Dracula Chapters 15-17
Nov. 3rd, 2018 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrChapters 1-4
*sigh*
So Dr Seward does not react well to the idea that Lucy eats children, but is persuaded to let Van Helsing try to prove it.
(randomly: I was suddenly struck by the amusing contrast between canon!Van Helsing and the Hugh Jackman version)
They meet with the most recent victim, a cheerfully recovering child with a clear vampire bite on it's neck who wants to play with the 'bloofer lady' again.
They go to Lucy's tomb in the night. The flowers are rotted and everything is decaying and covered with bugs. Van Helsing goes to open Lucy's coffin. Dr Seward thinks "It seemed to be as much an affront to the dead as it would have been to have stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst living" because we haven't had a weird sex metaphor in a while.
But the coffin is empty.
The sit in vigil through the night at either end of the churchyard. Dr Seward sees light and dark shapes he can't make out, then finds Van Helsing holding a sleeping but uninjured child. Not wanting to answer questions, they leave it on the street where they know a policeman will find it.
Van Helsing opens the coffin again during the day...and there is Lucy, looking more radiantly beautiful than ever, a rosy glow in her cheeks and lips.
Van Helsing: I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body.
But Van Helsing wants to wait because there is the chance Arthur will find out and misunderstand and think that Lucy was buried alive, and then that Van Helsing killed her. So he will gather the harem, make sure everyone is convinced, and then finish the job.
Dr Seward: Ha, that Van Helsing almost had me fooled but after a good night's sleep I feel sure there is some rational explanation for all this. I hate to think Van Helsing is mad, or that he is responsible for any of the terrible things that have happened. I will watch him carefully.
The next day Van Helsing gathers the harem. He realises Dr Seward is doubting him but doesn't seem offended. He asks them to promise not to blame themselves for whatever happens.
Arthur: If it be anything in which my honour as a gentleman or my faith as a Christian is concerned, I cannot make such a promise.
Van Helsing: May I cut off Lucy's head?
Arthur: No???
But he is persuaded to visit the churchyard and give Van Helsing the chance to convince him it's the right thing to do.
The coffin is empty.
Van Helsing mixes communion wafers with some sort of putty and puts it into the cracks of the doorway, saying he has an indulgence.
As dawn begins to break, Lucy approaches with a child. "The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness." Seeing them, Lucy snarls and throws aside the child.
Man this is some heady maiden/whore dichotomy we have going on here.
She calls to Arthur, with the same unearthly mind-control that sounds like tinkling glass as Dracula's other women. But Van Helsing holds her back with a crucifix, and when she realises she can't pass into her tomb her face becomes an angry grimace, like a Greek or Japanese mask.
Van Helsing: May I cut off Lucy's head?
Arthur: Yes :(
Van Helsing removes the putty, and Lucy passes into the closed tomb somehow.
The next day they all wear black, and return to the graveyard. Van Helsing brings out soldering materials (?), stakes, surgery knives and hammers.
Arthur and Quincy: :(
Dr Seward: Doctor stuff :D
Van Helsing explains "the lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the Un-Dead": the curse of immortality is that they cannot die, and anyone who dies as their prey becomes undead themselves. The children Lucy drank from will keep coming back to her until they too are turned. But if she dies, they will be free. As will Lucy herself: "Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels."
So Van Helsing wants Arthur to kill her, so that he may think "It was my hand that sent her to the stars; it was the hand of him that loved her best; the hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose"
I know I keep saying VICTORIANS but ahhhhh. They're a sliver away from villains murdering innocent women to keep them pure. (I mean this all makes sense within the story, just on a meta level oh my god)
And Lucy's corpse at last looks like herself, sick and sad but pure. Arthur can kiss her now that she is pure and safe and dead.
Then the non-doctors are sent out while the other two cut off her head, fill her mouth with garlic, then solder closed the coffin.
ok then :/
And then they promise to work together to bring down Dracula.
Van Helsing gives Dr Seward copies of Jonathon and Mina's diaries. He then meets Mina for the first time, describing her as "a sweet-faced, dainty-looking girl". They have a moment of embarrassment knowing that Mina knows about Dr Seward's thing for Lucy, but get over it.
