character designs for dracula. arthurs not here bc to be so serious i can only picture him as kermit the frog and draculas not here bc i didnt feel like drawing him. i know it’s not historically accurate but it’s about the vibes more than anything else
I just read this article called ‘Mrs. Harker and Dr. Van Helsing: Dracula, Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms, and the New Wo/Man’ by Karen Winstead, which is honestly a super interesting analysis of Dracula. I think it’s a really interesting look at the more subtle period feminist angles of Dracula. It also looks at Dracula and its themes and characters in the context of texts by ‘New Woman’ writers from the same period, as well as discussing hysteria and gendered fears of ‘shocking’ women. It’s an interesting article, and i find her outlook on Mina and Jonathan, and Van Helsing as well, to be quite an interesting one, if one I was initially unfamiliar with. It’s pretty short as well, so if it sounds interesting, give it a read!
Really fun essay! I thoroughly enjoyed it! Also, even though I am an avid Van Helsing enthusiast, I can’t help but agree with a lot her criticisms. I feel like his benevolent sexism really interferes with trying to track down Dracula. When you read Van Helsing as the “real hero” of the novel, you assume everything he says is “correct” and trivialise Mina’s importance to the story.
for all of Seward’s medical malpractice, today’s entry might be him at his very most unpleasant. “oh, this guy is so totally insane that he didn’t make any social distinction in how much respect he showed to me versus the orderly! such a sign of his delusions, the REAL god knows i’m much more important than an employee.”
Ebb tide in appetite to-day. Cannot eat, cannot rest, so diary instead.
(may 25th, emphasis mine)
I am weary to-night and low in spirits. I cannot but think of Lucy, and how different things might have been. If I don’t sleep at once, chloral, the modern Morpheus—C2HCl3O H2O! I must be careful not to let it grow into a habit. No, I shall take none to-night! I have thought of Lucy, and I shall not dishonour her by mixing the two. If need be, to-night shall be sleepless….
(august 19th, emphasis mine)
Glad I made the resolution; gladder that I kept to it. I had lain tossing about, and had heard the clock strike only twice, when the night-watchman came to me, sent up from the ward, to say that Renfield had escaped.
(august 19th, emphasis mine)
He [the attendant] is a bulky man, and couldn’t get through the window. I am thin, so, with his aid, I got out, but feet foremost, and, as we were only a few feet above ground, landed unhurt.
(august 19th, emphasis mine)
while jack’s sleeping troubles have been noted, i have rarely seen anyone bring up that his depression expresses itself by him not eating, in addition to not sleeping. which is why i also included the line about him being thin. now, he could totally just be a thin person in general… or maybe he’s thin because he has a habit of not eating when he’s depressed.
i was really just gonna throw this out there, but then i remembered a small detail from the september 3rd entry where jack briefly mentions that van helsing drinks tea when they’re together, not that they both drink tea, and i wondered if perhaps there were more instances of jack specifically not eating.
and… no. there isn’t really. but i found another pattern which is very interesting.
before september 8th, i cannot find a single reference to jack eating. but after that, it starts popping up quite a lot:
A telegram came from Van Helsing at Amsterdam whilst I was at dinner,
(september 8th)
Lucy came with me, and, enlivened by her charming presence, I made an excellent meal, and had a couple of glasses of the more than excellent port.
(september 9th)
“You are not much the worse. Go into the room, and lie on your sofa, and rest awhile; then have much breakfast, and come here to me.” I followed out his orders, for I knew how right and wise they were.
(september 10th)
I got back here in time for a late dinner
(september 10th)
i’m not going to quote every single instance of jack eating, but it’s marvellous that before september 8th there is not really a single mention of him eating, and then he is suddenly eating all the time (and continues to do so, with or without company).
now, what is eating? in very basic terms, it’s one of the main mechanisms of life. you must eat to stay alive.
and who does eat, quite a lot, specifically recorded in jack’s diary? that’s right, renfield. he eats specifically to gain life. eating can therefore be seen as the lust for life. and by not eating when he’s depressed, jack demonstrates a lack of lust for life.
which brings me to the july 20th entry:
If I only could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there—a good, unselfish cause to make me work—that would be indeed happiness.
renfield is eating, to gain life, because he has a purpose and a lust for more life.
jack, in contrast, is not eating, feels like he doesn’t have a purpose, and doesn’t seem to have much lust for life.
then, he gains a purpose; helping lucy. and around the same time, he starts eating.
many have commented before on how jack is saved by the events of the novel, especially @thebibi, and this further supports that idea.
