Best of Series – "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, Ch. 18-End

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Literary Life Podcast – Best of Series: "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, Ch. 18-End

Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, Cindy Rollins
Date: October 28, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode, part of the "Best Of" series, revisits the concluding chapters of Bram Stoker's "Dracula." Hosts Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy engage in an in-depth literary analysis, blending close reading with historical, theological, and cultural context. The conversation explores the Christian symbolism, narrative structure, character dynamics, and enduring themes in "Dracula," while also comparing it to other classic Gothic and detective novels. The trio aims to revive the tradition of deep, meaningful reading and to illustrate how great literature, like "Dracula," can lead us to greater truths about good, evil, and the human condition.

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1. Commonplace Quotes & Opening Insights (03:38 – 13:00)

Literary Quotations

• Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2:

  “Rumor is a pipe blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures… the blunt monster with uncounted heads, the still discordant, wavering multitude can play upon it.”
  (Angelina, 03:54)
  Hosts joke that Shakespeare "predicted Twitter" with this observation on the nature of rumor.

• Ronald Knox:

  “There is the double tragedy of the prophet. He must speak out so that he makes men dislike him. And he must be content to believe that he is making no impression whatsoever.”
  (Angelina, 04:37)

• John D. MacDonald, The Deep Blue Goodbye:

  "Be wary of all earnestness."
  (Cindy, 07:23)
  Cindy discusses the dangers of over-earnestness, especially as a lifelong earnest person.

• G.K. Chesterton, The Red Angel:

  “Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogie… What the fairy tale does is… clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness and stronger than strong fear.”
  (Angelina, 11:31)
  The hosts highlight this as the core of what "Dracula" is—less about horror, more about the hope of defeating evil.

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2. "Dracula" as Christian Romance and Dragon-Slaying Quest (13:11 – 18:47)

• Medieval Romance Structure:
  "Dracula" is framed as a St. George and the Dragon legend; the "knights of God" fight to rescue the damsel in distress from evil.
• Surprise at Christian Themes:
  Many readers expecting a horror novel are instead surprised by the book’s explicitly Christian imagery and optimism about the defeat of evil.

“I think people have been pretty tickled and delighted and surprised to find out that this is what this story is. I mean, so it’s not horror for its own sake or scary for its own sake. I think it’s trying to show us that evil is a reality in the world and it can do a lot of harm and it’s scary, but it can be defeated, as we say."
(Angelina, 14:27)

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3. Narrative Structure, Genre, and Literary Influences (15:02 – 18:47)

• Wilkie Collins Comparisons:
  Listeners drew apt parallels between Stoker’s use of multiple narrative voices and Collins’s detective novels ("The Woman in White," "The Moonstone”). Stoker’s "page-turner" pacing is rare among Victorian novels.
• Struggles with Narrative Devices:
  The narration sometimes feels clunky, with Stoker explaining reasons for different voices (e.g., gramophone unavailable), showing the genre’s developmental stage.

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4. Major Themes & Character Arcs (20:33 – 52:07)

Renfield, Mina, and the Angel in the House

• Renfield’s Role:
  Seen as a parody of John the Baptist, Renfield’s interactions with Mina reflect a moral ambivalence—he’s affected by Mina’s kindness and tries to protect her, showing glimmers of conscience.

  “He’s not entirely gone over to the dark side, so to speak.” (Thomas, 22:04)

• Mina vs. Lucy – Types of Femininity:

  • Mina inspires platonic, noble devotion—“as one might be devoted to Athena, rather than Aphrodite.” (Thomas, 22:59)
  • Lucy elicits romantic and sensual attraction.
  • The difference reflects the contrast between "new woman" (Mina) and “angel in the house” (Lucy).

• Frustration with Victorians' Protection of Women:
  Modern readers (especially in the Facebook group) express frustration at the men’s passivity in protecting Mina, seeing it as commentary on the limitations of the "angel in the house" ideal.

  “Are we supposed to be frustrated with them?” (Angelina, 24:17)

• Mina’s Active Role:
  Despite being the damsel in distress, Mina participates in her own rescue, using her intellect and skills (memorizing train schedules, typing, hypnosis).

  “She’s using the gift she has to be a genuine help to the quest. I don’t think they could have defeated him if she had not been participating.” (Angelina, 26:22)

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5. Christian Symbolism & The Parody of the Eucharist (47:26 – 54:01)

• Dracula's Feeding as Anti-Eucharist:
  The scene of Dracula forcing Mina to drink his blood is described as a perversion of the Christian Eucharist; he offers "undeath" rather than eternal life.

  “Obviously this is an anti-Eucharist image… She is eating his flesh. He even says, she's flesh of my flesh.” (Angelina, 47:32)

• Pelican Imagery:
  The act alludes to the medieval image of the pelican feeding its young with its own blood—a symbol of Christ—here inverted for evil.

• Host, Crucifix, & Catholic Imagery:

  • The hosts discuss the symbolic use of Catholic elements.
  • Stoker, not a Catholic himself, uses easily understood religious symbols for narrative power, not as a secret Catholic agenda.

  “He’s using Catholic symbolism because it clearly works with what he’s trying to communicate… But I don’t see it, him having an agenda.” (Cindy, 56:18)

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6. Technology, Modernity, and The New Woman (41:27 – 45:50)

• Victorian Technology:
  The use of telegraphs, typewriters (especially Mina’s portable typewriter), firearms, and hypnosis places the novel firmly in its modern context. This underscores the sense of a battle fought with all of modernity’s tools, not merely superstition.

  “To us, it doesn't seem full of technology. To the original audience, this would have been smack… like, you know, Sir Galahad in the middle of a King Arthur quest pulls out a flashlight.” (Angelina, 41:46)

• The Typewriter & The New Woman:
  Mina’s profession and skill signal the rise of women’s societal roles ("the woman question"). The typewriter, linked in public perception to "new women," becomes her badge.

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7. The Questing Team: Symbolism of Professions and Nationality (61:17 – 67:44)

• Team Dynamics:
  The questers include an aristocrat, a scientist, a lawyer, an American (Texan), and Van Helsing, the outsider.

  • Van Helsing bridges superstition and science and represents a synthesis necessary to defeat evil.
  • The best virtues of British society (and America) are shown as insufficient without outside tradition and faith.

  “He is not British… He is associated, I think, more with the old world. Well, okay, so Dracula is entirely associated with the old world. Van Helsing is more in between two worlds because he's both the man of science and of superstition.”
  (Angelina, 65:11)

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8. Metaphorical Layers and Psychological Themes (74:54 – 78:12)

• Dracula as Appetite/Disordered Soul:
  Dracula symbolizes unrestrained appetite—a soul ruled by base desires, in opposition to the properly ordered, reason-governed Christian soul.

  “Dracula is a picture of that. He’s only appetite.” (Angelina, 77:42)

• Lucy, the Brides, and Appetite:
  Lucy’s transformation, her predation on children, and the allure of the brides are examples of disorder and unchecked longing.

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9. Narrative Climax, All Saints Day, and Closure (79:43 – 88:58)

• Symbolic Timing:
  The final confrontation aligns with All Saints’ Day (old calendar), echoing the themes of spiritual warfare and victory over evil.

• Quincy Morris's Sacrifice:
  The American dies slaying Dracula, embodying the Genesis 3:15 motif (bruise the heel/crush the head). His legacy continues in the birth of baby Quincy.

• Resolution:
  Mina is freed, the mark is gone, and she receives respect as the "new woman" and the future of England.

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10. Final Reflections & Legacy (90:36 – end)

• Stoker’s Literary Achievement:
  Despite misconceptions and poor later works ("Lair of the White Worm"), "Dracula" stands as a masterpiece rich in Christian symbolism, narrative sophistication, and psychological depth.

• Character Symbolism: Lucy vs. Mina:
  Angelina's theory: Lucy and Mina may represent two sides of womanhood, with only “the Mina side” surviving and carrying the story forward.

“Metaphorically, Lucy and Mina are two sides of the same person… Bram Stoker killed off the Lucy side and it’s the Mina side that carries on into the future.”
(Angelina, 96:34)

• Enduring Power of Great Stories:
  The hosts reinforce the novel’s message: that stories of courage, good, and evil not only enchant but deepen our insight into reality.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Commonplace Quotes and Opening: 03:38 – 13:07
• Dracula as Christian Romance/Dragon Slaying: 13:11 – 18:47
• Narrative & Literary Context (Wilkie Collins, Sayers): 15:02 – 19:13
• Renfield, Mina, and Gender Dynamics: 20:33 – 26:40
• Anti-Eucharist and Symbolism: 47:26 – 54:01
• Technology, The New Woman, Victorian Context: 41:27 – 45:50
• Team Dynamics and Professions: 61:17 – 67:44
• Psychological and Spiritual Symbolism: 74:54 – 78:12
• Endgame, All Saints Day, Resolutions: 79:43 – 88:58
• Final Thoughts and Legacy: 90:36 – end

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “To be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality.” (B, 00:41)
• “Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogie…” (Angelina, quoting Chesterton, 11:31)
• "She’s using the gift she has to be a genuine help to the quest. I don’t think they could have defeated him if she had not been participating." (Angelina, 26:22)
• “Dracula is a picture of that. He’s only appetite.” (Angelina, 77:42)
• “It is Mina who is the future. It is Mina’s child.” (Angelina, 88:58)
• "Bram Stoker killed off the Lucy side and it’s the Mina side that carries on into the future." (Angelina, 96:34)

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Tone & Style

The conversation is witty, scholarly, and approachable, balancing deep literary insight with light-hearted banter and cultural references. The hosts weave personal anecdotes seamlessly with academic commentary, welcoming listeners into both the analysis and the fellowship of lifelong reading.

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Recommended For

Listeners who want to deeply understand "Dracula" as a Christian, literary, and cultural artifact; those curious about how classic literature can be read both for pleasure and for meaning; and anyone seeking to enter into the “great conversation” of the Western canon.

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Closing

As always, the hosts encourage listeners to "keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world." The episode ends with Thomas Banks reading Thomas Hardy’s poem, "The To Be Forgotten," epitomizing the show's ethos: that literature keeps memory, meaning, and hope alive.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed, as well as revisit listener favorites. To honor that request, I present to you this episode of the best of the Literary Life podcast.

[B]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Welcome back to the Literary Life podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and I am here with, well, my trusty fellowship of dragon slayers, the mysterious Mr. Banks and Cindy the blonde bombshell Rollins. Hey, guys.

[A]

Ms. Stanford.

[C]

Hey. Hello. I didn't recognize myself. So there you go. See?

[B]

I wonder, I thought to myself, you know, I haven't called her that in a while, so let's see how she responds. I just threw it, threw it out there. The Farrah Fawcett of Charlotte Mason, which. I stand by that. I absolutely stand by that. I was in. I was in an antique mall recently. Cindy, actually, we almost bought this for you. There was. Remember that, Mr. Banks? What? We saw that. We saw a vintage poster of Farrah Fawcett. We almost bought it for you.

[A]

Oh, we thought it was only right.

[B]

Yeah, we did a double take and I was like, why is there a poster of Cindy in here, you guys?

[C]

Yes. If I was like three feet taller and a little bit thinner.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Also, I don't want that on my wall anywhere because there's too many guys in my house.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The tastefulness of this as a gift did occur to us. It was maybe questionable.

