Dracula. The very name brings to mind scenes of grotesque Gothic horror: looming castles with turrets circled by bats, fangs dripping with the blood of unsuspecting victims. I had imagined that Dracula would be a short thriller, but it is actually close to 500 pages, something which I think worked both to its advantage and disadvantage. There is great scope for character and plot development which Stoker utilises well, but there are also a number of scenes which must repeat tens of times throughout for no obvious reason. I actually listened to this in audiobook form, which meant that I could speed up any soul-destroyingly repetitive parts and distract myself by doing other things, but reading it physically must be very tedious at times. Something like reading Homer’s Catalogue of Ships, except it’s Dracula’s Boxes of Dirt.
That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Dracula; in fact, for the most part, I was engrossed. It is written in an unusual style, taking extracts from newspapers, the characters’ journals and letters, so that the reader has to piece together the plot as they go along. I found Jonathan Harker’s journal entries at the beginning the most riveting. The reader is plunged into the plot in just the first few chapters, as Harker rumbles down the dark road to the Count’s castle for the first time, with everyone he meets urging him not to go, and giving him crucifixes to ward off he knows not what. The anticipation builds to a truly climactic few chapters in which Harker realises that he is trapped within the castle, and witnesses Dracula emerging from his window in the darkness and scaling the wall like a lizard. Harker realises that the Count always has ‘business’ to attend to during untimely hours of the night, and begins to fear what his intimidating host might be up to. His entries end abruptly and in suspense, leaving the reader fearing that he has reached some grisly, premature end.
But we learn from his fiancee Mina’s journal that Harker managed to escape. From here the plot unfolds at a disappointingly slow pace, but its wonderfully unusual characters and exciting (albeit occasional) plot twists help keep readers intrigued. We are fascinated by the eccentric Dr van Helsing, gentlemanly Texan Quincey Morris, and the psychotic (yet empathetic?), spider-eating lunatic Dr Renfield. If these characters alone aren’t enough to attract your intrigue, try dramatic boat chases, intense hypnotisms, mysterious shipwrecks and a good few deaths along the way.
As per my usual, I would like to take a moment to make a political point. As I was reading, I thought to myself that the pre-20th century character trope of the brave, macho man and his helpless damsel-in-distress ostensibly evident in Dracula would cause outrage in my Goodreadsing peers. I was right about the outrage, but I don’t know that this trope was actually as evident as its critics would claim. Yes, the characters who travel land and sea to hunt down vampires, camp out in haunted graveyards and drive stakes through the demented corpses of their loved ones are all men. And they do do it on behalf of the women in their lives whose delicate constitutions surely could not handle the ghastliness. However, there are plenty of instances in which Mina Murray, for example, rises up and shows herself to be far more resilient and level-headed in times of crisis than her male counterparts. She even comes up with the plan that will lead to Dracula’s capture, and the men listen to her advice. They do not brush her opinion aside in the manner of patronising misogynists. Ultimately, Mina is just as involved in the turnout of events as the men are: Stoker does not allow her to sit by and swoon and faint as many of his contemporary authors might have.
Overall, I enjoyed this book very much, but couldn’t help thinking that Stoker could have omitted a hundred pages and still maintained that excellent wordsmithery that has given Dracula the deserving title of ‘classic literature.’