Tag Archives: Dracula

November 10, 2025 · 6:07 pm

New Award-Winning Southern Gothic Novel Relentlessly Suspenseful

As a lifelong fan of Gothic literature, my taste tends toward the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classics. While I’ve read many more recent Gothic works, few have grabbed my attention like Leigh M. Hall’s new novel The Chambermaids. This novel is so good it won a Claymore Award for Best Southern Gothic Novel before it was even published. What makes it so good? So many things, but most of all, the way Hall builds unrelenting suspense. Until the final chapter, you wonder what will happen, and let me tell you, you won’t see the ending coming. The conclusion completely surprised me. It seems to open up new vistas for Gothic literature. The Chambermaids is far from your typical nineteenth-century kill the monster or have the villain experience redemption plot.

Describing such a bone-chilling work is difficult since I don’t want to create any spoilers, but I’ll summarize a bit of the plot to give a sense of what it’s about.

Elouise and Wilbur Saxton have a farm in the East that has gradually failed. Wilbur is fifty-nine, and Elouise is his third wife. We aren’t told how old she is, but she can’t be more than thirty. We also aren’t told what year it is, but it’s definitely after the Civil War, and since Elouise reads Henry James’ A Portrait of a Lady (1880), it must be early in the 1880s. Wilbur and Elouise have been married for several years but have had no children. Wilbur has a son, Johnathan, from an earlier marriage. Johnathan is only four years younger than Elouise, and they have developed a strong friendship, which Elouise suspects at times makes Wilbur jealous, but Johnathan is now grown and living on his own.

When the novel opens, Elouise has just inherited her uncle’s farm in Texas. She remembers visiting it as a little girl with her sisters. However, her uncle left it solely to her, perhaps because she was the only one not married when he wrote his will. The farm is a godsend to Elouise and Wilbur because of their financial situation. They make their way to Texas, find a ride to the farm, and take up residence there. Elouise’s late uncle’s lawyer visits to go over the will, but other than that, they are completely alone and struggle to keep up with all the work.

Enter the chambermaids. Mary and Margo Malkowitz unexpectedly show up to offer their help. They explain they used to work for Elouise’s uncle, but at the end of his life, he sent them away, wanting to die alone. They have been living with the Wilkersons—Elouise and Wilbur’s nearest neighbors—near being fourteen miles away. Mary and Margo now want to work at the farm again, and they soon show Wilbur and Elouise how capable they are by capturing the bull who has been running loose.

Elouise realizes she should be grateful for the help, but something about the sisters doesn’t sit right with her. She feels they don’t know their place, are nosy, and try to have their own way about things. When a mailman stops by to deliver a letter from Johnathan saying he is coming to visit soon, Elouise asks the mailman about her neighbors. He has never heard of the Wilkersons. For Elouise, that confirms that her misgivings about the sisters are not just her imagination.

A series of events follows that makes Elouise not only suspicious of the sisters, but afraid something very strange is happening. Even before the sisters arrived, she was hearing whispers in the house, but no one was there. She also sees a tall, shadowy figure outside. She wonders who took care of the chickens after her uncle’s death, and she wonders how it is possible they are multiplying so quickly.

Once the sisters arrive, life does become easier Elouise and Wilbur until Johnathan comes to visit. Elouise is excited to see him, but he only stays a short time, and then mysteriously disappears at night. Later, Elouise comes upon a pile of smoldering ash outside. She is certain it is Johnathan’s wagon, and she fears he has been killed. When she breaks the news to Wilbur, he and the Malkowitz sisters go out to investigate, but they claim to have found nothing. Soon, Elouise fears she is hallucinating, delusional, perhaps even insane, or being tricked or drugged by the Malkowitz sisters.

I’m not giving anything away by saying that Mary and Margo appear to be sinister. But Hall does a wonderful job of keeping the reader guessing whether Elouise is really just losing her mind.

I think literary critics could have a field day with this novel. Perhaps I am overinterpreting, but the novel reminded me a lot of Dracula because Elouise and Wilbur’s surname is Saxton, a very English name, while the sisters’ name is Slavic name with Jewish connections. In Dracula, the vampire is also of Eastern European origins and has even been interpreted as Jewish, while, of course, the other characters are English. Dracula’s desire to conquer England has been read as a metaphor for fear of reverse colonization by all the Eastern immigrants flooding into England at the time. While I did not pick up any racial undertones in The Chambermaids, the choice of Malkowitz as a surname was curious since Texas in the nineteenth century didn’t have a large Slavic population.

Hall has done something else interesting by making the Malkowitz sisters appear to be tied to the land itself. In this novel, the Anglo-Saxon American characters are more like the invaders since they come to Texas from far away, though Elouise’s family roots are there. Rather than conquer, in the end, it seems they assimilate or are conquered by the sisters, or perhaps not—depending on how you read the novel’s end, which I don’t want to give away.

A feminist strain also flows through the novel. At first, it doesn’t seem like a feminist novel given that Elouise is at odd with the Malkowitz sisters through most of the novel, but the surprising end changes that.

However you choose to interpret The Chambermaids, I guarantee you will keep wondering what is about to happen. The climax is disturbing, yet the resolution is deeply satisfying in what remains a rather unsettling way. I guarantee the ending will stun you. I can barely restrain myself from writing about it because it is so completely different from the end of any other Gothic novel I’ve read. This novel is definitely pushing against the genre’s boundaries to create something new.

In the acknowledgments, Hall mentions that this is her fifteenth novel, but her first attempt at horror. She asks, “How did I do?” Leigh M. Hall, you totally creeped me out! The Malkowitz sisters will be haunting me for a long time to come. Neither Mrs. Radcliffe nor Bram Stoker could have done any better.

____________________________________

Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and The Mysteries of Marquette: A Novel, plus many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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August 4, 2023 · 2:40 pm

Dracula and The Vengeful Female Vampire of French Literature

Nineteenth-century French vampire fiction is usually marginalized in vampire studies compared to the better-known British vampire works by John William Polidori, James Malcolm Rymer, J. S. Le Fanu, and Bram Stoker. However, French Gothic literature of the time had a stronger vampire tradition than Great Britain, the United States, or other nations’ literatures. What makes French vampire literature particularly unique is its depiction of female vampires.

Female vampires are nonexistent in British literature until J. S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1871) unless one counts the enigmatic Geraldine of Coleridge’s unfinished poem “Christabel” (1816); critics still debate whether Coleridge intended Geraldine to be a vampire. French authors, by contrast, embraced the female vampire in their earliest works. The nineteenth-century fascination with vampire fiction began with the publication of Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) in England. After the novella was quickly translated into French, it became more popular in France than in England, inspiring several plays. Cyprien Bérard also wrote a sequel, Lord Ruthwen ou les vampires (1820), which contains the first female vampire in fiction.

In this article, I will review depictions of female vampires in three French novels by Cyprien Bérard, Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon, and Paul Féval. The female vampires in these works are depicted less as bloodsuckers than as the enemies of the vampires who created them. I will also compare these female vampires to their less extreme counterparts in the works of J. S. Le Fanu and Bram Stoker and argue that enough textual similarity exists to suggest those British authors knew the earlier French works.

Cyprien Bérard’s Lord Ruthwen ou les vampires

Because The Vampyre was misattributed as a work by Lord Byron, Pierre-Franҫois Ladvocat would publish Polidori’s story under Byron’s name in France. This attribution to Byron would increase the novel’s popularity. Ladvocat would also publish Cyprien Bérard’s sequel, Lord Ruthwen ou les vampires (1820). Charles Nodier, who worked for Ladvocat and later wrote the play version of Polidori’s story, would provide the introduction to Bérard’s book, causing some misattribution of the story to him.[1]

Bérard and Nodier’s works would cement the popularity of vampire literature in France, where it surpassed vampire literature’s popularity in Great Britain. This popularity may be due to the French equating the vampire figure with an aristocrat who preys on others—a metaphor for how the upper classes had preyed upon the French people prior to the French Revolution. That the vampire was equated with Lord Byron, and thus, with nobility, only strengthened this connection. Furthermore, Lady Caroline Lamb had published in 1816 her novel Glenarvon, which had depicted a fictional version of Lord Byron giving him vampiric characteristics. Lamb wrote her novel as a form of revenge against Lord Byron after he had ended their romantic liaison. Therefore, it is ironic and fitting that the French also used revenge as a major theme in their vampire fiction. Only, this time, the vampires were not humans with vampiric characteristics but true vampires, and their female victims did not write novels as revenge but rather sought to help annihilate the male vampires who had wronged them.

Bérard’s story begins where Polidori’s left off. Lord Ruthven has successfully destroyed his former friend Aubrey’s sister, and now Aubrey seeks revenge upon Ruthven. The novel opens in Venice with the love story of Bettina and Léonti. Lord Ruthwen (Bérard’s spelling for Polidori’s Lord Ruthven) is also in Venice, and there he preys upon Bettina, causing her death. Her lover Léonti then searches for the stranger who destroyed the woman he loves. He meets Aubrey and they share notes until Aubrey is convinced the stranger is the Lord Ruthwen who killed his sister.

Aubrey and Léonti follow a trail of clues to locate Ruthwen. In the process, they hear the story of a Moravian woman who was betrayed by her lover and died. She then returned from the grave and pursued him. This story is believed to contain the first female vampire in French literature, and notably, she became a vampire through her lover’s betrayal, not by being bitten by another vampire.

Aubrey and Léonti then receive confirmation that Bettina has become a vampire (apparently also because of her lover’s betrayal; neither Polidori nor Bérard make Lord Ruthven a blood drinker). Léonti insists that if Bettina is a vampire, she will only use her powers to protect and help him in his quest to destroy Ruthwen. Soon after, Bettina appears and tells the men she rose from the grave as a vampire, but an angel came to protect her in a dream and told her she cannot be reunited with Léonti until Ruthwen is returned to the tomb.

The men now travel to the Duke of Modena’s court where a Lord Seymour (Ruthwen in disguise) has insinuated himself into the duke’s court and become prime minister. When the duke’s palace catches on fire, Seymour saves the duke. For his reward, he asks for the hand of the duke’s daughter, Eleanora. At the wedding, Aubrey and Léonti recognize Seymour as Ruthwen. Bettina also appears and confirms that Seymour is a vampire. She then falls and dies. Léonti plunges a blade into Ruthwen’s breast. Ruthwen dies and is buried, but in the days that follow, many women begin dying, so he is dug up. When life is seen to be still on his lips, he is destroyed by having red-hot irons applied to his heart and eyes.

