Ancient Horrors, Modern Settings, Modern Readers

My recent readings of a number of Dracula novels from the late-1970s onward have really impressed on me the brilliance of Stoker's original. Here's why: most writers who tackle Dracula, vampires, or supernatural horror in general tend to lose their nerve when it comes to confronting modern readers with patently irrational, pre-modern superstitions, and especially shy away from that when the setting is modern. Vampires are "updated," rationalized, and modernized; this or that bit of embarrassing lore is jettisoned as mere myth; everything about vampires that could jar discordantly against a modern setting or a modern reader's sensibilities is smoothed over or ignored. In starkest contrast to this approach, Stoker realized that there's something inherently anachronistic and atavistic about supernatural horror--something about it that's inescapably pre-modern, primitive, irrational. So far from trying to minimize that aspect, he embraced it and emphasized it.

A 21st century reader might assume Stoker had an easier job of that, on the mistaken notion that his setting and intended audience were pre-modern, practically Medieval or ancient. Nothing could be further from the truth. All the Victoriana of Dracula looks quaint now, but almost every one of the heroes and heroines is urban and cosmopolitan, and uses technology and techniques that were state-of-the-art at the time of writing, from phonographs to typewriters to shorthand to blood transfusions. Doctor Seward is a skeptic and a rationalist and as close to a modern psychiatrist as anyone could have been prior to Freud. My point is, both the (English) setting and the intended audience for Dracula are every bit as modern as if it had been written only yesterday and set in our own present. Stoker faced pretty much the same challenges current authors face when it comes to depicting ancient horrors in a modern setting for a modern audience.

Against that baseline ultramodernity he sought to establish, Stoker emphasized everything regressively anachronistic about Dracula. Probably the clearest illustration of the difference between his approach and that of so many later writers (who try rather to assimilate vampires to modern times) can be seen in their contrasting approaches to the cross as a holy symbol that protects against vampires. I daresay not many writers are fully comfortable embracing that as Stoker did. In my experience, most either treat the cross as absolutely ineffective, or at best something that's only effective when it serves as the focus of a believer's faith. The notion that a mere symbol could, in itself, be holy, and could, by itself, hold real power, is magical thinking, pure and simple. It's droolingly primitive, and no wonder so many modern authors would be frankly embarrassed to treat it seriously even in a novel about vampires.

To be sure, there are writers who go along with the cross convention simply because it is a convention, but Stoker uses it as a powerful marker of just what an anachronistic and atavistic monster Dracula is. Harker first encounters the crucifix in this capacity in Transylvania, significantly enough. The telling of his journey from London to Transylvania is a remarkably effective exercise in guided imagery that carries the reader from the familiar modern world to a much older, stranger, wilder world. One almost has the sense of going back to a time and place where Heaven is up, Hell is down, the earth is flat, and stars can fall. In any case, Stoker pointedly introduces the crucifix as a superstitious charm or fetish-object that is somewhat offensive to Harker's (and, by implication, the reader's) sober, bourgeoisie sensibilities:

She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to me.

I did not know what to do, for, as an English Churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well and in such a state of mind.

She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round my neck and said, "For your mother's sake," and went out of the room.

I am writing up this part of the diary whilst I am waiting for the coach, which is, of course, late; and the crucifix is still round my neck.

Whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.

Note how this actually heightens the sense of unease. Regardless of the fact that the crucifix is supposed to be a comforting, protective measure, its superstitious quality makes it vaguely menacing to a character who's just traveled out of a modern setting and a reader who still inhabits one. A later mention of the crucifix further underscores its primitively uncanny nature, links it directly to Harker's dawning horror of Dracula, and loosens Harker's inhibitions (i.e. suspends his disbelief) toward the sort of pre-modern magical thinking that previously would have appalled him:

For if he does himself all these menial offices, surely it is proof that there is no one else in the castle, it must have been the Count himself who was the driver of the coach that brought me here. This is a terrible thought, for if so, what does it mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand for silence? How was it that all the people at Bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for me? What meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash?

Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! For it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it. It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavour and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort?

What Stoker exploits here, and what so many horror authors lose out on when they dismiss the cross convention as "just a myth," is laid out by Freud in his seminal essay on The Uncanny:

Our analysis of instances of the uncanny has led us back to the old, animistic conception of the universe. This was characterized by the idea that the world was peopled with the spirits of human beings; by the subject's narcissistic overvaluation of his own mental processes; by the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts and the technique of magic based on that belief; by the attribution to various outside persons and things of carefully graded magical powers, or 'mana'; as well as by all the other creations with the help of which man, in the unrestricted narcissism of that stage of development, strove to fend off the manifest prohibitions of reality. It seems as if each one of us has been through a phase of individual development corresponding to this animistic stage in primitive men, that none of us has passed through it without preserving certain residues and traces of it which are still capable of manifesting themselves, and that everything which now strikes us as 'uncanny' fulfills the condition of touching those residues of animistic mental activity within us and bringing them to expression.

. . .

Let us take the uncanny associated with the omnipotence of thoughts, with the prompt fulfilment of wishes, with secret injurious powers and with the return of the dead. The condition under which the feeling of uncanniness arises here is unmistakable. We — or our primitive forefathers — once believed that these possibilities were realities, and were convinced that they actually happened. Nowadays we no longer believe in them, we have surmounted these modes of thought; but we do not feel quite sure of our new beliefs, and the old ones still exist within us ready to seize upon any confirmation. As soon as something actually happens in our lives which seems to confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny; it is as though we were making a judgement something like this: ‘So, after all, it is true that one can kill a person by the mere wish!’ or, ‘So the dead do live on and appear on the scene of their former activities!’ and so on.

Whereas many horror authors shy away from the cross as a protective measure against vampires because it's embarrassingly primitive, irrational, and superstitious, for that very reason, Stoker not only calls it to our attention but even rubs our noses in it--to wondrously uncanny effect. That's why Dracula is Dracula and nothing inspired by it has quite equaled it, despite the fact that it's not particularly well-written. Whether consciously or intuitively, Stoker grasped and deftly exploited those primitive, superstitious layers of our collective psyche. Later writers have either followed or discarded the conventions he laid down, in most cases without having understood them.

My own view is that supernatural horror should nakedly and unashamedly embrace anachronism, atavism, superstition, irrationality, and scandalously primitive modes of thought, feeling, and experience. Modern settings highlight the disturbing contrast, and modern readers will, I think, appreciate this if it's done with enough talent, imagination, and confidence.