#nabalysis

[inblackwoods]

Someone shut me up if I get redundant, but I do want to talk about how Dracula is constantly subverting the expectation of a singular, hyper-masculine heroic character to save the day and win the girl. Obviously, I find it relevant to my ongoing “Dracula is a story about love/community” idea. 

First is Jonathan, who obviously doesn't have a ton of machismo. He swoons, he's preyed on, he's locked away helpless in a tower. We all know this. He even finds himself connecting to the idea of women from the past writing letters at the desk he's sitting at in the castle, saying, “here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love letter, and writing in my diary in short-hand all that has happened since I closed it last” [Chptr 3]. Perhaps worth mentioning is that this is written right before he’s attacked by the three women. If he’s a hero, then he’s not of the standard, invincible superman sort.

Then, when Jonathan is suspected to be dead, the narrative moves on to introduce Seward, who Lucy goes to some effort to talk-up to Mina, listing his positive qualities and reasons why he might be compatible with her. The implication is that Jonathan is dead! Someone needs to come in and save the girl in his place! But Seward is Seward. So this is obviously not going to work. Lucy immediately moves on to describe him as nervous enough to sit on his own hat and then start fidgeting with a lancet, which scares her [Chptr 5]. And then, if one isn’t yet convinced that he's an unheroic mess of a man, his own diary starts and he's brooding, obsessive, maudlin, and prone to cruel thoughts and sometimes cruel actions. He's not our hero either! He’s too dark, quiet, arrogant, etc.. Fine, who else is there?

Quincey? Yes, one might think for a moment, but then recall how, after he's so ridiculously charming in his proposal and really does seem like a knight in shining armor, he up and leaves the narrative for a while. Completely unmentioned for six chapters! When he comes back, it's relieving and exciting and wonderful and-

He has the wrong blood type. There's an implication he might have killed Lucy, who Seward says, due to the transfusion, "had got a terrible shock, and it told on her more than before, though plenty of blood went into her veins, her body did not respond to the treatment as well as on other occasions” [Chptr 12]. She dies later in this chapter. This isn’t Quincey’s fault and no one could have known about blood types at the time, but I think it’s possible that this transfusion killed her or, at least, contributed to her death.  

Okay, so who else? Van Helsing? Close... but he's old and not likely to get into any dramatic knife fights and he considers himself still married, if his wife is out of the picture. So no saving the day in direct combat or winning any girls for him. Even when he kills the three women, it’s while they’re asleep and its only given a page or less of description. It’s not very dramatic or heroic. Arthur? He's a bit nervous too, despite Seward calling him brave. He falls to his knees and needs to be held up by the other suitors [Chptr 16], he sits up and sits back down in nervous fits of energy [Chptr 15], and he seems generally somewhat faint of heart, being described as growing “very pale” as he sat down and “breathing heavily” in response to the news that they’re getting close to confronting Dracula [Chptr 25]. In that same moment, Quincey and Jonathan are grabbing their knives in preparation for battle! And Arthur doesn't ever get near Dracula at the end. So not him either!

None of the men are perfect, infallible heroes on their own. They’re human beings who get scared and make mistakes. They all need help sometimes; they all fall short in one way or another, which can be compensated for by the other members of the CoL.

The ending is the most convincing aspect of all of this- the final battle is anticlimactic. Dracula's asleep, he won't wake up, and the only active threats are nameless henchmen. It's not a tense, drawn-out battle; it lasts for perhaps a page or two and then it’s over. There isn't a singular hero, there's two. It's not just Jonathan who single handedly saves the day and wins the girl, Quincey has to be there too. And neither of them would have gotten so far without the others, Mina especially. And then Quincey doesn't live to get any reward for his triumph other than the knowledge that he saved his friends! 

So again, in final, there can be no singular hero. It's a story about the strength of community, love, and cooperation. The fighting isn't glorious and triumphant because that isn't the point! The point is that people need love and friends/family to function, do good, support each other when in need, and save the day together.

[inblackwoods]

I don’t know how popular a take it is to say Dracula is first and foremost a story about love, but you can’t convince me that it isn’t when the entire narrative starts because a man wanted to document his business trip for the sake of telling his fiancée about it later.

[inblackwoods]

A thank you to @vanhelsingenthusiast for setting my thoughts running on Seward and Dracula parallels and causing a rough, sleep-deprived ramble.

It ties back into the ongoing “Dracula is a story about love” war that I’m waging. At the core of their personalities, I think Seward and Dracula are similarly ambitious, deceitful, and capable of cruelty, but they end up in different places; Dracula alone and hunted and Seward being an essential member of a loving family dynamic.

