Kaylea van Vliet
"This was all so strange and uncanny that a dreadful fear came upon me"
- Bram Stoker, Dracula
In my analysis of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I will be examining the ways that the uncanny operates in its narrative. I will be using the theory of the uncanny, originally developed by Sigmund Freud, which states that the uncanny is evoked through subtle unfamiliarity, doubling, tropes of concealment, and an involuntary return to a given situation. Writing itself is uncanny (Smith ix), and Dracula is simultaneously a novel that exists through writing, a novel that is constructed from the writing of its characters, and a novel that has a plot containing writing as a tool for combating the uncanny. Due to the significance of writing, I will find that Dracula produces the uncanny within its narrative structure and through the trope of mechanical reproduction that is present in the plot.
Uncanny discourse did not originate with Sigmund Freud, but “The Uncanny” is undeniably the site where the uncanny as a theory was born. In his 1919 essay, the patriarch of psychoanalysis defines the uncanny as “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar" (Freud 1-2). The original essay was written in German, so we arrive at the word uncanny via translation. The exact word that Freud uses is unheimlich, and Freud is quick to point out that unheimlich only exists in relation to its opposite, the word heimlich. Freud then asserts just how critical it is to remember that heimlich has two definitions: the first is “that which is familiar and congenial,” and the second is “that which is concealed and kept out of sight.” What he finds the most interesting is that unheimlich is used as an opposite to the first definition, but not to the second (Freud 4). The second definition, where the two terms appear to be synonymous rather than oppositional, is the focus of Freud’s study.
Freud uses “The Sand-Man,” a short story by Hoffmann, to illustrate how the feeling of uncanniness can be aroused. In this story, the themes where the uncanny is most effectively evoked “are all concerned with the idea of a ‘double’ in every shape and degree” (Freud 9) and feature “an involuntary return to the same situation, but which differ radically from it in other respects, also result in the same feeling of helplessness and of something uncanny” (Freud 11). The fact that “The Sand-Man” is a work of fiction does not impede its ability to produce the uncanny, since the writer first places the story “in the world of common reality” and, with this done, “the uncanny functions in the same way that it would in real life” (Freud 17). In this way, the author creates the uncanny when "he deceives us into thinking that he is giving us the sober truth, and then after all oversteps the bounds of possibility” (Freud 18). In other words, experiencing the uncanny in fiction is possible if works of fiction present themselves as occurring in the same reality that we inhabit.
We shall first deal with how the uncanny is conjured through the structure of the narrative. There is one element that makes Dracula particularly noteworthy, and that is how the multiple points of view create a fragmented, rather than cohesive, narrative. Jennifer Wicke asserts that “Dracula is not a coherent text” because it is “a chaotic reaction-formation” (Wicke 469) rather than a traditional narrative. However, Lasa claims that this is a “formal fracture” (Lasa 3), Erik Butler describes it as “artful ambiguity” (Butler 13), and David Seed argues that the narrative structure of Dracula can be divided into four distinct sections: “a narrative preamble, the working out of Dracula’s intentions, their discovery, and the final pursuit” (Seed 63-4). In the first section, Stoker begins by revealing Dracula so that the reader is able “to make a series of recognitions, to spot resemblances between later events and those in the opening four chapters” (Seed 66). This parallelism creates a feeling of uncanniness when the mysterious events that occur later remind the reader of the events that took place in section one of the novel. It also sets the reader up for an involuntary return when section four is reached, as “the final pursuit” takes us back to Castle Dracula. This manifestation of the uncanny makes the reader feel particularly helpless, since the uncanny feelings carry with it the impression that one is trapped forever within a realm of recurrence and duplication. The involuntary return also insidiously seeps into the rest of the novel. Dracula himself is perhaps the personification of this, since Van Helsing reveals that “in his life, his living life, he go over the Turkey frontier and attack his enemy on his own ground; he be beaten back, but did he stay? No! He come again, and again, and again” (Stoker 319). Dracula is the recurring nightmare that visits night after night, sometimes in various forms like a bat, mist, or a wolf, yet always subtly familiar and uncanny.
In the second section, Dracula is filled with various newspaper articles alongside the various letters, diary entries, and recordings made by multiple characters. Bram Stoker uses these disparate sources of information about the emergence of Dracula in England to create “a narrative in which the gaps between the narrating documents become as important as the sections of narrative proper” (Seed 68), since the state of confusion is the most relevant element connecting all the different threads. In “Textula,” Robert Ready argues that this part of the narrative structure creates a continuum of delay through its extended middle (Ready 280), which is achieved because the narrative is “continually interrupting sequence and disrupting point of view” (Ready 281). To Ready, the plot is nothing more than a series of delays, and he argues that the readers want to escape Dracula’s labyrinth of a middle but are unable to grasp a “contiguous narrative thread” (Ready 285) capable of showing them the way out of it. The characters are also stuck within this extended middle, since the true nature of Dracula is constantly concealed from them. Without an adequate explanation, they are left in a state of aporia. Even when they get an explanation, they are almost unable to believe it. Van Helsing points this out when he tells Dr. Seward that “‘it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain’” (Stoker 203), and is proven right when Seward expresses disbelief that “‘Lucy was bitten by such a bat; and that such a thing is here in London in the nineteenth century?’” (Stoker 204). Van Helsing is the only character who readily accepts the truth about vampires, but Dracula never features events from his point of view.
The refusal to provide the reader with a focal character that actually knows a bit about what is going on is another method for creating uncanniness. Multiperspectivity is typically used in a novel to provide the reader with an explanation that one character might not have access to. Instead, Stoker’s use of this form tosses the reader from one focal character to another while never offering any resolution. This creates a sense of groundlessness, which is crucial because “the uncanny emerges at the hinge between narrative frames” (Bernstein 203). This “hinge” is created when the points of view are not arranged in a sequence but are instead “parallel and superimposable” accounts that provide no illumination, “random echoes” that serve only to duplicate the confusion and uncertainty. The effect of the multiple points of view is compounded because the characters themselves are experiencing profound feelings of uncanniness, which is seen when “the uncanny cripples speech as the narrative staggers and stumbles, trips over itself” while it “breaks up language, leaving material remnants, in the presence of the strange” (Bernstein 205, 206). This phenomenon can be seen when Dr. Seward attempts to record the scene where Mina Harker asks Jonathan to read her burial service over her. First, Seward questions whether such an event could even be put into words by wondering “how can I – how could anyone – tell of that strange scene”, and eventually he admits that “I -I cannot go on – words -and - v-voice - fail m-me!” (Stoker 330). The presence of the strange, of the uncanny, renders him speechless.
This strange presence is a powerful manifestation when it displays “what is most intimately known and familiar” along with that which is “alien and threatening” because “such a blurring of boundaries is characteristic of those phenomena that give rise to uncanny fear” (Lyndenberg 1073). Lucy is this presence personified. She is loved by three of the men in the Crew of Light, the best friend of Mina, and a dutiful daughter. Yet a feeling of the uncanny begins to from when she starts sleepwalking, since sleeping, a necessary part of life, is rendered strange by activity. Her uncanniness grows until she is consumed by it when she becomes the living dead. This is uncanny enough, but this undead Lucy is also portrayed as the dark double of the living Lucy. The undead Lucy is a subtly unfamiliar copy, which Seward notes when he sees that she has “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” (Stoker 221). It is this similarity that creates such a violent reaction in the men. Though Dr. Seward is normally quite passive, he states that he could have killed her “with savage delight” after seeing those eyes. Even Van Helsing’s “iron nerve” failed him when he first encounters her clutching the child at the entrance to her tomb.
Uncanny motifs are also found within Dracula, most prominently in relation to writing. The presence of the text-within-the-text highlights the writing and tropes of mechanical reproduction that are present in the plot. Using these, Stoker emphasizes the indeterminacy and impersonal nature of writing and the self-reflexive nature of language itself to display the uncanny characteristics of subtle unfamiliarity, doubling, tropes of concealment, and an involuntary return to a given situation. Many scholars have written articles that focus on the role of writing in Dracula. For example, Erik Butler’s central claim in “Writing and Vampiric Contagion in Dracula” is that writing is the conduit that allows corrosive and archaic forces to seep into England. I am inclined to agree with him because the whole fiasco started when Dracula wrote a letter to the soliciting firm that Jonathan Harker was a junior partner in. Through this letter, Dracula was able to lure the unsuspecting man into his home and use him to compile several “forged and inauthentic documents” (Butler 14) that enable him to move to England. This is possible because writing is used to stand in for the actual presence of someone when that person wishes to relay information in a mediated way. On one hand, writing is a useful tool, but on the other, it carries with it an uncanny “uncertainty and indeterminacy” that allows it to mediate “between the personal and the impersonal” (Butler 14). Writing means that the sender and the receiver are always at least one step removed from direct contact with one another.
This mediation is emphasized right at the start of the novel in the opening note, which reveals that the elements of the narrative as being assembled after the events have already transpired. This arrangement is intended to serve a purpose, since the note assures us that “how these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them” (Stoker 28). Such an inclusion provides knowledge that serves to displace the reader from the events and simultaneously highlights its nature as a construct, making the readers aware that they are “inducted into Count Dracula lore by the insinuation of this invisible, or translated, stenography. This submerged writing is the modern, or mass cultural, cryptogram” (Wicke 471). The cryptogram contains the prefix “crypto,” which is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “concealed, not visible, not apparent.” Remembering the second definition of heimlich given to us by Freud, “that which is concealed and kept out of sight” (Freud 4), it is reasonable to conclude that this “submerged writing” is a manifestation of the uncanny.
