Dracula Chapters 12-14
Nov. 2nd, 2018 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrChapters 1-4
Dr Seward and Van Helsing arrive at Lucy's house. It is locked up tight, and noone answers the door.
They find the servants still unconscious, and Lucy asleep in bed with her mother's corpse. Lucy is pale and drawn, and the wounds on her neck are white and mangled.
They rouse the maids and put Lucy in a warm bath. They are discussing what to do about her need for blood when who should appear but harem member number 3, Quincy Morris!
...and then I got so anxious for Lucy I tried to watch the movie, failed, and looked up spoilers. I DO NOT LIKE THE SPOILERS. WHY NOT A HAPPY HAREM END BRAM STOKER??
Siiiiiiigh. Ok then.
Quincy realises this is not the first blood transfusion and is somewhat brought into the group. I do like how good natured the harem are with each other about all being in love with Lucy, even Dr Seward in his own diary shows no real jealousy, just fellow feeling that that they're all worried for her. I also like that Van Helsing does not show any signs of being in love with her, he just likes her and is trying to be a good doctor.
Anyway. Lucy wakes, is reassured to see her notes still in her breast (Van Helsing took them out and read them, then put them back so she wouldn't panic to realise they were gone) But then as night falls she tears them to pieces.
D:
They telegram for Arthur, he and Lucy both know she's dying but try to stay cheerful for each other's sake.
Letter, Mina Harker to Lucy Westenra.(Unopened by her.)
SCREW YOU TOO BRAM STOKER
Oh god Mina is so cheerful :( :( Jonathon's boss is dying and has left him a bunch of money and a nice big house. HOW NICE FOR HIM. She asks after Lucy's mother, talks about how Jonathon's health is improving, and then asks about all the details of Lucy's wedding.
;_;
Report from Patrick Hennessey, M. D., M. R. C. S. L. K. Q. C. P. I., etc., etc., to John Seward, M. D.
What do those letters even stand for??
Anyway, it's a report on Renfield. Now I'm imagining it being given by one of the cage-headed half-topless guards from the movie.
Some men were delivering boxes of dirt to Dracula's house next door, Renfield got super angry about it and escaped to attack them.
Another unopened letter from Mina to Lucy: Jonathon's boss has died, making them rich but sad and a bit stressed since now Jonathon has to run the law firm.
Dr Seward's diary: Lucy is very pale, her gums have receded and her canine teeth are longer. She is uninterested in food. When half asleep she pulls away the garlic around her, but pulls it closer when more awake. The wounds on her throat have disappeared.
This is both very sad and sweet and such a fucked up Victorian Sex Metaphor. KISSING IS DEATH.
She wakes up more and thanks Van Helsing, begging him to protect Arthur from her. Arthur kisses her forehead, and then she dies.
Van Helsing gathers up Lucy's diaries and other papers, then puts garlic around her body and a cross in her mouth. Dr Seward goes on quite a bit about what a pretty corpse she makes. They have covered up the specifics of her death. It is only after the burial that they discover that the cross was stolen (because the universe is conspiring against Lucy for being too sexy)
Van Helsing: To-morrow I want you to bring me, before night, a set of post-mortem knives.
Dr Seward: Must we make an autopsy?
Van Helsing: Yes and no. I want to cut off her head and take out her heart.
Dr Seward: D: ?!
Van Helsing: Stop whining, you're a doctor aren't you? ...oh, wait, you were in love with her, right. Sorry, just trust me.
Lucy's family lawyer: Isn't it lucky Lucy died at the same time as her mother? Or there'd be SUCH a mess with the inheritance. I'm so happy at how things turned out!
Dr Seward: >:(
Arthur: You loved her too, old fellow; she told me all about it, and there was no friend had a closer place in her heart than you. I don’t know how to thank you for all you have done for her.
He bursts into tears and holds onto Dr Seward.
At dinner Van Helsing starts to call Arthur by his formal name of Lord Godalming, since his father died in the end. Arthur says he's not ready for it yet.
