The Lair of the White Worm / Bram Stoker

 

The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my selection for the birthday challenge of the Dead Writers Society, as Stoker was born in November. Bram Stoker was only 64 when he wrote this, his final novel. Somehow it feels like the writing of a much older or less capable author.

The basic idea of the story is apparently built upon the legend of the Lambton worm. Now those of us who have read Tolkien will realize that worm = dragon, perhaps not self evident to all modern readers. So the title gives us a strong hint of what's coming. Unlike his earlier work, Stoker seems to have abandoned any attempt to be subtle. He signals blatantly what is ahead when his protagonist, Adam Salton, buys himself a mongoose to accompany him on his exploration of the English countryside. Being an Australian, invited to England by his great-uncle, he manages to step outside the English class system, which he displays by fixing a neighbour's carriage on the road.

The neighbour, Arabella March, is described as a sinuous beauty, always dressed in white. Adam encounters her on one of his neighbourhood walks and loses control of his pet mongoose, which attacks Ms. March in the same way it launches itself at snakes. There is no mystery here. The biggest surprise would be if Arabella wasn't supernaturally linked to the White Worm of legend. What is odd is that her strange connections seem to provide no material benefits; she is hunting for a wealthy husband to deal with her growing debts. The object of her hunt is the hereditary aristocrat in the vicinity, Edgar Caswell, who seems to be as loathsome as Arabella is. He is a narcissist before that psychiatric diagnosis is used. For some unexplained reason, he is desirous of dominating Lilla, a young woman on a nearby farm. Adam Salton is offended by this, as he has an eye on Lilla's cousin, Mimi, and feels protective of both of them. I ended up wondering how Adam et al. were going to deal with the White Worm, rather than being perplexed by the mysteriousness of the situation. It seems to me that a great deal more tension could have been created with a more judicious doling out of the clues.

Stoker makes good use of Biblical symbolism, naming his main character Adam and setting him up against a woman/snake. Shades of the Garden of Eden! Edgar Caswell gets his chance to fill Satan's role, providing a strange motivation for most of his incomprehensible actions. He gives his villain speech on the top of his tower during a powerful thunderstorm.

I found that misunderstanding science is nothing new, as Stoker has both Adam and Sir Nathaniel spouting some seriously inaccurate versions of evolution. A long lived creature can adapt in behaviour, but not decrease in size or change its basic intelligence. One wonders if Stoker believed this or if he just let his characters run amok. Also notable to me was the attitude to the one African in the book, that he was subhuman. It reminded me of Tarzan of the Apes, which I read earlier this year and which was published the year after this one.



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