Dracula has been interpreted in many different ways since it was published in 1897, and these days it’s sexual undertones that attract attention. However, as Richard argues, in the 18th and 19th centuries, writers and artists saw capitalism as a vampire sucking the blood of the working classes – and in the novel, it’s the peasants and workers who first understand the count’s true nature. Could thoughts of social class have been far from readers’ minds in the 1890s?

“Yes they could!” reply Adelle and Claire, who believe the book has next to nothing to do with class or politics. To be fair, Adelle has some authority here, as she played the lead role in her school’s production of a Dracula musical when she was nine, and sings a song on the podcast to prove it. (Yes, Dracula does seem an odd choice for a junior school play, but this was Tadcaster, where they do things differently.)

The episode was recorded at the Lit Fest in Whitby, where Stoker set much of the novel. In it, Adelle, the hosts and the audience debate the book’s meaning, its cast of eccentrics and monsters, and its place in Whitby history. In the end, after the bloody struggle ends with dawn peeping over the tombstones, the time comes to decide whether or not it deserves a place in the Working Class Library. Who will prevail? Tune in to find out.

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Books and authors mentioned

Beowulf

Isabella Bird – The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither

Terry Eagleton – “Allergic to Depths” (London Review of Books, 18 March 1999)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust

Charles Maturin – Melmoth the Wanderer

Stephenie Meyer – the Twilight series

John William Polidori – The Vampyre

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla

Bram Stoker – The Snake’s Pass, The Watter’s Mou’, The Shoulder of Shasta, The Lair of the White Worm

Adelle Stripe – Base Notes: The Scents of a Life, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure

William Wilkinson – An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, with Transylvania

W. B. Yeats – Collected Poems

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