Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897)

Though not what I immediately think of when I hear the phrase "Victorian novel", Bram Stoker's Dracula was just that.

I found it particularly interesting to consider the role of women in Victorian times, the restrictions upon and the challenges faced by Mina and Lucy (and the peripheral characters, including those who appear as only brief references in newspaper reports as victims of violent attacks).

In Victorian times, Dracula was primarily viewed as a fantastic story, an adventure novel, something entertaining and sensational, but now it is recognized as a classic. My thoughts on it below are also cross-posted to Buried In Print.

In Dracula, you might expect a traditional tale of fright, narrated by the one who's holding the end of the flashlight (er, torch) so that his face is illuminated in the spookiest way possible.

But, no. Bram Stoker's tale is kaleidoscopic. It's comprised of Dr. Seward's notes on Renfield's insanity, Lucy's and Mina's diaries, Jonathan Harker's diary and letters, excerpts from papers like "The Pall Mall Gazette" and "The Escaped Wolf", and telegrams.

And that's not all that surprised me about this story.

Did you know:

* Dracula is hairy?
"His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion."

Yup, somewhere it even said that he had hair growing out of his palms. How did I not know that?

* There is such a thing as a wholesome-looking puncture?

Nope, this description is not of that sort, but the other sort, the unwholesome-looking sort, apparently.

"Just over the external jugular vein there were two punctures, not large, but not wholesome-looking. There was no sign of disease, but the edges were white and worn-looking, as if by some trituration."

* The mere mention of white in a passage with a lot of red makes the red even redder, just like the horror victim's white dress in the movies?

Blood. Red. White. Crimson. You'll see...

"The thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam."

But what really surprised me about this story?

It really did creep me out. Not in an imagine-if-a-contemporary-writer-had-written-that-how-scary-it-would-have-been" way. But in a plain-old-eerie-chilling-me way.

"All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own."

I don't know if it was originally published in October, but it would have been a great marketing tactic (and it really did feel like a book that was written to sell, not like a classic in the traditional sense); that would definitely be the perfect time of year to read it.

"All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own."

PS Thanks for the hosting of this challenge.