A Vampire in the Library: Dracula from Within

Re-Size Text: A A A A Comment

RSS blog print

essay

Joachim Stanley

A Vampire in the Library: Dracula from Within

 

 

Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, is a text that has eluded a consensus of interpretation. The text notoriously reflects its readers’ preoccupations back at them and these are often wildly at variance with one another: Freudian critics lay sexual traumas bare; Marxists see barely metaphorical bloodsucking capitalists, and post-colonialists discover concerns of race. Judith Halberstam ruefully comments on this tendency by referencing possible anti-Semitism:

        Reading Dracula for the first time years ago, I thought I noticed something about vampirism that had been strangely overlooked by critics and readers. Dracula . . . with his peculiar physique, his parasitical desires, his aversion to the cross and to all the trappings of Christianity, his blood-sucking attacks, and his avaricious relation to money, resembled stereotypical anti-Semitic nineteenth-century representations of the Jew. . . .
  Halberstam describes how she made a series of connections, extending to an action for defamation against a breakfast cereal company which had incautiously depicted Count Chocula wearing a Star of David. She then surmised that this train of connections might be taking things too far:
        While I felt that this incident vindicated my comparison of Jew and vampire, doubts began to creep in about stabilizing this relationship. By the time my doubts had been fully expressed . . . I discovered that, rather than revealing a hidden agenda in Stoker’s novel, I had unwittingly essentialized Jewishness. By equating Jew and vampire in a linear way, I had simply stabilized the relationship between the two as a mirroring, but I had left many questions unanswered, indeed unasked, about the production of monstrosity, whether it be monstrous race, monstrous class, or monstrous sex. Attempts to consume Dracula and vampirism within one interpretive model inevitably produce vampirism. They reproduce, in other words, the very model they claim to have discovered.
  Dracula, then, is a text that, like its eponymous antihero, should be treated with caution. It is a book about a vampire, rather than a reliable bridgehead into wider cultural and critical considerations. Reflections from these perspectives can certainly illumine aspects of the text, but like Jonathan Harker’s mirror, they don’t shed much light on vampires, who in any case prefer the dark: to stray too far from the (un-)reality of vampires is to miss the point.
  But if Dracula resists conventional critical assessments, how is he to be understood? I would suggest that a more reliable means of understanding Dracula is to examine intratextual rather than extratextual sources: specifically, I will argue that Dracula’s own reading matter is a surer starting point for an analysis of the Count himself than other sources: libraries are, after all, notoriously revealing indices of character. Closer study of Dracula’s library also reveals one major surprise that has so far been overlooked.
  Jonathan Harker describes Dracula’s book collection as follows:
        . . . I found, to my great delight, a vast number of English books, whole shelves full of them, and bound volumes of magazines and newspapers. A table in the centre was littered with English magazines and newspapers, though none of them were of very recent date. The books were of the most varied kind—history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law—all relating to England and English life and customs and manners. There were even such books of reference as the London Directory, the “Red” and “Blue” books, Whitaker’s Almanac, the Army and Navy Lists, and—it somehow gladdened my heart to see it—the Law List.
  At first glance, this is an eclectic—even disorderly—collection with no central themes other than England and the English: it sounds as though Dracula has simply acquired any and all English texts he can lay his hands on. However, as the plot unfolds and we witness Dracula’s journey to Whitby and beyond, it becomes apparent that this is an eminently practical library. With commendable intellectual tidiness, Dracula has clearly thought through the potential difficulties he is likely to face once he arrives in England, and tried to read his way around them. His grasp of geographical location has to be good, because his safety depends upon it: equally, soil is important for a vampire (hence, presumably, the texts on geology and botany). Dracula’s grasp of legal matters turns out to be at least the equal of Harker’s (see below), and for one who wishes to avoid drawing attention to himself, some understanding of local history and culture is merely prudent (thus the history section). Dracula’s wish to dominate his new cultural milieu (“I have been so long master that I would be master still—or at least that none other should be master of me”) dictates that he has to know “who’s who” (hence the Army, Navy, and Law lists). However, the library Harker describes contains one genuinely puzzling category—namely, political economy.
  Prima facie, there is no particular reason why Dracula should interest himself in this: English high society functions have never been known for their perorations on David Ricardo or Adam Smith, and whilst England was the preeminent capitalist nation at the time, one would imagine that the historical section of Dracula’s library would have served to cover the point for conversational purposes. Even if one assumes that this interest predated Dracula’s plans for England, there is no obvious reason why someone with such an ordered and practical mind should have read about political economy at all: apart from occasional forays to predate on the local peasantry, he does not have to work for an un-living, let alone comprehend the workings of mills, however dark and Satanic. Why, then, does Dracula take any interest in political economy? Two subsidiary questions are also raised: which works on the topic did he pick, and why did he choose them?
