Soggy Brave Sausages and the Hands of God.

So what’s new with Dracula tonight? Not much, I’m afraid. The elements I bemoaned in the last Dracula post are still very much to the fore. Here are two examples:

‘“Do as you will,” said Jonathan, with a sob that shook him all over, “We are in the hands of God!”’

The inaccurate punctuation may be overlooked as a typo or archaic convention, but Jonathan is still sobbing and still falling back into the hands of God. Still, at least they don’t have a grip of steel, which is a blessing of sorts, I suppose. Although Jonathan's own hand did 'close instinctively on the handle of his kukri' at one point when Dracula's name was mentioned. Mmm.

 I’m curious to know whatever happened to the stiff upper lip for which Victorian gentlemen were renowned. Stoker’s male heroes – at least the British and American ones – appear to have lips that are about as stiff as uncooked sausages after they’ve fallen into a puddle and become ever so soggy. I wonder what this says about Stoker.

And here’s another one that’s true to form, lifted from Mina’s journal:

‘Later. – Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave!’

See what I mean? What did I say about ‘twice a page on average?’ That’s twice in two lines. Again, it’s interesting to reflect on the fact that this is a male Victorian author putting words into the mouth of a female character. Did Mr Stoker have a clue about real women, you might wonder.

It’s also interesting to note that the only characters with stiff upper lips in this posh Englishman’s story are a young woman, an ageing Dutchman, and a Romanian vampire. What a traitor.