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The Snake's Pass: A Critical Edition (Irish Studies), by Bram Stoker
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In 1890, The Snake's Pass was published in serialized form in the periodical The People. It is the story of Arthur Severn, an Englishman who has inherited wealth and a title through an aunt who took him under her wing to the exclusion of closer relations. His inheritance includes land in Ireland, and now that he is a man of leisure, he decides to tour the west of Ireland. As Bram Stoker's first full-length novel, The Snake's Pass is a heady blend of romance, travel narrative, adventure tale, folk tradition, and national tale. This early novel shows that, long before Dracula, Stoker used the genre of the novel to engage with questions of identity, gender, ethnic stereotype, and imperialism.
In this critical edition, Buchelt offers detailed and studied insight into both the novel and Stoker's life, demonstrating the significance of The Snake's Pass within the canon of late Victorian literature. The supplementary textual notes, scholarly material, and critical responses enhance the novel without distracting from the text. Readers will find a complexly layered and nuanced work that presents a pointed critique of British cultural attitudes and political positions concerning the Irish and Ireland.
- Sales Rank: #3508676 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-18
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x .94" w x 6.00" l, 1.10 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 360 pages
Review
A genuine contribution to the field. . . . Of interest to scholars and students interested in Bram Stoker, late Victorian popular literature and culture, Irish Studies, and postcolonial studies. (Marjorie Howes, associate professor of English, Boston College)
This is an invaluable and much needed edition of an unjustly neglected literary treasure. The Snake's Pass, Stoker's first full-length novel and his only novel to employ an Irish setting, is now made available in a meticulous and considered edition which, together with a fine selection of critical readings, elucidates the complex layers of this deeply engaging work.... A must for lovers of nineteenth-century fiction and of good reads. (Margaret Kelleher, Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama, University College Dublin)
About the Author
Lisabeth C. Buchelt is associate professor in the English Department at the University of
Nebraska-Omaha.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Occult Novel? Not Exactly: Bram Stoker's First Novel
By T.NAKAJIMA
`The Snake's Pass,' the first novel written by Bram Stoker, was published in 1890, about seven years before his Dracula.' You may expect from this title something very bizarre and weird, some strange tale Poe would have written, but the truth is `The Snake's Pass' is fairly orthodox love romance set in the mountains of Ireland.
The story is simple. It is about one Arthur Severn, young and rich Englishman traveling around Ireland. After one stormy night, he encounters a beautiful girl named Norah living with her father Joyce, who was ill-treated by Black Murdock, greedy `gombeen' man (Irish name for moneylender) who had mercilessly taken away their land. There is sub-plot about the hidden treasures of French army, and the local legend about the confrontation of Saint Patrick and The King of the Snakes.
Though the folklore surrounding the evil `King of the Snakes' plays the significant role in the earlier chapters of the book, the story is basically about the adventures of the hero and narrator Arthur, whose love for Norah plays the central role of the novel. Unfortunately Arthur is not engaging enough as character because he is just a rich gentleman from England, whose success is guarantees by his social status. There is no real conflict in his story. Things go too smooth for him.
Bram Stoker effectively captures the gloomy atmosphere of the rain-swept land of west Ireland, but these vivid descriptions of the swamp and slime are often forgotten before the more ordinary story about the hero and his love. Obviously Stoker intended to use the macabre legend of the snakes as sort of metaphor like Shakespeare's Birnam Wood, and the idea of the moving mountain bog might have been more interesting if he had introduced the snake legend with more subtlety.
As it is, Stoker, who had not found the right voice suitable for his supernatural tales yet, sometimes spends too many words on the long geological descriptions, but these prosaic details are painfully tedious, slowing down the actions and weakening the supernatural undercurrent of the novel. Stoker also minutely describes the slimy bogs and incessant raining in the mountains, both of which suggest the dark force affecting the people there, but Stoker's touch could hardly be said imaginative. He surely draws the rocks and trees in the landscapes, but his vision does not have the evocative power of the Whitby cemetery scene, later seen in `Dracula.'
