Jonathan Harker - Tumblr Posts
I'm really happy it ended with a note from our good friend Jonathan. He sounds good. It was a comfort. And now the circle is round again
I hope that after Dracula dies, before they start the long trek back home, Jonathan takes everyone back to the hotel and he meets back up with the old woman and her husband and he tells them that they’re safe now.
Everyone is safe now.
I hope he holds up the crucifix and kisses the old woman’s forehead and says thank you. I hope he he tells her “It kept me safe. You kept me safe. The evil of this place is gone and will never hurt anyone again. Children will grow up in this village and parents will watch them without fear. Everyone is safe now because of you and the faith you chose to share, not only with me, but in me.”
jonathan harker couldn’t handle all that….but i could.
the type of shit I’d be writing if I was Jonathan Harker
"Once more I have seen the Count go out in his lizard fashion." - jonathan harker on May 15
jonathan harker on may 12th: i witnessed with abject terror as the count descended the sheer stone wall of the castle face first as a lizard would. the unmitigated horror of the spectacle haunts my waking hours like an inescapable nightmare. this man or this thing shall surely be my undoing.
jonathan harker on may 15th: saw the old bastard do the crawling trick again and honestly fuck him it's not even that impressive i don't even care anymore i hope he falls.
WHY DID I JUST FIND OUT THAT JOHNNY FROM HOTEL TRANSLYVANIA IS BASED ON JONATHAN HARKER. the fuck?
a tv adaptation of dracula but it's a romantic slice of life comedy about lucy and the boyfriend squad, except for 1 - 3 minutes every episode, we abruptly cut away from Lucy Westenra is The Bachelorette to whatever ungodly horror jonathan's facing in castle dracula today, with no context before it cuts back to lucy, with no explanation or resolution of what's happening with jonathan. this happens without warning every time.
Made this with much consideration (worked off vibes)
Now that I know mina LOVES train schedules I'm finding myself SO charmed by Jonathan making sure to note every detail of the train schedule of his trip
Mina is Dracula's archnemesis in so many ways, but the most obvious ones are
Mina was Dracula's very first adversary in England
Mina is personally hurt by him over the same man and the same woman
Dracula claims Jonathan. Mina promptly marries Jonathan
Mina is the only one that Dracula openly attacks with personal malice, in the most intimate ways
A single, glaring scar on the same place for both Mina and Dracula
Only these two share the same blood
Both are strategists, commanders of men
Psychic link exists only between them
KIN OF MY KIN
Van Helsing hasn't even personally confronted the guy come on now
So it turns out that
a queer reading of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
is literally just reading
Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
okay jokes aside dracula daily is such an ingenious way of promoting and enjoying classic literature. bringing back the experience of reading it like a serial novel but through email?? connecting the narrative experience to the textual form but in a modernised way?? the epistolary novel at its peak!!! that shit is so cool!!!! and seeing people reading it for the first time and getting their live reactions?? fucking blessed!! maybe it’s the nerd in me but i think it’s genuinely awesome
No memes of gentle breasts that are sad? I expect more from you Tumblr.
Okay you guys the lapse in Dracula communiqués is really starting to put a strain on the Tumblr community. People are snapping at each other left and right in the comments of various unrelated posts. We. Need. Jonathan.
The almost throw away line at the start of today's update re: Dracula leaving Jonathan's room gave me Ramsey Bolton vibes (poor Sansa/Jonathan). I don't get people who ship Drac and Jonathan at all, or who think Drac is hot or whatever (but then I'm demi so I wouldn't get it even if he wasn't a monstrous baby killing kidnapper I suppose).
