4. John Sutherland (2017), Who is Dracula's Father?

[strange_complex]

This one I think I spotted on Amazon and put on my wish-list for kind family members to buy as a Christmas present. It sets out to answer puzzles and questions raised by Stoker's novel, with the one that really caught me eye being the theory that Quincey Morris is actually a vampire in league with Dracula, based mainly on the fact that he allows Dracula to escape at a couple of crucial points in the action. But on reading I discovered that this theory isn't original to Sutherland - rather, he's picked it up (as he quite freely acknowledges), from another source: Franco Moretti 1983, Signs Taken for Wonders. Much the same was true for most of the book, with many of the sources being blog posts (including several I had already read), while a certain sloppiness of detail betrayed a superficial grasp of the material on the author's own part (e.g. anyone who has a passing familiarity with Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films would know instantly that The Tomb of Ligeia could not have been released in 1982, as he has it).

So, while I appreciate the proper and careful referencing, this is basically a work of synthesis rather than that of a single sharp mind picking carefully over the novel's loose threads. Also, there was no acknowledgement at all of what to me is a crucial difference - that between explanations based on what is there in the text (such as the theory that Quincey may be a vampire), and explanations based on what we know about Stoker and his authorial process (e.g. Why does Van Helsing swear in German? Because Stoker originally conceived of the character as German but later changed him to Dutch, probably based on a combination of characters from Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly). I'm down for both, but they're not the same and I have already read bucket-loads of serious-business books offering the latter. I wanted the fannish story-expanding of the former.

Still, it was a fun book to read, and did include some really interesting insights. I've long been intrigued myself by the following claim of Dracula's, reported by Jonathan Harker in his diary of 8th May:

"Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?" He held up his arms.

There are three things a vampire could mean when he says something like that:

1. The conventional human meaning - I am directly descended from Attila.
2. I myself am Attila
3. I bit Attila and drank his blood during his lifetime

Either of the latter two would have to mean he was far older than Vlad III Dracula, but oddly that possibility seems to have been almost entirely ignored by Dracula commentators. (Not that they are mutually exclusive - an immortal vampire able to walk around in daylight can be multiple different historical figures across the generations.) Sutherland has picked it up, though - and as far as I can tell in this instance on his own initiative. In fact, it's his answer to the titular question of the book - Who is Dracula's Father? He ends up suggesting that Dracula may be a child conceived on the night of Attila's death, which was also his wedding-night to a new wife, which to me is slightly weaker than "I am Attila" or "I bit Attila", but still at least gets something out of the line. Props for that.

Another interesting observation is that

When blood is spilled on the floor, from Seward's arm which Renfield has cut in a maniac moment, he laps it up. Thereafter he seems to know everything that Seward knows. He owns him.

That is, Renfield is able to secure a similar telepathic connection between himself and Seward after drinking his blood to the one which Dracula has with Mina in the same circumstances, even though he isn't a vampire. I'd have to read the relevant parts of the novel again to know if the text really bears out what Sutherland says, but if it does, it sort of suggests something interesting about how Stoker is trying to portray vampirism - that the magical properties of blood-drinking aren't rooted in the condition of vampirism (and thus restricted to the vampire characters), but are to some extent inherent in the blood itself - the blood is the life. What distinguishes vampires from humans then isn't so much a quasi-medical condition of the body, but rather that they have recognised and given themselves over to this knowledge and the power that it brings, which is entirely consistent with what Stoker says about Dracula learning his secrets from the Devil in the Scholomance.

Finally - and I can't believe I didn't notice this one before - Harker leaves Bistritz for Dracula's castle on the eve of St George's Day, which his landlady explains means that at midnight "all the evil things in the world will have full sway". But as Sutherland also points out, Dracula's name means 'son of the Dragon' (as Stoker knew), and St George is famous above all as a dragon-slayer - which is what Jonathan, an Englishman and thus a knight of St George (at one point in the novel, Van Helsing literally calls them 'knights of the Cross') will do at the climax. It's another of Bram's Good vs. Evil dichotomies, as well as an index of Jonathan's character development - from the innocent traveller, out of his depth and at the mercy of supernatural things at the beginning, to the swooping hero, defeating them at the end. Nice.

Comments

[sovay]

He ends up suggesting that Dracula may be a child conceived on the night of Attila's death, which was also his wedding-night to a new wife, which to me is slightly weaker than "I am Attila" or "I bit Attila", but still at least gets something out of the line.

I appear to be strongly on Team I Bit Attila, for what it's worth.

[strange_complex]

Me too! *high-five*

[steepholm]

I always associate Sutherland with finding Watsonian solutions, where possible, in preference to Doylist ones. It’s a shame he doesn’t keep that distinction clear here.

[strange_complex]

I'm not familiar with his other work, though I see he's done a couple of other books along the lines of this one (they're advertised in the back of it). Both types of solutions have their value - it was the failure to acknowledge anywhere that they're different which bothered me.

[strange_complex]

Oh, OK - you made me curious, so I Googled him, and it's this guy, right? Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. So he definitely knows the difference between the readings a text can support and what its author may have thought, known or intended. I get that he's writing for a popular audience in these books, and probably knocking them off pretty rapidly and largely for his own enjoyment, so I'm more forgiving of the minor errors of fact in this one now ('Navra' for 'Varna' was another which irritated me). But it would seem like a golden opportunity to increase public awareness of the difference between the two categories, and it's now frankly bizarre to me that he writes as though they are equivalent.

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, I'm sorry to hear this one isn't full on LIterary Detective mode, as the others were, because they were always fun and a different way of looking at things. Still, I'll have to keep an eye out, as it's probably worth a look - I did love the other 3, and the Shakespeare one, although it wasn't as fun as it was half-written by someone else who didn't have quite the same light touch for it. (Oh, I read the modern one, too, but, lol, am a bit of a fail on reading enough modern lit stuff to know the sources.)

[lady_lugosi1313]

I need to give Dracula a proper re-read - especially from a looking closely at Renfield and his actions point of view.

[strange_complex]

Yes, I think you would enjoy it. I mean, the non-Literary Detective stuff is also good - it's just that I already know most of it and was expecting something a bit different from this book. But there's plenty here that's fun or intriguing.

[strange_complex]

It's always worthwhile! :-)

[steepholm]

Agreed, that is bizarre. I've only read one or two of them - primarily what I think is the first (Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, iirc). He may have got sloppy, but even in the preface to that book he referred to the essays as literary brainteasers, a kind of parlour game, which suggests he didn't take them altogether seriously. But in my opinion he should!