I just finished re-reading Dracula for my Classics Book Club, and was once again confirmed in my opinion that it’s actually a pretty poorly written book in a lot of ways. The people we’re supposed to like are insufferable prudes, and every other thought they utter is some sort of homage to manliness. There are gaping plot holes such as Renfield’s multiple escapes out of his (sometimes) barred window, and there are moments of imbecility as when Quincy Morris quietly leaves a conference to shoot a large bat he spies by going outside and firing, without warning, through the window into the room in which everyone is sitting. Everyone knows that sexy, undead Lucy is much cooler than virtuous, living Lucy and, likewise, everyone wants Mina to die. True, Van Helsing, despite his patriarchal condescension, is pretty cool, but Dracula outclasses the good guys in almost every way. Plus he has a harem of seductresses that only a relative of Jonathan Harker would resist.
But it’s a great book nonetheless. Dracula is a great character, and now a classic monster. He may not be the first vampire, but he was the first that was any good. Stoker somehow made him alluring and disgusting. There is nothing in the Anne Rice mode of the beautiful and effete killer, and Count Dracula does not sparkle. In fact, he stinks. Where he goes, his revolting stench follows and when he is caught napping, he is bloated with so much blood that it overflows from his gaping mouth. However, he is still an erotic creature. His victims are women, engaged or married, and once he has them, they’re his. His attacks are described in overtly erotic terms, and are obviously disguised sex acts. Afterwards, they are his slaves forever, and this is what makes him so terrifying to men. Dracula is the guy every man fears. We know we can’t compete, and now he’s coming after our girls!
Dracula isn’t about virtue overcoming evil. I was about to say it’s about male wish-fulfillment since the prudish men of sexual orthodoxy overcome the object of their fears, but that’s not really it. It would be male wish fulfillment if Dracula were the protagonist because, really, that’s who we wish we were. But we know we can’t be him. We are mortal, even though we’re not sure if all the other men are mortal. We have this fear along with Jonathan Harker that there is some Count Dracula moving in on our woman, or at least who could. (Somewhere in this argument is the reason why vampires have lost so much of their horror in the hands of female writers, but we can talk about that later if you want.) Dracula has become the enduring type of horror stemming from male sexual insecurity. Rather than suffer our women to be lost to our sexual adversary, we will destroy the object of our fear. Even worse, we will destroy our women. Even if we wouldn’t resort to murder in reality we can still relate to Arthur who brutally beheads his wife once Dracula turns her. Such things happen. Weren’t African-American men once the bugbears of irrational white sexual insecurity? Aren’t women still subject to violence at the hands of jealous men? There is a lot going on beneath the outward plot of this novel, and it’s why Bram Stoker’s work is a masterpiece. I’m not saying that’s good. It’s a horror novel, and we should be disturbed.
Am I overreaching? Discuss.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Tags: Classics, Horror, Robert L.'s Picks, Vampires
November 9, 2010 at 3:52 am |
I feel that your deconstruction of Dracula is wholly naive. It is not a prerequisite of the author of a novel to imagine what the cultural mores of future generations will be. You give no charity to the social environment in which the book was grounded nor allow for an altogether more complex class structure in which this novel was delivered to.
You seem to have a desire to be serenaded by voluptuousness or eroticism in your characters: at least that this my reading, though paradoxically you complain than Stoker attaches sexual undertones to his creations.
It is easy to assert flaws in any book but much harder to construct anything that will even get into print, never mind a tried and tested masterpiece, that is, and will long remain ‘the’ benchmark Gothic Horror Story.
November 10, 2010 at 10:04 am |
Sorry if I emphasized the novel’s flaws over its merits. That wasn’t my intention. I’m certainly not the first to call attention to the overt eroticism in the story, which has been emphasized in nearly every adaption of the novel for the past hundred years or so and is very prevalent throughout the body of criticism devoted to the work.
I can see people taking issue with the third paragraph, in particular, where I describe some personal reactions to the novel. I don’t expect you, or anyone else, to accept my interpretation (really just rumination) as gospel, but we are surely free to examine why certain stories continue to strike a deep chord throughout time and shifting cultures. Does Dracula’s appeal in Japan have anything to do with England during the time in which he was created? There’s got to be a reason why the novel is a masterpiece as opposed to a period piece. I’m not blaming Stoker for living and writing when and where he did. I would suggest that whatever social forces were at work in his novel played a part in making it transcendent enough to be relevant today.
I grant you that class is an important part of the story with far reaching implications completely unaddressed in the post. I’m a fan of Stoker and the Gothic tradition. Didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I think you might be under the impression that I’m looking down on the past from the vantage of my “enlightened” position of the present. Not my intention. I am posing, for the sake of discussion, a few personal and idiosyncratic
responses with which you are well within your rights to take issue.
Thanks for accepting the invitation to comment! It’s good to get a contrary and intelligent point of view.