Bram Stoker's Dracula

According to my Tumblog, which I updated sometime right after starting the book, I spent a little over a month trying to read Bram Stoker's Dracula.

In the book's defense, I have also been working on NaNoWriMo, so I've had my mind on other things, but as I also had most of the month of October to try to read this extremely well known novel, I don't think this escuse really counts. As it turns out, Dracula really is just one of those stories it takes me an unnecessarily long time to wade through.

Normally when writing a review, I start with a brief summary of the story at hand; I would skip that this time, citing Dracula as such a well known story that you shouldn't need a summary, but take a moment to think about it: What do you really know about the story of Dracula? Unless you've read the book or are in some way better informed than I was, I'm going to assume it's very little. I started this book with a basic understanding of the key elements, and got a few pages in before realizing that I actually had no idea what the story was.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is about a man named Johnathan Harker - but it's also about his fiance, Mina, and her best friend Lucy, and a bunch of guys who are in love with Lucy, and some old Dutch doctor, all of whom are being terrorized by a vampire named Count Dracula.

Side note - Oldman's Dracula is apparently
the only Dracula who even attempted
to fit the description in the novel.

The story actually opens up with Johnathan, however, who is visiting the Count's estate in Transylvania to help him purchase a house in England. This section of the novel is written totally from the journal entries of Johnathan, who knows nothing about who the Count really is, though it's obvious from the writing that the reader is supposed to have figured it out early on. Within the first 30 pages, Johnathan kind of realizes what's going on (though he doesn't make the leap to 'vampire') and finds that there's no way for him to escape.

About ten pages later, we're introduced to vampire chicks, women who Dracula apparently turned into vampires as well and who almost kill Johnathan. This part stunned me at first; how long have there been vampire chicks in Dracula, and why does no one ever reference them when speaking about the story?

(Having read the book, I now know the answer; it's because they don't do anything. As far as I can tell, they appear at the beginning to give the slower readers a chance to catch up, and are only referenced again as part of the clean up.)

Johnathan finally stops writing, so we assume he either is killed or escapes, and the prose jumps to his fiance, Mina. The rest of the novel is written entirely through letters, telegraphs, and journal entries from any of the various characters, first giving us tedious exposition on themselves before something mysterious starts to happen to Lucy, Mina's best friend, 60 pages later.

The story continues on, slowly and tediously, from there.

Despite the screenshots, there's virtually none of this in the actual book.

I'm not a big fan of the 'epistolary novel' way of telling the story. When done correctly, journal entries or letters can be an interesting and useful way of getting information to the readers, but in Stoker's Dracula it just felt like a gimmick. This means many unrealistically over-detailed entries, where Mina recalls to perfection every word spoken in a pivotal conversation, as well as giving us a two paragraph description of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. At least twice, someone, after writing a well thought out and detailed description of the day's events culminating in a narrow escape, ends their entry describing how they are currently sitting in hiding.

Not that there was enough action in Dracula to give the reader much reason to be anxious. I understand that Dracula was written over a hundred years ago, and that people back then didn't value high suspense as much as we do now, but Edgar Allan Poe's writings came even before Bram Stoker's, and I find Poe to be very skilled at providing anxiety.

Another rather accurate portrayal.

Another thing that surprised me about finally reading Dracula was meeting Dr. Van Helsing for the first time. Not having done any research, all I knew of him was that he was a kick-butt vampire hunter, a la that ridiculous Hugh Jackman movie. Even granting that the movie, which I did not see, was probably extremely over the top, I figured Van Helsing must at least be a strong and powerful vampire hunter.

In reality, Van Helsing isn't even a vampire hunter; despite his awesome name, Van Helsing is just a normal, aging Dutch doctor, albeit one with a very open mind.

I say open mind, because it's Helsing who finally figures out what's going on, even after all the obvious and frankly explicit clues given ('Lucy is deathly pale, as if her blood is being drained, and there are two small holes in her neck - maybe she just needs more sleep?'). Well into the novel, and too late to save poor Lucy's life, Dr. Van Helsing realizes that they are in fact being terrorized by a vampire, and leads the men into taking action against the monster.

The novel doesn't start to pick up until around page 270, well into the second half, when Johnathan returns to his now-wife Mina, after a night of vampire hunting with the other men, and writes in his journal "Mina looks paler than usual." Of course he assumes that the tasks of the recent days have been "too great a strain for a woman to bear," and I slammed my forehead into my palm.

At this point, Mr. Stoker must have decided he needed to start wrapping his story up, for there's no more dilly-dallying around, and after Dr. Van Helsing realizes what is happening with Mina, it takes them only about 100 pages to corner Count Dracula, chase him all the way back to Transylvania, and finally kill him.

(I'm not going to bother writing a spoiler alert - you all saw this coming, right?)

I did not enjoy Dracula - I think this is probably clear to you by now. By no means do I regret finally reading the story, but I feel like I could have gotten just as much out of a five-page summary as I did by actually reading the book. The plot was tedious, the characters slow to the uptake, and all of the 'vampirism rules' confusing to follow (though apparently vampires can't enter a house without being invited in first, which is comforting to know). In my opinion, if you're looking for a good period horror story to read, you should try Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which achieves more suspense and fear as a black comedy than Dracula does as a straight-up, monotonous, 'horror'.