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Title

<i>Dracula</i> by <i>Bram Stoker</i> (Read in 2014)

Description

<abstract>Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I've pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I've failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an interest in this book, then I'm happy for you.</abstract> <h>Notes</h> This book charges out of the gate and is quite enthralling---no pun intended---in a very modern way. Unfortunately, after the whole merry band of characters is introduced and expertly knit together, the book bogs down in professions of fealty and undying love and respect and myriad other forms of swearing undying and lifelong allegiance to one another. There is also the not easily overlooked heavily misogynistic aspect of the novel. The ladies Lucy and Mina are introduced as very clever and very capable, <i>for ladies</i>. That is, the females make the most of their the paucity of gray matter with which the good Lord blessed them. Stoker makes sure to let the inadequacy of the female thinking capacity be extensively explained by the women of his novel themselves. They are not the only ones who suffer thusly. Dracula is, as well, not considered very clever and possessed of only a <i>child brain</i>. The group of gentlemen was perhaps revolutionary at the time, but is now somewhat trite: a doctor in charge of an insane asylum (Dr. Seward), a Renaissance man, well-learned in all manner of arcane minutiae who also happens to be well-acquainted with the dark corners of the occult, Dr. Van Helsing, a brave, competent and not unwealthy Texan in the form of Quincey Morris, a Lord Gondalming (Arthur Holmwood) who throws money and influence about and, finally, Jonathan Harker, a lawyer who just happened to have come into a magnificent inheritance. The two ladies are, of course, more beautiful than anything this side of the angels. I liked quite a few passages in this book, but almost nothing of the second half wherein the hunt for Dracula mostly takes place. The hunters are, for the sake of the story, sometimes almost inordinately stupid and unobservant, so that Dracula continues to get the upper hand much longer than he should. But this lack of putting quite obvious clues together---or perhaps more charitably, <i>forgetfulness</i>---would go on to become a staple of the modern Western genre that Stoker would help found. Part of the tediousness of the book lies not in the tale itself or in the characters but in the voices used to tell it. Some of the passages are challengingly written in very coarse dialect but are sufficiently pregnable to be utterly rewarding and enjoyable. I speak of many of the minor characters interrogated by our merry band in their pursuit of Dracula. On the other hand, the eminently readable but grammatically horrifying prose of Van Helsing left me completely cold. Endless pages torn from his journal written in what I must assume is how Stoker thought an at-times flustered Dutch master of the occult would write or speak. Almost equally tedious were the long passages by the women---and less occasionally by the men---thanking God over and over for the chance to be good and to survive in order to be able to more capably serve both Him and man. Or their men. Or whatever. <h>Citations:</h> I can't imagine how this passage must have read in an England utterly steeped in its Victorain prudishness. It's quite well-written and holds up surprisingly well. <bq source="Page 48">All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina's eyes and cause her pain, but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on. One said, "Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours is the right to begin." The other added, "He is young and strong. There are kisses for us all." I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel “the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood. I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer “. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.</bq> Or this eerie scene in which Harker confronts the Count for the first time. <bq source="Page 48">Then I stopped and looked at the Count. There was a mocking smile on the bloated face which seemed to drive me mad. This was the being I was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps, for centuries to come he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless. The very thought drove me mad. A terrible desire came upon me to rid the world of such a monster. There was no lethal weapon at hand, but I seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases, and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face. But as I did so the head turned, and the eyes fell upon me, with all their blaze of basilisk horror. The sight seemed to paralyze me, and the shovel turned in my hand and glanced from the face, merely making a deep gash above the forehead. The shovel fell from my hand across the box, and as I pulled it away the flange of the blade caught the edge of the lid which fell over again “, and hid the horrid thing from my sight. The last glimpse I had was of the bloated face, blood-stained and fixed with a grin of malice which would have held its own in the nethermost hell.</bq> <bq source="Page 70--71">“White, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and many a one shuddered as the wreaths of sea-mist swept by. At times the mist cleared, and the sea for some distance could be seen in the glare of the lightning, which came thick and fast, followed by such peals of thunder that the whole sky overhead seemed trembling under the shock of the footsteps of the storm. Some of the scenes thus revealed were of immeasurable grandeur and of absorbing interest. The sea, running mountains high, threw skywards with each wave mighty masses of white foam, which the tempest seemed to snatch at and whirl away into space. Here and there a fishing boat, with a rag of sail, running madly for shelter before the blast, now and again the white wings of a storm-tossed seabird. On the summit of the East Cliff the new searchlight was ready for experiment, but had not yet been tried. The officers in charge of “it got it into working order, and in the pauses of onrushing mist swept with it the surface of the sea. Once or twice its service was most effective, as when a fishing boat, with gunwale under water, rushed into the harbour, able, by the guidance of the sheltering light, to avoid the danger of dashing against the piers. As each boat achieved the safety of the port there was a shout of joy from the mass of people on the shore, a shout which for a moment seemed to cleave the gale and was then swept away in its rush.</bq> A lovely sign-off for a letter, asking for haste: <bq>Pray do not take us as exceeding the bounds of business courtesy in pressing you in all ways to use the utmost expedition.</bq> Or this bit: <bq>“He went to the door and opened it, a most unnecessary proceeding it seemed to me. I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us. A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.</bq> More horror: <bq>[...] far down the avenue of yews we saw a white figure advance, a dim white figure, which held something dark at its breast. The figure stopped, and at the moment a ray of moonlight fell upon the masses of driving clouds, and showed in startling prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of the grave. We could not see the face, for it was bent down over what we saw to be a fair-haired child. There was a pause and a sharp little cry, such as a child gives in sleep, or a dog as it lies before the fire and dreams. [...] as we looked the white figure moved forwards again. It was now near enough for us to see clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. [...] By the concentrated light that fell on Lucy's face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.</bq> <h>Errata</h> When I read books that I downloaded from <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">Gutenberg Project</a>, I like to be helpful and provide corrections where I can. They have a very friendly and responsive errata-submission system. <pre> Title: Dracula, by Bram Stoker May 9, 2008 [EBook #345] File: pg345.epub Page 99: she demurred at first‐I know why, old man‐she finally consented Replace "‐” with an un-escaped entity; at first-I know why, old man-she </pre>