What I herein intend to discuss is Gothic Fiction (more specifically Bram
Stoker's Dracula) and the use (or
neglect) of terrors (either natural or supernatural) therein. In less
loaded language, I intend to discuss Dracula with particular
reference to the extreme fears, or the people (or things) who (or which)
cause these fears, especially when they are either above the essential
qualities, or operating outside of the the normal course of cause and
effect.
As I begin searching for terror within this book, I discover a certain
formula is used in all events thereof. This formula can be explained as
follows. The hero/heroin of a given adventure (misadventure) is
surrounded by supporting characters (of varying levels of significance);
these supporting characters feel fear on behalf of the hero/heroin; the
hero/heroin detects this fear and is affected thereby. Afterwards, your
own sympathy for this unfortunate character transfers the fear upon
yourself.
For example, at the very beginning of this novel, Jonathan Harker begins
his journey seeming very confident. However, his confidence is shaken by
the fear shown by the various locals he encounters. This loss of
confidence on Harker's behalf dispels a similar fear within the reader.
When explaining the fears of these inhabitants, we may be tempted to
agree with Dracula: "your peasant is at heart a coward and a fool!" However, looking back in retrospect, we find the peasants fears
were not grounded in ignorance, but rather in knowledge. We learn, there
was good cause for the peasants to fear and their "superstitious" charms
held power over Dracula and the other vampires.
Having identified the fear of the peasant, let us look to the person (if we may still call a vampire a person, after they have joined the ranks of the un-dead) who causes this fear. That is to say: Dracula, himself.
The Count, to my mind, is hardly terrifying in his own being. Powerful and eccentric seem much better adjectives for this old man with nocturnal habits, who sleeps among the dead, who uses no servants, who does not eat in front of his guests, and who prefers to exit his home by crawling out a window (head first), rather than using the more conventional front gate. The Count seemed friendly enough in his reception of Jonathan, polite in every way and seeing to every need. Had I not the peasants knawing at the back of my mind, I should laugh at the Count sooner than I should run from him. Granted, he has his seemingly superhuman strength, but of itself, it does not seem frightening.
The first instance of any frightful behaviour on part of the Count is when Jonathan cuts himself shaving. It seemed simply strange that Dracula did not appear in the mirror, but not terrifying. But when the Count noticed the cut Jonathan had given himself, the Count became subject to a "demoniac fury". This fury confirmed the suspicion of the peasants and also foreshadowed the future of the novel. This is the critical point in the book where we learn Dracula is not simply an eccentric old man who is misunderstood by the locals, but rather something not human with a passion for blood.
After Dracula leaves his castle, it is only by inference that we hold Dracula responsible for mischief on the Demeter, the death of a dog, and the illness and death of Lucy. It is only from these inferences that we hold a supernatural terror of the Count.
If I wish to take a naive viewpoint of the collected narratives, I may
suggest several misfortunes occur in and around Whitby coincident in time
to the arrival of an affluent and eccentric foreigner. Our heros panic at
an assumed connection between the two (based only on the evidence of
Harker's potentially dellusional journal and an assertion to its truth by
Van Helsing) and chase an untried, possibly innocent, man from their
homeland; not being satisfied simply with this, they then proceed to
murder him. We may well qualify the fear of the Crew of Light as stemming
from their own darkness; they are ignorant of the Count and his ways and
therefore react violently.
Unfortunately, though I may stand alone in saying so, the terror in this novel is unhappily neglected. To my observation, the only successful terror presented fit the above formulatic.
Further, at least for me personally, this atmosphere of terror does not last. Van Helsing knows too much about his enemy. Though his knowledge is not shared with the audience until rather late in the novel, we know he knows; our fear of the unknown is transformed into a curiousity of the unknown. There is hardly a struggle to learn the enemy's weaknesses, as Van Helsing hands them over on a plate; and these weaknesses made the enemy to weak to having a fighting chance.
After Lucy is laid to rest permanently (that is to say, taken away from the ranks of the un-dead) only half way through the novel, the rest of the novel is about the heros having the vampire weakened and on the run. There is a short doubt for Mina's well being, but our reasons for doubt are hardly taken to an extreme.
Although an attempt is made at terror when Harker and Arthur's steam launch is wrecked as their steam launch attempts to travel up the rapids, the attempt is weak. As readers, we do not expect our heros to travel across all of Europe chasing a vampire, only to be killed in a boating accident.
The ending itself is terribly anticlimatic and hardly dramatic, as the final fight is against gipsies and not Dracula.
As with the boating accident, we do not expect our heros to be killed by gipsies; in addition, the heros seem to have the entire situation under control.
When Dracula was killed (in four short paragraphs), he lay weak, within his box, waiting for the sun to fall. While I can not place my finger on any exact point where this was foreshadowed, it seemed inevitable that it should end this way. Had the sun fallen, thus Dracula brought back to the height of his power on his own homeland, we could have had a much more terrifying ending. I regard this just beating the clock ending as a cop out by Stoker.
As for Morris's death, while suprizing, I considered Morris too minor a character for his death to be overly touching; even if not, his death was too quick and on too happy an occasion. His death would have been much more terrifying if we were made to love him further and he died at a point of greater uncertainty, perhaps to become a vampire himself.
In conclusion, I would say the terrors invoked in this novel were evoked by two opposing forces. For the inhabitants of Transylvania, their terror arouse from enlightenment to the Count's vampire nature. By contrast, the Crew of Light suffered their terrors because of their own ignorance of the Count and their fears were lightened by enlightenment from Van Helsing.
Finally, I don't believe these terrors were developed particularly well, at least not as well as they could have been. Van Helsing should have known much less, and the knowledge of how to defeat Dracula should have been won by a great struggle. More heros should have been killed, and these should have been killed at more critical moments. Dracula should have been allowed out of his box and then Dracula given one last vigorous fight.
Bibliography
Fowler, H. W. and F. G. (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).
Stoker, Bram, Penguin Popular Classics: Dracula (London: Penguin Books, 1994).