#1st Book Review — Dracula

Salutations everyone!

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INTRODUCTION

This is the first blog I've done in... my whole life. So please, excuse me if it's a bit ugly or boring visually, but I've always wanted to share my opinions about the books I read, and what better way to do reviews about them?

I considered Dracula by Bram Stoker to be a good first work, since this year I finally had the opportunity to read it thanks to literature classes, and I fell in love with it.

Before starting, and to know which edition I'm going to talk about, I would like to share the pdf for anyone who wants to read it for themselves too.

Everything being said, let's get started.

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REVIEW

Firstly, I found the characters an enthralling element that I would like to talk about, starting with Count Dracula obviously. He is quite interesting, as he is someone who has his own vision of the world and it is the only one he considers correct; and this would mean that the count could be considered an antagonist more inclined to be a gray character because although there is evil in his actions of seeking power and control in a dark and aggressive way, he has quite human reasons such as wanting to recover what was taken from his family.

Jonathan Harker is the most important character along with Dracula, since he is the count's main victim and during the plot of the story he is the one who has quite remarkable development. At the beginning, he is a young, good-natured man who is engaged and good at his job, until he is corrupted by the events at the castle. This is visible when at a certain moment he confronts three vampiresses who produced a desire in him, representing that even the most modern and correct man has human weaknesses.

There are also presented two female characters who communicate through letters. One of them is Mina, Jonathan's fiancee, who although she is also a direct victim of Dracula, she acts more like the heroine of the novel. And there is her best friend Lucy, the second character I'm referring to, who is the first victim in the story, becoming a vampire.

Secondly, moving on to a rather cultural context, it is necessary to talk about the genre to which this novel belongs, which is Gothic fiction, more specifically Protestant Gothic. All its characteristics are collected in Dracula, like ancestral houses such as the vampire old castle, a damsel in distress whose role is taken by a male character, landscapes and climate that are described during the plot, these being nocturnal and unpleasant, a story that is based on the social classes (since Dracula, having the title of Count, is socially above Jonathan who is only a lawyer), the sexual ambiguity between the characters which I will talk about in depth later, and the generational clash also represented by the characters of the vampire and the young lawyer. I want to put special emphasis on the setting, since the Gothic novel was highly influenced by the Big House novel, where all the conflicts took place in a large house and functioned as a social critique.

Thirdly, driven by my personal interest, I want to talk about the author, Bram Stoker. From what has been explained to us in class, he was part of a Protestant family, and had a life quite in line with what any Irish author had in his time, going to live in England after finishing his studies in Dublin. But I would also like to talk about what I know and have researched about it, and that is that, as I have mentioned before, the Protestant Gothic has sexually ambiguous characters as one of its characteristics. In this case, it is shown on several occasions that Count Dracula feels a certain romantic and erotic attraction towards men, specifically Jonathan, who, even though he is a man, takes the role of damsel in distress and victim of the vampire. Perhaps one of the reasons why Stoker sought to write about this theme in the plot was because of his own repressed homosexuality, since it has always been suspected that he had a secret relationship with another writer, Oscar Wilde, and that when the latter was imprisoned for this, he tried to get rid of evidence that linked him to him in any way, clearly afraid of suffering the same fate. After all, Bram Stoker could have found in Dracula someone to reflect on, someone considered a monster who was scared to show himself in the light of day and for everyone to know who and what he was.

Finally, I give my personal opinion in a brief way saying that I love novels of this style and this work has only made me investigate and immerse myself more in them. I feel that they fit very well with my style and apart from being easy and pleasant to read, I feel comfortable doing so, especially because of the setting and the deep, sexual or LGBTQ+ themes that are dealt with. I highly recommend this reading.

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My rating!¡

★★★★✰

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CONCLUSION

I haven't had the chance to write down any notes for this book because I had to work so fast, but in the next reviews I'll try to mention some of the phrases I liked or even add images if I write any notes ^^

I hope you liked it, and if not, thanks for reading anyways and I hope you have a good day.

C ya ★~

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