Dracula By Bram Stoker

Dracula

By Bram Stoker​

So here we are, the reason for the Fangsgiving season, the novel that gave rise to everything else we're reviewing this month. Dracula was published on the 26th of May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company after a contentious couple of months where they whittled down Bram's original story (Dracula's completed official version weighs in at 418 pages so imagine what the first draft was like [Marx’s Kropotkin’s Beard]) but we covered a lot of that last week, so let's jump right into Bram's life. Abraham (Bram) Stoker was born November 8, 1847, in Dublin Ireland. The third of seven children (And they were protestants, not Catholics, which makes this even more surprising.), his father was a civil servant and his mother a charity worker and a writer. It was an open question whether or not Bram would survive his first decade afflicted by a mysterious illness that left him so weak that he wasn't able to even walk until he was seven (There are a few possible causes for this. His father may have been a civil servant, but food prices in Ireland in the 1840s were extremely high thanks to a famine that Jonathan Swift may have written a certain Modest Proposal about. As a result, it’s possible that his mom suffered malnutrition in gestation or picked up an infection which either caused a delay in gross motor development in Bram, or left him with a compromised immune system and thus bed-ridden in early life.{I’ve also had celiacs and asthma suggested, the thing is we simply don’t know.}). His earliest memories were of being carried everywhere and being told stories by his Mother, his favorites were horror stories and his Mother, having survived the 1832 epidemic of cholera in the town of Sligo that killed 1500 people in 6 weeks had plenty to tell him (King Cholera is no joke. Every last one of you needs to say a prayer of thanks to Saint John Snow, father of Epidemiology.). Bram did survive however and focused on strengthening himself so by the time he went to Trinity College in Dublin, in the year 1864, he was a celebrated athlete, winning awards for weight lifting and playing soccer and rugby. He was also known as a great debater, often defending poets like Whitman and getting involved in the literature scene of the college. He graduated with honors and a degree in mathematics in 1870. It was here that he became a huge fan of the American poet, Walt Whitman and through a series of letters established a friendship that would last until Whitman's death; with Whitman even leaving some of his work to Bram in his will (Awwwww! Also, it is worth noting that Walt Whitman was definitely gay, and this will be important later.). He then went into civil service like his father, working in Dublin Castle, but his passion was in theater and he became an unpaid local writer for the Dublin Evening Mail as a theater critic. He also wrote short stories, publishing “The Crystal Cup” in 1872 and in 1879 wrote a manual for his job The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland.

Bram's life took a dramatic turn when Henry Irving, the most famous actor in the British Isles at the time, asked Bram to be his personal manager and to manage London's Lyceum Theatre in 1878. This was a great thing for Bram for two reasons: first of all, he was a huge fan of Mr. Irving's work; second of all, there was Ms. Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe soon to be Stoker to be considered (Here we go!). This is a story in and of itself. So let's talk about Florence for a bit here. She was born July 17, 1858, in Cornwall to Lt. Col James Balcombe and Phillippa Anne Marshall. She was widely considered the most beautiful woman in Dublin if not Ireland, with Prime Minister Gladstone referring to her as “the beauty” and society magazines lauding her for her grace, wit, charm, and manners (I bet she was secretly yearning to break free of the fucking whalebone corset…). On top of all that when Stoker met her... She was dating Oscar Wilde. Yes, that Oscar Wilde. Oscar had told her he planned to propose but then ran off to Oxford and stopped writing to her (I mean… Look, Oscar Wild definitely played for both teams, and he didn’t have a monogamous bone in his body for any definition of bone possible. He was likely terrified of the prospect of marriage at that time.{Then he should have bloody well told her! Ghosting her after showering her with gifts and promises was damn cruel!} I certainly don’t disagree there. So many god damned manchildren.). This is where Bram showed up and in a whirlwind romance marriage proposed to her. To make this even worse? Oscar and Bram were buddies, Bram had gotten Oscar membership in Trinity's Philosophical Society when he was its President. So he bloody well knew how Oscar felt but then he also knew that Oscar was completely taking her for granted. This also meant Florence and Bram knew each other pretty well before the romance started. Faced with a choice between a guy who paid attention to her and had a paying job in London where she would have an inside track to society and a guy who was penniless and hadn't spoken to her in months... She married Bram in December of 1878. Oscar Wilde was completely melodramatic about it, demanding she return a gold cross with his name on it and sending her a set of anonymous flowers in a too little, too late gesture but eventually got over it and became a friend of the family…(Look, under those conditions, there’s a certain performative melodrama you have to do…{I was going to argue this but then I realized we were talking about Oscar “head drama llama” Wilde} Plus if he didn’t protest, people would be suspicious.) Until he got arrested for being gay. We'll get to that (Not yet! [Oh come on!]). If anything I'd say this is a lesson in not taking your girl/boy for granted and make sure you talk to the people in your life! Otherwise... They might find their own Bram Stoker.

