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Ep. 18. Bram Stoker, Dracula (with Kaja Franck)
101 Plays1 month ago
In this SPOOKY Halloween special, we do things a little differently. I talk to Dr Kaja Franck about a section from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
Dr Kaja Franck is a Lecturer in English Literature and Programme Lead for the online MA: Literature & Culture at the University of Hertfordshire. Her research centres on monsters and monstrous animals. She has previously published on the depiction of werewolves in Dracula (1897), the Canadian Gothic and YA fiction, alongside organising international conferences on werewolves, vampires and faeries in literature and popular culture. Her monograph, The Ecogothic Werewolf in Literature: Wolves, Woods and Wilderness, emerged panting into the wild this year. More recent publications include chapters on troll horror, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005-8) and John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). She has a soft spot for terrible shark horror.
Episode references:
- E. Gerard, The Land Beyond the Forest
- Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves
- John Polidori, The Vampyre
- Clemence Housman, The Werewolf
- Emily Habeck, Shark Heart
- Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch
Follow the show on Instagram. Find Kaja on twitter (@kajafranck). Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to Halloween Special
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and language nerds. In today's spooky Halloween special, I talk to Dr.
Meet Dr. Kaya Frank
00:00:13
Speaker
Kaya Frank about the classic 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.
00:00:19
Speaker
Kaya is a lecturer in English literature at the University of Hertfordshire, along with me. We're colleagues, we're friends. Her research centers on monsters and monstrous animals. She has previously published on the depiction of werewolves in Dracula, the Canadian Gothic and YA fiction, alongside organizing international conferences on werewolves, vampires and fairies in literature and popular culture.
00:00:40
Speaker
Her monograph, the eco-Gothic werewolf in literature, emerged panting into the wild this year and has a beautiful cover. So go look it
Close Reading Approaches
00:00:47
Speaker
up. Welcome, Kaya. but Hello, Chris, and thank you so much for having me. And yes, we are friends.
00:00:53
Speaker
And I think this is always so fun because I think it is a great example of the fact that we have some overlaps in what we study, but I'd say broadly speaking, we come at things from a very different angle and have really different interests, both in terms of what we read ourselves.
00:01:06
Speaker
I wouldn't recommend a book necessarily to you, and I think vice versa. yeah um Yes, but also sometimes when you're so consumed with work, we don't really get lots of time just to sit down and talk about texts, which is kind of what we love doing. So this is a nice opportunity to do that on the airwaves. And Kaya is the person I will go to if I want to ask questions about vampires and horror things and gothic things. So I'm excited to have you talk about Dracula, which is a book I haven't gone back to in a really, really long time.
00:01:35
Speaker
So much so that even I opened the first couple of chapters and I don't remember it very well. like I know kind of spinoffs. I know all of the kind of texts that have proliferated from it, but I thought it'd be nice to actually go back to it properly here. and We're going to close read an extract from the end of chapter three. So really early in the book, and we'll talk you through that in a minute, dear listeners.
Analyzing Dracula's Language
00:01:56
Speaker
But before we go there, Kaya, you know the show, but like, how do you feel about close reading as an activity in a practice?
00:02:02
Speaker
Oh, it's the fundamental ah aspect of my practice. I think that's a really nice This is exactly what you wanted to hear, but it's absolutely the case. I love, I've always enjoyed reading.
00:02:14
Speaker
um I've always enjoyed language. My mum in particular, she worked in the library service and she loved language and we would sit and we would read out everything. So we'd go in and we'd double check Leviticus for the rules. And we're not a religious family, but my mum was very much like, it's really good to have as many religious texts in the household as possible. So we had to like copies of the Koran.
00:02:38
Speaker
the Bhagavad Gita and things like that, and we'd flick through them. It just makes me sound so middle class, which I am, so fair. So when we weren't reading The Guardian and eating brown rice and lentils, all of which we did, we were, yeah, I think it was it was it was always, well, let's go back to the book.
00:02:54
Speaker
Let's have a look what's being said. And my mum read to me every night when I was a child. and She read the whole of The Lord of the Rings to me. It took a year And so again, the idea of hearing things out loud, we would read poetry to one another.
00:03:10
Speaker
i would, again, I sound like from the 1950s, but we would read poetry. She'd help me memorise poetry and talk about pacing and things like that. So from an early age, I just enjoyed language and it would make sense that I'd go on to study it.
00:03:26
Speaker
And then when I got to university, I always read the book first. I was not the person who'd read the secondary reading so that I could then like make things up in class. I would read the book or just not do the reading if I was feeling particularly lazy, but it would always be like the text was the thing that I thought was important.
00:03:44
Speaker
And then finally, I think the biggest thing was when I had this feeling in my gut that I didn't like what I call detective reading, which is where we use the author to solve the text.
00:03:56
Speaker
And that the idea would be somehow like there was one final reading. And if we could just know everything about the author, it would explain the text. I don't know why, but intrinsically I found that kind of a bit like it would make me feel kind of hemmed in and it would make me feel like I, I didn't feel like I was having a relationship with what I was reading.
00:04:16
Speaker
And so when we were doing theory, of course you come to Roland Barthes and, I know there are critiques of Roland Barthes and I, you know, what have you, but what i liked about Roland Barthes and I read some of his other stuff was he always felt quite tongue in cheek and a bit naughty to me. Like he was saying things to be provocative and this amused me because I do exactly the same thing. And like, Chris, you know this all too well.
