I am in the Halloween mood and realize there are a ton of classics that are scary!
I read this novel so many years ago that I sometimes confuse the plot
line with the hundreds of movies made about the Count and his minions. I
have decided not expound on any passages or scenes in case I am yet
again confused. Confusion and all, the book is nevertheless chilling.
When I read the novel at about the age of twenty, it dawned on me that
maybe Dracula was having sex with his victims while he was drinking
their blood. Knowing everything when you are twenty,(wink) I told my
mother this revelation and she said sarcastically, "You really think
so?" I think these themes of rape and exploitation of the vulnerable are
why this book continues to repulse and seduce readers and is why it is
the best horror classic ever written.
Whitby in the north of England was the inspiration for Stoker's setting
and I traveled there on two occasions in my twenties. The town is gothically gorgeous. It is a fishing village nestled between two bluffs
along a rocky coastline where it always seems to be raining. The
beautiful ruins of an ancient abbey stand vigil on one of the cliffs
overlooking the town. I was so taken with the landscape that I used it
as the template for Kilkerry in my first novel
Beyond the Cliffs of Kerry. It
is not hard to imagine Mina seated on one of the benches by the abbey
in a trance waiting for the Count. Believe me, my imagination raced when
I walked along cliffs. Bram Stoker's
Dracula will continue to hypnotize
and seduce readers too for centuries to come.
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