While reading the first chapter of Dracula, I was particularly struck by the rather peculiar language surrounding the description of the Transylvanian landscape during the journey to Dracula’s house:
“As the evening fell it began to get very cold, and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness the gloom of the trees, oak, beech, and pine (…). Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness (…) produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening (…).” (14)
The existence of dark, ominous language, along with the “great masses of greyness” that appeared to be “closing down upon us,” seems to resonate with Ledger and Luckhurst’s introduction in their book The Fin de Siècle – the gray, looming shadows that are described in the Transylvanian landscape mirror the looming anxiety that Ledger and Luckhurst outline regarding the turn of the century. The shadows represent, as written by Max Nordau, the inevitable “dusk of nations, in which all suns and stars are gradually waning, and mankind with all its institutions and creations is persisting in the midst of a dying world.” (xiii)
This sort of language is repeated later on in chapter two, when Jonathon Harker is in Dracula’s house:
“(…) I could not help experiencing that chill which comes over one at the coming of the dawn, which is like, in its way, the turn of the tide. They say that people who are near death die generally at the change to the dawn or at the turn of the tide; any one who has when tired, and tied as it were to his post, experienced this change in atmosphere can well believe it.” (31)
Again, the language seems to suggest a sort of foreboding, as in an approaching end or death, which is reflected in the “turn of the tide,” which closely resembles the Victorian “turn of the century.” However, here the language seems to suggest a beginning as well, which is embodied through the use of the word “dawn” – this can be tied to the Victorians’ fear of the ambiguity surrounding the beginning of a new century, as well as a realization of possibility and innovation. The interaction between these two contradictory feelings is what Ledger and Luckhurst refer to as the “ambivalence of modernity,” or “the way in which assertions of the limitless generative power of the British nation were haunted by fantasies of decay and degeneration (…).” (xiii)
How, then, can we interpret this “ambivalence of modernity” in terms of Dracula? Are these similarities within the text simply coincidental, or do they point to something greater? I feel like I am unable to analyze them just yet, as we have only read two chapters, but I am curious to see if this is a theme that will be continued later on in the novel.
I also made this connection between the two representations of descriptively troubling narrative that is presented to us through the portrayal of Transylvania in “Dracula” as well as while describing the unknowingness of the turn of the century in the “Fin De Siècle”. You discuss the contradicting ideas of the end of a time period and the “dawn”, or beginning of a new chapter of life. I wonder, then, if the focus on sleep, or Jonathan Harker’s lack thereof, could be associated with the fact that he is facing a certain death. Since he cannot seem to come by restful sleep and battles between wakefulness and a dreamy state throughout the novel, maybe this is a foreshadowing of his impending death as he is locked in the castle? It will be interesting to see how Harker either progresses with this pattern or is able to find sleep after all.
In Chapter VII the newspaper article describes, “masses of splendidly-colored clouds” mixed with shapes of “seemingly absolute blackness” (85, 86). The following storm is devastating, with the sea becoming “a roaring and devouring monster” and nature as whole becoming “convulsed” (87). However despite the chaos, the author describes an “immeasurable grandeur” that captivates the onlookers (87). I’m not quite sure what to make of this ambivalence yet either, but I think the contrast between endings and beginnings, light and dark, peace and chaos is interesting. Maybe Stoker is suggesting that the end of the era is in some way sublime, like all of these descriptions.
After reading more of Dracula, I can say that the term “anxiety” does keep coming up–over and over again. Every character, at some point, has tried to articulate some vague fear they have about illness, about death, or about a strange dark figure they caught a glimpse of. This could be in order to simply add to the tone of a horror-type novel, or it could reflect some of the feelings towards the turn of the century, at the time it was written. Either way, it is interesting to note that this anxious fear does not contain itself to Transylvania, but almost grows more pervasive as the plot makes its way over to England in the proceeding chapters.