So, wow, initial reaction, right off the bat: Dracula’s kind of a dick, right? Almost, dare I say, a monster?
Yeah, I know, duh, but I was raised on a steady diet of Count Chocula. This is my first time reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula1 and its made for a delightful change to encounter such a wholly creepy vampire, one who is without question intent on Very Bad Things. He’s really quite self-actualized, as creatures of the night seem to go. Most of the vampires who inform my experience are almost sheepish about their true natures: OK yes, they’re undead, but they’re just hoping to pass in polite society. Think Buffy‘s Angel, True Blood‘s Bill Compton, Louis from Interview with the Vampire, Cassidy from The Preacher comics, The Infamous Cullens, and the one that sired them all, Bunnicula.
The bulk of what we’ve read so far centers on Jonathan Harker’s reactions to Count Dracula. Although we meet Lucy and Mina in Chapter Five, all we know about them so far is that they seem to be engaged in the earliest recorded rendition of The Telephone Hour. But we have a good sense of Harker at this point, and what struck me most was how submissive he is as a protagonist.2 This is pointed out to us right away, in Chapter One. After noting the driver’s impressive grip as he hoists Harker into the caleche, Harker says:
…I felt a strange chill, and a lonely feeling came over me, but a cloak was thrown over my shoulders, and a rug across my knees, and the driver said in excellent German:—…
Hey are we on a date here? Seriously, get a room, you two. There’s more of this in the following chapter, upon his first meeting with Count Dracula (“…his hand grasped mine with a strength that made me wince…”) and the purpose is to draw parallels between the Count and the driver, but the effect is that Stoker quickly erases any impressions we might have that Harker is some kind of manly-man. Clearly, this is a guy who, when faced with a locked door (of which the castle seems to have no shortage), will merely shrug his shoulders and shuffle glumly off in another direction, rather than attempt to shoulder it open or attack it with some sort of high-flying kick.
In fact his only act of rebellion, once he’s grasped the nature of his situation (i.e. that he is a prisoner in Count Dracula’s castle), is to fall asleep somewhere other than his bed. Not exactly matinee idol stuff. But this does lead us to one of the major set pieces of the book so far, and the fullest depiction of Harker’s submissive nature: his encounter with the three Brides of Dracula. Harker is awoken from slumber to find himself being lusted after by three voluptuous young women, but rather than saying or doing anything, he just lies there and waits for them to do something (anything!) to him. “I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips,” he writes, and later:
Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one’s flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer—nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart.
Which, can I just say: how hot is this scene? I mean we’re talking about necks but we’re not exactly talking about necks, right? I definitely read that scene like ten times over in the quiet confines of my bedroom, just to make sure.
So what does this all mean? How do you read Stoker’s characterization of Harker? Is the author using Harker as a stand-in for the mood of the Victorian era? A reflection of a society fearful of acting on the perceived impropriety of their most base desires? Or is Stoker himself complicit in the repression of the era, giving us in Harker what is essentially a Victorian Mary Sue?3
It’ll be interesting, as we continue on, to compare the relative strength and fortitude of the female characters. Anyone who’s read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen can surmise that Mina’s going to be one to watch. I made light of their boy-craziness above, but maybe Mina and Lucy are simply less repressed than Harker? And maybe that’ll end up being a source of strength for them? I’m excited to find out, he wrote, pressing the “publish” button forcefully, like a real man does.
I’ve never noticed this before, but Harker is a lot like Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – the world is falling apart around him, and all he really wants is some tea.
//just DIES
Oh, that’s perfect. He really is. Is he in a dressing-gown?
I was hugely surprised to find myself terrified by the first four chapters. Despite knowing the rough outline of the story. Terribly unnerved reading at home in an empty house on a windy night.
BUT: I did have many an inward laugh at the idea of Dracula doing laps of the castle to convince Harker he had help running the place. Drop him off at the castle. [Pant, pant, pant, through the rear entrance, up to the front door] “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!” Cooking Harker’s meals. Making the beds. Count Dracula. Making beds.