[C]

It would be.

[B]

It would have been.

[C]

It would have made a big impact. It would have had to been hidden away. You know, I would have had to take the magic Marker to it.

[B]

I can't even imagine the eye rolls your would have given you if you.

[C]

Oh, yes, we did have this terrible thing happen one time. You know how apple like they'll sink your somehow. Somebody got one of my sons. His. All his pictures went on my phone. All my pictures went on his phone. And I had some high school picture I had sent to my husband of, you know, bikini Dom. And he had. He had pictures with his girlfriend. And I was like, how in the world I get these. All these pictures of these weird girlfriend, you know, thing. And he was like, who is this woman on my phone? I'm like, well, this is utterly humiliating. And we are going to sue Apple for destroying our family.

[B]

That's amazing. And also horrible. Mr. Banks, do you have a commonplace quote for us today?

[A]

In fact, I have two. Both of them fairly short.

[B]

That's cheating.

[A]

Well, I'm going to read them both anyway.

[B]

Well, okay. It's a two week episode. Go for it.

[A]

So the first is from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2. Rumor is a pipe blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, and of so easy and so plain a stop that the blunt monster with uncounted heads, the still discordant, wavering multitude can play upon it. So you see, Shakespeare predicted Twitter right there. My second one. This is from a more modern book. This is from a sermon by the Catholic priest Ronald Knox.

[B]

He says, also detective novelist, also detective.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Member of the Detection Club, Friend of.

[C]

Chesterton, Founder of the Detection Founder.

[B]

Yes. He. He actually wrote the rules for the Detective Club.

[A]

You know more about him than I do. Yeah. So he says there is the double tragedy of the prophet. He must speak out so that he makes men dislike him. And he must be content to believe that he is making no impression whatsoever. Thank God I'm not a prophet, Cindy.

[B]

I think with that definition.

[C]

Wow. I. I love those. They're going to go so well with my mind. But you know, when you said that about rumor. Well, when Shakespeare said that about rumor, it reminded me of the first time I read the Iliad. How, how the. In Greek mythology, rumor is. Is like very embodied. It's personified. And that always struck me as powerful, so. Oh, that sounded so that. I'm. I'm afraid we're going to be very cliche today.

[B]

This is going to be. The flu has turned us into cliched people. You're right, though. That scene of seeing her physically run around and whisper into people's ears, bringing people about.

[A]

Yes, yes. With the monster with thousands of ears and eyes.

[B]

Yes, Rumor as a monster. But, you know, Cindy. But that, but, but I'm glad you said that because that again, speaks to why we read stories. You know, it does. You know, it takes these eternal truths. I mean, we've all heard about, you know, We've all read James about the tongue. We know the damage the tongue can do, but there's something about seeing it embodied in a story like that rumor running around this monster and spreading these. These, you know, murderous words gives us new eyes to see.

[A]

Sorry, I'm not familiar with that Henry James, the. About the tongue.

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Oh, I thought he was joking. Okay.

[A]

Yeah, I was like, I. I admit I've not read this Henry James book, but. Wow. Okay, Right. The Apostle. Gotcha. Right, yeah. I've read the Bible.

[C]

St. Henry James, sure.

[A]

No, yeah. Mr. Banks is outed as never having actually opened the New Testament.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Oh, boy.

[A]

I have no idea what my mind went through.

[C]

Well, I also have a quote today that I got from my son. We were sitting around sparring, quote sparring. I said something. I can't remember what I said to him. And then he said, well, what do you think of this? Be wary of all earnestness. And I was like, oh, my goodness, I have. I have to have that quote. And it turns out it's from a book I read called the Deep blue. It's John McDonald. John D. McDonald, the deep blue Goodbye, which is a detective series from the 60s. And he. His detective is Travis McGee. These books are a tiny bit racy. So they're not. They're very 60ish. So don't, you know, they're not cozy mysteries.

[B]

So there's a lot of eyeliner and hairspray.

[C]

Yeah. And, you know, things that go along with that. So, you know what, you know, you were told when you were young what would happen if you put on eyeliner and hairspray.

[B]

Well, hairspray is just a gateway. It's a gateway to Gomorrah. That's what you're telling us.

[C]

But he's a great. His. His books are pretty good in a very dated kind of way. But I love that he said one of the quotes from the book is, be wary of all earnestness.

[B]

Oh, that's really good, though.

[A]

That is. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, that's really good.

[C]

And I say that as a person who's been earnest my whole life, and my earnestness has gotten me in a lot of trouble.

[B]

What do you think are the dangers of earnestness?

[C]

What do I think the dangers are? I think of going off the rails, misreading all. Everything, looking at everything through that one lens, rather than having your eyes open in a more broad way, and also just making some terrible mistakes. One of the things I always say is the very best parents make the very Worst mistakes. And we talked about that a lot on this podcast of, you know, the mom just reading a novel on the couch is maybe not. Not interfering constantly with everything her children do. Oh, I. That might have been the quote that led to this, because I just can't remember. But there was a quote, and I don't know if it was Charlotte Mason, but it was, you know, the idea that how come sometimes it's the kids whose parents ignored them that turn out better than the parents who were really micromanaging their child.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[C]

All right.

[B]

Well, my quote is from G.K. chesterton. He has. G.K. chesterton has a lot to say about fairy tales. And he's got a great book of essays about that called Tremendous Trifles. If anybody still looking for a book of essays for the reading challenge, you can find that on Project Gutenberg and read it right there online. And one of the essays is called the Red Angel. And I was rereading that and just thought, oh, you know, what he's saying here totally applies to also why you would read a book like Dracula. So why you would read a fairy tale, why you read Dracula. Dracula, of course, is. Is. I don't know if I specifically said this when I said it's a questing story. It's a group of knights, you know, who are surrounded by devot to a lady, and, you know, they're gonna slay the dragon and rescue the damsel in distress. That's the shape of a medieval romance. And a romance is a. It's just a highly literary form of a fairy tale, but it functions just exactly like a fairy tale. So, you know, why would you read these things? And especially because there can be kind of scary stuff. And we've been talking about this on this. In fact, a lot of people were surprised that it has turned out to have such strong Christian themes because they thought it was just going to be like this scary horror thing. And so in this essay, the Red Angel Chesterton is talking about the concern that parents have of giving children scary fairy tales. And I think the same thing, you know, is applicable to. To Dracula here. And first, I'm going to say that there is a. There's like a. There's a fake Chesterton quote that gets circled around, fairy tales don't teach children dragons exist. Fairy tales teach children dragons can be killed. Every time I see that, a cringe, because Chesterton never said that. I know everybody's going, what? No, I really was. I thought that was a Chesterton quote. It is not. It is the spirit of a Chesterton quote, but it's not actually a Chesterton quote. The real quote is from the essay the Red angel, and I'm going to read it to you now, and I'm also going to go on a little past it because I think what he has to say here is just a hundred percent apropos to why we have been reading Dracula. Fairy tales then, are not responsible for producing in children fear or any of the shapes of fear. Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly that is in the child already because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of Bogie. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly. What the fairy tale does is this. It accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness and stronger than strong fear.

[A]

That's a really nice passage. It's good to hear the genuine article because I've heard the. Yeah, Chesterton's another one of those authors who has had probably a Bible's worth of false quotations fathered upon him.

[B]

Well, now, now everybody knows what the real quote is, and it's from the Red Angel. It's actually a much better quote than that.

[C]

So the other one is more like a retelling of the quote.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's certainly true to the spirit of what Chesterton believed, but it doesn't flesh it out as, as.

[C]

Well, you know, it trivializes it more too.

[B]

Right. And this is very much a St. George story and you know, we have an international audience, so when I say we, I mean us here on the show who are Americans. We don't have a St. George and the dragon tradition in this country like you do in England. And this is an English book. And Chesterton's. Oh, it's an Irish book. It's a British book. We'll say, oh, oh, Ireland's going to cancel me. I know the difference. It's not an English book, it's a British Isles book. It's an Irish book. It's okay.

[A]

Sinn Fein assassins are going to show up, boys.

[B]

I love the Ireland. That was a miss. I'm sorry, sorry.

[A]

This is quite. When we're Behind. Yeah.

[B]

And Chesterton, of course, is a British author. And So, I mean, St. George and the dragon, the legend of that is the official legend of England. This is. This is deep in the heart of England. The dragon slayer. And. And that is at the heart of this story. Dracula is the dragon who is coming, invading England. And. And this fellowship of people, these knights of God, as Chesterton says, have gained together to. To track him out and slay him. I think people have been pretty tickled and delighted and surprised to find out that this is what this story is. I mean, so it's not hard for its own sake or scary for its own sake. I think it's trying to show us that evil is a reality in the world and it can do a lot of harm and it's scary, but it can be defeated, as we say.

[C]

And it gets more Christian. The book just continually. It gets more and more and more comfortably Christian wise as it goes along.

[B]

Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Angelina and I both have read some. Well, I guess I should say informative. Not always. Right. But very interesting essays on that point. And we should probably bring those up at some point.

[B]

We can bring those up at some point about what I think is going on. All right, well, let's jump in here with chapter 18. So we left last time talking about the quest, right? So they've devoted themselves to a quest. They used the word quest. And now beginning with chapter 18, we begin to learn more about Renfield, more about the history of Dracula. So that we've. I think we've been waiting for that. How did he become a vampire? And then, of course, Mina being in peril. This is what's happening in these chapters. So. Oh, you know what? I made a note to say it then I didn't say it. Before we jump into the chapters, I want to give a shout out to all of the people in the Literary Life podcast Facebook group who have been saying, man, this book is giving me so many echoes of the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins or the Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Two very famous novels, both of which are awesome. A Woman in White was 1859 and the Moonstone was 1868. And if you guys have been seeing connections, you are on the right track. I was reading some original reviews of this, of this novel, and quite a few of the original reviewers jumped on the same thing that this. He's channeling Wilkie Collins, which would definitely be a good thing. I mean, Wilkie Collins would have been like the Stephen King of his day. Like, not. Not in terms of writing scary stuff, but of, of churning out really popular thrillers. And so this, this would have been a big deal to be compared to, to that kind of writing. So yeah, the, the, a lot of comparisons between Marion in the Woman in White and Mina. But also even in the Moonstone, Wilkie Collins uses multiple narrators because, you know, it's a detective story. And so you, using the multiple narrator trick, Agatha Christie uses that a few times. That helps to sort of, you know, obfuscate what's going on.

[A]

Didn't Dorothy Ser say that the Moonstone was the best book of the detective genre?

[B]

It was certainly one of her favorites. I don't remember specifically. A few years ago, Mr. Banks tracked down for me a Modern Library copy of the Moonstone with the introduction written by Dorothy Sayers.

[A]

She thought very highly of it.

[B]

She did. And it's been a while since I read that essay. But I remember her saying, he set the genre. I think I talked about this in an early episode for Dracula. Like a lot of the stuff that we look at Bram Stoker or Wilkie Collins, we kind of roll our eyes. We're like, how cliche. She's like, you have to remember he invented it. The reason why all the books are copying is because Wilkie Collins invented these things. And of course, Bram, it is a.

[C]

Real thumping good read. It is definitely a page turner.

[B]

Absolutely. And, and for a Victorian novel to be a page turner is kind of amazing. I used to always laugh with my students and say, look, a Victorian novel, you know, you got to read the first hundred pages to meet the main character.

