Dracula Week '22
#4 Unreliable Narrators & Stake Drivers
I love epistolary fiction. Reading the letters, journals, diaries, and newspaper clippings allows me a deeper connection to the writer/character. I learned the habit from doing research for my historical fiction novels. I also really love special collection departments and their librarians. Special collections librarians are amazing sources of information and always ready to help a writer or student with research. Another topic for another day.
Consequently, I am drawn to collecting and reading the diaries and letters of published authors. I enjoy reading about what was going on in their lives and the world when they worked on a particular book. I’m currently rereading A Writer’s Diary written by Virginia Woolf and published/edited by her husband after she died. I love Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters by John Steinbeck and have just started reading Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I haunt used book sales for the older versions of these kinds of books because there is less editorial commentary than there is in contemporary reprints of such works. I like to come to my own conclusions.
This passion partially explains why I annually reread Dracula by Bram Stoker. I’m not so enamored of vampire literature. It’s the journals, letters, and newspaper clippings that Stoker uses as a narrative technique that draw me to the book. I’m more interested in the style and conventions he chose to tell the story with over the romanticism of vampiric folklore. While the diaries and journals of published authors are written in their own hand, it’s a straightforward connection to a new perspective on their published works. In Stoker’s case with Dracula, he chose one of the most difficult literary conventions. The unreliable narrator.
The unreliable narrator in literature is exactly what it says: a character telling a story, but you shouldn’t trust everything that character says. And what better way to stay true to a character’s viewpoint (and their own opinions about themselves and the story’s actions) than explaining the plot through their fictitious accounts—their diaries?
Some people tell the truth in their personal writings. Others are prone to embellishments. Everyone expresses an opinion about what happened. That’s called reflective writing. It is cathartic and authentic, written from the heart and emotions but not always from the intellect or common sense. Personal writing is for the writer at the time, although they generally have a suspicion that someone will read their journals after the holder of the pen has died. I write notes in my journals all the time to my children and grandchild for them to read long after I’m on my way to whatever is next after this part of my karmic journey.
The other interesting problem Stoker chose is that because of the “personal” writings used to tell the story, the author himself is forbidden to provide narrative comments on what the characters are saying and doing. He can’t narrate or explain anything in his own book because he can’t interfere with what the characters are writing then doing. He must stand back, relay the writing and deeds, then leave it to the reader to conclude as they will. Until you realize Stoker IS offering narrative commentary because he is the one writing the journals of his characters!
Each character in Dracula is unreliable because they have personal agendas that Stoker wants the reader to recognize-social justice, high morality, sexual repression, and the greater good of society. They each wish for a position in life other than what they are shackled to. They don’t want to be who they are and feel compelled to lash out at something they consider evil to assuage their own unhappiness. Happens all the time. However, most unhappy people complain in their journals and letters then go out into the world and act as normal as possible even if they secretly want to drive a stake through the heart of the devil. That’s what fiction is for.