Author: superhighschoollevel-hotmess

If several people witness a car accident–or anything really–they will all come away with slightly different accounts, with stories that are the truth as that person sees it.

 

The story of Dracula is told in so many different voices and modes that it comes across like the aftermath of a tragedy, like a compilation of evidence. There is something forensic about the storytelling, as if the writer is trying to construct a story from what was left behind after this series of climactic events.

This approach allows exposition to enter the story even though each specific single character could not learn the whole story.

 

The vast number of narrators telling the story distances the reader. The first part, when Jonathan alone is narrating, is more traditional–a first person narrative told in the diary style. After that, there are many limited-perspective narrators whose stories, taken all together, combine to tell a full story. However, the reader can never get attached to one character because the story jumps around. Interestingly, like in Lady Audley’s Secret, the only character we don’t really get to see into the mind of is the villain, which keeps that villain mysterious and foreboding.

 

The main voices belong to Jonathan and Mina Harker, Lucy Westenra, and Dr. John Seward, with many additions by other characters, some of which remain nameless, such as the authors of newspaper articles. Although the voices of each narrator are not very different, there are noticeable variations. This story is told via clippings from different types of media. Dr. Seward keeps a phonograph diary. Mina and Lucy’s perspectives are told through a combination of their diaries and letters, while Jonathan keeps only a diary. There are other unique narrators: letters between more minor characters, such as Arthur and Quincey, and newspaper clippings, for example.

 

This is not to say that the story is told dispassionately. Collections of evidence will include facts, yes, but they also include very emotional accounts. Jonathan, in the initial chapters, talks about his emotions a lot. In later chapters, Seward (a doctor) takes somewhat of a logical approach (as with his patient Renfield), but he reacts utterly irrationally when faced with the prospect of decapitating Lucy. Van Helsing is the most logic-based narrator, despite being viewed by John Seward as crazy. Seward, it must be pointed out,  seems logical but really is driven by his emotions in most situations–which we see when he breaks the Hippocratic oath by sharing information about Lucy with Quincey . “As he spoke the poor fellow looked terribly anxious.He was in a torture of suspense regarding the woman he loved, and his utter ignorance of the terribly mystery that seemed to surround her which intensified his pain. His very heart was bleeding, and it took all the man-hood of him — and there was a royal lot of it, too — to keep him from breaking down. I paused before answering, for I felt that I must not betray anything which the Professor wished kept secret; but already he knew so much, and guessed so much, that there could be no reason for not answering, so I answered in the same phrase: ‘That’s so’” (162-3). Van Helsing seems to be the one character who can think with his head and nothing else. This may even be why Seward views him as insane: in a world where evil is made flesh, logic seems madness.

The fragmenting of the story into a variety of narrators also illustrates Dracula’s spreading influence. While in his castle, only one narrator was needed. Once he is in England, the evil spreads, and there is a resulting cacophony of voices.

“Exactly. I fancy the yew alley, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr Mortimer has his headquarters. Within a radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist — Stapleton, if I remember right, was his name. Here are two moorland farmhouses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the great convict prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again.”

 

In viewing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles through the lens of names, we can glean a great many hints about the type of story being told and the world the story is set in simply from the names Conan Doyle gives to his characters, towns, and buildings. That is, before we learn anything about the particulars of what happens on the moors, the names Conan Doyle uses to set the scene give hints about what’s to come.

 

For example, one of the farmhouses is called Foulmire, and we later hear a great deal about the mire from Stapleton himself in a later chapter. In addition to that, the name Foulmire is very Gothic and in keeping with the tone of the story. Foul means offensive to the senses, and it may also be a Macbeth reference, for Conan Doyle, a well-educated, literary individual, would surely have read Macbeth–and The Hound of the Baskervilles itself has a very similar setting to the Scottish play. The name also echoes of the famous lines of Macbeth, “Fair is foul and foul is fair” could be a hint, as befits a good mystery story, that things are not always as they seem.

 

The other farmhouse is called High Tor, tor meaning a rocky hill, and that makes that house (by name at least) the direct opposite of Foulmire–a mire would be found in a valley, between tors, and the words foul and high can be construed as opposites, in the sense that “foul” is a low-sounding word, and that “high” is much more lofty.

 

Also consider the name of the hamlet–Grimpen—grim meaning, well, grim–dark, foreboding, unwelcoming–and pen meaning a pen, a fenced-in area. A finite space. Pen in this sense is usually used to mean an enclosure for animals–like, say, a certain hound. A pen is also a prison, and there is an actual prison fourteen miles from where the story takes place–Princetown. This establishment has significance in the narrative because we later learn there’s an escaped convict running around on the moors. Also, a ghostly monstrous dog in English folklore is called a grim. So Grimpen is literally a pen for a grim.

I’ll wrap this post up by talking about death-related symbolism, because it appears in two counts here and is rather more heavy handed. First off, yew trees, especially in British literature, are strongly associated with death, often being found in graveyards–not to mention that every part of them is poisonous–so the yew alley could be easily interpreted as an alley of death. The last name I want to touch on is Mortimer–mort meaning death and mer meaning sea. This sinister-sounding name implies that the seemingly helpful Dr. Mortimer may not be as much of an ally as he seems.

“Foul deeds have been done under the most hospitable roofs, terrible crimes have been committed amid the fairest scenes, and have left no trace upon the spot where they were done. I do not believe in mandrake or in blood-stains that no time can efface. I believe rather that we may walk unconsciously in an atmosphere of crime, and breathe none the less freely. I believe that we may look into the smiling face of a murder, and admire its tranquil beauty.”

 

I’d like to draw attention to the fact that in the book, there’s an ongoing theme of facades and of harmless, even positive and pleasurable things, concealing dark secrets, even if said dark secret is only ever hinted at within the work (as of yet). Lady Audley is–we know full well, both from the way the world reacts to her (as outlined in my classmates’ blog posts) and from other evidence in the story–the primary example of a beautiful façade versus a dark and underlying truth. We know nothing about her; she shows up out of the blue; dogs are frightened of her; and there are other hints.

 

There are also some fairly obvious inferences that can be made (Braddon is not adept at hiding her mysteries–but maybe that’s a topic for another post) that as of the end of volume 1 have not been laid out clearly for to the reader. So even though it’s not been stated outright, we know that Lady Audley is almost certainly George Talboys’ “deceased” wife.

 

I believe Robert is wrong about this. Robert thinks that any number of atrocities can be committed in a place, by a person, involving an object–and there could be no trace. But maybe he doesn’t want to see those traces. In the case of Lady Audley, there IS a trace. There are several traces that Robert has only begun to see.

 

Indeed, it is very possible that Robert has done what he has described many times–he has looked into the smiling face of someone who may very well be a murderer.