(Mem., get recipe for this also)
page 10
A large part of this novel has been about the increasing horror Jonathan Harker has felt while staying with Count Dracula at his gothic castle. One of the more interesting things to note, though, is the undercurrent of food talk that permeates the novel. This piqued my interest as it seems with many pieces of media that include “monsters” that have different tastes in food, an emphasis is put on the magic of the culinary arts.
The dishes that Harker mentions in the beginning of the novel are nothing special, simple meals that he can find in the countries he’s traveling in. What’s interesting is that we know the person he will soon be staying with has a penchant for human blood.
Take for instance the movie Fresh and the NBC show Hannibal which both feature cannibalism. Both pieces of media are aware that their main characters have an unorthodox taste in food which they tend to highlight in montages of cooking and preparing of meals. However, the real horror belies in knowing what is in the food. The meatball above is liver (or kidney) and the piece of meat to the right is a leg.
The presentation of the food is beautiful and some of the dishes even look edible (Hannibal has an entire cookbook dedicated to the show and it’s dishes but human free). For Dracula, though, the horror comes knowing that the person who is relishing in the food now, will become the food later.
All of her commonplace books are literally so beautiful. They are all so organized and have unique titles for each entry. My favorite entry she had was Entry 10: Food as a Vehicle for Horror. It gives an important view on Dracula that I have not seen anyone else talk about. Food is a very important part of culture and I think it is an important influence for writers in the 1800s. I love how she not only talks about what happened in the book but then always connects it to another form of media. Here, she talks about a modern television show but she relates some other aspects to other things going on in the world. It really allows us to better understand and relate. I really love all the pictures she adds and how she highlights certain sentences that are important.