00:04:38
Speaker
um But also when I read that line, like the author is dead and and I was given permission and I was told like that, that was a valid way of reason. I think it was reading. It's one of the,
00:04:49
Speaker
It was one of
Themes of Power and Seduction in Dracula
00:04:50
Speaker
the most significant things in terms of my career, I'd say. Amazing. And yes, we've taught a module together about close reading and we've taught the Bar essay, which listeners, you've heard me bang on about before.
00:05:02
Speaker
And part of me wants to maybe contextualize this extract. But I think actually if we dive in, start doing stuff with the language, and then maybe if you need to like contextualize anything, you can. Because actually it's good to go back to these.
00:05:15
Speaker
canonical texts and see what they're actually about and saying, right? When you go to Frankenstein, for example, most people haven't like read that or like read it in a long time. When you read it like, huh, this is not the thing that is conjured up when people think of Frankenstein or Frankenstein's monster, right? and I think Dracula's the same in that regard.
00:05:33
Speaker
we're going to read a bit from like near the end of chapter three. Would you read the extract for us, please? Absolutely. i was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes.
00:05:44
Speaker
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, as 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.
00:06:05
Speaker
Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about 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 could feel the hot breath on my neck.
00:06:22
Speaker
Then the skin on 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.
00:06:40
Speaker
I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, weighted with beating heart. But at that instance, another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning.
00:06:52
Speaker
I was conscious of the presence of the Count and of his being as if I lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily, I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage and the fair cheeks blazing with red with passion.
00:07:15
Speaker
but the Count. Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hellfire blazed behind them.
00:07:30
Speaker
Amazing. This passage goes on a little bit further, um but I thought we better stop, by the otherwise there'll probably to be too much to talk about. This is like very early on for such like wild scenes, right? like ah I feel like if you read this out of context, if I didn't tell you this was in chapter three, you might imagine this is like late in the narrative, right? like This is like this real buildup towards like these scenes of...
Stoker's Language and Symbolism
00:07:50
Speaker
I don't know, the biting, the sexuality, the like the terror. I don't know but we're going full throat from like early on in the book, which is quite fascinating. This extract begins like, I was afraid to raise my eyelids.
00:08:03
Speaker
And I did a search on Project Gutenberg earlier on like the text. And I was afraid comes up so many times, right? Because he's writing these letters, right? Like the book is in these like letter forms but like I was afraid to like comes I don't know it it is just the language of like the horror right of the gothic novel just like that fear is dominant but like they're always just saying it like I'm afraid absolutely and the thing why I love this particular section so I chose this very specifically because in my first year of university I did actually do one linguistics module um and I chose
00:08:35
Speaker
the section before they mentioned, so I stopped when they start mentioning the count so that I completely decontextualize it. So if you don't know where it's from, and I gave it to my, my, like my friends who were on the same hallway as me. So ah most of them weren't literature scholars, but I said, just read this, tell me what kind of book do you think this is from?
00:08:57
Speaker
And they all said, Oh, it's from like a Mills and Boone, isn't it? It's like from like, it's from something sexy, isn't it? Cause like, Like, like she's on her knees and, and the language and they talk about like the licking of the lips and like, it's somewhere between desire and repulsiveness. And we're thinking a lot about it's very oral. There's a lot of orality there and then ideas of shivering and then the use of colors.
00:09:22
Speaker
Deliberate voluptuousness. They were like, this language is the language Mills Boone. was like, no, no, this is from Dracula from 1897. And they were like, no. And I actually wrote an entire essay using this, simply talking about how it uses language and how we associate certain languages, certain genres.
00:09:45
Speaker
So this is, it's really significant to me. I've i've then also used it in now when I teach and I do a version of it. And again, i don't tell my students and then I edit huge amounts of it out. So it is very factual, like this happened, this happened, this happened. And then we talk about the effect of how simply bringing in certain types of words, choosing red, why red? What does red symbolize? Talking
Historical Context of Dracula
00:10:10
Speaker
about white, talking about skin,
00:10:13
Speaker
you know using things like longer sentences shorter sentences and playing with pacing how you can kind of bring that sense of of anticipation some very rocky horror you with them the patient so yeah it's it's i think it's important because of that and and i think it does highlight one of the things that we forget about the original text is that it is it it has huge amounts of really quite overtly erotic and sensual content in it, but not where you'd expect it to be.
00:10:44
Speaker
And sometimes in ways that I think makes us understand why Dracula is so inherently a queer text. And I mean that in the whole range of what queer could mean.
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, the the tactility, as you're saying about, like, of the text, like, eyelids, lashes, knees, neck, lips, like, it's nonstop, right, this attention to the body. And yes, I think we know that, like, the gothic and horror are, like, body attentive, but it's remarkable to see how consistently it is through this extract. Like, every single sentence is mentioning something about the body, right? It's really rooted in the flesh, and I think that's always, like, useful to note.
00:11:25
Speaker
And even there was a deliberate voluptuousness, which was both thrilling and repulsive. I've been thinking about deliberate voluptuousness for like a couple of days now. Like how is one deliberately voluptuous? Like, you know, this kind of performance of voluptuousness, I guess, but also voluptuousness is a like a bodily being, right? It's not like a it's like a performance. So there's something really interesting there about like that choice of words.
00:11:49
Speaker
Maybe they just sound good next to each other, the right? They are like quite thick in the mouth, right, to say, which is both thrilling and repulsive. And as she arched her neck, she actually licked her lips like an animal tail. like You know, like the sentence goes on and on. He's using very rich language to get to kind of play a little bit. He's playful.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's worth remembering. So it's worth remembering that at the time, you can look at the reviews from the Times, people weren't like, wow, this is a superb piece of art. and This is the most literary thing that's ever been written.