Florence and Bram had a son, named Irving Noel Thornley Stoker, so the boy was named after his uncle (Thornley Stoker) and his dad's boss. Bram would act as Irving's manager for 27 years, writing as many as 50 letters a day for his boss while also writing a series of Gothic horror novels. This was a high time for him, he was part of London high society and met James Whistler and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Florence became noted for her charity work and as a hostess for society while her evening social events became well known for being attended by notable intellectuals and artists. Among them Bram's sister Matilda, who was a noted artist and would come and stay with the Stokers for long periods. She would also stay and keep Florence company on the times that Mr. Irving would take Bram off on travels (We’ll get to this later). Although there were many trips where Bram prevailed on Mr. Irving to let him bring Florence with him. This was where Bram got to visit the United States repeatedly and met Walt Whitman face to face (Excuse me as I cough significantly). In fact, it's been suggested that some of Dracula's appearance is modeled on an elder Whitman. Bram published his first work Snake Pass in 1890; now most of his books were first drafts that he didn't put a lot of time into once the story was complete. Dracula on the other hand, spent 7 years on, where he would research European folklore and stories about vampires. Although he claimed the original inspiration was a bad dream brought about by eating bad crab meat. Now at this time Vampire stories were creeping into the public notice, the first English vampire story was written in 1797, under the title of The Bride of Corinth, Carmilla, another vampire classic was written in 1871. A novel simply called The Vampyre had been released by John Polidori, who came up with it while staying with Lord Byron and the Shelly's one hot (for ambiguous definitions thereof) June night. In fact, it was the same night that Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein. Bram seemed determined to create a novel grounded in real geography and in the modern-day however and for the most part, he succeeded.

