Dracula by Bram Stoker | Spoiler-Free Review

“It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.”

    Deep in the mountains of Transylvania, atop a sheer cliff and surrounded by woods, lies the Castle Dracula. This is where Jonathan Harker is sent to do business in the name of his employer, a solicitor who has recently sold a house to Count Dracula. During his stay at the castle, Harker encounters an evil most horrible, and is kept prisoner for weeks afterward, his mind breaking at the sights he bore witness to. 

    In London, Jonathan's fiancée Mina watches as her best friend, Lucy, falls victim to a strange wasting disease, her very lifeblood seeming to drain from her body. A wolf is seen jumping from a cargo ship in Whitby; a lunatic at Dr. John Seward's asylum is gathering hordes of spiders and flies and rats to his cell. It seems Dracula is on the move, and he intends to concur England for himself. 

    Told through diary entries, letters, and newspaper clippings, Dracula by Bram Stoker follows a year in the lives of the men and women determined to rid the world of the monster Dracula once and for all. 

“The world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it.”

    Okay, all dramatics aside. This was my first time reading Dracula, which I'm glad for, since I feel that if I had been made to read it earlier (say, for a school assignment or something of that nature) I would not have enjoyed it nearly as much as I did. And well, I don't think I enjoyed it that much to begin with. It was decidedly okay. I know that Gothic horror, and classic Gothic horror at that, isn't actually meant to be that scary, but more of an aesthetic, as well as commentary for political and environmental atmospheres at the time, but I was expecting the "Original vampire tale" to have more vampires in it, you know? (And, of course, I say original in quotations since we all know that Carmilla predates Dracula by twenty-five years. I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy of Carmilla soon.)

    Honestly, I was kind of bored by the story. I know that a lot of that boredom is probably due to the writing, and I have to remind myself that this book was written 125 years ago and that I'm doing it a disservice by looking at through a modern-day lens, but it's definitely hard sometimes. There are a lot of outright racist, classist, and sexist remarks throughout the novel, and it's written through a heavily Catholic veil, so a lot of the other religions and beliefs are described as ignorant at best and heresy at worst. I had to stop every few pages and say to myself, "This was written by a white, British man in the late 1800s," just to reaffirm that it's a product of its time.

    That being said, I do think Mina was my favorite character, even though she's like a hybrid of a Mary-Sue and a Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl. I wonder what she would have been described as when the book was first published? She is most definitely a woman written through a man's gaze. But for all that 

“She is one of God's women fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth,”

she's also strong and determined and unwavering in her love and faith for Jonathan and the other men around her. Mina Harker takes no shit, is what I'm getting at. 

    Overall, I could see myself returning to this story - it is a classic for a reason, after all - but not for a while. I'm more likely to pick up one of the 1000 of Dracula retellings before I read the source material again. 

    I gave Dracula a 5.57 CAWPILE score, which comes out to a solid 3 out of 5 stars. 

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I have to say, it only took me about a week to read Dracula, but it would have taken a lot longer if I wasn't also listening to Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions narrate it at the same time. She split the narration into four videos, each a few hours long, and it really helped me fly through the book. Red used a lot of accents so it made the reading process that much more enjoyable. I highly recommend using these videos as an audiobook substitute if you're planning on picking it up for yourself this spooky season. 

Have you read Dracula? If you have, tell me, who is your favorite character? Let me know in the comments, or tweet at me @AllyEmReads.

Until next time, friends!