At first, writing is seen as a tool that could help the Crew of Light conquer the uncanny menace. Part one depicts writing as a refuge when Jonathan Harker reports that “feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose” (Stoker 62). In the third section, the one Seed names “the discovery,” things begin to grow clearer. The writing of the characters becomes the central resource of information, and Dr. Seward recalls a conversation he had with Van Helsing, who “told me of a diary kept by Jonathan Harker when abroad, and gave me a typewritten copy of it, as also of Mrs. Harker’s diary at Whitby. ‘take these,’ he said, ‘and study them well. When I have returned you will be master of all the facts, and we can better enter into our inquisition” (Stoker 228). Mina also seizes upon the opportunity for knowledge that the written accounts present, proclaiming that “I shall read over some of these documents, and shall be better able to understand certain things” (Stoker 231). Furthermore, the random third-party narratives inserted chaotically in part two prove to have a purpose when Mina remarks that she remembers “how much ‘The Dailygraph’ and ‘The Whitby Gazette,’ of which I had made cuttings, helped us to understand the terrible events at Whitby when Count Dracula landed” (Stoker 233). Writing appears to have armed the protagonists with the knowledge needed to defeat Dracula, and “this is crucial” Seed points out, because “as the gaps between individual accounts close, so Dracula becomes better known, better defined, and therefore the easier to resist” (Seed 73-4). By section four, “the formal experimentation of the novel is exterminated” (Lasa 11) and the gaps between their accounts are superseded by a more traditional shift in perspective. The extended middle is finally abolished due to “the resolving action that the assembling of information facilitates” and, like Lasa states, is “narrated collectively” (Seed 74). With this cohesion, the uncanny should disappear at the same time as the repetition and doubling.
However, several scholars (Berthin, Wicke, Butler, Hustis, and Shah) argue that the duplication and mass distribution of these written accounts aggravate, rather than alleviate, the problem. I also argue that the mechanical reproduction of these accounts perpetuates the uncanny, since uncanny feelings are still experienced after the narrative becomes cohesive. In “Secretions and Secretaries: The Secret of Dracula,” Christine Berthin examines the ways in which communication and textuality in Dracula generates interference rather than constructing a valid resource for the expression and constitution of the characters’ sense of self. “Writing” Berthin states, “will always be both containing and revealing” (109). Although the writing of the self through diary entries is supposed to be a way to directly access the individual, the events in Dracula are not narrated directly. Instead, they are “transcribed” (Berthin 112). The result of this transcription is that the diary entries in Dracula invariably “duplicate one another, like a perverse form of copying” (Berthin 120). This form of copying mirrors the copying Mina does using manifold, creating “three copies of the diary, just as I had done with all the rest” (Stoker 233). In this way, Dracula heralds the advent of a novel that detaches the reader from “any central consciousness, a text produced and arranged mechanically… the narrative produces itself as it insists on the means of its own production” (Berthin 113). Berthin attributes the cause of this interference to the typewriter, a source of mechanical reproduction that undermines the representational power of language. The typewriter transcribes rather than communicates the original source, cutting us off from it.
In “Counterfeit Castles,” Raj Shah also argues that the writing in the novel “is the offspring of mechanical reproduction” (Shah 441) and that it creates an additional level of mediation between the original and the receiver. Like Butler, Shah agrees that writing itself is mediated, since “handwritten signs are also themselves simulacral signifiers as they attempt to stand in for the real experience itself, that which cannot be inscribed” and that “something is lost in every symbolization-formalization” (Shah 431). He also compares Dracula himself to writing, arguing that Dracula can “transcend the ordinates of time and space” (Shah 431) just like the written word can. This is another reason that writing is uncanny: it often serves as an immortal mark for a mortal person, preserving their thoughts long after the original carrier is dead. It isn’t the direct thoughts of that carrier, but an echo that is familiar yet subtly different from them.
The characters try to combat the uncanny indeterminacy that Dracula brings in his wake by bearing witness to the events via writing, but they ultimately fail when they also engage in duplication. The transcription and mass distribution of the events cuts the language from “its originary source” and ensures that “there is no subject behind writing” (Berthin 110). Consequentially, the mechanical reproduction undermines the power of the personal statement. The characters realize this in the note at the conclusion of the novel, when they “were struck with the fact that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic document; nothing but a mass of typewriting" (Stoker 371). The “mass of typewriting” is the double of their experience, an experience that has become, like the events within it, uncanny.
At the conclusion of the examination, we find that the uncanny, the rather ambiguous and often slippery concept popularized by Sigmund Freud, is clearly prominent in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Stoker’s inclusion of subtle unfamiliarity through characters like Lucy, the doubling of narrative voices, writing depicted as a perpetuator of mediation and mechanical reproduction, and a parallel structure depicting an involuntary return to a given situation all are testaments to the role that the uncanny has in this novel. Though the specific analysis of the uncanny has not been explicitly covered in previous writings, the link between the discussions about the role of writing in Dracula and the examinations made into the inclusion of the uncanny in narrative is a strong one. The notion of the occurrence of the uncanny in Dracula is, like the uncanny itself, an argument that comes to light when examined; It is seemingly unfamiliar, yet once it is identified, it is revealed as something long known.
Works Cited
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Biography
Kaylea van Vliet is a graduate student at California State University, Fullerton. Her areas of focus include critical theory, modernism, and existentialism, as she is interested in exploring the relationship between philosophy and literature.
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