This is something I hope I or someone else touches on at some point this month: Is this book funny? Like, the scene at the beginning where Harker is trying to understand the townspeople, thumbing through his dictionary and coming up with words like “Satan” and “Devil”, that was hilarious to me. But is that humor inherent to the story, or does it arise from what I already know about the vampire legend? And if it’s not intentionally humorous but I still find it so, does it matter?
When I first started writing my Twitter version of Harker’s diary (@JHarkerEsq) I quickly realized there was no way I would able to capture the mystery and fear the permeates it. So I went for the next best thing: humor.
“Terrified landlady forced her gaudy old cruficix round my neck. Still waiting for the damn carriage. So now I’m late AND tacky.”
I find a lot of Harker’s reactions hilarious, like the ‘How am I going to shave now?’ irritation, but I’m not sure Stoker meant me to.
Yes, that he has no servants was pretty great. As was/is the idea of Dracula roasting a chicken. Does he have a kitchen? Because he can’t just magic up a supper, can he?
Ha! I actually had some of the same thoughts, and a little chuckle myself as well. I also wrote up a post about how Dracula seems (at least at this point) to be a trickster figure.
http://humancomplex.blogspot.com/2009/09/count-trickster.html
Secondly, the sort of reversal of the entrance invitation ritual was interesting. Did Harker have to be formally invited in the castle and “enter of [his] own free will,” or could Dracula have abducted him and forced him in? Does Harker’s acceptance of the terms have something to do with his apparent inability to leave?
I interpreted this as just a traditional vampiric greeting. If you were a creature with limitations like those of a vampire, a forceful and exaggerated invitation to enter might become a point of good manners.
But again, I am reading into it with vampire-tinted glasses! Who knows if this even features in Dracula?
I like your idea too. Dracula is very formal in his manners — there could be unknown codes at work rather than just duplicity.
It’s the stiff formality (both in manner and behavior) before Harker accepts the invitation inside, followed by his hard, grasping handshake &c. once Harker steps in, that made me wonder if it were vampire-magic, rather than just Draculean politesse.
I tend to believe that Hawker is meant more as a stand-in for the mood of the Victorian era, but not necessarily because Stoker is trying to make a particular point. Rather, Hawker is meant to be Stoker’s connection with his audience: he commands the first four chapters of the book and introduces us to the Count and the general set-up of the plot. Hawker’s reactions are meant to be our reactions, heightened by the fact that he’s a bit of a “girly-man”. By juxtaposing Hawker with the Count, the Count comes off as much more terrifying than if, say, Van Helsing served as the vessel for our introduction.
Bunnicula! I love it!
Hello all. This is my first~ Reading of Dracula, joining Infinite Summer, and posting…
Thanks for the intro. I just popped in to say that I found many things funny in the first four chapters. I had the distinct impression the humor was intentional. At the moment, no specifics fly through working memory, but I’ll pay closer attention in the future to enable comments.
Great observations re: Harker’s passivity. It sort of makes me look back to Infinite Jest and Gately lying prone for the last third of the book, the very embodiment of Hal’s idea of the inactive hero…
I also found that free will stuff that Meave mentioned really interesting. I wonder if there’s any play with the Catholic dynamic here? After all we’ve got Protestant Harker being handed a Catholic crucifix, and the whole question of free will is something that Catholics and various Protestant denominations have butted heads on in the past.
I’m not quite sure I’m willing to consider this an example of submissiveness. I’ve always been under the impression that vampires cast a sort of passivity spell on their victims, rendering them pretty much helpless w/r/t putting up a resistance, or even wanting to contemplate contemplating putting up a resistance.
No?
Either way, I can imagine at least a million other worse ways to die, or become undead, or something or other.
Edit: Also, I cannot be alone in wishing I’d never watched or even been made aware of the existence of Coppola’s Dracula.
Fucking Keanu Reeves….
Keanu Reeves indeed! That’s part of the problem I referred to in my introductory essay – the baggage we as readers bring to the novel. That may explain the “humor” a couple of you have referred to. I doubt very much that Stoker had humor in mind. But the book and its characters have been so trivialized, satirized, parodied and ridiculed (and add the Coppola travesty into the mix) that certain scenes just make us laugh.
