Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is one of those books that define its genre. Stoker didn’t invent the vampire story. Before his masterpiece was published in 1897 there was John Polidori’s The Vampyre (which was a product of the same story-telling session that produced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), Varney the Vampyre by James Malcolm Rymer, and Carmilla by Sheridan LeFanu. But Stoker effectively codified the essential elements of the vampire story and wrote a book that, unlike his predecessors, is as fresh today as it was 120 years ago.
Dracula generally is called a gothic novel, which implies a focus on weird settings, melodrama, outsized villains and heroes, impossibly pure heroines and a style that is anything but subtle. But Dracula is a modern book that uses gothic trappings to depict the victory of 19th century Western science and technology over Eastern superstition.
Stoker’s protagonists write in shorthand, use Kodak cameras, phonographs, electric lights, and typewriters and carbon paper (if you don’t know what a typewriter or carbon paper are, Google it). There are blood transfusions and brain surgery and the telegraph allows communication across a city or across continents with a speed unmatched until e-mail.
It is, as Jonathan Harker writes in his diary, “nineteenth century, up-to-date with a vengeance.” But he also adds, “the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill.”
New blood
Dracula is an epistolary novel, told with diaries, journals, letters and other documents. This can be an awkward format, but Stoker constructs a compelling narrative with it.
Count Dracula wants to move from his ruined castle in Transylvania, where he is known and feared, to England where there is new blood and hunting is easier. Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor, travels to Transylvania to advise him and becomes ensnared by the vampire. Once back in England, Harker and his wife and associates engage in a battle of more than life and death to track down Dracula.
Stoker uses gothic elements: The ruined castle, coincidence, cloying virtue, and the protagonists’ infuriating blindness. But his writing is modern, without gothic excess.
Unlike many writers of the weird of that period, Stoker does not tell the reader that something is frightening. The horror comes naturally and we discover it for ourselves. Castle Dracula and its occupant are ominous, but Stoker’s descriptions are matter-of-fact, with telling details to forewarn the knowing reader: Dracula’s nocturnal habits; he doesn’t eat or drink; he shows no reflection; Harker’s growing realization that he is the only living thing in the castle.
When Stoker does show us the horror, it is effective. Harker’s confrontation with the brides of Dracula is probably the best vampire scene ever written, as erotic as it is terrifying. And the distraught mother pounding on the castle gates, shouting, “Monster, give me my child!” is genuinely chilling.
When the scene shifts to England, the horror slowly builds all over again: The arrival of the ship of the dead; Lucy’s mysterious illness; and finally the harrowing scene in the tomb at Hampstead Heath.
East vs. West
Dracula is a tale of conflict between two worlds, between rationality and the supernatural, between good and evil.
England is thoroughly up-to-date. Communication is rapid and dependable. People travel from Exeter to London in a matter of hours. Prof. Van Helsing commutes between London and Antwerp on an almost daily basis. Even traveling from Whitby on the Yorkshire coast to Buda-Pesth is easy: By train from Whitby to Hull, take the boat to Hamburg and by train from there to Buda-Pesth.
But beyond Buda-Pesth, “I had the impression we were leaving the West and entering the East,” Jonathan Harker writes, and “it seems that the further east we go the more unpunctual are the trains.” The Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania are not part of the modern world. There, darkness holds sway. Dracula tries to bring Eastern darkness to the West. His adversaries bring to bear Western technology to defeat him.
Writing was something of a sideline for Stoker, who was an assistant to the famous Shakespearian actor Henry Irving and manager of the Lyceum Theater for nearly 30 years. But throughout his career he wrote, criticism, non-fiction and fiction. His familiarity with the theatre is evident in Dracula and his language for the most part is clear and compelling. Some of it is genius. The old lady in Transylvania who urges Harker to take her crucifix, “For your mother’s sake.” And Dracula’s description of howling wolves, “Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”
It is interesting that the two most fully formed characters, Dracula himself and the Dutch doctor Prof. Van Helsing, speak with heavy accents. Dracula’s is of course sinister, while Van Helsing’s often is played for humor. But in neither case does Stoker let it sink to the level of parody. Maybe this is partly because we can’t read Dracula’s lines today without hearing Bela Lugosi’s wonderful voice. But Stoker also knew what he was about as a writer.
Dracula has remained in print since its original publication, and you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a copy to read for Halloween at your local library or bookstore.