00:12:21
Speaker
They were like, this is, yeah, okay. This is kind of, does what it does. It's a bit schlocky. They knew it was genre fiction at the time and it was popular fiction. um And I think people forget that like, whilst we treat Dracula, the novel now is like this really important literary ruy text.
00:12:36
Speaker
In reality, that wasn't really until the 1960s that people really treated it as a text that was worthy of ah research. And that started with Sir Christopher Frayling and his work.
00:12:47
Speaker
And that's really when people started saying, well, realising that actually he'd done quite a lot of research, that this wasn't just invented off the top of his head, that
Dracula's Cinematic Impact
00:12:56
Speaker
we couldn't find where he's been making notes and planning and so forth.
00:13:00
Speaker
So it makes sense that when we read it now, we can see that that aspect of it is coming through. And I love popular fiction and I, you know, you know, I, if someone tells me something's badly written, I'm going to read it.
00:13:13
Speaker
I'm going have to. So I have, that's no problem, I think, but yeah, he's, it's maximalism. It's literary maximalism. It's, it's the purple prose we see picked up in Angela Carter and Angela Carter's writing is absolutely playing with this to the nth degree.
00:13:29
Speaker
But you have to have something like Dracula being written. um The other thing is when you read it out, I am interested that I would say this is a text that when you read it out, ah you benefit a lot more from yeah So things like moonlight, the moisture, you get the m, m, and then you get lots of l sounds. And that's quite a languid feeling in your mouth.
00:13:52
Speaker
um And lots of ch and sh. And so you're getting lots of sibilance in there and alliteration. And you also feel that when you're reading out loud, the the grammar, the punctuation, how it's structured is forcing you to feel that pacing within your body.
00:14:10
Speaker
And there was more of a tradition of reading text out loud. And I think the very structure. and So and Dracula is ah has got elements where it's letters and elements where it's recordings and diary entries. It's epistolary overall.
00:14:27
Speaker
um But I think it is designed to have that personal quality. Hence, again, I think many of us forget that most of it's in first person. Yeah, that, yeah, should have said that at the beginning. Like the I, the first person is, and this is also like Frankenstein, right? The kind of like the narrative within the narrative, you get like the I voice that really grounds it in
Techniques in Close Reading
00:14:49
Speaker
that, but in the in the experience as it's happening, right? The kind of like,
00:14:53
Speaker
well Well, obviously he's recounting it afterwards. You're feeling the things happening slowly, right? She arched her neck. She actually licked her lips like an animal. love that, actually. you know when people say like, oh, literally, like people say literally now mean not what it means, but it's like actually licked her lips like an animal till I could see in the moon, like the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth.
00:15:18
Speaker
Okay, this is like hilarious, but like scarlet lips and red tongue. I like that he kind of like differentiates the two. And then white sharp teeth. This is the one thing that I get mocked for, right? When people know I do literature is they're like, oh, do you always just talk about how the curtains are blue?
00:15:33
Speaker
You know, it's melancholy and like how the walls are. And was like, yes, we do. But also there's no avoiding the fact that he is using color as a there a range of signifiers here, right there's There's more colours later on. There's more red, there's more white. But there's red, white, red, white, red, white.
00:15:48
Speaker
Which obviously conjures up, you know, both purity and, like, danger. But I feel like he's also playing with them a bit more than that, though, right? The fact that they're scarlet lips, like, and all those kinds of things conjure up, right?
00:16:00
Speaker
But the red tongue, like, that's... That's more like devilish, right? Or that's something beyond just like sexuality. There's like other kinds. And the white sharp teeth. Also like those like really crisp syllables in there, right? Like white sharp teeth, as you're saying.
00:16:15
Speaker
And it's so significant given that if you think about the impact that this had in terms of how we conceive of the vampire, like he's essentially laying down the blueprint. Now, my research also looks at like the the werewolf aspects and the wolfish aspects, and I could go on forever. And that's why things like talking about animal and red tongue, I also see that as we can be looking at sort of animal traits in there, the non-human, the subhuman. yeah The other thing I'm interested, because when you said the deliberate voluptuousness, well, how you deliberately voluptuous,
00:16:45
Speaker
Well, these are meant to be. So it's three vampires who are about to attack Harker. And one of them is this blonde haired bombshell. Basically, your Ingrid Pitts of your hammer horror, what's going to be picked up.
00:16:59
Speaker
So all these different types of elements are picked up in different adaptations. So yes, that's them. But I think the other thing is we're meant to be, I assume that we're not meant to be like, wow, this is awesome. He's about to have, well, ah I guess a foursome.
00:17:13
Speaker
This is going to be so cool. There's these hot ladies. They're going to bite him. No, Harker is very much the the Gothic heroine here. He's quite passive. he's He's lying. He's not doing anything. He's looking under his lashes.
00:17:26
Speaker
In some ways, the reason why they're scary is because they're being the aggressive person animalistic, more masculine ones. And so they are deliberately voluptuous because of course they would be because they're naughty harlot, scarlet ladies. They're bad women. And I, ah again, I think that's interesting because depending on when you're reading it, I read it now and I see a lot of sexuality and desire. I see some elements of like, is Harker secretly enjoying being passive? Does he want to be like, in some ways made to be the object? And actually on some levels, you just can't admit this un-
00:18:01
Speaker
desire because that's how i read and that's and that's what we see that's what i love about and i think this is why we see this sort of elements of different types of queerness not to mention because then later the count comes in um and this is the famous scene where he says this man belongs to me the line that basically led to an entire way of reading the text through a queer lens yep Pretty much.
00:18:25
Speaker
And I feel like this is this is a text where there are just these lines where it's like, and that's the basis for how we're going to apply an entire theoretical approach to an entire novel. Because so often there are areas in this where you're like, I can just close read this and I can close read that and I can close read that.
