While reading the first two chapters of Dracula, I noticed that some of the biggest themes brought up in the Ledger and Luckhurst introduction to the Fin de Siècle were echoed in the sentiments of the protagonist, Englishman Jonathan Harker. We can see the balance between anxious dread and nervous excitement at the turn of the century paralleled in Harker’s language about visiting Count Dracula in Transylvania. I also noticed a definite fixation with England as a nucleus of refined and polite society, and detached wonder with the “queer” people of the Carpathians.
Anxious is the primary term I would use to characterize Harker. These first two chapters are set up as him leaving comfortable, sophisticated England and venturing forth into unknown, barbaric, uncivilized territory (even though, of course, we know that people do live there— he is not “discovering” this land). This gives him a vague sense of fear and nervousness, of which he cannot completely describe, “I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.” (11) “I waited with a sick feeling of suspense” (18). According to Ledger and Luckhurst, this is reminiscent of the general feelings of anxiety towards the new century; not quite knowing what is to come, but knowing that it is uncomfortable and something you must get accustomed to.
Additionally, Harker’s language reflects Ledger and Luckhurst’s point that “popular culture of the time was fascinated by exotic, imperial terrors— fantasies of reverse invasions by the French or Germans, the stirring of mummies in the British Museum as Egypt and the Sudan were annexed, the evil genius of Fu Manchu and the ‘yellow peril’ as trade routes in the Far East were contested.” (xvi) Harker constantly remarks on the strangeness of the people he sees in the Carpathians, and their differences both from other groups in the region and from good, ol’ pure England. He describes it as sort of a hectic melting pot of strange, Gothic figures that incite in him quiet terror throughout the first two chapters. This “othering” language comes up again and again. He begins with random insensitive racially charged comments like “it seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?” (8), which evolve into psychologically deeper digressions: “The time I waited seemed endless, and I felt doubts and fears crowding upon me. What sort of place had I come to, and among what kind of people? What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked?” (21). The longer Harker stays in the Carpathians, the novelty wears off, and he grows fearful, not because of anything particularly frightening in the traditional sense, but because of the odd, anxious feeling the place and the people give him.