Paper #3: Enter If You Dare...

The first part of this assignment is the Book Cover Presentation, which is worth 10 of 30 points. Remember, you don’t have to turn in a paper for this part of the assignment—it’s completely oral. However, the remaining 20 points requires you to complete the assignment below which goes hand-in-hand with your cover conception.

As an English major/scholar, you have been commissioned to write a Student’s Introduction to the book from your cover assignment. The goal of this introduction is write an essay geared for students, like you, encountering this book for the first time. What do they need to know about the ideas, themes, and characters of this book? How does it relate to other Gothic literature—or modern literature/films? What did you most learn to appreciate about this book? What are its main difficulties, and why are they difficult for the modern reader? Don’t summarize the plot (beyond the basics, if necessary) or give us exhaustive detail about the characters, which the students can read for themselves. Instead, offer them context for reading and understanding the work so they can hit the ground running, and get more out the book than strange happenings, dated language, and confusing references.

A few things a good Introduction should do:

• Link the book to other works in class (at least one); be specific about these connections—show us why Dracula is like Frankenstein, for example.
• Suggest modern works, either books or films, that seem to be inspired by this novel, or related to it in some fashion. Be specific, but you don’t have to be as specific as with another book from class.
• Context for the book: some of the ‘big’ ideas of the era that seem to creep into the novel, and help shape the plot, characters, or ideas.
• A close reading of at least a scene or two to illustrate some of the above
• Use your cover art as a connection to the book: how does it help us see some of the above ideas? If the art is from the same period, suggest how they’re both channeling the ideas of their age.

You don’t have to be as comprehensive or knowledgeable as the Oxford World’s Classics Introductions; however, do think of your audience—other students not in this class. So don’t assume the students know what you know, or have spent a single day in our class (avoid statements such as, “as we discussed in class,” or “as Dr. Grasso explained,” etc.). Just imagine how you can help future students get more out of the text, or connect with a difficult or confusing book.

REQUIREMENTS

• At least 4-5 pages, double spaced
• Addresses all or most of the bullet points above
• Quotes significantly from the book in question, and at least from one other book in class
• Due Friday, May 4th by 5pm

For Wednesday: Stoker, Dracula, Chs. 20-24

Odilon Redon, The Grinning Spider 

[Note: I realize you were supposed to read to Ch.20 last time, but I want to cover it again since we didn't make it that far in Monday's class] 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In the beginning of the book, Stoker suggests a Jekyll and Hyde relationship between Seward and Renfield. But how might these chapters complicate this relationship—or suggest that seeing Renfield as “Hyde” is problematic?  Also, you might discuss how Renfield helps expose Seward’s unreliable narration.

Q2: Examine the passage in Chapter 21 where they find Dracula assaulting Mina: why is this a disturbing image then and now? How does Stoker make it resonate with other readings besides a vampire attacking its victim (remember, Stoker largely invented the vampire’s manner of assault)? Why does Mina later lament that she is “unclean”?

Q3: Van Helsing and the Vampire Hunters are constantly making distinctions between the idea of adults/men and children: Lucy and Mina are “little girls,” Dracula has a “child brain” and Mina has a “man’s brain.” What makes someone “childish” in their reading, and how might it relate to ideas of race? Is Stoker criticizing this racial bias of his heroes—or is it his own?

Q4: Some critics have read Dracula as not only a critique of British society, but of capitalism itself. Indeed, Marxist critics have enjoyed pointing out the true villain of the piece—the power of money and the secrecy of credit. How might we read the book in this light? Consider the passage in Chapter 23 when Dracula is attacked with the “Kukuri knife,” and “a bundle of bank notes and a stream of gold” spill out.

For Monday: Stoker, Dracula, Chs.15-20

Odilon Redon, Portrait of Marie Botkin (1900)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Discuss how Lucy is described by Seward as they gradually accept that she must be killed, and is not Lucy—at least the Lucy they once knew. Remember that we have to take this with a grain of salt, since Seward is the narrator, not an omniscient narrator; these are his biased and passion-addled diary entries. How does he see the new Lucy, and/or how does Van Helsing help him ‘translate’ her new appearance? You might consider the passage where he reflects, “I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of this being, this Un-Dead, as Van Helsing called it, and to loathe it” (188).

Q2: While there is a definite theme of English vs. “Oriental” (that is, of the world beyond the British Empire), many readers also read this book as also Christian vs. Pagan, or science vs. superstition (even faith vs. magic). How does Stoker complicate this reading through the characters of Van Helsing and Mina? You might also remember that even Dr. Seward describes Arthur slaying Un-Dead Lucy as looking “like a figure of Thor.”

Q3: Dracula is an extremely self-aware novel; that is, it is a gothic novel about writing a gothic novel. Stoker explicitly shows Mina “making” the book throughout, and even Arthur, examining all of her transcriptions, adds, “it does make a pretty good pile...Did you write all this, Mrs. Harker?” Why do you think Stoker calls our attention to the writing of the novel? What might be the advantage of this approach?

Q4: At one point, Van Helsing tells Mina, “We are men, and are able to bear; but you must be our star and our hope, and we shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger, such as we are” (225). Do you think Stoker intends this to be a misogynistic novel, one that puts “New Women” in their place, or simply believes that only men can save the empire? Or is this another example of the shortsightedness (and ineffectiveness) of the masculine ideal?

For Friday: Stoker, Dracula, Chs.10-14

No questions for Friday, but be sure to read Chapters 10-14 and consider some of the following ideas. We'll have an in-class response when you arrive on Friday.

