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I caught flu and stayed in my room shivering and reading Dracula — for me it began to work both as a supernatural story and a commentary on fear — fear of foreigners with strange appetites entering communities, blurring boundaries, and a different kind of monstrosity, a secret one, all the more dangerous for not being immediately visible, rather identified by signs.
Basically I think some fears can be good cloaks for other ones—people can read Dracula and think, ugh, oh no, horrible, the teeth, the blood, the smell of the grave, and stop there, or the story can mean more and reflect things about the mind that finds it dreadful.
"Author Helen Oyeyemi, quoted in this review of her horror novel White is for Witching.