Of course, it wasn't all good things. This period saw the end of Oscar and Bram's friendship, as it was discovered that Oscar was in a romantic relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and was sentenced to two years of hard labor. This led to Bram publically demanding that all homosexual writers in England be punished (Because he had to, or suspicion would land on him, and just like they did with Wilde, I have a sneaky suspicion they would have proved it.). This is a bit strange as Walt Whitman was also widely suspected to be gay (He absolutely was.), in fact, Oscar Wilde insisted that Witman was and Edward Carpenter, an early socialist poet, and gay rights activist, would claim to have a sexual encounter with him (I believe him). For example, Leaves of Grass was often considered pornographic or obscene. Suspicion was often aimed at Whitman, but Stoker defended his poems and skill until his dying day. This has led to a lot of questions about Bram's conduct and the reasons for it. This was brought to a head in the book, The Man Who Wrote Dracula by Bram's grand nephew Daniel Farson. Mr. Farson would portray a loveless, sexless marriage with a frigid Florence who lived miserably in London while Bram bounced from gay affair to gay affair. He claimed that he gathered all of this from the Stoker family, all of whom denied ever discussing a thing with him (Which they would. Though it is possible that both stories are kinda right. This presumes that Florence was lonely, for instance. She can be rather happy and even fond of her bisexual husband while’s he’s off getting to know Walt Whitman if they have an… arrangement. Say, involving Bram’s possibly bisexual sister. You think I am writing fanfic here? It’s circumstantial, but Matilda was a Victorian woman who as far as I know very much voluntarily didn’t marry until her 40s, and then married a French diplomat in his 50s. And we already know that Bram was perfectly fine - at least - with all the gays, mandatory denouncement notwithstanding.{It’s certainly possible and there’s circumstantial evidence for it at the very least. Although I got to point out all his meetings with Whitman were in public so I doubt that Bram and Whitman specifically ever had a physical relationship. As for Farson...}). This is further complicated by Mr. Farson painting Irving Stoker as an unwanted and unloved child, which was widely rejected by people who knew the Stokers. In Mr. Farson's later book Never a Normal Man, it is revealed that his own relations with his parents were not great and he often felt neglected. Now I'm going to get back to this but I'm going to ask y'all to remember this as we'll get back to this point. Back on the literary front, Bram's work would never approach the height of Dracula again. Although his mummy story The Jewel of the Seven Stars is considered a good effort and his nonfiction Reminiscences of Henry Irving in 1906 was well received. Some of his later work like the Lair of the White Worm is noted as declining in quality, in fact, leading some people to suggest that the illness that killed him was longer than is publicly known. What we do know is that his health declined sharply in the first decade of the 1900s and by 1912 Bram Stoker had passed away. What killed him isn't really known. Some claim tertiary syphilis, others claim he was the victim of a series of strokes and there's also the claim that Stoker just died of exhaustion after 3 decades of burning the candle at both ends (Literally any of these things are reasonable. A dalliance with any gender 30 years prior can give you tertiary syphilis.{Sure but it’s just as likely that some untreated asthma from his childhood flaring up combined with a Pulmonary embolism or stroke could have done it. Hell, he could have had his immune system weakening due to age and the garbage environment he was living in on top of untreated asthma. I actually had a talk with some mutual acquaintances of ours and they said that it could literally be dozens of things or combinations of them. So I can’t put too much weight on syphilis, especially given that your average Victorian House was 30% poison by weight} That is certainly true. They had no safety standards at all, for anything.). What we do know from Bram's own writings is that Florence dropped everything in a frantic effort to nurse him back to health and Bram ordered that his body be cremated quickly after his death. Which was incredibly odd for the Victorian period.

Florence would outlive her husband for 25 years and defend the copyright to Dracula with all the power and swiftness of a rabid honey badger (Honey Badger don’t care! Honey Badger don’t give a shit!). While she was happy to grant the rights to produce plays based on the novel, provided she was asked and the estate got it's due and to publish any unearthed work she found (like Dracula's Guest) she did demand that nothing be produced without her permission. That created enemies, especially when she was willing to go to court and call the cops on people she knew were abusing Dracula's copyright. When the German film Nosferatu premiered and proved to be basically a bootleg version of Dracula, Florence went to bloody war to set an example. She not only bankrupted the filming company but demanded that every copy of the print be given over to her and she burnt them to send a message. This did not make her popular and she was often gossiped about in cruel terms, although she had many defenders. Which leads me to where I think the rumors of her being frigid or hateful come from, right here. Because these are the kinds of rumors men spread about a woman who defeats them (This, exactly.). Frankly, I wonder how many the rumors about the Stoker marriage come from this period as some folks bitter that they could have a free lunch started gossiping. In 1927 she did grant the rights for a series of plays and Universal studios would buy the film rights, which would lead to the classic 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. She would pass away in 1929 and have her body cremated and her ashes mixed with Bram's. The rest is history. Now, this is just the shallow end of the Stoker pool folks, sadly we aren't going to be able to discuss things like Bram Stoker's sister in law Emily who was committed and may have provided a model for Reinfield's general behavior in the book for lack of space. Just be aware that I've only scratched the surface of what was going on in the Stoker family during Bram's life and in the period shortly after his death. Now at long last let's turn to the novel.