While Bettina does not destroy Ruthwen, she clearly assists Léonti in destroying Ruthwen. Rather than becoming a vampire like him, Bettina is an innocent victim of the vampire. Consequently, God assists her through the angel he sends to inform her how she can be reunited with Léonti, though only in the afterlife. Consequently, Bettina is the first female vampire who seeks revenge upon her creator.

Literary critic Kevin Dodd states that Bettina is a kind of Virgin Mary to Ruthwen’s Satan and the story is the only Ruthwen narrative in which an “unquestionably good vampire” opposes Ruthwen. “She feeds on no one and is genuinely altruistic.”[2] Stableford, in a similar vein, refers to Bettina as an “anti-vampire,” also stating she is the first of the “seductive female revenants,” who are numerous in French literature.[3]

Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon’s The Virgin Vampire

Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon’s La Vampire, ou la Vierge de Hongrie (1825), translated into English by Brian Stableford as The Virgin Vampire, is the first work to have a female vampire as its main character. Like Bettina, Alinska in The Virgin Vampire is subjected to a fate she did not choose. But Alinska is also more complicated than Bettina. While she becomes an object of terror to the novel’s other characters, once her backstory is revealed, the reader sympathizes with her.

The Virgin Vampire is set in France in the years following the Napoleonic Wars. Edouard Delmont, a colonel in Napoleon’s army, has decided to leave Paris and relocate his family—his wife Hélène, son Eugène, and daughter Juliette—to a chateau near Toulouse. He tells his wife a change in their finances requires them to move, but the truth is he has received a demanding letter from Alinska, whom he formerly promised to marry when he was stationed in Hungary with Napoleon’s army. There they engaged in a blood pact promise, but when the army departed, Edouard decided to forget about Alinska and later married Hélène.

Not long after the Delmonts arrive in Toulouse, Edouard is called away to visit his sister. While Edouard is away, Alinska moves into the neighborhood. Raoul, a former soldier who served under Edouard and is now a servant to the Delmonts, knows of Alinska’s past relationship with Edouard, but no one in the family does. When Raoul tries to confront Alinska about why she is pursuing Edouard, he is manhandled by her powerful servant. Raoul then tries to write to Edouard to warn him of the danger, but his letters are inexplicably torn to pieces or become covered in blood. Eventually, Edouard’s children and then Hélène befriend Alinska. When Alinska’s house burns down and her servant dies in the fire, Hélène invites Alinska to seek shelter under the Delmonts’ roof.

Edouard returns home to find himself in an uncomfortable situation. Alinska confronts him about how he broke his vow to her, but he can do nothing to resolve the situation since he is married to Hélène. Then Edouard and Hélène’s son Eugène becomes ill. Raoul, realizing Alinska is not quite human, looks through a keyhole one night when she is watching over the child and sees her sucking out Eugène’s blood through his mouth. Raoul enters the room and shoots Alinska, but she manages to stab and kill him. When she later claims the house was attacked by thieves, who killed Raoul, the Delmonts believe her. Alinska recovers from her gunshot wound, but Eugène dies.

Soon after, Hélène also begins to weaken. Edouard takes her away from Toulouse, but she feels the need to see Alinska again and calls her to her deathbed. Hélène asks Alinska to take care of her daughter Juliette after her death, which Alinska agrees to. Once Hélène dies, Alinska refuses to attend the funeral. She tells Edouard she cannot. Alinska tries to care for Juliette but finds herself repulsed by the girl, so Edouard sends Juliette off to boarding school.

By this point, neighbors report seeing Hélène and Eugène’s ghosts entering the house. Edouard tries to recompense Alinska for his past wrongs by offering to marry her, but she says she cannot be married by a priest. She finally agrees to a civil ceremony, but following that, Edouard brings her to a chapel where a priest awaits. Alinska now feels she must give in to her destiny. When Edouard removes her glove to put a ring on her finger, her hand is revealed to be that of a skeleton and her corrupted blood pours out of open wounds. The priest orders the demon to make itself known, but it is too late; Alinska has fallen to the floor as a corpse.

The novel’s power does not come through in such a simple summary. We are repeatedly shown Alinska being antisocial, rejecting visitors, fleeing from priests, refusing to go to church, and lamenting her fate or making cryptic statements to the Delmont family about her past and how she cannot partake of happiness. The most dramatic of these statements comes when Alinska tells Edouard she cannot marry him in a church:

Thus, making an effort, she cried: “No, Edouard, no, don’t talk to me about a ceremony to which I once attached all the felicity of my existence. Can I be yours now, when I do not belong to myself? Besides, where are your pretentions taking you? Feeble child of humankind, what union are you proposing? Shall I prostrate myself at the foot of the altar that has rejected me? I’ve already told you—banished from the Lord’s temples by a terrible malediction, I would not dare to cross the redoubtable threshold. You would believe it to be open to us, but I would see an exterminating angel there, which would escape your mortal sight. You love me, you say? Well, give me proof of it, by not importuning me again. I believe in your affection; that must suffice—it is not permissible for you to doubt mine.

Alinska then compares herself to the biblical Cain whose sin of murdering his brother resulted in the mark of Cain upon his forehead:

“Edouard, God marked the forehead of the fratricide Cain with a terrible mark; I bear an equally formidable sign on mine; you cannot see it, but he would perceive it, and then it would be necessary to say adieu to you forever, for there is here, as in Hungary, consecrated ground ever-ready to receive bodies that must dissolve.”

“Poor girl! How I pity you! You’re misled by the prejudices of your education; thus, by virtue of a chimerical dread, you oppose our common happiness. If you fear the rigors of the church, though, would you be equally afraid of a union consecrated by the civil authorities?”

“Oh, that wouldn’t matter—no sacred hand would touch my own.”[4]

Unlike Cain, however, Alinska has not committed a true transgression; rather, she has been transgressed against by her lover, though one might argue the pact she and Edouard made was based in pagan superstition and, therefore, a transgression against God. Edouard had agreed to the pact in Hungary, but the text never reveals what happened to Alinska after Edouard abandoned her. She apparently died and then rose from the grave as a vampire, though how she died is unclear. We may assume it was from a broken heart. Her punishment of becoming a vampire is unfair since she was abandoned by her lover, and she continually fights her vampiric urges while knowing she is cursed by God and will eventually suffer hellfire. As Brian Stableford points out, we cannot feel sympathy for Edouard since he abandoned her, but the novel’s real villain may be God, who creates such unjust punishment. Stableford remarks that Alinska herself is the instrument of God’s Divine Wrath, and:

Within the metaphysical schema of La Vampire, the question tentatively asked and left unanswered by Bérard, as to why God allows evildoing vampires to persecute the innocent, simply does not arise. Here, vampires are not evil, and any persecution that is going on is the work of God….

[Alinska’s] eternal and irrevocable damnation is way over the top by reference to any conceivable scale of justice. If she is a monster, she is not a self-made monster; her monstrousness has been inflicted upon her.[5]

One might also argue, given that the novel was written in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, that the novel represents a discomfort with the conquest of much of Europe by Napoleon. The vampire comes from one of the countries Napoleon subjected, and it seeks revenge upon one of Napoleon’s soldiers by following him home to destroy his family.

If Polidori’s The Vampyre is the father of vampire literature, then we might call The Virgin Vampire the mother of it, for it presents the first fully developed female vampire and is the first to grapple with the question of whether vampires can be redeemed.

Paul Féval’s Vampire City

Paul Féval wrote three vampire works, the best in my opinion being Vampire City (La Ville-Vampire, 1875). While it parodies Gothic literature, it also presents a female vampire who actively exacts revenge upon her creator.

The novel’s main character is none other than Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe, whom Féval refers to as Anna. Anna is, as Brian Stableford has noted, an early version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[6] Anna leaves England the morning of her wedding after learning from Ned, fiancé to her cousin Cornelia, that Cornelia has been abducted on the continent by a vampire named Monsieur Goetzi.

Anna heads to the continent where she meets Ned at an inn. Ned was attacked by Goetzi and is now lingering near death. Anna also meets Polly, who has partially become a vampire because Goetzi attacked her. Because Polly was Goetzi’s first victim, she has a special connection to him. She says that only she can help kill him, which must be done by inserting a key in his breast at a specific hour when he is weak. (Féval makes up such rules about vampires throughout the novel, obviously going for exaggerated humor.) Anna and her companions begin to pursue Goetzi.

Goetzi eludes the vampire hunters again and again—partly because all of his victims become in a sense part of him. They can even seem to double for him or at least serve his purposes. At one point, Goetzi escapes by crossing water, and he brings all his doubles or companions with him. They all enter inside of him, and then he lays flat on the water and floats on his back, feet forward, to his destination.

This sight results in Polly’s dramatic speech:

While each of them silently considered this strange spectacle, the former Polly broke down in tears. When she was asked why she was so sad, she replied: “Do you think that I can look upon the monster who stole my honor and my happiness without being overcome by rage? Mark this: he will not give you an inch of leeway while you lack the means of destroying him utterly. I tell you this partly for the sake of my vengeance, but above all else for your safety. Every hour of the day and night, whether he be apparent or hidden, you may be certain that Monsieur Goetzi is always prowling around you. Consequently, I now intend to explain in every detail the plan which I have already suggested briefly to Merry Bones—which, if it is executed courageously, will permanently annihilate our common enemy. The moment is favorable, for while we can see him down there, we can be certain that he is not here, listening. While he does not have me, he is obliged to keep all his other parts within him, and you will understand how angry that makes him.”[7]

Polly then tells them they must go to Vampire City where all the vampires reside. She gives them details on how to get into the city and what to expect there. They are successful in their journey, stealthily make it into the city, and they succeed in cutting out Goetzi’s heart.

Polly is remarkable for not only does she want revenge, but she has a psychic or telepathic connection to Goetzi that previous female vampires did not have. This connection allows her to assist in Goetzi’s destruction, thus fulfilling her desire for vengeance.

French Female Vampires’ Influence on Carmilla and Dracula

Of course, the question arises of whether Le Fanu or Stoker read these French novels and were inspired by them when creating their own female vampires. Unfortunately, Le Fanu and Stoker left us no references to these French novels so most critics have shied away from declaring there is an influence. I agree no hard evidence exists, but the textual similarities between the novels in their themes and characterizations, especially when considering the role of female vampires in the novels, makes me think it very likely Le Fanu and especially Stoker had knowledge of the French female vampire tradition.

Le Fanu’s Carmilla is a bloodsucker unlike the French female vampires, but she also seems both to act intentionally and feel remorse for what she plans to do. Consequently, she is most akin to Alinska.

Carmilla’s intentions are clear when she tells her friend and future victim Laura, “You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.”[8] When Laura questions her about things she keeps secret, Carmilla states:

The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me,—to death; or else hate me and still come with me, and hating me through death and after.[9]

These statements suggest Carmilla is fully aware that she plans to kill Laura, to drain her of her blood.

