Revisiting Dracula
A Case for Literary Retrieval
“It is now close to the time of our general gathering. Van Helsing has gone away to prepare for the meeting, and his painful part of it. I really believe his purpose is to be able to pray alone.”
Dr Seward, 5th October (Dracula by Bram Stoker)
Even as well read as I was, I rebelled against the idea of reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen well into my twenties. It wasn’t because it was a “book for girls” or even because it was a romance, it was because at school an English Literature teacher had told me that the book was all about a heroine, Elizabeth, and how she fell in love with a prideful and prejudiced man named Mr Darcy. I wasn’t interested in reading a book about a perfect heroine and how they fixed a broken man. I get enough of that from pop culture. Having now read the book multiple times, as well as Austen’s other works, and having watched both Film and TV adaptations, I have no idea what possessed that English teacher to give me such a profound misrepresentation of the story. I love Austen’s work in part because not one of her characters is perfect, each one has a journey to go on and all of them have work left to do by the end. Not only that, but we get to go on those journeys with the characters, and learn the same lessons along with them. In the case of Pride and prejudice, early on in the book one of the characters, Mary, points out that everyone struggles with the titular sins and as the story unfolds we find out just how true that is and how certain characters repent of these sins and others don't.
So many stories have been stolen from us by awful adaptations and representations which have left us unwilling to pick them up and see what they have to offer us.
Enter Dracula
I recently finished Dracula by Bram Stoker and it was nothing like I was expecting, to me give you some examples of assumptions which you might also have that I found to be wrong:
For 95+% of the book, it wasn’t even set in Transylvania.
Each character I’ve seen in other media is nothing like the version Stoker envisioned, not even close.
The centrality which God and Prayer played in this book bowled me over.
A few weeks ago I talked about Jekyll and Hyde which I found similarly enlightening, in the book a man tries with all of his human strength and ingenuity to keep both his purity and his sin, but finds that he’s left with only the latter when all was said and done. Eventually, he realised his fault:
“…with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, [I fell upon my knees] and lifted… clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father's hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me: and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul. As the acuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeded by a sense of joy.”
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Dr Jekyll repented in the end, and so must we. There are stories we’d do well to turn back to and Dracula is one of them. In the opening Chapters of Bram Stoker’s classic, Jonathan Harker visits Dracula, and I suggest we do the same. At times we will feel uncomfortable, terrified, and hopeless, but in the end, we will, along with the protagonists, believe that though “the devil may work against us for all he's worth, but God sends us men when we want them.”
Mirrors
There are a few things most people know about vampires, chief among them are:
They cannot stand garlic
They sleep in coffins
Mirrors don’t bear their reflection
When my wife and I were first married, we only had one mirror in the whole house. If I needed to shave I had two options; I could either do so in the bedroom where the mirror lived or take it with me into the bathroom. As we entered the pandemic and mirrors outside of the house were no longer available to me, I spent long periods of time without ever seeing myself. During this time, I stopped caring so much about what I looked like, my appearance, and the clothes that I wore, but in my reading—whether in the Bible or in the works of non-fiction or fiction—the literary mirrors I held up to myself helped me to care more about what was within.
In my case, the lack of reflection led to self-reflection, in Count Dracula’s case, it led to pride.
When it comes to works of fiction, those are our two options, either we pridefully accept that they have nothing to offer us, or we choose to see the benefit they can bring and that fantasy, however otherworldly, can explain our own experiences and failings to us in a way which non-fiction will always struggle to match. C.S. Lewis put it like this:
Stories have a way of getting behind our defense systems. “Stories allow us to steal past those watchful dragons”
Don’t get me wrong, non-fiction has its place, if it doesn’t I’m scuppered as I’m primarily a non-fiction writer and I consistently review non-fiction books on this newsletter, but I can’t overstate how effective fiction has been over the years in breaking me down, revealing my faults, fear, and failures to me, and making me face them head-on. Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks is undoubtedly one of the greatest works on the subject of spiritual warfare, but the Screwtape Letters helped me to see the enemy for who he was and to apply the wisdom I’d received from Brooks in the first place. If you’ve ever found yourself watching a film, a TV series, or reading a book and thinking to yourself, “I wish I would have acted like that,” or “I NEVER would have done that,” or sobbing because the scenario reminded you of a happy or painful memory and brought it to the surface again, it’s worth asking the question:
“If stories have this power, which stories should I be absolutely sure to read?”