On lying and toying with others: Dracula teasingly says Jonathan can leave and then calls wolves to the door, obviously making it deadly for Jonathan to actually leave as he wanted and trapping him in the castle [Chptr 4]. He’s not letting Jonathan go anywhere. He’s lying almost constantly in the first four chapters, but this instance is noteworthy in how directly cruel it was and how it seemed mostly just for the fun of it. Later, Seward offers Renfield a cat in an attempt to get an interesting response from him that can be studied in order to gain scientific notoriety. This is more clearly exploitative when considering that Seward only makes this offer after refusing earlier to give him one [”Tonight he will not speak. Even the offer of a kitten or even a full-grown cat will not tempt him” Chptr 9]. Morally, Seward has already admitted to being against giving Renfield a cat, and though his morals can flip multiple times in a single sentence [a post for another time], I don’t think he would’ve gone back on this. I think he’s only interested in lying to Renfield, offering the cat to get information but never delivering. Dracula and Seward have different intentions here, Seward probably thinking he's more justified, but what's happening is similar: toying with the vulnerable for some sort of personal benefit. They’re both ambitious, they both lie, and they are both capable of being cruel because of these traits. 

On love, connectivity, and technology: these topics seem separate but I think tie nicely together. Dracula is barred entirely from any stable or caring society. The locals around the castle fear him and understand him to be a threat, effectively warding him off and warning others against getting close to him. The only people he has, the three women, actively laugh at and defy him [Chptr 3]. More importantly, there is no one to help Dracula in any of his endeavors. He doesn’t even have servants so that he has to drive the coach to get Jonathan himself [Chptr 2]. Seward, though he is occasionally used as a joke [Van Helsing teasing him to cheer up Lucy in Chptr 9], is never treated cruelly or barred from interacting with the rest of the CoL in any way. It’s lighthearted, sweet, and productive. Seward is, more than anything, welcomed into the crew by teasing like this as it shows how close everyone is and how they help each other, Seward and Van Helsing working together to make Lucy feel better [Seward is never upset by this teasing]. If Dracula ever needs someone, he has no one but himself, and when Seward needs someone to help him save Lucy, Van Helsing drops everything to come to him immediately [Chptr 9]. 

Technology also makes Seward more accessible to others. He's able to better connect to the rest of the CoL through his use of the phonograph, allowing Mina to understand the depths of his emotions in a way that even writing out his feeling wouldn’t have accomplished. She mentions that the phonograph is “a wonderful machine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of your heart.” The phonograph allows Mina to truly be “more touched than I can say by your grief” [Chptr 17] because it allows her to hear his voice and its variance as he recounts his loss and heartbreak. Before all of this, it also allows Mina and Jack to connect with one another through a shared interest in advancing technology, Mina enthusing about the phonograph and Seward enthusing about teaching her how it works. And, of course, when Seward very poorly attempts to lie to Mina in this chapter, she doesn’t laugh at him or treat him cruelly for how awkwardly he fumbles, she just tries to and succeeds in gaining his trust [they interact differently than Mina and the other two suitors do, but again, another post]. Dracula, being unable to use technology like the telegraph or phonograph, is completely barred from either method of communication! He is implied to be archaic and too deeply stuck in some sort of “old world” to be able to integrate into the “new world” enough to use its technology. [It’s significant that Van Helsing uses the phonograph in Chptr 24 as it shows that Van Helsing can also use technology that Dracula doesn’t yet have access to and makes parallels between them as well. This is also the same chapter where Van Helsing mentions that Dracula is attempting to learn of “new social life; new environment of old ways, the politic the law, the finance, the science, the habit of new land and a new people who have come to be since he was.” It’s not that Dracula can’t learn these things, it’s that he hasn’t yet.]

TLDR: Dracula and Seward are both capable of immoral behavior, but Seward won’t ever fully cross the line into being completely “evil” or even a full-blown “mad scientist” because he's able to connect with other people who love him and remind him of what’s important in life; caring for those who he loves being placed above ambition. If he was as barred from love and community as Dracula was, he would have nothing to keep him from hurting and exploiting others for his own gain, perhaps to an equivalent extent that Dracula does.

[inblackwoods]

#This is my favorite Dracula ship and I have Reasons for it#Ask me about it and I'll pull book quotes and everything - please do, as someone who also loves them together a lot, I'd love to hear your reasons

Phenomenal! I can now ramble, thank you. A warning: this did get long. 

I’ll start with the weirder reasons I like Morward and end with the more obvious ones.

