If someone ever asks me for an argument against teaching English literature in high schools, I’m just going to show them this post.

It’s a horror story about a monster who eats people. What it is trying to say is: ‘I’m exciting, buy me!’

Okay, so it’s not entirely devoid of subtext. Stoker wrote at a time when Britain was receiving what was, for the time, a large number of immigrants from Eastern Europe. You can, if you want to be simplistic, reduce the core of the novel down to: Eastern Europe immigrant comes to London, sexually assaults pure English girl.

But there isn’t a political message; Stoker wasn’t trying to make a comment on the political problems of the day, he was just trying to riff on themes that would resonate with his audience.

And if your interpretation is an illustration of the dangers of exposing the unprepared brain to too many English literature classes, it’s also an example of why we need more, and better, history teaching. Because you don’t seem to understand the Victorian mindset at all.

Britain at the end of the 19th century was the richest, most technologically advanced nation on the planet, and perhaps with the exception of the United States it was one of the most socially progressive, too. For a 19th century understanding of the term ‘social progress’, that is. You’re trying to project a modern understanding of the word ‘conservative’ back onto a time when it doesn’t really fit.

Dracula represents the old world. The superstitious, feudal, Medieval societies still widespread across Europe in Stoker’s day. Jonathan Harker and his friends are very deliberately presented as middle class: a growing part of English society but still very much not the norm elsewhere. A lot of Europe was still divided between peasants and landed gentry, especially the further east you went. It was one of the big complaints by the British against immigrants that they were ignorant and superstitious.

Dracula is served by gypsies who were bound to him by custom and religious fear. But Harker is neither a grovelling serf nor a (literally) bloodsucking aristocrat. The upper classes had always looked down on anyone who actually worked for a living, but Harker has a respectable career (as does Mina); he doesn’t draw his income from the toil of others, but nor is he anyone’s servant. The theme is modern, progressive Victorian Britain vs. dark, regressive feudalism.

Trying to project our modern dichotomy between ‘liberal = pro sexual freedom’ and ‘conservative = anti sex’ doesn’t really work for this time period. Sexual continence was a middle class virtue; having babies out of wedlock was what poor people did, and being sexually promiscuous was what decadent aristocrats did (see: Lord Byron). Lucy becomes sexually promiscuous when she becomes a vampire because she has lost her moral sense.

But again, I cannot emphasize enough how Stoker was not trying to make any kind of political commentary. These are all things that would have been implicitly understood by his audience and were used by Stoker to add depth to what is at heart a traditional monster tale, rather than the story serving merely as framework for a metaphor (like Frankenstein, for example).

Daniel Greene is quite good if you want to keep up to date with what’s happening in fantasy and sci-fi.

I think it’s good to have some kind of editorial process. Someone to filter authors, find the good ones, and advise them how to improve their work.

Unfortunately I don’t think traditional publishing does that very well anymore. Self-publishing used to be for people with high hopes and low talent, but these days I definitely think there are more and more first-class authors turning to self-publishing.

stuck in my head

Ironic, given the main character’s affliction.