Sex, Blood and Neckache! (Dracula - Bram Stoker)

Member Name: Mauri

Product:	Dracula - Bram Stoker
Date:	08/01/02 (1447 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great read

Disadvantages: none

The figure of the vampire has become a modern cultural icon. We all have at some time seen the different versions that have appeared over the years, whether it’s the classic Universal studios 1930’s ‘Dracula’ played by Bela Lugosi, the 60’s Hammer studios version by Christopher Lee, the 70’s ‘Nosferatu’ starring Klaus Kinski or the up to date MTV pop video style vampires of Buffy, Angel and Blade. Despite more modern competition Dracula is still the undoubted king of vampire stories but how did it all start? The answer lies with ‘Dracula’ a horror novel written by Bram Stoker in 1897, although using ancient folktales and myths as the basis of the story Stoker was the first person to write about vampires in the form of a novel and from this work all future imitations came about.

Dracula is a very complex book and like all novels it tells us a great deal about its author and the time in which it was set. The key to understanding the novel beyond the superficial horror tale lies in understanding the motivations behind the writing and the preoccupations of the age.


****ABOUT THE AUTHOR****

Bram Stoker was a Protestant Dubliner son of a civil servant who after attending Trinity College initially followed in his father’s footsteps to become a clerk at Dublin Castle. Stoker loved the theatre and became a great admirer and later friend of Henry Irving a great actor and impresario of the time. Stroker wrote literary review and criticisms for local newspapers frequently praising Irving’s productions and work. After marrying he left Dublin in 1878 to take up a new job as manager of Irving’s Lyceum Theatre in London. Stoker became a faithful employee and close friend of Irving’s often making sacrifices in his personal life to accommodate Irving wishes. His work for Irving required extensive promotional work throughout Europe and America. Later after Stoker̵
7;s death his only son Noel believed his father had being unfairly exploited by the Irving. It seemed that their relationship went beyond friendship as if Irving drew a kind of spell over the younger man. During these years of exhaustive work Stoker found time to write ‘Dracula’ as well as other novels. None achieved the popular success of Dracula and even at the time of Stoker’s death in 1912 the novel was only moderately successful. The relationship of Stoker and Irving is key as it tells us a lot about the motivations behind the characters of the count and Jonathon Harker in the novel.


****THE STORY****

(Some Spoilers!!)

The novel is essentially divided in to four distinct parts; the beginning in Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, the story of Lucy and Mina in Whitby, the hunt for Dracula in London and the end chase back to Transylvania.

Jonathon Harker a young lawyer from England has been sent to Transylvania by his firm to conclude some property business with the mysterious Count Dracula in his secluded castle in the mountains. Soon after meeting the count Harker finds himself a virtual prisoner in the place and he realises that the count is no ordinary man but an evil undead creature who plans to spread his influence to England. He is forced to complete the business transaction enabling Dracula to purchase properties in England and is left to die in the place once Dracula begins his journey.

Harker has a fiancé back home Mina, who knows nothing of the trouble he is in. She is holidaying with her close friend Lucy Westenra in Whitby. Lucy a beautiful young woman is being courted by three suitors the nobleman Arthur Holmwood soon to be Lord Godalming, Dr John Seward who is in charge of a lunatic asylum and the American adventurer (and friend of Seward) Quincey Morris. Lucy decides to accept Arthur proposal of marriage and a date is set. While in Whitby the women hear about a strange ship
wreck that has occurred close to where they are staying. The captain of the ship was found tied to the wheel and in the ships log mention is made of an evil presence on the ship, which led to the disappearance of the crew during the journey. Soon after the shipwreck Lucy begins to sleepwalk on the cliffs near the house where she is staying. Lucy’s health also seems to deteriorate and she appears to be weak as is she was suffering from anaemia.

