I don’t know if it is sacrilege to invoke this, but something that’s been in the back of my mind since I’ve been reading Dracula (my second time: the first time was in high school, I believe, although I don’t remember much other than enjoying it) is how much I can’t wait to rewatch Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula when this is all done. On Halloween, of course, with a steady supply of Kit-Kats. And BLOOD! But it’s not so much to see how well the movie matches up to the book but to appreciate the possible genius of casting Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker.
On Monday Kevin noted how submissive Jonathan Harker is as a protagonist, but I’d go so far as to say that he’s kind of dim. Of course I have the benefit of being the “Don’t go in there!!!” reader, but there are times where Jonathan’s British stiff-upper-lip-ness seems idiotic compared to common sense and gut reactions. For instance, if I told some Hungarians that I was heading up to a castle and they all began crossing themselves and weeping and making me wear a crucifix and so on, I’d be a little uneasier than Jonathan was, and not say “It was all very ridiculous.” And he’s always accidentally falling asleep or falling into trances at the most inopportune times–granted, some of these little naps might not be voluntary but you’d think a.) being a skeptic b.) being a stranger in a strange land he’d work harder either to keep his wits about him or would think it was odd that he was often just falling asleep here and there. Sometimes Joanathan’s just sort of a knob in general: after he sees that Dracula has no reflection and steals away his mirror, what’s his reaction? “It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave.” Right, that’s your biggest problem right now. Then, Jonathan decides that he’s going to get some pleasure out of disobeying the Count by falling asleep where he shouldn’t–but this is after he’s had the mirror incident, knows that he’s trapped in the castle and saw the count climbing down the wall like a lizard. Really? Now’s the time when you get spunky? (Of course maybe he knew he was going to be in for “an agony of delightful anticipation,” with those vampiresses, which, Kevin is right, was totally hot).
In contrast is Mina. I haven’t read far enough to really take this observation to town but it is surprising to me how very modern she is especially for the period. I’m not educated enough to know off the top of my head exactly how a proper young lady of 1897 should comport herself but I admire that she seems to have some nerve and is an inquisitive type: she’s not just keeping a journal but hoping to emulate “lady journalists” (that’s on my business card). She’s learning that new-fangled typewriter and wants to understand how the weather works. Instead of being shy and withdrawn she asks the townies in Whitby about the local legends (although of course she probably wished she hadn’t–not, of course, because it turns out to be so sad and creepy but because those old men are so damn hard to understand: “fash masel,” “crammle aboon the grees,” “jouped,” “antherums,” “gawm,” “dowps”: WHAT?) Of course Mina hasn’t yet been put in the dire straits that Jonathan has so we can’t measure her backbone against his but I have a feeling that Mina secretly wears the breeches in this relationship.
What do you think? Or am I just giving Jonathan a hard time? Who would you have cast in the movie other than Keanu? Would you marry a guy who oversees a big lunatic asylum? Is anybody else having a hard time picturing Dracula with a mustache? And if, as Valente opines, Stoker’s appearance conforms to the Victorian “masturbator,”4 what do we think think the Count thinks about when he, well, you know?
In my opinion, Mina wins hands down over every other character in terms of brains and guts. I think she’s even a better psychologist than Seward and Van Helsing combined. And of course, if she’d been treated more like an equal by the others things would have turned out quite differently.
I totally agree with this, but I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why I enjoy Mina’s journals better than Harker’s. I guess I come away with a sense that Harker’s writing is almost an attempt to deceive himself, convince himself that what he’s experiencing isn’t believable, is beyond reason. Whereas Mina seems more genuinely inquisitive, more open to discovering whatever there is to discover? Is that a legitimate response to the text? Or is it just that I find Harker a total ponce.
I think it’s a legitimate response to the text and your comment prompted me to think a little more about the differences between them. To me, Mina’s character is looking forward (learning the typewriter, inquisitive, etc.) while Jonathan’s is looking back to the century that is ending. I think they’re reflecting what was probably a common tension of the turn of the century.
after I posted this my friend Sean sent me a link to mustachioed Drac:
http://heyoscarwilde.com/mike-mignola-dracula/
Who would you have cast in the movie other than Keanu?
From what we’ve seen of Harker so far, I’d cast Michael Cera.
Re Valente’s comment about Dracula’s appearance (ft 4 in Clare’s essay:
Valente also draws a parallel between Drac’s physical atributes and the malefactor of Victorian crimonology. These attributes are best outlined by Cesare Lombroso in his book “Criminal Man” (1875): bushy eyebrows, pointed ears, aquiline nose. Also keep in mind as well that Stoker started working on this book in March 1890, less than 18 months after the infamous Jack the Ripper murders. (Stoker even mentions dear old Jack in a preface he wrote to an Icelandic edition of Dracula (1901).
i am totally with you on harker. i’ve read the argument that he was crafted to act as a victorian mary-sue, but i think it goes beyond that. he seems to be–for lack of a better term–something of a ditz. i think the evidence of this is fairly prevalent in chapter one, in his complete overuse of “picturesque” to describe, like, all of his surroundings. i *don’t* think this is simply poor writing on stoker’s part, though that is a possibility. i believe there are other small cues, as well, but i shouldn’t procrastinate too much at work : )
oh, & i’m with you on mustachioed dracula, too! yikes.