In other instances, however, Carmilla seems unaware of her actions or at least unable to explain them. Early in the novella, we are told Laura experienced a strange dream as a child in which she saw a female crawl out from her bed and bite her. The reader is obviously intended to see this as a foreshadowing of Carmilla later being in Laura’s life. When Laura then meets Carmilla, Carmilla remarks that she recognizes Laura from a dream of her own, stating:

I was a child, about six years old, and I awoke from a confused and troubled dream, and found myself in a room, unlike my nursery, wainscoted clumsily in some dark wood, and with cupboards and bedsteads, and chairs, and benches placed about it. The beds were, I thought, all empty, and the room itself without anyone but myself in it; and I, after looking about me for some time, and admiring especially an iron candlestick, with two branches, which I should certainly know again, crept under one of the beds to reach the window; but as I got from under the bed, I heard some one crying; and looking up, while I was still upon my knees, I saw you—most assuredly you—as I see you now; a beautiful young lady, with golden hair and large blue eyes, and lips—your lips—you, as you are here. Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting up screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed to me, lost consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I was again in my nursery at home. Your face I have never forgotten since. I could not be misled by mere resemblance. You are the lady whom I then saw.[10]

Carmilla turns out, then, to be an odd vampire, for unless she has completely made up the story above, she does not seem to understand fully the vampirism that motivates her actions, and thus, she is reluctant as a vampire, far from the male Dracula who appears to delight in his bloodthirst.

The similarities between French female vampires and the female vampires in Dracula are even stronger. Stoker’s novel has five female vampires in total—the three in Dracula’s castle, Lucy Westenra, and Mina Harker. Mina never fully becomes a vampire, but while the other female vampires are all bloodsuckers, Mina is most akin to French female vampires.

I have argued in my book Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897 that Stoker could read and probably speak French well enough to read French vampire fiction in French.[11] In addition to my arguments there, it is notable that in his Dublin journal, he copied out an inscription in French he saw at a Trappist Monastery in France.[12] If he couldn’t read French, it is doubtful he could have understood the inscription, much less would have copied it. Furthermore, he made several trips to the Continent, at least four in the 1870s.[13]

While Stoker makes no mention of the French vampire novels discussed above in any of his notes for Dracula or other writings, he certainly was familiar with many works of French literature, including the works of Alexandre Dumas. Dumas would write his own vampire play, The Vampire, in 1851. This play has no female vampires, and we do not know if Stoker knew it, but it is very likely he did since he was the manager of the Lyceum Theatre and very familiar with most popular plays of the era. He certainly knew Dion Boucicault, who created his own version of Dumas’ vampire play in 1852. Boucicault wrote several works for Sir Henry Irving, Stoker’s employer, to perform at the Lyceum, as Stoker states in his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. Boucicault’s vampire play does not contain female vampires, but his play version of Dumas’ The Corsican Brothers (1852) may have influenced Dracula.[14] Irving’s production of The Corsican Brothers at the Lyceum in 1880 included Stoker in the cast as an extra, the only time Stoker is ever known to have performed.[15] The Corsican Brothers shares a similarity with Dracula because it depicts two brothers who are able to feel each other’s pain and sense when something is wrong with the other. Stoker may have been influenced by this connection between the brothers to depict Mina’s telepathic connection to Dracula after he forces her to suck his blood. It is also similar to the telepathic connection between Polly and Goetzi in Féval’s Vampire City.

Perhaps an even more significant work by Dumas that may have a connection to Dracula is The Hero of the People (1853), part of Dumas’ Marie Antoinette series. In that novel, Gilbert hypnotizes Andrée so he can learn the whereabouts of their son Sebastian. While Andrée does not know where Sebastian is, in the trance, she is able to see things usually beyond human ability, referred to as a “second-sight vision.” While in the trance, Andrée realizes Sebastian has had an accident and been rescued by a “vampire” doctor.[16] Dumas also uses a form of the second sight in The Man in the Iron Mask, in which the musketeer Athos feels so connected to his son Raoul that he senses his death before news arrives to confirm it. Dumas’ use of the second sight might have inspired Féval in creating the connection between Polly and Goetzi, which in turn may have inspired Stoker.

We know Stoker was interested in the second sight and he definitely used it in Dracula. Once Mina has become Dracula’s victim, she becomes the means for defeating him because through a form of the second sight, Mina is able to sense Dracula’s movements and read his thoughts, which she then communicates to the novel’s male vampire hunters so they can pursue and kill him. I feel this use of the second sight can be no coincidence on Stoker’s part. Based on previous British vampire literature, the vampire is destroyed by the use of stakes or other weapons but not with the help of a victim who has gained psychic powers. That means of defeat only exists in French vampire fiction prior to Dracula. Perhaps Stoker developed the idea on his own, but Dumas and Féval could be sources for his idea to use it in Dracula. That said, uses of the second sight are also abundant in British literature and include Edward Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story (1862), H. Rider Haggard’s Allan’s Wife (1889), and Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins’ play The Frozen Deep (1856), but we have no record that Stoker knew these works any more than we have record he read Féval, while we do know he was familiar with Dumas’ works, even if only in translation or in plays adapted from them. He might also have been influenced by nonfiction works, of course. He definitely was fascinated with the second sight, again using it in his novel The Mystery of the Sea (1902), even using the actual term, which he does not in Dracula. Later in 1909, he wrote a book review of Norman Macrae’s book Highland Second Sight. Paul S. McAlduff and John Edgar Browning discuss Stoker’s interest in the second sight and list several nonfiction books in Stoker’s library that mentioned the topic, several of which predate the publication of Dracula.[17]

In Stoker’s novel, Mina understands that Dracula’s power over her is so great that while she can read his thoughts, he can also read hers. Therefore, she avoids learning everything the men know from fear she will betray them by unwittingly helping Dracula. Mina and Van Helsing discuss this situation in detail in Chapters 25 and 26 of the novel. This connection and the resulting sympathy Mina feels for Dracula results from the vampire’s hold upon his female victim. Féval is the first author to employ sympathy as a plot device in this manner. Polly even goes so far as to become Goetzi once his actual body is destroyed. Nowhere does a vampire have another character serve as almost a double for him before Vampire City, and nowhere again does it occur until Dracula.

Conclusion

Several other similarities exist between Vampire City and Dracula that I have discussed in Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides, plus other possible French influences upon Dracula, but the strongest argument for a possible influence is the use of female vampires who seek revenge upon their creators and assist in bringing down his downfall, even when, like Mina, they feel conflicted over the matter.

We may never know whether Stoker read Féval or other French authors, and to some extent it does not matter. To say Stoker drew from these works may in some ways limit Stoker’s genius. To say these authors influenced Stoker may also deny their works their own marks of genius if they are read only as sources for Dracula. Tracing such lines of influence may be detrimental to full appreciation of both works. However, authors have always influenced other authors throughout history, so why should we think the case was any different with vampire literature? I believe Stoker was influenced by the French vampire tradition given the similarities presented in this discussion between his and French vampire novels. Furthermore, all of the authors discussed here made significant contributions to vampire literature, especially in their depiction of female vampires, and they deserve to be acknowledged and appreciated for those remarkable contributions.

Bibliography

Belford, Barbara. Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula. Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 2002.

Bérard, Cyprien. The Vampire Lord Ruthwen. Trans. Brian Stableford. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2011. Kindle edition.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Christabel.” 1816. The Portable Coleridge. Ed. I. A. Richards. New York, NY: Viking Press, 1970. 105-27.

D’Arcy, Uriah Derick. “The Black Vampyre, a Legend of St. Domingo.” 1819. Edinburgh, Gr. Brit.: Gothic World Literature Editions, 2020. Kindle edition.

Dodd, Kevin. “Plot Variations in the Nineteenth-Century Story of Lord Ruthven, Pt. 1.” Journal of Vampire Studies. 1.2 (2020): 19-43.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Corsican Brothers. 1844. In Alexandre Dumas: Collection of 34 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated). n.p.: Annotated Classics, n.d. Kindle edition.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Hero of the People. 1853. Trans. Henry Llewellyn Williams. New York, NY: J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company, 1892. Kindle edition.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Man in the Iron Mask. 1847. In Alexandre Dumas: Collection of 34 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated). n.p.: Annotated Classics, n.d. Kindle edition.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Vampire. 1851. Trans. Frank J. Morlock. In The Return of Lord Ruthven. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2004. Kindle edition.

Féval, Paul. Vampire City. 1875. Trans. Brian Stableford. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2003. Kindle edition.

Féval, Paul. The Vampire Countess. 1865. Trans. Brian Stableford. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2003. Kindle edition.

Gautier, Théophile. “Clarimonde.” 1836. Trans. Lafcadio Hearn. 1909. n.p.: Public Domain Book, n.d. Kindle edition.

Lamb, Lady Caroline. Glenarvon. 1816. London, Gr. Brit.: J. M. Dent, 1995.

Lamothe-Langon, Étienne-Léon de. The Virgin Vampire. 1825. Trans. Brian Stableford. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2011.

Le Fanu, J. S. Carmilla. In In a Glass Darkly. Vol. 3. 1872. Kindle edition.

McAlduff, Paul S. and John Edgar Browning. “Bram Stoker’s Oeuvre and ‘Other Knowledges’: The ‘Lost’ Book Review of Norman Macrae’s Highland Second-Sight (1909).” Gothic Studies. 18(2):86-95.

Polidori, John. The Vampyre. 1819. In The Vampyre and Ernestus Berchtold: or, The Modern Oedipus. 1819. Collected Fiction of John William Polidori. Toronto, Canada: U of Toronto P, 1994. p. 33-49.

Richardson, Elsa. Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century: Prophecy, Imagination and Nationhood. London, Gr. Brit.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Skal, David J. Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker the Man Who Wrote Dracula. New York, NY: Liveright, 2016.

Stableford, Brian. “Afterword: A Brief Note on the Theodicy of La Vampire.” In The Virgin Vampire by Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2011.

Stableford, Brian. “Introduction.” In The Vampire Lord Ruthwen by Cyprien Bérard. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2011. Kindle edition.

Stableford, Brian. “Introduction.” In Vampire City by Paul Féval. Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2003. Kindle edition.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula: The Postcolonial Edition. 1897. Ed. Cristina Artenie. Montreal, Canada: Universitas Press, 2016.

Stoker, Bram. The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years. Ed. Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker. Austin, TX: HellBound Books, 2012.

Stoker, Bram. Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. 1906. In The Collected Works of Bram Stoker. n.p.: Delphi Classics, 2014. Kindle edition.