The story then moves to London, Lucy is no better and Dr Seward is called in to see what can be done for her. In Desperation he and Arthur decide to call in Prof Van Helsing, an expert in rare diseases from Amsterdam who had been Dr Seward’s tutor and friend in medical school. Van Helsing quickly realises that the illness is due to great loss of blood and notices the two small puncture wound in Lucy’s neck. He begins to suspect this is no ordinary illness and that an evil force is at work. After giving Lucy a transfusion of blood from her fiancé Arthur she seems to recover only to worsen again a few days later. Further transfusions are provided by Dr Seward, Morris and Van Helsing himself, but despite their best efforts Lucy dies. Van Helsing by this stage realises that this is not the end of the matter and he with the help of the young men finally put Lucy to rest. While this part of the story is unfolding we learn about one of Dr. Seward’s patients Renfield whose behaviour normally predictable has changed dramatically and seems to be under the spell of someone who he refers to as his master. Dr Seward at first dismisses this a new manifestation of Renfield’s unbalanced mind but soon realises that Renfield’s actions are being influenced by some force which resides in Carfax House a deserted property bordering the asylum grounds.
Unexpectedly Mina receives word from Jonathon he is still in Eastern Europe and she travel out to meet him. On their return the full story of the count
s plans is brought to light and after Jonathon spots Count Dracula in a London street the group made up of Arthur, Morris, Dr Seward, Harker, Mina and Van Helsing set out to destroy the count a mission more imperative since Mina has also fallen under his spell.
The last part of the book describes a desperate chase across Europe as the group hunts down Dracula as he makes his way back to his castle. It ends in a thrilling ‘western’ style chase and gun battle across the Carpathians mountain ranges with a suitably exciting climax.


****THEMES****

SEX

‘The fair girl went on her knees and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth’

No, not sex exactly but sexuality and eroticism. The book is very much infused with Victorian morality and the female characters seem to fall in to distinct camps the beautiful alluring, sexually empowered vampires and the more discreet, beautiful yet virginal heroines. It seems that the vampyric disease is being used a metaphor for the disasters that would befall women and society in general if women were allowed to outwardly discover their sexuality and generally empower themselves. The actual act of drawing the blood from its victims is akin to the vampire seducing the victim and engaging in a sexual act. The result is the corruption both moral and physical of the victim. The character of Lucy is a good example, to begin with she is presented as the traditional English rose beautiful yet chaste with very traditional ambitions to get married and be a loving wife. As she comes under Dracula’s spell she becomes more alluring, her virginal beauty gives way to a more obvious sexual attraction. It is import
ant to remember that at the time the novel was written the early women’s liberation movement was being organised and to your average traditional Victorian male this was extremely threatening some have gone as far as saying that Stoker himself was a misogynist. Mina is an example of the perfect ‘modern’ woman she is pretty, able (she can type!), and intelligent but she knows her place. She is quite happy to let the men make the decisions while she plays a supportive role. We can further see how seriously Stroker took the perceived threat from the women’s movement if we examine the very symbolic passage where Lucy is finally put to death. The four men represent the pillar of Victorian society, Arthur Holmwood is the aristocracy, Dr Seward the professional classes, Morris the embodiment of free enterprise that went along with industrial revolution and Van Helsing who as well as being a scientist was a philosopher/theologian represents the church or the spiritual community. All these men have literally given their blood to try and save Lucy but to no avail in the end the evil must be stamped out. All the forces of ‘good’ available must each play a part in the final ritual. Lucy in the end is put to death by the Victorian establishment.

The relationship between Dracula and Harker is also worth examining. Many critics have seen this as a thinly disguised comment on Stoker’s real life association with Henry Irving. Certainly Irving’s perceived exploitation of Stoker could be said to have parallels with Dracula’s use of Harker. In the novel when Harker is about to be seduced by the three vampire brides Dracula calls them off saying ‘Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me!’ This could be a comment on the exploitative relationship that Stoker had with Irving and also there might be a hint of a suppressed sexual side to their relationship.

