Posts Tagged ‘Victorian’

I think my teacher characterized this book perfectly in class.  Before he started discussion about the book he said, instead of a book jacket, Dracula needs a straitjacket.  I have to admit that after struggling through over four hundred pages of Stoker’s land of lunacy, I fully agree with his assessment.

I have to admit, when I heard that we would be reading Dracula in my Victorian Literature class I was incredibly excited.  The class had been divided into two major sections of Gothic literature: ghost stories and vampire stories.  I always associated Dracula as one of the major pieces of literature that created the modern vampire that has inspired so many modern day marvels like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries. However, the class had introduced me to many of the stories that inspired Stoker’s creation of Count Dracula like Le Fanu’s Carmilla, which oddly enough tells the tale of a strange lesbian vampire relationship – you have to read it to believe it.

Strangely enough, Dracula isn’t really all that much about vampires.  Even though he is the title character, Dracula is not the main character.  The story doesn’t really revolve around him.  In fact, it is questionable whether there is a main character in the story.  Told in fragments through a nonlinear narrative of numerous characters, it can be difficult to figure out exactly what Dracula is about.  At first we meet, Jonathan Harker, who in the end is responsible for bringing Dracula to London which is where the “horror” begins as Dracula begins to prey on the local girls.

So what it really boils down to is that Stoker is writing a very strange misogynistic manifesto.  Dracula is not a threat to Harker and his friends because he is a vampire per se but because he is a foreigner (from Eastern European Transylvania) who comes into the heart of England, London, to taint the women there.  Lucy, his first victim, becomes the fallen angel.  So all the men get together to protect Harker’s wife, Mina, who is the model of the Angel in the house (what every woman obviously is meant to be).

I find it extremely unfortunate that this book has had such a lasting effect on our society.  In my opinion, Stoker takes the rich history of the vampire legend and destroys it by using it to reinforce stereotypes about women and foreigners.  Instead of opening people’s eyes and challenging their opinions about subjects that concerned them, Stoker is only preaching a very tired message about the dreaded “other.”

Publisher’s Synopsis: First published in 1886 as a “shilling shocker,” Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde takes the basic struggle between good and evil and adds to the mix bourgeois respectability, urban violence, and class conflict.  The result is a tale that has taken on the force of myth in the popular imagination.

Review: After hearing all the myths about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, most memorable to me is the portrayal in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it was extremely interesting to read the actual source of the man with the “monster” within.

I understand after reading this why it is considered a classic.  The narrative style is interesting: we don’t actually hear an account from Dr. Jekyll until the very end where he explains how he created and drank the potion that turned him into the destructive force of evil that is Mr. Hyde.  Until this tell all ending, we only get glimpses of the strange occurrences from a lawyer named Mr. Utterson.  This book definitely had numerous gothic elements that are definitely still relevant to a modern audience: namely, the anxiety about a source of evil within.

I really enjoyed finally reading this.  I love Stevenson’s writing.  I grew up reading and reciting his poems in various classes and never got around to reading any of his fiction work.  Now that I have, I’m very glad that I finally did.  He is wonderful at creating suspense and providing vivid descriptions that stick with you.  If you haven’t read this, I recommend it.  It’s a short and easy read but definitely worth while.