Stoker, Bram. The Mystery of the Sea. In The Collected Works of Bram Stoker. n.p.: Delphi Classics, 2014. Kindle edition.

Tichelaar, Tyler R. Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897. Marquette, MI: Marquette Fiction, 2023.

TYLER R. TICHELAAR is an author and independent scholar. He has a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature from Western Michigan University. His publications include two books on Gothic fiction, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption and Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Literature. He blogs at http://www.GothicWanderer.com.

[1] Stableford, “Introduction,” The Vampire Lord Ruthwen.

[2] Dodd, “Plot Variations, Part I,” p. 28.

[3] Stableford, “Introduction,” The Vampire Lord Ruthwen.

[4] Lamothe-Langon, The Virgin Vampire, Chapter 23.

[5] Stableford, “Afterword: A Brief Note on the Theodicy of La Vampire.”

[6] Stableford, “Introduction,” Vampire City.

[7] Féval, Vampire City, Chapter 10.

[8] Le Fanu, Chapter 4.

[9] Le Fanu, Chapter 6.

[10] Le Fanu, Chapter 3.

[11] Tichelaar p. 422-3.

[12] Stoker, The Lost Journal, p. 241.

[13] Stoker, The Lost Journal, p. 238.

[14] Belford p. 130.

[15] Skal p. 219; Stoker, Personal Reminiscences, Chapter 15.

[16] Dumas, The Hero of the People, Chapter 15.

[17] McAlduff and Browning, p. 88. For more on the nineteenth-century fascination with the second sight, see Elsa Richardson’s Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century. Richardson discusses expeditions into Scotland to find people who had the gift, as well as how it was used in literature by authors like Andrew Lang and Dickens and Collins in their play The Frozen Deep (1856). However, Richardson makes no mention of Stoker.

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February 1, 2023 · 10:21 am

New Book Reveals Dracula’s French and British Gothic Ancestors

Dr. Tyler. R. Tichelaar’s new literary history, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides, reveals how nineteenth-century French and British Gothic novelists were continually inspired by each other to create some of the most memorable characters in literature, from Quasimodo to Dracula.

Marquette, MI, January 2, 2023—Gothic literature studies usually focus on one nation’s tradition. Dr. Tyler R. Tichelaar, however, argues that the Gothic crossed the English Channel regularly, providing blood transfusions of new life into the Gothic corpus as revealed in detail in his new book Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897.

When Gothic novels are mentioned, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) quickly comes to mind, but Dracula was only one in a long tradition of vampire stories that stretches back to John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). Dracula scholars today focus on the handful of British vampire stories by John Polidori, James Malcolm Rymer, and J. S. Le Fanu, as sources for Dracula, but in Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides, Tichelaar looks to the plethora of vampire texts from France by Charles Nodier, Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon, Alexandre Dumas, Paul Féval, and several other authors as influential in the creation of Stoker’s masterpiece. In fact, the female vampires in Dracula make far more sense within the context of the French vampire tradition.

Beyond Dracula, French literature inspired numerous British Gothic works and was inspired by them. Tichelaar explores how early British Gothic novelists like Radcliffe, Lewis, and Scott influenced French Gothic works by Hugo, Dumas, and Sue, and those works inspired British works by William Harrison Ainsworth, George W. M. Reynolds, Charles Dickens, and many others. Besides vampires, Tichelaar examines such literary archetypes as immortals, werewolves, cursed transgressors, and redeemed Gothic wanderers. Separate chapters include thorough discussions of the city mysteries genre and depictions of secret societies and the French Revolution in Gothic novels.

Tichelaar argues that by exploring how the French and British Gothic traditions influenced each other, a new understanding arises of many literary classics from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Count of Monte Cristo to A Tale of Two Cities and Dracula. “To explore the French and British Gothic traditions together,” says Tichelaar, “is like performing an archeological dig that exposes the missing links in Gothic development. Reading Dracula and Carmilla in the context of early French Gothic literature allows us to understand better the continuity of the Gothic tradition. Today, Paul Féval is almost unknown and largely overlooked by scholars of British literature, yet his vampire and Irish novels probably influenced Bram Stoker. Even British novelists like Ainsworth and Reynolds, who have been ignored by literary critics, provide fascinating understandings of the Gothic’s cross-cultural influence. Dickens and Stoker regularly visited France, and French authors regularly read British works, so the two literatures deserve to be read together as one Gothic literary tradition.”

Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature includes in-depth discussions of a wide range of British and French Gothic novelists from 1789-1897, including Mrs. Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Sir Walter Scott, John Polidori, Charles Nodier, Victor Hugo, William Harrison Ainsworth, George Croly, Edgar Quinet, Eugène Sue, Paul Féval, George W. M. Reynolds, Alexandre Dumas, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Dickens, Marie Nizet, J. S. Le Fanu, Jules Verne, and Bram Stoker. The book’s cover art by Ukrainian artist Inna Vjuzhanina perfectly complements the title, suggesting not only the marriage of these two literary traditions but how the first literary vampires, including Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, continually tried to dupe unsuspecting women into marrying them so they could avoid eternal damnation. A comprehensive index, endnotes, and an extensive bibliography complete the study.

About the Author

Tyler Tichelaar with a statue of Bram Stoker in Romania.

Tyler R. Tichelaar has a PhD in Literature from Western Michigan University and Bachelor and Master’s Degrees in English from Northern Michigan University. He owns his own publishing company, Marquette Fiction, and Superior Book Productions, a professional editing, proofreading, and book layout company. The former president of the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association, Tichelaar has been a book reviewer for Reader Views, Marquette Monthly, and the UP Book Review, and regularly blogs about Gothic, Arthurian, and Michigan literature and history. Tichelaar is the award-winning author of thirteen novels and nine nonfiction books, including The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, When Teddy Came to Town: A Novel, and Kawbawgam: The Chief, The Legend, The Man.

Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, 1789-1897 (ISBN: 978-0-9962400-9-3 hardcover; 978-0-9962400-8-6 paperback; 979-8-9872692-0-6) is available through local and online bookstores.

For more information, visit www.GothicWanderer.com. Publicity contact: tyler@marquettefiction.com. Review copies available upon request.

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February 9, 2022 · 8:53 pm

English Translation Published of Swedish Dracula—Is It a Lost Stoker Manuscript?

I am thrilled to announce the greatly anticipated publication of the Swedish version of Dracula in an English translation. In my opinion, this is the greatest literary event of the twenty-first century, or at the very least, the greatest literary mystery of our time.

The cover of Powers of Darkness reflects the mysterious female counterpart to Dracula in the novel.

Several years ago, I blogged here about the publication of the Icelandic version of Dracula, translated into English as Powers of Darkness. Not long after, it was discovered that another version of Dracula existed in Sweden and the Icelandic version was actually an abridged version of the Swedish translation of Dracula. More surprising is that the Swedish version is significantly longer than Dracula, with the scenes in Dracula’s Castle being much more extensive and shocking. The scenes in England are also significantly different, perhaps most fascinating because they reveal that Dracula is not singlehandedly trying to invade England, but rather he is at the head of an international conspiracy of world leaders to achieve global domination. I won’t say a lot more because I don’t want to spoil anyone’s reading pleasure, other than to warn that Dracula lovers need to prepare to have their minds blown by this Swedish version.

Many questions still exist about the Swedish Powers of Darkness. It seems likely to be an earlier version of Dracula that somehow made its way to Sweden and was published there. How it got to Sweden remains unknown. Nor do we know if Bram Stoker had a hand in it. Dracula was published in 1897 while the Swedish Powers of Darkness was serialized in 1899-1900. The Swedish version contains some references to events that happened in the intervening years between publications. Did Stoker prefer his earlier version, update it, and send it to Sweden? Or did the Swedish translator decide to make a few tweaks to Stoker’s earlier manuscript before publishing it? Or did the Swedish translator just decide to completely rewrite Dracula to suit his own tastes? All of these questions remain unanswered, but readers of Powers of Darkness can draw their own conclusions upon reading it.

This first publication in English includes the fully translated text of the original novel published in Sweden. It also includes numerous illustrations that were originally made for that publication. Plus, I am pleased to announce it contains introductory essays, including one by myself. I feel highly honored to be part of this august event. The introductory essays include an “Editor’s Preface” by Will Trimble, who sponsored the translation into English, “Dracula’s Way to Sweden—Revisited” by Hans Corneel de Roos, who first discovered and translated the Icelandic Powers of Darkness, “Romania and Racism in the Swedish Dracula” by Tyler R. Tichelaar, and “Powers of Darkness Is an Important Addition to Dracula Lore Despite Heightened Xenophobia, White Supremacy, and Romaphobia” by Sezin Koehler. Each essay explores the differences between the texts and the virtues and flaws of the Swedish version compared to the original Dracula. In fact, don’t be surprised if you come away feeling that the Swedish Powers of Darkness is even superior to Dracula.

You can purchase the book online only as an ebook at this time. The full title to search for is Powers of Darkness: the wild translation of Dracula from turn-of-the-century Sweden.

The book is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other sites.

I hope you enjoy reading Powers of Darkness. Trust me, you will never think of Dracula in the same way again.

An illustration from the Swedish Powers of Darkness showing Count Draculitz meeting with his followers.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, The Children of Arthur historical fantasy series, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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July 2, 2021 · 7:44 pm

New Book Discusses Treatment of Body in Gothic Literature

Dangerous Bodies: Historicising the Gothic Corporeal by Marie Mulvey-Roberts is one of the best books on Gothic literature that I have read in many years. Mulvey-Roberts previously published Gothic Immortals, which I loved and was a major source for my own book The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, so I was honored when she agreed to write the foreword for my book. I am delighted that she has now published Dangerous Bodies, which explores how the human body as well as monsters’ bodies are treated in Gothic literature, although it explores far more than just that.

The book is divided into five chapters, and I can honestly say any one of these chapters, each a fine essay in its own right, is alone worth the price of the book. I will provide a few highlights from each chapter here with the hope you will read the book and explore in its entirety the wonderful discussion Mulvey-Roberts provides of some of the greatest Gothic texts.

