Jonathan Harker

Jonathan Harker is an English soliciter, and one of the main protagonists of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel *Dracula*.

## Jonathan Harker

A young Jonathan Harker holding a rosary for protection in 1893

## Biography

Jonathan Harker was born on August 19th, 1865, in Exeter, England.

Sometime before 1893, he became a certified legal solicitor.

In 1893, Harker was sent by his employer, Mr. Hawkins, to Transylvania in order to consult a on a property transaction. This client was a mysterious count who lived in a castle deep in the Carpathian Mountains and was planning to move to England. He planned to reside at (among other locations) the old Carfax Abbey.

Soon after Harker's arrival at the castle, he slowly realized he was made a prisoner by Dracula, who is soon revealed to have been a vampire. Harker also had a dangerous encounter with the seductive brides of Dracula later, and if he weren't saved by Count Dracula himself, he probably would have ended up a vampire too.

Later, he manages to escape the castle, finding refuge and help at a convent. He has a mental breakdown upon arriving there because of his experiences with Dracula and the brides. His fiancée, Mina Murray, comes to nurse him back to health with the nuns' help and marries him there. The newlyweds returned home to England and later saw Dracula in London. After learning Dracula killed Lucy Westenra, he joined Abraham Van Helsing, John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris. His clerical skills proved very useful for collecting information and for tracking down Dracula's London lairs by means of paperwork. He vowed to destroy Dracula and, if he could, to send "his soul forever and ever to burning to hell!" even if it be at the cost of own soul. When confronted with Mina's curse, however, he was unsure how to rreac. Mina asked the others in the group to kill her if the need came. While Harker said that he would, but in the privacy of his journal says that if it was necessary, he would become a vampire himself out of his love for her. However, Harker manages to avoid that because along with Van Helsing and the others he manages to destroy Dracula. At the book's climax, he pries open Dracula's coffin mere moments before sunset and slashed open Dracula's throat with a kukri knife while Quincey Morris stabbed him deep in the heart with a Bowie knife.

He and Mina had a son whom they namee Quincey, after Quincey Morris. Quincey Harker's birthday is the day Quincey Morris died fighting Dracula. Mina liked to think that some of Morris spirit is in their son. Jonathan Harker eventually visited Dracula's castle along with his wife and son and their surviving friends to reminisce. He returned home with his wife and son and was told by Van Helsing that one day his son will learn the whole story.

One interesting thing to note is Harker's religious orientation. While he, along with all the other main characters, was a Christian determined to serve Jesus by destroying the demonic Dracula, he, unlike the devout Van Helsing, was not a Catholic. Early in the book, he describes himself as simply an "English Churchman", a member of the Church of England, possibly even an Anglican. He was at first suspicious and dubious when an old woman gave him her rosary when he said he was going to go to Castle Dracula. Privately thinking that such things are idolatrous, he was apparently a low church Anglican. Yet when he is trapped in Castle Dracula and is protected by the cross' power his allegiance shifts, much like another young man named Henry Reid.