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A review by mamthew42
Dracula by Bram Stoker
3.0
I really enjoyed the first half of Dracula. It often feels surprisingly contemporary. The epistolary style feels punchy and limits the novel's perspective in a rewarding way. It's broken into a series of shorter episodes each with their own rising and falling action, with some new or different characters featuring in each episode, and this pacing allows each section to stand on its own. The opening story, in which co-protagonist Jonathan Harker finds himself trapped in Dracula's castle, is tense and mysterious, slowly revealing Count Dracula's abilities and motives. The next few stories all introduce new characters or reveal new facets to Dracula in unique styles and subgenres.
That's not to say the book hasn't aged. It's racist in ways that are uncomfortable but not unexpected for the time, and it's considerably more bio-essentialist than I'm used to even from other writings from the time. I'm used to a certain amount of discomfort when reading classics, but they usually don't emphasize fabricated neurological and psychological differences between men and women as much as Dracula does. A lot of this is because Stoker wanted characters who were well-versed in science, to contrast with the magic and religiosity of the vampiric realm, and science at the time was 70%-80% nonsense. Jonathan is a professional lawyer and amateur physiognomist, while Dr. Seward runs an asylum for the criminally insane, and Dr. Van Helsing is, as his wikipedia page notes, "a doctor, professor, lawyer, philosopher, scientist and metaphysic." This slate of characters versed in once-respected quackery calls for a whole lot of scientific jargon that at best doesn't hold up to scrutiny and at worst is offensive and harmful.
After the halfway mark, once the characters all agree that vampires exist and that Dracula is a threat, the novel slows to a halt. For much of the back half of the book, most of the entertainment I got out of it was through laughing at these rich himbos all bumbling through failed plans to kill an ancient evil. A lot of the story involves the characters trying to figure out Dracula's real-estate holdings while somehow missing that Dracula's clearly feeding off Jonathan's wife the entire time, which offers some comedy but gets repetitive. Several times, I caught my eyes glazing over yet another passage about despair and goodness and fake science.
One point I'm interested in, and might look to see if there's any scholarship on, is why Stoker, an Irish Protestant, wrote a book where a bunch of Protestant characters - at least one of which states outright that he views Catholic iconography as blasphemous - learn that the only things holy enough to keep hellspawn at bay are crucifixes, rosaries, and eucharist wafers. I'm curious if Stoker was making some kind of point, or if Catholic iconography was seen as more exotic and therefore more conducive to the horror genre.
I'm glad I read this book, and I really enjoyed a good chunk of it. It's given me greater insight into the origins of the vampire mythology, and it's entertained me too, even if it slows down considerably around the halfway mark.
That's not to say the book hasn't aged. It's racist in ways that are uncomfortable but not unexpected for the time, and it's considerably more bio-essentialist than I'm used to even from other writings from the time. I'm used to a certain amount of discomfort when reading classics, but they usually don't emphasize fabricated neurological and psychological differences between men and women as much as Dracula does. A lot of this is because Stoker wanted characters who were well-versed in science, to contrast with the magic and religiosity of the vampiric realm, and science at the time was 70%-80% nonsense. Jonathan is a professional lawyer and amateur physiognomist, while Dr. Seward runs an asylum for the criminally insane, and Dr. Van Helsing is, as his wikipedia page notes, "a doctor, professor, lawyer, philosopher, scientist and metaphysic." This slate of characters versed in once-respected quackery calls for a whole lot of scientific jargon that at best doesn't hold up to scrutiny and at worst is offensive and harmful.
After the halfway mark, once the characters all agree that vampires exist and that Dracula is a threat, the novel slows to a halt. For much of the back half of the book, most of the entertainment I got out of it was through laughing at these rich himbos all bumbling through failed plans to kill an ancient evil. A lot of the story involves the characters trying to figure out Dracula's real-estate holdings while somehow missing that Dracula's clearly feeding off Jonathan's wife the entire time, which offers some comedy but gets repetitive. Several times, I caught my eyes glazing over yet another passage about despair and goodness and fake science.
One point I'm interested in, and might look to see if there's any scholarship on, is why Stoker, an Irish Protestant, wrote a book where a bunch of Protestant characters - at least one of which states outright that he views Catholic iconography as blasphemous - learn that the only things holy enough to keep hellspawn at bay are crucifixes, rosaries, and eucharist wafers. I'm curious if Stoker was making some kind of point, or if Catholic iconography was seen as more exotic and therefore more conducive to the horror genre.
I'm glad I read this book, and I really enjoyed a good chunk of it. It's given me greater insight into the origins of the vampire mythology, and it's entertained me too, even if it slows down considerably around the halfway mark.