* Just as Dracula seems like he's emerged from the distant past, how is Van Helsing also uncanny and "primitive" compared to the genteel society of London? What makes his person and his approach somewhat taboo, and certainly shocks Arthur and the others?

* Stoker enjoys employing dialect, slang, and low-class speech in the novel, most of which is incomprehensible to a modern American reader. Of course, it would have been tricky even for a well-to-do reader of the time. Why do you think he includes this, when it might alienate some of his audience? What does it add to his story?

* Who do you think is the least reliable narrator in the book so far? What makes his or her narration seem suspect? Do you detect passages where he/she seems to be hiding information or not being quite straight with the reader, even if he/she is writing a diary entry?

* How do the men gradually piece together what is wrong with Lucy? What makes it so difficult to perceive and accept this diagnosis?

* What would be uncanny and grotesque about Lucy's transformation to a late Victorian audience? Naturally, she becomes a vampire, which is bad enough, but how does Stoker describe her new appearance/character that would be particularly disturbing?

* Why does Stoker often make Van Helsing come off as a bit humorous, not only in his accent, but in his comic abruptness, such as, "Yes, and no. I want to operate, but not as you think...I want to cut off her head and take out her heart."

* How does Mina aid the investigation, and why might Van Helsing be the only one to appreciate/understand it?

For Wednesday: Stoker, Dracula, Chs.6-9 (pp.61-110)

 

Odilon Redon, Angel in Chains (1875)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How do the passages from Dr. Seward’s Diary play into discussions begun by Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Who is more of a specimen for study—Renfield or Seward himself? You might consider the passage, “Am I to take it that I have anything in common with him, so that we are, as it were, to stand together; or has he to gain from me some good so stupendous that my well-being is needful to him?” (102).

Q2: Which of the “outside” stories (the log from the Varna, etc.) adds the most to the overall narrative? Why do you think Mina decided to add this into her journal? What ‘story’ is it helping her tell to her readers? (and how might we read this differently when we remember that she is the one arranging it)?

Q3: If you remember Coleridge’s Cristabel, how might the story of Lucy resemble that poem in its story, characters, and imagery? Consider a line such as “”there, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half reclining figure, snowy white” (86).

Q4: At the beginning of Chapter 8, Mina writes of the “New Woman” which she gently mocks in this chapter. However, according to the Notes, the New Woman was a “middle-class woman…sometimes celebrated as a pioneer in work, marriage, intellectual, and sexual life, but more often as a source of scorn in the conservative press. She was represented incoherently, either as mannish or frigid, or as a dangerously unstable and over-sexualized figure” (377). How might Mina and Lucy represent many qualities of this New Woman, and do you feel that Stoker is either supporting or celebrating the idea of “New Women” in society?

For Monday: Stoker, Dracula, Chs.1-5

Odilon Redon, Portrait of Violette Heymann (1910)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Dracula has no single narrator binding the entire novel together from either an omniscient or an unreliable point of view. Rather, the book is cobbled together from several different narrators, some consciously narrating (Harker's diary, Mina and Lucy's letters, etc.), while others are forced into the role unknowingly (newspaper reports, phonograph recordings, shipping receipts). How does this affect how we read the work and understand even the simplest ideas of plot, characterization, and narration? Is the entire work 'unreliable'? Or does the factual nature of the sources make it more reliable than our previous works?

Q2: How does Stoker's characterization of Dracula differ from modern versions of Dracula and of vampires in general? Though Dracula is not the first literary vampire in England (he is preceded by Polidori's Lord Ruthven by several decades), he created the prototypical mythology that all subsequent vampires follow. Nevertheless, Stoker's 'Dracula' shows some remarkable differences that often surprise or even disappoint readers. What might these be...and what might Stoker's intentions have been in writing him this way?

Q3: Reflecting on the man who is holding him captive, Harker reflects, “What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear—awful fear—and there is no escape for me” (III/35). How might the Dracula (as a person) compare to the Morlocks in The Time Machine, and how might Harker be a little like the Time Traveler himself? What makes him think he has gone “back in time” himself?

Q4: In Chapter 5, Lucy writes, “I know, Mina, you will think me a horrid flirt—though I couldn’t help feeling a sort of exultation that he was number two in one day” (57). What kind of woman is Lucy, and how does she contrast (so far) with Mina? Based on this, how does she resemble a certain type of woman still common in modern-day horror movies?

For Wednesday: Wells, The Time Machine (finish!)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Is the Time Traveler a reliable narrator? How might his own biases and beliefs color his narrative, particularly when describing the Eloi and the Morlocks? Is there anywhere we can tell that Wells might be critiquing the Traveler himself?

Q2: In Marina Warner’s Introduction to the Penguin version of The Time Machine, she notes that in many of Wells’ fictions, “He show an almost anorexic fascination with feeding, hunger, and abstemiousness.” Why do you think Wells (and the Time Traveler), as a late Victorian, is so drawn to the idea of eating in the novel? What might food—and the choice of food—have to do with taboos and the evolution of man?

Q3: Why does the narrator decide to take Weena back to his own time? Is he romantically interested in her? Or does she represent something important and ‘scientific’ to the Time Traveler? (you might also consider why she dies; why doesn’t he protect her?)

Q4: Toward the end of the novel the Time Traveler “grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.” Of course, since this is science fiction, Wells probably means that his own time had “committed suicide” in the same way. What do you think this means? How can an entire society decide to put an end to the “dream of the human intellect”?