Renfield RIP

What else.

Harker

I’ve done a complete 180 on Harker at this point, and now kind of love him.

Firstly, here is a video of a Kukri knife in action. OK? Harker launches himself at Dracula, swinging one of those, and gets all his gold coins. That’s my man right there.

Secondly, easily one of the most chilling passages in the book:

To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting agent for their ghastly ranks.

Is that not the most ice-cold shit ever?

Quincey

Quincey is pretty bad-ass, you guys. Is his character meant to be symbolic of the U. S. of A? If so I think we’re looking pretty good. While everyone else is updating their Livejournals, Quincey’s prowling around the house, blowing out windows trying to ping off bats. When Dracula shows up at the Picadilly house, everyone else panics, but Quincey busts out some Green Beret hand signals to quickly get everyone positioned. GANGSTA.

Lord Godalming

Is this guy still in the book? I keep hearing about him, but am totally unable to point to any evidence of his presence. Frankly I’m inclined to agree with the note in the back of the Norton Critical Edition that suggests Godalming as the inspiration for Snuffleupagus.

Seward

Interestingly, I don’t have strong feelings about Seward one way or the other. I think I accept him as the main narrator of the story, essentially neutral to the story. Although, he’s the one who brought Van Helsing into the mix, and never blinks whenever his former mentor pulls a bunch of nonsense. Maybe he’s not so neutral after all.

Van Helsing

Van Helsing remains the worst. Nothing redeemable about this guy, whatsoever.

This past month, whenever someone mentions disbelief about something Van Helsing says or does, someone chimes in with a comment that explains why it makes some sort of sense, given the times or the dualistic nature of his and Dracula’s roles. But I challenge anyone to find meaning in this scene, from the end of Chapter XXIII:

…Mina looked at him appealingly as she asked–

“But why need we seek him further, when he is gone away from us?” He took her hand and patted it as he replied–

“Ask me nothing as yet. When we have breakfast, then I answer all questions.” He would say no more, and we separated to dress.

After breakfast Mina repeated her question. He looked at her gravely for a minute and then said sorrowfully:–

“Because, my dear, dear Madam Mina, now more than ever must we find him even if we have to follow him to the jaws of Hell!”

There is no reason (none!) why his reply has to wait until after breakfast. He’s just a manipulative, controlling ass, and I sincerely hope that this book will end with Vampire Mina chewing Van Helsing’s throat off.

This is how fan fiction is born, isn’t it.

Although, I have to note, Van Helsing is driving me crazy. The never telling anyone anything. The rushing here and there with little explanation or reason. I’m all: Let us in to your world, guy. Ugh and plus the accent. Actually let’s do this here:

Top 5 Annoying Accents In Order of Annoyingness:

1. Van Helsing
2. Thomas Bilder, the wolf-keeper guy
3. Mr Swales
4. Lucy’s impression of Quincey Morris (”I know I ain’t good enough to regulate the fixin’s of your little shoes”) (?)
5. Drac

That’s just my humble, folks, but annoying accents are almost a leit-motif in this book. Surely there’s a barista somewhere who will be more than happy to share his master’s thesis on the topic.

Van Helsing is on my nerves because in this section there are multiple places where—stay with me—Stoker has written Seward having recorded Van Helsing expounding at length on basically nothing. I’ll suspend disbelief about vampires no problem, and I guess I’m suspending disbelief of the fact that Renfield has broken out of his cell four times so far, so fine, I’ll suspend disbelief about everyone’s ability to perfectly remember everything everyone ever said, accent and all.

It serves me right to be irritated by Van Helsing—I put up a big fuss about Harker being all talk and no action. Now I get a guy who’s mostly action and very little explication, and when he does explicate, it makes no sense whatsoever. The parts where VH goes on at length (e.g. Side 2 of Diver Down KIDDING little VH joke there) are the only parts of the story that really drag for me, and they often plainly illuminate the author’s stitchwork. Arthur being the one to pound the stake into Lucy is a hugely affecting and memorable scene, but we arrive at that scene because Van Helsing first convinces himself and Seward that they don’t need to kill Lucy right away. Which, uh, what? We’re talking about the same undead creature of the night who is attacking children all over the city, yes?

