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How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
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Author:  JayCruz [ Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:42 pm ]
Post subject:  How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
My image of Dracula has been imprinted by Hollywood films. He's portrayed for the most part as an elegant looking dude with a weird accent who happens to have fangs. So I was caught a little by surprise when reading in chapter 2 that he has a white mustache:
Quote:
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white mous-
tache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour
about him anywhere


At another point in the chapter we get a more in depth description:
Quote:
His face was a strong — a very strong — aquiline, with high bridge of the
thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair
growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows
were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that
seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it un-
der the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly
sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness
showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were
pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and
the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor


This dude is not pretty. The only film that I know of that's been loyal to this description has been Nosferatu, with the exception of the mustache. So I wonder how many of you got caught off guard by this.
Author:  OneBigParty [ Mon Oct 05, 2009 6:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
Yes, I too was surprised after being mentally primed by so many images, to expect a sinister kind of appeal to the facial features, i.e. a degree of youth/beauty. Nothing irresistible about this man. His whiskers have the extreme hoariness of those over say, 80. Since his moustache is white and he has a unibrow, I wondered then, does he have a bright white growth of hair across his forehead, too? Then I read later that when he got angry his brows "that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal" and that answered it. There is hair on his palms so I wonder if he has a white-hairy body as well...although I would not like to see it. I think a bit of Father Time is in there for me. Dracula is immortal, with a patriarchal look. Time is a sort of vampire, yeah?

The white color of the hair is surprising because I thought beforehand that Victorians associated the vampire with beasts most of which, except in the Arctic, have dark colored fur.

Hair on the palms as a result of masturbation is an old wive's tale--did Stoker have this in mind? I don't think he did; I think this detail was there to indicate the beast aspect.

The Victorians at the time Stoker was writing had their knickers in a twist about the huge influx of Eastern Europeans to the UK, in particular Jews. If anyone can cite some, I would like to see scholarly work on whether Stoker shared these concerns because along with the fact that Dracula is going to England, the description of the face, the nose and the general sense of the homeliness here call to mind caricatures of various non-Anglo "others" in the Northern European canon and popular culture of that time, and later on--even though Stoker was building on previous vampire novels which may or may not have had ugly guys as the vampire--I'm not sure.

I'll bet there's many an analysis of how Dracula's image evolved into a sexy one somewhere that would be great to read. Somebody with common sense working on a new incarnation of him probably just thought "I mean, really, who the hell would want immortality if you have to look old forever."
Author:  Elizabeth [ Mon Oct 05, 2009 6:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
As for the hairy palms, as well as the long fingernails, eyebrows meeting over nose, and pointed ears, Stoker borrowed these from Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves.

A couple of scholars have done interesting work on Dracula as an anti-immigration novel, and even as anti-Semitic. For the former, see Stephen Arata, "Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization"; for the latter, see Carol Davison, "Blood Brothers: Dracula and Jack the Ripper" and Judith Halberstam, "Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker's Dracula." I can track down full bibliographical references should anyone need them. :)
Author:  OneBigParty [ Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
Wow, thank you very much for those references Elizabeth.
Author:  HumanComplex [ Tue Oct 06, 2009 7:07 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
Does anyone know if it is true that Stoker modeled Dracula after Sir Henry Irving? I can see some resemblance in his descriptions. I know when I picture the Count in my mind, it's a slightly taller, older, more hirsute version of Irving. I don't see a monster at all.
Very strong, aquiline, lofty, astonishing vitality... these don't seem to be words to describe something monstrous. Maybe otherworldly?
Author:  JayCruz [ Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
Thanks to all for the great comments you added. I'm with Human Complex on Dracula being something other than a monster. The whole novel feels more fairy tale-ish than horror. In fact, as the Signet Edition made sure to remind in it's introduction, Dracula is a gothic novel. While related to the horror genre, it's something very different from what we know as modern horror.
Author:  Elizabeth [ Tue Oct 06, 2009 6:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
HumanComplex wrote:
Does anyone know if it is true that Stoker modeled Dracula after Sir Henry Irving? I can see some resemblance in his descriptions. I know when I picture the Count in my mind, it's a slightly taller, older, more hirsute version of Irving. I don't see a monster at all.
Very strong, aquiline, lofty, astonishing vitality... these don't seem to be words to describe something monstrous. Maybe otherworldly?


That Stoker modeled Dracula after Irving is a widely held supposition. Some even go so far as to argue that the novel was Stoker's way of expressing his resentment of Irving for his domineering ways. Problem is - Stoker wrote an entire book (2 vols) on Irving and there is not a hint of resentment or bitterness. Unless one wants to argue from absence - and there's been plenty of that! :)

In my opinion, Irving as ACTOR had an influence on the novel, especially his role as Mephistopheles in "Faust", one of the Lyceum's most popular productions.
Author:  JRLSberro [ Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How Dracula Looks - Chapter 2
Elizabeth wrote:
In my opinion, Irving as ACTOR had an influence on the novel, especially his role as Mephistopheles in "Faust", one of the Lyceum's most popular productions.

Thank you for this! I'm reading the Norton Critical edition, and since I've stayed away from the supplementary materials so far I could only speculate on why the cover was graced with Irving as Mephistopheles.
Joan
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