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Bela Lugosi played Stoker's famous creation Dracula in the 1931 movie classic of the same name. AP/Press Association Images

The making of Dracula How Bram Stoker's 'in-betweener' status inspired horror

Being a middle-class Anglican in Victorian Dublin helped Stoker create one of literature’s most monstrous characters.
“I SPREAD OVER centuries and time is on my side” – Count Dracula

 

The Count appears to be right. In a study of the afterlife of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843), the critic Paul Davis argued that the story of Scrooge “began as a text and became a culture-text,” but the term is perhaps even better applied to a character like Count Dracula.

Although relatively well-received when written by Bram Stoker and first published by Archibald Constable and Company in 1897, it would have been impossible at that stage to imagine the global impact this modestly ambitious novel from a man best known as the genial and efficient manager of the great actor Henry Irving would have in the 20th and now 21st centuries.

The best-known vampire of them all

Not only is Dracula the best-known vampire of them all (and we’ve all been living through a veritable vampire ‘craze’ since the 18th century), but he is, in fact, one of the most recognisable characters in literary history – and the most filmed one bar none (and that is not counting his appearance in other media).

Along with Scrooge, Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein (although the latter is as often mistaken for his creation), Count Dracula has passed far beyond the pages of Stoker’s novel and can now claim mythic status.

That this status is in large part down to the mesmeric attraction of the Transylvanian bloodsucker for screenwriters and cinema audiences, and accepting that most who recognise his name will never have read the novel in which he first appeared, or even have heard of such a person as Bram Stoker, should not detract from the cultural significance of text or author.

Dracula1958poster The original poster for the 1958 Christopher Lee vehicle. Warner Bros Warner Bros

The book itself has never been out of print, and is available in a bewildering variety of versions, from mass market paperbacks to collector’s editions and every possible variation in between. Given the enormous popular cultural presence of Dracula, though, it took until the 1970s before scholarly attention began to be seriously directed towards the vampire, though the academics were quick to catch up.

Indeed, since the publication of Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally’s In Search of Dracula in 1972, those two intrepid adventurers have been joined by an extraordinary number of commentators, critics and scholars and there is now an enormous body of secondary material circling around a novel that has moved from the academic margins to the centre in a very brief space of time.

Serious consideration has been given to the question of why (and how) a middle-class Anglican from Victorian Dublin generated a modern myth, and one point that has been made by many scholars is that Stoker was not alone in Irish literary circles in his investment in the Gothic and monstrosity. If Stoker provided the world with the best example of the male vampire, after all, his fellow Dubliner, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, gave the world the most significant female vampire ever in Carmilla, the eponymous anti-heroine of his 1870 novella.

The unholy trilogy

The ‘unholy trilogy’ of Trinity College-educated Dubliners is rounded-off by Charles Maturin, the author of Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), now almost completely forgotten except by scholars of the Gothic and the students they continue to require to read his enormous and labyrinthine masterpiece.

These writers all hailed from a class and a religious group whose grip on political power in Ireland was slowly slipping away across the 19th century.

In an influential formulation, the historian Roy Foster has argued that as the Catholic middle class grew and began to occupy traditionally Protestant positions in municipal government and local structures of power, many Protestants compensated for their loss of power in the real world by re-investing their energies in another, more obscure, and yet more powerful domain.

Foster contended that the major Irish Gothic writers were marginalised figures “whose occult preoccupations surely mirror a sense of displacement, a loss of social and psychological integration, and an escapism motivated by the threat of a takeover by the Catholic middle classes”.

The In-betweeners

This argument is quite persuasive in terms of understanding the particular attraction of the Gothic for Irish Anglicans (as long as it is qualified by a recognition that the Gothic in Ireland has a history that stretches back into the 18th century, and that very many Irish Gothic writers were Catholic) – what Frank O’Connor once termed “submerged population groups” may well be attracted and gravitate towards forms and genre that speak to their in-between status, their religious, social, political and personal liminality.

The Gothic, which is packed full of ‘in-between’ monsters, like vampires (who are living and dead), may well be irresistible to hyphenated figures and groups (which might help explain its attraction for teenagers also).