But the fact that the seams occasionally show is OK, because what I’m really loving about this book, beyond the whole vampire thing, is that the entire story is basically one big crush note to writing. Every chapter is written by one of the characters. They rush to write in their diaries before they forget what happened. They send each other urgent notes and letters that would have been full of !!!s and OMGs if they’d been written 100 years later. The scene in Chapter 17 where Seward and Mina are talking shorthand vs. phonograph was really sweetly endearing to me, and struck me as the Victorian equivalent of a Moleskin vs. Tumblr debate.

Even if Stoker wasn’t the perfect writer, I like that we can see him trying, putting words down just as passionately as his characters do. Yes, garlic and decapitation and stakes through the heart are going to be what get the characters through the night, but recording everything, writing it down and sharing copies and making sure the stories they have inside them get told to the right people—that’s what fuels everyone’s passion here, that’s what gets them through the days. I like that Stoker seems to feel the same way about writing that I do.

The bulk of this section centers on Lucy, and the reactions of Mina, Dr Seward, and Van Helsing to her situation. What I want to focus on is an interesting change that occurs in Lucy, aside from the whole living-to-dead one: it seems like maybe there’s an upside to a relationship with Dracula.

We 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 your own face? I do, and I can tell you it is not a bad study, and gives you more trouble than you can well fancy if you have never tried it.”). She’s wholly consumed in her attempts to fend off two of her three suitors. She bursts into tears when she must tell them she doesn’t love them, and cries “like a baby” when she gets the proposal she wants. She asks “My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them?” Not exactly a candidate for the aforementioned New Woman. She’s girlish, immature, self-centered, and her sense of self is all wrapped up in her desire to be someone’s wife.

We next hear from Lucy in her own words in Chapter Nine. At this point we know something has happened to her, but we don’t know what. She was sleep-walking, there was maybe something creepy standing behind her on the cliffs, and she’s got some marks on her neck. She’ll get sick later, but for now, she feels better, healthier than she has in a while.

The change in Lucy in the Chapter Nine letter is pronounced. She starts: “Oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your own home with your husband.” Already we can tell she’s more outwardly focused, in tune with what Mina is going through. There’s a maturity in the language of this letter that we didn’t see previously. Perhaps the most telling indication of the change is this line: “Arthur says I am getting fat. By the way, I forgot to tell you that Arthur is here.” This is the same woman who wouldn’t stop talking about her suitors before, and now he’s mentioned almost in passing. What are we to make of the fact that Lucy now seems more pleasant, more well-adjusted, more like someone we’d actually want to be around?

Mina, meanwhile, is undergoing a change of her own. At first she’s terrified about not having heard from Jonathan in so long, but must deal with the fact at hand of Lucy’s strange behavior. Her diary moves back and forth between these two spheres, her worry for Jonathan and her concern for Lucy. Then Mina gets word from Jonathan, and rushes off to meet him. They get married, and almost immediately her concern for her friend drops to nothing.

Granted, Jonathan seems to be having a lengthy convalescence, for whatever reason. And Lucy seems much improved, although you would think Mina would question this—Lucy never remembered sleep-walking, why trust her just because she says she isn’t doing it anymore?
This passage in particular really struck me:

I wish I could run up to town for a day or two to see you, dear, but I dare not go yet, with so much on my shoulders; and Jonathan wants looking after still.

What’s on her shoulders? Wifely duties? Her hands were much more full with Lucy, but as soon as she gets married she can’t make time to check in with her friend? And look at the language Mina uses to describe Jonathan: “He has had some terrible shock, and I fear it might tax his poor brain if he were to try to recall it.” Those are her feelings about the guy she’s devoting herself  to? This seems a far cry from the woman who risked propriety by running off under-clothed and shoeless to save her friend in the middle of the night.

On the one hand we have Lucy, changed from girlishness to maturity by her interaction with Dracula. On the other hand, marriage has transformed Mina from a strong, independent woman into someone’s wife. It’s hard to know what Stoker might have intended. Has Dracula—evil incarnate, after all—done Lucy a disservice in leading her astray from her former concerns? This would imply that Mina’s path, from New Woman to doting wife, is modeling the ideal behavior. Or are we to wonder if Lucy isn’t better off, having been released of her former concerns by Dracula, and if Mina would have maintained her sense of self and her integrity as a friend without her wifely devotion to Jonathan? Is Dracula one big STFU Marrieds?

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.