#Dracula Daily

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Jonathan and Mina are starting to feel miserable about not telling eachother anything since they arrived at Seward's asylum. And I get why they feel this way, their dynamic before being part of the Dracula Hunting Group was to tell each other absolutely everything, to help each other in what they could to solve a problem, and to comfort eachother without restrain.

And it worked perfectly! Even before Van Helsing and Seward convinced Jonathan to exclude Mina, both of them were going through all of the material that they collected like Mina's typewriter was possessed. They were collecting information with Jonathan's new lawyer connections, transcribing said information from audio and shorthand to written word, and putting together all the clues they could find to avenge Lucy, and Jonathan's mental health.

Mina and Jonathan worked with an impressive harmony that only people who have worked together for years can develop. It seems they expected to continue this dynamic when they arrived to work with the others. However, surprise surprise, victorian gender roles, and expectations about married couples grabbed a book and slapped both of them in the face.

Van Helsing, Arthur, Quincey, and Seward are men that also are restricted by the box victorian gender roles, but the key difference between them and Jonathan/Mina is how they perceived these gender roles. Both Jonathan and Mina see Victorian gender roles as a public obligation that they have to do since they were raised with those standards, but in private they are only with eachother so it was fine to "break the rules" because they are commited to them in public. They are affected by those gender roles because they have internalised them, and they use them to dictate their actions, but in private they can love eachother in the most comfortable way possible because they are alone.

However, the boys squad is not like them, they are commited to these gender roles in both public and private (even if they worsen their mental health hello Arthur), and they expected Mina and Jonathan to be the same. This is why Jonathan was so easily convinced that Mina shouldn't participate in the investigation, and why Mina sadly understood that she was going to be left out.

But it's so bad for both of them, they are going to die if they keep doing this. Mina is getting sick and weak with horrible nightmares, and she doesn't tell Jonathan because she doesn't want to worry him, on top of knowing that Jonathan wants to tell her all the important things that he knows she can put together. Jonathan wants to send Mina to their house because he knows it is practically torture for her to remain ignorant in the investigation, and he doesn't want her to feel useless when they could have been working with eachother to this point.

It's so horrible, and so weirdly interesting to see this power couple being completely restrained by the rules of their society, when in the past they were restrained, yes, but with loopholes.

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Dracula characters based on how likely they would be to eat a worm

Jack Seward
There’s scarcely anyone in this story more likely to eat a worm than Jack Seward. As an experiment? Yeah, sure. When he was bullied at school? Almost certainly. Because a somewhat overbearing father figure suggested it? Without question. This man has eaten a worm before and he would do so again.

Arthur Holmwood
Arthur is the son of a Lord, the Victorian 1%, one of the most wealthy and privileged individuals in one of the most wealthy and privileged countries in the world. Until the events of the novel, do we think Arthur Holmwood, future Lord Godalming, ever had to do anything he didn’t want to? Even in the horrors of the Victorian public school system, rank has its privileges. He would not eat a worm.

Quincey Morris
An adventurous type like Quincey? He wouldn’t just eat a worm, he’d fry it in a little butter and cayenne pepper and do his best to enjoy it.

Lucy Westenra as a human
I was going to say absolutely not. Surely she would be horrified at the very idea. But equally, Lucy is by far the biggest people-pleaser in the whole novel, even more so than Jonathan ‘What a pretty colour all these red flags are’ Harker. If she thought eating a worm would make someone she loved happy, she’d dig right in.

Lucy Westenra as the Bloofer Lady
Small children have been known to eat worms, and Lucy has been known to eat small children. So indirectly, yes, she would eat a worm.

Jonathan Harker
It strikes me that we don’t know much about the eating habits of any of the characters in this novel – for instance, we know which pub Jack Seward likes, but not what he eats when he’s there.

But we have a wealth of information about Jonathan, and we know he is the kind of man who will have an unfamiliar paprika dish for dinner, have “queer dreams”, then go down for breakfast and have even more paprika.

Jonathan Harker would eat a worm.

Mina Harker née Murray
Mina would do anything for her friends and loved ones, and that includes eating a worm. But come on guys, really? You would force Mina to eat a worm after everything she’s been through? You monsters.

Van Helsing
Van Helsing thinks astral projection is real and parrots live forever. He’s the first person to consider the possibility that Lucy is being vampired. This man has the most open mind in the entire novel. He is a deeply weird individual and he would definitely eat a worm.

Mrs Westenra
Mrs Westenra is a respectable Victorian lady of the upper-middle or upper-classes, and under no circumstances would she eat a worm.

Unless it was the last-ditch treatment for her ailing daughter, I guess.

Dracula
You know the song you might have sung as a kid – “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I’ll go and eat worms?”

We know Dracula eats solicitors and Lucys, he doesn’t eat worms. But he should.  

Renfield
Do I even need to answer this one?

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Dying to know how Van Helsing "signed" his phonograph entry in all-caps. Did he just suddenly bellow his surname into the phonograph at full volume in case Jonathan wasn't sure who was speaking?

(I'm also not at all clear on why VH is leaving notes by phonograph rather than just writing a note, but at least the "how" of that is fairly obvious.)

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