Dracula Chapters 1-4 (of 27)
So I am reading and taking notes on this as research but it's pretty entertaining. I haven't read the book itself before, but several years ago read an eventually abandoned blog which was going through the various diary entries etc in chronological order.
Anyway, it's such an influential classic I thought other people might enjoy a light hearted summary, so here you are. We'll see how far I get!
It starts as shorthand diary entries by Jonathon Harker, Sensible Englishman, who thinks he's writing a charming (if...racist...) travelogue. All the loving descriptions of the exotic locales, oddly dressed locals and crumbling castles etc make me think about how much Catherine Morland would love this. Anyway he's amusingly oblivious to the VERY OBVIOUS signs that he is in fact in a horror novel. Like it's written to be obvious to the readers of the time, who weren't as familiar with the vampire tropes this book would make popular, so to a modern reader it crosses into darkly comedic. Especially every time he thinks of Count Dracula as his friendly aristocratic boss.
Harker: Had a charming paprika based dish (note: get the recipe for Mina) and then queer dreams of dogs? Probably the paprika.
Peasants: Please don't go to the evil vampire castle you will die.
Harker: Ha! Must ask the Count about these charming local superstitions.
Peasants: *crossing selves* Why is this poor Englishman so very stupid.
Coachman: Welp looks like the coach to take you to Castle Dracula didn't turn up, how about you just come with us to the next town, it's very nice?
*evil coach turns up*
Coachman: D:
Harker: What fine black horses! And isn't it funny how the driver's eyes seem red?
Evil coachman: What was that about taking this man to the next town?
Coachman: NOTHING. BYE. *drives off*
Harker: How...strange...it's like...I feel cold? And lonely for no reason?
Wolves: *Howl and surround the carriage until commanded to leave by the coachman*
Harker: This..is...fine...
"What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked? Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor’s clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner? Solicitor’s clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor-for just before leaving London I got word that my examination was successful; and I am now a full-blown solicitor!"
He's so adorably moe. But this is the point where it stopped being funny and started being legit scary.
He figures out that Something Is Up With The Count reasonably quickly, unfortunately for him the next thing he realises is that he's trapped in the castle. The creepiness builds pretty effectively, even with a lot of it feeling like overdone cliche to a modern reader. For example, here is the description of Dracula:
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. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.
And then he sees Dracula crawl down the castle walls like a lizard.
He realises there's no servants, just the Count quietly doing all the cooking and cleaning, which is weirdly intimate? In general there's this whole Gothic Stockholm Syndrome Romance vibe with the Count being polite but VERY INTENSE and with a lot of quiet menace and power.
Dracula: Don't sleep in the Forbidden Lady Wing, you will have....bad dreams.
Jonathon: The forbidden lady wing is so restful and feminine. Screw you Count, imma sleep.
Sexy Vampire Ladies: Teehee, you go first.
Jonathon: Gosh. These women are...quite pretty. I wouldn't mind if they...kissed me??
Sexy Vampire Lady: *goes to bite his neck in a very fanservicey way*
Jonathon: Gosh.
Dracula: D:<
“How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you’ll have to deal with me.” The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:-
“You yourself never loved; you never love!” On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:-
“Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.”
The last thing Jonathon sees before falling asleep is the count throwing the women a sack with what sounds like a child inside it.
And then he wakes in his own bed and is like "Did the Count undress me??".
Something I know from osmosis and the chronological version is that Dracula is planning on moving to England and setting himself up as a a powerful noble keeping the peasants in line. There's some Scary Foreigner Learning Our Ways subtext, but also just like...that scene in a science fiction movie where the alien or time travelling villain from the past is learning human ways in order to stage a takeover. Jonathon knows more than him about English and the law but Dracula learns very quickly.
Count: My dear friend, could you please write letters in advance telling your friends you are on your way, and then have arrived in the next town? The post is so unreliable, you know, this way I can make sure noone worries about you ^_^
Jonathon: Haha, yes, of course. Nothing suspicious about that!
Jonathon (internally): Well now I know the exact date of my death :(
Sigh. Evil Roma minions.
The count steals Jonathon's clothes with no explanation, then goes off to town wearing them. Jonathon sits at the window watching for the Count's return, feeling powerless and depressed, when he finds himself slowly entranced by motes of dust forming shapes in the moonlight...only to realise they are turning into the Sexy Vampire Ladies. He runs.
A woman comes to the door and shouts up to Jonathon to return her child, before he can respond Dracula calls a pack of wolves and they devour her.
Jonathon has done something active! Realising the Count always sleeps during the day, he snuck into the count's room by creeping along the outside of the castle. But like the rest of the castle, it's fancy but ancient and dusty and unused. He went through a door to an underground graveyard, and there found the count seemingly dead in a coffin, eyes open and full of hate.
It comes to the night before his planned death.
Dracula, grimly: To-morrow, my friend, we must part.
Jonathon: Why not tonight? I could walk.
Count: Not an hour shall you wait in my house against your will, though sad am I at your going, and that you so suddenly desire it. Come! *opens the door*
Wolves: sup
Count: :D
Jonathon: Never mind :(
"The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me; with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of."
And then he hears the Count telling the Brides "Have patience! To-night is mine. To-morrow night is yours!"
Desperate, Jonathon sneaks back to the Count's coffin.
There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.
Nnnng. I'm not sure I've seen vampire-leech done before so literally and it is SO CREEPY. I guess most people write vampires as either sexy or corpse-like.
Jonathon attempts to strike the Count with a shovel, but the count stares it him and he is paralysed. The Count grins and the coffin closes.
Jonathon finds himself locked back in his room as the Count leaves for England. Instead of waiting for death he grabs some of the ancient money the count kept in his room, then sneaks out of the window, and towards freedom.