I have to admit that I was afraid that Stoker’s writing was at fault during the first chapters. Now that we’ve read the parts about Mina and Lucy, I’m less concerned. I think that the bland writing for the first few chapters was actually characterization of Harker.
i think mina wears the pants in more ways than one. her friendship with lucy seems a little racy to me.
Interesting parallel between Dracula’s appearance & the Victorian masturbator. I wonder what sort of appearance might Dracula have had to draw the same parallels in the 50’s. Maybe Elvis? I was reading this post on Letters of Note yesterday and was pretty intrigued by the author’s position RE sexual degradation of the youth: http://bit.ly/j2KIi (although maybe that’s trying to hard to relate to this discussion!)
Additionally, I love the idea of Dracula with a mustache. Having recently shaved my beard into one, I’m imagining the kinds of odd tics and personal affectations related to said mustache which may not be documented in the actual text. You can bet there’s a lot of evil twisting of the corners, that’s for sure (which also happens to be one of my newly acquired habits…)
Oh, and how has there not yet been a post on all the Hamlet references? I know that some folks haven’t or didn’t read IJ earlier this summer, but man, that seems like fertile territory to bring the discussion together at some point.
Re Hamlet references.
Yes, there are several – and more to come. In Chapter 3, Harker breaks off his diary “like the ghost of Hamlet’s father.” This allusion to the supernatural helps set up a central tension in the novel: the tenuous boundaries between the rational word of science amnd the intuitive realm of the supernatural.
Also in Chapter 3, Harker quotes Prince Hamlet (”My tablets! quick, my tablets! ‘Tis meet that I put it down”). However, Harker (or Stoker) misquotes Shakespeare here. Stoker’s Shakespearean allusions invariably came from the Lyceum’s actors’ copies and prompt books. Occasional errors were made and liberties taken, enough to lead G Bernard Shaw to accuse Irving of “Bardicide”.
As a side thought to this: the edition I have puts the “and men like trees” line as being a biblical reference. But the way it was used made me think of Birnam Wood in Macbeth. Why are scholars certain (if they are) that this is biblical when given the many other Shakespeare references in Dracula
I’m reading the Norton Critical edition and their note for this gives both the biblical and Macbeth reference.
The novel contains numerous biblical allusions, so one can go either way with this one. Personally, I think of it in terms of Macbeth. A clear parallel occurs with the three female vampires in Dracula’s castle – the three witches in Macbeth. Actually, Stoker himself (through Harker) made the connection in a line that was removed from the MS before publication.
‘Stoker’s Shakespearean allusions invariably came from the Lyceum’s actors’ copies and prompt books’
I didn’t know that! That’s fascinating.
I know it would spoil the story, but if Harker could climb out the window and across the wall to what he thought was Dracula’s room, why couldn’t he climb down the wall and escape on foot?
it seems pretty clear the natural world is not trustworthy in the Dracula orbit, generally speaking. furthermore, if you knew those wolves were all around the castle, would you want to risk running into them?
To this end, isn’t that what we presume he *did* do? Attempt to climb down during the day, knowing that if he stayed another night, those girls would get him?
While we’re on the subject of boys vs. girls I’ve been really enjoying the symmetry of the three female vampires lusting after Harker and the three panting suitors lusting after Lucy, and again Lucy beats Harker hands down by having more than a passive response to the situation, vampire trances aside. Lucy also states that she wishes she could marry them all, a sentiment that Harker seemed to share during his first encounter with the vampires…
Really? And what if you were an atheist/rationalist?
I think I’d still be concerned! Just because I didn’t believe in god wouldn’t mean that I would think they were totally full of crap.
I think that Jonathan Harker’s character represents, for lack of a better term, the scientific method.
Its heavy reliance on observing the obvious, complete dismissal of “magic.” Its naivete, in a way, that the world is as it announces itself to him in the most obvious of ways. Even when he observes things that do not fit in this world of natural law, his conclusions rarely go beyond a sense of foreboding, fear, or catatonia.
Later on, the trances… I thought those were his mysterious escape from his Westernism… the seduction of the dangerous, mystical East… but then I digress into the xenophobia issues.
He could also represent some form of religion. The contrast between Eastern Orthodox, which still used symbols, was mysterious, etc. to Western Christians at the time.