The Professor answered very sweetly:— “I only used that name because I was in doubt. I must not call you ‘Mr.,’ and I have grown to love you—yes, my dear boy, to love you—as Arthur.”
Ok he can be in the harem too after all.
Van Helsing makes vague comments about how Arthur may have trouble trusting him in the future. "But the time will come when your trust shall be whole and complete in me, and when you shall understand as though the sunlight himself shone through."
...is Van Helsing God? If he's God he doesn't get to be in the harem, that would be weird.
Mina's Diary: "I was looking at a very beautiful girl, in a big cart-wheel hat, sitting in a victoria outside Guiliano’s, when I felt Jonathan clutch my arm so tight that he hurt me, and he said under his breath: “My God!” "
A rejuvenated Dracula is also staring at the pretty girl. He really does have the same taste in girls (and guys) as Mina.
Jonathon freaks out, Mina doesn't want to encourage his madness so asks no questions, and later he calms down and seems to have forgotten all about it. She wonders if it is time to learn the truth of Jonathon's past. *am struck once again by the way Mina is the sort of character May from The Age of Innocence was critiquing, and not just because Winona Ryder played both of them*
Dr Seward: "It is all over." Oh, I wish. Quincy is as sad as the other two but bearing up "like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed"
Arthur: I feel like me giving my blood to Lucy was like us being married ;_;
The other three men who he doesn't know also gave Lucy blood: Mmm.
Van Helsing freaks out later, laughing and crying "just as a woman does. I tried to be stern with him, as one is to a woman under the circumstances; but it had no effect. Men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness!"
Van Helsing apologises, saying he is genuinely sad, but "[by Arthur's logic] this so sweet maid is a polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church’s law, though no wits, all gone—even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist."
Harems are no laughing matter, Van Helsing.
Dr Seward feels that this must be the end of his diary, or at least of this part of his life.
FINIS
(But actually there's still more than half of the book left to go)
News article: A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
Children keep going missing over night, saying a "bloofer woman" asked them to come for a walk. Each of them has a small injury on their neck. One was left almost dead. (Thanks to the plot summary I read, I know "bloofer" means "beautiful")
Mina's Diary: She has now read Jonathon's Diary. She's not sure she believes it, but steels herself to be ready if it's true.
Van Helsing writing to Mina: I have been going through Lucy's letters and see that you love her. You may be able to help me. Can I meet with you in secret, so we don't worry your husband?
Mina's Diary: "I used to think I would like to practice interviewing."
In a just universe Lucy would have her harem and Mina would be a newspaper reporter.
She describes how CLEVER and MANLY Van Helsing looks. I think Van Helsing is struck by how pretty she is and tries to cover for it.
He is impressed at how competent she is, not like other girls. "I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit—I suppose it is some of the taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths" so she demurely hands him the dairy, saying nothing until he realises it's all in shorthand lol. But then she hands him the typewritten account into regular English.
He goes into raptures about how clever and good she is. After he's read it, Mina starts talking about Jonathon and then bursts into tears and asks Van Helsing to help him.
Van Helsing says his life has been lonely but he has recently met many good people, and she has given him hope that there are good women to teach future generations. He promises to make Jonathon "strong and manly" but says it's important for his health that she pretend everything is fine.
VICTORIANS.
She gives him a typewritered copy of Jonathon's diary, then tells him what train to catch because she memorised the train timetable since it was helpful to Jonathon.
Van Helsing writes to her, having read the diary, saying that every word is true, and Jonathon seems entirely sane.
Jonathon's diary: Mina explains what happened. Seeing the letter saying he can trust his own mind finally calms his doubts, and he is no longer afraid. He meets Van Helsing: "Doctor, you don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don’t; you couldn’t with eyebrows like yours."
Van Helsing goes on for a while about how amazing Mina is and Jonathon could listen to it all day. Van Helsing feels like he knows Jonathon from the diaries, and says they should be friends forever. Jonathon gets a little choked up.
