Dracula: The Shade And The Shadow by Elizabeth Miller

Author:Elizabeth Miller [Miller, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908495129
Publisher: Desert Island eBooks
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Stoker’s Banana Skins

Even the finest authors make mistakes, muddling the plot or being blinded by inconsistencies. Dracula is a fertile hunting ground for this type of endeavor. No disrespect to Stoker is intended when claiming that his novel is riddled with errors and illogicalities.[38] By “errors” is meant, for example, wrong or contradictory dates. Stoker knew that this was a minefield, and his notes show numerous crossings out and revisions of dates. The problem is exacerbated by the nocturnal aspect of much of the novel. The happenings on any particular night, either side of midnight, necessarily span two days. In other words, an entry dated, for instance, 20 September, is likely to contain a record of what happened on the 19th.

Other problems crop up here and there. One minute Van Helsing appears to be staying at London’s Great Eastern Hotel, then without notice he switches to the Berkeley. He dashes backwards and forwards by overnight ferry to Amsterdam, in Holland, then mysteriously sends a telegram from Antwerp, in Belgium. Lucy writes an early letter from 17 Chatham Street, though her home is later disclosed as a mansion called Hillingham in north London. These and other inconsistencies are mostly attributable to the many drafts the novel went through. Traces of earlier snippets survived in later drafts when with the luxury of more time Stoker might have weeded them out.

Dracula’s “illogicalities” are of a different order. Many of these pertain to the Count and to vampires in general. Stoker pays great attention to the attributes of vampires, but left some facets either ignored or unexplained. Why, for example, is the Count helpless every time he is horizontal? Like a cockroach flipped on its back, Dracula just cannot get to his feet. No matter the time of day, whenever he is caught lying in one of his boxes – as Harker found him in the Castle (96), and when he is finally cornered in the climax (509) – Dracula is incapable of climbing out to defend himself. He lies there inert, incapable of no more than a look of hate, or a premature smirk as he sees the sun going down. His strength of twenty men (332) applies only when he is upright.

When Dracula is described as lying in his box in the castle, gorged with blood oozing from every pore (100), Stoker fails to tells us whose blood it is. Later we learn that Dracula conserves blood and never kills for the sake of it, so why break his normal habits in this instance? If he can still enjoy blood-banquets in Transylvania, he has no need to quit his homeland and invade England to find new conquests. The answer, one assumes, is not to be found in logic. The scene allows Stoker to paint one of the most blood-curdling descriptions in the novel.

And why, when Dracula shape-shifts into an animal, does it have to be an immense dog (137) or a great bat (158). Dracula can change into whatever he likes. He

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