  Dracula partially answers these questions when he enters the room, shortly after Harker has started browsing the Count’s shelves:
        “These companions”—and he laid his hand on some of the books—“have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her. . . .”
  Dracula’s mention of the texts as “friends” is revealing. Possibly the books function as sources of information, much like his animate “friend” Harker. Certainly, the usage of the word should put one on one’s guard: the Count is not the sort of person to have friends. But there is the further possibility that Dracula has found some source of intellectual engagement in his library—in other words, that he has found a kindred spirit. Whilst he is a supernatural entity, Dracula is also thoroughly prosaic, and so it seems improbable that he would derive much pleasure from reading gothic fiction or older ghost stories (and there is no suggestion that any such works appear in his collection). However, there was one major author on political economy whose texts were peppered with references to ghosts, spectres, werewolves and vampires—namely, Karl Marx. In Book 1 of Capital (1867), there are three references to vampires, as follows:
  Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.
  The prolongation of the working day beyond the limits of the natural day, into the night, only acts as a palliative. It quenches only in a slight degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour. . . . It is well known that this relay system, this alternation of two sets of workers, held full sway in the full-blooded youth-time of the English cotton manufacture and that at the present time it still flourishes . . . in the cotton spinning of the Moscow district.
  The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no “free agent” that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the time for which he was forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him “so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited.” For “protection” against “the serpent of their agonies,” the labourers must put their heads together. . . .
  To say that Dracula has read Marx is rather different from constructing a Marxist reading of the text, but if one takes him at his word (that the books offered him friendship), then this is a persuasive interpretation: the Count is far too sophisticated to take the presence of Marx’s vampires literally, but there would have been much in Capital to persuade him that in England he would meet some like-minded people, even if they only exsanguinate metaphorically. The capitalists of Marx’s oeuvre also provide Dracula with an opportunity: someone who quite literally drains people dry will very probably pass unnoticed in a metropolis run by bloodsuckers whose care of their workers is at best scant, and who will replace someone who has not turned up for work on Monday without giving the matter a second thought. If one assumes that he has read Marx, then Dracula’s foray into political economy seems likely to have been the central element in his decision to move to England, and thus a piece of blackest satire. Moreover, unlike Marx’s bourgeoisie, Dracula has not been chased all over the globe by profit: rather, Marx’s account of the capitalist system has suggested a specific location in which he could rather well for himself.
  Whether or not he has got all the way through Capital (who has?), Dracula’s behavior toward Jonathan Harker is entirely consistent with the descriptions of how capitalists mistreat their workforce quoted above. Whilst he is at the castle, Harker functions partly as a legal practitioner, partly as someone with whom Dracula can practice conversing in English, and finally as dinner. Indeed, the Count’s planned exsanguination is foreshadowed by his increasingly confident leeching of information from Harker. At one point Harker comes close to conceding that professionally he is not his host’s equal:
        . . . [He] then went on to ask about the means of making consignments and the forms to be gone through, and of all sorts of difficulties which might arise, but by forethought could be guarded against. I explained all these things to him to the best of my ability, and he certainly left me under the impression that he would have made a wonderful solicitor, for there was nothing that he did not think of or foresee. For a man who was never in the country, and who did not evidently do much in the way of business, his knowledge and acumen were wonderful.
  Further on in the text, Dracula exhibits a peculiarly lawyerly style of argument when he discovers Harker’s letter written in shorthand to his wife Mina:
  . . . “one is from you, and to my friend Peter Hawkins; the other”—here he caught sight of the strange symbols as he opened the envelope, and the dark look came into his face, and his eyes blazed wickedly—“the other is a vile thing, an outrage upon friendship and hospitality! It is not signed. Well! so it cannot matter to us.” And he calmly held letter and envelope in the flame of the lamp till they were consumed. Then he went on:—
  “The letter to Hawkins—that I shall, of course, send on, since it is yours. Your letters are sacred to me. Your pardon, my friend, that unknowingly I did break the seal. Will you not cover it again?”
  “You didn’t sign it so it can’t be yours” seems a wonderfully legalistic trope, especially coupled with the preceding clause, which renders the passage as a whole breathtakingly disingenuous (but punctiliously preserves the forms of good conduct). Dracula has clearly been absorbing the terminology and formulations of his guest’s profession—its methodology is an aperitif. Like Marx’s capitalists, Dracula shows himself to be not only highly practical but avidly parsimonious: little goes to waste in his castle, and perhaps that explains why he reacts so badly to Harker cutting himself whilst shaving. Indeed, the castle’s ruinous and soit-Gothic façade is precisely that: behind it lurks a ruthlessly utilitarian spirit, thoroughly (if mockingly) in tune with the modern age.