00:18:41
Speaker
Yeah, like attending to the language is like, well, really hide from this, right? Because it's right there. It's not just an association. Like, lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fast. You're like, well, OK, what's happening right now?
00:18:57
Speaker
Very sexual, but also the the repetition, right? He starts to amp up the repetition in this mid bit. Lower, lower, below. and then he does the and, and, and, right? Which, I don't know, just just this amping up of like details accruing, right? It's like one thing and another thing and another thing.
00:19:16
Speaker
You might call this parataxis in literary terms, right? Where rather than joining things together with commas you're joining with the and which has it's like an is again it's the excess i think for me right it's just like one thing after another and you could read it and it's kind of like sexy and seemed about to fasten on my throat like then she paused and i could like he's doing nothing as you say right he's not even he's not flinching
Gothic Elements in Dracula
00:19:38
Speaker
he's not like moving he's not saying no please stop like he's just letting it happen and Then she paused and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips.
00:19:48
Speaker
The churning sound of her tongue. don't even know what that's like. doesn't make any sense, but it's fantastic. Please do a listener. Oh, and he's putting your five moments. See if you can make a churning sound with your tongue.
00:20:01
Speaker
um so Record it, sending it to Chris. I'm sure he would love that. Yeah. And then you start seeing that. Then that's when you start moving the and. And then we get like nearer, nearer.
00:20:11
Speaker
waited, waited. And we get this sort of, oh, it's condensing, it's condensing, condensing. And then you get like a new paragraph, but that instant, and we get a slice through.
00:20:25
Speaker
yeahp um And when I do talk to my students about things like when they're doing creative writing, I always say like, please be careful with using things things like suddenly and but.
00:20:36
Speaker
Because you're letting us know something's about to happen. So if you think about, do you want us to know as the reader, do you want me to be like, oh, oh, I'm prepared or do you not?
00:20:47
Speaker
And I think this is a great example of, I feel like sometimes I look at these sort of texts, I'm like, if a student submitted this to me, i'd be like, no, no. But I have to say to my students, because at this point it's really, really cliched.
00:21:00
Speaker
What Stoke is doing, there's plenty of cliche in there and it does fit within in ah in a wider remit. But what he's doing in terms of actually how insignificant this text has been and on culture and adaptation and what have you.
00:21:15
Speaker
Well, aim high, kids, but I would say that just please stop putting suddenly and but... In this case, that book does work, I would argue, because we are about to have a sudden shift from this moment of languorous ecstasy where we are waiting with bated breath alongside Jonathan Harker to the Count comes in and, well, not sound too Freudian, but Daddy is home.
00:21:39
Speaker
shit It is giving daddy energy. But yeah, you're right. Like the that the turn of like the language, like even before that paragraph break, the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches near it.
00:21:53
Speaker
Like to tickle it, I could feel a soft shivering touch of the lips and the super sensitive skin. Like all that S alliteration is like... non-stop and the hard dents of two sharp teeth just touching and pausing there even that right he's the pausing there like it feels quite cinematic right this kind of writing it's like very like we've gone from the wide shot like right up to this like close-up of the teeth and the thing and it's pausing and we're kind of waiting and there's this suspension you know how your flesh feels as a hand is about to tickle it
00:22:26
Speaker
you know it hasn't actually started tickling it's the kind of anticipation it's which is which is sexual but it is also like there's something about the language here that is saying anticipation is the name of the game for the gothic and the horror right like yeah the emergence of the monster is like part of the deal but actually it's the anticipation that is the thing that is terrifying right like the when you finally see what the monster is you're like okay well at least i can see it now whereas The kind of the buildup is like really where most of the terror comes from, right? The kind of what's about to happen.
00:22:55
Speaker
I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart. But at that instant, like like it it kind of cuts through in a comic way, but as well as a, like it kind of does destroy the tension been built up in a way that is both a new kind of tension, right?
00:23:13
Speaker
Because another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning. Like we've moved to a different territory, but also yeah, it just breaks that, that moment that is frustrating.
00:23:24
Speaker
And I noticed there's always like, um there is, you've got this break and I think you're absolutely right. And I won't bore listeners with too much analysis of like terror and the sublime, the Gothic and where, where, how different people have have seen like a massive differentiation between Gothic and horror and how have people have seen overlap. It's, it's yeah. ah I think the thing that is important there is that notion, as you said, of not showing the monster and,
00:23:52
Speaker
That's a rule that we still have today. i love shark horror and Jaws is an excellent example of not showing the monster, partly because the monster kept breaking in the saltwater so they couldn't use it.
00:24:06
Speaker
But um It ended up being more effective because of that. And you're right as well that it's cinematic. And I always wonder whether is the reason why this has been so adapted, because it already has that inside, it already has that language in there. It's very visual. We talk about the aesthetic of the Gothic. We've spoken about this colour palette already.
00:24:28
Speaker
that's already popped in. As we read it, I can't help thinking like which came first. Did we watch films with vampires in and know that you have that shot to get up to the neck being bitten? Or is that actually coming from the book?
00:24:41
Speaker
And then we're reading it back into this sort of cycle. And I also like that weighted with beating heart, but at that instant, kind of a similar balance. And so you've got these two clauses, one at the end, one at the beginning. And they actually...
00:24:57
Speaker
they sort of mirror one another in terms of leading to that break of the waiting and the, and then the, the, the, the softness of all the susurration of the and before it.
00:25:10
Speaker
um I really, I just love close reading. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. but And the other turn that happens here then is like, at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning.
