiding colonial beliefs about the disparity between Western and Eastern Europe, as well as the divide between what is scientific and what is superstitious. Harker’s role in the novel is mostly one of passivity in the pursuit of Dracula; he is exposed as comparatively naïve and ill-equipped as the events unfold until he is aided by Mina and Van Helsing. Repeatedly throughout the novel he questions his own sanity because accepting the events as reality is unacceptable in a society dominated by logical thinking and science. Ultimately, Stoker utilises Harker to reflect the confusion of the Victorian era about anomalies of the modern world; rational, scientific knowledge may not be able to explain that which lies outside the traditional fields of science.
