Dracula I

SUMMARY

Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, travels to Castle Dracula in the Eastern European country of Transylvania to finish a real estate deal with a nobleman named Count Dracula. When he gets there many of the locals give him charms to defend him from demons or any other threat. Harker stays in Dracula’s castle and considers him a well educated and friendly gentleman. He soon realizes something is wrong and that he has become a prisoner in the castle. At this time he also notices that the count has unnatural powers. Meanwhile, in England, Harker’s fiancée, Mina Murray, keeps in touch with her friend Lucy Westenra. When Lucy suddenly starts sleep walking after the arrival of a Russian ship with no crew and a dead captain, Mina finds Lucy in a cemetery with a dark figure with red eyes standing over her. Mina later notices two bite marks on her neck. Unable to figure out what's...

wrong with Lucy, Mina and Dr. Seward, call Professor Van Helsing, Seward's mentor. Van Helsing determins that it is a vampire bite. After, Lucy is killed in a wolf attack and becomes a full vampire, they stab her in the heart and cut off her head to make sure she's really dead, and not just mostly dead. Van Helsing and a group track down Dracula to kill him. Mina has to hide in Dr. Seward's office at the assylum while the men go vampire hunting. Unfortunately Dracula goes there and he starts drinking Mina's blood. The men come back and find her being force-fed some of Dracula's blood. If they don't catch and kill Dracula quickly, Mina will turn into a vampire, like Lucy. Finally, Dracula leads them on a spectacular chase back to Transylvania, where they at least kill him. Mina is saved, and they all live happily ever after. Except for one of them who gets killed during the final fight.

• Tzvetan Todorov

The fantastic is between the Uncanny and the Marvellous. Gothic Literature.

• There are two different varieties of the fantastic:

1) The first kind of fantastic narration creates hesitation between the real and the illusory.

2) The second form of fantastic narrative creates hesitation between the real and the imaginary.

• According to Todorov there are three conditions which a work has to fulfill to be considered fantastic.

• The environment is shown by the scary, gloomy, dark and sinister places.
• Situations of calmness, happiness, and apparent solution of the plot announces chaos, disaster and calamity.
• Topics related to the immortality, death and evil forces

The fantastic stories could be classified in:

Those which have fantastic explanation, but not supernatural.

"Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. [...] The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation. ‘Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!’"

(Ch 2.)

"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 under 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." (Ch 2)

Mina is a very intelligent, well-educated woman. She's a schoolteacher, which means she earns her own income before her marriage and is financially independent.

She becomes a unifying force in the story, joining the main characters together for a common purpose.

Jonathan is the first character we meet in the novel when he travels to Transylvania on business.

He's supposed to meet with a nobleman named Count Dracula to help him buy a house in London.

He is described as a "quiet, businesslike gentleman," "uncommonly clever," and "full of energy" (Ch. 17)

Seward is the administrator of an insane asylum not far from Count Dracula's first English home, Carfax.

As a psychiatrist, Seward enjoys using the most up-to-date equipment, including using a recording phonograph to record his interviews with his patients and his own notes.

Lucy's like a child: she's blonde and innocent and seems very vulnerable, which inspires everyone around her to protect her.

Everyone loves Lucy. She is proposed by three different men, besides Van Helsing thinks she's the sweetest thing ever, and even Mina can't stop talking about how gorgeous Lucy is.

He's a professor, He's from Dutch, and he's an expert in many sciences. Besides knowing all about medicine (both modern and ancient), superstitions, and religion, he is Jhon Seward's master, "... who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world." (ch 9)

• STRUCTURE

"How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of later-day belief may stand forth as simple fact. There is throughout no statement of past things wherein memory may err, for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary, given from the standpoints and within the range of knowledge of those who made them."

Dracula is written in epistolary form mainly throughout a collection of journal entries, letters, and telegrams written or recorded by its main characters.

The collection of documents is like a stack of evidence being presented at court.

JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

CUTTING FROM ‘THE DAILYGRAPH’, 8 AUGUST (PASTED IN MINA MURRAY’S JOURNAL)

MINA MURRAY’S JOURNAL

DR. SEWARD’S DIARY (Kept in phonograph)

LOG OF THE ‘DEMETER’

TELEGRAM. SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM

LUCY WESTENRA’S DIARY

MEMORANDUM LEFT BY LUCY WESTENRA

THE PALL MALL GAZETTE 18 September.

LETTER, MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA

"Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkey-land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph!" (Count Dracula, Ch. 3)

Deuteronomy 12:23

Only be sure not to eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.

"The blood is the life" (Ch. 11)

She committed crimes in order to bathe in or drink their blood, believing that this way she preserved her youth.

Dracula appeared younger after feeding.

Fantastic Literature, Gothic Novel.

The Gothic genre is a kind of fiction that involves horror and supernatural events.

According to Jorge Luis Borges and Todorov's Fantastic Literature Theory, Dracula novel fits perfectly into the Fantastic Gothic horror genre.

