Dracula Blog

Through the first few difficult pages, I was able to gather that Bram Stoker's Dracula would be another difficult read but still further in was able to conclude that it would be more gothic than our previous read, Wuthering Heights, which had the writing style of a gothic but not so much other aspects excluding the ghost story intertwined.

By the end of the first chapter of Draula, we are already dealing with religion and Catholic skepticism through the first character we meet, Jonathan Harker. This is first pointed out when Harker's landlord's wife comes to him and implores that he not go on his trip of business with Coutn Dracula over purchasing an estate. She warns him of the night when "all the evil things in the world will have full sway," (pg. 9) and offers him a crucifix to protect him. Though hestiant due to the "idolatrous" nature of the request, accepts it anyways.

The gothic increases from here, emphasizing the abnormal through a strange carriage ride to the count's castle followed by an even stranger stay at the castle where Harker notices his host "arriving" back at the castle only at night, not eating or drinking, not having a reflection in Harker's shaving mirror, and jumping towards Harker after he cuts his throat shaving, only to fall back when noticing the crucifix hanging around his neck.

The gentle gothic doesn't take long to turn to a tale of escape as the count has now held Harker prisoner. This, for me so far, has become the most intense writing of the gothic novels we have read. From three women all hungry for Harker, to Dracula intercepting Harker's letters to his wife, to allowing Harker to leave only to a pack of wolves waiting by the front entrance. While Harker wishes he could rid himself of Dracula with perhaps a gun, he notes that "no weapon wrought alone by man's hand would have any effect on him," (pg. 55).

The book doesn't follow traditional literary style, for after Jonathan Harker's diary passages, we enter letters exchanged from two other characters, Mina and Lucy, and then into Mina's diary. Following Mina and a doctor named John Seward, we follow even more enigmas and horrors such as Mina's missing husband experienced. Mina and Lucy have met up in a town supposedly haunted and Lucy begins to sleepwalk. Mina doesn't take much notice to it (as she is informed by Lucy's mother that her father suffered the same) until Mina herself begins to lose sleep over it and notices the Lucy is practically "watching her" as she sleep walks. This, along with Dr. Seward's newest patient with a tendency to eat living creatures, has begun to capture my interest even more than Jonathan's portion of the story with Dracula. I think this may be due to the fact that I am not familiar so much with these stories over the one of Dracula himself and with that, I cannot predict how this will yet tie into the story later on.