Dracula - Bram Stoker

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Genre: Classics

Blurb (on back of book): When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival.

In Dracula, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.

MY OPINION: *****

This was the first classic I ever read as a child and I distinctly remember feeling so proud upon finishing this rather lengthy novel. I enjoyed it just as much this time around as I did when I was young and I definitely will always hold this book close to my heart.

Dracula has become a commercialized, mass-market, contemporary figure, what with all the film adaptations and other pop culture symbolism. However, most people haven't read the original manuscript that made Dracula who he is today. Just like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, there are core misconceptions about the book and the modern-day conceptions of these Gothic, "scary" figures. 

This is an epistolary novel told through journal entries and letters, something which I'd forgotten since the first time reading this. I usually am not a fan of that format when it comes to classic novels especially and I noticed a lot of the critiques about this book were how much it dragged on. While I can't argue with the fact that Stoker did repeat himself several times when he could have summed it up a lot faster, I will say that I found the format of the book a lot more tolerable than expected. I felt like I was reading straight from the characters' minds and wasn't stuck with some omniscient third-party narrator.

It's crazy to me that this is the crux of the entire vampire genre that is still so prevalent to this day. This is the original vampire novel. This is where the coffin thing came from, the fear of garlic, the crucifix as the ultimate weapon, and the stakes in the heart as the one way to kill the beasts. The amount that these tropes have managed to proliferate throughout society is crazy to me, especially considering that this is not the most popular vampire novel anymore.

The entire book is super creepy and keeps you on your toes. Since I didn't really remember anything about the plot or the characters from the first time I read this book several years ago (literally, like nine or ten years ago), it was thrilling and surprising with each twist and turn it gave us. I loved the writing style and while there were times when I was a little bored, Stoker managed to keep up the entertainment factor throughout the majority of the book. 

I will say that there was a general theme of misogyny running throughout the book that didn't sit well with me. The main targets of Count Dracula are two "beautiful, innocent" women, while Jonathan, our protagonist who manages to somehow escape from the count's castle (with NO description whatsoever as to how that happened) escapes unscathed and gets to play the male savior and vampire hunter alongside the other "brave, strong" men. The women are told to stay at home and must wait for their husbands/lovers/male friends to do the dirty work when they are literally the main targets?? I absolutely despised Jonathan and found him to be annoying and frustrating. He needed to be humbled. I did like Van Helsing, though, since he clearly was the only one who seemed to understand the situation.

I absolutely loved the boat scene and the newspaper articles/captain's log about the incident. That was truly the most "horror" aspect of this book and I really enjoyed reading that part. I did listen to this on audiobook so it was hard to really have the same experience as if I was reading it in paperback but I think that the narrator was interesting and managed to get the point across well enough.

The middle of this book could have been cut in half and the ending could have been lengthened quite a bit. I will say that the pacing was not the best thought-out. However, the child in me who loved this book cannot bear to give it any less than five stars, despite its obvious flaws. Call me nostalgic but I would feel bad lowering my rating after all these years (though I guess my true and honest rating would put me somewhere in the three-to-four-star range..).

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the horror genre and the Gothic era.

Main Character: Jonathan, Mina, etc

Sidekick(s): Van Helsing, Lucy, etc

Villain(s): Dracula

Classics Elements: This is a true horror classic.