Yes! I was thinking about this, how Jack’s comment about being thin isn’t said as boastfully as it could be because he can fit through the window (!!) that Renfield couldn’t. Also, there are moments after Van Helsing arrives later in the novel that indicate he sleeps better as well. His life literally starts improving as Lucy’s gets worse, in a way.
There is a subscription paywall, but the abstract looks very interesting. Perhaps one of my fellow classmates taking Dracula Daily at Tumblr University has access and can open it up and share any pithy quotes (with due attribution).
I somehow managed to access it w a uni account that i thought got shut down 5 years ago, the full text of the review Digitizing the Epistolary: Dracula Daily and Embodied Contemporary Reading by Lin Young below the cut:
Bram Stoker: Here's a good guy, a more morally grey guy, and a very bad guy. They're all old, tall, commanding, and very strong. I don't have a type.
Bram Stoker Old Man Enjoyer
Also! Like, these three specific characters occupy such iconic parts of the book, it feels very intentional. There is a buff old guy to suit most people’s tastes!
I wrote a post last year about artificial sleep, which I would like to excerpt here without spoilers to talk about Dr. Seward and the chloral. In the context of how prominent sleep is in this novel, both natural and unnatural, ordered and disordered, the chloral (the modern morpheus) takes on a different color:
Seward doesn’t have a drug problem - he has a sleeping disorder.
The only mention of the chloral is of Jack not taking it. Whereas his insomnia comes up repeatedly. He complains about it in his first diary entry, he brings it up when he contemplates taking chloral about it, he will discuss it openly and note its absence at various points as the plot develops. He (brain doctor) has a brain disorder that he sometimes takes medicine about. In that light him not taking the chloral is an early example of his preoccupation with Lucy causing him to neglect his self-care routine, which is something he will definitely do again.
On the other hand the night he chooses not to take the chloral is the night Renfield tries to escape in the middle of the night, so his insomnia, his “exceptional brain” is a benefit to him. And it will continue to be a benefit to him, up to a point. So there’s a sort of a pattern of people’s flaws also being their strengths, particularly in terms of mental, or mental adjacent issues. Seward’s insomnia makes him well-suited to dealing with vampires. Jonathan’s cowardice is what allows him to survive Dracula; Renfield’s madness is [redacted] . There may be something about seeing these things as gifts, rather than problems to be solved. Although there’s no way to fit Lucy’s sleepwalking into this schema. Except perhaps in that it is already a known thing, so Mina is able to act quickly and decisively when she finds Lucy gone, because she recignizes the problem.
But artificial sleep never seems to be a good thing in this book. This may be getting at an underlying theme of Natural vs Unnatural. You have the Unnatural sleep of the vampire trances and the Unnatural sleep provided by drugs. But it’s interesting because typically in this book modernity and technology are good (but sometimes insufficient). Jack calls chloral the “modern morpheus” very literally replacing ancient superstition (morpheus, god of sleep) with modern technology (which is extremely Seward of him). It’s worth watching how this technology interacts with Dracula going forward.
Me, seeing that today’s episode is narrated by Seward: Why hello Dr. Daddy Issues! What human rights violations have you committed since last we heard from you, my little drop of chloral?
when drawing / picturing / imagining R.M Renfield, let’s look at today’s text for some clues:
wrenched out a window with his bare hands
scaled a high wall that Seward needed a ladder to climb over
described as “immensely strong”
took three to four other men (plus Seward?) to restrain him
So while Renfield has been traditionally cast and costumed and drawn, etc. as a scrawny, crazy l'il guy… what if in fact he’s more, like… pick any of your favorite 40-something / 50-something movie star with a superhero physique?
Its very important to me that everyone knows that Renfield is OLD and BUFF! He’s not just a little guy. He has a presence and a commanding one at that!
I personally think that Mr. Hawkins feels quite guilty about Jonathan’s trip going so poorly.
He sent him in his place, and likely would not have if he suspected anything at all.
So, paying for Mina to go to him and get married seems like a small part of trying to repair things.
I feel that he probably would have preferred to see the wedding himself, but he encourages Mina to tell Jonathan to marry in Hungary for a few (some spoilery so not getting into that here) reasons. But one of of them include the fear that Jonathan may not live long from what the letter says.
I agree. The ideal plan was probably for them to be able to get married with him there once Jonathan returned from an uneventful trip.
But now he is making the decision to make sure they are married in case Jonathan is too ill to make it all the way back to England, and to afford Mina the legal protection of being a married woman on the way back.
ALT
