|
?:reviewBody
|
-
No two works have had a greater influence on the monster genre of popular culture than Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). The archetypal characters introduced in these novels — the Frankenstein monster and Count Dracula the vampire — have suffused popular culture through hundreds of films, television programs, books, and other media, featuring in works as diverse as the chillingly stark silent film Nosferatu to the cheerily silly sitcom The Munsters. It's often the case, however, that aspects of such original works become obscured by the innumerable derivatives they spawn: Elements enter the popular lore of a genre not because they were present in the progenitor work, but because they were introduced somewhere along the line in films, plays, sequels, modern updatings, or other types of adaptations. Such is the case with Bram Stoker's Dracula: Those who are familiar with the Count Dracula character of popular culture but are not well-acquainted with the original Bram Stoker version might be surprised to learn that two common elements of vampire lore are not to be found in Stoker's novel. One element that is lacking in Stoker's Dracula is the final dispatching of the titular Count through the medium of driving a wooden stake through his heart. Certainly this method of converting the UnDead into the really, truly dead (usually accompanied by a simultaneous decapitation) appears several times throughout the novel, such as when Professor Abraham Van Helsing writes to Dr. John Seward (in Chapter 15) that the latter must: Van Helsing repeats the need for staking and decapitation in Chapter 18: In Chapter 25, Jonathan Harker details in his journal how he plans to help turn Count Dracula to dust: And also in Chapter 25, Mina Murray requests that this procedure be performed on her should she succumb to the world of vampirism: This is indeed the method by which Van Helsing dispatches Dracula's brides, and in Chapter 16 Arthur Holmwood follows similar instructions from Van Helsing in order to free his fiancée Lucy from the torment of the UnDead: In the novel's climactic scene, however, it is not a wooden stake but rather two knives — a kukri and a bowie — that serve as the instruments which finally turn Count Dracula to dust: Another element surprisingly absent from Bram Stoker's Dracula is the notion that vampires cannot ever expose themselves to daylight; they must return to a safe enclosure (typically a coffin) before dawn and remain there until after dark. This isn't the case in Stoker's novel: Even though Jonathan Harker muses in his journal (in Chapter 4) that I have not yet seen the Count in the daylight. Can it be that he sleeps when others wake, that he may be awake whilst they sleep? he is clearly mistaken in his assumption, as he previously had a daytime encounter with Dracula: And as author Elizabeth Miller noted in Dracula: Sense & Nonsense, several more instances of the vampire Dracula's being out and about during daylight hours occur in the novel: Miller noted that successive film adaptations were responsible for introducing and promulgating this aspect of the Dracula story:
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}