The 1897 classic Dracula is a phenomenal book that has left a massive impact on the entire world to this day. When my girlfriend was reading this book earlier this year, I noticed that she simply couldn’t put the book down. This got me intrigued in the book as well and lo and behold: the same spell was cast on me.
The book follows an epistolary format, with various fragments of diaries and letters between the various characters. It all starts with the diary of Jonathan Harker, who travels to Transylvania to meet Count Dracula for a business endeavour. Via Jonathan’s writings, we get introduced to the character Dracula and all his horrible inclinations.
After being introduced to Dracula and meeting him from unclose, the story is continued in England, where we read the diaries of the ladies Lucy and Mina. From this moment onwards we never get any close interactions with Dracula anymore. He is the big scary character of the book, but he’s scary by omission. We mostly read about the consequences of his actions (apart from the very direct and descriptive diary entries of Jonathan Harker at the start of the book).
Towards the end, the pace slows down a bit. There are more and more moral monologues of the following kind:
“It would be at once his sheath and his armour, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we love—for the good of mankind, and for the honour and glory of God.”
They seem to go on and on, which prevents the plot from moving forward.
Worst of all, the foreshadowing is laid on too thickly. E.g. when Mina is left alone in the house while the men go vampire hunting, there are maybe 6 or 7 announcements of impending doom like this:
‘Mina looks paler than usual. I hope the meeting to-night has not upset her. I am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations.’
These repetitive ‘hints’ were getting a bit too much at some point. It made me - as a reader - loose the feeling that I’m clever and sharp for understanding what was going on and instead it made me feel infantilised by the author. It’s a thin line to walk as an author, but you’d want the reader to be firmly in the first camp. Bram Stoker manages to do that for 80% of the book, except in this case of Mina falling victim to Dracula.
Whereas the book looses steam in the final third, it does pick up pace towards the end. So much even that I felt a bit blindsided by the end. There is quite a big build up for a final boss-battle with Dracula, but the pay off is a simple stab and a slash and they defeat him.
All in all I’m very impressed by this book. It’s very engaging, good pace (except towards the end perhaps), it’s a master of the show-don’t-tell and scary by omission (hardly see Dracula, mostly the results of his actions).
Fun mentions of the ‘men of thirst’ a.k.a the representation of the working class folks that can be bribed by a bit of beer or liquor
- One of them added that it was hard lines that there wasn’t any gentleman “such-like as yourself, squire,” to show some sort of appreciation of their efforts in a liquid form; another put in a rider that the thirst then generated was such that even the time which had elapsed had not completely allayed it.
- with the dusty nature of the job, and of the consequent thirst engendered in the operators.
- My friends of the thirst and the language that was of bloom and blood laughed, as they told how the captain’s swears exceeded even his usual polyglot, and was more than ever full of picturesque, when on questioning other mariners who were on movement up and down on the river that hour, he found that few of them had seen
Examples of old time values in the book:
- “Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and a woman’s heart.”
- “We men are determined—nay, are we not pledged?—to destroy this monster; but it is no part for a woman. Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer—both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.”
- Minor anti-semitisme?
- a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez.
Interesting mentions of USA relationship, Bram Stoker seems to revere this country, or at least have high hopes for it. A bit of Googling helped me to understand that the UK was in a bit of a Wild West craze in the late 19th century, with the play Buffalo Bill leaving a big impact on the Victorian crowd. Other theories discuss the imperialist views of the story, where the UK is the declining empire, the USA the upcoming one and the UK might be invaded by ‘foreign powers’.
- What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy’s death as any of us; but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed.
- “Mr. Morris, you should be proud of your great state. Its reception into the Union was a precedent which may have far-reaching effects hereafter, when the Pole and the Tropics may hold alliance to the Stars and Stripes. The power of Treaty may yet prove a vast engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true place as a political fable.”
Fun reference to Bulgaria (port of Varna):
- Thank God! this is the country where bribery can do anything, and we are well supplied with money.