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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.



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