00:25:23
Speaker
it's like the metaphor now of weather, because in the next sentence, I was conscious of the presence of the Count and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury, right? So we've got lightning, we've got storms. Again,
00:25:36
Speaker
It's like he's just like placing down all of the, like the archetypes and the imagery of, of this genre, right? Like give me lightning, give me storms, give me. when It's giving pathetic fallacy.
00:25:48
Speaker
ah but Like, you know, I know not in the truest sense, but it is, it's it's utilizing those preexisting structures there. And I think,
00:25:58
Speaker
Again, we've we've had this slow, slow, slow. We start seeing the sentences shorten in the section when the counter arrives. We start seeing like quick as lightning, storm of fury, then fury again with the blue eyes transformed. But again, it's interesting we're talking about blue eyes now because blue eyes suggest that flash of lightning.
00:26:17
Speaker
We think of lightning often in pale blue and and we think of it as whites as well. So suddenly we're moving. You could argue as well that I would say that visually in some ways like white teeth have a slightly jagged quality to them and you see that again with that notion of the lightning coming through and again red is now something different whereas before it was probably more to do with the sensual and and now red is the demonic it is lurid it is flame and it is it is of violence suddenly you and so we get the two sides of that kind of terror and sublimity that that
00:26:56
Speaker
pleasure-pain dynamic and it just switches on an instance which is essentially what some of the fundamental aspects of the gothic are about you're just suddenly blazing yeah i mean like comes up a lot the thrilling and repulsive of the voluptuousness right like it's something that we both like desire and want to push away right like that's that's all of the tensions and contradictions right of of psychoanalysis like the the thing you want and want to push away at the same time But here, as you say, there's the idea of like being conscious of the presence of the Count, right? He can't see him, he can just like feel him.
00:27:30
Speaker
Sensation again, right? The body, the affect is present if not seeing him. like How powerful is this Count if you can just feel him
Stoker's Research and Writing Process
00:27:40
Speaker
near? So we've moved away from the body to just like presence, which again is a real part of this like fear making ah of the feeling of the passage.
00:27:49
Speaker
And as my eyes opened involuntarily, he can't, but like that it that is, that the, yeah, that is the passive, isn't it? Very passive. um Jonathan Harker is ah incredibly sort of like, in many ways, of I really see him as the heroine in this. He's not particularly active at any point.
00:28:07
Speaker
um And his his his wife, or soon-to-be wife Mina, ends up being the far more active one in many ways. What I've also noticed well, there is that when the count comes, we then get a switch because then he becomes like the the most strong in there. So before we've got Harker, who's the victim of this the female vampire who's being a little bit like taking on a masculine role. And then in comes the Count.
00:28:32
Speaker
And notably, this imagined hand that tickles becomes the real hand of the Count that grasps the neck of the woman with a giant's power. So this hand that was soft and sensitive and going to tickle is now the hand that is, yeah, it's got this strength back. And I think that's, ah again, a very interesting balance of the imagery there as we move from that that anticipation and then to the, again, it's not tickling, it's grabbing.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah. And even as you're saying this, I'm like noticing like the language ah gets very short too. Eyes, sore, strong hand, grasp, slender neck, fair woman, giant's power, draw it back. Like almost all monosyllables, right? Like given the the languorous ecstasy and weight, like the the language is is real stripped back as the intensity is building, but they count exclamation mark.
00:29:27
Speaker
We love an exclamation mark. Oh my God. Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. Like this is, this is real, real strong. His eyes were positively blazing. Again, we've had blazing twice, like in two sentences, like the cheeks are blazing, his eyes are blazing.
00:29:46
Speaker
The red light in them was lurid as if the flames of hellfire blazed behind them. Like how many blazes do you want in three sentences? That's very like, again, you would, you would strike those out, right? If you saw this in someone else's writing, you'd be like, you probably could pick another word other than blazing. But the blaze is just so fulsome, right? He's, I feel like Stoker's just like going this, right? He's just like, I'm going to pick this word. I'm just going to keep using it. i'm going to really amp this up so that we're, we're at like 10, right?
00:30:13
Speaker
right like it's hard to come down from that 10 but everything has to be up here now because we're talking about like the devil we're talking about hell we're talking about like the worst possible imagined thing so yeah it's just full-throated the language and everything think what's against is because it it does you said like this is in chapter three and it's like all the way up here at this point harker's realized he is trapped essentially he's trapped and what he actually now believes is well this is where he's gonna die he's trapped in this castle so ah He just went there as just a little solicitor to just go and, you know, got some eyes and cross some T's and help and help Dracula buy a nice house. It's really just about property and property law.
00:30:53
Speaker
And now he's going to die in a castle so in Romania and he's never going to see anyone he loves again. And he's writing this diary in the hope ah that someone's going to find him.
00:31:05
Speaker
And so it does get up to 10. Then it then goes... way back down. And when we jumped to his wife, we have the kind of the two wife to be his fiance. We have the two narratives together and she's like, just, Oh, hanging out with her friend, Lucy, he's having a few issues with sleepwalking and they're just chatting and taking the tea.
00:31:24
Speaker
And then you know, because you've seen that it's been 10 in chapter three, you know, we're then going to be coming back because you then get that literary irony that here comes Dracula and they don't know that the danger is there too late.
00:31:36
Speaker
So I do think as well, there is, there is a playing. This isn't yeah just, and we're going to keep this at 10 for the rest of it. It's like, we need to get up here so that you can see why this is so dangerous, why we need to destroy the count um and why this becomes a battle for the soul.
