Copyright © 2017 by Wil C. Fry.
Some rights reserved.
Author: Bram Stoker
Year: 1897 (mine is 2004 paperback)
Genre: Horror Fiction, Vampire Literature
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
ISBN 978-1-59308-114-0 (paperback)
Wikipedia page
Author’s Wikipedia page
Summary
Told in the epistolary format, Dracula is perhaps the most widely known early vampire novel — though it was not the earliest (this came as a suprise to me). Through a series of personal journal entries, letters, and a handful of newspaper articles, the story follows a small group of characters as they become aware of Count Dracula and the existence of vampires, and as they eventually track and kill him. The book begins and ends with entries by Jonathan Harker, a solicitor, but the bulk of the narrative comes from more prolific journal-keepers Mina Harker (Jonathan’s wife) and Dr. Seward — administrator of an insane asylum conveniently located near the London house (“Carfax”) Dracula eventually acquires.
The inspiration for countless plays, films, musicals, and other books, Dracula quickly became a cultural meme with staying power like few others, its influence felt well into our lifetimes in movies and TV shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Twilight, True Blood, From Dusk Till Dawn, and others.
What I Liked Least About It
While I was surprised at the readability through most of the book, by far the most annoying thing was the change in language from 1890s Britain to 2010s United States. Helpful footnotes and endnotes (by author Brooke Allen) solved many of these issues, but it definitely slowed the story for me. Following are two examples of text from the book; the first an example of easy readability and the second an example of parts that were tough to read:
“I was pretty tired and worn out when I got to Hillingham. For two nights I had hardly had a wink of sleep, and my brain was beginning to feel that numbness which marks cerebral exhaustion. Lucy was up and in cheerful spirits. When she shook hands with me she looked sharply in my face and said: — ‘No sitting up tonight for you. You are worn out. I am quite well again; indeed I am; and if there is to be any sitting up, it is I who will sit up with you.’ ”— pg. 139, Dr. Seward’s Diary
“Final the captain, more red than ever, and in more tongues, tell him that he doesn’t want no Frenchman — with bloom upon them and also with blood — in his ship — with blood on her also... The captain swore polyglot — very polyglot — polyglot with bloom and blood; but he could do nothing...”Secondly, the changes in font size bothered me. The publishers decided to use a normal-size font for journal/diary entries, ship's logs, and newspaper articles, but for letters and telegrams they went with a slightly smaller typeface — more difficult to read via my bedside lamp.
Thirdly, at times it felt like Stoker went overboard with his “women are weak and helpless” schtick — I know it was a common attitude during the Victorian era, but to modern sensibilities it grew old quickly. “I suppose that we woman are such cowards”, Lucy Westerna writes in a letter, for example. Mina more than once exclaims how glad she is for brave, strong men to protect weak and ignorant feminine specimens. On the other hand, two women (Lucy and Mina) have prominent roles in the story, not only as characters but as writers. Mina is one of the primary organizers of the third act and even carries a firearm into battle in the final scene (though she doesn’t get a chance to use it). At one point, her clarity of thought is so helpful that learned sage Van Helsing cries out, “Our dear Madam Mina is once more our teacher. Her eyes have seen where we were blinded.”
One final thing that bugged me is how little I could identify with the eliteness of the main characters. All the named characters belong to the upper echelons of society — professors, doctors, otherwise wealthy persons, and at least one Lord (Godalming) and one Count (Dracula). All have servants, cooks, drivers, and doormen, and all live in and vacation to spectacular estates — with the exception of Dr. Seward who resides in the asylum where he works (but still has servants). They don’t fetch their own food or do their own laundry or do any physical work of any kind. When working class persons are mentioned, they are uniformly described as lesser — living in hovels, constantly thirsting after liquor or bribes or both, speaking in such harsh lower-class slang that it's nearly unintelligible to contemporary readers and entirely unintelligible to me.
What I Liked Most About It
I didn’t think I would like the epistolary format, but it turned out to be more engaging than either a third-person or first-person narrative voice would have been. It also allowed each character to express his or her own concerns in his or her own voice. While Stoker’s writing of the women’s words felt vain and childish to me, I don’t know how different it actually is from the letters and journals that actual women wrote at the time.
Because there is no narrator in the usual sense, the reader sees events unfold through the eyes of the characters, with only the characters’ imaginations to attempt explanations. This made it feel more realistic to me. At points, it felt like I was actually reading the stack of typed documents — which Mina and Jonathan compiled near the end of the second act — that I was just a few days behind actual events.
I like that it's in chronological order, with only few a overlaps between journal entries by different characters. There are no flashbacks or time jumps — all too common in today’s fiction. Everything is explained through unfolding events; nothing is explained in narrator lines about the past.
Despite my complaints above about the oldness of the language, the majority of the book is easy to understand for modern readers; compared to other authors I’ve read from this time, Stoker seemed to be on the cutting edge of evolving language — and also mentions relatively new technology fairly often (phonograph for recording journals, blood transfusions, telegrams, commuter trains, Mina’s typewriter, etc.)
This last point brings up another topic:
Science vs. Faith
While I was pleasantly surprised to see so many newfangled devices mentioned in the novel, and to see several references to psychology and a fairly liberal attitude toward mental illness, the novel as a whole leans away from this in the latter half and rests its weight on superstition, faith, and pseudoscience.
Having seen plenty of vampire films (and I’ve read the True Blood novels), I expected to see occasional references to crucifixes, hell, demons, and so on, not to mention the magical superpowers of the vampires themselves. What I didn’t expect was a full-on evangelical onslaught of the Christian message. Stoker has his characters lay out the actual Gospel on several occasions. Not only are crucifixes and Holy Communion wafers (“the Body of Christ”) used as weapons against vampires, but Van Helsing claims to have received a special “induglence” from the Vatican in order to use the corpus Christi in this way. Various characters use rosary beads to protect themselves from vampires.
Many characters regularly quote scripture and pray. Count Dracula and other vampires are presented as souls damned to Hell. If killed in the correct way, their souls can finally be at peace and visit Jesus in Heaven. Several characters actually believe “the devil” is at work amongst humanity while God sends male heroes to get things done. “We must keep trusting, and ... God will aid us up to the end” Jonathan Harker writes in one journal entry. Van Helsing asserts that this merry band of vampire hunters is doing “God’s own wish”, which is “that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more.”
After she was bitten by Dracula, Mina develops a psychic connection to the Count, and Van Helsing uses hypnotism to probe into the enemy’s whereabouts. At one point, he outright tells the others to eschew science and rational thinking and look to “superstition” (his word) in obscure old books in order to defeat Dracula.
Weirdly, all this took place after it was made clear that some of the characters had no particular religious affiliation and that some were Protestant. Without any fuss, all of them took up the pseudo-Catholic doctrines.
(I’m not the first person to notice this; just search for “religion in Dracula” to find more. Christian writer Mike Duran noticed it too and says it meets all of today’s standards for Christian fiction, which he lists and describes in detail.)
Conclusion
If you haven’t read this classic, I recommend it. Despite the few things that bothered me, and despite my surprise at the overt evangelizing, the book was enjoyable.
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