[C]

Right? Well, and this book gets bogged down in these last, like, I felt like there was a middle part here in these few chapters where it was like, okay, you can tell this is Victor, right? And actually get out.

[B]

I was worried.

[C]

Netflix movie.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. I was worried at first about having to do a double episode here, but then I thought, like you, I was like, actually, this whole big chunk of chapters is just, and they keep chasing him. So, I mean, there's not going to be a lot to talk about. So. No, I, I, I know what you mean. And, and, but you know, like anything with the development of the novel, they're learning their way, you know, like, if you read the early 18th century novels, it takes them a long time to figure out, like, even narrative and, you know, it takes a long time before they come up with third person omniscient narrator and kind of, you know, set the form for what we think about as novel. So things like suspense and the pacing of suspense, it just took a lot of time for that to be developed.

[C]

And so I thought it was interesting that he. You can see him struggling with. Now this person's going to say this, but why are they saying it? So I'll explain. Oh, they didn't have their gramophone available, so.

[B]

Yes. Yeah, he does a lot of that.

[C]

Like, the reason this is different than this is it's like he is trying to be as realistic as he can and doesn't want to, even though we probably wouldn't even notice that.

[B]

Right, Exactly. Yeah. The multiple narrators become more and more difficult. And, you know, in his decisions through the whole storytelling process of who tells what story is. Is very interesting. Even at one point, I think he has somebody writing down something they don't even know happened, but somebody told them happened. Like, you know, so he runs into a few things like that. And especially trying to. This, this is always the case with the first person narrator. And here you have multiple first person narrators trying to narrate it in a way where you still have suspense. Right. Because whoever's telling the story obviously is alive. Right. And so to. To shift it around like that at the end, that's always very, very tricky. All right, so the other thing I wanted to say was that when this book came out, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a huge fan, thought it was like one of the best books he had ever read. Loved it so much that he wrote a Sherlock Holmes short story based on them. Based on. Inspired by this, called the Adventures of the Sussex Vampire. But in that one, it's. It's, in many ways, it's the reverse. So it's Sherlock Holmes saying, I'm not going to believe in superstition. And he proves through deduction and logic that it's. It's a hoax. It's not really a vampire.

[A]

He. Sherlock Holmes.

[B]

Right. So there's a. There's a different thing going on there, but I thought that was kind of fun. Okay, so let's start off with Renfield. And they make the. The guys make the decision to move Mina into the mental hospital for safety. And of course, is. Is what is going to make her vulnerable to Dracula's attacks. And we learn a little bit more about Renfield here with his phrase, the blood is the life. So again, a lot more religious imagery, a lot of biblical echoes, scriptural echoes. My book also has tons of annotations of all the Shakespeare references. I had not remembered that. So many Shakespeare references. Which makes sense because Stoker was involved in the Theater.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So that actually makes a lot of sense. But the blood of the life. So this isn't, you know, this is an Old Testament Bible verse. That's why you're forbidden to eat the blood in the Old Testament. And, you know, Renfield making it very clear that what is at stake here is a life. Somebody's coming after your life and they're consuming that. That blood there. And we talked about Renfield as a, you know, an anti. John the Baptist figure.

[C]

So.

[B]

So we have a parody of Christ here. So Dracula coming as the Antichrist, meaning against Christ. So the opposite of him. And Renfield is his. Is his John the Baptist. And yet in this section we see Renfield trying to protect Mina.

[A]

He turns against breakings in of conscience and he's. Yeah, he's not entirely gone over to the dark side, so to speak.

[B]

But do you think there is something about Mina that inspires this protection in him?

[C]

Well, she visited him and she treated him kindly and with respect. And I, I think that's, you know, his response to that.

[B]

Well, I thought it interesting because she seems to have the effect of having every man she meets be devoted to her, but in a platonic way, a maternal way. There's some kind of respect and admiration for there. That's not romantic.

[C]

Yeah, definitely.

[B]

As opposed to Lucy, where every man who meets her falls for her.

[C]

Well, that's a great. That is a great contrast because you're right that all these men were in love with Lucy, but with Mina it's.

[A]

Something else, as one might be devoted to Athena rather than Aphrodite, sort of.

[B]

Yes, precisely. Exactly. There's, there's a. There's an admiration there and there's something about her that is bringing out the best in all of these men. But it's not romantic. And we'll, we'll.

[C]

We'll come back and maybe the point is that romantic love isn't enough. It has to be a greater love.

[B]

Well, I think, I think you're on to it. So the other thing I want to talk about here is I've been chuckling because both on the Facebook group and in our Patreon forum, our listeners have just been absolutely flabbergasted and frustrated with the men in this section saying after everything that happened to Lucy, what is wrong with you? Like you just you. Oh, let's just leave Mina unattended. Oh, she looks really pale today. How. What's that about? Oh, she must be sleepy. And I've been chuckling to myself because I've been keeping Very quiet. What I want to suggest is this frustration you have that you're so irritated with the men that did they learn nothing from Lucy and how can they put her in this danger, all under the name of protecting her. I want to raise the question of. Is that Bram Stoker's point? Are we supposed to be frustrated with them?

[C]

Well, we are.

[B]

What'd you say, Sydney?

[C]

I said we often are in real life with our men. They are very frustrating at times when they can't see what we want them to see.

[B]

Well, but I mean this in the context of the angel in the house.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Okay. So Lucy gets treated like the angel in the house, or the angel in.

[A]

The asylum in this case.

[B]

That's right. But she gets treated as this, you know, this. This beautiful child. How often is she called a child? She's a beautiful child. Everyone's in love with her. They don't have any real respect for her intellect or anything. And that has all left her susceptible to falling to this, to this, you know, to the dragon. And she does, and they lose her. And Mina, on the other hand, Van Helsing says that she has a man's brain. This is gonna. This puts her in the category of the new woman. I mean, we see her actively involved here, not just with the typing of the minutes, but memorizing the train schedules, just being an active participant in this quest. And when the men try to. They're like, oh, we have so much respect for you and you've helped us. And if it wasn't for you, Ms. Mina, we'd never be able to figure out where Dracula is because of all your work. Now, that's enough, though. Let us do the heavy lifting. And. And that is what ends up putting her in danger again. But then I think they learn, and then she becomes an active participant. And I just kept thinking, what an interesting twist this is. So in the romance, you have the damsel in distress, right. The guys have got to go out of there and slay the dragon and rescue the princess. And since Bram Stoker is casting this into a larger picture of questions around the new woman and the angel in the house, I think it's really interesting that he has the damsel in distress here be an active participant in her own rescue. Not in this kind of like, I don't need a man way.

[C]

But.

[B]

But she's. She's using the gift she has to be a genuine help to the quest. I don't think they could have defeated him if she had not been participating.

[C]

And later we see Van Helsing actually trusting her in a very dangerous situation where, yes, he, instead of, you know, he, he lets her make the decision and several times. But, you know, it's. I think it's significant that she is playing a role. He's even letting her play a role when she can't maybe quite be trusted.

[B]

That's right. And so, you know, if, if we have a larger idea here that this is a, this is a spiritual quest of, of how do you fight, you know, evil. The reality of evil and the reality of Satan in the modern world, that this is not just something for men to do and for women to be protected from. We all have to be engaged in this battle. And I, I appreciated that. And I think when it all comes together, that Bram Stoker is saying something really interesting. And, you know, I wanted to address this in case anybody's listening and saying, well, wait a minute, how can, how is it okay in the literary tradition for him to switch it and instead of the damsel in distress, she's participating in her own rescue? Well, innovation and variation is always part of this. And where I object is when people innovate in a way that show that they have disregarded the tradition, but authors are always playing with it. Like, I just, I'm teaching the Silver Chair right now in my middle school classes. And that's. That is very much a medieval romance. It's the most like specifically medieval romance of all of his. And I'll let you say that in a second. But one of the things that really struck me, and we talked about this in class, is that in the typical medieval romance, it's slay the dragon, rescue the girl. But in this case, it's not a damsel in distress, it is a dude in distress. It's really in who's captured. And a girl and a boy have to go down and, and rescue him. And, and C.S. lewis is, certainly knows what he's doing in the tradition. And this sort of innovation is certainly okay because when you understand that the damsel in distress is, is, is the bride of Christ, then then it's okay because the bride of Christ is both men and women. And, and so there's, there's really no problem with these particular innov as the person who's, you know, under the, the power of the dragon, or to, in this case have Mina be the, be the representative of the bride of Christ, but also participating in her rescue, especially as he ties it into these other issues, would you want to say?

[A]

Well, I was going to say, I mean, an Example of actually, maybe the ultimate example of taking an established form and modifying it with respect to the form so that it remains identifiably himself itself as the Divine Comedy. Because, I mean, Dante there. I mean, there is a courtly love relationship sort of between him and Beatrice. I mean, they had known each other during her earthly life, but the earthly courtly love that he would be expected to feel for her becomes kind of. Sort of transcends itself over the course of the poem, so that his devotion to Beatrice becomes a. You could say, sort of the catalyst for his renewed love for God and submission to the will of God.

[B]

Plain and more specific, what has always been understood allegorically, what's going on in the romance. Allegorically, it's always been understood that the love for the. The courtly love for the lady is supposed to be pointing to the transcendent love. And. And Dante just. He made it more explicit. Right, exactly. So. So I. I really enjoy what he's doing here. And we even see Mina, you know, she's unhappy when they. When they treat her like the angel in the house. Let me find that passage. And they just kind of sent her off to her bed there. She. She doesn't like it at all. And I really find it interesting that Bram Stoker shows that this is what puts her in danger, is that she's not participating in it. And, you know, in their attempt to project her. Let's see, all the men, even Jonathan, seemed relieved with the decision to leave her out. But it did not seem to me good that they should brave danger and perhaps lessen their safety. Strength being the best safety through care of me. But their minds were made up. And though it was a bitter pill for me to swallow, I could say nothing, save to accept their chivalrous care of me. And that word pointing it back to the romance. So I definitely think he's playing with this. And then she says, man, like, they had told me to go to bed and sleep. As if a woman can sleep when those she loves are in danger. Yeah, my husband's grinning. You know, these are great lines. And this isn't some kind of, like, you know, feminist rant, but this is definitely an appeal for a woman to be treated like a full human being and not a child who got sent to bed while the men do all the work. She's like, as if. As if I could go to sleep. I'm worried about my husband. I'm worried about all these guys. And she wants to be able to do something. I mean, any woman whose family has ever been in danger knows exactly what Mina is talking about here. That mama bear, right? That is the last time we want to be, like, pushed off to the side. We are ready to, like, lead the. We're like Queen Bodacia. We are, you know, Camilla. We are ready to charge in with the Amazon warriors there. Take no prisoners. All right, well, we'll come back to that as we. As we go on. The next thing we find out is the history of Dracula. Let's talk about that. How he became a vampire. Thoughts about that, gang.

[A]

It's. I think it's interesting that Stoker. Not a major point, but it's interesting that Stoker waits this long to give us the full story because it's.

[B]

It's sort of.

[A]

We sort of. I feel we've sort of been teased with that throughout the course of the entire book. Like, how. How did Dracula become what he is? I mean, how did he become.

[B]

Okay, why do you think he. Why do you think he waited?

