sorry to Draculapost on the WRONG DAY but I’m catching up with Dracula Daily and just got to the September 23rd entry and … I don’t think we talk enough about the fact that it’s not just that Mina and Dracula aren’t romantically linked in the book at all (unlike every adaptation ever, ugh) - instead, they’re literally set up as romantic rivals.
Look at this passage. Jonathan is holding Mina’s arm here - basically, she’s in the strong masculine support position and he’s clinging on to her in the feminine position. She’s feeling awkward because she’s aware they’re playing with late Victorian gender expectations. She looks away from him, at a very beautiful girl … and then Jonathan points out Dracula, staring at the same girl. Again, Mina is behaving in a masculine way by openly staring at a pretty girl - and her taste is shared by Dracula.
I think you can kind of substitute Jonathan for the pretty girl in this scene at a meta level. Mina and Dracula both claim him actively at different points of the book - Mina marries him, obviously, and in the castle Dracula tells his brides that ‘he belongs to me’. Obviously Mina does get feminized at points of the novel - her gender is all over the place in the most awesome way - but I think there’s really something in seeing her and Dracula as two masc romantic rivals, fighting over their shared love interest.
