Daily Dracula

[RoseMorninStar]

It seems there was only one casualty on Dracula's return trip of which we are aware (Petrof Skinsky, the man who was hired to take the box off the ship). Given the wanton destruction of those on the Demeter, I find it odd.

[Frelga]

It's gone! It's done!

[RoseMorninStar]

I have thoughts but I was going to wait to see if others were finished before discussing. In addition to reading Dracula, I simultaneously read the summary & analysis from Spark Notes which added to my impressions of the work.

*edited for syntax errors

[Jude]

A "years later" epilogue - just like Harry Potter!

[RoseMorninStar]

As I mentioned earlier, I read the Spark Notes summary & analysis for the appropriate chapters simultaneously with the Dracula emails which added some depth and background to the story so perhaps I'm going to take too deep a dive into my thoughts and reaction to the novel. I tried to read this tale we all kinda grew up 'knowing' through new eyes/without prejudice. It wasn't terribly hard to do as there is a lot in the novel I was not familiar with.

The epistolary style of writing is clever for this type of tale, as having multiple narrators/ different people telling the same story lends to the idea that they all can't be crazy/lying. Official papers, ship's logs, newspaper articles all lend reality/authenticity to the events.

Given the time the story was written it is understandably Victorian with chaste -especially female- purity and worthiness vs. sexual overtones attributed to evil and uncleanliness. However what caught my attention is that it is heavy on Catholic propaganda, superstition, and customs with reliance on the miraculous power of the host and crucifix (which was the norm/encouraged pre-Vatican II, 1962-1965) along with forgiveness and redemption after 'becoming clean'. This made me curious what faith Bram Stoker practiced and, to my surprise he was born and raised Protestant/Anglican (Church of Ireland). Furthering this idea is an article I ran across, Keeping the faith: Catholicism in "Dracula" which has some interesting things to say:

The novel’s religious analogy is obvious: in the most basic
of his many perversions of Catholic lore, Count Dracula is the figurative anti-Christ who promises
eternal life through the ingestion not of sacramental wine representing the blood of Christ, but of actual
human blood.

Later in the article discussing subsequent film adaptations;

This Dracula movie refrains
from mentioning the “P” or “C” words but in a film with so thin a plot any edifice is plainly visible:
Gabriel Van Helsing is saving the world from Dracula on behalf of the Catholic Church

.

Stoker may have been using religious and Victorian stereotypes much as he used the trope of the backward, superstitious Eastern European peasant vs. the cultured and educated Englishman. The collaboration with the Gypsies was also interesting. I couldn't quite figure out what was in it for them, but it came across to me a statement of their character as a whole, that they would collaborate/do any unholy thing for money. I'd be curious what you all thought.

There is an earlier Vampire tale/gothic novella which inspired Stoker, Carmilla. It is by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu which, from the Wikipedia entry sounds as if there are sexual/lesbian overtones. I suppose such novels were a way of allowing such taboo topics to titillate yet fly under the radar in polite Victorian society. This novella is available on Project Guttenberg.