In the following essay, MacGillivray exposes weakness in Stoker's characterization in Dracula but maintains nevertheless that the work has serious literary merit.
Bram Stoker's Dracula has never been much praised for its literary merits. Yet this horror novel, first published in May 1897, survives today, after more than seventy years of popularity, as one of the little group of English language books from the nineties still read by more than scholars. Because of the succession of horror films based on it, whether Dracula would have achieved this success solely through its intrinsic merits is uncertain. Certainly without the films it is hard to believe that Dracula would be one of the few proper names from novels to have become a household word, known even to people who have never heard of the novel. Stoker created a.....
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