The temptation of Van Helsing however is perhaps Stoker's most potent treatment of this theme. Seen as an avenging servant of God, he represents the rival to Dracula, who is often likened to the Devil: 'His eyes flamed red with devilish passion'9, and thus seeks to end the Manichaean conflict between light and dark. This is presented through the contrasting images of Van Helsing and Dracula's final wife, 'He looks very tired, old and grey. She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely voluptuous. and man is weak'10. The juxtaposition between short, weak adjectives, 'tired, old and grey' and rich expressions such as 'radiantly beautiful' and 'exquisitely voluptuous' emphasise his vulnerability to temptation, a veiled allusion to when Jesus was tempted at his weakest, 'Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil'11.
Both Coleridge and Stoker have religious backgrounds, a possible explanation for the distinct use of Christian allegory in their novels. Stoker, who was born into a middle class Protestant family in 1847, would have experienced an upbringing closely concurrent with religious teaching, potential pretext to why, according to Duran, 'Christianity is portrayed in a positive light throughout Dracula'12. Likewise, Coleridge's early life was dictated by his father's aspiration for him to pursue the religious ideal. The son of an Anglican vicar, Coleridge vacillated from supporting to criticizing Christian tenets and the Church of England. Despite this however, Coleridge continued to remain 'defiantly supportive of prayer, praising it in his notebooks and repeatedly referencing it in his poems.'13 While Angela Carter's works still retain religious motifs, unlike other Gothic novelists, the theme of religion is not explored to the same extent as in Dracula and the Coleridge poems. This decline parallels the declining influence of organized religion in the west between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
