ENGL 538 Reading Journal #6: Dracula

 

Painting by Frank Frazetta. (This is not a faithful depiction of Stoker's Dracula, but I couldn't resist a nod to Frazetta)

Reading Journal #6: Response to Bram Stoker’s Dracula

 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a very engaging and entertaining novel. I was not familiar with the novel but have seen various film adaptations and spin-offs based on the characters over the years. I found that I enjoyed Stoker’s novel more than any of the adaptations. The novel felt so grounded and lacked all the hype and sensationalism that pervades the modern versions of the story and characters. Stoker’s decision to write the novel as a series of diary entries was also a welcome change from the standard narrative style. It felt as though the story was unfolding more gradually and because the reader only gets one point of view at time—especially in the beginning when Harker is traveling and subsequently imprisoned in Dracula’s castle—without the presence of an omniscient narrator, the mystery feels as though it reveals itself in what I’ll describe as a more genuine way.

In addition to the narrative style, the characters that populate Dracula contribute to the grounded feeling of the story; they are in no way sensational. The only slightly larger-than-life characters are Quincy Morris, the American, and Van Helsing. Morris felt like a caricature of an American—a gunslinging adventurer with a cowboy drawl that he summoned on demand in his attempt to romance Lucy—and, of course, he dies the hero’s death proclaiming Mina’s release from her curse. All the others, Jonathan, Mina, Lucy, Seward, and Arthur were (other than their social status) normal people caught in extraordinary events. Even the story’s trigger event, a real-estate transaction, is decidedly common.

However, given the common underpinnings of the aforementioned characters, Count Dracula, is decidedly not common or plain. The descriptions of him and the century-spanning life he’s had are both supernatural and sensational. He’s been a ruler of nations, a conqueror, a powerful lord, and a supernatural fiend with great power and influence over men and beasts. His desire to move to London to stretch his wings, if you will, presents an interesting threat to both London and the Victorian world. Count Dracula’s success would be essentially a colonization once he had spread his influence sufficiently. Count Dracula’s move to London and his efforts to secure a foothold through many hideaways of soil from his original grave site and the corruption of Lucy and others that would eventually allow him to dominate London and operate with impunity as his power and influence grew, present the Victorian reader with more than a supernatural monster story; it pulls at anxieties of reversal on a culture built on domination of others (Arata). Dracula is, in essence, the other coming to feast on those whose worldview put them decidedly at the top of the proverbial food chain. 

Stoker’s novel combines ancient myths and legends about vampires and vampirism with modern (for his day) technologies, modes, and means. Some critics found this juxtaposition hurt his effort, but I disagree (Appendix H 483). I think it worked well. However, there were a few instances where I felt that Dracula with all his age and wisdom made some rookie moves. Van Helsing ascribes this to Dracula not being aware of his full power, but that did not make sense to me. Instead, I thought the plot felt a little contrived in places and Dracula made little mistakes that seemed out of character in order for the plot to work out. If Dracula had acted with such decisive strategy in all his efforts as he did when he set up his move to London, he would have succeeded easily. Consider this gap: He followed a woman after spotting her in a café, but the reader never finds out whether or not he turned her into a Vampire. If he had, there would be at least one more safehouse for him to flee to. The other plot gap that bothered me was the mysterious case of Renfield. The reader never really finds out how or why Renfield became aware of Dracula and why the vampire didn’t make more use of him.

Perhaps Count Dracula discarded Renfield because he was male. Throughout the novel, Stoker maintains what Glennis Byron calls “conventional Victorian middle-class gender ideology (Byron 17) for all the characters. Mina and Lucy both fit the Victorian female archetype and all the male characters do as well. Even the female vampires, as ancient as they are, behave in such an ineffective manner that Van Helsing kills them in their graves with little effort or contest—and they never pose a real threat to anyone except Harker and that’s when he’s been charmed or put to sleep. The vampire women were essentially flat and almost powerless, if not downright dumb. They lacked all the cunning of Count Dracula even though they were also centuries old. 

I’d also like to offer a quick thought on Van Helsing. Stoker’s Van Helsing is my favorite character in the text. I appreciated his eccentricities and his depiction as an old doctor and scientist. Modern adaptations of Van Helsing (there was a film in 2004 and a television series in 2016, both titled “Van Helsing”) are so far removed from the character that Stoker wrote that he is not recognizable. Stoker’s character was far more interesting than the modern recreations that really only share a name with the character that inspired them.

 

Works Cited

 

Arata, Stephen D. “The Occidental Tourist: ‘Dracula’ and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.” Victorian Studies, vol. 33, no. 4, 1990, pp. 621–645.

Byron, Glennis. Editor. “Appendix G: Gender” Dracula. 1897. Broadview, 1998. pp. 473-80.

---. “Appendix H: Reviews and Interviews” Dracula. 1897. Broadview, 1998. pp. 481-8

---. “Introduction” Dracula. 1897. Broadview, 1998. pp. 9-25

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Edited by Glennis Byron. Broadview, 1998.

Van Helsing (Television Series). Echo Lake Entertainment and Nomadic Pictures. Distributed by Dynamic Television, Syfy, and Universal Pictures, 2016.

Van Helsing (Feature Film). Directed and Written by Stephen Sommers. Universal Pictures, 2004.