Journal of Dracula Studies3 (2001)
[Jenna Harris is completing a B.A. in
English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is currently working on
her first fantasy novel, In the Semblance of Truth. We offer this as an
undergraduate student’s commentary on Stoker’s novel and invite responses.]
“What I saw appalled
me. I felt my hair rise like bristles on
the back of my neck, and my heart seemed to stand still.” (Dracula 246)
I tremble at horror stories as much as the
next person, but as a twenty-first century reader, I did not have this reaction
to Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). This classic horror novel fell
completely flat on me, the moments of suspense or horror seeming infrequent and
insignificant. How could this have happened?
That
which causes horror, the feeling of the uncanny, has not changed. Sigmund Freud
maintains that uncanny experiences occur “when the distinction between
imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto
regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality” (244). This happens “either
when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by
some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once
more to be confirmed” (249). In other words, we get scared when something
threatening that we didn’t think possible occurs in our everyday life. The
threatening object usually involves something that we repressed as children or
else a superstition in which we no longer believe. Applying this to literature,
Freud notes that when “the writer pretends to move in the world of common
reality, ... he accepts as well all the conditions operating to produce uncanny
feelings in real life; and everything that would have an uncanny effect in
reality has it in his story” (250). This is why Stoker’s novel was able to
frighten his contemporaries more than it does modern readers. The causes of
horror have not changed; time has merely diminished the verisimilitude of the
original novel, and thus lessened its uncanny effect. For evidence of this, let
us consider the narrative format, setting, contemporary allusions and cultural
anxieties embedded in the text.
In
1897, Dracula’s realistic format enhanced the horror of the uncanny.
Stoker presents a series of journal entries and newspaper clippings “placed in
sequence” where “all needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history
almost at variance with the possibilities of later-day belief may stand forth
as simple fact” (5). Victorian legal courts used such journal entries and
newspaper clippings as evidence in their trials. To Victorian readers, the
novel was similar to a real case file in which they could examine the evidence
like detectives searching for a murderer. The world of the text seemed to
adhere to the rules that governed their reality.
What
is acceptable as court evidence, however, has changed in the modern world.
Written journals can be forged, individuals often lie, and newspaper stories
like those in Dracula would be thrown out of court. We now rely more
heavily on technological evidence such as videotapes, fingerprints, and DNA
sampling. Modern readers no longer accept journal entries and newspaper stories
as factual evidence, so Dracula’s format may actually interfere with
rather than contribute to their acceptance of the novel’s reality.
Stoker
sets Dracula in his contemporary turn-of-the-century, Victorian England,
at a time when both science and technology were rapidly advancing. A book
review from the Spectator, published on 31 July 1897, just after Dracula
first came out, even mentions the “up-to-dateness of the book” (see Stoker
365). This “up-to-dateness” is shown through many details in the novel:
Jonathan’s shorthand, Mina’s typewriter, and Seward’s phonograph; as well as
Van Helsing’s blood transfusions and his state-of-the-art hypnotism. The
musical allusions are also contemporary. Mina and Lucy, for instance, listen to
Spohr and Mackenzie as they stroll on the Casino Terrace the night after the
Count’s first attack on Lucy (90). Victorian readers would have seen much of
their own world in the pages of the text. To encounter the vampire in a setting
so like their own would certainly have been an instance where the “imaginary
appears before [them] in reality” (Freud 244). But today, such antiquated
allusions distance readers from the text. The prospect of the new monster Count
Dracula hiding within their society might have frightened Stoker’s
contemporaries; but given the stereotypes of vampires that have bombarded our
popular culture since that time, the idea of a vampire in our society no longer
has the same effect.
The
presence in Dracula of the cultural signposts of Victorian England also
acts as a barrier to modern readers. Take, for instance, gender relations. What
Stoker’s contemporary readers found commonplace is no longer acceptable today.
