venetia_sassy | Dracula/Lair of the White Worm/Dracula's Guest (Reply)

A couple of years ago, I found an omnibus of Bram Stoker’s work (Dracula/The Lair of the White Worm/Dracula’s Guest) at a book sale and thought, great! Not just his best known piece then. Having read it … well, I think there’s reason Dracula is his best known work.

The book starts with a thoroughly useless intro by Fay Weldon, full of breathless speculation about Stoker’s sexuality. The ideas about vampires, menstruation and sex might be interesting but it’s all so overblown, I can’t take any of it seriously. Added to which she can’t even get the character’s names right. Renfield is called Penfield, Mina is called Mimi, Arthur Holmwood is mixed up with Dr Seward … one typo I could understand but this was ridiculous.

Dracula

It took some days to wade through this story. I found the start, with Jonathan Harker recording his experiences in Transylvania quite engaging but when we got back to England …

It was interesting that for most of the book Dracula is offstage. You see the effects but not the cause. I thought the plot was rather uneven but it was interesting. I also found the narration via journals, diaries, newspaper articles and letters quite effective, as we see the different pieces being put together but … I wish these people didn’t talk so much! Everything is longwinded and repetitive and high-flown and really, it’s quite exhausting to read. I know it’s partly the style of the times but it’s all so earnest. And it finally occurred to me about two-thirds of the way through that one of the reasons it was so exhausting is because there is no humour. None. Not so much as a wry smile anywhere.

For an example:
"It may be that you may have to bear that mark till God himself see fit, as He most surely shall, on the Judgement Day, to redress all wrongs of the earth and of His children that He has placed thereon. And oh, Madam Mina, my dear, my dear, may we who love you be there to see, when that red scar, the sign of God's knowledge of what has been, shall pass away, and leave your forehead as pure as the heart we know. For so surely as we live, that scar shall pass away when God sees right to lift the burden that is hard upon us. Till then we bear our Cross, as His Son did in obedience to His Will. It may be that we are chosen instruments of His good pleasure, and that we ascend to His bidding as that other through stripes and shame. Through tears and blood. Through doubts and fear, and all that makes the difference between God and man."

Now imagine that going on for 300 pages.

As for the various characters, well the men are somewhat indistinguishable at times and if it weren’t for their varied professions I probably would have got them confused. I got a little irritated with Van Helsing’s mysteriousness and Wise Elder ways at times, not to mention his foreign speech patterns. Stoker was at least consistent with these but given how tedious the various characters’ monologues could be, this really didn’t help.

I did like Jonathan and Mina. They were clearly a devoted couple and Jonathan obviously respected Mina’s intelligence. And I found it interesting that all the male characters acknowledged her abilities and intelligence, although this didn’t keep them from trying to shield her from horrors (this never ended well.) Thing is, I liked Mina. She was a strong, intelligent, capable woman but the way the men practically worshipped her irritated me. They kept blathering on about her being a pure, noble creature (and this, after she was married, interesting) and how they would die for her and all that. Stop blathering and just talk to the woman about what’s going on! At least Mina had some character development. Poor Lucy got to be sweet, good and long-suffering and that was it.

I said above that the story was uneven. It dragged quite a bit in the middle and I kept wanting to smack people over the head and holler at them to see what was right in front of them. It didn’t really pick up until the last ten pages when we suddenly had Action! Adventure! And that was fun. And then it was over. And one person I thought might be killed off wasn’t but I picked which of the Various Young Men would get to die in a noble fashion.

Well, I’ve read it but I wish the introduction had actually discussed how much of Dracula and the vampire mythos was Stoker’s creation and how much already existed. Reading the book, it is clear that Stoker had an enormous influence on later stories but I would like to know who influenced him.

Lair of the White Worm

Dreadful. It’s as though Stoker came up with a number of interesting ideas, threw them all at the page and let them stay where they landed without any effort to figure out what the story was about, who the story was about, how the story would progress and why the hell any of the characters would behave the way they did. There ware instant bonds of deep trust, first impressions are always correct, nasty sexism, truly vile racism and an absolute mess of a plot. And it was boring.

Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories

Dracula’s Guest was originally part of the Dracula manuscript but edited out – and I think Dracula is better for it. If it is Jonathan Harker in the story, I would have lost all respect for him as an arrogant idiot long before he reached the castle.

As for the rest of the stories I found most of them not creepy or horrifying but nasty and miserable. I thought of giving up before the end but I was determined, having made it so far, to finish the whole book. And the last three stories weren’t bad. ‘The Burial of the Rats’ has a tense chase scene and depicts a part of Paris rarely seen. ‘A Dream of Red Hands’ is somewhat maudlin but it ends with some form of hope. ‘Crooken Sands’ reminds me of a Sayers short story. It’s no great piece of writing but it’s a bit intriguing and has what all the other stories utterly lacked – a touch of humour.

If you’re interested in Dracula – just read Dracula. Don’t bother with the others!