Conclusion

The ending disappointed me a bit. Not only was it unexpected for me that it was so easy for them to get rid of Dracula, but it seemed too cliche for my liking. They killed him and all got happily married and lived happily ever after. But don't they bear some scars or emotional hardships from what they went through? Or they just fall back into their previous stages in life before any of this happened? Mina reverts to the perfect example of Victorian womanhood she was, no longer infused with any evil whatsoever, and most of the men that weren't already paired up found wives and moved on with their lives unscathed, (even Arthur Holmwood, whose fiance turned into a vampire and required his assistance in driving a stake through her heart as well as further mutilation of her corpse). It all seemed unrealistic to me (granted the story is about monsters and it is already unrealistic). I just feel like the way the plot details were wrapped up and a big ribbon plopped on top of them was disappointing and too similar to the ending of a fairy tale, which Dracula definitely was not.

As a whole, though, I enjoyed the novel. The overall feel I received of Victorian England was satisfying. Christine Ferguson discusses the culture and Victorian context more in depth in her article at http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/journals/elh/v071/71.1ferguson.html. The roles women and men were 'supposed' to play in that time period brought out the Victorian culture that I sought after learning about when I began reading this book. An article by Eric Kwan-Wai Yu sums up some more of the main themes and implications of the novel in detail; the link is http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/journal/texas_studies_in_literature_and_language/v048/48.2yu.html .

My expectations for Dracula himself and his coherence with the common image of Dracula I was used to hearing about were matched for the most part, although I did expect him to put up more of a fight at the end/throughout the novel. He didn't come off as the all-powerful being he was made out to be in the stories I'd heard. I guess the good guys finish first in this case.