DARWINISM

Darwin’s theory of evol
ution did not simply chance the face of modern biology it also deeply affected society in general. The idea of man evolving from a more primitive form, the theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest shook the Christian foundations of Victorian society. The novel uses many images derived from Darwinian biology. Renfield's preoccupied with a rudimentary food chain with the animals he collects in his room, first flies, then spiders, then birds and eventually he wants Seward to let him keep a cat. He is working up the food chain and up the evolutionary tree as well. Dracula the vampire is at the top of our own food chain, he feeds off humans and has evolved beyond the constraints of mortality. We also se his ability to ‘devolve’ as he freely can turn himself from man to wolf to bat and even to a fine ethereal mist. In a classic passage when Harker spies Dracula leaving his room in the castle and climb down the wall head first, Dracula is physically moving down the wall and becoming like an animal a lizard as symbolically he is devolving from man to beast.


THE ANTICHRIST

Blood is a potent symbol in many religions, it directly represents life and as blood is drawn from a living being we are literally drawing the life out of them. In Christianity blood represents our access to salvation, by drinking the blood of Christ Christians are drinking the blood of divine life. The concept of the vampire turns this imagery on its head as we have the vampire drinking human blood to survive thus Dracula can be seen as an antichrist figure a pure personification of absolute evil. We also see another analogy to Christian belief in the way that a vampire is created by killing an individual and then bringing him back to life as Christ rose from the dead although in the case of the vampires this rebirth is actually no more than a state of living death.


XENOPHOBIA

In the 1890’s just like today many people
were preoccupied with immigration. In those days it wasn’t Afghani asylum seekers but economic migrants from Eastern Europe looking for a better life in the buoyant Victorian economy. Again it is no coincidence that the evil in the novel comes from eastern Europe and that Dracula is helped by gypsies, of course gypsies then was a derogatory description of any dodgy looking foreigner from that part of Europe. The fact that Dracula is eventually chased away from England might encapsulate the general solution adopted at the time to the perceived problem of too much immigration.


***THE REAL DRACULA***

Near the beginning of the story, Dracula tells Harker of the history of his country and is really talking about his own past life as a Christian soldier fighting against a succession of invading armies. Stoker based these details on fact although the identity of Dracula in the historical context is never made clear. We know from manuscripts that Stoker did some research on the history and myths of Romania and especially the racial composition of the country.
In the 16th century the Ottoman Empire threatened to invade Christian Europe and Romania was one of the countries bordering this expanding empire. In those days Romania was split in to three states Country (Wallachia), Moldavia and Transylvania. The Country was ruled by a great leader Mircea the Old who consistently defeated the invading Turks. After his death in 1418 a power struggle ensued between two of the strongest noble families the Danesti and the Draculesti. Vlad Tepes Dracula is the son of Vlad Dracul, an illegitimate son of Mircea the Old. After forming and alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg, Vlad Dracul gains the throne of the Romanian Country. In Romanian history the son of Vlad Dracul is known as Tepes / tsepesh which means impaler derived from his habit of disposing of his prisoners. The ‘a’ added at the end of Dracul means ‘son
of’ therefore Dracula is the son of Vlad Dracul. Sigismund invests Vlad I after great services to Christianity in fighting the Turks with the order of the dragon and his son Vlad Dracula also becomes a great soldier fighting the Ottoman forces. After many victories he was finally defeated by the Turks in 1476 and his head cut off and taken to the Ottoman Emperor. It is almost certain that Vlad II is the ‘real life’ Dracula although it is doubtful whether Stoker knew any of the exact details of his life. He does not mention any of this in the novel and although they appear in the Coppola film supposedly based on the Stoker novel these are much later additions to the plot. Stoker seemed to know of the various myths and legend so the area and knew that the name of Dracula over the years had become associated with evil and cruelty and so he mixed these two sources together to derive the story we know today.