I’ve also been trying to purge my memories of Keanu Reeves since I starting rereading the book although after catching up with the group yesterday I’ve begun to think that perhaps his insipid and colourless performance wasn’t a million miles from the character of Jonathan Harker. Harker seems to be becoming more two-dimensionally translucent as Dracula’s character emerges, until it seems as if it’s he that should be invisible in the mirror. Dracula is sucking him dry without laying a fang on him.
I had to watch that movie REPEATEDLY because I was selected to report on it for a course in Gothic Lit. The HORROR, indeed. (I have the novelization!)
The first nights that Dracula has with Harker seemed to me to reveal a deep loneliness in the Count. He may have been thirsting for a connection to his lost humanity as much as he was thirsting for Harker’s blood.
I also think much of the humor is due to the pervasiveness of Dracula and vampires in our culture. We have so many varying versions of the Dracula figure, both frightening and comic, that it contaminates our reading of the book. It is hard to be objective, when things like the Lugosi films and Count Chocula provide most of our referents to the characters, plot, and language of the book.
As far as the words spoken at the door upon entry and leaving, they seem to harken back to old customs of courtesy and safety that a host would be required to follow while a stranger is in his domain.
I see that Elizabeth Miller has more than competently covered the idea of the second paragraph in my previous post, supra.
The funniest thing I’ve read so far that conflicts with our default picture of Dracula is when he crawls down the side of the castle wall. Harker describes him as a “lizard.” Where’s the bat?
Wait wait! Have we forgotten that Harker has shimmied down the castle wall, broken into the Count’s chambers and tried to kill him? That didn’t seem passive to me at all.
Perhaps we as self-empowered 21st century men and women would not have waited so long to attempt escape, but let’s not forget how important manners were in Victorian society, particularly when one is being hosted by a client. It would’ve been unthinkable for Harker to ditch his host until he was absolutely sure he was being mistreated.
I gotta concur here: it takes some nut to scale the wall of a crumbling castle on a precipice, coffin-peer, wield a deadly shovel etc. – perhaps it’s us who’ve been corrupted by the Shwarzenegger-ian thought mode – does Harker’s self-possesssion and intellect and awareness that he may even be going mad designate him as a ‘girly-man’? Is not the man who can control his physicality and emotions possibly stronger than the one who reverts to a primitive grunt and kick? When he begins to mentally ‘grasp’ the gravity of the situation i.e. that he’s imprisoned by a hairy-palmed, wall-crawling lunatic, Harker has the poise and fortitude to reflect, “When, however, the conviction came to me that I was helpless I sat down quietly – as quietly as I have ever done anything in my life – and began to think over what was to be done. I am still thinking, and as yet have come to no definite conclusion.” (nice bit of humor on the end there as well)
And he goes on to say that he must keep his ideas and fears of the situation to himself as the Count ‘would only deceive me if I trusted him fully with the facts’ That speaks of toughness to me, keeping the terror sealed to yourself while trying to outwit a ghoulish fiend!
Also, are we assuming at the moment that Dracula is sexually and sanguinously omnivorous? Is he angry at the Brides because they’re threatening his source of information, or blood, or just his new pet? Dracula says something along the lines of “He is mine”. I read something interesting in the notes to the edition I’m reading (Byron) about how Dracula is outside the rules but that the Brides are strictly heterosexual in their appetites. Also, can’t they get their own babies to eat? Are they also prisoners?
I completely disagree with the characterization of Jonathan Harker as a “girly-man.” No, he does not break down locked doors with high-flying kicks, and yes, he does notice the inherent strength in Dracula’s handshake. But to me, this is what makes the beginning so terrifying.
Harker is not a super-hero, he is a real man.
Stoker’s portrayal of Harker makes it much easier to empathize with him because, in all honesty, his actions are more closely aligned with how we would act (i.e., if I were in that house, there is not way in hell I would be trying to open doors — I would be too paralyzed with fear).
In fact, I feel the only drawback to the beginning chapters is when Harker does venture out of his room. It seems rather out of character for him. Despite his desire to escape, I just don’t see Harker scaling walls and entering tombs.
With regard to end note #3, Stephenie Meyer has gone on record saying that she has not, in fact, ever read Dracula. She claims it’s on her list of things to do.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20049578,00.html
As to whether or not we believe her — well, that’s a discussion for another day.
