Guiding
questions (and passages) for discussion:
Quiz
question: in the first 8 chapters of Stoker’s Dracula a solicitor
(lawyer) from the West (England) travels to Dracula’s castle in East (Transylvania),
and then Count Dracula travels to England. How does this part of the novel
represent the difference between “modern” England and primitive Transylvania?
Set
of oppositions (get answers on board):
Self
/ Other
Enlightenment
rationalism /legend, myth, superstition
skepticism
/ belief
empirical
evidence grounds truth /the spirit world
England
/Transylvania
the
garden / sublime nature
Modern
West /on border between East/West
Nature
/ Anti-Nature
domesticity,
virtue / blood bonds, corruption
many
media /writing
How
does England penetrate the mysteries of the East? By assuming the role of
the detective: Jonathan Harker as detective: Chapter 3, para 2 (37): READ
The
Detective Narrative (as the most influential modern type):
·
entails
a rational world, where the laws of physics are in force, but mysterious
things are happening;
·
crime:
the scandal is the corpse, the violation of life and law, that must
be buried, so the scandal and mystery (what happened? Who did it?) can be
put to rest.
·
the figure of the detective: while others can’t comprehend how they are happening,
the detective brings science, his skepticism about official pieties and accounts
of reality, and his interpretive insight to bear upon all the evidence before
him à his goal is solve the crime,
apprehend the criminal, and thus (metaphorically) bury the body;
·
the
narrative unfolds from the point of view of the detective solving the mystery/crime
à therefore the reader becomes
a detective in his/her turn: we get the evidence placed before us before
or at the same time as the detective
·
paradox about the gothic version of detection: the gothic turn to the detective
narrative: the supernatural (here Dracula as the Devil) is accepted into
the ordinary world as a real/actual component
What
gives the vampire its power over the humans?
Jonathan
Harker’s first encounter: (end of chapter 3(46) page after Hamlet quote: READ
What
is kinky about this? disturbing? attractive? (three in number, you first,
etc)
How
does Jonathan feel: both attracted and repelled? Why does he feel guilty?
How
does this scene represent women? (no modesty, no restraint—just thirst)
How
does this represent Dracula? (sudden power, flashing eyes—the Devil’s power)
End
chapter 4 (60): trying to destroy Dracula while he sleeps:
what
is the danger Dracula presents? (like many s/f stories of take-overs)
why
can’t Harker destroy him? (stop him with a stare… uncanny powers: he will
need more knowledge to destroy him)
Switch
to England:
Chapter
5: meeting Mina and Lucy: what is the difference between Lucy and Mina?
Western
Female Characters: what distinguishes
Lucy and Mina?
Lucy is the beauty, the woman all men love (3 suitors; the seamen; etc.), radically white and innocent: but therefore vulnerable and sensitive and nervous
What
makes Mina stronger? (she is less beautiful and less innocent)
What is Mina’s role in the
narrative?
as “good sister type”, as girl next door, as nurturing maternal type. But
also as someone who keep a journal and is learning shorthand and learning
how to type.
As
amanuensis, secretary, as data base builder, as medium (in both senses of
the word) à allowing two way communication
with Dracula.
What
is the role of these records and record-keeping in the novel? Several different
strands are being recorded at once:
Ø
Harker’s
journal re Dracula’s castle
Ø
Mina’s
journal (and letters) re Whiby visit with Lucy
Ø
Dr.
Seward’s journal (phonography record) of his observations of Renfield
All will be used in detection of the mysterious powers
of Dracula.
You
the reader positioned as detective: What is the effect for you as the reader
of a novel that nothing but documents? (no 3rd person narrative
to synthesize)
What
are the forces that England has to bring against Dracula?
What
are issues or questions interest you about Dracula?
How
different than the movie versions you know?
How
different than the historical Dracula?
May
31, 2000
Dracula
Class #2:
Key
scenes:
Lucy
between woman and vampire: end chapt 16 (217-218)
What
is she? What is terrifying about this figure to the men fighting her?
What
are the Powers/Qualities of the vampire?:
merging appetite for blood and sexual drive
egotistical, automatic, indifferent to any moral inhibitions:
this is the fascinating power of many cyborgs… they are beyond human self-restraint
or moral feeling
the power of transforming humans into another of itself:
thus the treat to humans of contagion
Scene:
Mina Harker forced to suck at Dracula’s breast: chapt 21 (287ff)
Primal scene of horror, where Mina is found with Dracula: what gives this scene its horror? READ 287-288 (what the men see when they burst into Mina and Jonathan Harker’s room)
READ 292-294: Mina’s narrative of the scene of her pollution
View from three sides: male protectors; Mina; and Dracula
Why are the men so ashamed? (they have failed in protecting their woman)
why is Mina so ashamed of this scene? Why does the novel offer us this ritual of self-abasement and shame for Mina? What would she have had to do to deserve this shaming? [Leslie Fiedler, a former colleague and famous critic of popular culture says that the scene is a prettied up version of another scene—Dracula forcing Mina to give him oral sex: kitten pushed into milk] Only this explains the shock and shame of both the men and Mina herself... that she has been complicit with her own pollution.
