The narrative style of Dracula is generally a pleasant surprise to modern-day readers who may be expecting another fervent Victorian melodrama. Dracula’s narrative skips back and forth between several narrators, in the form of diary entries, medical notes, newspaper articles, telegrams, letters, and so on, enabling the author to depict events happening at the same time in different places, and the reader to see the characters and actions from different points of view. The epistolary novel was a common form of the period, but the extraordinary nature of the events in Dracula gives the collected narrative the air of an official case study (consciously heightened by the preface informing readers that the documents have been placed in order). When considering this case-study aspect of the book, it is interesting to compare Dracula to another groundbreaking Victorian novel: The Moonstone. Published some thirty years before Dracula, The Moonstone is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language; like Dracula, it deals with violent aberrations in the settled life of ordinary English people; and like Dracula, it is told in a collection of narratives, from the rich Verinders’ lifelong servant, to their insufferable cousin, to the opium-addicted doctor who solves the mystery. Like Dracula, The Moonstone uses its changing narrative to establish an “official” narrative and, by jumping from narrator to narrator, effectively keeps the reader from becoming too wedded to any one version of events, or too attached to any single character.
Why is the case study technique so important in these particular books? I suggested earlier that the extraordinary story of Dracula gives the narrative an official power; in fact, both Dracula and The Moonstone use the distancing technique of multiple narrators to keep horrible events at arm’s length, suggesting that the way Victorian authors – and readers – could best deal with occurrences so far beyond the pale of ordinary life was to experience them through the prism of a reassuringly orderly study. The documents in both novels were written after the fact by the characters; therefore we know that they survived whatever horrible experience they are describing, because they are able to write about it. Both novels deal with threats to England – Dracula’s in the person of the Transylvanian count, The Moonstone’s in the titular jewel, which is Indian, and the “exotic” opium that is revealed to have been a vital element of the crime – but we know that England survived, because some reassuringly English hand has ordered the narratives for us.
The similarities in narrative between Dracula and The Moonstone – both unusual at publication, both regarded as seminal genre works today – are striking. I am too cautious (and too ignorant) to expand this argument into one about Victorian society as a whole, but I will leave it as an open question: what does this distancing of reader from story, in this particular genre of shocking stories, tell us about the Victorian psyche? Why did potentially disruptive stories like Dracula and The Moonstone need to be “officialized” for an audience? And finally, what kinds of stories do we in the 21st century treat in this way, and what does it say about us?
As to the last question, my mind immediately leapt to the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, a favorite childhood series. Every book changed POVs from chapter to chapter, fulfilling multiple purposes – ending on cliffhangers only to change POV added suspense; covering multiple events happening at the same time; seemingly random events/POVs mentioned becoming clearly relevant by the end of the book; and, most importantly, providing perspective for the reader: multiple POVs mean seeing the event in different ways, each POV allowing you to see from yet another viewpoint. All of these purposes can also be found in Dracula – times have changed, but not so for how we tell good stories.
This is a fascinating blog post about the similarities between the narrative form of Dracula and Moonstone and what effect that form might have had on Victorian readers. I have never read Moonstone, but I am intrigued by novels with an epistolary form. They are both engaging, because it feels as though another human being is telling you a story, and allow room for their story to be doubted, because the letter-writer is composing their own narrative, and can tell it however they wish. An example of a novel written in this form around this time in England is Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), which led Henry Fielding to write his critique Shamela a few years later.
Your post reminded me a lot of the Senf article, which focuses a lot on subjectivity and narration. According to her, “Stoker de-emphasizes the novel’s mythic qualities by telling the story through a series of journal extracts, personal letters, and newspaper clippings – the very written record of everyday life” (422). Although this is discussed in the way of creating a more mundane record rather than “officializing” it, it seems as if these were easier ways in which to handle such startling concepts.
I think that there is also evidence in The Island of Dr. Moreau for Victorians wanting to have a distanced, objective telling of horrifying stories. Prendick begins with well-known facts about the Lady Vain so the story is more likely to be taken as truthful. But there is another possible introduction in Amazing Stories from Prendick’s nephew that gives further details about the Lady Vain, confirms the time period that his uncle was missing, and states that no one can fully corroborate the story; so nothing is entirely confirmed or denied, the reader is just again distanced from the events of the story.
Here’s the link the the Amazing Stories issue with that version:
http://pulpmags.org/PDFs/AMS101926/index.html
I found many of your points engaging, and so often overlooked when reading older novels. The epistolary form in particular seems like a good example of readers who expect older works to be dry or difficult to access, yet are just as readable as modern works, often even more so. Your discussion on the narrator’s inevitable survival of the ordeal was interesting, as when reading these forms this fact always seems to fade from my mind, and this spoiler of sorts never actually affects me, which I find interesting.
I love The Moonstone, and you’re so right that the separation of narrator and reader from events is suspiciously strong. We’re encouraged in both novels to see the “foreignness” of things (the diamond, the opium, Dracula, the vampires) because we’re seeing them through a thoroughly English lens: the narrators in The Moonstone, as in most of Dracula, are quintessentially English. Even in fiction, the Victorians are distancing themselves from potentially dangerous “foreign” entities; is this a fear of the ramifications of empire or another form of xenophobia? Why was the epistolary format so popular – could it be because they needed many English voices, not just one, to back up the facts? And could that reflect a discomfort with English identity itself?