Castle Dracula, the original Hotel California. Also, being Stoker was an Irish man and a theatre manager, I would think that humor would be intentional.
This is delicious. Thank you for pointing this out.
Yeah, well, doesn’t she also say she never watched Buffy? (I think she revised that to ‘I walked through the room when my kids had it on….’) Shhhyeah.
Did Harker have to be formally invited in the castle and “enter of [his] own free will,” or could Dracula have abducted him and forced him in? Does Harker’s acceptance of the terms have something to do with his apparent inability to leave?
I took the Count’s greeting as some kind of spell, at first, as if it needed to be said for Harker to cross the threshold, but later on, he makes it clear that he’s learned English and English manners entirely from books. After than, I took it as a sign that the Count was using formal manners, and took the greeting to be the equivalent of something found more often in a phrasebook than in actual speech.
While in the castle, he is under a spell of some type, though. He sits mesmerized by the dust in the moonlight, and admits as much.
In reading the Norton C.E., it’s mentioned in a footnote that vampires (whether or not this was something Stoker invented or something that existed pre-Drac remains to be seen) can neither lure guests into their houses nor enter the houses of other’s w/o expressed permission.
That said, I do like that it’s not noticeably out of character for the Count to welcome Harker to the castle in such a well-mannered fashion. A respectable, if demoniac, host.
That is an answer! Thanks, Norton Critical Edition. I don’t recall ever hearing about this no-luring-guests-in rule before.
Less a submissive/bottom/girly-man/fop and more the prototypical Victorian leading man – educated, refined, mild-mannered to a fault and completely gob-smacked when those traits fail him. Leastaways that’s what I think.
I think CDG nailed it here (http://infinitesummer.org/dracula/archives/74/comment-page-1#comment-65): Harker is a man of manners–which is why it surprises me to find that he tried to kill the Count. I find it odd only that he never recorded a suspicion of the food being poisoned.
On the grounds of the book being funny, there’s this great line from Chapter 2: “You shall, I trust, rest here with me a while, so that by our talking I may learn the English intonation. And I would that you tell me when I make error, even of the smallest, in my speaking.” [sic]
There’s no way he didn’t intentionally slip up, just to make Harker feel as if he really *could* teach the Count something.
I’m glad other people have already taken issue with Kfan’s depiction of Harken as some sort of wuss, so it means I don’t have to. For me, he just seemed sort of ordinary, realising minute by minute that he was trapped in an extraordinary scene. I wasn’t bothered by his inaction as the fair-haired ‘woman’ went for his throat — she was our first exposure to the sublime in the novel, and what could a man really do in that circumstance? If anything besides polite, he just seems disorientated, which is fair enough considering he’s existed on a few hours of sleep between 5 and 10am.
To me, there were a few key points to focus on in these expository chapters:
1. Stoker’s (rather belaboured) othering of Dracula. Obviously his actions put him in another realm, but when interacted with on a purely human basis, there are constant references to his foreignness. The instance that most sticks out in my mind is the ‘Harken Jonathan oh I mean Jonathan Harken silly me using the patronymic first’. There has been nothing about Dracula’s dialogue that would mark him as a non-native English speaker, and yet there’s abruptly thrown-in central European reference. Even in Aaron’s quotation above, there’s absolutely nothing wrong. The use of ‘would’ is a bit archaic and Latinate, but it is entirely in keeping with English usage of the era. The other passage that really brought this home (and to be fair it served other purposes) was the lengthy discourse on the history of the Dracula family, what with its links to Attila by way of the Magyars etc. I don’t remember any Angles or Jutes in there. Which makes for an interesting conundrum, given that Harken posits himself as the potential saviour of England, and yet here we leave him, trapped.
2. The other thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was the role of writing in this novel. For one thing, the format is already driving me a bit mad. It’s like reading Pamela all over again, what with these breathless up-to-the-minute first person narrations. (Come to think of it, it’s interesting Kevin would interpret Harken as a wuss, given that it’s Harken’s telling we’re relying on. If we take the view that our narrator is going to be unreliable, it would stand to reason he’d be motivated to present himself in a positive light. Which, I expect, by his reckoning, he has: he may be a bit timid, but he’s only newly qualified as a solicitor, and he’s a gentleman.) But anyway, Stoker is also constantly bringing up writing in the text, whether they be these falsified letters or Mina’s ‘lady journalism’ or, for that matter, Harken’s place of respite in Dracula’s library. So I’m interested to see where this goes as we progress.
