John Seward
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Dr. John Seward is a fictional character appearing in Bram Stoker's vampire novel Dracula. He is a talented young doctor, formerly Abraham Van Helsing's pupil.
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 (although that word is not used in the novel).
He is best friends with Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood. All three proposed 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 Van Helsing to help him with her illness, and he helps Seward realize that Lucy has been bitten by a vampire and is doomed to become a vampire herself. After she is officially destroyed and her soul can go to Heaven, Seward is one of the main characters determined to destroy Dracula.
Seward is most often known simply as "Jack" (possibly to help distinguish him from another character named Jonathan). Note that Van Helsing always refers to him as John, either because of their relationship or as part of his general awkwardness with English colloquialisms.
[edit] In adaptations
Seward is a character who 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'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 (1969 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 named Dr. Sievers in the first film adaptation of the novel, 1922's Nosferatu.
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