Next Chapter
This entry was originally posted at https://alias-sqbr.dreamwidth.org/685854.html. There are
comments.
Anyway, it's such an influential classic I thought other people might enjoy a light hearted summary, so here you are. We'll see how far I get!
It starts as shorthand diary entries by Jonathon Harker, Sensible Englishman, who thinks he's writing a charming (if...racist...) travelogue. All the loving descriptions of the exotic locales, oddly dressed locals and crumbling castles etc make me think about how much Catherine Morland would love this. Anyway he's amusingly oblivious to the VERY OBVIOUS signs that he is in fact in a horror novel. Like it's written to be obvious to the readers of the time, who weren't as familiar with the vampire tropes this book would make popular, so to a modern reader it crosses into darkly comedic. Especially every time he thinks of Count Dracula as his friendly aristocratic boss.
Harker: Had a charming paprika based dish (note: get the recipe for Mina) and then queer dreams of dogs? Probably the paprika.
Peasants: Please don't go to the evil vampire castle you will die.
Harker: Ha! Must ask the Count about these charming local superstitions.
Peasants: *crossing selves* Why is this poor Englishman so very stupid.
Coachman: Welp looks like the coach to take you to Castle Dracula didn't turn up, how about you just come with us to the next town, it's very nice?
*evil coach turns up*
Coachman: D:
Harker: What fine black horses! And isn't it funny how the driver's eyes seem red?
Evil coachman: What was that about taking this man to the next town?
Coachman: NOTHING. BYE. *drives off*
Harker: How...strange...it's like...I feel cold? And lonely for no reason?
Wolves: *Howl and surround the carriage until commanded to leave by the coachman*
Harker: This..is...fine...
"What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked? Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor’s clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner? Solicitor’s clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor-for just before leaving London I got word that my examination was successful; and I am now a full-blown solicitor!"
He's so adorably moe. But this is the point where it stopped being funny and started being legit scary.
He figures out that Something Is Up With The Count reasonably quickly, unfortunately for him the next thing he realises is that he's trapped in the castle. The creepiness builds pretty effectively, even with a lot of it feeling like overdone cliche to a modern reader. For example, here is the description of Dracula:
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. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.
And then he sees Dracula crawl down the castle walls like a lizard.
He realises there's no servants, just the Count quietly doing all the cooking and cleaning, which is weirdly intimate? In general there's this whole Gothic Stockholm Syndrome Romance vibe with the Count being polite but VERY INTENSE and with a lot of quiet menace and power.
Dracula: Don't sleep in the Forbidden Lady Wing, you will have....bad dreams.
Jonathon: The forbidden lady wing is so restful and feminine. Screw you Count, imma sleep.
Sexy Vampire Ladies: Teehee, you go first.
Jonathon: Gosh. These women are...quite pretty. I wouldn't mind if they...kissed me??
Sexy Vampire Lady: *goes to bite his neck in a very fanservicey way*
Jonathon: Gosh.
Dracula: D:<
“How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you’ll have to deal with me.” The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:-
“You yourself never loved; you never love!” On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:-
“Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.”
The last thing Jonathon sees before falling asleep is the count throwing the women a sack with what sounds like a child inside it.
And then he wakes in his own bed and is like "Did the Count undress me??".
Something I know from osmosis and the chronological version is that Dracula is planning on moving to England and setting himself up as a a powerful noble keeping the peasants in line. There's some Scary Foreigner Learning Our Ways subtext, but also just like...that scene in a science fiction movie where the alien or time travelling villain from the past is learning human ways in order to stage a takeover. Jonathon knows more than him about English and the law but Dracula learns very quickly.
Count: My dear friend, could you please write letters in advance telling your friends you are on your way, and then have arrived in the next town? The post is so unreliable, you know, this way I can make sure noone worries about you ^_^
Jonathon: Haha, yes, of course. Nothing suspicious about that!
Jonathon (internally): Well now I know the exact date of my death :(
Sigh. Evil Roma minions.
The count steals Jonathon's clothes with no explanation, then goes off to town wearing them. Jonathon sits at the window watching for the Count's return, feeling powerless and depressed, when he finds himself slowly entranced by motes of dust forming shapes in the moonlight...only to realise they are turning into the Sexy Vampire Ladies. He runs.
A woman comes to the door and shouts up to Jonathon to return her child, before he can respond Dracula calls a pack of wolves and they devour her.
Jonathon has done something active! Realising the Count always sleeps during the day, he snuck into the count's room by creeping along the outside of the castle. But like the rest of the castle, it's fancy but ancient and dusty and unused. He went through a door to an underground graveyard, and there found the count seemingly dead in a coffin, eyes open and full of hate.
It comes to the night before his planned death.
Dracula, grimly: To-morrow, my friend, we must part.
Jonathon: Why not tonight? I could walk.
Count: Not an hour shall you wait in my house against your will, though sad am I at your going, and that you so suddenly desire it. Come! *opens the door*
Wolves: sup
Count: :D
Jonathon: Never mind :(
"The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me; with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of."
And then he hears the Count telling the Brides "Have patience! To-night is mine. To-morrow night is yours!"
Desperate, Jonathon sneaks back to the Count's coffin.
There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.
Nnnng. I'm not sure I've seen vampire-leech done before so literally and it is SO CREEPY. I guess most people write vampires as either sexy or corpse-like.
Jonathon attempts to strike the Count with a shovel, but the count stares it him and he is paralysed. The Count grins and the coffin closes.
Jonathon finds himself locked back in his room as the Count leaves for England. Instead of waiting for death he grabs some of the ancient money the count kept in his room, then sneaks out of the window, and towards freedom.
Next Chapter
This entry was originally posted at https://alias-sqbr.dreamwidth.org/685854.html. There are
comments.