If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen countless parodies and reinterpretations of Count Dracula, and the character needs no introduction. He has become something of a stock character, our collective stand-in for vampires. Dracula has been depicted in books, movies, magazines, video games, television, comics, and even radio plays. I decided to read the eponymous 1897 novel by Bram Stoker to see what Dracula looked like in his original incarnation. What I found was a surprisingly thrilling and atmospheric text.
The book begins with Jonathan Harker, a solicitor (law practitioner) who travels to Romania to visit the wealthy Count Dracula and help him purchase a home in London. While he rides a carriage to the Count’s castle, the locals on board become increasingly distressed, hurriedly giving him religious items, including rosary beads and a cross. This sequence is great at building suspense! Once Harker arrives, he quickly becomes suspicious of the Count. Eventually, when Dracula makes Harker write letters to his partner providing an alibi, Harker realizes that he will soon be killed once he completes his work at the castle. He manages to escape by climbing down the castle wall in the same manner that he witnessed Dracula do himself, and Harker ends up in a Budapest asylum. Dracula boards a ship approaching London.
The book’s point-of-view character switches to Lucy Westenra, a friend of Harker’s partner Mina back in London. While Mina leaves for Budapest to care for Harker, Lucy describes being romantically approached by three male friends on the same day. She turns down two of their offers (Dr. John Seward, Quincey Morris) but accepts one (Arthur Holmwood). As someone who has to turn down dozens of romantic invitations daily, I empathize with Lucy’s struggle. Regardless, Lucy struggles with sleepwalking, and once John Seward notices her health’s mysterious decline, he sends for his old professor, the legendary and unconventional Abraham Van Helsing. His vampire-fighting techniques (garlic, stakes, holy water) may seem unorthodox for the time, but they come off as rather clichéd today. Lucy herself is very passive, with no real motivation driving her character save for the inherent human drive to stay alive. Her suffering at Dracula’s hands feels undeserved and even contrived, although I suspect this is an intentional choice on Stoker’s part.
Mina returns from her half-a-book-long stay with Harker, and the group decides to kill the Count before he can spread vampirism across London (and eventually, the world). They do this by sanctifying the various coffins he placed throughout the country. While they’re playing around with Dracula’s coffins, he has secretly been feeding on Mina’s blood. She begins the process of transforming into a vampire, creating significant time pressure for the vampire hunters to kill Dracula before Mina becomes fully vampirized. Mina’s slow transformation to a vampire has a similar narrative purpose and effect to Jonathan Harker’s letter deadline, but it is less effective because it lacks the explicitly-stated date-of-death that Harker had to contend with. Mina’s treatment in this book is bizarre. There is a moment where Mina scolds Jonathan for wishing death upon Dracula, and all of the men in the group literally kneel and cry because of how much of a good person Mina is. Despite their apparent worship of Mina, the men refuse to tell her about their plans on several occasions throughout the book, because she is a woman. At least Dracula doesn’t discriminate.
The beginning is, without a doubt, my favorite part of the novel. The castle setting is deeply atmospheric. Its physical isolation from the rest of the world, and the accompanying sense of unknown danger are reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining. I also love how the “deadline” for Harker’s death set by Dracula’s letters makes the reader get more and more anxious as they see the deadline approaching in the date of each diary entry. I really didn’t like Lucy’s story, though. I think that her story could have used more forward momentum, as the story seems agonizingly slow compared to when Harker is in Dracula’s castle. One phenomenal aspect of this book was the character of Renfield, who is a patient at the insane asylum Dr. Seward runs. I won’t spoil him, because his motives are the best mystery in this book.
Another point of praise: the book’s epistolary narrative. I love the way that the story is told through newspaper clippings and diary entries. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes horror novels and is looking for an old classic to enjoy. I would further advise potential readers that Dracula was not meant to be intellectually profound as some classics were; Dracula was written to be a page-turner.