Dracula is told in an epistolary format, which means it's presented in a series of documents. In the case of Dracula, it uses journal entries and letters as the main method but also has ship logs and newspaper articles to communicate events to the reader that the main characters would be unaware of. This is a format with a lot of strengths and weaknesses. It can allow you to insert knowledge that your main characters wouldn't know without tipping the antagonist's hand too much, it allows you to switch narrators pretty easily, as well as use this to show the same event from different viewpoints or use an unreliable narrator when needed. It also allows you to insert different ideas or world views into the story simply by switching characters. It can also be used to enforce realism by using outside sources like newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, or even recently blog posts to enforce what the main characters are saying. This is also done by having more than one character repeat the events since most readers will unconsciously assume that they all can't be lying. It can however rob your story of some dramatic tension as anyone writing about their experience clearly survived to do so and it creates additional work for the writer as you have to pay attention to the voice of each character. If you're not careful, each character starts to sound the same and readers will blur the characters together (While this is true, it is likely easier to use this format than to use First Person unlimited, because the documentary format lets your brain switch modes between characters.). It can also cause a sense of being somewhat removed from the plot as you're not “seeing” the events as you would in a 3rd person or 1st person narrative but are being “told” about them. This tends to reduce the dramatic weight of action and at times can make it difficult to add depth to the characters. Mr. Stoker can avoid this by having characters whose viewpoint we never see be major characters in the plot, as well as cutting off journal entries at strategic points and switching viewpoints at moments in the story to rack up the tension. For example, John Harker's journal entries cut off for a while when he decides to make an escape attempt from Castle Dracula and we instead jump over to Mina and Lucy back in England and are left wondering whatever became of poor old Harker? Actually, before I start throwing names at you, let's go over our characters. Now fair warning, I'm going to spoil the hell out of a book that is by my count about 123 years old so... I think you've had plenty of time to read it.

John Harker is actually the first viewpoint character of the story, which is mostly shared through his journal entries, as well as Mina and John Steward's and to a lesser extent Lucy and Van Helsing. He's a lad of no family but has managed to impress his employer Peter with his diligence, intelligence, and work ethic. John has recently become a full-fledged Solicitor, which in the United Kingdom is a type of lawyer. In the English legal system, they traditionally dealt with a wide range of legal matters but were required to get another kind of lawyer called a barrister to advocate in a high court (Think of the solicitor as the family lawyer, while the barrister is the hired gun.). At this point and time in the United Kingdom barristers didn't deal with the public directly, you hired a Solicitor who hired a barrister for you. Solicitors were also used as legal representatives by the wealthy and powerful for most of their business and legal concerns allowing them to avoid being seen engaged in the middle-class occupation of trade (Gotta love that class-stratification.). At the start of the book, John has actually just become a Solicitor and his job is to head off to Transylvania to complete a real estate deal with Count Dracula. That's right, poor John is just a real estate agent in the wrong place and time (Real Estate Lawyer, to be fair.). John is in a lot of ways the perfect Victorian gentleman: he's modest, polite, wants to do a good job, and avoids any overt display of gaudiness. John is very much the motivated hunter of the group, often pushing further than others will go due to his personal stake in the hunt. We see this as he's often the first to attack Dracula, often willing to engage the vampire head-on. He's also a bit of a racist as he disregards the various warnings of the locals not to go to Castle Dracula but not so racist that he refuses the crucifix that he's given although he grumbles to himself that he's giving in to idolatry. To be fair to him, he also fully admits that those locals knew what they were talking about and maybe he should listen the next time a quaint little peasant tells him that a place is dangerous (Which makes him better than most of the rest of his social strata at the time.). I tend to think his biggest character flaw is falling apart after a crisis has passed. Don't get me wrong, he's great in a dangerous situation, when imprisoned he operates with a clear head, recognizing his danger and making the decisions he needs to escape but as soon as he thinks he's safe he has a mental breakdown and forgets everything! We also see that he's a bit sexist but not as sexist as we should expect as he doesn't raise a fuss about his wife traveling alone or her being involved in his future vampire slaying activities up to her dainty elbows. (Well that’s progress for the Victorians!)