“Chapter 1: Catholicism, the Gothic and the bleeding body” discusses both the role of Catholicism in Gothic literature as well as how bodies are treated, often by Catholics in the Gothic. Think of the scenes of the Inquisition in Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), for example. Mulvey-Roberts provides historical context for the backgrounds to Gothic texts, including pointing out that in reality Protestants committed far more bloodshed and torture to bodies than Catholics in the broad Renaissance error. Furthermore, during the heyday of the Gothic novel, English Protestants were not really as anti-Catholic as often thought, but sympathetic to the French clergy fleeing the French Revolution. However, for me, the highlight of the chapter was the discussion of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), considered the first Gothic novel. I have to admit I always thought it a rather silly novel, but Mulvey-Roberts discusses how it is really a satire of the English Reformation, offering commentary on Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries. I won’t go into the details, but I feel the argument is very convincing and it shows that this very first Gothic novel was far from anti-Catholic and even in this early period, the Gothic was offering social commentary and a way to express the fears of the time, which would be more obvious in the 1790s when Gothic novels were largely fueled by the French Revolution. Mulvey-Roberts points out that The Castle of Otranto was itself written right after the conclusion of the Seven Years War and was doubtless influenced by that conflict.

“Chapter 2: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and Slavery” was frankly rather mind-blowing for me. In the past, I have often thought I could just not possibly read one more article about Frankenstein (1818), but I am so glad I read this chapter. I have never heard the argument that Frankenstein is largely a commentary on slavery or at least influenced by the horrors of that institution. Mulvey-Roberts argues that Mary Shelley was not an abolitionist, but rather believed in an ameliorist position to make the transition to an end of slavery easier. Immediate emancipation would have been detrimental to slaves who would not know how to survive without assistance—think of how the Monster feels abandoned by Victor Frankenstein. Mulvey-Roberts offers evidence that Mary Shelley would have been aware of the plight of slaves, especially in the West Indies. Shelley had a friend, Frances Wright, who bought a plantation in Tennessee and bought slaves to educate and prepare them for their labor, with Shelley’s support. Furthermore, Gilbert Imlay, Mary Shelley’s mother’s lover, was involved in the slave trade, and in 1816 while working on Frankenstein, Shelley read Charlotte Smith’s The Letters of a Solitary Wanderer (1800), a novel set in Jamaica concerning slavery. She also read Bryan Edwards’ history of the West Indies. One passage, in particular, is significant because it describes rebels, called “monsters,” who decapitated a husband, then dissected his pregnant wife and threw her unborn baby to the hogs. The rebels then put her husband’s head into her belly and sewed it up, all while the wife was still alive. Mulvey-Roberts notes that similarly Frankenstein’s Monster is created by suturing of different body parts. In addition, in the chapter Mulvey-Roberts discusses Matthew Lewis, author of The Monk (1795), as a slaveowner.

“Chapter 3: Death by orgasm: sexual surgery and Dracula” continued to exceed my expectations. Here Mulvey-Roberts showed how aware the author of Dracula (1897), Bram Stoker, was of medical information. Three of his four brothers were doctors, and the eldest, Sir William Thornley Stoker, was likely a model for Abraham Van Helsing and Dr. Seward. Thornley’s gynaecological operations have never before been considered in relation to Stoker’s novel, but Mulvey-Roberts has filled a huge gap in Stoker studies by outlining them here. She discusses in detail the role of female sexuality in the novel and especially the way Lucy is depicted as sexually licentious in the novel and how she is punished through surgeries meant to destroy her sexuality and reproductive parts. Mulvey-Roberts goes on to discuss surgery, masturbation, hysteria, and the vagina. Mulvey-Roberts concludes that Thornley was a major source of medical information for the novel and that Stoker’s notes for the novel confirm it. I was fully convinced by her argument.

These first three chapters were the ones that interested me most because they explored major Gothic works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although the remaining chapters were also interesting. “Chapter 4: Nazis, Jews and Nosferatu” discussed how Hitler used negative stereotypes of Jews to turn the German people against them. Mulvey-Roberts admits there is no evidence that Hitler ever saw the film Nosferatu but it is likely he did, and it may have added to his ideas for the negative caricatures of the Jews that he promoted. She discusses this famous silent film, the first film version of Dracula, in depth. She also goes into detail about the myth of the Wandering Jew and how it was used to demonize Jews, although at times some writers were sympathetic to the Jew. She then discusses how vampires have been linked to the Wandering Jew. And ultimately, how the true vampires were not the Jews, as the Nazis tried to convince people, but the Nazis themselves.

The final chapter, “Chapter 5: The vampire of war,” discusses how war has frequently been depicted as being like a vampire, especially a female one. The discussion involves the Crimean War, as well as the World Wars. Mulvey-Roberts also discusses several twentieth century films about vampires created during times of war, plus the novels of Kim Newman, which are written to illustrate what would have happened if Dracula had not been defeated—he would have taken over England, and that would have interesting repercussions for World War I.

In the conclusion, Mulvey-Roberts discusses how “the Gothic arises out of conflict.” The examples of Gothic depictions of slavery, physical abuse, and war throughout the book all attest to the truth of this statement.

Overall, Dangerous Bodies brings fresh blood to Gothic studies, reinvigorating it with new perspectives that enrich our understanding of it and help us to see what has always been there but perhaps hiding in the shadows, waiting to be illuminated.

I highly recommend Dangerous Bodies and hope Mulvey-Roberts will write many more books on the Gothic. The book won the IGA Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize in 2017, which only proves how frightfully good it is.

In the United States, the book is available at Amazon.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, The Children of Arthur novel series, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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October 26, 2020 · 7:46 pm

Lady Athlyne or Lady Ninny? Bram Stoker’s Sexist Novel

Given how fascinating I find Dracula, it may be surprising to some that I have not devoured everything else by Bram Stoker. I have been very slowly working my way through several of his other novels, but the truth is that Stoker was not a great writer, and while some of his novels are interesting, especially the ones with supernatural plots, his writing style could be loose, wordy, and weak. After Dracula, I think the best novel he wrote was The Jewel of the Seven Stars, although the realistic The Man is also interesting. Even a relatively bad novel like The Snake’s Pass has its moments of great atmosphere, and The Lady of the Shroud and The Lair of the White Worm keep readers interested, despite their weaknesses. I admit to not having read the other six novels by Stoker (The Primrose Path, The Watter’s Mou’, The Shoulder of Shasta, Miss Betty, The Mystery of the Sea, and Seven Golden Buttons). Truth be told, if not for Dracula (I have written too many blog posts about it to link to them all here but they can be easily searched for), it is unlikely anyone would remember Stoker or any of his other novels. In this blog post, I will discuss Lady Athlyne (1908), which I have to say it is one of the silliest Victorian novels imaginable.

Lady Athlyne

Lady Athlyne’s biggest weakness is the overall concept of its plot. Joy Ogilvie, on a trip from New York to Italy, meets a woman who fostered the Earl of Athlyne. The woman raves about him so much that Joy and her aunt start to joke about her marrying him and referring to Joy as Lady Athlyne. Eventually, this leads to rumors that get back to the earl that someone is impersonating his wife. He goes to America to investigate, calling himself Hardy. At a horse race, he happens to save Joy’s life, not knowing she’s the one calling herself Lady Athlyne. Wanting to keep his identity secret, he continues to call himself Mr. Hardy. Of course, he and Joy fall in love. Eventually, Athlyne/Hardy returns to England. The Ogilvies then visit, but Joy’s father cannot understand why Mr. Hardy doesn’t correspond with them, not knowing his sister-in-law and daughter are carrying on a correspondence with him. Eventually, Joy sees Hardy again and they go joyriding in his car. A string of circumstances results in a compromising situation that is resolved by their marriage.

The whole plot is highly strained, and Stoker, while trying to write something like a drawing room comedy novel in the style of Oscar Wilde’s comic plays, fails to pull it off. The novel’s denouement goes on for chapters until the reader wishes he’d just get it over with.

There is nothing Gothic about this book. Wikipedia has a very poor entry on it that tries to draw comparisons between Lady Athlyne and Dracula and also find references in it to the historical events of the time, but it fails abominably. The novel is not Gothic. Stoker is not trying to build Gothic atmosphere, and there is no real social commentary in the novel other than Stoker’s sexist comments (more on that in a minute).

For Dracula fans, the only thing about the novel of interest is that among the earl’s string of names is that of Westerna. This name is very close to Westenra, the surname of Lucy in Dracula, which critics have made a lot over to argue it reflects the superiority of the West over the East. That Stoker uses the same name with the placement of the “r” in it changed, suggests maybe he wanted to make some link between Dracula and Lady Athylyne’s characters, but then he changed his mind. The similarity is interesting but not significant. Stoker can’t even get his main character’s full name right, the first time presenting it in Chapter 1 as “Calinus Patrick Richard Westerna Hardy Mowbray FitzGerald 2nd Earl of Athlyne” and then in Chapter 23 as “Calinus Patrick Richard Westerna Mowbray Hardy Fitzgerald, Earl of Athlyne” lowercasing the g in Fitzgerald and reversing the position of Mowbray and Hardy.

Other critics have talked about Lady Athlyne in relation to the New Woman, showing how Joy’s aunt is more modern in her willingness to correspond with the earl and how as an old maid of forty-five, she reflects the New Woman who doesn’t settle for marriage. However, Stoker suggests she’s unhappy to be an old maid, and in the end he marries her off. If anything, as in Dracula, Stoker is showing concern about the New Woman and any efforts by women to better their position in society and be equal to men.

The sexism of the novel is apparent in the ridiculous statements Stoker makes about the sexes. In Chapter 7 is this surprising statement:

“Joy was a woman in whom the sex-instinct was very strong. She was woman all over; type of woman who seems to draw man to her as the magnet draws the steel. Athlyne was a very masculine person and therefore peculiarly sensitive to the influence. That deep thinking young madman who committed suicide at twenty-three, Otto Weininger, was probably right in that wonderful guess of his as to the probable solution of the problem of sex. All men and all women, according to him, have in themselves the cells of both sexes; and the accredited masculinity or femininity of the individual is determined by the multiplication and development of these cells. Thus the ideal man is entirely or almost entirely masculine, and the ideal woman is entirely or almost entirely feminine. Each individual must have a preponderance, be it ever so little, of the cells of its own sex; and the attraction of each individual to the other sex depends upon its place in the scale between the highest and the lowest grade of sex. The most masculine man draws the most feminine woman, and vice versa; and so down the scale till close to the border line is the great mass of persons who, having only development of a few of the qualities of sex, are easily satisfied to mate with any one. This is the true principle of selection which is one of the most important of Nature’s laws; one which holds in the lower as well as in the higher orders of life, zoological and botanical as well as human. It accounts for the way in which such a vast number of persons are content to make marriages and even liaisons, which others, higher strung, are actually unable to understand.”

Interestingly, Otto Weininger, cited in the quote, wrote a book titled Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character) which became popular after his death. The book influenced the Nazis, and according to Wikipedia: “Weininger’s views are considered an important step in attempts to exclude women and Jews from society based on methodical philosophy, in an era declaring human equality and scientific thought.” Just one stupid thing Weininger wrote was “In the Jew and the woman, good and evil are not distinct from one another.” Seriously, Bram. This man was not someone to draw your philosophy about women from. Why would anyone listen to a twenty-three-year-old who killed himself? Stoker was thirty-three years older than Weininger and should have known better.

