John Seward
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Dr. John Seward is a fictional character appearing in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
[edit] In the novel
Seward is the administrator of an insane asylum not far from Count Dracula's first English home, Carfax Abbey. Throughout the novel, Seward conducts ambitious interviews with one of his patients, Renfield, in order to understand better the nature of life-consuming psychosis. As a psychiatrist, Seward enjoys using the most up-to-date equipment, including using a recording phonograph to record his interviews with his patients and his own notes. Several chapters of the novel consist of transcriptions of Seward's phonograph recordings.
He is best friends with Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood. All three propose to Lucy Westenra the same day. Although Lucy turns down Seward's marriage proposal, his love for her remains, and he dedicates himself to her care when she suddenly takes ill.
He calls in his mentor, Abraham Van Helsing, to help him with her illness, and he helps Seward to realize that Lucy has been bitten by a vampire and is doomed to become one herself. After she is officially destroyed and her soul can go to Heaven, Seward is determined to destroy Dracula. The novel's epilogue mentions that Seward is now happily married.
[edit] In adaptations
Seward often appears in different adaptations of Dracula but in a wide variety of different roles. The most common change is portray him, not as Lucy's suitor, but as her father (or sometimes Mina Harker's father). This was almost certainly based on the decision made in writing the Hamilton Deane stage adaptation. Such portrayals include:
- Herbert Bunston in Dracula (1931 film)
- José Soriano Viosca in Dracula (1931 Spanish language film)
- Charles Lloyd Pack in Dracula (1958 film)
- Paul Muller in Count Dracula (1970 film)
- Donald Pleasance in Dracula (1979 film)
- Harvey Korman in Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)
In recent years, the trend has been to return Seward to his role in the novel, as a suitor for Lucy's hand in marriage:
- Mark Burns in Count Dracula (1977 TV movie)
- Richard E. Grant in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)
- Matthew Johnson in Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002 film)
- Tom Burke in Dracula (2006 TV movie)
Gustav Botz played a similar character, Dr. Sievers, in the first film adaptation of the novel, 1922's Nosferatu.
[edit] In other works
In the alternate history novel Anno-Dracula, where Van Helsing fails and Dracula becomes the ruler of Britain, Seward becomes the murderer known as the "Silver Knife", whose targets are vampire prostitutes who remind him of Lucy.