Van Helsing’s comment to Mina, “You no more must question ... We are men, and
are able to bear; but you must be our star and our hope” (214), might have been
a noble sentiment in the old patriarchal society. Today that comment would
invite responses ranging from humor to outrage, and thus further distances the
reader from the story and/or detracts from the story’s uncanny effect. Similar
difficulties arise with passages that expose Victorian classism and racism:
Lord Godalming’s statement “My title will make it all right with the locksmith,
and with any policeman that may come along” (261), and Jonathan’s observations
that “these Szgany ... who are almost outside all law ... are fearless and
without religion, save superstition” (45).
Today’s reader also does not share
the cultural anxieties and fears of Victorian England. Dracula may very
well be, as Stephen Arata asserts, a tale that “the culture tells itself not
only to articulate and account for its troubles, but also to defend against and
even to assuage the anxiety attendant upon cultural decay” (623). Such
Victorian anxieties as “reverse
colonization,” the sexuality and feminism inherent in the “New Woman,”
homosexuality, prostitution, and secularization do not play as large a part in the
cultural experience of today’s reader. What is reverse colonization to a
melting pot of cultures, especially as it is now situated in our global
society? Our culture adamantly markets sex and values sexually expressive
women. Though unfortunately fears of feminism and homosexuality still exist, we
now find subtler, more politically correct ways to express those fears. We
still struggle with the individual solitude resulting from our secularized
world, but now we express that by questioning our reality, such as we did in The
Matrix and The Sixth Sense. In the face of a throng of teenage
mothers and the child massacres at Columbine, our fear of prostitution is
pushed to the backburners. The syphilis feared by the Victorians has changed to
AIDS, and instead of trying to push down the lower classes, we’re now afraid
that they may never rise. Since the original Dracula doesn’t address our
modern concerns, it no longer twists a knife in our gut as it did to Victorian
readers.
Yet
in one respect, Dracula belongs more to our modern world than it ever
did to Victorian England. Everyone knows the story of Count Dracula; its myth
and symbols have become part of our cultural heritage. Vampires are so popular
that they’re now labeled in Three Genres, a guide to writing, as one of
the “Seven Deadly Sins” for fiction writers: “[The vampire] was once good dream
stuff, but the convention has been repeated so often that it has sunk to the
level of comic strips and Halloween masks” (Minot 150). Vampires are so common
now that occult researchers assert that vampires truly exist, though not quite
in form of the famous Count, and they offer a plethora of case histories and
first hand accounts as evidence. A small portion of our population even
emulates the behavior of vampires, and some, such as Kristin from Norine
Dresser’s American Vampires, even say they need to drink blood (note
that such blood is donated, not taken from victims). Dracula and the
vampire have become more real to us than they ever were to the Victorians.
This
particular increase in verisimilitude decreases Dracula’s ability to
induce horror because vampires are now so familiar. The strangeness of both
Dracula and his situation caused Jonathan to write “I doubt; I fear; I think
strange things which I dare not confess to my own soul” (24) before he even
knew Dracula was a vampire. As one may recall from Freud, the uncanny feeling
occurs “when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears
before us in reality” (244). Count Dracula is too familiar now to frighten us.
We can never experience the original text as Stoker’s contemporaries did. It is
very difficult for us to detach the popular faces of Lugosi, Lee, Langella and
Oldman from our image of the Count. The changes in today’s society which have
either distanced us from the world of the text or have made it even more real
to us than Stoker ever imagined possible have irrevocably altered our
experience of the novel. Dracula has become less the horrific encounter
with the uncanny than an enjoyable reunion with an old friend.
Works Cited:
Arata, Stephen D. “The Occidental Tourist: Dracula
and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.” Victorian Studies 33.4 (1990):
621-45.
Dresser, Norine. American Vampires.
Vintage Books: New York, 1989.
Freud, Sigmund. “The ‘Uncanny.’” The
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol 4. Ed & trans James
Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1966.
Minot, Steven. Three Genres. Prentice
Hall: New Jersey, 1998.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Ed Nina Auerback and David J Skal. New
York: Norton, 1997.
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