The search for the identity of Dracula does not end with Vlad, there also seems to be a connection with Lord Byron. Byron was a legendary figure in his own lifetime. Everyone knew his scandalous exploits. He was a notorious womaniser and drug-taker. In a now famous evening in Northern Italy Byron along with Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley and Byron’s Physician Dr. Polidori invented horror stories for each other seeing who could come up with the most frightening. It was on this evening that Mary Shelley came up with the basis for Frankenstein but Dr Polidori related a tale about a Vampyre or walking dead. These events might have influenced Stoker and the figure of Byron might have served as a model for Dracula the aristocratic Vampire.

Finally the character of Dracula and specifically his association with Harker bear resemblance to Stoker’s own relationship with Henry Irving. As often happens in fiction the character of Dracula was drawn from many and not a single source.

****STRUCTURE****

The story is told
to the reader by way of journals, diaries and newspaper reports detailing the major events. The tale is told in the first person by a variety of characters depending on where the events are taking place. This represents quite a departure from the traditional structure of the Victorian novel.
Although modernism is not readily accepted as a form in literature post-World War One many elements in ‘Dracula’ do follow the modernist idea and some consider him one of the first exponents of modernist writing. Certainly Stoker is moving away from the realist style of many late nineteenth century novelists embracing a more introspective view in doing so he also attempt to disrupt the conventional linear flow of the narrative. However we do not see in the novel a break with Victorian morality or a rejection of optimism later to become characteristic features of many modernist novels. If anything Dracula seems to reinforce many of the Victorian idea of morality and in the end it is this view that finally succeed.
The way the story is told does give the narrative a punchy feel and enables Stoker to examine the events from varying perspectives. Structurally the novel works very successfully.

****HOW GOOD IS IT? / HOW DOES IT COMPARE WITH THE FILMS?****

Overall the book is a great read. The first 60-70 pages set in Dracula’s castle are masterfully written. Dracula is a fine example of Victorian horror gothic that has been imitated so many times since. We really do get the oppressive atmosphere of the crumbling castle, dark passages dimly lit by faltering candles and the sound of the wind echoing around the damp cold corridors. The detail that surprised me was the description of the count having wild wavy white hair and a long drooping white moustache, this is completely different from the suave immaculately tailored and presented movie representations.

Most of the movie adaptation owe more to the popular dramatisation by Hamilto
n Deane and John L. Balderstone early in the twentieth century. In this play and subsequent films a love interest has been introduced and the character of Dracula is treated with more sympathy. In the book Mina does see Dracula as cursed pathetic being but the main emphasis is on the evil he represents. Even Coppolla’s 1992 version is not true to the book and in fact is a very loose adaptation. The love story between Dracula and Mina does not exist in the novel and the vampire is treated with far less sympathy than in any of the films I have seen. The Dracula of the book is more of an elemental force and less sophisticated than the suave nobleman portrayed in the films.

The immediate impact of the novel and the early passages set in Transylvania are dissipated somewhat when the story moves to England and the initial atmosphere is never quite recaptured. Dracula appears very little in the text the story cantering very much on the interactions of the five men and Mina.
Dracula is still a very good read despite some of its impact having been diluted by the pervasiveness of the Dracula/vampire figure in modern culture. It is very interesting to see how the portrayal of Dracula has changes through the years and reading the original brings this fact in to greater contrast. The passages dealing with the asylum are also very well written and Renfield the madman is a fine literary creation. Overall the pace of the story is excellent and I was never bored. The conclusion of the novel changes the style and pace of the story once again. From a gothic horror we move to a rip-roaring adventure as the heroes chase the vampire by train, boat and horseback across Europe. In the end I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying Dracula is killed but not in the way you would imagine, no wooden stakes through the heart is involved…

Dracula is a complex novel but also a terrific read.

Thank you for reading and rating this opini
on

© Mauri 2002

Summary: