Dracula, Part 2

The concept that vampires could be considered more “alive” than the living was very interesting to me.  While they are sometimes seemingly ghostly figures, vampires have certain characteristics that suggest that they live a life beyond what a human life is capable of being.

Physically, they always seem to be nearly invulnerable.  Whether it be holy water, a spike through the heart, or cutting of the head, in most cases some kind of special criteria is required to kill a vampire that goes far beyond what is required to kill an average person.  This suggests a certain vitality that goes far beyond human life.  Another example of this vitality is shown in their ability to live for an extremely long time.  Not only does this provide the vampires with more life in terms of years, but it would also most likely give them a wealth of experience and wisdom, which only adds to their cunning and manipulative nature.

I think that sexuality is another way in which vampires show more “life” than humans.  I thought that this was illustrated well by Lucy’s transformation into a vampire.  Her illness caused by Dracula’s attack made her very sickly looking.  However, when she seemed to pass on, all of her beauty returned.  It is even stated that Holmwood finds himself surprisingly attracted to her when he first sees her.  Then, to add to her sexuality, she begs him for a kiss.  While her beauty and sexuality is represented as a result of Dracula’s evil, it doesn’t change the fact the it makes Lucy more vigorous and uninhibited, which some may these days call “being alive”.

Now that I’m done talking about the question of the week, though, I’d like to briefly move on to what I thought of the book.  This has definitely been the most exciting book we’ve read so far this semester.  I was constantly surprised by how often it kept “on the edge of my seat”, if you will.  While Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights was an interesting character, I never really felt as though I was grasping the full weight of his character.  Dracula, on the other hand, seemed much more in line with what I was expecting from this class.  He was a true figure of terror, which is something that I wasn’t really expecting.  Given the books age, I thought it would be more atmospherically scary than anything else, sort of like Wuthering Heights, but I’m glad that I was wrong.  Especially the ending! Wow!  That was much more intense than I was expecting (and probably my favorite part of the entire book).

Online Artifact Essay

Well, I kind of forgot that my artifact was due this week, so I ended up writing a blog post as well.  Oh well!  Guess I'll have to pay more attention from now on.

Anyway, Enjoy!

Vlad Tepes vs. Count Dracula:

Man vs, Myth

For my online artifact essay, I chose to look into the origins of the now infamous Count Dracula as he was initially portrayed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  Like some of the other characters we have discussed this semester, it seems as though the character of Count Dracula was actually based on a real person—a Wallachian ruler by the name of Vlad Tepes (which apparently translates to “Vlad the Impaler”).  I say “seems”, because, from what I have read, this connection is mostly alleged or assumed, despite the fact that there is little evidence to support the claim.  According to Elizabeth Miller’s online article, “Dracula: The History of Myth and the Myth of History”, it is stated that “. . . there has been much speculation about the exact nature of the connection between Vlad and the Count Dracula of Bram Stoker's classic novel”.  I hope to use Miller’s article to discuss the similarities and differences between Vlad and the Count in order to distinguish between the man and the myth.

The easiest place to start would probably be at the name of Dracula itself.  According to Miller’s article, “The name "Dracula" has links with the Romanian word "drac" (derived from the Latin "draco") which can mean both "dragon" and "devil".  Most Romanians still refer to Vlad as ‘Vlad Tepes’ rather than ‘Vlad Dracul”, however, there are multiple documents signed by Vlad himself that use the term “Dracula”, or variations of it.  While the name was actually first bestowed upon Vlad’s father, Vlad Dracul, by something called “The Order of the Dragon” in the 1430’s, the name seems to have stuck with the ruler (mostly in the west) as a testament to his “blood steeped” military career.  When considering all of that, “Dracula” seems to be a very intimidating word that suggests both violence as well as the unknown.  While the idea that Bram Stoker started building the character of Count Dracula based solely on a name seems unlikely, the nature of the word nonetheless seems to serve as a good foundation for understand the character of the Count.

Vlad the Impaler’s military history is another possible reason why Bram Stoker chose to base Count Dracula on him (if he did intentionally choose Vlad at all).  In Romania, Vlad Tepes is mostly known as a national hero of sorts.  At least that seems to be the way in which Romania would like him to be portrayed, although there is certainly a good amount of debate, which seems to have stemmed from the nature of Vlad’s military history.  According to Miller’s article, renowned historian Ion Bogdan’s treatise Vlad Tepes (1896) presented Vlad as “a bloodthirsty tyrant whose cruelty could only be accounted for in terms of mental aberration, a sick man who killed and tortured out of sadistic pleasure”.  This duality is another feature that can be associated with both Vlad and the fictional Count.  In Dracula, it seemed as though the Count was always very concerned with keeping up the appearance that he is nothing more than a kindly host.  However, we come to know better as the story goes on and we find out about the Count’s secret darkness.  To me, this revelation closely resembles the way in which recorded history itself works. (A good example of this would be the comparison between the way the Christopher Columbus used to be viewed and the way the he is viewed today).