As Ireland continues to grapple with its own in-between status, between tradition and (post-)modernity, Berlin and Boston, Britain and Europe, the Gothic will most likely continue to occupy a central place in its literary scene.

Jarlath Killeen is a lecturer in Victorian Literature at Trinity College Dublin.

The Bram Stoker Festival runs from this Friday, 28 October to Monday, 31 October to honour Dublin’s most famous Gothic son with four days of living stories and four nights of deadly events. 

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9 Comments
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    Mute Luke Sarpish
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:31 PM

    So basically we have to apologise for everything we say.

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    Mute Jbob How
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:35 PM

    Only the stupid shit. I don’t know how that affects you…

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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:42 PM

    I lost a close friend a year ago. I would not be able to joke about it now because the pain is so bad. He was right to apologise. Just because someone is famous it does not mean people don’t have the same pain.

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    Mute Lurfic
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:51 PM

    Deborah you should try joking about it. It’s a very good way of helping yourself get through it.

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    Mute Wolves 1966
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:55 PM

    Jon Snow should have to apologise for being Jon Snow. Channel 4 would be a much better place without the likes of him.

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    Mute Luke Sarpish
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    Jan 16th 2016, 6:19 PM

    I’m sorry for your loss Debbie.Ok.

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    Mute Enda Kenny
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    Jan 17th 2016, 4:33 AM

    @ Deborah Behan

    sorry

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    Mute Keith D'Arcy
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:32 PM

    You can’t even joke about the dead now. The PC brigade have finally put a nail in that coffin.

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    Mute Patrick Hurley
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    Jan 16th 2016, 9:14 PM

    Remember when that French comic made a joke about that dead Arab fella.

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    Mute Louis Jacob
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:28 PM

    FFF… There’s always room for a bit of humour. The joke wasn’t funny but he’s worse to apologise.

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    Mute Enda Kenny
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    Jan 16th 2016, 8:10 PM

    Kevin Costner was gonna play Michael Collins (and direct)

    Alan loved working with Costner on robin hood prince of thieves

    i reckon the ‘dances with wolves’ stars involvement is what attracted Rickman to the project

    he was probably ashamed of himself for being involved in what Neil Jordan eventually made

    same as Gabriel Byrne was ashamed of what Jim Sheridan did with Gerry Conlon

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    Mute Len Brennan
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    Jan 16th 2016, 8:37 PM

    Did you for get to take your tablets again Enda?

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    Mute T Beckett is back
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    Jan 16th 2016, 8:57 PM

    @Ek

    The Costner interest in Collins is true, but it was Jordan that pitched for that film. He got Rickman involved.

    Costner probably would have been more historically accurate though!

    Don’t know what you’re on about with Gabriel Byrne but I’d take Danny Day over him any day of the week ;)

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    Mute Enda Kenny
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    Jan 16th 2016, 9:06 PM

    would an irish actor make a film that glorified

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    Mute Louis Jacob
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    Jan 16th 2016, 9:24 PM

    True Enda Kenny and guess who’s script they were going to use.

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    Mute Louis Jacob
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    Jan 16th 2016, 9:26 PM

    I’ll give you one guess… Otherwise I won’t tell you.

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    Mute Enda Kenny
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    Jan 17th 2016, 4:31 AM

    @ T Beckett is back

    imagine the hatred british people must have had for DDL when he made in the name of the father

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    Mute Cosmo Kramer
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    Jan 17th 2016, 5:08 AM

    DDL played Gerry Conlon.. An innocent man framed by the British for murders he didn’t commit.. Why would British people have hatred for him playing that part??

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    Mute Grumpeee Oldman
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:49 PM

    Kinda funny though… Would Mr Rickman have minded?

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    Mute Walter Black
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:56 PM

    Mountain out of a molehill

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    Mute David McShite
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:05 PM

    One of those moments when something seems funny in your head until it escapes and is savaged by the delicate flowers looking to be injured by any perceived slight.

    50
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    Mute Vinnie_the_yute
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:29 PM

    Injured on behalf of a dead person they have no connection with whatsoever.