That wife would be Mina Murray Harker, Mina is an assistant schoolmistress who is head over heels in love with John. When he heads off to unknowingly stick his head into the undead lion's mouth, she heads out to visit her much wealthier friend Lucy because school is closed for the summer. Mina is the most organized of the group and capable of gathering together information from a lot of different sources and boiling it down to its actionable points (It’s almost like she’s a teacher or something.). In fact, out of all the group, she's the one who knows the full story as she's the one who reads everyone else's journals and letters. She was the one who made the decision to read John's journal of his time at Castle Dracula after hearing what happened to Lucy and realizing she had critical need-to-know information, got it to Van Helsing so he could operate with all the information he needed. She also performs a lot of emotional labor for the group (Because of course, she does.), as she's the one who comforts the men when they're mourning Lucy and is the person the men decide to protect at all costs. She's also the one who nurses John Harker back to health during his mental breakdown after he escapes Castle Dracula. Of course, they fail to protect her because they stop listening to her and it's interesting how in the novel their ability to fight Dracula goes downhill when they aren't listening to what she tells them (I feel like there is a lesson here.). She is also Dracula's second major victim that we know of in England. Now in the novel, there is no romance or personal reason for Dracula's attack, it's a purely tactical move on the vampire's part. Mina additionally doesn't show any sign of attraction or desire towards Dracula but is repelled and deeply upset at what Dracula has done to her. I'll talk about this more when I discuss the 1992 film, however. Mina's also the only one who seems in any way shape or form aware of operational security at times (Jesus she is surrounded by idiot manchildren). I mean granted the rest of the group doesn't run around London screaming at the top of their lungs what they're doing but Mina's the one who has to tell them that if they can use her to see into Dracula's mind, he can do that with her so they can't tell her anything. It's moments like this in the book that lead me to ask how the hell did Victorian gentlemen ever manage to run the world, even considering that they did a rather poor job of it (Because they used the blunt instrument of the army and piles of money.). Seriously if anything is holding back Mina here, it's the insistence of the men around her that she not use her gifts to the fullest. While she's given a lot more freedom and recognition than I expected, she's often relegated to sitting at home waiting for the menfolk which is what in the end made her an easy target (This is why we have Solidarity here on the left, people. Those who get left out get victimized and make you weaker. It is why the IWW was militantly anti-racist in its organizing waaay before it was cool.). Still, there are books written in 1960 that do a worse job so maybe I shouldn't be too harsh here.

Lucy Westenra is a minor viewpoint character and is Dracula's first known English victim, a bright, beautiful, and sweet lady who is proposed to by three men on the same day. She makes the difficult decision to marry the heir to a local lordship and become a lady instead of marrying a doctor who runs an insane asylum or a Texan adventurer (The men then all swear to be bros forever. It is remarkably mature of them.). Lucy draws Dracula's attention because she's sleepwalking and he's able to call her out of her home for the first attack and get her to open the way to him in the following nights. Lucy is frankly a sacrificial victim in this novel. She doesn't get a lot of time in the story and when we do get to see her viewpoint, it's mostly one where she is confused and deeply frightened of what is happening to her. Her characterization isn't deep but I'm not sure what can be done given that she spends most of her time in the book, you know... Dying (I mean…). Her suffering, death, and undead state however serve to bring in Helsing and united Seward, Arthur, and Quincey. Her friendship with Mina serves as a method to bring in the Harkers and hammer together this little band of crusaders. She is also the first vampire that Seward, Arthur, and Quincey see and serves as proof of Dracula's unnatural unlife and his dark powers.