Just imagine the novel readers of the 19th century reacting to Jonathan climbing the walls. Imagine how utterly unthinkable such a thing would be to them (much as it was unthinkable to Jonathan at first). I think a lot of us reading now don't have the same reaction. We get that Jonathan is mimicking Drac much like Drac mimicked him. We get that Jonathan is desperate and behaving in a new way that indicates he's changing. But I don't think most of us have the visceral reaction of horror it would likely have engendered among the (often female, sheltered) readers of the time. Jonathan isn't just getting desperate and taking risks, he's being corrupted. He! A man! He's behaving like a monster. A fine English gentleman! The kind of person you have been brought up to see as unquestionably upright, wise, and virtuous is crawling the walls like a monstrous lizard vampire! It's the Yellow Wallpaper except it's a man. Inconceivable. The absolute terror underlying this story, the fear of the Other, of how even the most unassailable person would succumb to the corruption of the East. Xenophobia in the form of an old world legend.
I just fell down an unexpected hole. After reading June 30's entry, I started making connections in my mind between Jonathan's attempted shovelmurder and the concept of regeneration through violence. My spouse is more well versed in this concept but I recalled him linking it to Theodore Roosevelt. As I understand it, TR very much believed in the necessity for men to use violence to blossom as Real Men. In a civilized society, men would degenerate due to soft living. They could only restore themselves - regenerate themselves - through violence. Since one of the things I enjoy about reading fiction from past centuries is imagining how it impacted people then versus now, I started thinking about how today's readers (here on Tumblr anyway) feel very gratified by Jonathan's sudden choice to employ homicidal violence. For us, he's a relatively weak character (meow meow) who we want to see regenerated through (his embracing) violence. But how would it impact readers at the time? Would they be horrified to see a well educated English gentleman lose his shit like that? Or would they feel excited and cheer him on? So I thought of Teddy Roosevelt and it occurred to me that he was alive at the time Dracula was published. This is where the hole I fell into comes in. Turns out, Bram Stoker and Teddy Roosevelt met on two occasions and also corresponded. Stoker was impressed with TR's strength of personality. I think this adds a whole new aspect to our charming cowboy, y'all. Not only that, but Stoker was friends (possibly more, folks) with Walt Whitman. THE Walt Whitman. The unapologetically GAY Walt Whitman. Please imagine the glee with which I write this. So any gay subtext you were sort of wondering about? Asking yourself (like I was) is this *really* gay subtext, or am I reading into it? Welp, Stoker LOVED Whitman's poetry (link attached leads to an article that includes the full, gushing text of Stoker's first letter to Whitman if you want to see for yourself). So I'm going to go with, HELL YES. THE SUBTEXT IS REAL AND INTENTIONAL. I know this is probably common knowledge in some circles, but I never studied or read Dracula before now so for me, it is a delightful surprise.
I'm curious, people who are reading Dracula Daily, but haven't read it before and have managed to avoid spoilers, what are your predictions?
I am convinced that Dracula has long distance telepathy, though some aspects of my theory don't really work. I've never read the book so please don't comment either way if you know the story. Here's my thinking. It stands to reason that Jonathan told Dracula all about Mina and absolutely convinced Drac that Mina is the best woman in England (and the world as far as Jon's concerned). Dracula is not immune to such advertising and send his telepathic mind tentacles out to find her. Here's where my theory gets shaky. Why did he start playing with (his food) Lucy first? Was she sitting near Mina and his mind-tentacle bumped into her first? And then there's Renfield. I suspect Renfield was always ND. But the eat-living-creatures thing must be a Drac influence. Drac setting up a little helper for when he arrives. Or just playing with his food again, who knows. But I doubt Jon has ever heard of Renfield? Unless he mentioned Seward and the mental hospital and that intrigued Drac. Maybe he was looking for Seward and his tentacle bumped Ren instead. Imagine Dracula having, like, imprecise aim! Seward would be a much more useful helper, after all, as a respectable medical man. Think of the access to helpless food Seward could provide. Come to think of it, if Drac has long distance telepathy he'd have close proximity telepathy too. Maybe he plucked Lucy out of Jon's brain. Maybe out of his dreams. Maybe Drac just liked her looks; everyone seems to. But that still doesn't explain him going after Renfield. Unless Jon met Renfield once, somehow? Could have been in passing, before Ren went to Seward's hospital. Maybe Ren acted memorably enough for Jon to have dreamt of him, and put him on Dracula's radar? Anyone new to this novel have thoughts about it?