In Chapter 8, Joy’s aunt, Judy, spouts more sexism to her, saying:

“A woman wants a man to be master, and specially to be her master. She wants to feel that when it comes to a struggle she hasn’t got a chance with him, either to fight or to run away. That’s why we like to make a man follow when in truth we are dying to run after him—and to catch him up!”

In Chapter 10, we are told of Joy’s relationship to the earl:

“In that moment she had accepted him as her Master; and that acceptance on a woman’s part remains as a sacred duty of obedience so long as love lasts. This is one of the mysteries of love. Like all other mysteries, easy of acceptance to those who believe; an acceptance which needs no doubting investigation, no proof, no consideration of any kind whatever. She had faith in him, and where Faith reigns Patience ceases to be a virtue.”

Finally, Stoker makes several references to Eden and how God established marriage there. Toward the end of the novel, in Chapter 22, as Joy and Athlyne admit their love, Stoker tells us, “Instinctively the woman recognised the tone and obeyed, as women have obeyed the commands of the men they loved, and were proud to do so, from Eden garden down the ages.” What Bible was Stoker reading? I don’t remember Eve being very obedient to Adam about anything.

The novel might have actually worked as a fun comedy of errors over mistaken identity if the speeches didn’t go on for so long and include such inane sexist ideas. Instead, Stoker wrote an atrociously bad novel with characters none of us can remotely care about. As far as I am concerned, Joy is a complete ninny and any self-respecting twenty-first century woman would find her completely unsupportable.

I am left wondering how the author of Dracula could have written one of the greatest novels ever written and then followed it up with so much drivel. Stoker apparently worked harder on Dracula than on any other book and it’s also possible he had help from a good editor—a matter that still needs more investigation and was suggested first by H.P. Lovecraft, who stated that he once met a woman who had told him she had offered to revise Dracula for Stoker and that the manuscript she saw was in a terrible state. This suggests Stoker may have been seeking help with the novel. It also seems to me that a lot of Dracula’s strength comes from its first-Ottperson narration while many of his works, including Lady Athlyne, are in third person, allowing the narrator to intrude with his silly philosophical and sexist remarks, thus weakening the novel’s flow and the character development. That said, both The Snake’s Pass and The Lady of the Shroud are in first-person and fail to be great, though still readable, novels. Lady Athlyne, however, is an embarrassment to the author of the masterpiece Dracula.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, The Children of Arthur novel series, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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October 19, 2020 · 2:44 pm

A Pre-Dracula Vampire Novel—The Pobratim: A Slav Novel

The Pobratim: A Slav Novel was published in 1895. When I first heard of it, I thought it was a translation of an original Slav novel, but it was actually written by “Prof. P. Jones,” which makes me think he was British, Jones being a Welsh name. I have been unable to learn anything about Professor P. Jones beyond the few clues the book offers. The novel was published by H.S. Nichols, a printer in Soho Square in London, and dedicated to Prince Nicholas of Montenegro. This would be Nicholas I of Montenegro (1841-1921), who was prince of that land from 1860-1910 and king from 1910-1918. The date and place given in the dedication is Trieste and June 17, 1895, which suggests the author lived abroad at the time. Clearly, Professor Jones knew a great deal about the Balkans and traveled through them. After all, Trieste is in modern Italy near Slovenia. In this article, I will provide a plot summary of the novel since almost nothing about it can be found online. I hope this article will create greater interest in it among readers and scholars.

Of course, the only reason most people would be interested in The Pobratim is that it contains a vampire and was published two years before Dracula. I only discovered it myself because it was mentioned by Andrew Boylan in his introduction to James Lyons’ translation of After Ninety Years, a Serbian vampire novella from 1880. Although The Pobratim is a pre-Dracula novel, I do not believe it influenced Stoker. I still think it interesting, though I would not regard it as a vampire novel but a novel about the Slavs that has a vampire in it.

“Pobratim” is the Slavic word for “blood brothers.” The novel’s focus is on the friendship of two young Slavic men, Milenko and Uros. Set in the nineteenth century, it appears to be written primarily to depict Slavic folklore and customs. One custom, common to the Balkans, is that of blood brothers. The novel begins with the two friends becoming blood brothers. In the United States, we might equate this with slitting the wrists of two friends and comingling their blood, but in the Balkans, it is a more formal ceremony. The two men actually swear to be lifelong blood brothers in a church ceremony. This ceremony includes a “best man” for each brother and is described as being like a “marriage.” It is a lifelong bond that is created that must never be rent asunder, and during the ceremony, the two friends even hold hands and kiss each other. Twenty-first century readers would raise their eyes at all this and think of same-sex wedding ceremonies, but our two heroes are strictly heterosexual here.

Prior to the pobratim ceremony, Uros and Milenko have been friends from childhood, but an old woman predicts that tragedy will part them. That tragedy is set in motion when Uros falls in love with Milena, a married woman. Uros and Milenko decide to become sailors and leave their home, which seems largely to be to get Uros away from Milena. Milena is married to Radonic, a violent and unlikeable man. Radonic is friends with Vranic, who has the second sight and is rather disliked in the community. Uros and Vranic are both aware that the other is interested in Milena, although Radonic is not yet suspicious of either.

The pobratim now sail off. Eventually they are involved in rescuing a shipwrecked family, including a young woman named Ivanka. They learn Ivanka’s father was good friends with Uros’ father many years before. The two fathers had once sworn that Uros and Ivanka would marry. However, Ivanka’s father confuses Milenko with Uros, and Milenko has fallen in love with Ivanka. Uros, as a result, acts obnoxious to get Ivanka’s father to dislike him and agree to marry Ivanka to Milenko instead. Besides, Uros is not interested in marrying anyone except Milena, whom he cannot have.

When the pobratim return home, Uros again begins seeing Milena. One day, when Radonic goes on a journey, Milena goes to visit Uros’ mother. Vranic, thinking he will catch Milena home alone and have his way with her, goes to Radonic’s house. However, Radonic, suspecting his wife of adultery, returns home and finds Vranic there. He claims he is there to protect Milena from Uros, but Radonic knows Vranic is after his wife and murders him.

Radonic now goes into hiding. The novel, in its interest in depicting Slavic life, goes into detail about what happens next. A “Karvarina” ensues—this is rather like the weregild of Anglo-Saxon culture—where a murderer is forgiven after paying a price for the dead man’s life. Radonic’s friends go to Vranic’s two brothers and manage finally to convince them to forgive Radonic in exchange for payment. The scene is one of the best in the novel as they go through the formalities of this process, the brothers claiming their brother is worth a great deal, even though the narrator tells us they hated him, and in the end, because everyone hated Vranic, the brothers receive very little.

Vranic’s spirit, however, is not happy. He returns in the form of a vampire and begins to torment one of his brothers—the novel gets confusing here since the brother is also referred to as Vranic (I’ll call him Vranic 2). The townspeople come to realize Vranic has become a vampire so they go through a ceremony where they dig up the corpse, say prayers over it, and then require Vranic 2 to stab his brother. However, it is dark and the clouds make it hard to see. He is supposed to stab his brother’s corpse in the neck, but he bungles it and only gets his cheek. As a result, the villagers are angry with him and he’s told his brother will now have eternal life as a vampire.

Vranic continues to torment Vranic 2, telling him he will soon be a vampire too and enjoy it. Vranic 2 is now urged on by Vranic to kill Bellenic, Uros’ father, which results in Vranic 2, in the scuffle, stabbing Uros, who tries to defend his father. Vranic flees the scene, horrified that he has committed murder. He finds it even more scary because he didn’t want to kill anyone but found that the vampire forced him to act against his will.

Meanwhile, Milenko comes to Uros’ aid, carrying his friend to a nearby convent to be nursed. Believing Uros is dying, his parents visit him and they manage to sneak Milena into the convent, disguised as a boy. By this point, Milena has learned that Radonic has died, and she has also given birth to his dead child. Uros’ dying request is that he and Milena may be married, which the monks finally agree to. Uros then dies, and Milenko returns to sea.

Vranic 2 has also fled to sea and now works on various ships. Eventually, Vranic 2 and Milenko’s paths cross again when Milenko’s ship comes to the aid of Vranic 2’s ship during a storm. Vranic 2 is in the water about to drown when he realizes Milenko is rescuing him. He then cuts the rope he has tied around himself in an attempt to rescue him because he fears Milenko’s retribution. He is never seen again, presumably drowning.

Milenko now receives a letter from Uros that he has not died. He fell into a state of unconsciousness and was about to be buried when he was able to waken and be restored to life.

The novel ends with joy as the characters celebrate Milenko and Ivanka’s novel.

The author, unfortunately, seems to forget that Vranic, the vampire, is still on the loose. However, in Slavic culture, vampires tend to torment their relatives, and so with Vranic 2’s death—nothing is ever said of what became of the other brother—apparently Vranic is no longer a threat to the community.

I have summarized the main plot here, but the novel is filled with interrupting stories and poems of Slavic folklore and myth that the characters are continually telling to one another. In some cases, these stories appear to be commentary upon the main plot or the novel’s themes. At other times, the stories seem to be included simply to delay the action or provide a break from the emotion and suspense. One such story is a narrative poem about St. George. The other stories would not be recognizable to English readers, but they are all entertaining. I do not know if P. Jones drew upon actual Slavic stories or made up the stories he included. Since the tale of St. George is included, I suspect many, if not all, of the other stories have some origins in Slavic folklore. Most contain supernatural elements, including a bargain with the devil, and some are love stories.

Oddly, the book ends with a list of “transcriber” corrections, which mostly are things like missing periods the “transcriber” added.

While Vranic is far from as effective a vampire as Dracula, or even earlier vampires in British literature like James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire or John Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, the novel itself is very interesting because it reflects an interest in the Balkans in Britain that predates Stoker, although is after LeFanu’s Carmilla (1872) which is also set in the Balkans. Overall, The Pobratim is very readable and interesting, which makes me surprised it is not more generally known, especially among Dracula scholars and vampire enthusiasts. I hope someone will do further work to reveal more about who P. Jones was and his reasons for writing the novel.

