Renfield is Doctor Seward’s psychiatric patient who presages the presence of Dracula and the chaos he unleashes. He is connected to Dracula in an almost master–slave relationship. Before his death, Renfield is afflicted by the conflict between his devotion to his master and relinquishing control over his humanity. Unknown to the other characters, Renfield was more attuned to reality than anyone else in the novel, despite being declared mentally insane. Thus, the demarcation between sanity and insanity become blurred in the novel. Only those who embrace the ideological concept of madness are able to comprehend the truth. Renfield’s scheme of collecting and consuming life forces is an attempt to ascend the Great Chain of Being in hopes of achieving immortality. To subvert the Great Chain was to go against the will of God and nature, making this a metaphor for the moralistic conflict of lower-class or foreign individuals invading and infecting the social hierarchy of ‘proper’ middle and upper-class Victorian England that was dominated by wealthy political conservatives and white supremacy.