Dr Seward: Nothing ends.
He says the wound of Lucy's death is becoming "cicatrised" (forming scar tissue, what a nice word) Then Van Helsing shows up with the newspaper article about the missing children.
Dr Seward completely fails to put two and two together. Van Helsing goes on a little rant about being open to the unknown and how science is constantly discovering things that seemed impossible, like hypnotism, yet acting like that which it does not yet understand is untrue. There's some science babble about immortality in animals and humans, vampire bats etc.
This is both a nice philosophy and a great way to gloss over hinky vampire 'science'.
Dr Seward is persuaded to believe Van Helsing, even if what he says seems outlandish.
And so Van Helsing tells him that the "creature" attacking the children is Lucy herself.
Dr Seward and Van Helsing arrive at Lucy's house. It is locked up tight, and noone answers the door.
They find the servants still unconscious, and Lucy asleep in bed with her mother's corpse. Lucy is pale and drawn, and the wounds on her neck are white and mangled.
They rouse the maids and put Lucy in a warm bath. They are discussing what to do about her need for blood when who should appear but harem member number 3, Quincy Morris!
...and then I got so anxious for Lucy I tried to watch the movie, failed, and looked up spoilers. I DO NOT LIKE THE SPOILERS. WHY NOT A HAPPY HAREM END BRAM STOKER??
Siiiiiiigh. Ok then.
Quincy realises this is not the first blood transfusion and is somewhat brought into the group. I do like how good natured the harem are with each other about all being in love with Lucy, even Dr Seward in his own diary shows no real jealousy, just fellow feeling that that they're all worried for her. I also like that Van Helsing does not show any signs of being in love with her, he just likes her and is trying to be a good doctor.
Anyway. Lucy wakes, is reassured to see her notes still in her breast (Van Helsing took them out and read them, then put them back so she wouldn't panic to realise they were gone) But then as night falls she tears them to pieces.
Whilst asleep she looked stronger, although more haggard, and her breathing was softer; her open mouth showed the pale gums drawn back from the teeth, which thus looked positively longer and sharper than usual; when she woke the softness of her eyes evidently changed the expression, for she looked her own self, although a dying one.
D:
They telegram for Arthur, he and Lucy both know she's dying but try to stay cheerful for each other's sake.
Letter, Mina Harker to Lucy Westenra.(Unopened by her.)
SCREW YOU TOO BRAM STOKER
Oh god Mina is so cheerful :( :( Jonathon's boss is dying and has left him a bunch of money and a nice big house. HOW NICE FOR HIM. She asks after Lucy's mother, talks about how Jonathon's health is improving, and then asks about all the details of Lucy's wedding.
Tell me all about it, dear; tell me all about everything, for there is nothing which interests you which will not be dear to me. Jonathan asks me to send his ‘respectful duty,’ but I do not think that is good enough from the junior partner of the important firm Hawkins & Harker; and so, as you love me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb, I send you simply his ‘love’ instead. Good-bye, my dearest Lucy, and all blessings on you.
;_;
Report from Patrick Hennessey, M. D., M. R. C. S. L. K. Q. C. P. I., etc., etc., to John Seward, M. D.
What do those letters even stand for??
Anyway, it's a report on Renfield. Now I'm imagining it being given by one of the cage-headed half-topless guards from the movie.
Some men were delivering boxes of dirt to Dracula's house next door, Renfield got super angry about it and escaped to attack them.
Another unopened letter from Mina to Lucy: Jonathon's boss has died, making them rich but sad and a bit stressed since now Jonathon has to run the law firm.
Dr Seward's diary: Lucy is very pale, her gums have receded and her canine teeth are longer. She is uninterested in food. When half asleep she pulls away the garlic around her, but pulls it closer when more awake. The wounds on her throat have disappeared.
“Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come!” He was stooping to kiss her, when Van Helsing motioned him back. “No,” he whispered, “not yet! Hold her hand; it will comfort her more.”