00:31:53
Speaker
um and, I also think that if we sort of, if I took all of this and kind of made it into a poem, we'd perhaps be more sensitive to the repetition of language and that actually rather than being a oh dear, you just keep using the same word, it actually seems to be bringing in almost a stanza-esque quality to it and reminding you that this is pulling through. So, you know, again, we have fury, fury, fury.
00:32:23
Speaker
Three, three Furies, one per sentence, the classic. And I think that if, yeah, if I was seeing this as a poem, I'd probably be more accepting of that because I'd understand that as a conscious decision.
00:32:38
Speaker
Whereas there seems to be something where we're assuming that this was a, okay, editorial mistake, but it is about the language and context. And this is the right context for this.
00:32:50
Speaker
And it does, know, it's great. It gives you this, they do the pacing's really good. The colours are really good. I've got this visualisation. I've got this aesthetic. I'm in the moment.
00:33:02
Speaker
And there's a really clear sense of the characters as well coming through. And yeah, I love that because the you realise that the other sensation, another sensation swept through me. The another sensation, it's just that the count's coming.
00:33:15
Speaker
It's so bizarre because you're like, but I have a sensation when someone comes in a room? Do I? his eyes are closed. That other sensation is just that this, and again, we can go into the sort of the, the queer elements here that are coming through, but you know, and, and now I can understand now why you end up with like, you can see why the count ends up being such a, a more of a sexual or sensual figure in adaptations because other people have read this and said,
00:33:41
Speaker
hey We're going to make someone really hot play that guy later. We're going to make Jonathan Rhys-Mairs play him at some point. But yeah, but it's it's an entire passage about power, right? And like how power is wanted, not wanted, who wields it, when they wield it, how it's enacted, right? That first paragraph, right?
00:34:02
Speaker
all of the powers with those female vampires, but they're like, they're not doing anything yet, right? Like it's the approach. Like the approach is the thing is where like the power lies and he's just like, well I'm powerless to you.
00:34:12
Speaker
Whereas that second paragraph, the entire power is in the Count's presence, his physicality, his body, his like aura, all of those things. The red light in his eyes was lurid as if the flames of hellfire blazed behind them.
00:34:27
Speaker
Again, loads of alliteration there, right? He's like flames, fire, blazed behind. It's like it's not hellfire, but it's like as if the flames were right there. Like all of the Count's power is in his like very being.
00:34:41
Speaker
Whereas the female vampires are using their like bodies, their wiles to get him like the sensuality. But this is a different kind of bodily sensuality. It's a different realm at this point.
00:34:53
Speaker
there's all these kind of like counterpoints, as you say, the different ways in which the body is indexing. The body keeps the score. but Also, again, I think One of the things we have to be conscious of is is I suspect,
Literary Analysis of Dracula
00:35:08
Speaker
and i like I can't prove this, but reading practice would have been different as well. So this is most likely unlikely to be a book that someone's going to sit down and devour in one go.
00:35:16
Speaker
So in some ways, the language that's being set up here then itself becomes a calling card throughout so that you can understand what's happening later and how you're meant to be reacting to certain moments. So um one of my little things i i like to do, um and I always tell my students, is when you've got a text like Dracula, it is usually easily available as a PDF or an online HTML format.
00:35:40
Speaker
um And that's really useful for searching for words and just seeing where you see language repetition. And i I do this quite a lot. um And and know I ah wrote about this book in my thesis and then and then in my monograph, it comes up as an entire chapter.
00:35:58
Speaker
And the word voluptuous is very important and it specifically comes up about female vampires. And the next time you see it repeated a lot is when it comes to after Lucy Westenra, who is one of the other key female characters. So she's a a good little English lady.
00:36:17
Speaker
she becomes ah vampire and she then becomes voluptuous. And they actually talk about that transformation. So suddenly, um and she's described as having voluptuous wantonness.
00:36:29
Speaker
Again, not just you're not just voluptuous. You've got voluptuous wantonness. And again, I think that's a way of saying she's beyond redemption now. I've already set up this language. You already know that this is the language of evil and the demonic and this aberrant sexuality, female sexuality.
00:36:48
Speaker
Well, boom, when I bring it back in, you're primed. And really importantly, you're primed because Lucy is going to be staked in a very brutal manner. And you're primed to be almost like, well, Harker didn't get that sort of justice at the time.
00:37:04
Speaker
So now we're going to do it to Lucy. We can't have Lucy be like these other women. And there's a lot there, I think, in terms of sort of post-colonial and ways that we can look at it as well. <unk> It's just such a it's a great text. I think you can apply so many different theories um to it.
00:37:18
Speaker
But yeah again, it's worth saying that it does feel, again, Lucy's eyes will blaze. She's going blaze. She's going to have all the things that we know mean vampire.
00:37:29
Speaker
So there's quite literally what's been created is a vampiric vocabulary that you're alert to it later. That's great. that And that's a really useful thing for listeners. If you've got an ebook version or a PDF version, search those words that stand out.
00:37:45
Speaker
Again, like if a word comes up multiple times, like, the author is saying something is doing something right. Like, so and it's never a mistake, but you want it, you want to think of what, what is happening there? What is it? What are they doing with it? um That's a really good thing.
00:38:00
Speaker
Let me if we can like hard transition to, do we know anything about like Stoker's writing his like practice? Like, do we know anything about like the construction of this novel? Yes.
00:38:13
Speaker
And we do thanks to the fact that his notes were found. So, And you can access his notes, you can get them published, they've been compiled and they've been published with annotations.
00:38:24
Speaker
And so we can see his planning from chapter by chapter. We can also see the texts that he was reading to research. um So that's incredibly useful. So we know that um two texts that I found particularly significant in my research was The Land Beyond the farm Forest by Emily Gerard.
