1. Dracula – Chapters 15 and 16 - Notes

2. Previously on Vampires Really Bite
Jonathan Harker takes a business trip to Transylvania only to find that his client, Count Dracula, is a vampire. Dracula moves to England, thinking Jonathan doomed. However, Jonathan manages a daring escape, reunites with Mina, and tries to put everything in Transylvania behind him.
Meanwhile, Lucy, Mina’s friend, entertains many suitors, chooses Arthur Holmwood, and before her life can blossom into marriage and family, Dracula slowly takes her life, each night, until she dies. Friends, including Dr. Seward and Prof. Van Helsing, try all they can, but discover the truth only too late.
Now, after Lucy‘s death, all parties involved must come to terms with the fact that a new rash of victims, children even, are not the victims of Count Dracula, but of Lucy herself – the new vampire in town.
It is just after Van Helsing’s claims about Lucy’s being the infamous Bloofer Lady that Seward chimes in and we resume our readings.

3. Chapter 15 – Seward’s Diary - Pg177
“Dr. Van Helsing, are you mad?” – Seward
To what claim is Seward referring?
Van Helsing goes on to riff for a while about hard truths:
“My friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady. But even yet I do not expect you to believe. It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the ‘no’ of it; it is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy Tonight I go to prove it. Dare you come with me?”
Seward’s words are interesting, here:
“A man does not like to prove such truths; Byron excepted from the category, jealousy. ‘And prove the very truth he most abhorred.’”

4. Seward Continued – Pg178
Note how complicated a relationship we have with the truth. We, theoretically, want to know the truth. However, it can be very difficult to accept the truth if it is, in any way, contrary to something we’ve thought for a very long time. Are there any things you thought true for a long time, learned different later, and had a hard time accepting? Why do you think this is a part of human nature? Our natures?
Note also, dark truths – we want to know them, yet we don’t want to know them. Why do we feel this way with regard to certain truths?
Feeling vs. knowing – we want to know the truth, but we don’t want to “feel” the truth. The constant battle between logic and emotion in human nature.
Van Helsing tries to logic through this debate in Seward:
“If it be not true, then proof will be a relief…If it be true! Ah, there is dread; yet every dread should help my cause, for in it is some need of belief.”
Moving forward, seeking knowledge, however dark, is a win-win proposition. Either relief or knowing what needs to be done. Again, think of how this philosophy lines up with Victorian philosophy on logic and human ability.

5. Skepticism and Evidence – Pg 178
Van Helsing and Seward spend the night in the cemetery.
All the while, evidences are presented, but Seward continues to doubt and look for other answers.
Maybe they’re animal bites on those children?
Maybe some wild animals came over with a sailor or got out of the zoo again?
At this point, with all Seward knows, it should be obvious. Does he truly not know? Evaluate Seward’s mental state, here.

6. Into the Tomb – Pg 179
Any heroic journey would be incomplete without a descent into the underworld, and most Gothic stories would be incomplete without a descent into a tomb.
Note the unsettling nature of such a thing – living characters going into a place of death, into darkness, to see a state that all living things inherently wish to avoid.
Note the attention to detail Stoker uses in setting up the eerie scene:
“The tomb in the day-time, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; when the time- discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been imagined.”
Certain genres, like the Gothic or steampunk, depend heavily on descriptions to set the mood. It’s not enough to say they went to the tomb and saw a vampire. Describing the scene in such great detail draws us in, helps us “ride mental shotgun” with the protagonists and feel their feelings as they enter into the darkness.

7. Deduction vs. Induction – Pg 180-183
As logic figures greatly into Victorian novels (not just Sherlock stories, but in general), let’s define two types of logic: deduction and induction.
Deduction – Moving from general to specific, deduction starts with a posing a theory, then moving to forming a hypothesis, making observations, then confirmation.
Induction – Moving from specific to general, induction starts with observation, moves to finding a pattern, forming a tentative hypothesis, then establishing a theory.
Van Helsing poses his theory, then seeks after the evidence – a more deductive method.
Seward constantly starts with the evidence.
Bite marks – Animal?
Empty coffin – Grave robbing?
No conclusion jumped to till the observations / evidence warrants it.
Which method does Seward best line up with?
What observations / evidence finally confirms Lucy’s vampirism for Seward? – Pg

8. Before the Slaying – Pg183
What does Van Helsing want to do before slaying Lucy? “If you, who saw the coffin empty…[who] know of the white figure last night that brought the child to the churchyard, and yet of your own senses did not believe, how then, can I expect Arthur?”
If Van Helsing slays Lucy and the others find out later, what will they think?
First, they must know everything. It is not enough to have allies, but to have them be persuaded of the truth as well, before continuing forward, or friends may become enemies.

