Focus on Chapter 5: Victorian Morality and Epistolary Form

Last lesson we dicussed Stoker's purpose in using letters within his novel but I won't talk about that seeing as we have to write a seperate paragraph or two about it anyway and have, I think, blogged about it before (back in the summer when my blogs made even less sense than they do now). So...the other major question of the lesson was how the victorian morality and sexuality that we had learnt about last week is presented in Chapter 5. To my mind, there's a very distinct change in voice between chapter 4 and chapter 5 as we go from reading Harker's journals to reading Mina and Lucy's letters as if Stoker was trying to emphasize the change from a male to female writers. Chapter 5 sees stereotypical traits of female speech and writing in use, for example, the 'I-can't-quite-think-of-a-single-word-so-I'll-bunch-a-few-together' style as seen in Mina's first letter ('two-pages-to-the-week-with-a-Sunday-squeezed-in-a-corner'), repetition of arguably phatic phrases such as 'Just fancy!' and repetition of words to highlight points ('Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again', 'really and truly'). It seems Stoker is exploring the idea of identity and gender stereotypes. Strangely, I'd always classed Lucy as the more stereotypically female character (as in more feminine and 'wife-like') so I'm glad we discussed this in class because I don't know why on earth I thought that! As Mr Francis said, there are hints at promiscuity and an attraction to the supposedly 'wrong' things in the characterisation of Lucy and although Mina's more 'modern' in the sense that she's independent and keeping up with technology (writing like 'lady journalists' and practising shorthand), she still fulfils the stereotypical female role of 'doting wife' more than Lucy does. So yes...that made me look at things differently...

The rigid social codes that we learnt about with regard to Victorian morality also crept in rather a lot, with the women referring to what they should and shouldn't do and say - motives explored through personal accounts of experiences. Also...I've finally been able to relate the 'Queer Theory' that we were asked to research to the text...the way Lucy tries and fails to categorise people reflects an idea integral to queer theory that people are individuals and shouldn't be categorised on account of gender, race, sexulaity e.t.c. ('It seems that a man always finds a girl alone. No, he doesn't'). Exploration of identity which was key to Victorian society.

Something which puzzled me during my first reading of Dracula which I've just been reminded of is the repeated references to Shakespeare - they start linking Harker to Hamlet and, as we discussed briefly in class, in chapter 5, Lucy writes 'I sympathise with poor Desdemona', a reference to the character who is attracted to the chequered past and danger of Othello and is eventually killed by her lover. I understand this link but might do a bit of resarch into why Stoker uses repeated links to Shakespearean characters (characters constantly relating their lives to fiction - blurring lines of reality?). This reference to Desdemona, can be interpreted as foreshadowing which we see more of in Chapter 5 - there's a sense of irony in the text that is detectable when reading for the second time - for example, Mina saying 'I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan' as, in hindsight, she really is...with her diaries that she ironically speaks of saying 'I do not suppose there will be much of interest to other people'.

I also just wanted to mention the sudden change in tone between the 'ladies letters' and Dr Seward's diary entries in chapter 5 and the argument that, being 'unrelated' should belong to a seperate chapter - I think that, by having Dr Seward's voice put in direct contrast to Mina and Lucy's, the reader is made aware of the fact that there are whole other stories going on behind the ones we are focused on e.g. Lucy presents Dr Seward as simply someone who proposes...but we are then given further insight into another side to him, a darker side (maybe a reflection of Dracula's dual personality) and this idea that the world is still turning and other things are going on even though we're focused on something else (Lucy's love life for most of Chapter 5) is a reminder that, while all is going on with Lucy and Mina in England...Jonathan is still out there and his story is continuing....causes reader to speculate.

One final thing - the more I read Dracula, the more I realise its subtlty it terms of hidden meanings e.g. I underlined Mina's talk of wanting to 'build castles in the air' simply because I thought it was an interesting meataphor but on a second reason I realised the significance of 'castles'...could it mean Mina wishes to build a picture in her mind of where Jonathan is (a castle!) or could it simply mean that she wants to dream of greater things...dream/fantasy.