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    Mute Rasputin
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:54 PM

    I wonder how they’d handle us Irish where in the face of even overwhelming tragedy the first thing out of our mouths is usually a joke…

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    Mute Harry Whitehead
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    Jan 16th 2016, 7:24 PM

    Unless Richard Wilson himself has complained, I fail to see what gives everyone else the right to take offence on his behalf. Still, you’ve got to hand it to these self-appointed guardians of decency – they never waste an opportunity. As usual, they leapt aboard the outrage bus faster than Usain Bolt at the 100 metre finals.

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    Mute @dela
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:37 PM

    Look once he realised himself it didn’t sound right I’m cool with that. If he apologised cos of some tweets I know we’re near Armageddon. Especially tweets from weirdos who live, sh|t, breathe and fester by that medium.

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    Mute Shane Gubbins
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:44 PM

    You know nothing jon snow.

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    Mute Neil Holland
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:31 PM

    What’s it like to be so predictable?

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    Mute Shane Gubbins
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:37 PM

    You must be fun at parties

    16
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    Mute Tom Burke
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:28 PM

    Some people are just waiting to be offended.

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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:47 PM

    Ordinarily I would agree but the pain of losing someone is so great that this joke in the week they died is simply horrible. Could you joke about your friends death the week they died?

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    Mute Suzie Sunshine
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    Jan 16th 2016, 7:07 PM

    People need to lighten up a bit .

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    Mute ted hagan
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    Jan 16th 2016, 8:28 PM

    Yea lighten up a bit people. It was only someone’s death we’re talking about. Anyone got any jokes?

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    Mute Suzie Sunshine
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    Jan 16th 2016, 8:36 PM

    The joke was aimed at Wilson so he wasn’t being disrespectful towards Alan . no harm done .

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    Mute Kieran Roche
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    Jan 16th 2016, 10:00 PM

    I really dont know why I read this tripe

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    Mute Hugh G. Johnson
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:30 PM

    Well as Richard Douchet has already proven, British journalists are masters of putting ones foot in their own mouth.

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    Mute Con O'Donnell
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:28 PM

    I don’t believe it!!

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    Mute Kirsha Sova
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:40 PM

    Not just bad taste ,but also a terrible joke .

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    Mute Grot Master
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    Jan 16th 2016, 4:50 PM

    Generation Wuss, indeed.

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    Mute Evelyn Murphy
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    Jan 16th 2016, 8:34 PM

    Absolutely ridiculous. People need to get a grip on themselves. We won’t be able to say anything at all soon for fear of upsetting someone. Alan Rickman would uave probably appreciated the joke for goodness sake.

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    Mute Evelyn Murphy
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    Jan 16th 2016, 8:37 PM

    *have*

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    Mute Enda Kenny
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    Jan 17th 2016, 4:39 AM

    @ Evelyn Murphy

    once obama was elected people started sniffing around looking to be offended and when there isn’t anything to be offended by.. t

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    Mute Patrick Fitzgerald
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    Jan 16th 2016, 8:12 PM

    There is a big difference from saying something offensive to saying something in bad taste or some thing stupid or something really awkward. He made a tit of himself and apologised. There is no mention in the article or the tweets about masses of people taking offense. If you just read the comms here youd swear the whole world was up in arms about. Calm down lads. He was right to apologise out of respect alone. Red thumb away

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    Mute FlyingDogThing
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    Jan 16th 2016, 11:30 PM

    You know nothing Jon Snow.

    5
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    Mute Eugene Walsh
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:05 PM

    All these celebrity DJ, tv anchor newsreader types, tv hosts and presenters need all to be put out to pasture. Sick to the back gnashers of the lot of em. Condescending, contemptuous, over bearing over paid egotistical self righteousness and centred maggots. Ya you heard me !!

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    Mute Peter McGlynn
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    Jan 16th 2016, 5:27 PM

    What u expect from a man that knows nothing.

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    Mute James Stratford
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    Jan 17th 2016, 6:02 PM

    Saw the interview, didn’t cross my mind that it was inappropriate at all. Was a very personal and difficult enough conversation to have, I thought Jon Snow did his job admirably and it was a moment that lightly trivialised the sad news, which is exactly the normal human response to dealing with something tragic that we don’t want to believe has happened. I’d say most people upon hearing the news of Rickman’s passing couldn’t believe it. It was perhaps just a subtle side note that ironically the person who was famous for the phrase could sadly believe it all too well.

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