Recent Reads {Bram Stoker's Dracula}

Dracula by Bram Stoker - This was my book club pick for October.  We usually do our discussion at the end of the month, and thought it would be a fun idea to read something "spooky" to discuss so close to Halloween.  Like most people, I'm very familiar with the general story of Dracula and the vampire legend, but hadn't actually read the book.  It has been on my "I should read that sometime" list for quite some time now, since I saw (and loved) the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  After seeing the movie a couple of times, I decided it would be interesting to read (or reread in many cases) the literary works on which the "extraordinary gentlemen" were based.  At any rate, I really enjoyed this reading of Dracula, and of course throughout my reading, I pictured Mina Harker just as she was portrayed in the movie!

It's easy to see why this novel remains a classic.  Even knowing how it ends does not dampen the thrill and the suspense as I turned the pages.  Stoker tells the story using first person narratives of most of the characters, with a few newspaper clippings thrown in.  Each of the main characters keeps some form of journal and some write letters or memos, and the chilling tale of the vampire, his victims, and those who fight him are told through the chronological organization of these various pieces. 

The edition I read included an introduction by Leonard Wolf, in which he explains that Dracula is considered to be of the Gothic novel genre, and points out that this monster is an invention of Stoker's, just over 100 years ago.  Yet most everyone knows who Count Dracula is and what he looks like, and that the vampire legends date back at least to medieval Europe.  Don't they?  Wolf reminds us that they do not.  The vampire was introduced to English literature in only 1816, and that by what is considered a rather weak novel by John Polidori.  (Polidori was one who took up Byron's party challenge to write a ghost story - the best known story from that challenge is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein)  Two other novels appeared during the 1800s which featured vampires, and only one, Carmilla by Sheridan LeFanu, is likely to have influenced Stoker's writing of Dracula.  Wolf's analysis of Dracula observes that not only is it an imaginative and exciting Gothic adventure, but is also intended as somewhat of a Christian allegory in the struggle between good and evil.  Wolf says:

The struggle is not merely between good guys and a supremely bad man, but between high-minded Christians and a minion of the devil.  Dracula (his name, in Romanian, beans "dragon") is a creature of the night, cut off from God because he has chosen immortaility under the sponsorship of Satan rather than of Christ.  Though Dracula has supernatural powers, he is weak in God's daylight; he shrinks from any contact with the cross.  Still, he represents a more than mortal danger in his victims because his blood drinking is not simply an act of nourishment.  The more the vampire drinks, the greater is the victim's spiritual empoisonment, so that, when death finally comes, it brings not release from the shocks that flesh is heir to but the beginning of ****ation. (Introduction by Leonard Wolf , p xi, to Dracula)

Certainly the spiritual overtones are obvious, but I would not have described the story as a Christian allegory myself!!  And I certainly don't recommend reading it for the inspiration, because while good ultimately triumphs, Dracula could hardly be considered inspiring or uplifting! It is entertaining and well-crafted fantasy fiction, but dark and chilling in tone.  I enjoyed revisiting this classic novel.