Dracula

Like Frankenstein, Dracula has been glamorized by Hollywood, so once again I've been shocked when I read the literally description of the legendary vampire. Here are my thoughts of what I expected him to look like: tall, dark well quaffed hair, handsome face, lean, well dressed,young, and very suave.

This is what Dracula actually looks like: "His face was a strong-a very strong-aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty doomed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, cruel-looking, with particularly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years" (23) "For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremly pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin...The backs of his hands had seemed rather white and fine; but seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather coarse-broad, with squat fingers...there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me (24).

That said Dracula does not sound like the seductive killer that people have come to know. (I'm on team Edward, but I don't read Twilight, Rob Pattinson is just really attractive lol)

What I find bizarre though is that the novel begins with a male character that Dracula is trying keep imprisoned. Everything that I previusly knew about vampires, at least the males, was that they seduce women. They turn on the charm to get the girls pretty little necks. In the first few chapters all I see is Dracula trying to "seduce" Jonathan Harker with his hospitality, status in life and knowledge of history. I get that creepy old guy pedophile vibe from Dracula, especially when he says "This man belongs to me!" and "Yes, I can too love; you yourselves can tell it from the past!(43). So why is there this underlying homoerotic feeling coming from Dracula? I don't know, to be honest. I know that latter on there are female victims, but opening sets the tone of this uncanny story of a monster.