What
are the Powers/Qualities of Dracula?:
can change form, summon agents, control
the mind of victims
has lived for hundreds of years—and thus gained strength
of his victims
has master plan: domination of the modern
world (where modern rationality will actually help him)
but what
does Dracula want? The object of knowledge and the monster that must be
fought is Dracula: What do you think
is Dracula’s single distinguishing trait?
Immortality and great strength; radically alone and seeking dominion;
What makes his most inhuman, and different than every other human (or vampire): he takes no physical or sensual enjoyment: his only pleasure is that of dominion, control, and prevailing over his enemies. That is what makes him seem anti-human (and, perhaps like Christ?)
What
are the powers of the English men?
their coordinated effort and attachment
to each other & their common passion to fight & their masculinity
(valor, honor, self-sacrifice for the cause, and all that)
they bring together the skills of diverse
professions: Jonathan Sewerd: lawyer, Dr. John Seward: doctor, Professor van
Helsing: professor, Quincy Morris: adventurer, and Arthur Holmwood. What qualities
do each express?
What
intellectual posture is necessary to come to terms with Dracula?
scientific rationality; skepticism and openness
(why not go to the London police and get their help?à they wouldn’t believe in vampires)
Key
scene in many monster/ horror movies: a briefing on the enemy: vampires described
in chapt 18. (~giant insect; Ash’s comments on alien) Double function: terrify
the audience, but marshal the forces for battle. Humanity is at risk, unless we use science and our cunning to wage
this battle.
What
high technological do the human’s have to fight Dracula?
access
and use of all the information technologies of the 19th century:
which allows them to be in many places at once, and communicate:
1)
technologies
of inscription: journals, letters, telegraph, newspaper articles, phonograph
records (~Dictaphone)
2)
organizational
skill—so as to bring together all the information in the same medium—the typewritten
manuscripts of Mina Harker of both diary writing and the phonographs (where
tone of voice is drawn away), arranged in chronological order, so it becomes
an accessible data base which may be repeatedly accessed; through this sort
of organization, details become significant in new ways: what is woman’s
role? (woman as the matrix for growing their knowledge)
3)
the
exercise of interpretive skill—especially evident in Professor von Helsing
4)
use
of communications and transportation media: postal system, telegraph, railroad/
subway (so as to have observers at multiple places within a common communications
network)
With
this use of information and communication technologies, the Western males
hope that they can fight the black magic technology of Dracula.
But
note this irony: the non-human cyborg will be the creation of this sort of
information technology.
How
in this story are men and women differently disposed toward Dracula?
What
is the role of the women bring in the men’s battle with Dracula?:
they embody the value in the name of which the men
fight (Miss Mina’s purity, goodness, virtue: she is the viol of pure human
virtue);
women are also, more equivocally, the site of human
vulnerability;
the
medium through which Dracula touches them and they can reach Dracula.
Why
do you think that Mina feels so guilty about her pollution?
Pollution
does not depend upon consent (~rape victim): she loses her position as pure
and virtuous
But
Mina is now implicated: something inside her has begun to side with Dracula.
Gender and
sexual allegory: the men fight for their women, who as the pure and precious vessels
of all that is best in modern Western Christian civilization is threatened
by seduction and pollution by the Count from the East. The Christian Western
“white” team “loses” Lucy to Dracula and the Eastern forces of night, darkness,
and polluting blood-sex rituals. [Only way to reclaim her by killing her again.]
The
woman’s body becomes the ground for this battle: but after Mina’s infection,
she quite explicitly a medium through which the men can trace Dracula’s movement:
hypnotize Mina to find out where Dracula is.
But since the virtuous woman who has been polluted—especially if she mobilizes the power of writing, archiving, producing a data base—can become the male Western guy’s secret weapon. They will get to Dracula through his new girlfriend. Thus, the plot suggests the virtuous woman must be put become sexually polluted in order to take hold of the alien Other, Dracula. à just as Dracula seeks to gain control of them through their women, they find that they can exploit that possession to gain some knowledge and control over him through her: both the men of the West and Dracula use the woman—and especially Mina—as a medium.
What
is the significance of blood?
grotesque
inversion of Christian blood—as cleansing, as symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice,
as what one eats in the wine of communion: now blood is a bodily fluid exchanged
between two different species: the human and the non-human, undead vampire.