42 pages • 1 hour read
A Dowry of Blood
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Pages 80-100 Summary
Constanta and Dracula travel to Spain. They are going to spend a few nights at the home of Magdalena, a Spanish noblewoman with a knack for politics. Dracula has been corresponding by letter with her for some time. Constanta meets the beautiful Magdalena and is jealous and suspicious of Dracula’s motives. When she accuses Dracula of “keeping another woman” (81), he insists that Magdalena is simply a friend but suggests that she could be a “gift” for Constanta.
Magdalena is charming, and Constanta is drawn to her despite herself. Magdalena hosts a ball. Dracula and Constanta dance together, and Dracula asks Constanta if she wants Magdalena; he thinks it would be good for her to have a friend or a sister. Both Constanta and Dracula are free to take other lovers, and they have done so before, though they have always killed those they have shared a bed with. Magdalena pulls Constanta into a dance and kisses her in front of everyone. She urges Constanta not to overthink or deny herself simple pleasures.
At dinner, Magdalena declares that she will never marry because she always wants to be free, which intrigues Dracula. Constanta is overwhelmed by how good Magdalena’s blood smells. When Magdalena announces that she is going to bed, Dracula offers to escort her to her room. She accepts and asks if Constanta will join them. Constanta knows that Dracula and Magdalena will sleep together no matter what she says, but she is uncomfortable. When they leave, she wanders the castle alone for a while.
Part 2, Pages 101-124 Summary
Constanta is conflicted about what she wants. Eventually, she goes to Dracula’s room and finds him and Magdalena having sex. Dracula invites her into bed; she is cool and aloof until he makes her feel more welcome. Despite her misgivings, she joins them, feeling an intense desire for Magdalena. Dracula bites Magdalena, and he and Constanta drink her blood. They give Magdalena their own blood, transforming her into a vampire.
The next night, the three of them leave Magdalena’s home to go on a honeymoon. Constanta finds herself falling in love with Magdalena. As they travel, Magdalena keeps in touch with philosophical and political informants. Dracula permits this for a time, though he does not like Magdalena’s connection to the mortal world. They travel to Venice, where Constanta and Magdalena spend more and more time together as Dracula becomes obsessed with his research. They go to the opera together, where Magdalena assures Constanta that they should not be rivals for Dracula’s affection. She loves Constanta as much as she loves Dracula and wants them to have “[t]he kind of bond that no one can separate, no matter how they try” (118). They kiss and drink each other’s blood and then explore the city together. It is Carnival in Venice, and Constanta is happy to have Magdalena all to herself.
As time has passed, Constanta has moved further away from her human self and is drawn to Magdalena because she, by contrast, is still so alive. When they hunt together, they kill wicked men, but they also start feeding from people and sparing their lives. When Dracula discovers this, he is furious. He thinks they are trying to sire their own vampires and assures them that their blood is far too young and weak for that. He accuses Constanta of infecting Magdalena with her moralism and insists that no one on Earth is innocent. Magdalena manages to persuade Dracula that they were simply experimenting, which appeases Dracula’s scientific mind.
Part 2, Pages 125-149 Summary
Constanta tries to convince herself that Dracula did not set out to find a new bride in Magdalena; he simply fell in love, as Constanta did when she met Magdalena. However, her suspicion toward him grows. The three of them move to Denmark, where Constanta searches through Dracula’s letters. She wants to learn how long Dracula had been corresponding with Magdalena before they met her in Spain. While she does find Dracula’s correspondence with Magdalena, she also finds letters dating back centuries to various people, all of whom Dracula called “husband. Lover. Wife” (128). Constanta thought that she was the first person Dracula turned into a vampire and is devastated to learn that she is not special. She is too afraid to confront Dracula about the letters. In England, Constanta tries to run away from Dracula. She flees to a cathedral and prays to God, though she worries that God has abandoned her because she is a vampire. Dracula finds her and admonishes her for trying to run away. Constanta wants to confront him about his controlling nature and the secrets that he keeps, but instead, she agrees not to run away again.
