Dracula

About halfway through reading Dracula, I paused to look up whether Bram Stoker had, like many other Victorian writers, produced his work in serial form and been paid by the word. Apparently not! Which is mildly astounding. After an atmospheric and gripping opening in which naive English lawyer Jonathan Harker finds himself trapped in the remote castle of the vampire count himself, this degenerates into a meandering, wheel-spinning slog. The book could easily have been half as long and would have been twice as good.

Many of the words omitted could be the dialogue placed in the mouth of Abraham van Helsing, a supposed Dutchman who exclaims in German and whose syntax is absolutely unbelievable as Dutch language speaker speaking in English. show more The references to the "duck thoughts" and the "child-brain" were so frequent and so irritating I found myself rooting for Dracula.

I appreciate the rampant homoeroticism, I appreciate that this paved the way for a century plus of pop culture, but this was so underwhelming. show less

I first read Dracula in elementary school; I believe I was eight or nine years old at the time. You could say that this is the book that started it all - my love of classics, my love of suspense, and especially my love of vampires. There is something so mysterious, so sensual, and so deliciously creepy without being overtly scary or gory, that I never fail to enjoy this story.

The epistolary nature of the novel is a stroke of genius. It not only builds suspense because the reader can see the entire picture being established but it heightens the emotions of the reader through the intimate interaction with each diary author's personal thoughts. In addition, what is left unsaid, everything left to the reader's imagination creates its own show more sense of building horror. The result is a novel that places the reader on a roller coaster of dread and anticipation.

On this most recent of many re-reads, I was struck anew by the dynamic between the men and the women in the novel. Mina and Lucy are much stronger, both emotionally and physically, than any of the men ever consider possible. Their patronizing tone and declarations that Mina's mind is just as good as a man's is upsetting at the frequency with which both are used. The blood transfusion scenes are a great example of a poor, weak woman needing the blood of a strong, healthy male to fortify her and help her recover from any illness. I can never truly discern whether Mr. Stoker meant to confirm that a woman's place is at home, safely bundled away from danger, or if he was pointing out that a woman can indeed hold her own with a man. Evidence for both arguments abound throughout the novel, lending a somewhat contradictory air to the implied message.

Much has been said of the sensuality of Dracula, with much debate about whether it exists or whether it is imaginary. To me, I feel that it not only exists but is a huge part of the novel. The nape of the neck is extremely sensual, and Dracula (and his vampire coven) tends to go for the neck when drinking from his victims. When he starts to turn Mina, he forces her to drink from his breast. Then again, the time of the day when vampires prey on their victims is suggestive - nighttime, when women and men are scantily clad. All three combine to imply an intimacy between vampire and prey that typically is only present in the bedroom. This intimacy only heightens the shock and discomfort of the main characters, making Dracula's crimes that much more sinister and depraved.

Dracula is the quintessential vampire story. It is important to remember that it is not the first vampire story but it is certainly one of the most influential. There is a reason for this. Spooky castles, mysterious counts, a tragic loss, a love story - it has it all. Add a touch of gothic, combined with a hint of the supernatural, and you have a story that has ensnared minds throughout the decades, remaining as popular today as it was when it was first released in 1897. show less

I was expounding on my love of Dracula to my poor long-suffering mother yesterday, and realized I should probably confine my effusions to a more opt-in format.

I first read Dracula as a teenager, breathlessly turning pages of a library edition late at night while coyotes howled around the little bungalow where I was staying alone. Even as an adult, in less conducive conditions, the story holds up for me.

It is in deadly earnest, and the emotions are grand, the stakes high: if you can't put your cynicism aside, it probably isn't for you. It builds slowly, accumulating unease and unearthliness, until you reach the first vertiginous climax -- and then again, you return to normalcy, waiting to be slowly, sickly drawn to the next dramatic show more break in the fabric of the world. It takes a while to reach a breakneck pace, but it's well worth it.

I'd call Dracula an anxious book. Not just tense, or thrilling, but profoundly anxious. As a teenager, I found the Victorian anxiety about carnality and sex dripping from the pages interesting: Jonathan's revulsion from the incongruously lush lips of the Count, the menace of the castle ladies, and above all the hectic loveliness of Lucy. It's a terrifically clear look into the Victorian psyche, bringing the cultural subtext so close to the surface it pulses like an exposed vein.