[A]

I mean, again, you know, it's a means of keeping us on our seats. It keeps our attention fixed. And yeah, also it's. When you draw that out, when you protract that interest for so many hundred pages, I guess it's maybe more effective dramatically when the. When the itch is finally scratched, so to speak.

[B]

Cindy, what did you think about that delay?

[C]

Yeah, I did. I wasn't sure about that delay. I just thought it was like. Tom, I agree with Thomas. I just thought it was drawing things out, keeping you. Keeping you on the edge of your seat, waiting. And maybe the story couldn't have gone forward as it has without drawing it out because they all had to be ignorant of what was going on, really. I mean, it did seem sometimes that, you know, as in all drama, just a little communication would have helped here. But it wouldn't be a drama if they can.

[B]

Wouldn't be a drama, Cindy, if they communicated. I think thematically there's also something going on here. You know, not only are they. They're on a number of quests, so they're. They're going to be on a quest to kill the dragon, but they've also been a quest to. To understand the nature of the enemy they are battling. And so I think by delaying that, he's. He's. You know, one of the things medieval romances do is as the night is going on his adventures, the reader is too. And like, you take something like the Red Cross knight and the fairy queen, the reader is on a journey to learn discernment. Too. Like, so the whole point is that he. He has to get eyes to see and he's deceived through the whole book until finally, you know, he goes through some things and. And he. Obviously he has eyes to see. And Spencer does a whole bunch of things to try to get the reader to learn how to see and discern good from evil too. I think there's something similar to that technique going on here. You know, it at first it's just. There's a horrible monster, but the more that it's gone on, they've understood the nature of this. And slowly Bram Stoker has been dropping these little threads that. That he's associated with the devil and then finally just comes out specifically and says he was messing around in the occult and he. He has some kind of pact with the devil and that is how he became a vampire. So I think thematically that it's also really interesting here. So he. He went to Scholemance. I'm sure I butchered this German word. This word right here.

[A]

Sure, we'll go with that. Scholemance.

[B]

What do you think it is?

[A]

Actually, I think that might. I. Okay, your guess is as good as mine.

[B]

I don't know either. So he. He got involved in the occult, which opened him up to. To the influence of Satan here. But what. What else is interesting, though, is that that is supposed to be the lake. So the Skola Mas is at Lake Hermstadt. That lake is supposed to be the home of a sleeping dragon.

[A]

Oh, well, that's only too perfect.

[B]

It's only too perfect. So he goes into the cave with the dragon and becomes a dragon himself.

[C]

Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

[B]

Cool. In fact, one of the. The folklore things is that the descendant. So you remember when the Pied Piper comes and kidnaps all the kids?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

The. I. The folklore is that that's the lake where he took them, and the descendants of those children live there beside that lake.

[C]

Ah, interesting.

[B]

So all the connections to the dragon.

[A]

Your footnotes are way better than mine. Yeah, mine is content with pointing out that loot or no, that Mina is not an entire useless woman. That's. That's about as good as it gets. Wow.

[C]

Mine just translates the Latin for me.

[B]

Yeah, no, I thought that was. That's well done. So again, we got. So I think here he's finally making it explicit. Dragon, Satan, Dracula.

[C]

And honestly, say this was real life and someone came to you and just spilled the beans and said, you know this guy, we think he's a nice guy, but he's really a vampire. We don't believe those kind of stories. Even when the guy, even when we say, oh, this guy isn't a very nice guy, you know, you do have to build. People do have to be. Have their eyes open slowly. They can't have, you know, it isn't something that we can believe when we don't see it. So I think it's wise that Van Helsing is going about this in a very systematic way. As they see something, then he gives information.

[B]

Right? And, you know, I noticed too, several times the characters say something to the effect of, even though I am experiencing this, it is so hard to believe it.

[C]

Right? And, and, and, and, and you forget easily. You, you, you go, you revert back to this can't be true. So you constantly have to go see it, believe it, then question it.

[B]

It's almost like they had to really be face to face with this danger and what happened to Lucy before they were. Before they were really ready for information. Now it, now it's more believable what they've been through. He also tells us here about the consecrated earth, and a few people had a question about that. So this is one of the things that is not entirely explained by Stoker, but the idea is that a vampire can only be in hallowed ground that has somehow been unhallowed. So, for example, the cemetery with the suicides, because that's. That at that time would have been unhallowed ground because you couldn't bury a suicide with the, the regular ground. So he has to be connected to. Basically he has to bring his lair with him everywhere he goes. And I think what we're seeing is something similar to what Milton shows us with Paradise Lost, with Satan, that, you know, Satan can't create anything only God can create. Right. So Satan just has to twist up the things that God does. That's all that's on the only option he has.

[A]

That's why Satan. I don't know how old this name is, but I think, I think it goes back to the Middle Ages. Why Satan is sometimes called the ape of God.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

Because I mean, he can only imitate clumsily what God has made perfectly.

[B]

That's right. So what we see all with Dracula is that he is like a weird, a weird ape of Christ. Through this whole thing, we're going to see there's a number of parody moments, and I think that's also part of the parody here. He can only exist in some. So the. In hallowed ground that has been desecrated. So These. That's an image of. He can only exist in things that God has created that he's just tried to twist up.

[A]

And also, like a false Christ, he can't bestow eternal life, but he can bestow a cursed immortality.

[B]

Exactly. This undeath.

[A]

Well, even he promises Renfield that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Which is. I mean, that's almost exactly like Satan in the Temptation in the desert where, what does he say? All this shall be yours if you fall down and worship me.

[B]

Yep, yep. So, yeah, we definitely had that scene there. And then, of course, Renfield, though, doesn't agree because he's trying to protect Mina and. And Dracula ultimately kills him for it. But, yes, yes, all of that. And I think a lot of people, once we open the door to that, saw all of the biblical imagery in the language there. Okay, so next. So right after they decide we're gonna. We're gonna shut her out now for her own safety, she becomes susceptible to Dracula's. His. His. His attacks here. Oh, is that flipping through? Yeah. I. I continue to note all the technology because, again, we want to come back to this idea that. Well, actually, Van Helsing says that on chapter 18, that we have. We don't have just religion and superstition, we also have science. So, again, I think we talked about that last time, that you can. You know, this is. This is not an attempt. We have to go back to the old way to fight it. But you can fight evil right now in your world with, you know, the weapons that you have at your hand. So the fact that they have electric lamps, flashlights, firearms, fire. The Winchester was new. So again, we just see all this technology, which, to us, because the book's old, doesn't seem like a lot of technology, the telegraph and all that. But as somebody who has read a lot of Victorian novels and did my master's degree in that, I can tell you, I can't think of any other Victorian novel that talks about telegraphs and typewriters and electric lamps. In fact, so much so that if we were. I'll be honest with you, if Mr. Banks and I. Because this is how we watch movies. If we were watching a 19th century movie and somebody pulled out a flashlight, I would immediately pull out my iPad to fact check that.

[A]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So.

[A]

So I think the telegraph is older than the typewriter. I'm not positive on that score, but I'm pretty sure that it is.

[C]

And she later mentions that portable typewriter, so I thought that was cute too.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like her little cell phone here but the point I'm trying to make is, to us, it doesn't seem full of technology to the original audience. This would have been smack. This was, this would be like, you know, Sir Galahad in the middle of a King Arthur quest, pulls out a flashlight like that. This is, this is the vibe he's going for.

[C]

That would be Connecticut. What is it?

[A]

Connecticut Yankees. King Arthur's core about the portable typewriter. I know this is a completely trivial thing to wonder about, but I was wondering if it was portable, like in the, like the old 80s and 90s, laptops were portable, quote unquote laptops. Like, it still weighs like 25 pounds or something.

[B]

A portable typewriter from the 60s when she went to secretarial school. And it was this big clunker, but it was in this, like, zippered case and it had a handle.

[A]

Yep, yep. I think I can picture the type.

[B]

Something else I don't want us to miss, though, is the fact that the typewriter is completely associated in the public imagination with the new woman.

[C]

Ah, that makes sense.

[B]

Oh, yes, because it's the secretarial schools coming up and they're learning shorthand and typing. That, that is what has put women in the, in the workforce. So, so the. In a medieval ro. The characters usually have some kind of item associated with them that's allegorically a representation of who they are. So, like, if you're really prideful, you'd have a, you know, you'd have a, A mirror and somebody else might have like a little bag of gold. So obviously they're greedy. So the fact that she's constantly carrying around this typewriter, I mean, he couldn't be making it more clear. This is the new woman.

[A]

There, there was actually, I think it was an, like, recognizable enough what you're talking about, that it was the subject of music hall jokes and things like that. Like Chesterton, for instance, once said that, that there is delicious irony in the fact that the new woman says, I will not be dictated to, and then becomes a typist.

[B]

That's a classic gesture.

[C]

Well, didn't Dorothy Stairs have the whole. Or what was that? Dorothy? Sarah. No. Who was. Who has the. Lord Peter. Yeah, he has the. The lady he goes to for help is like, runs a type.

[B]

Mrs.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Plum. Plum free.

[C]

Oh, I can't remember her name.

[B]

I know what I'm talking about. Yes, the spinster lady with that runs the typing pool. Yes, yeah.

[C]

And those ladies all help, you know, at various times with the murder inquiries.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. If any of y' all watched the first season of Downton Abbey. You'll recall that one of the housemaids is having a correspondence school to learn typewriting. And that is what gets her out of the serving class and into a profession. So this. This is. This is a big deal at this time. The world is changing. It's going to radically change, of course, after World War I, but, you know, it's. It's. It's. It's complicated. And I would hesitate to say, oh, this is just a bunch of feminists who didn't want to be in the home. George Gissing wrote a book about this called Odd Women. Even before World War I, you still had women outnumbering men because of things like the Crimean War. And so there were still just not enough men to go around. And so the odd women, that. That doesn't mean like odd like, you know, bizarre, but odd. Like odd numbered. Like, all the women have paired up.

[A]

Supernumerary women.

[B]

Yes, all the women have paired up, and there's not enough men for all of us. And so what do we do? These women who, you know, they're not, like, waving their feminist flag saying, I don't need a man. I hate kids. Nothing like that. Just saying, okay, this is the reality we're in. There's not enough men. What a women who never get married is supposed to do, because the spinster life is not. That's not okay. So there's just. There's a large context going on in the late 1800s with this argument about the woman. It was called the woman question. Capital W, capital K, Q. I don't even know the Alphabet.

[A]

I was thinking that Mina would be just of the right age to have gone to Somerville College, Oxford, which was the first Oxford college to allow female. Female members.

[B]

Oh, that's right. Dorothy Sayers.

[A]

Dorothy Sayers went there. Rose McCauley.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Somerville girl.

[B]

Oh, yeah, and they went to school there, but they weren't given a degree.

[A]

Margaret Thatcher later on was a Somerville girl.

[B]

Now, Cindy, this is 1897 put us in the context of Charlotte Mason, because she's hiring girls. And you were having not just correspondent schools for tight learning, typewriting and shorthand, but Charlotte Mason had a correspondence homeschool program.

