Dracula Study Guide, Part 2

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BEFORE reading Chapter 10 on, review Perkowski, “The Romanian Folkloric. Vampire” ... One key question is whether Perkowski's claim that Stoker modeled his Dracula on Vlad ... Van Helsing requires an autopsy, which was not a common.
Dracula Study Guide, Part 2 BEFORE reading Chapter 10 on, review Perkowski, “The Romanian Folkloric Vampire” in Dundes. READ pp. 35-36, skim the rest of the essay. One key question is whether Perkowski’s claim that Stoker modeled his Dracula on Vlad Tepes has any evidence behind it. See also the footnote in Dracula on p. 34. Q’S BELOW ALSO ASK YOU TO READ OR SKIM OTHER RESOURCES! 1. Do you think it’s necessary for Stoker to have had a “real” vampire in mind to write this book? 2. How widespread is the assumption that Vlad the Impaler was the “real” Dracula? Interested students might peruse a few vampire websites!!

Chapters 10 and 11: 1. To save Lucy, Van Helsing resorts to blood transfusion. This is common today but was considered an exotic, desperate technique when Stoker wrote. Why do you think Stoker repeatedly uses blood transfusions in the story? How does it relate to the folklore theme that “blood is life”? Also, how does this therapy relate to the theme of science versus the irrational?

2. Look closely at p. 120 and the footnotes. About garlic: it is an apotropaic, which means “a charm that turns away evil.” Such charms in folklore typically have some characteristic that likens them to the evil they dispel. Here is a passage from Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (Yale UP, 1988): Various substances are deemed effective [in warding off vampires]. One of these – and here, for a change, fiction and folklore come together – is garlic, which may not only be put in the grave [of a suspected vampire] but may also be hung around one’s neck to keep off vampires. In the Folklore Archives at the University of California, Berkeley, I found several accounts of people who as children had been forced to wear garlic around their necks . . . (p. 63). Why do you think people believed garlic would work?

3. Why does Stoker resort to a newspaper account to describe the escaped wolf? What do you, the reader, know at this point that readers of that newspaper story don’t?

4. How does the back and forth switch between news accounts, telegrams, etc. in this (and other) chapters contribute to our reaction to the pace of the events described in the story?

Chapters 12 and 13: 1. Why do you think Van Helsing has not yet told Seward and the others of his suspicions about what causes Lucy’s condition? 2. Page 146: Lucy’s deathbed scene. What happens? Why does Van Helsing fling Arthur from Lucy when she attempts a dying kiss? Why does Lucy then say to Van Helsing, “My true friend . . .”? How “theatrical” is this scene? How “sentimental”?

3. Englishmen in the Victorian age adored death scenes and made a fetish out of the dead, especially a young and beautiful corpse. See p. 148, bottom of page, “All Lucy’s loveliness . . .” This description agrees with the idea, current in those days, that the beauty of such a corpse was evidence of her purity. However, that beauty has an ominous significance here. a. Van Helsing requires an autopsy, which was not a common practice then b. How does Seward react?

Chapters 14, 15, 17, 18: 1. Examine the dialogue between Seward and Van Helsing on pp. 170-171. How does it relate to the theme of science versus the irrational?

2. One common theme in horror and science fiction concerns the limits of what man can – or should – know. The legend of Faust is a good example. Examine http://www.hants.gov.uk/ssa/faustus/faust.htm for information, if you wish. Typically, variations on this legend have a scientist or philosopher who makes a pact with the devil to get secret, forbidden knowledge in exchange for his soul. How is Dracula the reverse of the Faust legend?

3. Page 178-179: the discovery of Lucy’s intact body in her coffin. Van Helsing notes it should have started to decompose, but it has not. For background, skim Barber’s essay in Dundes, but pay attention to pp. 115116. What is Barber’s point? 4. Page 179: Van Helsing calls Lucy “Un-Dead.” What does this mean? Did Lucy actually die? a. Can you relate the notion of “Un-Dead” to the mythic pattern of the liminal figure we have seen elsewhere? 5. Closely examine pp. 186-187. What is a “host”? How does a wafer become a host? What happens in the process? See the footnote on p. 187. a. You have seen one example of an apotropaic charm in Odyssey: the “moly” that protects Odysseus from Circe’s spell. Some scholars think moly was the root of the mandrake plant: The mandrake was said to have power because its root resembled the human body. Hence many apoptropaics “work” because they are “like” the evil they ward off in some way. How is the host “like” vampirism? 6. Pages 192-193 deserve close attention. There is a definite undertone of necrophilia here. Notice also the kiss motif here and elsewhere in the novel. Remember when Dracula’s women wanted to “kiss” Harker? 7. See Van Helsing’s comment (p.207) that Mina has a man’s brain but a woman’s heart. Read the footnote. The editors of our book call attention to the Victorian “New Woman” in the preface but note that Mina is only partially representative of this trend. On the level of myth and folklore, however, this description characterizes her as another liminal figure! How so? 8. Pages 209-210: Compare Van Helsing’s description of the powers of the vampire to the account in the essay by Felix Oinas in Dundes, pp. 47-55 (skim it).