The Pobratim can be purchased in paperback and ebook formats at Amazon.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, The Children of Arthur novel series, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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October 2, 2020 · 12:37 pm

An Unusual Vampire Novel: Richard Laymon’s Bite

I am no expert on horror writer Richard Laymon (1947-2001), but a friend encouraged me to read his vampire novels, and while I don’t find a lot to write about in them, I do find a lot to enjoy. Earlier this year, I reviewed The Traveling Vampire Show (2000), probably Laymon’s best-known vampire novel, but he wrote two others, The Stake (1990) and Bite (1996). I have yet to read The Stake, so I’ll only discuss Bite here.

Like The Traveling Vampire Show, Bite is low on vampire appearances, and although it’s been described as horror, it is not really scary. Therefore, some vampire and Gothic or horror fiction fans might be disappointed by it, but what it lacks in vampires, it makes up for in a suspenseful, sexually-charged story that keeps the reader turning the pages, constantly wanting to know what will happen next.

In The Traveling Vampire Show, Laymon holds the suspense as the characters go through the day anticipating the vampire show that evening. In Bite, he does the opposite, having the vampire show up in the very beginning. I will not summarize all of the plot so I don’t give too much away. I’ll just say there is a vampire and the main characters, Sammy and Cat, have to kill him and then find a way to dispose of the body so they are not accused of murder—though killing a vampire may seem justified, who will believe them that their murder victim was a vampire?

The novel opens when Sammy finds Cat at his door. She wants him to help her kill the vampire who has been attacking her for the last year. Sammy and Cat are in their late twenties and dated in high school. Vampires aside, their relationship is really the meat of the novel and what ends up most interesting to the reader. Sammy is the narrator throughout, and it is clear from the start that he has never gotten over Cat. He is still highly sexually attracted to her, and so he is very willing to help her get rid of a vampire and all the mess that results from it. Plus, unlike in The Traveling Vampire Show where Laymon shied away from actual sex scenes because his characters were teenagers, these adults are able to have plenty of sex, even at some of the most unlikely times.

Once the vampire, named Elliot, is killed, the disposal of the body fills the bulk of the novel. Sammy and Cat decide to bury the body out of state, and so begins a road trip that will be filled with disasters, violence, and many twists and turns. Laymon is a master at keeping the suspense going and the reader guessing what will happen next.

Anyone who likes a suspenseful ride will not be disappointed. I didn’t miss the lack of a (living) vampire throughout most of the novel simply because there was so much else to keep me interested.

My only complaint is that while we have a great villain, why does he have to be gay and a pervert? Sure, gay people can be villains, but they can be villainous bank robbers or counterfeiters or carjackers—instead, there seems to be a trend of them always being perverts, and I find that offensive. Such is also the case in Outlander, as I’ve written about previously. In any case, these gay characters end up being more like vampires than the vampires themselves, which perhaps is intended by the author. In that respect, we can say Laymon was a product of his time, and he may have been more sensitive had he written the book today. That said, homophobia has been at the heart of the Gothic at least since Bram Stoker’s time as many a literary critic of Dracula will tell you.

Regardless of its flaws, the story in Bite does what it sets out to do—entertains—and it entertains extremely well.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, The Children of Arthur novel series, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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September 23, 2020 · 12:43 pm

Dracula’s Icelandic and Swedish Versions: Translation, Plagiarism, or Fan Fiction?

In 2017, the literary world and especially Dracula fans were stirred by the publication of Powers of Darkness, believed to be a lost version of Dracula. For years, scholars have known of the Icelandic version of Dracula, but they had assumed it was just a translation of Bram Stoker’s novel. The curious thing was that it included a preface signed by Stoker. However, then Dutch literary researcher Hans Corneel de Roos discovered the Icelandic edition was a very different version of the story. Theories floated around that somehow someone in Iceland got a copy of an early version of Stoker’s novel and published it. The reason to think the novel represented an earlier manuscript of Dracula was that the scenes in Dracula’s castle were longer, but the scenes in London shorter. The book itself was only about half the length of Dracula (Berghorn 3) and many of the characters not as developed.

Powers of Darkness is the 2017 translation into English of the Icelandic translation of Dracula. It reveals many surprising changes between the Dracula we know and the Dracula read in Iceland for over a century.

However, since the publication of Powers of Darkness in English, further research has revealed that the book was not based on one of Stoker’s earlier drafts of Dracula, but rather upon the Swedish “translation” of Dracula. Whoever rewrote/translated Powers of Darkness borrowed from the Swedish translation and the strange differences can then be traced to that translation. Surprisingly, the Swedish translation is also quite bizarre. It turns out to be almost twice as long as Stoker’s Dracula (Berghorn 3). Furthermore, the preface to the Icelandic version that was believed to have been written by Bram Stoker is a forgery. Not only did Stoker not write it, but large portions of it are plagiarized from a Swedish priest. It is highly unlikely a priest would write or edit this preface. Instead, pieces of it were lifted from the memoirs of the priest Bernhard Wadström (Roos 12), who in his memoirs had written an essay about ghost apparitions.

This fascinating discovery leaves us with the question: Where did the Swedish version of Dracula come from? Further exploration has made it clear that the novel is not simply an earlier version of Dracula that Stoker wrote. The author of the Swedish version embellished Stoker’s work, given that Stoker published Dracula in 1897 and references in the Swedish version to the Orlean conspiracy of 1898-9 post-date Dracula (Berghorn 15).

I will not detail how these discoveries were made, but rather, I recommend people read my sources listed at the end of this article.

Of more interest to me is why would someone choose to rewrite Dracula? The answers to that are difficult to know. Since Powers of Darkness (Makt Myrkranna, the Icelandic version) has been published in English, I can only hope that a translation of the Swedish version (Mörkrets makter) will also be soon published in English so more scholars can compare the Swedish version to Stoker’s text. It is possible that an earlier version of Dracula was the source for the Swedish rewrite, and scholars have already determined that if it was based on a draft, it had to be a draft that post-dates 1892. That said, it seems unlikely the Swedish author, whose version was serialized in June 1899 to Feb 1900, thought he or she was solely working from an unpublished manuscript and would not have known that Stoker had already published Dracula. While Dracula had not yet acquired the great fame it enjoys today, it was known internationally, so I would think word of its publication would have reached the Swedish translator/author. Plus, it seems unlikely the author would have let a version of the manuscript just sit around. If the author had acquired it in 1892 or shortly thereafter, why wouldn’t he or she have published it sooner, even before 1897? Therefore, it seems unlikely to me that the Swedish author was working from an earlier version of Dracula. Instead, I believe the Swedish author was working from Stoker’s published version and embellishing the story as he went, although the case remains open.

David J. Skal, in his recent biography of Stoker, Something in the Blood, suggests the Icelandic version might be considered as “unauthorized fan fiction” (Brundan, Jones, and Mier-Cruz 303). I don’t think it’s as simple as that, although it may be.

First, it is certainly possible that the Swedish author simply enjoyed Dracula and wanted to fill in parts of the story by expanding it. But why then did the Icelandic author shorten it? That is complicated. According to Wikipedia, ten days after the Icelandic Powers of Darkness was published in 2017:

“De Roos and Stoker [Dacre, Bram Stoker’s great-nephew] were contacted by Swedish fantasy fiction specialist Rickard Berghorn, who claimed that Makt myrkranna must be based on an earlier serialization in the Swedish newspaper Dagen (The Day) under the title Mörkrets makter (equally meaning Powers of Darkness), from 10 June 1899 to 7 February 1900. In his interview with De Roos, Berghorn stated that Mörkrets makter was much longer than the ca. 160,000 words of Stoker’s English Dracula, and—unlike Makt myrkranna—upheld the epistolary style known from Dracula throughout the novel. Checking these claims against scans he obtained directly from Stockholm, De Roos established that there must have existed two different Swedish variants. It soon turned out that the second serialization of Mörkrets makter, in the tabloid Aftonbladets Halfvecko-Upplaga (Evening Paper’s Half-Weekly), from 16 August 1899–31 March 1900, as first obtained by De Roos, had been shortened to ca. 107,000 words, while dropping the diary style after Part I. Dagen, the sister paper Aftonbladet, and the Aftonbladets Halfvecko-Upplaga were owned by the same publishing company with the same editor, Harald Sohlman; Dagen was a daily Stockholm newspaper while Aftonbladets Halfvecko-Upplaga was a tabloid published twice a week for rural areas.

Did Bram Stoker play any role in the publication and translation of his novel in Sweden and Iceland?

“As the structure of the Icelandic version corresponded to that of the abridged Halfvecko-Upplaga variant (same chapter titles, no epistolary format in Part II), De Roos concluded that Ásmundsson must have used the latter as his source text, replacing various cultural references with hints to Icelandic sagas, while shortening the text even further, to ca. 47,000 words.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Darkness#M%C3%B6rkrets_makter)

Since the Icelandic author also made changes to the manuscript as he abridged it, both the Icelandic and Swedish authors/editors might be considered as writers of fan fiction. However, there are other possibilities beyond just writing fan fiction.

Second, given that both the Icelandic and Swedish versions were serialized, a very real and practical explanation is that the authors expanded or abridged the text to meet the demand of the newspapers, which in turn were trying to meet the demand of the reading public. This, in turn, raises questions about whether the authors thought they were improving Dracula in some way to make it more attractive, palpable, or acceptable to their readers. An April 23, 2017 article by Mark Branagan in Express (online edition) described the Swedish version as a “‘SEX and violence’ version of Dracula deemed too shocking for Victorian Britain.” Was the Swedish author trying to make the story more sensational so it would help to sell the newspaper in Sweden, which may not have been as sexually repressive as England at the time? Perhaps the Icelandic author had similar reasons.

Third, we are left wondering what if any role Stoker had in the production of either of these versions of his novel. Theories were presented of how a manuscript of Dracula got to Iceland before the discovery of the Swedish version, but those we can probably now cast aside. Theories about how a manuscript got to Sweden have also been put forth (Berghorn17-19). However, at this point, we do not know enough to do more than guess.

Currently, many questions remain. I am hopeful a translation in English of the Swedish version will be published so we can learn more. Recently, on December 22, 2019, on his Weird Webzine Facebook page, Berghorn announced an English translation of the (longer) Dagen serialization is upcoming and has been accepted by a well-known publishing house. According to information supplied by Swedish literature scholar Martin Andersson, Berghorn will address anglicisms in passages that did not appear in Stoker’s Dracula, thus suggesting that an (other) English text must have been the basis of the Swedish version  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Darkness_(Sweden)).

Dracula fans and scholars and, indeed, all of the literary world eagerly wait for more answers.

