Thursday, 29 November 2012

Colour Shifts and Saying it with Tears.

Tonight’s Dracula update:

(Well, sort of update anyway.)

Having previously remarked on Jonathan Harker’s propensity to colour shifts, we now have a new one. I quote:

‘Then her husband (Jonathan) turned to her, wan-eyed and with a greenish pallor which subdued the snowy whiteness of his hair…’

It seems that while Dracula’s poison is gradually turning Mina into a vampire, Jonathan is offering some compensation by becoming an oompa-loompa. Hey,ho; that’s Victorian England for you – nothing if not well balanced.

And talking of Victorian England, I can’t help noting that the ‘ordinary’ male characters – those whom Mina is want to call ‘good, brave men’ about twice a page on average – are rather excessively given to weeping and squeezing one another’s hands. It is with some relief, however, that when Mina asks them to promise that they will kill her should the vampire’s poison take her too far along the road of diabolical transition, they are too emotional for tears. Oh, good.

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