Dracula - C1-4 - complete Flashcards
What does the epigraph of the novel contribute to
- it’s verisimilitude
- the epigraph states the events of the novel are ‘facts’
What does Harker begin the story as
the epitome of the Victorian rational man
give a piece of evidence demonstrating Harker is the epitome of the Victorian rational man
- his diary is regulated with notions of time ‘left Munich at 8:35 pm’
- his world is punctual, civilised, regular and rational
give a quote showing Harker transitioning to the foreign Transylvania
- he sees himself ‘leaving the West and entering the East’
- ○ He also notes how ‘the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains’, showing his transition from civilisation to barbarism
Give a quote showing how Harker is stepping into a world where appearance and reality have become disjointed, and the transparent window between perception and reality is hence undermined
- how does this affect the rational Victorian man?
‘The women looked pretty, except when you got near them’
- □ In this setting, the rational Victorian man has lost all his power, as rationality depends upon transparent perception in order to be useful
How does Harker’s enlightenment thinking hinder him at this point
- His nature thus makes him unable to understand the warning signs from the locals about Castle Dracula, as he is so contemptuous and so far removed from a world of folklore and superstition.
○ This could be a comment from Stoker about the blindness of the rational, modern man, who has lost the ability to sense the warning signs of evil
§ Perhaps this is part of the wider gothic preoccupation with characters who are ignorant, and made vulnerable through that ignorance, of the presence of danger
□ This is part of a wider Victorian fear that enlightenment thinking and scientific advancement could be made vulnerable by its dismissal of different ways of thinking
Give two interpretations of Harker’s comment about a woman in Transylvania having a dress ‘almost too tight for ___’
‘modesty’
○ This is showing his humanity slipping through the cracks of the Victorian shell?
○ It potentially demonstrates his moral weakness early on?
- Alternatively,
○ This shows deep-set Victorian repression, as he denies sexual feelings
○ These subconscious desires are then released and displayed in castle Dracula
What is Harker’s religion at the start
Protestant
What is Harker handed by a Transylvanian person when he goes to visit castle Dracula
- a Catholic idol - a crucifix
what happens when Harker travels in the coach in the dark and wolves begin howling around the coach
reality becomes confused with dream states
= he says ‘ i must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming of the incident’
- this is a liminal state
How does Harker feel when he is in the coach surrounded by wolves
he becomes overcome with a ‘paralysis of fear’
Give 3 key quotes about Dracula’s appearance
‘Tall’
‘Clad in black’
‘ strength which made me wince’
‘Cold as ice’
‘More like the hand of a dead than a living man’
‘A very marked physiognomy’
give a quote linking The count to the pseudo science of physiognomy
He has a ‘very marked physiognomy’
How does the description of Dracula link to Cesare ___ ‘portrait of the___ man’
Lombroso - criminal
- both the criminal man and Count have pointed noses like ‘beaks’ and ‘pointed ears’
- note that pointed ears are also associated with the devil
Give a quote showing draculas masculine vitality/virility
He has ‘astonishing vitality’ for a man so old
- this also is uncanny as it twists conceptions of natural aging into something unnatural
how does Dracula’s aristocratic nature link to his masculinity
- he owns the castle, demonstrating a dominant masculinity
why is Victorian masculinity associated with ownership
as the capitalist system and the rise of bourgeois culture invoked the renewed fetishisation of property, and connected personal with financial and material success (ownership).
How is aristocracy more masculine than middle-class entrepreneurship/professional work
- Draculas aristocratic right to this ownership sets him above even enterprising Victorian men, as his property is a fundamental right, integral to himself as a character
- It also means he never has to compete with other men and thereby quantify or in any way measure his masculinity against others
○ The aristocracy, in their ability to sidestep of capitalist competition, thus lie divinely transcendent
○ This transcendence of societal standards and competition later develops (in the mid twentieth century) to being interpreted as a weak and effeminate trait, as the very act of capitalist competition and the hardship required to become a self made man, becomes integral to the masculine ideal. It is thus that the fall of the aristocracy takes place in England, as exemplified in Brides-head Revisited
- It also means he never has to compete with other men and thereby quantify or in any way measure his masculinity against others
What does Dracula make Harker feel and what does this mean
’nausea’
- He has an instinctive and visceral reaction to Dracula, he has a natural human response to evil which he should trust, but is irrational
○ This could be stoker again exploring the danger of secularism and rationality at the expense of all else
Give a quote showing Harker’s facade of rationality and self control slipping and analyse it
- ‘I am in a sea of wonders. I doubt. I fear. I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul’
○ He is slipping into a world of uncertainty, of emotion and irrationality
○ There is something so primal and raw about the way he is expressing his state of mind. He is reduced to his humanity, and this is a reminder of vulnerability. The civilised human has nothing to fear, and every reason to hope for immortality (as we drink from the elixir of progress). The wild and free human must fear everything as alone we are weak.
The indubitable simplicity of the way in which he describes something, which it is unlikely he could rationally explain, shows his transition to a more internalised/subjective view of the world, rather than the Enlightened one.
What is significant about Harker being kept up all night by Dracula and then sleeping long into th day
- His natural circadian rhythms are disrupted
- His waking hours become the night, where the subconscious runs free in dreams
○ This shows how castle Dracula is becoming a place where his subconscious is freed and explored
○ It also explores the liminality of dream and sleep states
- His waking hours become the night, where the subconscious runs free in dreams
