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Google had a nice doodle
today in honor of "Bram Stoker's 165th birthday. " That is their wording. I guess they think he might still be out
their!
From
Sookie Stackhouse, through Victoria Winters, the lineage of vampire girlfriends
ultimately leads back to Bram Stoker's Lucy, the victim of Count Dracula. The Irish writer wrote his most famous novel,
Dracula, in 1897. (US Edition) (UK Edition)
MINA MURRAY'S
JOURNAL
26 July.--I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here. It is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time. And there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan. I had not heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very concerned, but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a letter from him. I had written asking him if he had heard, and he said the enclosed had just been received. It is only a line dated from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home. That is not like Jonathan. I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy.
Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided that I am to lock the door of our room every night.
Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place.
26 July.--I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here. It is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time. And there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan. I had not heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very concerned, but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a letter from him. I had written asking him if he had heard, and he said the enclosed had just been received. It is only a line dated from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home. That is not like Jonathan. I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy.
Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided that I am to lock the door of our room every night.
Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place.
Dracula is an epistolary novel, told
in letters, journal & diary snippets and newspaper articles. It is not a sexual romp as you often find in
vampire novels these days – but readers of the Twilght series may find echos of the sublimated sex from that
series.
As with all epistolary novels, the
form sometimes causes awkward constructions. See my emphasis below.
They have a
legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea. I must ask
the old man about this. He is coming this way…
Of course it is not the only awkward
moment . . .
He is a funny
old man. He must be awfully old, for his face is gnarled and twisted like the
bark of a tree. He tells me that he is nearly a hundred, and that he was a
sailor in the Greenland fishing fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am
afraid, a very sceptical person, for when I asked him about the bells at sea
and the White Lady at the abbey he said very brusquely,
"I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn't in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's and drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk."
"I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn't in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's and drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk."
I am not quite sure what this is
about, other than a little foreshadowing.
You can find traces of vampires in
folklore and literature, but Dracula is the novel that engendered all the
vampire novels we read today. I hope the “comers and trippers, an' the
like” here will enjoy this very popular download.
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