As love story `The Snake's Pass' is nothing remarkable, and as macabre tale it is not simply macabre enough. The book is a romance but flatly told, and most of all, few things are really unpredictable. Not a bad novel at all, but not a great one either.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Dracula's Precursor
By Tyler R. Tichelaar
The Snake's Pass is one of those pseudo-minor classics that would have been forgotten if it were not the first novel written by the author of Dracula, one of the greatest of the nineteenth century novels. The book was published in 1890, only seven years before Dracula, yet it is a long way from Stoker's masterpiece in plot and form. A fan of Dracula may not enjoy it, but a literary or Bram Stoker scholar definitely would. It is actually better written than Lair of the White Worm, a later Stoker novel, but up to the quality of The Jewel of the Seven Stars.
What sets the novel off the most from Stoker's other Gothic works is a real lack of the supernatural in the novel. There is a legend of a snake king driven from Ireland by St. Patrick in the book, but nothing supernatural ever actually occurs in the novel's pages. The mysterious shifting bog is not supernatural at all, and frankly, the dullest part of the novel since Stoker goes into great detail of the measuring and study of the bog, which is being analyzed to determine where a lost treasure may be found. The conflict exists between the villain, Murdock, who is willing to do anything to find this treasure, and Arthur Severn and his friends. Arthur falls in love with Nora, whose father is cheated by Murdock to gain control of his land which may have the hidden treasure on it.
The first half of the book is bogged down with descriptions of the bog until Arthur falls in love with Nora, and then a tender, but not terribly exciting love story occurs. The book picks up speed halfway, yet still moves relatively slowly until the dramatic ending scene during a storm where Murdock and the protagonists struggle to find the treasure. This final scene makes the book worth reading, both for itself, and as an example of the talent Stoker had already developed for pacing and drama which he would use consistently in Dracula.
The book is not for the general reader, but I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the British or Irish novel--it is the only novel Stoker set in his native Ireland. One wishes Stoker, as a more mature writer, had written another novel of Ireland, perhaps with vampires included.
- Tyler R. Tichelaar, author of Iron Pioneers and The Queen City, available on Amazon.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
“A Pure Idyll of Ireland”
By Eclectic Reader
Bram Stoker (1847-1912) took up writing as an important aspect of his life and career late in life. The Snake’s Pass (1890) has long been considered to be Bram Stoker’s first novel, but the discovery of a serialized novel, The Primrose Path (1875), is now known to pre-date The Snake’s Pass. Nonetheless, The Snake’s Pass is still frequently cited as Stoker’s first novel and remains a fascinating early work giving insight into the author’s creation of his masterpiece, Dracula (1897) and later work. Interestingly, however, The Snake’s Pass (in spite of its ominous sounding title and many of Stoker’s later novels and stories) contains no elements of the supernatural and it is his only novel to be set in his native home of Ireland.
There are some interesting parallels between The Snake’s Pass and the later masterpiece, Dracula. Like Jonathan Harker in Dracula, the protagonist of The Snake’s Pass, Arthur Severn, is a traveler abroad and somewhat of an innocent. Arthur, who is the novel’s narrator, admits he is “younger in many ways and more deficient in knowledge of the world in all ways than other young men of my age.” Upon the death of his aunt, Arthur is “left heir to all her property” and “resolved to spend at least a few months in travel.” During his travels he is caught on a typical Bulwer-Lytton dark and stormy night, much like Jonathan Harker as he travels to the castle of Count Dracula to conduct a real estate deal with the Count. It is while taking refuge from the storm that Arthur learns many local legends just as Harker learns of the belief of the nosferatu, the undead, from the residents.