Update: The Swedish version of The Powers of Darkness is due to have an English translation published in January 2021. My thanks to Ryan McPeak for bringing this to my attention and the following links:

https://www.vampires.com/another-icelandic-dracula/

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/powers-of-darkness-dracula-by-bram-stoker-centiped-t77798.html

https://www.librarything.com/topic/321696#:~:text=Powers%20of%20Darkness%20is%20an,preface%20written%20by%20Stoker%20himself

Sources:

Berghorn, Rickard. “Dracula’s Way to Sweden: A Unique Version of Stoker’s Novel.” Weird Webzine: Fantasy and Surreality.  Was available August 19, 2020 at: http://weirdwebzine.com/draculitz.html. Site no longer active.

Brundan, Katy, Melanie Jones, and Benjamin Mier-Cruz. “Dracula or Draculitz?” Translation Forgery and Bram Stoker’s ‘Lost Version’ of Dracula.” Victorian Review. 45.2 (Fall 2019): 293-306. Available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757842

de Roos, Hans Corneel. “Was the Preface to the Swedish Dracula Written by a Priest?: Bernhard Wadström and the ‘White Lady.’” Available at: https://www.vamped.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/HansDeRoos-WadstroemCase-v17-25May2018-for-W-D-Day.pdf

Wikipedia. Powers of Darkness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Darkness

Wikipedia. Powers of Darkness (Sweden). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Darkness_(Sweden)

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, The Children of Arthur novel series, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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September 21, 2020 · 8:04 pm

Bram Stoker’s Carpathian Sources for Dracula

Until recently, it has largely been believed that Stoker was most influenced by J. S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) to set Dracula in the Balkan region. It appears he originally intended to set the novel in Styria (in southeast Austria), where Carmilla is set; then he came across references to Vlad Tepes that may have inspired the character of Dracula, so Stoker changed the novel’s location to Transylvania.

However, Stoker was not the first author to set a vampire story in the Carpathians. It is worth noting here, that Transylvania, and Romania, has no vampire tradition, but rather has had one imposed upon it by Europeans, and most intensely so by Stoker in writing Dracula. See my past post Racism in Dracula: The Romanian Perspective, largely based on the work of Romanian scholar Cristina Artenie.

Bram Stoker, whose sources for Dracula are still debated by scholars 123 years after the novel’s publication.

Previously, I have blogged about Jules Verne’s novel The Carpathian Castle (1893) as a possible source for Dracula. According to scholar Raj Shah, there are striking similarities between the description of Dracula’s castle and that of Jules Verne (Shah, Raj. “Counterfeit Castles: The Age of Mechanical Reproduction in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Jules Verne’s Le Château des Carpathes.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 56.4 (2014): 428–71. p. 432-33). However, while similarities exist, Verne’s story is intensely dull and fails beside Dracula itself, so I cannot imagine it was much of an influence. If Stoker did read it, it could only have inspired him to write a better story.

More recently, it has been suggested that Stoker may have borrowed from an even earlier vampire story set in the Carpathian Mountains. This story, “The Mysterious Stranger,” was first published in Chambers Repository of Instructive and Amusing Tracts. Vol. 8, no. 62, 1854, pp. 1–32. I came across mention of this story in an essay by Katy Brundan, Melanie Jones, and Benjamin Mier-Cruz titled “Dracula or Draculitz?” Translation Forgery and Bram Stoker’s ‘Lost Version’ of Dracula” (Victorian Review, Vol 45, No. 2, Fall 2019, p. 293-306). The authors suggest that the reason Stoker chose the Carpathians was the result of his coming across this short story, and they argue as follows for it being a source for Dracula:

“But he [Stoker] stumbled instead upon an anonymous vampire tale set in Transylvania, which helped redirect the novel’s setting toward eastern Europe. Like Dracula, “The Mysterious Stranger” (1854) features an older, aristocratic vampire with “piercing” grey eyes and a sallow complexion who lives in a castle in the wolf-infested Carpathians (14). The very anonymity of ‘The Mysterious Stranger’ seems to have invited borrowing, which Stoker promptly did. The tale’s exact origins eluded researchers for decades, but we now know it is an unauthorized translation of Karl von Wachsmann’s Der Fremde (The Stranger), first published in his collection Erzählungen und Novellen (1844).

“In closely modelling the early portion of Dracula on an anonymous, pirated translation of a German story, Stoker created new textual life from a translated text whose ties to the original author had been severed. This example demonstrates how nineteenth-century mass culture’s parasitic consumption—a mirror of the vampire’s own insatiable appetite—depended in part on translational practices. Stoker’s unauthorized reproduction makes him complicit in the archive’s suppression of the German author responsible for many details of Dracula’s character, from the vampire’s “repulsive” but magnetic manner to his waving the wolf pack away with a hand (“Mysterious Stranger” 14).” (297).

While I was intrigued about the possibility that Stoker was inspired by “The Mysterious Stranger,” I thought the argument here of the work as an influence rather weak. Two characters having “piercing” eyes is not enough. As I’ve shown in my book The Gothic Wanderer, eyes that are piercing or more likely hypnotic are a frequent attribute of vampires and go back to depictions of the Wandering Jew. A sallow or pale complexion is common to most vampires in literature also—Stoker would have found such details in earlier British vampire stories like Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire (1846), and so that leads us to just the Carpathian setting and the wolves for similarities. That said, I do think the story’s influence possible; I just don’t feel enough evidence exists to make a strong argument for it.

Readers can draw their own conclusions by reading “The Mysterious Stranger” themselves; the full text can be found online at: https://souo.fandom.com/wiki/Full_Text:_Mysterious_Stranger. However, I will summarize the story here to draw a few conclusions of my own.

The story begins when Count Fahnenberg, an Austrian nobleman, is traveling to an estate he recently acquired in the Carpathians. Accompanying him are his nephew Franz, his daughter Franziska, and her friend Bertha. Franz appears romantically interested in Franziska, but she confides to Bertha that he is too effeminate for her. By contrast, Bertha is engaged to Woislaw, a military man, who is heroic and admirable in Franziska’s eyes. Woislaw is away fighting in the Turkish war, while Franz refused to go.

On their way to the count’s new estate, they fear being attacked by wolves whom they can hear crying in the distance, so they take shelter in some ruins said to be haunted. As the wolves grow closer, a stranger appears and, by a gesture, sends them off. The rescued do not learn the stranger’s name.

When they arrive at the count’s mansion, the party learns from the locals that the ruins they took shelter in are those of Klatka Castle, whose last lord was Azzo von Klatka, a despotic tyrant who was hanged by the peasants he had oppressed.

When the count’s party returns to visit the ruins, they again meet the stranger who saved them. They thank him for his help and the count invites him to visit them. Although he seems like a hermit and is rather sullen, the stranger agrees to do so at a later date.

Eventually, the stranger becomes a regular visitor and shows interest in Franziska. She likes the stranger, who reveals his name as Azzo (a hint he is the nobleman who was hung). Franz, however, sees the stranger as a rival. After the visits begin, Franziska falls ill and begins having a strange dream in which Azzo comes in a mist, kisses her throat, then vanishes in a mist. The next morning, her neck is red with blood. No one can explain her illness or the dream.

Then Bertha’s fiancé, Woislaw, arrives from the war with the Turks. He has lost a hand in the war and has a new one made of gold, which is very strong. He recognizes Franziska’s symptoms and attributes them to the stranger. When the stranger next visits, Franz challenges him to a duel. In a tense scene, Azzo picks up Franz like he was a baby, but Woislaw intervenes and makes him drop Franz through the great physical strength of his golden hand. Azzo, thinking Woislaw’s strength is supernatural, calls him “blood-brother,” apparently believing Woislaw a vampire like himself.

Woislaw now visits the ruins and finds Azzo sleeping in his tomb. Woislaw nails Azzo’s coffin shut and leaves a packet of nails on top of it. Then he brings Franziska there and tells her she must drive the three nails (stakes) through it. After she does so, he says liquid will flow from the coffin. She must dip her fingers in the blood and besmear it on the scratch at her throat.

Only after Franziska does all this and begins to heal does Woislaw reveal that Azzo was a vampire, which he knew from his own past experience with one. He says a vampire must be destroyed by the one who has been afflicted by him, which is why Franziska had to kill Azzo.

The story ends happily with a double wedding between Franziska and Franz and Woislaw and Bertha.

While “The Mysterious Stranger” does have similarities to Dracula, especially in the vampire having control over wolves, the story being set in the Carpathians, and the vampire appearing in a mist and disappearing, as well as it seeming to be like a dream, there is also much that is strange about it—primarily the insistence that the victim is the one who must kill the vampire. Perhaps if Stoker was influenced by the story, he decided to change this element of vampire lore since that would require both Lucy and Mina to kill the vampire. Why he would make such a change could be an entire article in itself, disputing whether it was to increase the action of the plot not to have Lucy kill Dracula, or whether it was considered too unfeminine for a woman to commit such an act of violence.

Dr. John Polidori, whose story, The Vampire, was a major influence on vampire fiction in both England and France.

One also has to wonder about the origins of “The Mysterious Stranger” itself. While Stoker thought the story was written by an anonymous person, the version he read was really an unauthorized translation of Karl Von Wachsmann’s story “The Stranger” first published in 1844, more than half a century before Dracula, and only a quarter of a century after the publication of Polidori’s The Vampyre, considered the first real European and definitely English vampire story. Polidori’s story was tremendously popular in Europe, being translated and adapted into plays and eventually inspiring countless vampire works. More research needs to be done on whether Von Wachsmann knew Polidori’s story or was inspired by other works that were themselves inspired by Polidori’s story, or whether he had independent vampire sources to draw upon. Little appears to be known in the English-speaking world about Wachsmann, who lived from 1787 to 1862 and appears to have been part of the German literary Romantic Movement. Only the French and German versions of Wikipedia have entries for him (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Adolf_von_Wachsmann) and the translations of the pages reveal little that tells us much about his literary works. Unfortunately, most of his works appear not to have been translated into English. “The Mysterious Stranger” appears to have been a rare translation.

Certainly, the path to the creation of Dracula remains as mysterious as Dracula himself.

Poster for the Italian version of the The Curse of the Karnsteins starring Christopher Lee. It is doubtful this film was in any way influenced by “The Mysterious Stranger.”

As a side note, according to Wikipedia, the Italian film La cripta e l’incubo (The Curse of the Karnsteins) (1962), starring Christopher Lee as Count Ludwig von Karnstein, may have been influenced by “The Mysterious Stranger,” although Wikipedia admits that the film is more closely based on Le Fanu’s Carmilla. I watched the film recently (available on Amazon prime) and will say that I see absolutely no resemblance between the film and “The Mysterious Stranger,” but the Carmilla influence is obvious. “The Mysterious Stranger,” however, might make a very good film in its own right.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, The Children of Arthur novel series, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and many other titles. Visit Tyler at www.GothicWanderer.com, www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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