As an adult, I've enjoyed the other thematic obsessions: the clash of science/technology/modernity with magic/superstition/occult; the West versus the East; the train and the typewriter set against ancestral earth and the evil eye; the pagan versus the holy; eternal carnal life at the cost of the heavenly beyond.

Perhaps others who aren't English majors, history readers, or obsessed with Victorian foibles and fables won't find those contrasts as compelling as I do, or greet the intrusion of shorthand, typewriters and railroad time tables with the same affection. But these themes play out on characters we care about, for all their occasional preciousness: the slightly fussy Jonathan, the garrulous Lucy, the careful and self-reliant Mina. They play out in deliciously high drama, memorable scenes, iconic images. A hundred years of progress and easing (or replacement) of cultural neuroses can't rob Dracula of its charm, its pathos, or its terror.

P.S. To audiobook readers: A multitude of unabridged productions exist, many of them with multiple readers to bring the diaries and letters of the various characters, male and female, English and Dutch, to life. I have bought, and often return to, the Brilliance Audio version. Most of the readers and accents are quite good, although Michael Page, who reads Seward's journals, is as usual scenery-chewing. I haven't tried the Audible original, chock full of famous names, so that might be another option -- but I do recommend getting one with multiple narrators, to really do the epistolary style justice. And do listen to samples -- there are some very fake English accents running around claiming to be Jonathan Harker of Exeter. show less

During my visit to Transylvania, I finally read the classic that haunts Romanian tourism to this day. Apart from supplying the bad guy and some of the lore, it isn't really about Transylvania. Most of the action happens in 19th century England. London, to be precise.

Contrary to my expectations, modern technology plays a giant role in the novel. The protagonists travel by ship, train and coach at breakneck speed. Even a century later, Jonathan Harker's train journey from Munich to Budapest takes up the same amount of time. Abraham Van Helsing's overnight city hopping between London and Amsterdam would shame any modern consultant. The full range of note-taking techniques on display from short-hand, typewriters to phonographs highlights show more the intrusion of an ancient evil into modern society which is battled with the latest advances of science and the scientific method (apart from just missing Karl Landsteiner's discovery of blood types which turns a plot element into a life-threatening endeavor). Reasoning and the power of deduction is the magic weapon.

Compared to the modern concept of vampires (and their current fangbanger travesty), Count Dracula and his powers are not yet fixed. He is both too powerful and too weak in the original conception. The major flaw of the novel is Dracula's motivation. What does he try to achieve in London? His sophisticated plans are not matched by his actions. Could he have chosen a worse target for his fangs?

I really like epistolary novels and the multi-perspective they allow. The reader is always several steps ahead of the stumbling, sense-building narrators which creates a thrilling suspense. Recommended. show less

Beneath Dracula's ghastly pale skin; beyond the iconic blood lust and delectable gothic horror, lies a far more delicious subtext that ultimately drove a big fat stake through late Victorian ideals as Bram Stoker successfully stalked and skewered that culture's hypocritical heart regarding women. Men could be sexual scoundrels and yet honored (some things never change), while women who violated just the slightest sexual more (were merely perceived as being "flirtatious" -- oh the impropriety!) found themselves branded whores and ostracized.

What better way could Stoker have commented on just how much that double standard sucked than with vampires: creatures emblematic of not just the demonic but divine, holy devils heralding the end of show more a repressive and dying Victorian culture that sucked the life and enjoyment out of almost everything, and yet who paradoxically also symbolized a supercharged eternal equality and its attendant sexual liberty for women that made them as powerful as men in deciding their own destinies?

That's what Dracula means to me when we venture into its deathly and yet life-affirming flesh through the double puncture wounds about its neck -- liberation and equality -- and why that damnable Twilight tripe whose egregious ethos (I won't call it a "philosophy" a la Stoker's and thus demean that noble term) so peeves me and sucks in ways that have absolutely no redeeming qualities for women or sensuality; but are, in fact, deserving of our deepest disdain even if only for their unwitting portrayal of young women still shackled by outdated and inappropriate Victorian chains, depicted as nevertheless enjoying their dungeon. show less

I wish I could review this book in two parts. On starting, I quickly felt that wonderful tingle of delight from realising why a classic is a classic… Dracula, I decided early on, has become a classic because Bram Stoker knew how to mix a recipe of character anxiety, gruesome detailing and small waves of disturbing events into a well-written and reasonably well-paced story that gets under the reader’s skin. Jonathan Harker’s opening journal, wherein he finds himself prisoner of the terrible Count, a demonic fury behind a mask of polite civility, incites the reader to delicious chills.

