Of Wolves And Bats*...

Of wolves and bats*...

*actually I'll do two posts because otherwise hello novel-length musings.

Anyway. Wolves. I'm puzzled. That's an understatement.

First of all, I love wolves so I was never very happy with their association to evil in Dracula. Imagine my pleasant surprise when Mr. Bilder and the count were chatting about them and Drac said that wolves *wouldn't* like him.

This is so interesting to me.

It made sense for Stoker to cast them in the role of evil children of the night. I'd have been more surprised if he portrayed them positively because there's such a long history of fear of wolves in all corners of Europe. Just consider the fairytales! Of *course* they'd be vampire familiars.

And now, they're not?

I think this is Stoker's way of saying that all natural animals hate Dracula on sight. I wonder if bats and rats hate him too?

Then Dracula mindcontrols them. *He's* the one choosing animals that creep humans out. There's nothing inherently evil about wolves, it's Dracula that chooses to make them evil!

Honestly Stoker really exceeds all my expectations if that's the case.

What do you all think happened to poor Bersicker ? Speculation only, please, no spoilers.

😬

I am, admittedly, *increasingly* biased and irrational about Lucy.

But.

For FUCKS sake, Mrs. Westenra.

WHERE did you think those flowers CAME FROM. Did you even bother to ask the staff, who undoubtedly could tell you the DOCTORS put them there?

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS

The same is true of an illness, though, especially since they immediately rule out any sort of anemia (why do they do that??). I think, in Jack's shoes, I'm like, totally flummoxed, right? Super upset and worried. Honestly I'd probably suspect the mother or a member of the staff. Someone is exsanguinating Lucy. I'd also be grasping for potential animals. I'd be in the library trying to figure out if rats ever drink blood or something. Actually, (tw animal suffering/death)

.

.

I used to have chickens and found two of them totally exsanguinated one morning. We think it was a weasel. So as Jack I'd be like, "Is a fucking WEASEL getting in here somehow???" And my mind would keep linking the blood loss to anything similar I'd encountered with my patients, so I really do think it's reasonable to want him to start having these ideas, even if he can't make them fit or make sense.

Someone here asked why Jack doesn’t yet suspect that someone is preying on Lucy, and it got me thinking. It’s a great point. The Jack the Ripper murders predate Dracula by a few years. Why wouldn’t Jack, a man who deals with people like Renfield every day, think of the Ripper and begin putting together a theory of some madman (his term) crawling through Lucy’s window at night?

I poked around Google to see if there’s any connection between Stoker and the Ripper. Aside from him meeting two men suspected of being the Ripper (did he know they were suspects? it didn’t say), there doesn’t seem to be much there. One source did mention that he made a comparison between the evil of the Ripper and the evil of Dracula. So we know Stoker was aware of serial killers; hence Seward should be, too.

Anyway as I was reading my findings I was struck by something else. In multiple sources people dismiss the idea that Dracula was based on the Ripper because the Ripper tortured and killed prostitutes while Dracula “romantically” preys on high class ladies.

You guys.

Okay, to be clear, I don’t see much evidence that Stoker based Dracula on the Ripper.

But like. Did any of these people read the book? Romantically? Ffs.

Also (and this is the point I’ve been working towards, believe it or not) the idea that Dracula doesn’t prey on poor sex workers just annoys me. We have no idea. No one would tell us, in this epistolary novel, if sex workers were turning up dead in London gutters. It’s not newsworthy when a sex worker dies looking pale but otherwise unharmed. We’ve seen that Drac has a huge appetite (*cough*Demeter crew*cough*). The fact he *hasn’t* killed Lucy yet implies an almost guarantee that he’s eating other people. Who better than sex workers? Maybe some vagrants here and there, too. The way they die would likely mislead most people who found the bodies into thinking it wasn’t by violence, too.

Dracula likes to slowly torture and draw out his kill when it comes to Lucy. Is she the only one? We have no idea.

Aaand now I want a story about Dracula’s unknown victims.

Okay, so what about the fact that London isn’t becoming overrun with fledgling vampires? Well, idk if Stoker ever gives us an explanation for how Drac makes new vampires, but it’s clearly not an automatic thing, or Transylvania would have a lot more of them (a lot of them babies–yikes).

Will someone pretty please write the story of these missing victims?

Maybe I’ll take a crack at it…

Catch me SCREAMING in the subway for a PLOT TWIST from a 1897 book. NOT THE FLOWERS C'MON!!!

Hilarious that Dracula does not seem to realize that he could have just showed up as a dog and scratched on the door and Lucy absolutely would have let him right in. Work smarter, not harder, buddy.

It’s so funny how the #1 defense of Van Helsing keeping everyone in the dark is the threat of Seward throwing him in his asylum if he breathes the word “vampires,” and then Quincey just shows up all

Quincey: Wow this reminds me of the time my horse got drinked by a vampire

Jack: Quincey this is the third time you’ve told that story let’s stay on topic here