Stoker, Bram (1847 - 1912) | Introduction
Introduction
(Full name Abraham Stoker) Irish novelist, short story writer, and essayist.
Stoker is best known as the author of Dracula (1897), one of the most famous horror stories of all time, and a work frequently cited as a culminating example of the late-Victorian Gothic novel. Stoker also wrote adventure novels and romances, several other works of horror, and numerous pieces of short fiction. These works, however, have been overshadowed by Stoker's most popular novel and have attracted relatively little critical attention. For most, Stoker is regarded as a one-book author, his sole memorable contribution being the creation of the Transylvanian count whose name has become synonymous with vampirism.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Born on November 8, 1847, in Dublin, Stoker was stricken with illness as a child that left him bedridden for the first seven years of his life. During this period, his mother reputedly told him stories of her own childhood during the cholera plague in the Irish town of Sligo, recounting instances of live interment and corpse burnings. At Trinity College, Stoker made up for his early invalidism by excelling in athletics as well as in
MAJOR WORKS
Stoker composed Dracula as an epistolary novel comprised of journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, a ship's log, and phonograph recordings. The story begins with the journey of a young English solicitor, Jonathan Harker, sent to Transylvania to counsel a wealthy client, Count Dracula. During his two-month stay at Dracula's castle, Harker becomes disconcerted by Dracula's odd appearance, eccentricities, and predatory behavior. After some investigation, he discovers that Dracula sleeps in a coffin in a crypt beneath the castle during the day and spends his nights stealing babies from the nearby town. Harker manages to escape the castle and return to England where he is reunited with his fiancée Mina Murray. Strange events in London, including the arrival of a Russian schooner containing fifty boxes of earth, and the mysterious death of Mina's acquaintance Lucy Westenra, suggest that Dracula has followed Harker back to England. Harker engages the help of Lucy's former doctor, Van Helsing, when she reemerges as a vampire. Together with several assistants the men locate the undead Lucy and destroy her. When it becomes clear that Mina is the Count's next victim, Harker, Van Helsing, and the others extend their search for Dracula himself. Discovering that he has fled London, they track him down and kill him. As Dracula's body disintegrates, Mina is saved.
As is Dracula, Stoker's remaining novels and works of short fiction are primarily characterized by their macabre nature and focus on such themes as death, male rivalry, ambivalence toward women, and the morality of good and evil. Among them, "Dracula's Guest," originally intended as a prefatory chapter to Dracula, is one of Stoker's best-known stories. The tale opens with Jonathan Harker traveling to Dracula's castle, only to be stranded alone in the countryside when his frightened driver refuses to complete the trip. He takes refuge from a violent storm in a mausoleum in a nearby cemetery. As he rests, a beautiful female apparition rises from the tomb and approaches him. Suddenly, he is thrown to the ground and later wakes to find himself warmed and protected by a werewolf. In another story, "The Squaw," an American visiting Nuremberg drops a pebble from the top of a castle, killing a kitten. Its vengeful mother stalks the man, eventually causing his death. Of Stoker's other supernatural novels, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) is generally considered his best effort after Dracula. The work concerns an ambitious Egyptologist who attempts to reanimate the mummified remains of an ancient Egyptian queen. During the course of the novel the scientist, Trelawney, discovers that this mummy has been exerting a mysterious influence over his daughter Margaret, from which he eventually manages to free her. Probably Stoker's second most popular work of fiction, his late novel entitled The Lair of the White Worm (1911) is generally perceived by scholars as a lurid and somewhat incoherent pastiche of grotesque horror. Its story concentrates on the sinister figure of Lady Arabella March, whom the novel's protagonists eventually learn can transform herself into a repulsive worm of monstrous proportions. Although not well regarded by critics, the novel is sometimes discussed in terms of its bizarre, sexualized imagery and as a troubling indicator of Stoker's mental decline shortly before his death.
CRITICAL RECEPTION
Most Victorian readers interpreted Dracula as a straightforward horror novel. Some early reviewers noted the "unnecessary number of hideous incidents" which could "shock and disgust" readers. One critic even advised keeping the novel away from children and nervous adults. Later commentators began to take a more scholarly approach to the novel, exploring the theme of repressed sexuality within the story. Critics have asserted that the transformation of Dracula's female victims, Lucy and Mina, from chaste to sexually aggressive should be considered a commentary on attitudes toward female sexuality in Victorian society. Homoerotic elements in the relationship between Dracula and Harker have also been analyzed. Moreover, Dracula's drinking of blood in the novel has been regarded as a metaphor for sexual intercourse, and the stakes that kill Lucy and three other vampire women have been discussed as phallic symbols. Among contemporary critical approaches to Dracula, Clive Leatherdale has traced the origins of Stoker's Transylvanian count from the stories of eastern European folklore and history, and has examined the novelist's ambivalent and at times paradoxical rendering of the vampire as both victimizer and victim. Valerie Clemens (see Further Reading) has considered Dracula within the contexts of late nineteenth-century England, exploring Stoker's representation of rapid changes in Victorian science, technology, and culture in the work. Jerrold E. Hogle has suggested that Stoker's novel both exaggerates and intensifies the English Gothic literary conventions laid down by Horace Walpole in his supernatural romance The Castle of Otranto, arguing that Dracula offers a bourgeois, capitalist "counterfeit" of the social and symbolic structures originally depicted in the Gothic novel through its use of narrative simulacra. Joseph Valente has studied gender construction and social marginality in Dracula, particularly highlighting the idealized feminine and maternal virtues associated with Mina and the work's allegorized cultural and political contexts. Other critics have frequently evaluated Dracula from a Freudian psychosexual standpoint, and the novel has additionally been interpreted from folkloric, political, feminist, and religious points of view. Still other commentators have identified themes of parricide, infanticide, and gender reversal in the novel. In recent years, the diverse literary origins of Dracula have also been identified, with Varney the Vampyre; or, The Feast of Blood, John William Polidori's The Vampyre, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla," and Guy de Maupassant's "Le Horla" studied among its Gothic forerunners.
Though Stoker's other novels were favorably reviewed when they appeared, most are now considered dated by their stereotyped characters and romanticized Gothic plots; and except by aficionados of supernatural fiction they are rarely read today. Even the earliest reviews frequently decried the stiff characterization and tendency to melodrama which flaw Stoker's writing. Critics have universally praised, however, Stoker's beautifully precise place descriptions. Stoker's short stories, while sharing the faults of his novels, have fared better with modern readers. Meanwhile, Dracula has garnered much critical and popular attention since the time of its publication and through the years has spawned countless stories and novels by other authors, as well as numerous theatrical and cinematic adaptations. Indeed, Dracula has never gone out of print since its first publication. Many critics regard the novel as the best-known and most enduring Gothic vampire story ever published. Whether Stoker evoked a universal fear, or as some modern critics would have it, gave form to a universal fantasy, he created a powerful and lasting image that has become an indelible part of popular culture.
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