Author: beckerda

In the poem, The Lady of Shallot by Alfred Tennyson, written in 1832, there is a curse that forces the title character to stay in her tower in Shallot and continue weaving for what seems to be all eternity. What is interesting about her situation is that it addresses the general idea that the best place for a Victorian woman to be is in the house doing chores. The reader can easily tell from all of the interesting and captivating people who pass by her tower, that the lady of Shallot is missing out on the many wonders and curiosities of life. However, when she tries to escape, which Tennyson seems to be encouraging her to do with all the wonders of life passing by her window, she is struck by the curse and ends up dying. While Tennyson approaches the subject of the new victorian woman, by showing the curse’s hold over lady Shallot, seems to admit that the public is not ready for it yet.

When we fast forward to 1897, the date when Dracula was written, we see Bram Stoker make similar use of curses and nosferatu to discuss the place of women in society. While obviously not enough, we see that 60 years later the tune has changed, as exemplified by Stoker’s character Mina. Mina is also affected by a curse—in this case vampirism—due to her not being proactive in the rest of the main characters’ search for Dracula, and essentially being trapped in her own tower. Once bitten however, Mina begins to take matters into her own hands in finding a fighting Dracula. Unlike the Lady of Shallot, however, Mina is allowed to live. From the time that Tennyson is writing to the time of Stoker, and with as many things equal as possible in the comparison of the Lady of Shallot and Mina, Mina fares much better than the lady. This appears to indicate that, even if slowly, views of women’s’ roles are steadily getting better and more equal.

The debate about science versus pseudo science is so prevalent in Dracula because of it’s place in Victorian era literature. As a part of the industrial revolution, we see the scientific method and many other sciences becoming far more developed and able to explain a larger multitude of different phenomenon. When you combine this with the fact that in many of the works we have read including, Dracula, Lady Audley’s Secret, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, feature a diminishing role for conventional religion, the role for spiritualism becomes more apparent. In Lady Audley’s Secret, the robes of the priests are found dusty and old and unworn for a long period of time, while in Dracula, Drs. Seward and Van Helsing attempt to save lives through the use of advanced medical techniques (though somewhat flawed ones). This lack of belief in conventional religion could very well have precipitated the rise of spiritualism as Diniejko writes that “many Victorians particularly those who had begun to abandon conventional religion, fervently believed in spiritualism.” The priest robes that are clearly old and unused in Lady Audley’s Secret are indicative of the decline of the very conventional religion that kept spiritualism at bay. Spiritualism is also extremely prevalent in Dracula as the entire plot of the story is based off of pagan and spiritual beliefs. The attempts by Van Helsing to use new scientific and medical means to cure Lucy fail and they are forced to fight spiritualism with conventional religion in the form of wafers and crosses. Stoker and Braddon land on opposite sides of the debate, while Braddon fights spiritualism with the science and deductive reasoning of the character Robert Audley, Stoker favors fighting back by re-embracing the role of conventional religion by showing off the ineffectiveness of science to explain the story of Dracula.

Throughout many of our readings in this course, Great Britain and the UK has always played a central role and always served as the pinnacle that people could strive to. In Lady Audley’s Secret, we see this when it seems that Australia should be the place that George Talboys wants to live, as that is where he wins his fortune. The motherland of Great Britain, however, is always calling and draws George home to where traps are waiting.

We see this view of British superiority in Dracula as well in the several chapters consisting of Jonathan Harkers journal. Of particular interest is Harker’s encounters with the gypsy-like Szgany, and his description of the eastern European travelers. Following his failed attempt to get the Szgany to deliver his letters and subsequent conversation with the Count, Harker “ran to the window and cried to them. They looked up at me stupidly and pointed, but just then the ‘hetman’ of the Szgany came out, and seeing them pointing to my window, said something at which they laughed” (51). This quote illustrates the perceived inferiority of foreigners who are not British. The description of ‘stupidly pointing’ immediately evokes an emotion of confusion, similar to just ordinary people staring and point at something they do not understand (a UFO for instance). There is also a sense from Harker that there is a type of tribal leadership going on amongst the Szgany, as evidenced by his general control over the group when they all seem to listen and laugh at his comments. This tribal sentiment definitely hearkens back to times before stable democratic governments and seems to be used in this case to demonstrate a lack of real political development.

Stoker’s Dracula seems to once again touch upon perceived British superiority, especially with regards to intelligence, social and political development. The purpose of the Szgany is to portray Eastern Europe as less developed and inherently inferior to the United Kingdom.

All throughout the novel, there are points where the narrator seems to foreshadow parts of the book that have not happened yet. Oftentimes, these foreshadowed events have a dark undertone. In Chapter 9, after a long day of work pursuing George’s fate and whereabouts, Robert falls into a deep sleep–where he has what seems to be a prophetic dream. Robert dreams of seeing, “A pale, starry face, looking out of the silvery foam, and knew that it was my lady, transformed, beckoning his uncle to destruction…but as he looked at the dismal horizon the storm clouds slowly parted, and from a narrow rent in the darkness a ray of light streamed out upon the hideous waves” (244). This passage is striking because it is the first allusion to the Greek story of the Sirens, mysterious half mermaid women who would lure men to crash their ships on their perch rock. The fact that Robert dreams about Lady Audley in such a manner, could be some allusion to the fact that she is an evil person or has committed some evil. Here, however, the victim is his uncle, and not George, as Sir Michael Audley is the man who is lured out to sea. Instead, we learn that there may be some sort of happy ending in this seemingly written script with regards to George’s death. The “ray of light” that interposes itself upon the deep waves could represent that, out of all the madness, the book could still turn out with somewhat of a happy ending where we learn that George is alive.  As we talked about in class, the portrayal of Lady Audley as a monstrous creature like a siren has been mentioned before, but in this instance, we see a ray of hope for the fate of George.

In Lady Audley’s secret, it is extremely important to look at word choice when examining any part of the text. Words are replaced, sometimes for aesthetics, but in the writing of Baddon, there appears to be something more significant about any word change. Take for example, the tombstone description on page 45. It reads, “Sacred to the memory of Helen, The Beloved Wife of George Talboys, Who departed this life, August 24th, 1857, aged 22, Deeply regretted by her sorrowing Husband” (45). There are two things that stand out in terms of word choice. The first is the use of the word ‘departed.’ Normally it would be common to use a word associated with death, of which departed is only loosely related. The word ‘departed’ has more of a temporary connotation than a word associated with death would have. This seems to suggest that maybe using the word departed has some ulterior motive in which Braddon is foreshadowing a different fate for Helen Talboys. Another important word choice to note is the use of the word ‘regretted’ to describe George’s sentiments on the matter of his wife’s death. A more common or likely word to be used here is ‘mourned,’ but Braddon could easily be hinting at some unrevealed part of George’s past, where he feels some sort of regret for something he did or could have done. Regret is the second word choice that seems to indicate that the reader does not know all the details of the past relationship between Helen and George.