[C]

Yeah, well, she had a teacher's college that she started right about that time. So it started as a way to train women to go into homes to help families with their children. But we know that that was a quickly disappearing model also. Then it became women overseas who were needed to be able to be Trained to help other families. And that actually lasted much longer than even her work at home lasted. Missionary families were very involved in the pneu. And so. But her college was started. And it is kind of fascinating to look at the pictures of the women who were, you know, that this was their only option for a career. I don't know. Just looking at the pictures, you. You sense that. You get the sense that these women, this was an amazing opportunity for them not. Not to be stuck, you know, just being at home with their parents all their lives.

[B]

No, exactly, exactly. So that's the same context, Right? The world is changing. There are opportunities for women. And that. That's part of the question here. All right, so here's where we're going to get to the. The Big Daddy O scene. One of my favorite scenes in the whole book in terms of really pulling together everything. Everything that Stover is going for with this parody of crisis, Antichrist image. And this is when the men get worried about Mina and bust down the door and walk in to find Dracula force feeding her his blood.

[C]

Yeah, that was about as gruesome as this book gets. I'd forgotten that out of my mind.

[B]

No, it's amazing in terms of the imagery and everything he says. So obviously this is an anti Eucharist image. And so we really have kind of dueling Eucharist as well, because the Eucharist wafers, what they use him drive out of the room in that scene. But here he's. She's feeding off. He's. She's drinking his blood and she is eating his flesh. He even says, she's flesh of my flesh. And. And so, you know, all of the anti Eucharist imagery, there he is. He is the Antichrist. He is. He is. He is baptizing her later. Van Helsing called it the baptism of blood.

[A]

And where normally the blood is the life, as it's already been quoted here, the blood would be the death.

[B]

Exactly. Or the undeath. Precisely. Well done.

[C]

Well, it is. It does go back to the garden where it says, if you eat the. Of the Tree of Life now, you're going to live forever. But you're going to live forever in this terrible state that you're not going to want to live forever.

[B]

That's right. That's right. So they're. They're trapped. And that's, of course, she's. She's pleading and saying, you know, promise me you'll kill me. Don't let this happen to me. Even that being an active participant in the decision Making right, she takes it out of their hands. I'm telling you, if you see me turning into a vampire, you have to release me now. They hold your flesh of my flesh imagery. That's, that's marriage, of course. And again you have to go back to this idea that the metaphor of marriage is inherent to understanding the Christian life. Christ is the bridegroom and the church is his bride. And he talks about that all the time. So of course then Dracula as the Antichrist is going to be stealing his bride and saying, no, she's my bride now. And even the vampire women are called the brides of Dracula. So interesting too that it's almost like he's having a harem here, which would also be a little more, you know, Antichrist imagery there, but something that my, my book did not have a note about, Mr. Banks, before you ask, and that I am very excited about. And perhaps I get this while I study medieval imagery, but not just that I'm a Louisiana girl. And what is the state bird of Louisiana that's also on our flag?

[C]

Pelican.

[B]

The pelican. And this, my friends, is an image of a pelican. A pelican. It takes our fingernail and cuts their breast and feeds their children, just like that. And the pelican is a long standing Christ image for that. That's right.

[A]

There's a lot of pelicans in medieval imagery. Books of hours and illuminated manuscripts and the like.

[B]

So should they come in? And this is, this is the pelican image. He has cut his own breast and is force feeding her.

[C]

Now, now let me ask you a little bit about that because so, so we have only evidence that there are. He's has female, like you said, a harem of females. But he hasn't. But he has been going out and biting men also. Like, is that not true or not? No.

[B]

Well, a vampire certainly could do that. Stoker is not doing that. And I think it's because he is. I think it's because he's framing this whole thing in the question of the women, the woman question, literally called the woman question. And I think that he is showing that, that women are vulnerable to a threat.

[C]

And then Lucy, she was biting children, which was sort of pathetic.

[B]

Okay, Right. But that's also the whole, the whole false.

[C]

Right.

[B]

I also think it's interesting that the way that this plays out with Dracula and Mina is very different than Lucy. So Lucy has been described as the cockette, the flirt. She's completely upset. Her life revolved revolves around the question of who to marry, which would make her, you know, the ideal Victorian woman. And the encounters there are much more seductive. Right. She goes out to him in the dark on the moors and the moonlight and offers her. Him. Her neck. So it's much more seductive. Language. You don't see that. Here he comes to her in a mist when she's asleep. Even here he. He comes to her and threatens her. That's. I think that's very different. The. The. If you scream, I'll kill your heart. Husband.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's. It's a much more of a. Of an attack and assault and much, much less of a seduction. This. This is very clearly against. Against her will. Now, Lucy, of course, was in a sleepwalking state, and so I'm not necessarily saying she wanted to be seduced, but there's just a lot of different language and imagery in the. In the two encounters. So after this, of course, now they know they've got to. They've got to not just drive him out of England, which is what they had been doing with the boxes. Right? So they're going and putting the wafer there and driving them out.

[A]

The host.

[B]

The host.

[A]

I want to be pedantic.

[B]

Oh, no, I'm just gonna ask if the Catholic wanted to say something. I was using Van Helsing's language, the sacred wafer, and I want to talk about that in a minute. But the nature of their quest changes from just drive him out of England. Now we have to kill him in order to rescue the girl. So it takes on the more obvious questing language. But let's go ahead and talk about. Let's talk about the Eucharist. And why would the Eucharist, in terms of both theological imagery and the imagery in the story, why would this be something that would repel Dracula? You're the resident Catholic. Explain to us, to our Protestant audience, why, why that would. Well, I mean, an efficacious, tenacious symbol since then.

[A]

I mean, it's a means of grace. I mean, in Catholic teaching, it's a means of grace and fortifies the faithful against the onslaughts of evil. So I. You could say that it has a. It would be natural for Stoker to use it as a sort of talisman here to. To ward off wickedness.

[B]

And he seems to make the point of saying that this is a Roman Catholic host. Yeah, he says. Well, he uses the wrong word. He says, I have an indulgence. He should have said, I had a dispensation. But you don't get the sense it's an Anglican thing, but that he has, he has brought this in. Well, I was thinking it's because in theological language, the host is the body of Christ.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So it's, it's Christ they're holding up Christ. And that is what is repelling him. Cindy, did you have some thoughts about all that?

[C]

No, I, I just thought it was just the, just the, the known power of God over evil through the blood of Christ, which is, you know, I, I truly believe our only hope against evil.

[B]

Right, right. And you don't have to necessarily be a Roman Catholic to appreciate the symbolism of the book. Bram Stoker himself was not a Roman Catholic. Actually. Do you want to go ahead and talk about.

[A]

I was gonna say.

[B]

Let's go ahead. This would be a great time to bring that up.

[A]

This was bizarre. We both, both, you go first. Because it was actually in your, your copy of Dracula that you discovered a critical essay.

[B]

So I, I wrote an essay that. Well, okay, so if anybody knows me at all, you know that the words secret agenda are automatically going to red flag me. Okay, I, I don't believe that authors have secret agendas. Cough, cough. And yeah, that's from my fellows who are laughing hysterically now. And I read an essay that basically explored the idea that Bram Stoker, although he was not a Catholic, had a secret Catholic agenda and that this book was part of it and that this book is, it's about, you know, that it's not Christianity that defeats Dracula, it's Catholicism, and that the, the, the members of the quest have on a journey of conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. So I, I didn't buy it for a second. And then I ran it by my husband, the Catholic, to see if maybe I was overreacting. And just the look on his face told me not buy it.

[A]

Yeah, again, I mean, as far as we know, I mean, Bram Stoker is a lifelong member of the Church of Ireland. Actually, this is something I, I, I'm sorry. I know, I know in one of my classes or one of my own webinars, I've brought this up. But it's always been a question, sort of a maddening question to me. Why Irish literature? Ireland, which is like the quintessentially Catholic country, almost all the great Irish writers are protestants. One or two exceptions. But I mean, Goldsmith, C.S.

[B]

Lewis.

[A]

C.S. lewis, yeah. I mean, Bram Stoker, even George Bernard Shaw, who's an atheist, comes from a Protestant family. So, yeah, it's again, I mean, if, if Bram Stoker was a, like, closet Catholic, he kept that Catholicism Very closeted. And yeah, this book, the idea of this book is a kind of Catholic follow the code. And you will find, you know, this, this conclusion that, that seemed to me kind of a stretch.

[B]

Oh, very much so. What I think is going on, Cindy, what do you think about the, the thesis that this, this book has a secret Catholic agenda?

[C]

I don't see that at all. I, I, I think he's using Catholic symbolism because it's clearly works with what he's trying to communicate. But I think, I think it would be harder to communicate it with other symbols when it's so clearly, easily easy to communicate it with those symbols. But I, I don't see it, him having an agenda. If he did, he, he would have gone about. I, I don't see it at all. I mean, you, he barely mentions Van Helsing as a Catholic, and he never makes it. So they're all like, converting to anything.

[B]

Yeah. And I think it's just so much more clear that it's, it's faith in Christianity versus evil rather than a particular type of Christianity. But I'm with you. I think the same thing. Cindy, this will make you laugh because I was explaining this to Mr. Banks about how when I was a kid, you know, we've talked about this on this podcast before, my mother watched soap operas. And so, so did I. And you'll recall this, Cindy, anytime there has to be any kind of church imagery at all in a soap opera, it's, it's Roman Catholic.

[C]

Yeah, Right.

[B]

The priest comes out, he's got the collar. It's the Catholic wedding, somebody's going to confession.

[A]

It's true in horror films, too.

[B]

That's right. And as a kid, I thought about it and I concluded I was a weird kid. These are things I thought about. I concluded that it wasn't because they were Catholic, because actually the, the parts of the world that the soap operas were set were not even predominantly Catholic. But I, of course, was in a predominantly Catholic area in South Louisiana, and I knew the rest of the world wasn't like that, so I thought that was odd. But what I concluded was if you are telling a story or making a film, and you want a very quick and easy way to signal certain religious things to your audience. Well, the imagery of the Roman Catholic Church is the easiest way to do that in this, in this culture. Right. I mean, guy comes out with a collar, everybody knows that's your priest. Right. I mean, you're, if you're Protestant, a preacher comes out with his skinny jeans and his spiked up hair. You know, the audience is not going to know. Oh, this is a. This is youth pastor. The youth pastor comes out and. But I don't think any of that was ever intended to be a theological statement. I don't think. I don't think as the World Turns had a secret Catholic agenda. I think that's just the easiest way, just like you said, with horror. No, but we should start.

[A]

We should start spreading that rumor just.

[B]

To have some fun Catholic agenda of Guiding Light.

[C]

There is more symbolism in some of these. Older Catholicism has a lot of symbolism, so it's easy to procure those symbols in a story when you want to say something. Whereas, you know, if you don't have symbols, what are you going to do?

[B]

That's right. And I think the crucifix, as opposed to the cross, is because the crucifix has the body of Christ on it. So if you think about it, it's the body of Christ that continues to repel the vampire. Right. The crucifix, the host, which is also the body of Christ.

[C]

And I do think people have switched out the. The symbols for the reality. Like, sometimes the symbols become more powerful than Christ. You know, there is that situation. I'm not saying in Catholicism. I'm just saying in general, as people get less religious, the symbols maybe maintain some meaning that the actual Christ doesn't actually have for them.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I don't think there's any question that what Stoker really intends is that it is Christ that is defeating the vampire.

[A]

So, anyway, to move on to. Okay, this, This. I found this online, this essay on, well, some of Stoker's imagery. It was. It was something about Evangelical Gothic. That was. That was the title of this essay, and it was it one point it made, and this was, I think, even more bizarre than the Catholic thing, was that Stoker is writing in a. I guess under the influence of Wesleyan Hymns. And anyway, it was like all the Irish. Anyway, so, like this. And I guess this is the thesis of some. Some scholarly tome published by the University of Virginia Press. It had the. I think the title was Evangelical Gothic, Something in the Decline of Virtue from John Wesley to Dracula.

[C]

It was.

[B]

It was a bizarre title.

[A]

The Attack on Virtue from Wesley to Dracula.

[C]

I.

[A]

So, yeah, I've never heard John Wesley connected to Dracula. Dracula and Methodism, but there you go. So someone has. Someone has connected those. Those. That trail of breadcrumbs.

[B]

George Eliot has method in her. I mean, Dinah was a mess.

[A]

There's a lot of Methodism in. In George Eliot.

[B]

Yeah, well, I haven't seen it here. Yeah, just. I just got to show you the Freudians. I'm not the only ones who can, can misread things. But, you know, so we've been Talking about the St. George and the Dragon, and I failed to mention that when, when Jonathan Harker goes to meet Dracula the first time, it is on St. George's Day.

[A]

Very good.

[B]

So it's all part of that, that. Well, okay, so what I want to talk about now is something I was thinking about. And again, we're not reading this as an allegory, but this is obviously not like in a one to one John Bunyan allegory, but there's obviously a lot of spiritual, metaphorical language here, poetic language. And when you have that, things operate on a number of levels. And so I started thinking about, okay, so these four men who are on this quest, plus Dr. Van Helsing would make fun of. I thought, well, you know, we know who they are. And I wanted to talk about what they represent and what y' all think Stoker's going for here. So we've obviously got a member of the aristocracy, okay. And we've got a member of the law profession. So it's almost like we're getting all of our casts, you know, check, check, check. Right. So we've got. Got a member of the nobility, a lawyer, we have a scientist, right? And then we have an American, who's not just an American, but he's a Texan, he's a frontier guy, he's a cowboy. What do you think Stoker's doing with this particular group of men on this quest? Do y' all think what their professions are is significant at all?

[A]

It seems like he is bringing in, I don't know, bringing in every corner of the globe. The sense, like it's sort of, I don't know, like the way that the church is. Here comes everyone. The church is of every tribe and nation. That's probably too much of a stretch, but that's, that's the best I could guess.

[C]

But what are their professions? We have a doctor, we have a professor.

[B]

A lawyer.

[C]

I remember the lawyer. A lord, not a royal, but, you know, a titled person with money. And is that, is that it?

[A]

Sort of all estates and conditions of men, kind of.

[B]

I, I think he's very careful here of kind of like this, the best of British virtues. I think in America we don't think of lawyers as being great bastions of virtues, but in English literature, your lawyer, your barrister, your solicitor, these are These are your rocks.

[A]

Very often. Yeah.

[B]

The English legal system, the English train station, the member of the aristocracy, the rising science field. These are. And again, we don't really think of England like that because we're Americans. But.

[A]

But no, our national sense of patriotism doesn't. Doesn't coalesce around ticketing agents.

[B]

That's right. But that. It is very Bridgewater watch and pit pip. And. But even the science profession, I mean, Prince Albert, the Prince consort of Queen Victoria, he had the Crystal palace, which was kind of like a World's Fair kind of event where he showcased all of the great science and technology coming out of England. I mean, it was almost like, you know, the Disney, you know, the House of Tomorrow exhibit at the Epcot Center. It was that kind of thing where you actually went in and could see the house of the future. So Bram Stoker actually is really putting his finger on sort of the things that the British pride themselves on as what makes them this modern and stable country. And it's not enough. These things are not enough in their own. To defeat the dragon, to defeat evil. I think the throwing in the American cowboy is really interesting because I think we seek sort of this, like, courage and this man of action. So, like, the best British virtues, the best of the American virtues, they are not enough to slay the dragon.

[A]

What they need to, in the words of the Prime Minister George Canning, bring in the new world to redress the balance of the old.

[B]

Well, in this case, they're going to bring in the old world to address the imbalance of the new. Because what they bring in is the outsider, Van Helsing. And I think that's significant. He is not British. British. He has a thick accent. He is associated, I think, more with the old world. Well, okay, so Dracula is entirely associated with the old world. Van Helsing is more in between two worlds because he's both the man of science and of superstition. And he says a few times we have superstition on our side as well as science. And I think superstition here is. I quibble with some of the authors I read who think there's a huge difference in this book between religion and superstition. And I kind of think superstition is being used a little more broadly to mean, like pre Enlightenment thought.

[A]

It's just a weird use of the word in a positive sense.

[B]

Yes, exactly. Yeah. So I. I disagree with the same person who thinks this book has a secret Catholic agenda also thinks that Bram Stoker is saying, you know, garlic and flowers that's just superstition. But, you know, the cross, that's real. But I don't, I don't see that distinction.

[A]

And I might have been pursuing a false. But I, I was wondering if maybe Van Helsing might be using the word superstition in a positive sense because he's, His English is so radically imperfect that he doesn't know that that's not exactly the word he would normally be searching for.

[B]

No, that makes sense to me.

[A]

Maybe, I don't know.

[B]

He does have a few, like, little malaproprisms here or there, which are kind of funny.

[A]

A few, yeah, it's, but, but I.

[B]

Think it's interesting, right? So you have all these British virtues, American virtues, we'll say modern virtues, virtues we pride ourselves on, because in 1897, this is before the United States is a big world power. And, and so, you know, I see American courage, that kind of, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This man of action, Quincy is a man of action, right? He's always running out with his gun, fighting to shoot. He's very Texas. But it's not enough they bring in Van Helsing, they have to bring in an outsider. Now that there's a long history of, in English literature of that. I mean, you go all the way back to the first, where English literature begins, according to Tolkien, Beowulf, same thing, right? You have a kingdom under the threat of a monster, Grindel. It can't, they can't free itself. An outsider has to come in. Beowulf has to come in and, and do it. So I, I, I think that's all fitting kind of this quest, this quest story as, as well. So they succeed in running him out of England, but they've got to go back to his lair.

[A]

So you bring, you bring up Beowulf. I mean, Beowulf has to seek out not Grendel, but Grendel's mother in her lair.

[B]

That's right. Yeah, exactly. And then, of course, also it was a dragon at the end and has to go into the cave and, and all, all of that. So now they, now they have taken the fight into the old world itself. And I know a lot of people have been excitedly seeing Harry Potter connections to this book, but boy, did we get some big ones here. Right? She's got the scar on her forehead.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And she's got the, the psychic connection to Dracula, just like Harry does with the dragon in Harry Potter, which is a snake monster of Voldemort. So a lot of that now, Mina Scar, of course, we should be thinking not only the mark of Cain, but also that Dracula himself has a mark on his forehead, a scar that Jonathan Harker put there. So that also ties her to, to him. Right in, in that way. All right, so off they go on this quest. And you're right, Cindy, it's very, very long. But they are using her psychic connection through hypnosis to try to figure out where he's going. And he, he knows what's up. It's a two way communications tree and, and he is able to set up a feint.

[A]

Now with the use of hypnosis and all this kind of thing here. This is the age when professional hypnotists and people like that, it was, it was kind of becoming a fad, A, a lucrative fan for some people.

[B]

Yeah, I was thinking about this because one of the notes I read tried to say that the hypnosis was part of the superstition and almost kind of like magic. But I, I think, I disagree with that. I think hypnosis would have been a technology.

[C]

What I want to know, do we have any. What is the modern view of hypnosis? Is it, is it debunked or is it real?

[B]

I believe that psychologists do use it, don't they?

[A]

Well, they would have back in the day. I mean, at this time. At this time, this is. Yeah, I mean that was, that was a, I mean, part and parcel of a. Well, they wouldn't have called them psychologists. Yeah, but alienists, I guess you could say. Bag of tricks. Yeah. So, yeah, hypnosis. Yeah. I think hypnosis had a kind of scientific standing then that it does not today.

[B]

Yeah, I think it's kind of like a little parlor trick, kind of, you.

[A]

Know, carnival sideshow with fake scientific, quote unquote scientific.

[C]

I mean, I know they do it on tv, modern TV shows like that are supposed to be realistic, but they're not very realistic anyway.

[B]

So I'm not sure, I don't honestly know about today where the line is with hypnosis. I mean, don't they use a hypnosis to help people stop smoking and stuff like that? I mean, it's not all just spooky stuff.

[C]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I feel like by now we should know whether hypnosis is genuine or not.

[A]

To illustrate how in the early 20th century people, I mean, there were, like I said it was a fad. There were people who thought that this is, this is scientific, a scientifically sound technique, memory technique. People thought that testimony given under hypnosis there. There were, you know, journalists and people like that who thought it should have, like, legal standing in a court of law. Fortunately, this never happened, but yeah, there.

[B]

Were lie detected tests aren't even admissible.

[A]

Oh, sure, yeah.

[B]

There's a lot of. There's a lot of fuzziness even about the science of that. Yeah, that's a good question though. But. Yes, so I'm glad we're all on the same page here. I thought that note was wrong. I think. Think the hypnosis was part of the.

[A]

Technological scientific arsenal, so.

[C]

Yeah, definitely.

[B]

Exactly. Of course, the Winchester was a new kind of weapon as well. Did y' all catch that? They went on the Orient Express.

[C]

Yes, yes.

[A]

Which also would have been a fairly new train system about that time.

[B]

That's right. Uniting all of Europe. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Lots of cool stuff. All right. Okay, so shall we fast forward through all of the ship and the weird stuff and.

[C]

Yeah, so they all separate also. So are we there? They're each going a different way, which I never quite understood the point of that, but I guess it was just.

[B]

I think you needed it for a narrative more. Right, So a couple of important things happened during this time. Mina is seeming, the longer this goes to fall, more under Dracula's control as they draw nearer. And she's fighting it. And he has previously said to them when they ran into him at Carfax, your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them, you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. So this, you know, your girls are mine. And. And Nina, of course, is becoming there, but she fights this in a very interesting scene when they're all together. So this is before they break up, when she wants her true husband to read the burial service to her. Now, this was the Anglican burial service, so, so much for your secret. But does anybody. I'll tell you my note. Does anybody know how the Anglican burial service begins?

[A]

Oh, the ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Is that the.

[B]

I am the resurrection. Oh, yeah. So. So that. That's. That's very serious. She wants her soul to be delivered. She wants to be a bride of Christ and not a bride of the Antichrist. So. Yes. And he's, of course, dying, but, you know, just groaning and. And she wants that now, the whole back to dust thing. Yes. So when they. They. They go and they kill the lady vampires first and they instantly turn to dust.

[A]

They pulverize.

[B]

Yeah. Because that. It's like it goes back to the state of what their body would have been. So Lucy was just a few days dead, so she goes back to that state. And they're turning into dust. So they're going back into dust. And it's. And it's interesting that they're. That's being portrayed as both a slaying of the dragon and the killing of the monster, but also a restoration of their souls.

[C]

Right, right. It's a good thing for them. Them.

[B]

Yes. And they are now released from the power of Dracula. You know, something else too. Speaking of Lord Godalming, obviously his money opens a whole lot of doors, but it's also interesting that that alone is not enough to solve this problem either. Money and position and power. And especially when the stoker brings that up explicitly when they go back to the old world and Lord Godalming says, well, can't I just order a special? And Van Helsing says, it would get here later than the. Than the real train. And then the. Another person says, you're gonna find that your money and title are not going to open the doors here. And I appreciate.

[A]

And that the trains don't run on time.

[B]

The trains don't run on time. That's right.

[C]

Not Switzerland.

[A]

Cindy can testify to all these things.

[B]

But that's gonna. But that's gonna be part of the contrast. You know, they've left the world of the modern world. World and they've.

[A]

With accurate timetables.

[B]

The more wilderness. That's right. And, and money and title and position and power. Don't. Don't really, you know, work here. And if we're looking at this in terms of a spiritual battle, of course, that is very true. Money and power and position and prestige is not. That's not going to be an aid in the fight against the dragon. So off. Off they go. Now, before we get to the. To the final thing, I was also thinking about some other things that are going on because obviously, I mean, the vampire is not Satan himself, but is the representative of Satan. He has some kind of pact with him. And, and he's going to be delivered at the end here as well. But when you're talking about metaphorical language and metaphorical imagery, we talk about this a ton in my classes. So if this is a little confusing, don't worry, I. I give the full spiel in there. But this means you can have multiple layers of meaning all at the same time, as long as they're rooted in the. In the meaning and the images. And so it's not a John Bun. You Know, well, vampire is. Is, you know, he's. He's Satan. And you know, and mean is this and, and worse, Morris, is that they can be multiple things. So obviously on the one level, he's. He's the satanic thing. But I was also thinking about the fact that he is drinking their blood. He's thirsty, he's devouring. Of course, that's all. That's all dragon language, too. But it also strikes me that, you know, in medieval romances, they always kind of connect these things back to the disordered soul. And we've talked about this a lot in this podcast, that a properly ordered man has reason at the top. And reason is not pure intellect. Reason is being made in the image of God. And so reason would. Would include not only your ability to reason, let us have logic, but also divine revelation would be under that. Basically, just reason is like a. A wide category for, you know, godly wisdom. So it would be the church and tradition and the scriptures and, you know, the church fathers, your. Your ability to think, all of that, that a properly ordered man is going to have that ruling him. And under that is his will. And at the bottom of that is his appetites. And so. So the way it's supposed to work is if you have some kind of appetite, your reason will evaluate. Right. Should I feel this attraction to this girl? Well, no, she's married to somebody else. Okay. No. Well, my reason says no, and then my will would say, no, I'm not going to act on this appetite. Or your reason might say, you're attracted to this woman. You're single, she's single. This is a good match. That's a good feeling to have. And then you act on it. You marry the girl. A disordered man, however, is a man flipped upside down. So he's ruled by his appetites.

[A]

A man whose God is his belly.

[B]

Well, okay, so it struck me that Dracula is a picture of. That he's entirely.

[A]

He's only appetite.

[B]

Only he's only appetite. And so I think part of what we've got going metaphorically here, too, is we have divine wisdom, you know, in the symbols of the crucifix and Eucharist and this quest of people who are going after him. So it's almost like reason versus appetite and, and the attempt to have, like England disordered by all, all becoming, not not only feeding his appetite, but also becoming appetites, if that makes sense.

[A]

I like that. I like that. You're good at this, Stanford. You should, like, you know, teach for a living or something like that it could be you might have.

[B]

Yeah, maybe I can make a side gig. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That really struck me. Dracula has appetite. So that's another level, I think, that's going on, this thing, this, this disorder. And I think you see that in Lucy when you see her disordered appetites, then when she goes after children and then of course, with the vampire brides going after Jonathan. You know, I think those are all pictures of disordered appetites. So I like that, that, that struck me on this read. All right, well, they get over there, like you say, Cindy, the classic, the classic thriller ending. They're all running over. And he really had his work cut out for him. Him from a narrative standpoint. To pull this back, my notes were a little snarky about how Mina couldn't possibly have seen this from where she was or known what the language.

[C]

Yes. She saw so much. And he moved slightly in front of him.

[B]

Exactly. Somebody had to be able to report it, you know. Those were some awesome suspenseful scenes, though, when Van Helsing draws the circle and the vampire women are out there and they, they're calling for Mina to come and join them.

[C]

Yeah, that gets really weird. And it does, it does pick up the narrative at that point after just, it just seems like we're we and weeks we're going on this.

[B]

Yeah, that's what I thought so too. That's when it really, it really picked up. She can even see the river lying like a black ribbon and kinks and coils. That's a snake.

[C]

Ah, there you go.

[B]

That's a snake. Such good imagery here. All right. But I will credit my book for this Note. So chapter 27, everything that's happening there all corresponds with the feast of All Saints. Saints.

[C]

Well, I was wondering about this too, because the dates didn't line up completely because I'm thinking, oh, this is all going to end on Halloween or, oh, this is all going to end on All Saints Day, but then it goes on till November 5th.

[B]

No, but you were right, Cindy, at the time. November 6th is the, is the. Is the old calendar. Oh, okay. Oh, well done. Well done. You figured it out, though, that it was leading up to that. That was very good. Yeah. Is it. See, they're in the old, old world, so it's in the old calendar.

[C]

Okay. Yeah, they passed.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

In the Orthodox world. So now they're in the. Now they're in the old calendar. And so November 6th is All Saints Day. Yeah, that's really good.

[C]

Huh? I'm so Excited.

[B]

Oh, no, that was really good. And some of our Patreons did an amazing job of really jumping on this and figured out that the death. So I had focused primarily on Lucy had died on what would have been her wedding day. So she becomes a false bride. Died. And I missed this. And the patrons looked it up and said that she also died on the feast of St. Michael. Ah, okay. So of course, St. Michael is the head of God's army and does battle with Satan in Paradise Lost. And so the fact that they, they, they give Lucy. There's her second death, you know, when they stake her, that's on the feast of St. Michael. So more of this imagery of the. The battle with Satan. Like, Stoker really knows what he's doing here.

[C]

Wow. He is really layered, this, this.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. This is amazing. And it's just really kind of sad. We'll talk about this when we do the film episode. But it's kind of sad what the vampire story has turned into, because he just does an amazing job of tying it into these Christian themes and. And these dates. All right, so they go in there and not surprisingly, someone in this quest had to die, right? Like whenever we're watching a thriller, I'll turn to Mr. Banks and be like, okay, there's no way I'll find five of these people are coming out of these scenes. Who do you think is going to be the one to go? So, you know, you have that Genesis 3:15 verse, and you see it in a lot of stories, right? So that. That central conflict of history, you know, the seed of the serpent will bruise your heel, the seed of the woman will crush your head. And of course, Dracula's head is going to get crushed here, but. But he's also going to be stinging too, right? And. And so it's not surprising that someone got. Got killed. So it ends up being Quincy Morris. But it's very exciting what happens. And I love that Quincy Morris has a Bowie knife. Speaking of technology, this would have also been a new thing from Jim Buoy. And my hometown has a big Jim Buoy monument and tree where he supposedly came and stopped on his way out to the Alamo. And so, yeah, Jim Boo is always large. Loomed large in my imagination as a kid because I was always from Louisiana, because there was so much stuff about him in my hometown. My hometown has a lot of weird things, weird claims to fame, which is. That's just people's last stop before they die in Texas. So Jim Bowie is one. The other one, which will make you laugh is that Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde stopped in my hometown, Opelousas, Louisiana, for a haircut before he drove to Texas and got killed.

[A]

So I guess this proves that Louisiana is more peaceful than Texas.

[B]

Maybe.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

That's our tourism sign. Stop here before you die in Texas. Yeah, exactly. The barber chair Rick Clyde had his last haircut is in the Opelous Museum. Like, this is our. This is our claim to fame. Like, I always imagine that when they put the newspaper picture of, you know, Bonnie and Clyde dead, that the barber was like, that's my work right there. Front page.

[A]

This, again, just serves to. Serves to show that you come from a part of the country with cooler history than I do. Because in. In Idaho. No one ever stopped in Idaho. Well, I guess Lewis and Clark did, and then nobody else.

[C]

Don't they have a giant potato that you go see or something like that?

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Lead the world in. Lead the world in lentil production.

[B]

All right, so they stab him. And I think it's been pretty well foreshadowed that it was going to be Quincy who did it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, because he's always shooting.

[B]

He's always shooting the vampire.

[A]

Oh, sure, yeah.

[B]

He's the cowboy. And so he kills him, but he gets mortally. He gets mortally wounded. Wounded.

[A]

Not by Dracula, though, by. It's not by one of the gypsies.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. One of the gypsies who are defending the thing. And, of course, Mina is fully released. Now, sometimes people get a little wonky about the end and say, hey, you didn't stake him in the heart. And so maybe he's not really dead. Maybe it's a trick. And so I read the ending very carefully to see if there was any, you know, credibility to that theory. But what happened. Mina is released from it. It doesn't. That doesn't make sense to me that this is anything other than the death of the dragon, because her face changes. But even this Mina sees what happens to Dracula's body. It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes. And almost in the dawning of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I should be glad, as long as I live, that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace. Peace such as I never could have imagined might have rested there. So it was the slaying of the dragon, but was also his rescue as well. And so we do have a comic structure here of. Of that redemption at the end. And then they look at Mina and Her face is now unstained. The mark of Cain is gone. And Morris says, I'm only too happy to have been of any service. Oh God. He cried, suddenly struggling up to a sitting posture and pointing to me. It was worse for this to die. Look, look. And he dies. So Morris dies while slaying the dragon, but we end up with, you know, the Christ figure who slays the dragon, of course dies, but then is resurrected. And we have a little bit of that imagery here with the birth of baby Quincy. Yep, exactly. So we still get the imagery there that qu. Morris died, but he's reborn as the baby who's named Quincy there. And the baby is born the same day that Quincy died, all saints day. I mean, he's just tying this up for us in a bow. And it ends with him seven years. That's quite a significant number as well. When they go back to the old country, they go back to Transylvania. And she says, I don't think I.

[C]

Would ever go back.

[B]

I wouldn't either. That's crazy to me. But.

[A]

Well, just to get closure or something.

[B]

Something like that, I guess. And she says, you know, that would.

[A]

Be a lame way to put it. But like if in a. In a modern.

[B]

Yeah, I just embrace my fears to get over my trauma, sure I'd be okay with leaving my drama in Transylvania. Speaking of which, I found out that there's a Transylvania, Louisiana.

[C]

Well, there's a Transylvania College in Kentucky. In Lexington.

[B]

Yes. It was a graduate of there who moved to Louisiana and named a town after that college.

[C]

And I never have. I've always thought it was a joke. And then one day I realized, oh, there really is a college named Transylvania University.

[B]

There is. And I'm told that Transylvania, Louisiana has like 200 people in. And it's basically just one big tourist shop for Dracula memorabilia.

[C]

But there is a Transylvania, right? Is there a Transylvania? Did we cover that? I totally just. Oh yeah, it's a real place.

[A]

Across the woods. Yeah, across the woods, that's right.

[C]

We did cover that.

[B]

Oh, that's significant symbolism. Across the woods. That's a Hades.

[A]

How's that? Sorry?

[B]

Well, forests. Forests are types of Hades. Oh, so you know, crossing into the dark forest, the garden in the wilderness. Never mind. That requires way too.

