Gender Female Spouse Jonathon Harker | Species HumanVampire Children Quincey Harker | |
Portrayed by Greta Schröder (Nosferatu)Helen Chandler (Dracula)Melissa Stribling (Horror of Dracula)Maria Rohm (Count Dracula)Penelope Horner (Bram Stoker's Dracula)Judi Bowker (Count Dracula)Isabelle Adjani (Nosferatu the Vampyre)Winona Ryder (Bram Stoker's Dracula)Amy Yasbeck (Dracula: Dead and Loving It)CindyMarie Small (Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary)Stefania Rocca (Dracula)Peta Wilson (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)Alexandra Kamp (Dracula 3000)Stephanie Leonidas (Dracula)Zoe Tapper (Demons)Nathalie Fauquette (Dracula, l'amour plus fort que la mort)Victoria Summer (Dracula Reborn)Marta Gastini (Dracula 3D)Jessica De Gouw (Dracula)Olivia Llewellyn (Penny Dreadful)Sarah Gadon (Dracula Untold) Aliases Miss Mina MurrayMadam Mina Movies and TV shows Bram Stoker's Dracula Played by Similar |
Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker (née Murray) is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula.
Contents
In the novel
She begins the story as Miss Mina Murray, a young school mistress who is engaged to Jonathan Harker, and best friends with Lucy Westenra. She visits Lucy in Whitby on July 24 of that year, when schools would have closed for the summer.
After her fiancé Jonathan escapes from Count Dracula's castle, Mina travels to Budapest and joins him there. Mina cares for him during his recovery from his traumatic encounter with the vampire and his brides, and the two return to England as husband and wife. Back home, they learn that Lucy has died from a mysterious illness stemming from severe blood loss as the result of repeated attacks by an unknown, blood-drinking animal; — the animal, they learn, was none other than Dracula taking a different shape.
It is because of Mina that the party learn of the Count's plans as she is the one who collects the journals, letters, newspaper clippings and fits all of the relevant information regarding the Count together, places them in chronological order, and types out multiple copies, giving them to each of the other protagonists to which the end result is the epistolary novel itself. Mina and Jonathan then join the coalition around Abraham Van Helsing, and turn their attentions to destroying the Count. The party uses this information to discover clues about Dracula's plans, and further investigate the location of the various residences he purchased as a means to track him and destroy him. With each subsequent action the party takes being recorded by the various parties and added to the collection of events surrounding Dracula.
After Dracula learns of this plot against him, he takes revenge by visiting — and biting — Mina at least three times. Dracula also feeds Mina his blood, dooming her to become a vampire should she die, afterwards killing Renfield and destroying all of the copies of their epistolary except for one which Dr. Seward kept in a safe. The rest of the novel deals with the group's efforts to spare her this fate by tracking and attempting to kill Dracula. When Van Helsing attempts to bless her by placing a wafer of sacramental bread against her forehead, it burns her flesh leaving a scar proving that Dracula has made her unholy. Mina slowly succumbs to the blood of the vampire that flows through her veins, switching back and forth from a state of consciousness to a state of semi-trance during which she is telepathically connected with Dracula. Mina then uses her inherent telepathic abilities to track Dracula's movements under the hypnotism of Van Helsing. Dracula later flees back to his castle in Transylvania, followed by the entire group who split up. As Van Helsing takes Mina with him on his journey to Dracula's castle to slay the brides of Dracula, the rest of the party attempt to locate and raid the ship Dracula is using to ambush him. As time goes on, Helsing's ability to hypnotize Mina to obtain intelligence on the whereabouts of Count Dracula diminishes significantly as her appearance and mannerisms become more vampire-like to the point where she even loses her appetite as well as her ability to stay awake during the day despite multiple attempts of Van Helsing to wake her.
While Mina and Van Helsing are at camp, Helsing crumbles sacramental bread in a circular ring around Mina as she sleeps during the day time. Upon waking, she is unable to cross the circle at all. Van Helsing did this as a test to determine that if Mina were unable to exit the circle, vampires would be unable to enter as well. This is confirmed when later in the night, the brides come to the camp, unable to cross into the ring which Mina and Helsing are located. The brides beckon her to join them but fail and fly back to Dracula's castle before sunrise.
When the party kills Dracula just before sunset, Dracula's vampiric spell is lifted and Mina freed from the curse as a result.
The book closes with a note written 7 years after these events about Mina's and Jonathan's married life and the birth of their first-born son, whom they name Quincey in remembrance of their American friend Quincey Morris, who was killed by Dracula's Szgany minions during the final confrontation. The birth of Jonathan and Mina's son signifies hope and life of the new as the novel heads into the 20th century.
In other media
Mina (or a similar character) has appeared in most film adaptations of Stoker's novel.
In Stoker's original novel, Mina Harker recovers from the vampire's curse upon Dracula's death and lives on to marry Jonathan. However, in some media, Mina is killed at some point in the story, while in others, she becomes a full vampire and keeps her powers after the death of Dracula.
Books
In Dracula the Un-dead, co-written by Dacre Stoker, a great-nephew of the original author, Mina's son, Quincey, is claimed to be a product of rape and Dracula's biologically human son, conceived at some point when Dracula was attacking Mina.
In From the Pages of Bram Stoker's Dracula: Harker, written by Tony Lee and endorsed by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, Mina becomes bound to Dracula's spirit as his remaining allies attempt to use her unborn child as his new body.
Mina Murray (returning to her maiden name after having divorced her husband) is one of the lead characters of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. She is a bisexual suffragist and leader of the titular team, and is involved in a romantic relationship with Allan Quatermain. She and Allan are the only remaining members of the initial League after a Martian invasion and subsequently becomes immortal, remaining young even in the year 2009. She is in a polyamorous relationship with the gender-changing omnisexual Orlando. It is implied that she still feels trauma over her encounter with Dracula and has disfiguring scars covering her neck, covering them up with a red scarf.
Film
TV
Music
Japanese media
In the light novels (also later adapted into two anime films and a manga series) Vampire Hunter D, the ancient vampire Count Magnus Lee refers to a "Mina the Fair" who was pursued by the "Sacred Ancestor" (revealed in the English dub of the first film to be "our sire Count Dracula"). It is implied that she may be the mother of D (the son of the Sacred Ancestor).
In the 1997 manga series Hellsing, a character referred to only as "She" is eventually revealed to be Mina Harker's corpse. She died before Dracula (later Alucard) could be defeated, but because he did not die, the curse was still active in her, which the Doctor exploited to create Millennium's vampires.
In the 2005 manga series Dance in the Vampire Bund, the central female vampire protagonist is named "Mina Țepeș", a reference to Vlad Țepeș, one of the inspirations for Dracula.