Trollheart

There’s a pretty strong sense of abiding love between the men too, even if this is only barely skimmed over and they’re treated more as all lads together on a grand adventure, and Harker’s love for Mina and hers for him is certainly undeniable, one of the main things that keeps him alive, induces him to get out of the castle and escape from the women (I mean, having your blood sucked aside, the idea of three beautiful girls making love to you every night does have its advantages) and to save her in the end. I think though that those who talk of a sexual bond between the vampire and Harker are reaching; nowhere in the novel do I see him profess love for Dracula. On the contrary, he is repelled by him, disgusted by him, terrified of him. The count, of course, tells the women Harker is his, but this is more a case of his being the vampire’s property, the source of his life-renewing (or un-life-renewing?) energy, and it’s really more a nineteenth century version of Dracula warning the women not to touch his stuff. Harker might almost bear a label: PROPERTY OF DRACULA. HANDS OFF.

In terms of vampire literature though, this is where it all comes together. The previous authors have laid down the framework, but it’s Stoker who puts it all into one manageable whole, he who takes the skeleton and clothes it in flesh and looses it on the world, he who takes what others have begun and creates the first, and most lasting, of the literary vampires. Some aspects from previous vampire stories and novels are retained, some are not. The idea of moonlight healing a vampire, so prevalent in Polidori’s story, is nowhere mentioned here, nor I believe is it again. Polidori’s vampire, as Le Fanu’s and Rymer’s, and even Byron’s possible one, all seem to begin as more or less vital humanoid figures and undergo little change, whereas we meet Stoker’s Dracula as a frail old man, who gets younger and stronger by sucking the blood out of his unwilling visitor. This is, I think, the first time that the vampire figure uses the drinking of human blood not only to sustain himself and satisfy his devilish thirst, but to renew himself, to remake himself and almost rise from the dead, or from very old age. Using the power of the blood (“The blood is the life!”) he can actually combat time, force it back and reverse the ageing process.

To my knowledge, none of the previous vampires, other than Carmilla, refused or did not consume food. Dracula pretends he is simply not hungry, but it soon becomes clear that he is unable or unwilling to eat, or uninterested in human food. Blood is what sustains him, and terror, and possession of the will. Like Carmilla - and only her, up to that point - Dracula can change his form into that of an animal. He first appears as a dog, then as a bat, but not only that, he can perform extraordinary feats of strength and agility, this last displayed when Harker sees - as he thinks, in a horrible dream - the count crawling, insect-like, up the side of the castle. Though the moonlight can’t revive him, Dracula’s power seems to be at its height during the night, and he avoids the sun, something touched on in Carmilla, who sleeps through the days, though she does seem to be able to walk in the daylight.

If Dracula resembles the format of any of the previous treatments of the vampire legends, we have to go back to Byron, whose A Fragment is literally that; a tiny snippet of what should or could have been a longer story (and became one, in John Polidori’s perhaps plagiaristic hands) which takes the form of a letter. Stoker’s novel is made up exclusively of letters, journals, newspaper reports and is what is called an “epistolary novel”, which is to say, there is no single narrator and it is made up of extracts like the above. Where Dracula differs from A Fragment is that the narrative is all in the present tense; Byron wrote about an event which had taken place, which he was now relating later, whereas Stoker tells it as it happens, giving very much a sense of immediacy to the story, and making us feel as if we live it through the eyes (and pen) of the various internal authors.

It’s perhaps interesting, though not that surprising, as you’d hardly expect Dracula to keep a journal, that there’s little actual dialogue from the title character. Other than his speeches in his castle to Harker, Dracula is, to some extent, almost a passive character once he leaves his home, spoken of, referred to, but seldom speaking for himself. You might see him as a moving narrative device, being utilised by each character as he enters or impacts on their life, the effects of his interaction with them then being related by that person. In later versions of the tale, of course, he will assume complete control, but it’s telling that here he depends on the words of others mostly to direct his actions. In that respect, you could almost make an argument for his being the weakest character in the novel, being buffeted by circumstances from place to place, and finally driven back to his starting point, where he, no longer needed or wanted, is eliminated as the story comes to an end.

And again, though later versions would address this, there is no attempt by Stoker to either justify the Count’s behaviour or explore the reasons behind it. There is literally no backstory. Nobody knows - or, I guess, cares - where Dracula came from, what made him into who and what he is, whether he had any choice in the matter and whether or not he is just trying to survive. In typical Victorian attitude, he is Evil, and there is nothing more to be said. Evil with a capital E. The Bad Guy. No redemption, no understanding, no analysis. And oddly enough, nobody asks who he is or where he comes from (other than the literal origin, as in, Transylvania) or even why he’s targeting Lucy and Mina. It’s not seen as being important. He’s evil, and that’s enough. Evil is evil because it’s evil. He’s a servant of the Devil, and abhorrent to God. There is no sympathy for him, and the novel is fiercely and determinedly, and almost in a blinkered way, very much black and white.