She meets him at his office, a little disconcerted by it being in a lunatic asylum. We find out that all of Dr Seward's diary keeping has been into a phonograph.
Mina: Can I hear it?
Dr Seward: No, it's too horrible! Also...uh...you know it's just occurred to me I have no way to find old entries on these. I possibly should have thought of that before now.
Mina: I'll type them up!
Dr Seward: No D:
Mina: You don't know me yet, but read my diary and I hope you will learn to trust me.
Dr Seward: You know what, I do know you, through Lucy. Here's my diary.
Mina: Woo, I get to hear the other side of the love story!
...the story where he gets dumped and then Lucy dies?
She comes to him later, crying, and he appreciates her sympathy.
And then she starts working out dates and filling gaps by looking up newspapers etc. They realise that Dracula lives in the house next to the insane asylum, and that Renfield's behaviour is a guide to his comings and goings.
So Dr Seward checks on Renfield: he is entirely content. This seems like a bad sign.
Jonathon goes to Whitby and follows the path of the boxes of dirt, greasing the wheels of his investigation by offering drink to "thirsty" delivery men, who complain of all the dust.
Mina meets the harem, and lets them know she is aware of their harem-ness.
Arthur: I know you loved my poor Lucy—*sniffle*
Mina: I loved dear Lucy, and I know what she was to you, and what you were to her. She and I were like sisters; and now she is gone, will you not let me be like a sister to you in your trouble?
"I felt this big sorrowing man’s head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child."
There is much talk of how difficult it has been for him with no woman to comfort him, and he promises to help her if she ever needs a man. She comforts Quincy as well, and kisses him to cheer him up.
Quincy: Thank you little girl ;_;
Mina: Aw, that's what he called Lucy!
VICTORIANS
*sigh*
So Dr Seward does not react well to the idea that Lucy eats children, but is persuaded to let Van Helsing try to prove it.
(randomly: I was suddenly struck by the amusing contrast between canon!Van Helsing and the Hugh Jackman version)
They meet with the most recent victim, a cheerfully recovering child with a clear vampire bite on it's neck who wants to play with the 'bloofer lady' again.
They go to Lucy's tomb in the night. The flowers are rotted and everything is decaying and covered with bugs. Van Helsing goes to open Lucy's coffin. Dr Seward thinks "It seemed to be as much an affront to the dead as it would have been to have stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst living" because we haven't had a weird sex metaphor in a while.
But the coffin is empty.
The sit in vigil through the night at either end of the churchyard. Dr Seward sees light and dark shapes he can't make out, then finds Van Helsing holding a sleeping but uninjured child. Not wanting to answer questions, they leave it on the street where they know a policeman will find it.
Van Helsing opens the coffin again during the day...and there is Lucy, looking more radiantly beautiful than ever, a rosy glow in her cheeks and lips.
Van Helsing: I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body.
It made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman whom I had loved. And yet the feeling was not so strong as I had expected. I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of this being, this Un-Dead, as Van Helsing called it, and to loathe it. Is it possible that love is all subjective, or all objective?
But Van Helsing wants to wait because there is the chance Arthur will find out and misunderstand and think that Lucy was buried alive, and then that Van Helsing killed her. So he will gather the harem, make sure everyone is convinced, and then finish the job.
Dr Seward: Ha, that Van Helsing almost had me fooled but after a good night's sleep I feel sure there is some rational explanation for all this. I hate to think Van Helsing is mad, or that he is responsible for any of the terrible things that have happened. I will watch him carefully.
The next day Van Helsing gathers the harem. He realises Dr Seward is doubting him but doesn't seem offended. He asks them to promise not to blame themselves for whatever happens.
Arthur: If it be anything in which my honour as a gentleman or my faith as a Christian is concerned, I cannot make such a promise.
Van Helsing: May I cut off Lucy's head?
Arthur: No???
But he is persuaded to visit the churchyard and give Van Helsing the chance to convince him it's the right thing to do.
The coffin is empty.
