#The Count is a complex gothic character in regards all of the stuff he represents both in the good watsonian and the bigoted doylist sense

[immediatebreakfast]

One of the things that it's always interesting to see in a gothic noble is what the villain, or the antagonist represents in the narrative as a whole.

The Gothic is a romantic literary response to the historical, sociological, and political contexts of the the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It's a look through the ruin, the passionate, the bigoted, the decaying, and the irrational rationality.

It's an explanation as to why it's crucial to the narrative of why Dracula is a count, why Jonathan is an inexperienced worker, and why there is so much emphasis on the locals.

"Because your peasant is at heart a coward and a fool! Those flames only appear on one night; and on that night no man of this land will, if he can help it, stir without his doors. And, dear sir, even if he did he would not know what to do. Why, even the peasant that you tell me of who marked the place of the flame would not know where to look in daylight even for his own work. Even you would not, I dare be sworn, be able to find these places again?"

How much contempt, and underlining hatred can one fit in a single paragraph that bordelines on a monologue? Dracula truly holds true resentment towards the locals of Transylvania for daring to try, and defend themselves against him.

He doesn't call them locals, citizens, not even commoners, but peasants. A word that not only signals the kind of social hierarchy that Dracula benefits the most (notice how he also included Jonathan in the social class at the end), but also why he is shown so angry despite Jonathan asking a simple question.

The locals of Transylvania had commited the worst crime in the eyes of the Count, the peasants dared to revolt against their "master" in order to keep themselves alive instead of baring their necks for the slaughter. Even with all of the fear that Dracula has sowed in the heart of the locals, to the point that they obey all of his orders, it's still not enough for him. That fear it's not enough for Dracula because it lacks the concrete submission of his old days as an actual noble class.

The locals of Transylvania fear him for his power and his wealth, but they lack the class mentality that would truly put them under Dracula, and that is eating the Count alive. He calls them fools while they fill their streets with protection wards and put rosaries around their necks, he calls them cowards while we have read how everyone around Jonathan risked the Count's wrath to protect him.

We Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may lie amongst the common dead. 

The Count hates the old innkeepers, the coachman, and the passengers for daring to rebel against him, even if he is still the unliving cause of their suffering.

Hell, it's heavily implied that all of that is still not enough to fully stop Dracula, and yet he is still so angry. There is nothing that the aristocratic nobility hates more than the mere vision of how the people they deem beneath them act together to stop their abuse.