[C]

I think we actually went over some of that earlier.

[B]

We may have. We may have. So what's interesting is at the end here, having been through all of this, they're saying it was almost impossible to believe that the things which we had seen with our own eyes. Eyes and heard with Our own ears were living truths. So, you know, here we are, we're right back in the modern world, and it's just so hard to believe that the spiritual warfare is. Is real. And we, of course, everything gets tidied up. Godalming and Seward are both happily married. And then he says this little thing at the end about, weirdly enough, none of the original documents still exist. Just this typewrited, typewritten thing that you're reading now. Well, and maybe you won't even believe it. And here's Van Helsing with our boy on his knee. We want no proofs. We ask none to believe us. This boy will someday know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. And I think it's very interesting that it is Mina who is the future. It is Mina's child. And we pointed out all the. The people who died without heirs. That's how Mina inherits the fortune. So I think his final word here is that Mina is the future of England, not the Lucy's of the world, but the. But the new woman.

[A]

At the same time, I kind of think that the Lucy's of the world, he will always have with you.

[C]

But she's also not just a new woman. She's bearing a child. She is.

[B]

Well, I mean, the new woman is. But like I said, it's not like modern feminism. It's the new woman doesn't necessarily mean she's like a career gal who never wants to have kids. It's that she wants to be treated as a fully functioning human being with a brain. And so Stoker's integrating that, you know, she is a genuine help meet to her husband, which I realize to our audience probably sounds like a traditional position, but it was not a traditional position in the Victorian area era. She wants to be a real help to her husband. She wants to raise a family. She wants to be an active participant in their family and in their life. And she has a mind and she wants to use it. You know, Mary Wollstonecraft, in her Vindication of the Rights of Women, talks specifically about this. I mean, she's. She's responding to Rousseau, who argued that children had. I'm sorry, that women had children's brains and so you couldn't tax them anymore when you've got a child. Child. And she.

[A]

Go ahead and with Rousseau, the funny thing is, it's not even that he thought women did have women's brains, but they should. In an ideally organized society, they should. Oh, it was more of a should.

[B]

We should educate them in a way that would make them to have.

[A]

Oh yeah, Rousseau, I mean, he, I mean, was quite proud of the fact that his, as we would now say, common law wife, Therese could not read and he, he preferred that she stay that way.

[B]

You know, I would think that would be an advantage to somebody staying with Rousseau if they couldn't read anything he wrote.

[A]

That might be, you might have a point. Yeah.

[B]

But Mary Wollstone grabbing a vindication of the rights of women, this is the argument she makes, okay. And it's, it's, it's honestly, it's not this big feminist thing. She just says women are supposed to be help meets to their husband. And how can they do that if they're not educated, if they don't have, if they're not treated like they have a mind. And she, she argues that the way that the Victorian society treats women is not befitting of a Christian nation. That she says you're raising women to be more part of a Muslim harem than a Christian wife. You know, just little, little beautiful playthings for the men to dally with. I mean, she's arguing for a full humanity for the women in order to fulfill their, their God given calling. It's not, it's not like modern feminism as, although you could see, certainly see the roots of it there. But I think Stoker is going for something very similar. I mean, Mina is a woman. She, she's never anything but a devoted wife. She's not trying to be a career woman. I mean, she's saying I, I want to be useful to my husband. And what angers her so much when the men kind of push her aside is that she, she feels like I now she feels helpless. And she even says, I can't, I can't, I can't sleep because I have anxiety about Jonathan. She wants to help him. And I also thought it was interesting in a number of places at the beginning of the book that she is in the situation of protecting him and his fragile health. That that was that in his fragile mental state. And it come, she and Van Helsing for a while keep Jonathan in the dark about certain things to protect him. And I thought all that was just an interesting twist but, but final thoughts about this. But I loved reading it again. What an awesome book. No, it was good.

[A]

We did this. It had been really, really a long time. And I, yeah, I knew I had forgotten a lot in this book just because I had not read it in 20 years or whatever. But yeah, I had forgotten even more than I thought I had so it was good to refresh my sense of what the book actually is and is not about about.

[B]

And Cynthia, I know you had read it recently and really enjoyed it. Did you get anything new out of it reading? I did.

[C]

I. So I read it in January and really enjoyed it and then we ended up doing it on the podcast. And of course you, you have a lot of insights that I did. You know, I. It's weird when you read a book once, you're. You're just kind of going through it. You're not looking for, you know, things hit you, but that you're not looking for things. But when you go through it, looking for things, things, it's, it is quite exciting to find all this stuff that I had missed the first time around. I mean, I think I. It helped to read it twice.

[B]

Well, there's a lot of layers going on here. And then, I mean, I haven't even, you know, we just talked about some of them. The Patreon group is doing an amazing job wrestling with all these imageries. There's a, there's a lot of layers going on here. I mean we just, even through the church calendar in here at the end. So, yeah, it's just a fascinating book and apparently nothing he, he wrote other than this is as good as this one, but. Yeah, what a masterpiece. This one is amazing.

[C]

You know, I think one of his books was considered the worst book ever written.

[B]

Yes. Is it the Lair of the White Worm?

[C]

Something about the white worm? Yeah, so avoid that one probably.

[B]

But I mean, you see, he was continuing to try to develop some of these same, you know.

[C]

Well, was this his first book or did he really develop as a writer?

[B]

It would.

[C]

Yeah. So fantastic job on this book. It's a really well done book.

[B]

It's really, really well done. And you know, something interesting I read is that that he probably intended to turn this into a theatrical production with Henry Irving. The guy, he was, you know, he was manager of the actor Henry Irving, that Henry Irving would have played Dracula. So that's, that's all very interesting too. And especially because you can see the book kind of has a three act structure. Lucy, Mina and then the Pursuit. So I think that's interesting that he, he realized that it had that potential for the stage because of course.

[A]

And it was staged within, oh, I think within a decade or so of his death.

[B]

Yeah. His wife apparently spent the rest of her life fighting things like that.

[A]

Right. She did not like these were not approved and even, I mean she lived into the age of movies and She, I dare say she would have been spinning in her grave now that it's been adapted 72,000 times, but she. She didn't want the original copyright Dracula.

[B]

Movie to be made. And anybody could. Anybody could just make a. Make a drama out of it, and people did. And so she wasn't, she wasn't too happy about that.

[C]

Wouldn't it be great if someone really did understand the Christian symbolism and, and made a new great movie about it?

[B]

It would be. It would be. I mean, I. I hope that this restores people's faith in, in the Gothic genre, that it is a Christian genre filled with imagery. So I was thinking about when I took my vampire class, what I had written my, my paper on. So I thought I'd throw my thesis out here. Oh. Oh, Now I've got Mr. Banks's look. So this is. This is what young Angelina wrote about. I observed the fact that Lucy and Mina seemed to be opposite even in their physical appearance. One's blonde, one's a brunette one's. The cockette one's got a. One's that had a childlike brain that they all call child. The other one's got a man brain, which would be very high praise. Right. And so I went through the book and I noticed something. I noticed that Lucy and Mina are never together in a scene with a third person, a man. None of the main male characters ever see Lucy and Mina together. So I wrote a paper, because, you know me, I'm the metaphor girl. Girl. I wrote a paper in which I argued that metaphorically, Lucy and Mina are two sides of the same person. And so that in every woman, there's the side of her that could be developed into a true help meet and a full functioning human with a brain, you know, who wants to be an active participant in her own life. And then there's the side that Rousseau would want to make us be. The, the. The cockette, the childish person who just wants to be, you know, beautiful and attract all the men. And that it's interesting to me that Bram Stoker killed off the Lucy side and it's the Mina side that carries on into the future.

[C]

That was. That was a great observation.

[A]

I didn't even think about that or something like that.

[C]

Yeah, that they never were seen with the third person. That's awesome.

[B]

I shouldn't say third person because the mom. The mom sees them. But none of the main male characters ever seen. See, they're not together with any of the. So it's almost like in the presence of these men, it's either the Lucy side or the Mina side.

[A]

Someone a while ago, I can't remember who, was the first to notice this, but in King Lear, Cordelia and the fool never appear at the same time together. Each of them. Yeah. Functions as King Lear's conscience, sort of to remind him of what he ought to be doing and even. And at the end, he actually refers to Cordelia as my dear little fool.

[B]

Fool.

[A]

When the fool is no longer there.

[B]

Yes. That's the kind of stuff that gets me super excited thinking about that kind of thing. Well, I really, really enjoyed this story and it's been a lot of fun talking with you guys about it. And again, shout out to the Patreon because y' all are killing it. They have just taken these ideas and run with it, and they have found so many more layers. I mean, really, you never get to the end of it. So this has been a lot of fun and I hope you guys at home have enjoyed listening to Dracula. And thank you all for trusting us with this pick. I know some of you are like, what, this is going to be some slasher horror thing. And then it's fun to watch you all be delighted by this book because it is really good. So the very next episode, guys, is the one y' all have been waiting for all year, the 2023 Reading Challenge. That is next week's episode. Let me tell you, my co hosts here have something pretty awesome up their sleeves that we're going to introduce you to to next week. And then after that, we will have atleon to look at Dracula in film. And we're going to look at the way that Dracula has been interpreted and misinterpreted on the film.

[A]

Probably more of the latter.

[B]

Well, I do kind of have some theories about what's going on with that, so it'll be fun to, to, to talk through that on that episode. And then we'll finish off the year with our year in reading, where we'll find out the 722 books that Cindy read.

[C]

I'm struggling. These toddlers are kicking my reading list.

[B]

That's the cycle, right? So you have small kids of your own and you don't read. Then you have that brief respite where kids are grown and you can read and then now your grandma on your back to not being able to read.

[C]

Yeah, that's sort of how it's going right now. And that. That is truly a great reason not to read.

[B]

Well, maybe you're. You just need a bit like a fairy tales, a little Red Riding Hood. You know you can count of those as books. That's true.

[C]

That's I have been reading a lot.

[B]

You'Ve been reading a lot, just not your usual stuff. Well, thanks so much for hanging in there with us for this series and we hope you guys have enjoyed it. Stick around to the end of this episode. Mr. Banks has got a special poem picked out for us and again, huge shout out to our Patreon. You guys are killing it on these books and I'm very, very proud watching you guys learn how to read so well. And don't forget 20 off everything in our store at House of Humane Letters. All right, gang, we'll say goodbye. We'll see you right back here next week. And until then, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[A]

The To Be Forgotten by Thomas Hardy I heard a small sad sound, and stood awhile among the tombs around. Wherefore old friends, said I, why are you distressed now, Screened from life's unrest? Oh, not at being here, but that our future's second death is near. When with the living memory of us numbs and blank oblivion comes these our sped ancestry lie here embraced by deeper death than we Nor shape nor thought of theirs can you decry with keenest backward eye they count as quite forgot they are as men who have existed not Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath. It is the second death. We here as yet each day are blessed with dear recall as yet can say we hold in some soul loved continuance of shape and voice and glance. But what has been will be first memory, Then oblivion's swallowing sea. Like men forgone shall we merge into those whose story no one knows for which of us could hope to show in life that world awakening scope? Granted the few whose memory none lets die, but all men magnify we were but fortune's sport Things true things, lovely things of good report. We neither shunned nor sought. We see our born, and seeing it, we mourn.