It has been some time since my last post, and for that I apologise. Both completing my dissertation and generally sorting out my life had been rudely taking up too much of my time, but I am happy to say that I am back in full force and ready to ramble about fiction. I have a slew of topics ready to dispense my thoughts on and will be aiming to update this blog at least weekly, until of course society inevitably collapses and I must pursue a new hobby of scavenging the wastes for shelter and sustenance.

So, Dracula then. In terms of Hallowe’en mascots, the vampire is one of the most famous figures in all that is creepy and Gothic. That being said, despite having seen vampires portrayed across media and literature, I had never actually read the most famous of all these stories. I knew it by reputation and that most other representations of this monster draw most to all of the elements present in Bram Stoker’s novel, so eventually coming to read it I had very high expectations. Having recently finished the novel, I can safely say I am mostly disappointed.

This is not to say that the novel is in any way shape or form bad; it is a classic for a reason. The creativity in combining the monstrous blood-sucking creatures from various cultures and the upstanding yet creepy figures in Victorian literature, alongside incredible descriptive language for the eponymous Count Dracula have forged a figure that has been told, retold (and Untold by Universal Pictures in 2014) for over a century. The Count is easily the best part of the novel, with his presence felt on every page even though he appears, by my estimate, for only 10% of the story. This is a very common technique for horror stories, best explained by the film-making phrase, “don’t show the shark,” where the monster is kept out of view or hidden from the audience in order to enhance the fear surrounding it. The less one knows of something, the more frightening it is.

This brings me to my problem with Dracula. The absence of the monster was something I went into the novel expecting and appreciated during my reading since it made his limited appearances all the more exciting. However, the characters that we are left to follow are, to but it bluntly, dull as bricks. The novel follows multiple protagonist through their various journal entries, from English Lawyer Jonathan Harker, his fiance Mina, her friend Lucy Westrena and her three suitors. All of these characters share an upright and frustratingly noble nature that started off endearing, but eventually became annoying when I realised that this was the only note of their personalities. This group, along with Professor Van Helsing, the only interesting character apart from Dracula, form a union to defeat the dreaded count after Lucy is corrupted by him. What then follows is a zealous Christian crusade against the unholy vampire with compassion, morality and a great big helping of faith at its centre.

This started to irk me more and more as I kept reading and at various points I was not sure which of our many narrators were speaking, since they all sounded the same, had the same values and were all just so perfectly virtuous. As I mentioned, Van Helsing is quite interesting himself, having a greater understanding of the supernatural elements of the story than other characters but still having one foot planted in the scientific world. Yet even he falls back on very simple and old-fashioned values when faced with struggle. In hindsight, it is probably not very fair of me to be judging this novel based on this, since these qualities were what was normal to and expected from readers of Stoker’s era. To a 21st century reader, these characters will all seem rather hard to believe, which I think is a major barrier that holds this novel back from renewed success. Its attitude to women is another aspect that caused me to raise an eyebrow. Their role in the plot revolves around either becoming corrupted by Dracula or praising the bravery and virtue of the men around them. This is yet another painful reminder of just how Victorian the novel is and makes rooting for the main quintet of manly men extremely difficult.

It is perhaps the plainness of Stoker’s traditionalist human protagonists that have caused later interpretations of the horror story to focus more on the vampire itself. In a literary world that has gone through both the modernist and post-modernist eras, normal societal structures that these men symbolise have been repeatedly called in to question. This makes the sophisticated vampire of Dracula extremely interesting, since he is both recognisably human in form and polite mannerisms, but shares qualities of the monstrous other. The nobleman who with an impressive castle and can speak very eloquently, yet at night feasts on the blood of the innocent is an engaging trope that Bram Stoker started and although his novel is fairly outdated in many senses, the ideas and imagination will outlive us all.