This post is a follow-up to a post I wrote way back in 2020, right in the midst of the pandemic, as part of a series called ‘Stay in and Read’. For that blog series, I recommended books that could provide a good ‘escape’ during that troubled and uncertain time. I could argue that we’re still in uncertain and troubling times now and, even if you don’t agree, who doesn’t want to escape into a good book every once and a while?
That’s why I wanted to take some time AGAIN to talk about why I love reading Dracula around this time of year. It’s spooky, it’s sexy, it’s surprising, and in my humble opinion it’s a superior experience to any adaptation I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot of them!).
Here are four great reasons to read (or re-read) Bram Stoker’s Dracula:
Reason #1: It’s a tale of friendship
For me, Dracula is the original Scooby Doo. At its heart, it’s about a group of people who are trying to solve a mystery and defeat a dastardly villain intent on destroying their society. Lots of films try to make this into a romantic story, but to me it’s a tale of friendship and camaraderie. This makes for a very fun reading experience as the motley crew of heroes (including a young lawyer, a cowboy, an English Lord and a vampire hunter) try to problem solve and defeat a foe much more powerful than themselves.
Reason #2: It’s got a cool, epistolary style
An epistolary style narrative is one that’s made up of documents like letters, journal entries etc. This gives the book a wonderful, almost ‘true crime’ feel as the reader tries to piece together the story from these fictional ‘found’ documents. It makes it feel more real (and thus more spooky), but also it gives you insight into the minds of several different characters. It creates a sense of claustrophobia as well, particularly in the first section where Jonathan Harker is trapped at Castle Dracula (which has to be one of the most suspenseful and chilling sections of any book I’ve ever read!)
Reason #3: It’s very well-written
Stoker is a master at creating a gothic vibe through his foreboding descriptions of the ominous Castle Dracula perched at the edge of a precipice or the spooky graveyard where Lucy’s body is laid. Check out this passage from Harker’s journal, as he recounts his imprisonment at the castle:
The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.
But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view I explored further; doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit.
The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!
I wanna zoom in on one part of the sentence there: ‘doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted.’ Do you see how the sentence itself embodies the sense of endless locked doors through the repetition (‘doors, doors’) but also through the punctuation: putting only a comma after each word so the sentence itself is just an endless hallway of doors without a break? It’s not gory, but it is quite a scary image indeed.
Reason #4: It’s a fascinating insight into the mind of a Victorian man
Novels are one way to learn about history. Dracula, like all books, is a product of its time and place and it’s interesting to note what, exactly, is to be feared in the book. Sometimes that is female sexuality: embodied most memorably in the character of Lucy but also Dracula’s horrifying wives (By the way, I saw a production at the Edinburgh Fringe festival where the wives were played by two girls and one guy and to be honest this queer re-imagining felt completely natural. Dracula does have some homoerotic undertones, and while I’m not a big fan of speculating about the private sexualities of long dead authors, Stoker certainly might have been a queer man. At the very least, I think both men AND women in the book are described in sexually charged ways). There’s also an uncomfortable strand of ‘fear of the foreigner’ in the book (Dracula as as Eastern European man encroaching on Harker’s native England), as well as lots of meditations on science and superstition (big concepts in Victorian England).
So we’re thinking about the role of women, about deviant sexualities, about an increasingly globalized world, about old religion and new science, about how society should be run and who should be in charge. It’s a window into a time, in addition to just a great, spooky adventure!
I could give many more reasons, but those are the ones that came up! This is a fascinating and totally gripping book. Please let me know if you have read it or if you’d like to read it, as I’d love to hear your thoughts. I love curling up with it each year and sinking my teeth (he he he) into the story.
Madeira Mondays are posted on the first Monday of every month and explore history and historical fiction. If you enjoyed this post please share it, subscribe to the blog, or you can support the blog by buying me a coffee on Kofi! There are many more historical adventures and journeys to share, and I thank you so much for reading! 🙂
Carly Brown 