Dracula by Stoker Bram & Castle Mort

Author:Stoker, Bram & Castle, Mort
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2014-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

We know, of course, the account Mina reads. We know how deep her love is for Jonathan. And so we might be tempted to ask, “How can she question his account of the Transylvanian horrors?”

Except we know Mina (Murray) Harker. She is stalwart, loving—and realistic. That means that no matter her feelings for her husband, she cannot willingly accept what seems impossible “just because my hubby says so.”

Stoker provides us well-rounded characters, and because Mina is the most fully developed (human) of any of Dracula’s cast, we can accept her questioning Jonathan’s account without seeing her as anyone other than his loving wife. In addition, Harker had a brain fever, so Mina is right to suspect Jonathan’s view as quite possibly not rational.

This is the practical and loving Mina we have come to know.

Van Helsing is a doctor and a lawyer and, with his great love of secrets, hardly a master of human relations. Too often, what he arranges to keep concealed causes problems for “the good guys.” Is Van Helsing meant to show “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” or is he simply so arrogant that he thinks he can ladle out knowledge to his “intellectual inferiors” when they can best process it, or … something else? In any event, Van Helsing, like other important characters, is not a simple, one-dimensional creation.

Don’t worry, dear Mina, Van Helsing has no problems with secrets.

By setting this diary entry after Mina has had time to reflect on her encounter with Van Helsing, Stoker gives Mina time to more objectively consider what has transpired.

Stoker the psychologist is getting it absolutely right. We cannot evaluate any experience while we are in the middle of the experience. It is only later that we can articulate the experience and begin to understand it.

To paraphrase William Wordsworth, “Poetry is powerful emotion … recollected in tranquility.”

Recollection + distance = understanding.

Okay, she is working too hard at describing Van Helsing. She isn’t giving us a mental picture, she’s taking inventory. But Mina has told us she is more or less “pretending” to be a newspaper reporter, and if she has not yet gotten the idea of “selected meaningful detail,” well, she has defined herself as an amateur and we accept it.

Perhaps not previously mentioned, but the epistolary format enables a character to share information with any character at any time she chooses! Did Stoker do right in using the epistolary format?

I think I’ve made a case for Stoker’s sense of humor … but let’s agree that this is not an example of it.

He’s got that right, doesn’t he? Of all the characters in the novel, Mina acts with the most consistent intelligence.

Deep characters: Is she “hysterical” or does Mina, she of the pragmatic mind, realize that an emotional appeal to the narcissistic and paternalistic Van Helsing will serve as the quickest route to helping her husband—and perhaps to answering some of the questions growing in her mind?

Dracula was and is a popular novel. And by the complexity of its characters and its serious philosophical concerns, it is equally a literary novel.

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