The character of the Count was first shaped by the history of Vlad, but in more recent years, it would seem as though the fiction of Bram Stoker’s Dracula has begun to shape what people think about the real figure of Vlad Tepes.  The fictional Count Dracula was actually virtually unknown in Romania until the fall of communism, however, in the few decades since then, Romanian tourism has greatly benefitted from the myth.  Consequently, though, as is stated in Miller’s article, “This has created an interesting dilemma for Romanians: how to accommodate this demand while at the same time keeping clear the distinction between the fictional vampire and their own national hero”.  According to Miller, this has cost the Romanian people a lot in the area of maintaining their own history.  She states that “A far more serious problem [than tourists getting fact and fiction confused with each other], in my opinion, is a tendency on the part of some enterprising Romanians to cash in on the confusion, at the expense of their own history and culture.”  She states that at various locations on different “Dracula tours” in Romania, she found things that further the confusion between the real Vlad Tepes and count Dracula.   In her travels, she encountered things like “a T-shirt depicting Vlad Tepes with fangs extended, leaning over a bare-breasted and willing female victim”.  She even stated that in the courtyard of Vlad’s birthhouse, there is “a life-sized model of Vlad where tourists were invited to have their "bloody photo taken"”.  While this is mostly a testament to the overwhelming power of commercialism, I think it also attests to the power of Stoker’s Count.

Vlad Tepes certainly did have some similarities to the character of Dracula.  It is easy to see why Stoker chose to model his horror icon after a man like Vlad.  Both Vlad and the Count have a certain ambiguity and mystery to them which I think is essential to any form of art that is supposed to instill fear in its audience.  It is just human nature to fear the unknown.  Also, while the Count’s continued prevalence in our culture is definitely a testament to Stoker’s success in creating a truly horrific figure, it is somewhat of a shame to see the way in which it has effect Romanian culture and history.

Sources Cited

Miller, E. (2005). Dracula, myth and history. Retrieved from http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/myth.html

Dracula, Part 1

Bram Stoker’s Dracula seems to touch a lot on the themes that we’ve talked about so far in this class.  Whereas Wuthering Heights had some Gothic elements that were pretty spooky at time, I think that Dracula has more obvious gothic themes, which in turn keeps the book pretty scary.  The wolves, the creepy old castle, the count himself—it seems as though these are all things that stuck with us through years.  I mean, look at Halloween.

I also had no idea how much sexual repression played into the development of vampirism.  Seeing female vampires licking their lips in vampire movies used to just give me the impression that Hollywood added that aspect to vampirism and vampire movies with the whole ‘sex sells’ thing in mind.  It’s very interesting to see that the sexuality in vampirism actually comes from a much more interesting social situation.

Considering the way that sexuality was perceived in Victiorian culture, I would imagine that the ‘brides of Dracula’ were downright terrifying when this book was first published.  The way that Jonathan was simultaneous repelled and drawn in by them was a good example of the power that people thought that sexuality had over people’s minds.  Also, I think they provide a strong counterpoint to the much purer female protagonists of the story.  Seeing what ‘good’ Victorian women were supposed to be like made the ‘bad’ vampire women that much scarier.

Overall, I am enjoying this movie for multiple reasons.  It’s pacing is a bit quicker than some of the other readings we’ve done, which is nice.  Also, it’s pretty spooky, which is also nice (especially with Halloween right around the corner).  Most importantly, though, I think that Dracula is really helping to drive home some of the themes and ideas that we’ve been talking about.  I think that Carmilla made it easier to understand the themes of sexual repression in Victorian culture, and it’s similarities to Wuthering Heights is helping me to understand many of the themes associated with gothic literature.

Victorian culture and vampirism

Tamar Heller’s essay “The Vampire in the House” was quite interesting.  At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I suppose I was just expecting a bunch of weird, ill-defined connections between vampirism and female hysteria in Victorian culture.  Sometimes these essays that make connections between fiction and reality are kind of a stretch (for example, for a film class we discussed an essay linking the Western movie “High Noon” to the McCarthy era or communism or something).  However, while some of it was a bit hard for me to follow, I was pleasantly surprised.  This essay contained a lot of insight into Victorian culture and how it relates to “Carmilla” and vampirism in general.

To be honest, thought, I found it hard at times to follow all of the concepts presented in the essay.  Whether it was due to the essay’s language or its abstract concepts, I’m afraid I was only able to get away with a few main points and notes.  To me, the thing that was most interesting to read about was how little people knew about medicine and the human body in those days.  It seemed as though female repression in Victorian culture lead to many misconceptions about women and sexuality.

“Since Victorian culture associated menstruation with the incursion of unruly desires, we can read Carmilla’s advent in the story—the entry of the woman who drains blood—as symbolizing the menarche of the adolescent narrator.” (82)

“First associated solely with boys, but then, from the 1860s onward, increasingly linked with girls, masturbation was the target of a vehement and weel-organized nineteenth-century medical campaign arguing that autoeroticism caused hysteria in girls and was encouraged by such practices as eating red meat.” (83)

Passages like those were very interesting.  It would be very hard to make a connection like that today, but when looking at the writing in the context of the time period in which it was written, this kind of stuff starts to make sense.  These concepts now just seem completely ridiculous.  Associating menstruation with “the incursion of unruly desires”?  Autoeroticism “encouraged by such practices as eating red meat”?  These things are obviously very dated ways of thinking, but it is easy to tell that their purpose was to scare women into acting a certain way rather than to actually inform.

So, while most of the connections presented in “The Vampire in the House” seemed to be mostly based on misinformation of the Victorian era, they certainly provided a lot of insight on when the book was written, and the mindset of people in society at that time.  While I didn’t fully understand all of the information presented, I think I got enough of it to be able to better understand the underlying themes that were present in “Carmilla”.