...
In a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which were now dull and hard at once, and said in a soft, voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from her lips:—
“Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!” Arthur bent eagerly over to kiss her; but at that instant Van Helsing, who, like me, had been startled by her voice, swooped upon him, and catching him by the neck with both hands, dragged him back with a fury of strength which I never thought he could have possessed, and actually hurled him almost across the room.
“Not for your life!” he said; “not for your living soul and hers!” And he stood between them like a lion at bay.
This is both very sad and sweet and such a fucked up Victorian Sex Metaphor. KISSING IS DEATH.
She wakes up more and thanks Van Helsing, begging him to protect Arthur from her. Arthur kisses her forehead, and then she dies.
“Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!”
He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity:—
“Not so; alas! not so. It is only the beginning!”
Van Helsing gathers up Lucy's diaries and other papers, then puts garlic around her body and a cross in her mouth. Dr Seward goes on quite a bit about what a pretty corpse she makes. They have covered up the specifics of her death. It is only after the burial that they discover that the cross was stolen (because the universe is conspiring against Lucy for being too sexy)
Van Helsing: To-morrow I want you to bring me, before night, a set of post-mortem knives.
Dr Seward: Must we make an autopsy?
Van Helsing: Yes and no. I want to cut off her head and take out her heart.
Dr Seward: D: ?!
Van Helsing: Stop whining, you're a doctor aren't you? ...oh, wait, you were in love with her, right. Sorry, just trust me.
Lucy's family lawyer: Isn't it lucky Lucy died at the same time as her mother? Or there'd be SUCH a mess with the inheritance. I'm so happy at how things turned out!
Dr Seward: >:(
Arthur: You loved her too, old fellow; she told me all about it, and there was no friend had a closer place in her heart than you. I don’t know how to thank you for all you have done for her.
He bursts into tears and holds onto Dr Seward.
In such cases men do not need much expression. A grip of the hand, the tightening of an arm over the shoulder, a sob in unison, are expressions of sympathy dear to a man’s heart. I stood still and silent till his sobs died away, and then I said softly to him:—
“Come and look at her.”
Together we moved over to the bed, and I lifted the lawn from her face. God! how beautiful she was. Every hour seemed to be enhancing her loveliness.
At dinner Van Helsing starts to call Arthur by his formal name of Lord Godalming, since his father died in the end. Arthur says he's not ready for it yet.
The Professor answered very sweetly:— “I only used that name because I was in doubt. I must not call you ‘Mr.,’ and I have grown to love you—yes, my dear boy, to love you—as Arthur.”
Ok he can be in the harem too after all.
Van Helsing makes vague comments about how Arthur may have trouble trusting him in the future. "But the time will come when your trust shall be whole and complete in me, and when you shall understand as though the sunlight himself shone through."
...is Van Helsing God? If he's God he doesn't get to be in the harem, that would be weird.
Mina's Diary: "I was looking at a very beautiful girl, in a big cart-wheel hat, sitting in a victoria outside Guiliano’s, when I felt Jonathan clutch my arm so tight that he hurt me, and he said under his breath: “My God!” "
A rejuvenated Dracula is also staring at the pretty girl. He really does have the same taste in girls (and guys) as Mina.
Jonathon freaks out, Mina doesn't want to encourage his madness so asks no questions, and later he calms down and seems to have forgotten all about it. She wonders if it is time to learn the truth of Jonathon's past. *am struck once again by the way Mina is the sort of character May from The Age of Innocence was critiquing, and not just because Winona Ryder played both of them*
Dr Seward: "It is all over." Oh, I wish. Quincy is as sad as the other two but bearing up "like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed"
Arthur: I feel like me giving my blood to Lucy was like us being married ;_;
The other three men who he doesn't know also gave Lucy blood: Mmm.
Van Helsing freaks out later, laughing and crying "just as a woman does. I tried to be stern with him, as one is to a woman under the circumstances; but it had no effect. Men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness!"