I agree with this a lot. I think there are many attempts by Stoker to cover possible responses to a vampire, and I think Harker is not dim, but staunch in his ways. I mean sure, as the wise reader, you find him to be a moron– but in that circumstance, wouldn’t you try to talk yourself out of your “nonsense” too? No one ever wants to believe that the worst is happening to them, even when it is.
About Harker, I wonder if he’s just someone who’s conscientious about his work and who thinks of the people he encounters as “simple folk” with superstitions, etc. Maybe if he’d been given explicit information by a figure of authority, he might’ve reconsidered the trip.
After he is in the castle and meets Dracula, maybe he is not in total control *and* he doesn’t know it. We are never told how Dracula is able to — for lack of a better word — “seduce” people. Why do people allow him to partake of them, so to speak? Maybe he has an effect on people that they don’t realize.
Regarding the Dracula with the mustache, didn’t Gary Oldman have one in Bram Stoker’s Dracula at some point in the movie? Somehow, after reading the book Oldman doesn’t seem like the Dracula in the book – Christopher Lee seems to fit much better.
On the “seduction” point, I agree. Harker is not in control and the lack of control appears driven, or at least initiated, by sexual desire.
What do they call it in True Blood? Glamouring people?
In Stephen King’s Firestarter, the Push?
Therein is the mystery, right? This seductive foreign guy who’s hundreds of years old manages to poison the blood of our women… and they *like* it!
(And, no vampiresses come with him to England. Hm.)
You can’t deny that Coppola’s Dracula did some great casting. Keanu’s detached California dude and Tom Waits as Renfield were the most memorable. I too can’t wait to re-watch it again.
Oh I didn’t realize that was Tom Waits! It was great casting, I can’t help but think of him when I read the Renfield scenes.
Is anyone else confused about how Mina has so much independence? I know that she had her own job, but doesn’t it seem odd that she can just up and travel to Budapest all by herself? No maid, no guardian, no companion? To meet some dude that she’s only engaged to and not married to? Where are her parents? Or if they’re not around, shouldn’t she have some old aunt yelling at her? Her character really seems to breaking some stereotypes here.
Would this have been shocking to readers in 1897? Would she have been considered radical? I think it’s interesting that such a strong female character is engaged to Harker, who most of us consider rather weak and bumbling.
From what I recall the first time I read the book, Mina is meant to represent “the modern woman.”
It states in the text that Mina is also an orphan, so I imagine she’s always had to work for her bread.
Mina mentions the ‘New Woman’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Woman) a few times in the text, but mostly to poke fun at the idea.
Re: the old Whitby man’s dialect–
I laughed at the term”air-blebs”. Sounds like an a cross between a bubble and a blister, full of nonsense. But “thruff-stean,” meaning a table tomb covering the entire corpse doesn’t sound at all like what it’s supposed to be, except the “stean” (stone) part.
By the way I think Ethan Hawke would make a good Harker. He plays handsome, trouble-prone and dim (as well as fake dim) well.
OMG YES to how much of a dimwit Harker is — I had the exact same reaction wrt the shaving-mirror (altho I am v behind on blogging it). And yeah, Mina is a much more interesting and independent character — I wonder deliberately? Harker seems more sort of stereotypically ‘feminine’ (the BAD parts of that stereotype), down to being the princess kept captive in the tower and preyed upon.
You’re dead on about Mina. There is a reason there are more sequels to Dracula featuring Mina than featuring any of the other original novel cast of characters outside of Van Helsing. She, VH, and Dracula himself are THE most compelling characters throughout the novel. I think it’s notable that when Alan Moore was picking and choosing characters from this period to include in his “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” comic book series, he pulled Mina from Dracula rather than Van Helsing who would have been the more obvious choice.
Dracula is totally new to me in that I have neither read the book before, nor seen any of the movies. I’m doing my best to approach the book without reading into it any of the popular representations of Dracula (which seem to border on cartoonish).
One thing that strikes me, in the context of vampirism as it relates to sexuality, is that Dracula himself seem to be bisexual/omnisexual. By this I mean that while his sexuality seems both masculine and dominating, but it seems to be directed at men and women alike. His attentions to Harker in the first few chapters seemed filled with such tension.
This seems surprising, given the time of writing, but I can’t claim to be an expert in that area. Am I out in left field on this?
Not really surprising, Prolixian. Consider that the 1890s was the decade of Oscar Wilde – the scandals, the trial, the imprisonment. I would not go so far as to claim (as have a couple of literary critics)that these events inspired the novel, given that Stoker did significant work on the early chapters during 1890. But they may have been on Stoker’s mind as he wrote. Then, too, you may or may not be aware of the fact that in 1878, back in Dublin, Stoker had married Florence Balcombe, who had previously been courted by – you guessed it! – Oscar Wilde.
No, I don’t have trouble picturing Dracula with a mustache. I have trouble picturing Dracula without a mustache. If Stoker says he had a mustache, he had a mustache. John Carradine played Dracula with a mustache in House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula.