I read _Dracula_ afterwards, and I think this perspective is 100% correct, and perhaps the single largest theme from Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ which has been thrown out by successors.
(For fellow Gene Wolfe fans: I was reading up on this topic earlier because of "Suzanne Delage", where I interpret (https://gwern.net/suzanne-delage) as an inversion of _Dracula_ - in "Suzanne Delage", the protagonist & his allies are defeated by Dracula due to a lack of coordination/technology, in contrast to the successful protagonists of _Dracula_.)
A lot of vampire fiction includes themes about technology vs the supernatural, Anne Rice especially has the vampires being overwhelmed by the new world. The focus (not so much in Ann Rice books) can be more on more action oriented technology (trains and gadgets) rather than the modern weapons of a detective though. Weird steam-punk gun gadgets (even in a modern setting like Dusk to Dawn) are a common and lazy example of these. I think a wacky invention is a shorthand to the audience for "technology".
A modern Dracula with detective themes could use a "hacker" to put together the kind of digital trail that a modern police officer would follow, so we understand that checking a person's Facebook page is modern and high tech.
Yes, that's the opposite of _Dracula_, though. Dracula isn't overwhelmed by the modern world, he's defeated by it. That's not the same thing. He's no Lestat in _Interview_, driven to catatonia by change.*
Dracula loves the modern world (particularly with its lack of Catholicism & peasant superstitions about how to fight vampires). He is, in fact, an enthusiast for modernity and England, an anglophile otaku, you might say, with a library stuffed full of English books & periodicals he reads obsessively: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_2
Further, he is a dark counterpart to Van Helsing in that throughout the novel, he is 'waking up', and scientifically experimenting in learning how to use his vampiric powers effectively in the modern context, and Van Helsing tells us that Dracula was only days away from becoming invincible, after discovering that he is allowed to transport his own coffin-soil and hide them away in places that only Dracula's fog or animal forms could ever reach: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_23 (Rather than depending on humans, who keep receipts and addresses, and happily reveal the locations of all of the coffins to the protagonists.)
It is only by the skin of their teeth that they are able to destroy his backups before he has figured out how to move & hide them, and reduce him to a single backup and force him to flee to Transylvania before he finishes his 'hard takeoff vampire Singularity', if you will.
* yes, I know Rice retconned this for her narrative convenience so she could churn out sequel after sequel. Nevertheless.
> Anne Rice especially has the vampires being overwhelmed by the new world.
I think the point Rice makes in the books I have read is that the vampires are not equally overwhelmed. The Vampire Lestat is about capital-P Progress even more explicitly than Dracula. The protagonist, Lestat, is influenced by the Age of Reason he is born into. He witnesses the end of the old ways in the French Revolution. All of it prepares him for the future. This is in contrast to the younger Louis and the older Armand, who hang on to the past.
The introduction to that book is memorable for being an over-the-top paean to its time. Lestat is not overwhelmed; he loves the 1980s.
Quote:
> As I roamed the streets of New Orleans in 1984 this is what I beheld:
> The dark dreary industrial world that I'd gone to sleep on had burnt itself out finally, and the old bourgeois prudery and conformity had lost their hold on the American mind.
> People were adventurous and erotic again the way they'd been in the old days, before the great middle-class revolutions of the late 1700s. They even looked the way they had in those times.
The men didn't wear the Sam Spade uniform of shirt, tie, gray suit, and gray hat any longer. Once again, they costumed themselves in velvet and silk and brilliant colors if they felt like it. They did not have to clip their hair like Roman soldiers anymore; they wore it any length they desired.
And the women-ah, the women were glorious, naked in the spring warmth as they'd been under the Egyptian pharaohs, in skimpy short skirts and tunic like dresses, or wearing men's pants and shirts skintight over their curvaceous bodies if they pleased. They painted, and decked themselves out in gold and silver, even to walk to the grocery store. Or they went fresh scrubbed and without ornament-it didn't matter. They curled their hair like Marie Antoinette or cut it off or let it blow free.
> For the first time in history, perhaps, they were as strong and as interesting as men.
> And these were the common people of America. Not just the rich who've always achieved a certain androgyny, a certain joie de vivre that the middle-class revolutionaries called decadence in the past.
> The old aristocratic sensuality now belonged to everybody. It was wed to the promises of the middle-class revolution, and all people had a right to love and to luxury and to graceful things.
it's been a few years since I've read through Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles but I don't recall them getting overwhelmed by the "new world".
What I recall is that vampires who don't occasionally "go to sleep" never make it long enough to become truly strong. In essence, they burn out. Almost as if the world becomes so boring that they must sleep for centuries so they can wake up and find the new world _invigorating_ rather than overwhelming.
In her books, both the original vampires did this, as did Lestat.
It’s really Dracula vs Modernity. There’s nothing in the blog post that justifies the usage of the “Catholic” epithet. London is the seat of Anglican faith after all and using type writers and records are secular endeavors.
But the sacramentals used against him are Catholic (and in Romania Orthodox).
I didn't read all of it, but the first two pages of [1] demonstrate how the book is "Catholic" as opposed to Anglican, with the protagonist feeling awkward, as an Anglican, at the icons and crucifixes used as (in the book effective) protection.
Keep in mind, for the purposes of the book Catholicism and Orthodoxy can be considered the same as we both believe in icons, consecrated sacraments, apostolic succession, transubstination, etc
But Dracula was defeated by being decapitated and stabbed in the heart. I do hope religion isn't claiming those as their own!
FWIW, I like the concept in the book 'I Am Legend' where the vampires are repelled by religious symbols that are meaningful to them, rather than any religion in particular.
In Blindsight, vampires have epilepsy triggered by right angles. That explains both the aversion to crosses and the inability to go through a door uninvited.
In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_(2020_TV_series) the writers decided to basically write religion out of the Dracula story, and made it that he is afraid of sunlight, and the only reason he cowers from the big bronze cross is because it is reflecting sunlight at him.
I enjoyed Dracula's origin in the "Dracula 2000" film; not going to say what it is to avoid spoilers, but it's very religion-centric and explains in great detail why Dracula is affected by the things he's affected by.
That's really splitting hairs. Crucifixes, holy water, and communion wafers are symbols from formal, organized Christianity, of which Catholicism is the most prominent example.
It's also a sneaky, underhanded way to make a point. The shell game of argument tactics.
> Bram Stoker died in April 1912: wonder what he might have made of the spectacle of Progress known as World War One, the applications of all that beloved industry, the rational pursuit of rational ends with well-engineered (hence, rational) means, the wholesale destruction of quaint rural culture and peoples, the royal connections by blood among the crowned heads of so many of the contending parties, to say little or nothing of the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
This reminds me of Heinrich Böll's At the Bridge (An der Brücke), published 1949. Its protagonist makes his own attempt to efface the legibility to technological modernity of his beloved, but as Böll had briefly worked as a statistician before turning to writing, the author was surely aware of the futility, or at least the limits, of his character's effort!
Thank you for introducing me to "Suzanne Delage," I am a Gene Wolfe fan but was unaware of this story until now. I found your interpretation incredibly convincing, too.
I read _Dracula_ afterwards, and I think this perspective is 100% correct, and perhaps the single largest theme from Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ which has been thrown out by successors.
(For fellow Gene Wolfe fans: I was reading up on this topic earlier because of "Suzanne Delage", where I interpret (https://gwern.net/suzanne-delage) as an inversion of _Dracula_ - in "Suzanne Delage", the protagonist & his allies are defeated by Dracula due to a lack of coordination/technology, in contrast to the successful protagonists of _Dracula_.)