Van Helsing apologises, saying he is genuinely sad, but "[by Arthur's logic] this so sweet maid is a polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church’s law, though no wits, all gone—even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist."
Harems are no laughing matter, Van Helsing.
Dr Seward feels that this must be the end of his diary, or at least of this part of his life.
FINIS
(But actually there's still more than half of the book left to go)
News article: A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
Children keep going missing over night, saying a "bloofer woman" asked them to come for a walk. Each of them has a small injury on their neck. One was left almost dead. (Thanks to the plot summary I read, I know "bloofer" means "beautiful")
Mina's Diary: She has now read Jonathon's Diary. She's not sure she believes it, but steels herself to be ready if it's true.
Van Helsing writing to Mina: I have been going through Lucy's letters and see that you love her. You may be able to help me. Can I meet with you in secret, so we don't worry your husband?
Mina's Diary: "I used to think I would like to practice interviewing."
In a just universe Lucy would have her harem and Mina would be a newspaper reporter.
She describes how CLEVER and MANLY Van Helsing looks. I think Van Helsing is struck by how pretty she is and tries to cover for it.
He is impressed at how competent she is, not like other girls. "I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit—I suppose it is some of the taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths" so she demurely hands him the dairy, saying nothing until he realises it's all in shorthand lol. But then she hands him the typewritten account into regular English.
He goes into raptures about how clever and good she is. After he's read it, Mina starts talking about Jonathon and then bursts into tears and asks Van Helsing to help him.
Van Helsing says his life has been lonely but he has recently met many good people, and she has given him hope that there are good women to teach future generations. He promises to make Jonathon "strong and manly" but says it's important for his health that she pretend everything is fine.
VICTORIANS.
She gives him a typewritered copy of Jonathon's diary, then tells him what train to catch because she memorised the train timetable since it was helpful to Jonathon.
Van Helsing writes to her, having read the diary, saying that every word is true, and Jonathon seems entirely sane.
Jonathon's diary: Mina explains what happened. Seeing the letter saying he can trust his own mind finally calms his doubts, and he is no longer afraid. He meets Van Helsing: "Doctor, you don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don’t; you couldn’t with eyebrows like yours."
Van Helsing goes on for a while about how amazing Mina is and Jonathon could listen to it all day. Van Helsing feels like he knows Jonathon from the diaries, and says they should be friends forever. Jonathon gets a little choked up.
Dr Seward: Nothing ends.
He says the wound of Lucy's death is becoming "cicatrised" (forming scar tissue, what a nice word) Then Van Helsing shows up with the newspaper article about the missing children.
Dr Seward completely fails to put two and two together. Van Helsing goes on a little rant about being open to the unknown and how science is constantly discovering things that seemed impossible, like hypnotism, yet acting like that which it does not yet understand is untrue. There's some science babble about immortality in animals and humans, vampire bats etc.
we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of a big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him; but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.
This is both a nice philosophy and a great way to gloss over hinky vampire 'science'.
Dr Seward is persuaded to believe Van Helsing, even if what he says seems outlandish.
And so Van Helsing tells him that the "creature" attacking the children is Lucy herself.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-02 11:37 pm (UTC)What do those letters even stand for??
M.D., of course, is Doctor of Medicine ("Medicinae Doctor"). The rest is made trickier because somebody seems to have misplaced the commas. The first bit is M.R.C.S., Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. What's next I'm not sure; if it were M.R.C.P.I., it would be Member of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-03 01:29 pm (UTC)Ohhhh. Thank you! I was reading it as either one VERY LONG acronym or many short ones, both of which seemed a bit much.
But considering I got the book for free off Project Gutenburg I won't complain too much about a few missing commas :)
no subject
Date: 2018-11-04 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-05 01:01 pm (UTC)Once I finish this book I may have to write it, since the world so cruelly refuses to provide. Or at least draw a picture.