[Small digression: that horror convention of human figures crawling down walls forwards is one that, in films, never fails to make me shudder. Even show more had it occurred to me that it would work in written horror fiction, I had no idea it hailed from as far back as Dracula!]

There was a touch of overwriting in the first half, but this seemed more than redeemed by the way that the story is layered; letters, journal and diary excerpts and articles, and so is always shifting point of view, keeping the reader absorbed and giving everything a very satisfying depth. First we watch the decline of Lucy, lamented by no less than three devoted men. Later, the predicament of Mina Harker becomes a sudden mid-book re-energiser and I was positively thrumming with excitement. Renfield, Dr. Seward’s psychiatric patient had me chuckling and aghast; everything was shaping up very nicely.

Then things began to drag. It was disappointing, realising the reader wasn’t going to properly meet the Count again, except in the guise of a big bat (which imagery, admittedly, I enjoyed). The last third of the book involves the interminable ‘chase’ in which our principal characters (who had, largely, devolved into ‘manly men, how wonderful they are’, with the exception of Van Helsing, who was so wonderfully, amusingly, reassuring that all the tension disappeared!) waited for Mina Harker (so brave! So clever! So like a man!) to tell them whether or not Dracula was being moved from the ship. Three pages from the end, they had their little adventure, wrapped everything up, and went home. Mr. Stoker, were you still alive, I’d point out that this isn’t how one paces a novel. Actually, were you still alive, I’d drive a stake through your chest and cut off your head, but not before asking why it was necessary to include so many diarists’ variations on ‘we waited, it was horrible’.

It says a lot about the first two thirds of the story that I’m not sorry that I read it. It really balances out at ‘enjoyable and interesting’, with some good scary bits, sympathetic characters – despite the later lack of attention to their individuality – and a fund of supernatural imagery… I just don’t think the tension could survive the lack of momentum. show less

Audiobook narrated by Alexander Spender and Susan Adams
Audiobook narrated by Simon Vance

Does anyone really need a synopsis? If you’ve seen any of the movies, you know the basic plot, but the original novel is so much more!

Stoker wrote the work as a series of journal or diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings. This could easily become disjointed, but in this case, it serves to give a certain immediacy to the writing. It also builds suspense, as we leave one character to jump to another’s perspective, frequently with a disconnect in terms of what each of the characters knows about the full situation. The danger they are in is frequently a result of not having the full picture, of not truly understanding the force against which show more they are pitted.

But the novel is more than just a horror story. There are several themes which would be great for book group discussion.

To begin there is the typical Victorian theme of strong men coming to the rescue of pure damsel in distress. However, Stoker turns the tables a bit when he gives Mina the intelligence, foresight and courage to fight the evil forces in her own way. Yes, the men do the actual fighting, but it is Mina who first puts together all the individual notes into a coherent chronological story, and ultimately gives the men what they need to go up against Dracula. The woman has steel!

Stoker also includes a fair amount of sexual – or at least sensual – tension. Bosoms heave, blood quickens, breathing is rapid, and people are completely overcome and overwhelmed by desire. They are simply helpless in the face of their base instincts … or are they?

The novel is wonderfully atmospheric; from the delights of a new culture as Harker first experiences the loveliness of Eastern Europe, to the growing sense of doom when surrounded by howling wolves, to the creepy, skin-crawling scene with the hordes of rats (I feel squeamish as I type this), and finally to the “pure-white” snow of the mountain blizzard, time and again Stoker puts the reader smack dab in the middle of the scenes.

There are several different audio versions. The one I had from my library was masterfully performed by Alexander Spander and Susan Adams. Each voiced the journals / diaries based on the gender of the character writing that segment.

Update: 28Sep17 For my second listen I managed to get the Blackstone Audio version narrated by Simon Vance. I liked this audio even better than the first one I listened to. But then, I would probably listen to Simon Vance read his grocery list. show less