Seward is the third and last major viewpoint character. A suitor of Lucy's who gets turned down, rather than be bitter about the whole thing, he, Arthur, and Quincey swear to be brothers and friends. This honestly is a great reaction and I liked it (Homosexuality aside, I feel like this reflects Stoker’s own experience with, you know… Oscar Wilde.). Seward is a doctor focused on treating various mental conditions (A really primitive psychiatrist. Holy Fuck were they primitive back then. Like, women with depression just needed to get their rocks off, and the doctor would help, kind of primitive. Here, have some more morphine, it’s good for you! {To be fair Seward tries to talk to his patients and reason them through their issues, which is better then repeatedly shocking them in a tub of cold water}) and his main focus is figuring out the problems of Renfield, a man who suffers under the delusion that if he eats something alive that he gets the creature's life force, adding to his vitality and span of years. While Dr. Seward labors under the primitive nature of Victorian healthcare, he at least attempts to maintain a non-hostile relationship with his patient trying to draw him out through talk therapy for the most part and reason him out of his delusion. Seward is very much in love with doing things the new way, for example, he doesn't write in a journal, he records his own voice by the phonograph, forgetting that without labeling the recordings he has no way of knowing what information is kept in which (Oh dear…). What's interesting is that he is very much a man of science and is a skeptic of the supernatural but is the first to be convinced by the evidence that Van Helsing has to show him (Well yeah, I mean, if you show me evidence of vampires that is compelling, I will alter my worldview accordingly without missing a beat. I will then become ComradeTortoise, the Communist Vampire Slayer: Blood-sucking isn’t just for capitalists anymore.). He serves as both the medic of the group and as Van Helsing's apprentice, absorbing the lore and lessons. We learn these right alongside him, so in a lot of ways, he's our gateway to the world of vampire hunting. Arthur and Quincey are very much supporting characters. We don't get their viewpoints in the story, their roles are both to provide brute force and resources to the group. Although Arthur is given depth by his grief for Lucy and the fact that he's dealing with losing his bride and his father all in the same week (Yeeesh). He's also able to provide the most authority in the group via his noble title but honestly seems careful not to abuse it. Quincey on the flip side is the world-wise adventurer, brave to a fault to the point of being right beside John Harker when it's time to charge the immortal blood-drinking demon with the strength of 20 men armed with nothing but knives. He's rasher than Seward or Arthur, more prone to give promises, although I'll point out in the book, Quincey keeps every promise he makes. No matter what the personal cost to himself.

Abraham Van Helsing is the voice of experience and the commander of this unit. Originally brought over to treat Lucy's mysterious blood loss, he arranges the transfusions that keep her alive long enough for him to realize he's in a duel with a creature of the night. It's Helsing who initiates Dr. Seward and the others into the grim world of hunting monsters. It's him who upon realizing that the Harkers already have experience and with the same vampire that they're hunting, brings them all together for one purpose. Helsing is here to kill Dracula or die trying. His past is mysterious, we know from his comments that he is married but his wife is lost to him, most likely from mental illness (possibly caused by some past brush with the monstrous?) and he is well known for his study in obscure diseases and topics arcane and on the very edge of science (Something creepy probably did drive his wife insane. Kinda has to be personal to go from doctor to monster hunter.). A lot of the book plays out as a series of moves and counter moves between Helsing and Dracula as Dracula attempts to outmaneuver Helsing and Helsing tries to pin down the bloodsucker and kill him. Van Helsing is given a very idiosyncratic voice partly due to being Dutch in a crew of English folks and the fact that he often seems near-insane himself (I mean…). So his grammar and word choices are very individualistic compared to the other characters and can take some time to puzzle out. In the book, we see him have several bouts of what I can only call hysterics either through near mad laughter or weeping. He only really does this in front of Dr. Seward. This leads to an interesting split as John and Mina see Van Helsing as an all-wise and resolute commander but Dr. Seward is often left asking just how damaged his mentor and father figure is and just what is it in the past that led to this? (He breaks down in front of his psychiatrist student as a cry for help, but unfortunately, all he can expect is a hug and tincture of laudanum. Even Dr. Seward knows that Cocaine would likely be counter-productive. {Dr. Van Helsing on Cocaine would be terrifying, suddenly Dracula isn’t the apex predator of London anymore!}) I think Mr. Stoker was trying to hint at the idea that Van Helsing had hunted and slain other monsters in the past and was not left unscathed by these events. I do find it interesting that while the threat in Dracula is foreign, so is salvation. Because it's Van Helsing who brings the group the information and skills they need to win and he does so from beyond the green shores of England.

