Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' - still scary after all these years?

In today's post, Sebastian Rodger reassesses a horror classic. 

Dracula is an iconic story. The characters and the story that Bram Stoker created over a century ago have gone on to play a significant role in the shaping of a genre, not only in literature, but also in mediums like television and films.

It was clearly an incredible book upon its release, and has stood the test of time, even now still having an impact on horror stories as it was the first to use many techniques which are still employed in literature today. It is also of course well written. Its epistolary style allows the reader to more effectively empathise with the protagonists and thus can understand the fear they feel. Because of this I feel like attempting to review this novel with its history and position as a ‘classic’ is pointless. It has been done countless times before, and I believe is ultimately of little use to the average reader who is just looking for a new book to enjoy. Instead, I will be reviewing it to see if it still works in the modern day.

The success of Dracula leads to what I think is a major weakness for the book: it is very predictable. Even if someone hadn’t watched any of the direct adaptions of Dracula, I think that it is highly unlikely that a reader wouldn’t easily be able to guess what will happen. For example, someone becoming a vampire after they were bitten is meant to come as a surprise to the reader. However, a modern-day reader likely already knows how a vampire works, and so all the tension that the book tries to build up fails.

This problem doesn’t just stem from the general public’s knowledge of a vampire. The story itself is also well known. Everyone knows that the Count is a vampire, that he wants to spread his curse and that to stop him the protagonists will need to use garlic, holy objects and a wooden stake. While knowing roughly what will happen can help build tension, since the reader doesn’t know exactly when something will happen, I think that unless a reader is going into the book to see the origin of what nowadays are clichés it would detract from their enjoyment of the novel. I feel the need to reiterate that this in no way means that the book is poorly written. The effectiveness of these parts of the story is why they have been so overused since the publication of this novel and thanks to Stoker’s execution of these ideas the overall story is still enjoyable.

Another problem with Dracula is that it is not at all scary. As someone who is easily scared by supernatural stories and has little experience with horror this means that the novel likely struggles to frighten a modern audience. Someone who frequently enjoys horror novels would probably experience this to a greater degree, perhaps finding the sections intended to scare boring. Scenes like when Dracula crawled around the outer walls of the castle like a lizard or when he suddenly appears to bite someone only made me feel mildly uncomfortable.

Because of this, I feel that classifying this book as a horror novel is misleading. Perhaps it is because modern stories have greater stakes [!], often including things like particularly gory deaths and post-apocalyptic worlds. The events in Dracula just don’t have the same shock factor. Stoker is able to build up a sense of dread quite effectively, such as in the opening parts of the novel which are focused on Jonathan’s time in Dracula’s castle, but the build-up isn’t able to have an effective payoff.

To conclude, I enjoyed the book, but it certainly isn’t flawless. If you’re looking for a horror novel I wouldn’t recommend the book at all, but if you’re looking for a thriller which is able to have a mixture of fast paced scenes as well as slower more thoughtful scenes I would. If you’re not a casual reader, but instead looking for a book with some depth to explore this book is of course an essential read.

Through the book Stoker presents some analysis of his society on subjects like sexual repression and colonialism. As I have mentioned before, the book is also very interesting from a perspective interested in the history of literature as many significant horror and gothic stories built upon the foundations that Bram Stoker established.