For Tuesday: Stoker, Dracula, Chapters 10-14

Edvard Munch, Vampire (1893)

Answer TWO of the following as always:  

Q1: Who do you think is the least reliable narrator in the book so far? What makes his or her narration seem suspect? Do you detect passages where he/she seems to be hiding information or not being quite straight with the reader, even if he/she is writing a diary entry?

Q2: Just as Dracula seems like he's emerged from the distant past, how is Van Helsing also uncanny and "primitive" compared to the genteel society of London? What makes his person and his approach somewhat taboo, and certainly shocks Arthur and the others? Why is this also in turn a bit humorous? Consider the passage where he says, "Yes, and no. I want to operate, but not as you think...I want to cut off her head and take out her heart" (Ch.13). 

Q3. In Chapter 13, from Dr. Seward’s Diary, Van Helsing takes him aside and says, “Friend John, there are strange and terrible days before us. Let us not be two, but one, that so we work to a good end. Will you not have faith in me?" What do you make of the male relationships in the novel? Do they reinforce a “homosocial” order (that is, a world of men, for men, by men), or are these relationships critiqued from an almost feminist perspective?

Q4: What might be most distrubing about Lucy's transformation given the Victorian ideal of womanhood and chastity? Naturally, she becomes a vampire, which is bad enough, but how does Stoker describe her new appearance/character in ways that would be particularly disturbing? 

Q5: Why might Mina be the true hero in this book, and why might her journey echo what we've seen with Coraline and Bilbo in our previous books? What makes her an "unwilling burglar" or an "uncertain explorer"? Related to this, is she a Mary Sue or does she also have to learn through stumbling?