Coursera: Fantasy and Science Fiction (Summer 2012) discussion

I've been pushing through Dracula and find that it's far more creepy than I thought it would be. I had this idea that as a more modern person I wouldn't find it at all chilling. :)

I have been having some problems getting the reading done since we have a lot of company and the older prose takes a bit more of my concentration than more modern books.

How's it going for everyone else?

It is creepy! At least in the first half. Stoker built the tension very well. After Lucy I found I was really struggling to get through it, though. I don't remember it being that strung out, and frankly boring, the last time I read it. It sort of turned into a treasure hunt once they'd figured out Dracula was indeed real. I'm so glad I started it early.

Okay just finished this and submitted my essay.

Was anyone else but me struck by how often the whole secrecy thing was not only stupid but dangerous? If only they'd all talked in the beginning maybe Lucy would have been saved. Of course that would not have made much of a book. :)

Jute wrote: "Okay just finished this and submitted my essay.

Was anyone else but me struck by how often the whole secrecy thing was not only stupid but dangerous? If only they'd all talked in the beginning ma..."

I know what you mean about the secrecy being dangerous. Upon this reading, I had noticed details I had either skipped or forgotten previous times - one of them being what I'd call rather disgusting requirement of Van Helsing to be "trusted" by the rest, whereas, IMHO, he did not exactly deserved it. Also, all the comparisons to animals and hunt of a predator animal were rather sick to me...

Jute wrote: "Was anyone else but me struck by how often the whole secrecy thing was not only stupid but dangerous? If only they'd all talked in the beginning ma..."

Mmm...it seemed in character with Victorian values to me, and they didn't actually know each other right at the beginning so there was a lot of trust to be built. Lucy's sleepwalking would have been seen as rather dangerous - to be tainted with a kind of madness would be absolutely scandalous and ruin any chance of marriage to a peer of the realm, not to mention potentially have killed her mother with the shock. Mina keeping that to herself was simply the action of a good friend - likewise keeping Jonathan's illness to herself preserved his business reputation intact too. We're not exactly over that mental illness taboo 100 years later. Maybe I've just read too many Regency/Victorian novels where people just don't talk to each other very much and that comedy of manners is the main part of the tale.

Van Helsing not explaining his actions was pretty clever, I thought. He proved Lucy was a vampire in front of their eyes so the horror and shock was absolutely genuine and they had no choice but to act quickly. In modern vampire books there's sometimes the idea that Christian symbols of faith don't work any more against vamps unless they're held in the hands of a true believer. I've often wondered whether Van Helsing was a man of faith deep enough for it to work (since he was by profession a cutting-edge scientist), or whether he was depending on the faith of the others. If the latter, he'd have wanted to preserve their faith and sense of horror to the last possible moment.

Even if that wasn't the case, he was offering them plausible deniability - if it all went south they could simply say "well, we trusted the old man, we had no idea what he was up to - perhaps he's gone gaga, poor old crazy foreigner" and come out of it with their reputations intact. He said several times that he was at the end of his life; he had nothing to fear from death and perhaps that extended to social death too.

Really interesting ideas!

I don't think that the symbols of faith in this had to be wielded by a true believer since Jonathan in the beginning states the bit about the rosary not being a symbol of his faith when given it by the woman. It does work for him however.

Jute wrote: "Really interesting ideas!

I don't think that the symbols of faith in this had to be wielded by a true believer since Jonathan in the beginning states the bit about the rosary not being a symbol of..."

Yes, you're right - I think it's a modern idea, I just wondered if it had some vague roots in Van Helsing's actions. Pretty sure Harker was still Anglican/CofE Christian, though, rather than Catholic - one of the things that really divides the two branches is the graven image/idol idea. Doesn't make him less of a true believer, just that that he'd been taught a crucifix was not part of his faith. I wondered, too, if you could extrapolate a little of that into Stoker's feelings about Ireland - he was all for Home Rule but was a monarchist too. Must have been hard to hold both viewpoints.

Van Helsing, on the other hand...I did a little bit of research into Bram Stoker and it turns out he may have been a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He certainly had a few friends in the order, anyway, and his beliefs seem to have been tending towards the science/rational view rather than the religious...I wondered if van Helsing was a way of him sorting out those ideas. A bit of a Mary Sue, if you will.

Caroline wrote: "Jute wrote: "Really interesting ideas!

I don't think that the symbols of faith in this had to be wielded by a true believer since Jonathan in the beginning states the bit about the rosary not bein..."

Yes, a vague possibility. He was into occult, after all (according to wiki...).

Also, speaking of the true believer: I do not know if Seward counts as one at all, but there is a place in the chapter where they encounter the Count (of course, my memory can be a mess... ) and he is the first one to show the cross to him - there is note that he kind of has felt a power of force flowing through his arm, I think, which - to me - seemed like a surprised response.

Yes, I remember the bit you mean! I don't think he explores that feeling much afterwards, does he? Perhaps he just doesn't question what he interprets as the power of God - possibly there was no better explanation for him; whereas today we'd wonder about the power of suggestion.

Could be. I just thought it was very interesting, since he did have certain thoughts that I'd call "mystic" or even questioning the religion :)

It is interesting :) I think it's a fascinating little bit of history (and actually I wrote my essay about this sort of idea!). For anyone interested in science and metaphysics it must have been a tough time to live through in terms of questioning faith. On The Origin Of Species had been published only about 25 years previously and it probably felt like new discoveries and inventions were coming every day.

Makes me wonder if there was a similar set of fear-based tales around Galileo's time?

Would be interesting to check out :) I wrote about Bersicker, because he / it fascinated me for some time, and since I'm a bit of a fan of both "Dracula" and wolves.