Gothic Heroine Jonathan Harker

Megparsec's Dracula Daily and all-purpose gothic lit sideblog. Home of deep-dive literary analysis, excavations of queer subtext, memes and bad puns, the occasional paprika hendl recipe, you name it.

[theleonardnimoymemoriallibrary]

In honor of Star Trek and World Dracula Day, phrases from Dracula as Star Trek episode titles:

[obsidian-sphere]

Interior art by an uncredited artist from 1922 of a "Flapper Vamp."

[hamletteprinceofdenmark]

Jonathan, writing at that little oak table:

[marghen]

Happy Mina Murray Day!

[obsidian-sphere]

Interior art by an uncredited artist from 1922 of a "Flapper Vamp."

[weberina]

Funny that it is only now, on my third pass of Dracula Daily, did I pick up on the fact that either the Harkers are both train fiends or else Mina's fiendishness has rubbed off on him. Coz the first thing Jonathan Harker writes in his first entry is about train times

Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.

Trains are obviously A Thing TM with them XD XD XD

[crowboy-bebop]

leaving paprika hendl out under my Bistritztree for Jonathan Harker tonight

[thecoolguy24601]

Really insane found media

So, back when Dracula first released in 1931, it came with an epilogue where Edward Van Sloan (who played Van Helsing) basically reassured the audience that vampires exist. They apparently removed it out of fear it’d anger religious groups. After almost a century, it’s now available

[orbisonblue]

@hotvintagepoll

[hotvintagepoll]

@lazaefair these tags rule

[cry-ptidd]

Seward: constantly sniffing after his times' gender roles and gets outdone or proven wrong by the narrative at almost every turn

Van Helsing: "Seward doesn't know shit about women and he never gets any"

Scholars: Seward's word on women is absolute in regards to the gender politics of Dracula

[laceghost-art]

“I have been in love with no one, and never shall," she whispered, "unless it should be with you."

[titleleaf]

side note: if you want to read some killer late 19th century weird fiction by a queer writer: run, do not walk, to Vernon Lee's Hauntings. Lee's queerness falls right in that valley where modern identity categories fail due to the complexity of gendered experience, and it doesn't seem useful to retroactively pronounce One Definitive Label for her life and experience-- she used a male pseudonym and embraced gender-nonconformity by the standards of her era, both in physical presentation and in her career; she had powerful romantic relationships and long term collaborations with women; she had a complex relationship to physical intimacy; she lived a generally offbeat independent life as a scholar and international traveler -- but holy fuck her supernatural fiction is a first-class treat and has a lot of queer valences. Curious phenomena surround a charismatic orphan girl as Italy's pagan Classical past perseveres into its heavily Catholic present; a visiting academic becomes enthralled to a long-dead Renaissance femme fatale; a super-normie-looking married couple manifest troubling echoes of their ancestral forebears in the presence of the artist hired to paint their portrait; an uptight classical musician is tormented by a long-dead CASTRATO SEX GHOST who exerts preternatural force to seduce or to kill through the power of his otherworldly voice. It fucking rules. And you can read that shit for free. Please do.

Hauntings by Vernon Lee

Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by volunteers.

[bellasouto]

carmilla the girl from my dreams

[marghen]

Overhauling my character designs starting with Mina but idk if I love the hair yet. The shape is fun but I need more references for different angles because Period Accuracy™ is the goal

bonus:

[marghen]

Quick update: finally liking the hair shape! It really needed the bun to be visible from the front angle.

[vamplire]

i will always be the girl who likes vampires

[forthegothicheroine]

Have we considered whether Mrs. Westenra was ever under Dracula's mind control? I doubt it was Stoker's intent, but as with Mr. Hawkins, it seems plausible. A not-totally-faithful adaptation could have her start out as overbearing and otherwise not a great mother even for the time, but as they vacation at the seaside, it gets worse.

"You know what happens to people who sleepwalk?" she tells her daughter in a voice that doesn't sound entirely her own. "They call them loose women. They end their lives in asylums. You wouldn't tell anyone you're sleepwalking, would you?"