Future authors would not only expand on the vampire myth, but delve - some quite deeply - into the life, or unlife, the past at any rate of the vampire, some of them referencing events way back in history, to show how old the vampire was and perhaps to give him a sense of realism too. If you can think of a vampire who exists today being, say, the shield-bearer for Alexander the Great, or helping Columbus discover the New World, he feels more real, more… there. And this I think also then almost humanises him, in a way writers like Anne Rice and Charlene Harris would later attempt, mostly successfully. You wouldn’t think it, from the way Dracula is portrayed here as a slavering, amoral, pagan and evil monster, but through the writing of these and other authors we would actually come over the years to sympathise with, understand and even grow to love vampire characters. Not so for Stoker’s fiend though. There are no ambiguities in his novel.

The good guys are good. There’s not even the hint that one of the three men who vied for Lucy’s hand might have darker pasts or deeper feelings on losing her. It’s quite unrealistic in that way. Two men who have fought for one woman are unlikely to remain friends with the third, who won her. It just would not happen. There’s never even any sign of tension, jealousy or even schadenfreude when Quincey loses Lucy, and then his own life. Harker is never anything but a good guy, no stain attaches to him, and his enslavement by the vampire brides is never brought up. Everyone (other than Quincey, Lucy and of course Dracula) lives happily ever after in this dark and at the time modern fairy tale.

I feel compelled though to point out that in giving Harker the profession of a solicitor, a lawyer, Stoker may very well be saying something about the business. At a time when his contemporaries like Dickens were loudly and savagely lambasting the trade in novels like Bleak House, and in an age where lawyers were thought of, and often described as bloodsuckers and leeches, draining clients of their financial life blood for the maintenance of their own living, was Stoker taking revenge on the law profession, giving it a taste of its own medicine? Having been a bloodsucker for so long (though possibly not him personally) was Harker being drained as a figurative backlash against the system, a triumph for the people who had lost all their money in endless court cases, a case of, um, the vampire strikes back? Maybe not; I guess Harker would have to have been a lawyer in order to necessitate his being in the Count’s castle, but I do wonder.

There is, of course, a strong sense of religion running through the novel. Well, when you have basically the devil as your main antagonist, it only stands to reason that God is going to be in there too doesn’t it? The religious imagery used to fight Satan I mean Dracula does not, I think, necessarily come from folk belief, as much of that was pagan anyway, but I’d have to check. I feel the idea of using the crucifix to stop the vampire was a crude way of showing how God - and religion - triumphs and prevails over darkness, the same as with the sprinkling of holy water and the placing of Communion wafers in Dracula’s coffins to preclude his lying in them. But garlic was a long-held remedy against the Undead, and Stoker uses it here, first by Van Helsing as he tries to protect the sick and dying Lucy - his efforts would have succeeded had it not been for the naivete of Lucy’s mother, who removes the garlic and dies as a result, as if Stoker is punishing her for not obeying the strict orders of the male authority figure, and later, when she is undead, as a protection against her coming back, though how she would do so minus a head is puzzling.

One of the ideas Stoker had in Dracula, but which sadly was never carried forward and adopted into later vampire literature, was the idea of being unable to capture his likeness. In his time, the only real way to do this was by being painted, as photography was very much in its infancy, but the same would have held true for photographs or movies with the vampire on them. The premise went like this: if Dracula were to sit for a portrait, or someone sketched him unawares, the resultant picture would look nothing like him, would look entirely like someone else, as his image could never be properly captured. The logic behind this being, I think, that Dracula was not of this world, and in today’s scientific terms might be described as a being from another dimension impinging on our reality, thus not really here, thus unable to be captured. I guess the idea survives somewhat in the mostly accepted belief that vampires can’t be seen in mirrors, for presumably the same reasons.

I also find it all but unbelievable that an agency of defeating the vampire which went forward from his wellspring of vampire lore and literature was not actually in the book. When Harker and the others come upon Dracula it is almost sunset, and, while it could be said the Count is despatched in the rays of the dying sun, almost but not quite able to rise, not until the sun goes down, the trope would quickly develop that the rising sun would destroy the vampire, burning him up like a torch. This is not addressed here at all: the sun is an enemy, not a friend, for when it sinks below the horizon Dracula will rise and be powerful and deadly, and quite probably invulnerable. The rising of the sun, half a day away surely now, will not help the adventurers kill t their adversary, and again in a departure from what would become canon, Dracula is not despatched by a stake through the heart, or beheaded or set on fire. A simple dagger thrust (well, two) are enough to rid the world of this monster.

One can only assume that Stoker had not quite worked out what was necessary to kill the vampire king (although that’s not true, as he was quite clear on how Lucy and later the vampire women were to be dealt with) and just went with his best guess, but it’s hardly iconic is it? Dracula slashed across the throat and stabbed in the heart (if he has one): not quite the stuff of legends, which may be why it was changed. It will be interesting to see who, where and for what reason it was changed; who was the first to introduce the whole death-by-sunlight and staked-in-the-heart idea (Stoker claims the latter but has not embraced or even thought of the former, so who put them together?), establishing a clear idea in the literature of the best way - perhaps the only way - to kill the Undead?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018