00:38:44
Speaker
And she was a British woman who was married to a gentleman in what was at that point the Serbian army. And they were based over in Romania.
00:38:55
Speaker
And she went over and as many women of that time, she, you know, um she went around walking to local people and compiling like what she saw is as regional folklore and making notes about how people dressed.
00:39:08
Speaker
When you read it, it very much has the tone of a Victorian folklorist, which means that by the modern standards of folklore, and I have to reiterate this, that is not the current standards of good folklore practice. It is very much someone going in who is an outsider and writing about a community, and it has some really aspects there.
00:39:31
Speaker
So I'm always cautious that though I have read Emily Gerrard's work, um And I've also read Sabine Bering Gould's work, The Book of Werewolves, another source um for this novel.
00:39:44
Speaker
I read them as a text. I don't read them with the eyes of a folklorist. I read them as this is a source. So I don't, come I can comment to some degree about the limitations of it, but I'm not going to in and fact check Embiérin Gould and Gerrard.
00:39:58
Speaker
So we know that Sabine Bering Gould's Book of Werewolves came out in 1865. and that it was definitely one of the texts that and Stoker used. In particular, he used it for descriptions of how the count looked.
00:40:13
Speaker
um And he picked up different bits of sort of folklore, and I'm using that in a very broad sense, and he picked up little bits of information and tidbits to give texture, really. Stoker never actually visited Romania.
00:40:27
Speaker
So he was using Emily Gerrard's Lambion Forest, and most likely an excerpt from that that was published in as a journal article, which had this section. And the the bit that was published was the sort of sensationless bit that was about vampires and werewolves um so and and superstition. So it's it's likely that he was using that bit and then could consult the wider text when it was published.
00:40:48
Speaker
And that kind of gives you the the creation, evocation of Romania. Things that might be of interest is that there isn't actually specifically any Dracula's castle.
00:41:00
Speaker
And again, that's because we can see from his notes that and until reasonably late in the writing process, he was just called Count Vampyr or Vampyr. and then...
00:41:12
Speaker
when Stoker was researching in Whitby. So this was a really long research process. This was over a number of years. and He was based in London, working at the Lyceum and working with Henry Irving. And then he's moving around and lots of different places across the British Isles have sort of claimed like this is where he took his inspiration from. And um I'm sure to a certain degree, it's all true.
00:41:33
Speaker
Texts are palimpsest. But yeah, so at one point Stoker's up and he's he's in Whitby. with his family and he goes to local library which you absolutely should and he is double checking some things about Romania he's been reading other travel logs and he comes across this woodcut engraving um of Vlad the Impaler Vlad Vakul and that's where he gets Dracula from So it isn't an absolute like for like, and it's not intended to be.
00:42:06
Speaker
And a lot all of what has occurred since has very much been from ah like English speakers reading Dracula and then going off to Romania being like, where's well, where where's the vampires? And then the Romanians are like, what are you talking about? Like, where's Count Dracula? And they're like, you mean an important national hero?
00:42:27
Speaker
and well, no, no, like he's a vampire, right? Where's his castle? And so there's been lots of places now in Romania that will sort of give you the Dracula experience because quite quickly people work out you can make money from that kind of tourism and Gothic tourism.
00:42:40
Speaker
and But I think it is important. like There is a lot of research and it is very useful to see how Soka creates this world using all these different sources. super fascinating and to the kind of the the kind of collaging, right? Like the, again, we might think of the, the Gothic or the horror genre as, I don't know, as like trope heavy, right? Like they will become tropes obviously, but you know, even at this point, like these writers are kind of trafficking in different kinds of imagery and using them.
00:43:08
Speaker
But that there are these kind of historical bedrocks beneath it as well. I think it's useful when we're thinking about all kinds of fiction, all kinds of writing, that you can see some of those resonances in the close reading, right? We're like, oh he's using these particular kinds of words or these particular kinds of bits of imagery. And like, where does that come from? Where have they picked that up from?
00:43:26
Speaker
To have that long view as well from you, like that's really, really useful. Thank you for um introducing us to that. Was there anything else you wanted to say about this passage or this extract or the book that we didn't talk about?
00:43:37
Speaker
Nothing in particular. I would just say that like all of the, the further research I do comes from reading the text first. So I read the text first and then I slowly move my way back. um And I think that's really important. And to say that I use that close reading, not simply when it comes to something like a fictional text, but I use it when it comes to his sources as well.
00:43:56
Speaker
um And, And that's where you see these overlaps. And so each time what I'm relying on is that sensitivity to language and construction and tone and how we're getting an atmosphere um and how they come together.
00:44:11
Speaker
um And again, the travelogues at the time, they were there were adventure narratives, really, even though they were they were intended to be non-fictional. and They wanted to they wanted to take you there and a time before you could go watch things on TV.
00:44:26
Speaker
So they were they were designed to be evocative and and imaginative themselves. And I think that comes through as well. We see it. because the very structure of the book kind of is a travelogue to a certain degree. yeah But yeah, so I think that's all I'd say about it. But hopefully that's been interesting. Yeah, it's super interesting.
Book Recommendations and Conclusion
00:44:43
Speaker
um And really nice just to go back to that. And I'm going to to reread it. I mean, I've got too many books on the list, but like reading some horror this month, like everyone go do it. Go read some scary books.
00:44:53
Speaker
I'm using horror and gothic wildly as interchangeable listeners. If you want to at me, you can do that. I don't really care. Yeah. No at me. i'm not really Honestly, of broadly.
00:45:06
Speaker
Do you have book recommendations for our listeners? Old things, new things, things you're currently reading, classics you want people to go back to? So, i mean, I've got obviously tons and tons and tons.