It is necessary to consider each one of the characteristics of fantastic literature.

The weather in the novel is shown by dark, windy and scary sets.

"Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket."

"The excitement of the passengers grew greater. [...] I had to hold on. The road grew more level, and we appeared to fly along. Then the mountains seemed to come nearer to us on each side and to frown down upon us. We were entering on the Borgo Pass. One by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed upon me with an earnestness which would take no denial. These were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that same strange mixture of fear-meaning movements which I had seen outside the hotel at Bistritz—the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye”.

“I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place. In the gloom the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several dark ways led from it under great round arches, it perhaps seemed bigger than it really is. I have not yet been able to see it by daylight. (Chapter I, page 27)

“I only slept a few hours when I went to bed, and feeling that I could not sleep any more, got up. I had hung my shaving glass by the window, and was just beginning to shave. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard the Count’s voice saying to me, ‘Good morning.’ I started, for it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me (Chapter II. Page 47)

"The (garlic) flowers which had been round her neck we found upon her mother’s bosom, and her throat was bare, showing the two little wounds which we had noticed before, but looking horribly white and mangled." (Chapter 12)

“By-and-by, however, as I was curious to know how time was passing, I struck a match, and by its flame looked at my watch. It was within a few minutes of midnight. This gave me a sort of shock, for I suppose the general superstition about midnight was increased by my recent experiences. I waited with a sick feeling of suspense. Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night. At the first howl the horses began to strain and rear, but the driver spoke to them soothingly, and they quieted down, but shivered and sweated as though after a runaway from sudden fright. (Chapter I, pages 21-22)

Bram Stoker, is totally interested in the latest and most up-to-date technology.

"It seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?" (Ch1)

"My friend John and I have consulted; and we are about to perform what we call a transfusion of blood – to transfer from full veins of one to the empty veins which pine for him." (Ch 10)

"The Professor thought a moment and said, ‘We must reduce the pressure and get back to normal conditions, as far as can be. The rapidity of the suffusion shows the terrible nature of his injury. The whole motor area seems affected. The suffusion of the brain will increase quickly, so we must trephine at once or it may be too late.’" (Ch 21)

All the high-tech objects contrast strongly with the superstitions and ancient traditions surrounding Dracula himself

"Then, with the fear on me of what might be, I drew a ring so big for her comfort, round where Madam Mina sat. And over the ring I passed some of the wafer, and I broke it fine so that all was well guarded."

In the end of the story it's only through the use of relatively primitive weapons and rituals based in superstition that the men are able to defeat the vampire.

Setting of the story

• The rest of the action takes place in and around London.

• Transylvania, where the novel starts, is in southeastern Europe.

• Castle Dracula is located on the eastern side of Romania, close to the Black Sea.

TECHNOLOGY AND MODERNIZATION

• GENRE

• REFERENCES

Sense of mystery and dread

Atmosphere

Vlad III (The impaler)

Elizabeth Bathory

The Blood Countess

Vampires and castles

Sounds that reflect mystery and fear

• TITLE

• Stoker planned on titling the novel "The Undeads"
• The main character was called Wampyr.
• Stoker found a book about Transylvania and a medieval Romanian prince named "Vlad Tepes".
• Vlad the Impaler's father was a member of the Order of the Dragon so he was called "Vlad Dracul"
• "Dracula" comes from the Romanian word "Dracul," which means "dragon" or "devil."

Count Dracula

Jonathan Harker

Van Helsing

• BIOGRAPHY

• Born in Clontarf (near Dublin, Ireland) on November 8, 1847

• Third of seven children.
• Stoker was a sickly child and spent a lot of time in bed.
• By 1878 he had moved to London.
• His biggest success was the famous Gothic Horror novel Dracula in 1897
• Stoker continued to write Gothic and fantasy fiction.
• He wrote a total of twelve novels and three collections of short stories.
• Bram Stoker died in London, England on 20 April 1912.

• Stoker was educated at Trinity College, where he won honors in science, mathematics, oratory, history, and composition.

• Historical Context

End of Victorian era:

• Dracula was written and published during the Victorian Period It represented the 19th century ideals.
• Queen Victoria as an example of these values.
• The Victorian society was very strict in terms of political system and the individual development.
• It was marked by the Industrial Revolution.
• Conflict between religious faith and scientific truth.
• An era of repression.
• The women’s role.
• This period suppressed the sensuality of Romanticism and the Gothic.
• The Victorian regime inspired the gothic and the mystery novels.

Franco-Bulgarian Philosopher born in 1939.

1) The story must be set in a “world of living people” and the reader can hesitate between a natural and a supernatural explanation of the events described.

2) Hesitation of a character. Ambiguity.

3) The reader has to reject allegorical and poetic interpretations.

Theoretical Approach

• Borges J. L .

Those which have a being or a supernatural event.

Those who admit the possibility of a natural explanation.

Mina Murray

Lucy Westenra

Dr. John

Seward