AHC: Jane Austen's *Dracula*

David T

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OK, let's imagine Jane Austen as the author of Dracula. True, William Wilkinson's An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia https://books.google.com/books?id=RogMAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover (from which Stoker apparently got his knowledge of the Voivode and of the word "Dracula"[1]) was not published until 1820, and Jane Austen died in 1817; but we can have her live a few more years..

("Wickham, in turn, bears a passing resemblance to Lord Ruthven in Polidori's Byron rip-off: They both feed on virgins and have a penchant for disastrous gambling, a tendency Regina Jeffers makes even more monstrous in her fiendish version of Pride and Prejudice. Janet Mullany, author of the forthcoming Immortal Jane Austen, concurs: "There are characters in Austen's novels who are clearly vampires—Willoughby, the Crawfords, and Wickham," she revealed in an interview. "They exploit and feed off others, they're amoral and handsome and they wreak havoc. So obviously Austen knew about vampires as well as sex."" https://www.chronicle.com/article/See-Jane-Bite/64585)

[1] " Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. The Wallachians were, at that time, as they are at present, used to give this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous either by courage, cruel actions, or cunning." https://books.google.com/books?pg=P...eQ&id=RogMAQAAMAAJ&ots=JKN1lXiRU0&output=text
 

alexmilman

David T said:
View attachment 519641

OK, let's imagine Jane Austen as the author of Dracula. True, William Wilkinson's An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia https://books.google.com/books?id=RogMAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover (from which Stoker apparently got his knowledge of the Voivode and of the word "Dracula"[1]) was not published until 1820, and Jane Austen died in 1817; but we can have her live a few more years..

("Wickham, in turn, bears a passing resemblance to Lord Ruthven in Polidori's Byron rip-off: They both feed on virgins and have a penchant for disastrous gambling, a tendency Regina Jeffers makes even more monstrous in her fiendish version of Pride and Prejudice. Janet Mullany, author of the forthcoming Immortal Jane Austen, concurs: "There are characters in Austen's novels who are clearly vampires—Willoughby, the Crawfords, and Wickham," she revealed in an interview. "They exploit and feed off others, they're amoral and handsome and they wreak havoc. So obviously Austen knew about vampires as well as sex."" https://www.chronicle.com/article/See-Jane-Bite/64585)

[1] " Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. The Wallachians were, at that time, as they are at present, used to give this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous either by courage, cruel actions, or cunning." https://books.google.com/books?pg=P...eQ&id=RogMAQAAMAAJ&ots=JKN1lXiRU0&output=text
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Wow! Didn’t he know that it actually means “Dragon” as in “Order of Dragon” with which Vlad II, father of the Impaler, had been awarded and which became a sobriquet? Well, this is a rhetorical question. 😀
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

My immediate thought is that Austen's Dracula would be a good deal sexier than Stoker's, and the story would be a good deal more satirical.
 

David T

alexmilman said:
Wow! Didn’t he know that it actually means “Dragon” as in “Order of Dragon” with which Vlad II, father of the Impaler, had been awarded and which became a sobriquet? Well, this is a rhetorical question. 😀
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Apparently "Dracul" is used in modern Romanian to refer to the devil and this may have misled Wilkinson.

About Stoker and Wilkinson, , see my post at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ioning-of-hungary.481721/page-2#post-20079273:

***

BTW, it has been persuasively (at least to me) argued by Elizabeth Miller that Stoker's Dracula was *not* based on the historical Vlad Tepes, that probably all Stoker knew about the Voivode was from *An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia *(1820) by William Wilkinson, in which " The name “Dracula” appears just three times, two of which more accurately refer to the father (Vlad Dracul). What attracted Stoker was a footnote attached to the third occurrence: “Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. The Wallachians were, at that time, as they are at present, used to give this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous either by courage, cruel actions, or cunning” (19). That Stoker considered this important is evident in that he copied into his own notes “DRACULA in Wallachian language means DEVIL.” The three references to “Dracula” in Wilkinson’s text, along with the footnote, are the only occurrences of the name in all of the sources that we know that Stoker consulted.