Stoker is in his glory as a story-teller with local natives recounting tales of the area. Most of the characters at “Mrs. Kelligan’s hospitable shelter,” a pub, speak with Irish dialect, but readers will be surprised by how quickly their eyes/ears become accustomed to the characters’ speech. Chief among the legends is that of having to do with lost treasure. One story has to do with a giant snake, the King of Snakes, a “mighty important intirely. He was more nor tin times as big as any shnake as any man’s eyes had iver saw; an’ he had a goolden crown on to the top of his head, wid a big jool in it that tuk the colour iv the light, whether that same was from the sun or the moon.” The tale of the snake doing battle with St. Patrick who orders all of the snakes in Ireland west and into the sea is fabulously entertaining and intriguingly, a giant snake is featured in Stoker’s last novel: The Garden of Evil aka The Lair of the White Worm (1911). Before his encounter with St. Patrick, the King of Snakes also demands the annual sacrifice of a baby—much like the Count providing local babies as fodder for his vampire brides. The King of Snakes escapes the Saint’s demands by hiding his jeweled crown, draining the lake in which he resides, and disappearing, “dhrivin’ through the rock and makin’ the clift that they call the Shleenanaher—an’ that’s Irish for the Shnake’s Pass—until this day.” A second story involves a treasure chest lost “in the Frinch invasion that didn’t come off”—a heavy chest “full up to the led wid goolden money an’ paper money.” The chest allegedly is hidden on a hill, “Knockcalltore—an’ that’s Irish for ‘the Hill of the Lost Gold.’” The bog in the area of the two lost treasures is known to keep “shiftin’ till this day” and Arthur is “determined to visit it” before he leaves the area.
Of more flesh and blood than the legends of the area is “the Gombeen Man,” also known as “Black Murdock.” Murdock is a “sort of usurer,” ruthless in his money-lending practices and certainly the villain in the piece—a living version of Count Dracula who heartlessly preys upon the locals and is quick to fool them and suck them dry by seizing their land when they do not pay back their loans on time. Murdock is said to be held by the Hill of local legend and where he owns some property, not through any supernatural means but because “he doesn’t like to leave it because he hopes to find a treasure that is said to be buried in it.”
Although treasure and legend make up some of the most sensational aspects of The Snake’s Pass, at the heart of the novel is a romance between Arthur Severn and Nora Joyce. Complicating matters, Arthur is neither aware for quite some time of Nora’s actual identity nor of the fact that an old school mate and friend, Dick Sutherland, is also in love with the girl. Nora is the daughter of one of Murdock’s victims, Phelim Joyce. Joyce foolishly borrows money from Murdock and when a string of unfortunate incidents prevents Joyce from repaying the loan on time, Murdock puts into effect their agreement: a trade of Joyce’s “almost… ideal” farm “for this part of the world; it has good soil, water, shelter, trees, everything that makes a farm pretty and comfortable, as well as being good for farming purposes” in exchange for “a piece of land as irregular in shape as the other is compact; without shelter, and taken up” with the bog “and the utter waste and chaos which, when it shifted in former times, it left behind.” Which leads readers to the most curious, but equally important character in the novel: the bog itself.
Referred to as “a carpet of death,” the bog is “more treacherous” than a quagmire or quicksand” with a “film or skin of vegetation of a very low kind” on the surface “mixed with the mould of decayed vegetable fibre and grit and rubbish of all kinds which have somehow got mixed into it, floating on a sea of ooze and slime.” Capable of bearing weight in some spots and not in others, a misstep while upon the bog means certain death, where one’s body would “ultimately waste away, and the bones would become incorporated with the existing vegetation somewhere about the roots, or would lie among the slime at the bottom.” Murdock has Sutherland searching the bog by dragging magnets across its surface “to ascertain, if possible, if there was any iron hidden in the ground”—such as an iron chest—while Sutherland, with Arthur Severn’s assistance, is also engineering the draining of the bog in another area. Stoker quite brilliantly makes the bog in The Snake’s Pass every bit as intriguing and important as the moor in a later work by a fellow writer and friend of Stoker’s—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his famous The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901).
