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bloodygranuaileIn honor of Halloween, I decided that this October I would reread Dracula. Yes, it took me six weeks. Shut up, I've been busy.
Anyway, a few months back I picked up a copy of the edition of Dracula that was illustrated by Edward Gorey. It has a black fabric binding with embossed silver letters and gorgeous thick ivory-colored pages and a red ribbon bookmarks and a gorgeous slightly spiky font and squeeeeeeee. I say these things because they are why I bought the book, since I already have two other editions of Dracula.
This particular edition of Dracula starts off with a slightly cranky critical commentary by someone who is way too serious to be handling Gothic novels, complaining that some people think Dracula is trashy, and this is clearly stupid because Dracula is A Great Work Of Literature, See, It Has Multiple Viewpoints! And it is true that Dracula is well-researched and is fairly tightly constructed for a Victorian novel and the Wilkie-Collins-esque "case file" format is well put together (which can be hard) and all that other stuff. However, it does not follow from these that Dracula is not a hilariously cranky piece of conservative whining about evil foreigners corrupting our good God-fearing English women and making them slutty, and that it is frequently highly sensationalized and mawkishly sentimental, and that Doctor Van Helsing's strange syntax doesn't make him sound like Yoda, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cleolinda has astutely observed. I have already linked to Kate Beaton's fabulous take on the book.
That said, I actually do love the book, and I actually do like Mina, despite the "women's role is submissive helpmate" aspect of her "all I want in the world is to do helpful chores for all these wonderful men!!" thing, because (a) I do relate to and approve of the drive to develop skills and knowledge and be productive, and (b) most of her devoted helpfulness involves extensively documenting and typing up things, and I can appreciate that, over a hundred years ago, typing and secretarial work were actually new and progressive and exciting directions for women. (And even though it is now 2011, I kind of want to learn shorthand and own a typewriter anyway, just because.) Also Mina is cleverer than most female characters in Victorian novels, although in typical Victorian fashion, every time she figures something out about where Dracula is and what he's going to do next, Van Helsing or somebody praises her for "having a man's brain."
The biggest thing that struck me about this reread is the differences between Stoker's presentation of Dracula and the pop-cultural squabblings over Real Vampire myths. Eddie Izzard's famous "What the fuck's a low-powered vampire?" in his Horror Movies sketch castigates the Coppola version for having Dracula walking around in the daylight rather than crumbling to dust; however, so does Stoker--the crumbling-to-dust thing was made up by whoever wrote the script for Nosferatu. I also generally tend to think of old myths as spreading vampirism by bite only and that the "human drinking vampire blood" thing is the domain of modern stories that can't have entire villages turning into vampires; however, Stoker kind of uses... both. I had kind of forgotten about Dracula getting younger, too. Although you almost never see that one used anymore.
Anyway, next up I need to read something that is not a reread and perhaps that will not take me forever and a day to do.
Anyway, a few months back I picked up a copy of the edition of Dracula that was illustrated by Edward Gorey. It has a black fabric binding with embossed silver letters and gorgeous thick ivory-colored pages and a red ribbon bookmarks and a gorgeous slightly spiky font and squeeeeeeee. I say these things because they are why I bought the book, since I already have two other editions of Dracula.
This particular edition of Dracula starts off with a slightly cranky critical commentary by someone who is way too serious to be handling Gothic novels, complaining that some people think Dracula is trashy, and this is clearly stupid because Dracula is A Great Work Of Literature, See, It Has Multiple Viewpoints! And it is true that Dracula is well-researched and is fairly tightly constructed for a Victorian novel and the Wilkie-Collins-esque "case file" format is well put together (which can be hard) and all that other stuff. However, it does not follow from these that Dracula is not a hilariously cranky piece of conservative whining about evil foreigners corrupting our good God-fearing English women and making them slutty, and that it is frequently highly sensationalized and mawkishly sentimental, and that Doctor Van Helsing's strange syntax doesn't make him sound like Yoda, as
cleolinda has astutely observed. I have already linked to Kate Beaton's fabulous take on the book.That said, I actually do love the book, and I actually do like Mina, despite the "women's role is submissive helpmate" aspect of her "all I want in the world is to do helpful chores for all these wonderful men!!" thing, because (a) I do relate to and approve of the drive to develop skills and knowledge and be productive, and (b) most of her devoted helpfulness involves extensively documenting and typing up things, and I can appreciate that, over a hundred years ago, typing and secretarial work were actually new and progressive and exciting directions for women. (And even though it is now 2011, I kind of want to learn shorthand and own a typewriter anyway, just because.) Also Mina is cleverer than most female characters in Victorian novels, although in typical Victorian fashion, every time she figures something out about where Dracula is and what he's going to do next, Van Helsing or somebody praises her for "having a man's brain."
The biggest thing that struck me about this reread is the differences between Stoker's presentation of Dracula and the pop-cultural squabblings over Real Vampire myths. Eddie Izzard's famous "What the fuck's a low-powered vampire?" in his Horror Movies sketch castigates the Coppola version for having Dracula walking around in the daylight rather than crumbling to dust; however, so does Stoker--the crumbling-to-dust thing was made up by whoever wrote the script for Nosferatu. I also generally tend to think of old myths as spreading vampirism by bite only and that the "human drinking vampire blood" thing is the domain of modern stories that can't have entire villages turning into vampires; however, Stoker kind of uses... both. I had kind of forgotten about Dracula getting younger, too. Although you almost never see that one used anymore.
Anyway, next up I need to read something that is not a reread and perhaps that will not take me forever and a day to do.