"My daughter's marrying a lord!" she squeals when Lucy accepts Arthur's proposal- a man Lucy quite likes, but whom she might not have chosen without explicitly being told she'd kill her mother if she turned him down. "My daughter's marrying a lord," her mother murmurs again and again as the vacation goes on, in a different tone of voice.

"You didn't tell that doctor anything that could make you...unfit for marriage, did you?" she asks after Van Helsing visits. "Some nightmares, a girl must keep to herself to avoid shaming the family." Lucy cannot meet her eye.

"Your mother knows best for you," Lucy's mother whispers as she removes the garlic flowers which her daughter begged her to keep up.

"Your mother knows best for you," the Bloofer Lady sings to the children who drain away in her arms.

Mrs. Westenra dies of fright at the very moment when the control is lifted enough for her to comprehend everything- the moment Dracula doesn't need her anymore.

[annabelle--cane]

am i allowed to ask for context on transfem jonathan harker. because i love the vision and am currently reading dracula but i want to know like your reasonings as you are the wisest draculablogger i know

basically the whole Thing for the beginning chunk of the book where jonathan's stuck in draculaland is that he's taking on the typical role of gothic heroine, i.e. getting locked away in a crumbling castle by a weird old guy with an implicit looming sexual threat, and the text directly compares him to two well known female characters, lenore from the ballad "lenore" and scheherazade from the arabian nights. often the way this gets read is that part of the horror is supposed to come from jonathan's emasculation and the subversion of gender norms, and while that's not not true, it also overlooks that he compares himself to women a few times in an effort to self-soothe in a kind of "it makes me feel better to remember that my situation is kindred to these other situations" way, or, as I like to think of it, "god I'm miserable but at least I can imagine I'm a miserable girl. yeah phew that's better." later, when he gets back to london, mina mentions that it's an old preference of his to take on the feminine social role in courtship rituals (him holding her arm when they go out walking instead of the other way around), which she as an etiquette teacher is hyper aware of as "improper" but can't bring herself to actually mind.

(spoilers for the last like third of the book)

there's also the really interesting contrast where, on the one hand, jonathan is finally catalyzed into getting back on his active heroic masculinity game when his innocent wife is attacked and violated by an orientalized Other, an image that reinforces all kinds of conservative ideals about gender and sexuality and race and nation and so forth, but on the other hand he then swears to himself that if it gets down to it he will straight up turn gender / religion / nation traitor and reject everything he's been raised to value in favor of staying loyal to his wife and literally giving his body to her. he begins performing masculinity like a motherfucker but in a way that the other men ("the other men") in the story find unnerving, dangerous, and untrustworthy. previously in the text, jonathan makes a distinction between men and women vs vampires who look like men and women, and I feel like late-novel jonathan is all masculinity with no manhood. and yes that entendre is doubling.

basically I think jonathan harker is a lightly butchy transfem in a "had to completely drop her assigned gender role and then cautiously re-approach it from the other side to pick out the parts she actually likes" kind of way.

[annabelle--cane]

Your analysis on transfem Jonathan made me remember what I've thought before: that Jonathan performing Manhood was specifically when he agreed with the doctors and the other men that Mina must be kept ignorant for her own good. More so than any later emotional outburst, or declaration that he will sell his own soul to kill Dracula, or swearing that he will send him to hell (which, as you said, unnerves the other men instead of making him admire him; Van Helsing is freaked out). When he sees Mina pale while keeping her in the dark, he comments, "It is too great a strain for a woman to bear. I did not think so at first, but I know better now." While he's performing Manhood with the Boys, Mina, on her part, performs The Angel In The House, and hides how she feels and what she wants to not be a burden. And this performing of their Gender Sphere (and going against his wedding words that a couple must have full confidence) so perfectly is what keeps them the most emotionally distant, and lets Dracula bring total disaster.

big big agree. so much of the social role of Being A Man is just doing misogyny, and that is jonathan's one real try at being the Proper kind of man/husband and deliberately letting something be unequal between himself and mina. and then it almost immediately backfires to all hell and he starts drafting his gender two week notice.