It may or may not be a stretch to state that the characters of The Snake’s Pass are as held by the land as is Count Dracula who, when he leaves his home of Transylvania, must do so taking with him samples of native soil in crates in which he must sleep during the day.
Stoker carries off the romance aspects of his novel strikingly well. With the exception of Murdock and a few of his cronies, Stoker’s Irish characters are all men and women of honor and integrity. Only brief passages approach a level of melodrama typical of novels of the period, generally in dialogue between the two lovers. Stoker infuses the two’s difference in class and background nicely into the relationship so that it and their attempt to shrink the cultural gap between them comes across as a reflection of the admirable quality of the two persons’ makeup and their love for each other rather than a stereotypical narrative device.
Murdock is, of course, the un-ignited gun powder with a short fuse in the story whom Stoker uses to force the story forward at a fine narrative clip and who also reflects some of the Gothic-like aspects of the novel. Murdock proves to be a master of treachery driven by greed and selfishness and totally indifferent to the fate of others he would use (again, the parallel between him and Count Dracula is inescapable). His megalomania knows no bounds, and when there is “villainy afloat,” Murdock is always behind it. Murdock’s determination to possess Norah (like Dracula’s obsession with Lucy and Mina) puts her in the typical damsel in distress scenario of a Gothic novel with a powerful corrupt man lusting after an innocent. Stoker, however, provides readers with a fine twist on this theme toward the climactic events of the novel set upon the bog during a terrific storm in which Norah proves to be a strong and resourceful life-saving character.
Other aspects of the Gothic novel can be found in The Snake’s Pass. Along with heroic figures fighting evil and attempting to deal with nature’s unharnessed power, the Irish countryside which Stoker includes vivid passages of, sometimes idealizing it, also includes a wealth of mystery and secrets, decay, and otherworldly, ancient caves decorated with ancient writing (an equally treacherous site is a memorable part of Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm). Dreams, often included in the Gothic tradition of literature (and certainly in Dracula), also play a role in The Snake’s Pass, especially for Arthur Severn. Stoker deftly uses Arthur’s dreams to reflect the character’s troubled state of mind, to create an atmosphere of gloom and despair, and to hint at possibilities (or impossibilities) in future events.
Unlike in some of Stoker’s later work, he doesn’t get bogged down (no pun intended) in too much distant historic detail in an attempt to lend historical accuracy or relevance to his story’s events. He does, however, include a lesser but reoccurring character, Andy Sullivan, a local cart driver, who like the gatekeeper in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, provides more than a little comic relief. More importantly, Andy reflects the provincial Irish philosopher—unschooled but wise, he carries within him the heart of Ireland itself although his comic appearances, always affected by heavy Irish idiom, at times threaten to slow down the narrative.
Occasionally, readers can tell when a writer is simply having a good time telling their story and such appears to be the case of Stoker and The Snake’s Pass. Stoker’s fondness for his Irish compatriots and the unique countryside which he inevitably describes in detail shines throughout the novel as do the author’s recounting of Irish legends and occasional mention (usually by Andy Sullivan) of Irish “gnomes, fairies, pixies, leprechauns, and all genii, species and varieties of the same.” Stoker’s version of the encounter between St. Patrick and the King of Snakes reads much like one of Oscar Wilde’s delightful animal fables. There is no questioning, however, Stoker’s ability to writing convincing, absorbing narrative as the last portions of The Snake’s Pass bring together all of Stoker’s plot lines in a terrific dual between man and nature on Knocknacar during an incredibly vivid, memorable storm. Readers are not likely to be surprised by the novel’s conclusion, but are likely to find The Snake’s Pass both entertaining and for those interested in Stoker’s other work, insightful into the creative mind of an intriguing writer. The Valancourt Books edition follows the original 1890 text.
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