00:45:20
Speaker
If you like vampires, I would highly recommend um John Polidori's Vampire from 1819. ah The text we forgot that came out of the Via Diodati.
00:45:31
Speaker
And I think that's a really interesting text in terms of how it uses focalisation to talk about power and power dynamics. So that's worth, if you like close reading, paying attention to that.
00:45:42
Speaker
um And I have written on that. And again, simply using close reading. If you like werewolf texts and you want something that's a little bit off ah the beating track, I would say Clemens Hausmann's The Werewolf.
00:45:55
Speaker
um Great news. Both of these things are available online because they're outside of copyright. But Clemens Hausmann's The Werewolf is a beautifully written novella. It's very symbolic.
00:46:07
Speaker
It's set in some kind of broadly Scandinavian time that's a while back. that's That's as much as you're going to get from the text.
00:46:18
Speaker
um But the descriptions of running... yeah are some of the most beautiful and and of of the werewolf who's a female werewolf um white fell running are absolutely stunning um so i would highly recommend that and then i would say i really like anything um that's a little bit weird and wacky and one of the weird and wacky but not technically horror or gothic that i read recently was called oh i think it's called a shark heart now my brain's going
00:46:52
Speaker
by Emily Habeck or Habeck. And it's, I like sharks. I like shark horror. It's a, it's a space of fiction texts and it's about a woman whose husband turns into a great white shark.
00:47:05
Speaker
And it is so beautiful and elegant and moving. And it is really about grief and what it is to lose someone to a debilitating long-term illness.
00:47:20
Speaker
And you can read it in as many ways as you need to read it. And it's just very, very moving. And I think it's exploration of the limits that your body will go to in caring and to love and to remain in a loving relationship as you lose someone in front of your eyes is excellent. And again, it's beautifully written. The way that it's written is sparse.
00:47:45
Speaker
false It jumps around in terms of narrative. You also get the protagonist's relationship with their mother as well. But yeah, the whole set of it's a world where some people just have a gene where they turn into an animal and they truly turn into that animal.
00:47:59
Speaker
So it isn't like they can talk to them. It is that they are there, but they are beyond the the ability of our our knowledge. And then finally, um a text I absolutely love.
00:48:12
Speaker
It's now a film, which I haven't watched because I can't watch it because what happens if it's not as good as the book and I'll cry. Night Bitch by Rachel Yoda. And it is, I guess, a werewolf text only. It's sort of a were-dog text.
00:48:26
Speaker
There's been a few, interestingly, I've noticed of like women turning into dogs recently as opposed to wolves. And I'm sure there's a whole research project I could do there. it is like reading something and going, that's what it's like to be a mum.
00:48:39
Speaker
It made me sweaty It made me breathless. It made me feel desperate. It made me feel all the things you feel when it's 3am and your child won't sleep and you are dying. Or you just have to pack the bag and get to the library for the reading time and you know it's not a big deal, but for some reason you're sweating and this is the most important thing in the world and everyone's judging you and you know they are because you look wild.
00:49:01
Speaker
It was recommended to me and I read it in an evening and I was just like, oh God, I i feel seen. in a way that I think literature is meant meant to make you feel. um so yeah, I highly, highly recommend it. I recommend it to all my mum friends. i was like, I'll put down the books about how to raise a happy baby. That's all nonsense.
00:49:19
Speaker
No one knows what they're doing. Read an angry book where someone rips a cat to shreds because it's just one more thing to care for. That's going yeah. I came to that book too late for my dog chapter of my current academic book, but there's way more to do. And I also haven't seen the film yet, but if I watch it, I'll let you know.
00:49:38
Speaker
It's a very good recommendation. Kaya didn't recommend Red, White and Royal Blue, which usually she recommends to anybody in the corridor of our workplace. So I'm just going to add that to the list because usually she shouts about it.
00:49:50
Speaker
i'm I'm sure you all know what that book is anyway, listeners, but... um i just i was I was surprised you didn't say it. Well, I was trying to be grown up and mature and sound like I'm an academic. But yeah, my God, if you haven't read and Red, White and Royal Blue, firstly, you're welcome. What a tonic to the modern world. It's just, I loved it.
00:50:10
Speaker
But also i do think, interestingly, it does use um like epistolary format in a really interesting way that I think in many ways draws on the earliest examples of novel writing and I also think it uses the tendency now to write in present tense and I know we we malign it a lot and it's very fan fictiony but I like fan fiction so I don't know what I can tell you my favorite fan fictions want but um I think actually I as reading that I was like no this is this is I was persuaded that this is this is a ah new way of writing and even if
00:50:46
Speaker
We don't like it, even if we find it a bit schlocky, even if we associate with methods of writing that we denigrate. I was reading it and i was like, I'm so invested in this.
00:50:57
Speaker
I would say i had a similar sort of somatic experience reading it. like I had to put the book down because i was like, I can't breathe. Like this is, I'm really getting tense that I had when I was reading something like Night Bitch or when I was reading Dracula Evening, even for the first time.
00:51:15
Speaker
And so I think that appeals to the gothicist in me where I want reading to be my whole body. yeah And I'll take me there. Just, I will take your hands as an author and you can leave me wherever you want.
00:51:28
Speaker
Thank you so much your time today. I know you're super busy. I really, really appreciate it. Oh no, honestly, it's been such a pleasure. I've really, really enjoyed myself. It makes me remember why i love reading. Amazing. Happy Halloween, everybody.
00:51:42
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know. You can also follow the show and me on Instagram at Books Up Close and on YouTube.
00:51:54
Speaker
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00:52:06
Speaker
This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.