Van Helsing mixes communion wafers with some sort of putty and puts it into the cracks of the doorway, saying he has an indulgence.
As dawn begins to break, Lucy approaches with a child. "The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness." Seeing them, Lucy snarls and throws aside the child.
Lucy’s eyes in form and colour; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight.
Man this is some heady maiden/whore dichotomy we have going on here.
She calls to Arthur, with the same unearthly mind-control that sounds like tinkling glass as Dracula's other women. But Van Helsing holds her back with a crucifix, and when she realises she can't pass into her tomb her face becomes an angry grimace, like a Greek or Japanese mask.
Van Helsing: May I cut off Lucy's head?
Arthur: Yes :(
Van Helsing removes the putty, and Lucy passes into the closed tomb somehow.
The next day they all wear black, and return to the graveyard. Van Helsing brings out soldering materials (?), stakes, surgery knives and hammers.
Arthur and Quincy: :(
Dr Seward: Doctor stuff :D
Van Helsing explains "the lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the Un-Dead": the curse of immortality is that they cannot die, and anyone who dies as their prey becomes undead themselves. The children Lucy drank from will keep coming back to her until they too are turned. But if she dies, they will be free. As will Lucy herself: "Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels."
So Van Helsing wants Arthur to kill her, so that he may think "It was my hand that sent her to the stars; it was the hand of him that loved her best; the hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose"
I know I keep saying VICTORIANS but ahhhhh. They're a sliver away from villains murdering innocent women to keep them pure. (I mean this all makes sense within the story, just on a meta level oh my god)
He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it
And Lucy's corpse at last looks like herself, sick and sad but pure. Arthur can kiss her now that she is pure and safe and dead.
Then the non-doctors are sent out while the other two cut off her head, fill her mouth with garlic, then solder closed the coffin.
Outside the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and it seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch. There was gladness and mirth and peace everywhere
ok then :/
And then they promise to work together to bring down Dracula.
Van Helsing gives Dr Seward copies of Jonathon and Mina's diaries. He then meets Mina for the first time, describing her as "a sweet-faced, dainty-looking girl". They have a moment of embarrassment knowing that Mina knows about Dr Seward's thing for Lucy, but get over it.
She meets him at his office, a little disconcerted by it being in a lunatic asylum. We find out that all of Dr Seward's diary keeping has been into a phonograph.
Mina: Can I hear it?
Dr Seward: No, it's too horrible! Also...uh...you know it's just occurred to me I have no way to find old entries on these. I possibly should have thought of that before now.
Mina: I'll type them up!
Dr Seward: No D:
Mina: You don't know me yet, but read my diary and I hope you will learn to trust me.
Dr Seward: You know what, I do know you, through Lucy. Here's my diary.
Mina: Woo, I get to hear the other side of the love story!
...the story where he gets dumped and then Lucy dies?
She comes to him later, crying, and he appreciates her sympathy.
And then she starts working out dates and filling gaps by looking up newspapers etc. They realise that Dracula lives in the house next to the insane asylum, and that Renfield's behaviour is a guide to his comings and goings.
So Dr Seward checks on Renfield: he is entirely content. This seems like a bad sign.
Jonathon goes to Whitby and follows the path of the boxes of dirt, greasing the wheels of his investigation by offering drink to "thirsty" delivery men, who complain of all the dust.
Mina meets the harem, and lets them know she is aware of their harem-ness.
Arthur: I know you loved my poor Lucy—*sniffle*
Mr. Morris, with instinctive delicacy, just laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly out of the room. I suppose there is something in woman’s nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood
Mina: I loved dear Lucy, and I know what she was to you, and what you were to her. She and I were like sisters; and now she is gone, will you not let me be like a sister to you in your trouble?
"I felt this big sorrowing man’s head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child."
There is much talk of how difficult it has been for him with no woman to comfort him, and he promises to help her if she ever needs a man. She comforts Quincy as well, and kisses him to cheer him up.
Quincy: Thank you little girl ;_;
Mina: Aw, that's what he called Lucy!
VICTORIANS