"Stoker’s debt to Wilkinson is generally acknowledged, but a number of points are often overlooked: Wilkinson refers only to “Dracula” and “Voïvode,” never “Vlad,” never “Vlad Tepes” or “the Impaler”; furthermore there are no specific references to his atrocities. It is no mere co-incidence that the same paucity of information applies to the text of Dracula. Yet the popular theory is that Stoker knew much more than what he read in Wilkinson; that his major sources were the Hungarian professor Arminius Vambéry, and readings in the British Museum." She says that while Vambery and Stoker did have a couple of conversations, there is no evidence that Dracula came up in them, and that Stoker probably did not even know that the Voivode Dracula was named Vlad. "Another consequence of the insistence on connecting the two Draculas is the temptation to criticize Stoker for inaccurate “history.” Why, some ask, did he make Dracula a Transylvanian Count rather than a Wallachian Voivode? Why was his castle situated in the Borgo Pass instead of at Poenari? Why is Count Dracula a “boyar,” a member of the nobility which Vlad continuously struggled with? Why does Stoker make Dracula a “Szekely,” descended from Attila the Hun, when the real Dracula was a Wallachian of the Basarab family? There is a very simple answer to these questions: Vlad Tepes is Vlad Tepes, while Count Dracula is Count Dracula." http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/divorce.html
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

For completeness, Wilkinson's three references to Dracula:
  • Page 17: Wallachia continued to pay [the tribute] until the year 1444; when Ladislas, King of Hungary, preparing to make war against the Turks, engaged the Voivode Dracula to form an alliance with him. The Hungarian troops marched through the principality, and were joined by four thousand Wallachians under the command of Dracula's son.
  • Page 19: Their Voivode, also named Dracula, did not remain satisfied with mere prudent measures of defence: with an army he crossed the Danube and attacked the few Turkish troops that were stationed in his neighbourhood; but this attempt, like those of his predecessors was only attempted with momentary success.
  • Page 19 [Footnote]: Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. The Wallachians were, at that time, as they are at present, used to give this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous either by courage, cruel actions, or cunning.
 
Mr_Fanboy

Mr_Fanboy

How significant a role did vampires play in American and Britishpopular culture before the publication of Stoker's Dracula?

I am not an Austen expert, so I cannot really speak to how she would have written such a novel, but assuming that she popularizes the concept of vampires in the English-speaking world, it would be interesting to see how other authors of the era would tackle the subject - particularly Edgar Allan Poe.
 
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Jared

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good bulb of garlic, must not want a vampiric visitor."
- Famous opening line from Jane Austen's Dracula and Deniability
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

Mr_Fanboy said:
How significant a role did vampires play in American popular culture before the publication of Stoker's Dracula?

I am not an Austen expert, so I cannot really speak to how she would have written such a novel, but assuming that she popularizes the concept of vampires, it would be interesting to see how other authors of the era would tackle the subject - particularly Edgar Allan Poe.
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Vampires existed in popular culture before Dracula. The Vampyre (1819), by Polidori, for a start, and Carmilla (1872), by Le Fanu. The latter started the lesbian vampire sub-genre, twenty-five years before Dracula.

Going further back, there was the (very popular) Treatise on Vampires and Revenants, by Augustin Calmet (1751). This was translated into English in 1850 or so by Reverend Henry Christmas. Calmet, a Benedictine monk, is just chronicling folk traditions - he doesn't believe it. Christmas is just translating it to have a laugh at those primitive Catholic hicks on the Continent.

(Calmet's reasoning for rejecting vampires is hilarious to modern eyes. He argues that only God can resurrect someone, and the alleged cases of vampirism are unlike documented biblical cases of resurrection. Therefore, these alleged cases of vampirism are untrue).
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

I've just finished reading Wilkinson (the entire book), and let's just say that its connection with Stoker's Dracula is pretty minimal beyond that single footnote. Wilkinson, who was British Consul, gives a seriously unflattering portrait of that part of the world, takes time out to bash gypsies, and appends a gigantic essay on the Ottoman military structure, as translated out of Turkish by a friend of his. The essay takes up a third of the book.
 

Kaze

Banned
Well.... Have you read "Selene - the Vampire City" by Paul Féval ? In the novel - it has one of the famous Gothic horror writers ( Ann Radcliffe ) as a vampire hunter... but at the last minute a mysterious man on a white horse saves the day -> none other than Lord Wellington fresh from the Battle of Waterloo.

Jane Austin makes many mentions of Lord Wellington in her writing - if I did not know better, Jane wanted into Wellington's pants! So... you could have her do a Selene thing where her self-insert DOES get into Wellington's pants (or the reasonable look-alike)
 
Brita

Brita

Maeglin said:
Vampires existed in popular culture before Dracula. The Vampyre (1819), by Polidori, for a start, and Carmilla (1872), by Le Fanu. The latter started the lesbian vampire sub-genre, twenty-five years before Dracula.

Going further back, there was the (very popular) Treatise on Vampires and Revenants, by Augustin Calmet (1751). This was translated into English in 1850 or so by Reverend Henry Christmas. Calmet, a Benedictine monk, is just chronicling folk traditions - he doesn't believe it. Christmas is just translating it to have a laugh at those primitive Catholic hicks on the Continent.