The years pass quickly. The Age of Enlightenment begins, and Magdalena writes to many of the brightest minds of the age. Dracula will not let her meet any of them in person. As the years pass, Magdalena becomes disenchanted with her correspondences, as mortals age and die “in a blink of [her] immortal eyes” (139). She stops writing and becomes melancholy. She loses interest in eating, and Constanta and Dracula have to bring her blood to drink. Magdalena confesses to Constanta that she wants to live in the world, not outside of it. She is frustrated by her inability to change as the world changes around her.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Dracula takes them to Berlin in the hopes of rekindling Magdalena’s interest in life. This works for a time, but again, she becomes frustrated by Dracula’s controlling influence and her lack of freedom to live in the world. Constanta and Dracula disagree about how to help Magdalena; Dracula thinks that she is ungrateful, while Constanta believes that she needs friendship. Constanta finally confronts Dracula about what happened to the other vampires he sired before her. She asks if he killed them for their ingratitude. Dracula is furious with Constanta for going through his letters but admits that there were others before her. They are now either dead or gone. Dracula killed those who “railed against [him] and rebuffed [his] affections” or “endangered [their] lives with foolish trysts with humans” (146). Magdalena continues to waste away, so Dracula has them leave Berlin and head to Russia.
Part 2 Analysis
Constanta continues to struggle with the effects of Abuse and Vampirism in her life now that there is a third person in the relationship. As before, there is a honeymoon phase where things go well between Constanta, Magdalena, and Dracula. Again, Dracula steadily becomes more controlling, and Constanta and Magdalena must go to increasing lengths to keep the peace and manage his volatile emotions. When Dracula first turned Constanta into a vampire, he promised there would be no secrets between them, but she learns that this is not the case when she realizes that he has turned other people before her. He pretends to have built a relationship based on mutual trust, consent, and openness, but discovering his secret history makes Constanta doubt his sincerity. Magdalena’s depression is a clearer, more visceral response to the situation than Constanta ever demonstrates. Unlike Constanta, Magdalena comes from a life of relative freedom where she was able to impact politics and form close connections with people, and she feels that loss keenly. Though the two women develop a close relationship, Constanta does not tell Magdalena what she has discovered about Dracula’s former lovers, further isolating both of them.
Magdalena joins Constanta and Dracula in reckoning with Immortality, Violence, and Morality. Just as Constanta has decided to kill people who harm others, Magdalena is interested in drinking blood from people without killing them. Of course, while her method might be more moral, it carries risk: Survivors of non-fatal encounters could tell the world that vampires are real. Outside of violence, the three vampires reckon with what social mores mean for immortals. The polyamorous sexual relationship between them is unconventional, but because they are not human, they are not bound by standard social codes that prioritize heterosexuality and monogamy. In fiction, it is very common for vampires to be LGBTQ+; it is almost an underlying assumption of the genre. John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” describes a vampire figure based on Lord Byron, who was famously bisexual. Many other pieces of media, from the novel Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice to the TV show Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), depict most or all vampires as LGBTQ+ by default; A Dowry of Blood continues that tradition without raising any questions about anti-gay bias or the social consequences of transgressing heteronormativity.
Magdalena undergoes a process of Rebirth and Self-Discovery when she becomes a vampire, initially hoping her new reality will allow her to see the world and engage with politics, which is her passion. She believes vampirism will open doors and lead to greater freedom, but the opposite is true. Vampirism, at least for those living with Dracula, actually means living a heavily curtailed and limited life. Magdalena wants to be a participant in the world, but Dracula forbids her from breaking away from his tight control. For Constanta, Magdalena’s arrival heralds her own kind of self-discovery: She now has a long-term lover outside of Dracula, which means that she has an ally who might eventually be able to help her live a fuller life.
This section of the book begins shortly after the Ottoman army attacks Vienna in “the early 1500s” (73). This is a reference to the Siege of Vienna in 1529. Later, Constanta refers to the discovery of a new continent, which is an anachronism: Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492, and Europeans were aware of the existence of the Americas well before Constanta, Magdalena, and Dracula would have started their honeymoon travels.
Although A Dowry of Blood presents itself as a retelling of Dracula, this section of the book skips right through the 1800s and ends in the early 20th century with no discussion of the events of Bram Stoker’s novel. There is no mention of the characters living in Romania or England during the late 1800s. There is also no mention of a third bride of Dracula, even though Stoker’s novel describes three women who live in Dracula’s castle. These differences highlight that A Dowry of Blood is a creative retelling of Dracula that is not deeply beholden to its source text’s plot.
Unlock all 42 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: