Discover Top Posts Tagged with #the beetle

Very late to the party, but that MA thesis on Jonathan and Mina's gender presentation that circulated on Tumblr some time ago (Jonathan, Mina, and the Holiest Love: Intimations of a virtuous queerness in Dracula (1897) by Viktor Karlsen Hessen) really is so, so good. From a deep dive into Jonathan as a Gothic heroine, complete with step-by-step comparisons with an actual Ann Radcliffe's heroine as well as the other female characters he's paralleled with in the text - Scheherazade and Lenore - to an exploration of how Mina's masculine traits are treated as positive throughout the novel and survive into the ending. Also, the author is very careful and rational when talking about Stoker's personal views and sexuality, neither jumping to conclusions based on a few facts nor disregarding those facts at all.

Also, there's a section comparing Mina to other female characters in Gothic literature who do not act in accordance with the Victorian gender norms but are punished for that - Helen Vaughan from The Great God Pan and Marjorie Lindon from The Beetle, and I personally am 1) always there for some The Great God Pan talk, 2) always there for dragging The Beetle.

#the only part where i thought the author was wrong was mentioning renfield & the last voyage of the demeter as the examples #of recent movie adaptations that exclude jonathan. they do but that's just bc they're focused on other parts on the story #they also exclude every other crew of light member. it's not some specific jonathan hate. otherwise incredible work #it's been some time since i interacted meaningfully with anything dracula-related #but this paper really reminded me how much love i have for this book #dracula #bram stoker #jonathan harker #mina harker #jonmina #the great god pan #arthur machen #the beetle #richard marsh #talk talk talk #gella talks dracula

the beetle 1897 is the best book ever published. no one should read it. no one HAS read it. it outsold dracula in its original run. significant portions of its prose are almost unreadably bad. it made me laugh out loud more than any other nineteenth century literature I've ever read. one of the main characters is an honest to god aspiring war criminal and asks random men for recreational fist fights when he's bored and has ten minutes to spare. it spends a quarter of its story building up a pro-feminist narrative about women's autonomy and then tears it all apart in favor of being as racist as possible. the last act and climax of the story is entirely about narrowly missing trains. it's called the beetle and the main antagonist is named the beetle and the magic words you have to say to summon the beetle are "the beetle." 10/10 experience that I hated every minute of.

#the beetle #marina marvels at life

From “The Birth of the Beetle!” in Strange Tales #123, August 1964. Stan Lee script, Carl Burgos pencils, Dick Ayers inks, Stan Goldberg (?) colors, Sam Rosen letters.

Info from Grand Comics Database