A few other random comments:
– Someone above pointed out, and I was also intrigued by, the homoeroticism suggested by Dracula’s claim on Harken. I’m curious to see what boundaries exist for the vampires.
– I’m curious about whether the Protestant/Catholic dichotomy is comes up further than Harken’s embrace of the rosary.
– The conclusions Harken jumps to at the end of chapter 4 seem quite a leap. He seems to have determined in an instant that Dracula has the power to ‘convert’. I wonder at that revelation. It felt a bit lazy to me, but maybe I’m being overly sceptical of Stoker?
While not necessarily homoerotic, I do wonder what’s missing from all of Harker’s diary entries–i.e., that there are things happening which are too terrible (or impolite) for him to write down. Dracula wanted him for *something*, right? So what is it that he gets from Harker? I thought he might be feeding off his energy, but Harker doesn’t seem to have lost any vitality.
As for Dracula’s speech, Matt, he’s missing an article, which generally happens when someone switches to an unfamiliar language. (“I would that you tell me when I make [an] error, even of the smallest, in my speaking.”) Except that his error seems intentional; just one more mind game.
heh. I kept re-reading that sentence and my brain kept filling in the article. My sympathies revealed! mea culpa…
BUT I will say that the recounting of the dialogue is one of the things that bugs me the most about this first-person journal/epistolary format. We are meant to accept the accuracy of the reportage of other characters’ speech, as remembered by the narrator of the moment. Rather than impressionistic, which is certainly the most I could ever manage, we’re given multi-paragraph speeches that are ostensibly verbatim. This was driven further home for me when I read Mina’s account of her ‘old friend’. He speaks in a dialect she can, by her own admission, not fully understand, and yet she transcribes it in shorthand which can then be transliterated for our consumption. Despite her reference to her attempts at developing memory or whatever, I struggle with this.
Anyway, just to say that I thought about this when I was thinking about Dracula’s apparent command of English. It’s unclear to me (at least as yet) whether Jonathan is generally tidying up Dracula’s speech in his journal (which is also ‘kept in shorthand’ for that matter) or Mina is more faithful to phonetics.
Matt, I too take Stoker-as-Mina’s description of how easy it is to remember things verbatim (with just a little training) as total bunk. But–to tie things back to Infinite Jest–this raises an interesting issue (I blogged about it back for Chapter 2): who is the narrator? Ostensibly Harker, right? Except that–as you say–his journal has been translated from shorthand. It’s also been broken up for dramatic effect. Harker may have *recorded* this words, but the one relating them, ala Jest, well, that’s all Stoker.
I alluded to this a little in my response above–what exactly is being *omitted* from the journals/letters/&c., and why? Curious and curiouser, no?
Possibly relatedly, if indeed Dracula does have a stronger command of English than he’s letting on–if all his slip-ups are calculated–what to make of Harker’s assumption that the Count wouldn’t be able to read his shorthand journal? More likely the Count can and has read everything, even the letter written in shorthand that he dramatically (and kind of hilariously) burns. (No secrets between besties!!)
In that case, the Count might feel that nothing Harker has written is of any threat to him. Or it might not matter, since he plans to kill Harker before the journal ever reaches anyone. Or he’s making secret edits. Or or or OR EVEN Dracula LIKED Harker’s observations, liked how they addressed his creepy behavior without ever realizing or articulating too many specifics (every long-term bad-ass probably likes a nice legend, right?), and maybe Harker was meant to escape all along, to spread the crazy word. And then, “He’s mine!” would be nothing more than a mis-direct for the Brides, something to keep them away until Harker escapes.
am I writing fanfic yet, maybe.
[...] « The Transylvania Twist [...]
[...] meet Lucy in Chapter 5, in the two letters she writes to Mina. As I touched on in my last post, the language Lucy uses is light-hearted, even approaching ditzy (”Do you ever try to read [...]