Dracula himself is a huge presence in the novel, which you would hope so, the book being named after him and all. However, we never get any chapters in his viewpoint and his goals and desires can only be inferred by his actions. The book does make it clear through his actions that Dracula is a proficient planner and tactical operator (He’s an immortal. Van Helsing is not his first vampire hunter.). He doesn't set up one lair in England, he sets up almost a dozen. He doesn't just disappear John Harker, he sets it up to look like he starts on his way home but disappears on the way back removing himself from suspicion. He kills Lucy and turns her to both create a minion and a distraction from his own actions. In fact, we get so focused on vampire Lucy's actions that we have no idea if Dracula killed anyone else in England. When the group begins attacking him in an organized way, he strikes directly at Mina. This both demoralizes the group and robs them of one of their most intelligent members. Worse, since it takes them several days to even realize he's doing it, Dracula can use Mina as an intelligence conduit right into his enemies' inner counsels and no one the wiser! Again the book has me questioning how the hell did Victorian Gentlemen ever manage to run the world? (Just be glad Dracula isn’t Russian. He’d be playing maskirovka games with them.) When he no longer has a secure base of operations in enemy territory he escapes and heads back to his homeland to rebuild his forces for another attempt. Even though he only engages John Harker in conversation in the book, he manages to have a dramatic and at times brutal impact on every character in the novel. I am left thinking that there was some greater purpose for Dracula coming to London, if all he wanted was a larger and wealthier hunting ground, after all, he could have gone to cities in Germany, Sweden, or Italy (Or even just… Budapest or Bucharest). Instead, he went to the one place that could be argued was the capital of the world and certainly the capital of the greatest power in western civilization at the time. So I am left wondering... What was Dracula's ultimate purpose?

Dracula does a great job of creating a memorable plot with a rising sense of danger and horror throughout the book. The book uses the epistolary format to full effect and is still able to give us some rather well-done action scenes. There are however weaknesses, first, off I think modern readers would find the language a little silted and the characters strange and a bit unconvincing. This is an effect of the past being a foreign country in some ways. Simply put the people of 1897 don't think, speak, or act like us and if you're not prepared for that it might damage your suspension of disbelief. The characterization isn't awful, each character has a clear distinct character with different flaws and virtues but it is rather thin. The most complex characters are Van Helsing and John Harker. Mina, while a good character isn't that complex, she's smart, a devoted wife, and an all-around good person. Quincey is brave, loyal and rash, reckless, and so on and so forth. Dracula, our villain, is slain at the end and left an utter mystery to the reader. Which I think is part of the appeal and what carried the character forward. Because we only see him as others see him and have no idea what he was really intending it is easy for the reader to project what they want to see into Dracula. Also while I don't get the erotic appeal that is often brought up, I do get Dracula to a lesser extent. He's a figure of power and authority but is utterly unbound by social rules or restrictions. Able to move through society but not in any way beholden or controlled by it. He can simply take what he wants, without regard for any law or morals. There's an attraction there that I can understand and I think anyone can really. This is only enhanced by Mr. Stroker's actions to ground Dracula in a real-time and place while giving him the immortality to transcend that time and place making him feel real, but leaving him a possible threat to you, no matter when and where you're reading this. I honestly think it's the character of Dracula that gives this novel its legs. Not that the heroes are awful but most of them could easily be replaced (and have been in a number of adaptations) and you don't really lose anything but you need Dracula. I'm giving Dracula by Bram Stoker a B. The weaknesses remain but the story remains compelling and worth the read and deserves its longevity.

So this is a super long review and I want to say thanks for sticking with us all the way. Fangsgiving was a decision made by our ever-wise patrons to explore Dracula over a month of reviews. If you'd like to have a voice in future discussions on future reviews and theme months, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads  Join us Sunday for a bonus review of the 1992 Dracula film by Francis Ford Coppola. Monday we will have a guest review by Mr. Davis on the first 3 games of the Castlevania video game series. Until then, stay safe and as always Keep Reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Normal text is your reviewer Garvin Anders