Transylvania, South London
I grew up in Croydon, South London. When I meet someone from elsewhere in London I usually smile and say, “I come from Croydon, but don’t judge me for it, or I’ll stab you.” It’s a grim joke, but within the context of Greater London, it’s never ceased to win a laugh. Why? Croydon has a reputation.
If someone from Croydon shouts at you, you’ll be okay, it’s harmless fun. If they smile, if they place a hand on your shoulder, and try to put you at ease, follow this one rule: Run, run and don’t look back.
Dracula could have grown up in Croydon, I’ve known Draculas.
When we meet the vampire he’s nothing but cordial, hospitable, and calm. When Jonathan Harker first arrives at his door he takes this at face value, but as the story progresses, he begins to read between the lines. Harker tries to run but finds that there’s no way out. For the first section of the book, the tension between good and evil is built up, and we’re faced with the very real truth that evil is out there somewhere, and it’s coming for us. I felt this all the more acutely as Dracula was headed for London, my home, and whatever horrors I’d faced there as a teenager were nothing compared to this monster.
When Dracula leaves Transylvania, he also leaves the story.
With the exception of a few references, after the first part, the enemy moves through the pages like a mist, wetting the pages and making them uncomfortable to the touch, but rarely landing upon them in full force. The effect upon us the reader and upon the unlikely heroes of the story is profound. For some it leads them half to madness, others towards pride and self-aggrandisement, and finally, to the best of them, it helps them to their knees in prayer.
“It is now close to the time of our general gathering. Van Helsing has gone away to prepare for the meeting, and his painful part of it. I really believe his purpose is to be able to pray alone.”
Dr Seward, 5th October (Dracula by Bram Stoker)
As each character wrestles with themselves, with each other, and with God, we’re left to do the same. It’s impossible whilst reading this book not to think, “What would I have done?” or “Would I have been strong enough to have made that decision?” As Christians, we should also be asking ourselves a third question though:
“Given that our own enemy is even more insidious and deadly than this one, prowling around like a lion looking for prey, am I fighting sin this readily, am I as quick to turn to prayer, and to trust God even in the midst of my fear?”
“Take heart afresh, dear husband of Madam Mina. This battle is but begun and in the end we shall win. So sure as that God sits on high to watch over His children. Therefore be of much comfort till we return.”
Dr. Seward’s Phonograph Diary, Spoken By Van Helsing (Dracula by Bram Stoker)
Bleeding Bibline
Spurgeon famously said of John Bunyan, that he had bled bibline, in other words, that he had so indwelt the word of God that it was flowing through his veins. It’s unsurprising then that in his most famous work—the Pilgrim’s progress—scholars have managed to trace almost every sentence back to the Bible, and though that doesn’t mean the work is perfect, it does speak to how God-fearing fiction writers can be. With that said, Bunyan isn’t the standard, he’s the ideal, I don’t know that any other work will ever come close, and that’s okay. If you’re a lover of the word, and of Theology, I’m not asking you to switch your theology off as you read works like Dracula, but rather to consider this:
The better the writer, the less perfect their characters will be.
If there’s a bad point of theology, it might be there by accident, it may be a remnant of the author’s own misunderstanding, or, on the other hand, it may be there on purpose. With that said, be forgiving, no author will get everything right, and neither will any of their characters. Even Christian, the Pilgrim Bunyan wrote about, makes many mistakes on the road to glory.
I hope you will read Dracula, you can find it for free all over the internet, otherwise, there are several beautiful copies which would look fantastic on any bookshelf—and certainly draw eyes if sat next to Spurgeon, Owen, or your collection of Study Bibles.
The greater point though is this, whether it be Pride and Prejudice, Jekyll and Hyde, or Dracula, the books you haven’t read, but think you know, might be some of the most instructive treasures you’ve never considered. Austen reminded me not to judge on first impressions, Jekyll brought home that no matter how much I think I can separate myself from my sin alone, it will never be possible, and Van Helsing prayers alone and with friends in the face of the evil one will remain with me till the end of my days. What will you read and what might you learn?
Grace and Peace,
Adsum Try Ravenhill
Thank you A.T. Really enjoyed this! I should probably pick up Dracula again. I read it at 15 when I was home alone and was terrified. I picked it up again at 21 at college and was terrified then as well! I should probably give it one more go now and look at it from a literary perspective!
Yes!! I've just finished reading Dracula and I've been so surprised how different and better it is to pop culture!