(Calmet's reasoning for rejecting vampires is hilarious to modern eyes. He argues that only God can resurrect someone, and the alleged cases of vampirism are unlike documented biblical cases of resurrection. Therefore, these alleged cases of vampirism are untrue).
Click to expand...
Kaze said:
Well.... Have you read "Selene - the Vampire City" by Paul Féval ? In the novel - it has one of the famous Gothic horror writers ( Ann Radcliffe ) as a vampire hunter... but at the last minute a mysterious man on a white horse saves the day -> none other than Lord Wellington fresh from the Battle of Waterloo.

Jane Austin makes many mentions of Lord Wellington in her writing - if I did not know better, Jane wanted into Wellington's pants! So... you could have her do a Selene thing where her self-insert DOES get into Wellington's pants (or the reasonable look-alike)
Click to expand...

There were several short stories about vampires in France in the early 19th century.

If Jane Austen spoke French fluently enough to read them or if her cousin Eliza de Feuillide could translate them for her, then why not? But we'd need a POD in the 1810s so they both live longer.
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

Brita said:
If Jane Austen spoke French fluently enough to read them or if her cousin Eliza de Feuillide could translate them for her, then why not? But we'd need a POD in the 1810s so they both live longer.
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Calmet's 1751 Treatise was in French. That'd be your starting point.
 
DanMcCollum

DanMcCollum

Mr_Fanboy said:
How significant a role did vampires play in American and Britishpopular culture before the publication of Stoker's Dracula?

I am not an Austen expert, so I cannot really speak to how she would have written such a novel, but assuming that she popularizes the concept of vampires in the English-speaking world, it would be interesting to see how other authors of the era would tackle the subject - particularly Edgar Allan Poe.
Click to expand...

Vampires first really gain prominence in the English speaking world, to my understanding, following the early 18th century case of Peter Blagovic, a Serbian peasant that was suspected of being a vampire by his neighbors and who was exhumed and disposed of as the local folklore demanded. His case wasn't anything unusual, save for the fact that an Austrian Official was in the village, witnessed the incidents, and wrote extensively about them. These reports ended up sparking a fascinating with vampires in Western Europe after translations became available.

This lead to the rise of the Vampire as a figure of fiction, and lead to the writting and publication of such pre-Dracula vampire stories as Camilla, Varney the Vampire, and Polidori's The Vampyr. There are, of course more - but Vampire was a pretty well known creature in fiction and folklore inthe years prior to Bram Stoker's tale being published.
 

M79

*Vampires appeared in British and American culture before Stoker, Native American influences notwithstanding

*Attila could have enough descendants running around today to make a claim of Dracula as one of them alin to a claim as descendant of Charlemagne or Genghis Khan

*Austen likely writes a stronger and more complex Dracula character that might be more 'fallen knight' than 'predator by design' - very similar to a 1992 Gary Oldham Dracula

*Dracula's appearance during the Napoleonic Wars could make for any number of interesting plotlines, perhaps that has something to do with why he believes a move to London or its environs is somehow good for him

*Stone Castle or better yet Hever Castle in westernmost Kent could serve as great 'Carfax equivalents' or Warwick Castle (or the Richard III chuldhood home with the very tall walls and maze-like layout whose name escapes me) could be relocated to the London area as well.

*Potentially a much better book overall that might not be published until after her death
 
Brita

Brita

Wouldn't the modern representation of vampires ITTL be a little different from the OTL one? I heard ours owes a lot to Stoker's Dracula, for instance vampires having fangs or no shadow/reflection in mirrors. The last two sometimes appear in folklore but it isn't a typically vampire trait.
 

Kellan Sullivan

Brita said:
Wouldn't the modern representation of vampires ITTL be a little different from the OTL one? I heard ours owes a lot to Stoker's Dracula, for instance vampires having fangs or no shadow/reflection in mirrors. The last two sometimes appear in folklore but it isn't a typically vampire trait.
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The high-collared cloak was also a Stoker invention (admittedly, its not as common even among the older vampires in fiction - the old guys in the Underworld series, or those "ancient" ones, Caius etc in the Twilight* series, although there the "enforcers" are described as wearing long cloaks IIRC).

*pretty sure that even Jane (writing at a time when women had less rights than today) could do SOMETHING/ANYTHING better with vampires than Meyer's overly-cloying attempt. Her heroines at least have brains FWIR, they don't sit around obsessing over/waiting for a sparkly idiot to save them
 
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