9. Smooth Operator – Pg
Van Helsing is wise, but not a master of tact. Let’s read together pages , starting with “I want you” and ending with “Too far.”
Imagine Arthur’s feelings and reactions to hearing all this – he, who has not seen anything magical or undead, as of yet.
How would you react?
Activity - Random – Convince a Friend (If Time)

10. Chapter 16 – Seward Again – Pg 189
Slowly, Arthur and Quincey are brought into the fold – shown, clue by clue, evidence by evidence, what they need to know the believe in Lucy’s state and in what needs to be done. –
Then, Van Helsing gets out his assorted vampire- slaying equipment. Aside from the garlic, what else does he have? –
A mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit.
What does he do with it?
What is it?
Why would vampires hate this?

11. Descriptions and Suspense – Pg 191
“Never did tombs look so ghastly white; never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funereal gloom; never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so mysteriously; and never did the far away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.”
Note how Stoker builds suspense by describing instead of moving forward.
Note how he turns ordinary things into unsettling things – a concept Freud calls the uncanny – more on that later.

12. Myth / Culture Note – The Uncanny
Freud’s concept of the uncanny (not popularized until he wrote of it in 1919, after Dracula) is relevant to most Gothic / horror stories.
Uncanny -- the class of frightening things that leads us back to what is known and familiar.
Note how back in our earlier works, monsters were grotesque inhuman creatures, inside and out.
However, now a days, horror takes the familiar and twists it / changes it just enough to make it unsettling, as if the horror were just beneath the surface (not so blatant and on the outside as, say, Grendel).
Note how an ordinary girl, Lucy, is not Lucy (on the inside, in words and mannerisms).
Note how the Gothic / horror takes places like churches, which should be benign enough – places of prayer, meditation, calm, goodness – and twists them just enough to make them into spooky ruins or spooky Gothic cathedrals or such.
Note how houses out in the country become spooky in some horror stories, too.
The familiar turned just enough to be, at the same time, unfamilar. Uncanny.

13. Lucy – Pg
“It was now near enough for us to see clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.” – Bottom of 191
“By the concentrated light that fell on Lucy’s face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.” –
Note all the symbolism, all the contrasts –
Lucy, yet not Lucy (uncanny, familiar made unfamiliar, thus made disturbing)
Sweetness to hardness (different person on the inside)
Purity to wantonness – “Good” to sinful / evil
Light and dark – The light of the lantern reveals the truth of Lucy’s nature, parts the darkness
Stain of blood on a pure funereal robe – Like the stain of sin on a pure soul
“Lucy’s eyes in form and colour; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew.”
“The child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone.”

14. Lucy – Sin and Temptation - Pg192
“Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!” – Pg192
Let’s take a moment to analyze how many ways these lines are disturbing. Uncanny.
“Something diabolically sweet in her tones.” - Pg192
Evil not just as grotesque, but tempting. Evil as sin.
Note the change when confronted with holy things:
“The beautiful colour became livid, her eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-=fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa’s snakes, and the lovely blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the Greeks and the Japanese. If ever a face meant death – if looks could kill – we saw it in that moment.” – Pg192
A biblical quote comes to mind:
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.” KJV, Matthew 23:27
Note how the Bible evokes a very similar and useful image here. Just as a tomb is beautiful smooth white stone on the outside, yet full of nasty rotting dead things on the inside (quite the stark contrast), some people appear beautiful, pure, holy, etc, on the outside, yet are ugly on the inside (their true nature).
How does this Biblical quote / concept apply to Lucy? To vampires in general?
How does this further the idea of vampires as evil, Dracula as anti-Christ, etc etc?

15. Time to End It – Pg
At last, all are convinced of what needs to be done:
“Do as you will, friend; do as you will. There can be no horror like this ever any more” – Arthur Holmwood
Note Lucy reveals more powers when they remove the wards from the tomb’s doorway:
“We all looked on in horrified amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pass through the interstice where scarce a knife-blade could have gone.”
Van Helsing’s case for ending it, now:
“When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immmortality; they cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world.” – Like a disease.
“But of the most blessed of all, when this now Un-Dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free.” – the paradox of killing vampire Lucy to free human Lucy, who share a body and a soul, yet are not the same. Note how often, in vampire and zombie stories, how the protagonist can kill the monsters easily enough until one of them is a former loved one. Their hesitation usually results in either having to overcome the hesitation or face the harsh, dark consequences of letting their feelings get in the way of what they know to be true. How harshly is hesitation punished in these stories?

16. Slaying Lucy – Pg 195-197 Note all the details in the act of slaying:
What is Van Helsing doing during the slaying?
Why?
What is Arthur Holmwood doing?
Why does Arthur have to be the one to do it?
How many paradoxes lend themselves to the horror of this situation?
Pg 196 – How is Lucy different after she is “freed” of her vampirism? How does the book describe the changes?
Note the pathetic fallacy once again – how is nature responding to the change?
Is their work done? Is the danger over?
“Now, my friends, one step of our work is done, one the most harrowing to ourselves. But there remains a greater task.” - 197