Mina Harker and Dr. Seward: So In Love.

Warning: there is going to be a lot of capslocksia going on in this post.

Sometimes, when I'm reading a book or watching a TV show, my brain gets really bored. As a result, I start inventing storylines in my head--and, since this is me we're talking about, the stories usually have something to do with a secret romance between two characters.

Some people call this shipping (for more about shipping and what it is, read "To Ship or Not To Ship" at Bookalico.us). I call it LOGIC. Or at least in this case I do.

See, lately I've been listening to Dracula on audiobook (it was free), and I swear to Gott--as Van Helsing would put it--that Mina Harker and Doctor Seward are in love. THEY ARE SO CUTE TOGETHER, YOU GUYS!!! Yet I can't find anything on the internet about their secret, burning romance. What the fridge? It's totally obvious.

Don't believe me? Here is my recap of how they fell in love, which seriously reads almost exactly like the start of a romantic comedy:


Meet-cute: Paddington Station. Mina recognizes Dr. Seward immediately from her friend's description of him. He blushes. She blushes. They go to the lunatic asylum where he lives for some reason (because he's crazy?). He's so excited he has to record his thoughts about their meeting IMMEDIATELY.

Mina knocks on the door.

*gasp* "Here she is!" (Seward literally says this--okay maybe not the gasp. But he's obviously P R E T T Y jazzed.)

And they fell in love: Mina walks in, wondering to whom Dr. Seward is talking, but he's alone. He really is crazy! No, he's just recording in his "diary," which happens to be a phonograph. Mina's all, "You keep a diary? I keep a diary!" (And for the same reason--to improve themselves. RME These two already clearly belong together.)

Mina's account:

I felt quite excited over it, and blurted out, "Why, this beats even shorthand! May I hear it say something?" 

"Certainly," he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it in train for speaking. [Gawd they are so cute.] Then he paused, and a troubled look overspread his face. 

"The fact is," he began awkwardly, "I only keep my diary in it, and as it is entirely, almost entirely, about my cases it may be awkward, that is, I mean…" He stopped, and I tried to help him out of his embarrassment. 

"You helped to attend dear Lucy at the end. Let me hear how she died, for all that I know of her, I shall be very grateful. She was very, very dear to me." 

To my surprise, he answered, with a horrorstruck look in his face, "Tell you of her death? Not for the wide world!" 

"Why not?" I asked, for some grave, terrible feeling was coming over me. 

Again he paused, and I could see that he was trying to invent an excuse. At length, he stammered out, "You see, I do not know how to pick out any particular part of the diary." 

Even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said with unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the naivete of a child, "that's quite true, upon my honour. Honest Indian!" [Seward, you are so awkward. Adorbs.] 

I could not but smile, at which he grimaced. "I gave myself away that time!" he said. "But do you know that, although I have kept the diary for months past, it never once struck me how I was going to find any particular part of it in case I wanted to look it up?"

Don't worry, Seward. Mina won't just type up your diary for you, she'll index it according to patient, symptoms and illness.

Which brings me to another reason why Mina and Dr. Seward are in love: they need each other! Mina is so bored with Jonathan she's memorized the train schedules on his commute "just in case he's in a hurry." JESUS, MINA. Memorizing the schedule for your own commute is one thing, but another person's?! I'm guessing Jonathan is able to tell time, get a freaking grip. Dr. Seward, on the other hand, needs someone to help him with his research and, um, you know, play with his phonograph. His work is much more interesting than Jonathan's, and he doesn't commute--he lives at the asylum!

Anyway, Mina and Seward exchange diaries, which is like the cutest thing ever, and Seward gets so wrapped up in Mina's he almost forgets to eat. And Mina gets so wrapped up in Seward's diary she cries and tells him,

That is a wonderful machine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of your heart.... See, I have tried to be useful. I have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did.

Aww. She can hear his heart beat.

Adjectives Mina uses to describe Seward: noble, good, thoughtful. Adjectives Dr. Seward uses to describe Mina: sweet, a brilliant mind, pretty, courageous. GAH HE'S SO IN LOVE. Dr. Seward also never refers to Mina as a child, unlike SOME people I could name (coughJonathancough).

After a few days at the lunatic asylum, Dr. Seward remarks that having Mina there has made it feel like a home for the first time ever. So cozy (too bad Jonathan Wet Blanket Extraordinaire is there). Then she decides to talk to Renfield, I forget why, and Seward--who's in the room to make sure she's safe--observes, "She came into the room with an easy gracefulness which would at once command the respect of any lunatic."

OHHHHHHH MAH GAWSH coming from Dr. Seward that's like a love poem! He might as well have said, "She walks in beauty, like the night." Even Renfield notices. He's all like, "Wait, are you two going out?"

You see? They're totally in love. So Jonathan's going to die at the end of Dracula and Dr. Seward and Mina are going to get married, right? Right guys?



Have you ever shipped any characters in classic novels?

Weekend Cooking: Food in DRACULA

"I don't drink... wine."

It's not that I pay particular attention to food mentions in books (honest), but in some novels the characters talk about food so often it's impossible not to notice and be slightly weirded out. The Chicagoland Vampires series by Chloe Neill, for instance. And, another vampire book (coincidence?), Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Here are just a few of the food mentions from the part I've read so far (basically Jonathan Harker's journals):

I dined on what they called "robber steak"--bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks, and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the London cat's meat!

The wine was Golden Mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable.

I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. [Apparently this is actually chicken paprikash.]

I rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared.

The count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese and a salad and a bottle of old tokay [Tokaji wine?], of which I had two glasses, was my supper.

He took my arm, and we went into the next room, where I found an excellent supper ready on the table.

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". (Mem., get recipe for this also.)*

DOOD, SLOW DOWN. Who does Jonathan think he is, Anthony Bourdain? I swear to god all he does is eat. And what the heck is forcemeat? (When I first read that I thought I thought it said "horsemeat" and I seriously wanted to throw up. Maybe it's related to empenadas?)

Anyway, because I'm me, I have to wonder--why all the food mentions? Here are some possibilities I've come up with:

• Bram Stoker was a foodie and couldn't stop himself from writing incessantly about food.
• Jonathan's journals are supposed to imitate a travelogue, and eating weird stuff is one of the great joys and trails of traveling.
• Jonathan's food lust mirrors the Count's lust for blud.
• MOST LIKELY POSSIBILITY: Food, like everything else in Dracula, is a metaphor for sex.

Take, for instance, Jonathan's encounters with the vampiresses, where they "licked their lips like an animal" and sent him into a major spaz attack. Admittedly, that's pretty easy to do with Jonathan, but I think it's clear they think he's appetizing. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I think, too, all this eating eating eating sets the stage for Jonathan's paranoia that he's about to be the Count's dinner.

Have you ever read a book where the food descriptions seemed out of control, and was it by any chance a vampire novel? Because so far all the ones I can think of are.


*Dying--har har--to make some of these dishes yourself? There's an excellent blog post with the recipes Jonathan mentions at Her Raven Domain.