  Of course, to argue that Dracula read Marx requires the further step that Stoker himself had some familiarity with the political economist. I am not aware of any source material that would settle this question one way or the other. Certainly, Marx was well known by the time Stoker was writing Dracula, and his theories were well publicized: bloodsucking capitalists were a societal commonplace that had migrated beyond the pages of Capital, and Dracula was published approximately two years prior to the inception of the then avowedly socialist British Labour Party over 1899–1900. Indeed, against the backdrop of the consolidation of the Trade Union movement into a formal parliamentary force, it seems somewhat improbable that Stoker did not have at least some acquaintance with Marx’s output. There is also a further element which suggests that Stoker was familiar with Marx, and deployed this knowledge within Dracula.
  Stoker’s biographies all refer to the business relationship between the notable actor Henry Irving, and Stoker, who managed the former’s financial affairs over an extended period. All of Stoker’s biographies refer to the physical resemblance between Dracula and Henry Irving (and note that this was commented upon at the time); most seem to agree that Irving exerted a fascination upon the younger Stoker, and that Stoker was not always treated well by the actor. Irving kept Stoker away from his family for extended periods of time, sometimes omitted to pay him, and could be overbearing and capricious to a degree. All of these dynamics inform the relationship between Dracula and the (much) younger Harker. Many critics have suggested that unflattering comparisons between the Count and Irving were intended to be drawn. To suggest additionally that Irving was intentionally depicted exhibiting some of the nastiest aspects of Marx’s vampire capitalism does not seem especially far-fetched. There is, however, a more scathing dimension to this characterisation of Irving qua Dracula: specifically, whilst he is a very good businessman, Dracula is an appallingly bad ham actor. Significantly, Harker’s description of Dracula’s library includes no mention of Shakespeare, nor any serious dramatists, nor even any Victorian Sensation novels. However, in spite of this, Dracula clearly thinks he has a flair for the dramatic, which in its execution begs comparison with Victorian Sensation writing at its very worst.
  Harker initially meets Dracula masquerading as his coachman; Dracula has cunningly pulled his hat down over his face (which makes him sound as stage-y as Dickens’ character Rigaud in Little Dorrit), but fails to conceal his distinctive blazing red eyes. When Harker arrives at the castle, there is an ominous pause, whilst the hapless lawyer stares up at his host’s fortress. After he enters, Harker is greeted with two separate fires (one in his bedroom; the other in the room where he dines before the Count) which he says have been replenished recently. Read for the first time, this is merely atmospheric, but on a reread there is a vein of comedy which Stoker develops later: whilst Harker has been contemplating the castle’s silhouetted façade, Dracula must have made his way to the back entrance, rushed round inside piling up fires, then ensured he has not burnt the dinner (no mean feat for a vampire, whose culinary skills are likely to be rusty after several hundred years of a highly specialised diet that doesn’t involve cooking), and finally rustled up a bottle of wine. After this, Dracula must have scooted around to the main front gate—presumably after the fashion of Bilbo Baggins in the first chapter of The Hobbit—and opened the door to his perturbed guest. The only reason he isn’t out of breath is that he isn’t breathing. Later on in the text, Harker infers that he is alone with the Count in the castle, when he spies his host cleaning his room: the monster is not under the bed, but quite literally making it—and Harker infers his monstrosity by this failure of stagecraft.
  Thereafter, the Count decides to dress up in his guest’s clothes to post his letters. This might be a (just) passable plot mechanism in a melodrama, but in the context of a novel about a physically distinctive vampire, it is a daft idea: Harker and Dracula look nothing like one another, and it seems doubtful that the clothes could have fitted the Count especially well. There is a curious disjunction between this harebrained scheme and the Count’s otherwise meticulous preparations for his own passage to England, which is not easy to explain, unless one accepts that Stoker was poking fun at Irving. Harker’s frequent allusions to Hamlet are also in stark contrast to the Count’s thespian antics and (given his library) his ignorance of the classics, and so probably amount to a further dig at Stoker’s employer.
  This reading is bolstered by Irving’s own reaction to Stoker’s stage adaptation of his novel. Initially, the great actor took it as read that he would play the Count; he then read the script, and pulled out of the play, never speaking to Stoker again. It is hard to believe that Irving was solely put off by the physical resemblance between him and Dracula (even the addition of the Count’s halitosis seems unlikely to have poisoned such a long-standing relationship). Likening Irving to an unscrupulous capitalist with a penchant for sucking his underlings dry, whilst also suggesting that he is little better than an uncultured hack, seems a far more persuasive explanation for the break. After all, if Stoker was correct, then Irving was willingly—or at least wilfully—turning down the chance to participate in a production that was highly likely to have been a box office hit (the novel had sold well): was he trying to prove a point? For once, the Count was caught in a mirror, and Stoker/Harker, rather than the looking glass, was defenestrated. If le style c’est l’homme, then la bibliothèque, c’est vraiment le vampire.