The weirdest scene that makes me think they’ve got an interesting dynamic is actually the start of Chapter 19, immediately after Renfield begs Seward to let him out of the asylum and Seward, of course, says no. Everyone feels a bit odd about all of this, but Quincey is the only one to say anything, very directly questioning Jack in saying, “it was pretty rough of him [Renfield] not to get a chance.” Van Helsing then defends Seward a bit, saying he knows best on this issue and they all move on. But! Very few characters question Jack like this and whoever I ship him with, I would want to interact with him in a critical way/be even with him in terms of authority [this is why Renfield/Seward or Dracu/Mina or whatever are Not Good to me. Those are very uneven power dynamics]. They seem to be on very even footing here, so much so that Quincey can call him out and not much fuss comes of it.

Next: Quincey is described by Jack as "phlegmatic in the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, with hazard of all he has to stake" [Chapter 16]. And Jack describes himself as "a sceptic, who can see nothing but a travesty of bitter truth in anything holy or emotional" [chapter 25] and describes his own "nature" as being of "dogged argumentativeness" [chapter 15]. Quincey is open-minded and agreeable [but not naïve or stupid] and Seward is stubborn and argumentative.

So. I think they're ･ﾟ☆✧Character Foils･ﾟ☆✧

Then in Chapter 26 we have the part where the CoL splits up into three groups of two. Seward says, “I think I had better go with Quincey. We had been accustomed to hunt together, and we two, well armed, will be a match for whatever may come along.” I just find this cute because 1. They have an apparently well-established history of hunting together [good friends make good partners] and 2. Seward could almost be a little whimsy here, like he’s saying they can fight anything if they’re together [and armed, of course]. Which might be a stretch on my part but… I love it.

Finally, what seems most obvious to me, the final blood transfusion scene in Chapter 12. At this point, Quincey has not even been mentioned in about six chapters. When I first read the book, I assumed he had fallen out of the narrative and might not come back because he was gone so long. Him coming back was one of the most exciting parts of the book for me because!!! It was so shocking and so wonderful! He seemed like a hero come to save the day! And I think most of this feeling is dependent on the way Seward describes the scene. It’s Seward’s excitement, relief, admiration, etc. that makes Quincey’s return hit as hard as it did. He says “the voice came from the sofa across the room, and its tones brought relief and joy to my heart, for they were those of Quincey Morris… I cried out “Quincey Morris!” and rushed towards him with outstretched hands.” This is all somewhat dramatic and even a little out of character for Seward who seems to usually try to cover up his emotional expressions [though he’s not always Great at that]. I think it’s Seward’s emotions that make this scene so exciting as the reader gets to really feel those emotions through him.

Anyway, this was really long and I feel like I’ve probably even got more I could say that I can’t think of it right now and… I did really ramble. Thank you, again!

[inblackwoods]

I've never really thought about DracuMina beyond just considering it to be a thing that has to be tolerated in adaptations, but the more I think about it the more dubious it seems.

The dead wife trope is bad because it diminishes the role of a female character down to a device the writer can use to make a male character more complex, right? The reincarnated-wife trope is just this same problem but doubled in this case. Not only is this character of Dracula's wife a woman who was invented only to be killed off to make Dracula more understandable or sympathetic [something I already question bothering with], but then Mina is reduced to the role of a dead woman who had no purpose other than to be a looking-glass for Dracula. It takes a significant portion of Mina's identity and throws it away for Dracula's sake.

And then on top of that, in order to have DracuMina be in any way mutual it requires Mina to fall in love with someone who actively preyed on and victimized her.

Having the relationship be a singular obsession on Dracula's part helps with the second issue but not the first; Mina is still turned into a tool which an author uses to develop Dracula. It's an interesting idea and much better than having a mutual romance, but I still feel like it uses Mina in a way that doesn't do her justice. The issue is that women in media are seen as important only if they have some sort of impact on how we see the male characters in the narrative. To develop Dracula without devaluing Mina, some other character should be used or some other method altogether [why always romance?]. However, if done well enough, it might add to Mina's character as well.

Ultimately, I'd just like one accurate adaptation with nothing weird thrown in, but if someone wanted to push the idea of transformative, progressive fiction in a Dracula adaptation, perhaps Mina shouldn't have any relationship to Dracula aside for he killed her friend. Maybe even some other cast member could be the second victim after Lucy. Say Arthur or something. That might cause issues in the sense that it could villianize gay/bisexual identities, but only if the narrative focuses on some sort of sexual association with being bitten by a vampire. Which it certainly doesn't have to, it's just hard to swing when so many vampire narratives are associated with sexuality in this way.