#mina/bram saying ‘oh arthur must feel safe enough to cry now that he’s with a woman :)’ even though we’ve seen him cry and express emotion

[emeraldgreaves]

dracula is a great book, but there is the occasional moment where it feels as though the characters are overridden by bram stoker attempting to get a good grade in victorian sexuality, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve

#dracula daily #product of their time etc. but they very much interrupt the flow of the narrative #this is specifically about the occasional asides #mina’s eve mention re: tricking van helsing #the new woman passage #van helsing regularly going ‘mrs harker is wonderful she’s not like Other Girls’ #like ‘mrs harker brought me a cup of tea and for the first time this felt like home’ #is cute or sexist depending on the cultural lens you read it through #bc 21st century audiences will read it as found family but it’s also very ‘this place felt like home now that there was a Woman around’ #Lucy’s Dead and Now She’s Sexy is related to sexuality *but* it is actually not an example of this because there was a clear and observable #force that acted on her (getting drinked) that caused a dramatic shift in her behavior #that occurred within the narrative #whereas we’re expected to take the characters at face value when by a 21st century lens they tend to act opposite of what bram’s hammering i #mina/bram saying ‘oh arthur must feel safe enough to cry now that he’s with a woman :)’ even though we’ve seen him cry and express emotion #multiple times before this! which may be a result of the chronological format. i have no idea how it reads originally #maybe this is the first time we see arthur cry #in the normal book #yeah. many thoughts #emerald speaks #emerald reads