#mrs westenra
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There are many explanations of why Mrs. Westenra decides to enter her daughter's bedroom in the middle of the night, and simply throw away all of the garlic flowers.
I know the doylist reasons behind Mrs. Westenra decision of throwing away her daughter's flowers. I know how the narrative needed more blood to oil the gears of the story. I know this was needed to wake up Van Helsing from his state of "don't ask because I won't tell".
But I just can't fathom why.
None of this would have happened if Dracula wasn't so offended that Lucy did not die when he drained her to the point of needing Arthur's blood. The fault lies on this monster who is enjoying this slow torture process because this poor young lady has people around that care about her. Dracula has been causing all of this.
And I still ask myself WHY.
The fault lies in Van Helsing? Absolutely, he thought that communication and explanation were not important enough while treating Lucy, and that decision smacked him in the face as he keeps losing time.
AND YET WHY, WHY THROW AWAY LUCY'S FLOWERS. THOSE WERE HERS.
It's not only the act of throwing away the flowers in the middle of the night while Lucy is sleeping, which is disregarding of Lucy's privacy. It's how smug Mrs. Westenra is after it, telling the two doctors who have been treating Lucy since the beginning.
Think about for a second! Jack and Van Helsing are established as Lucy's doctors. Both of them have been visiting her every day. Then, suddenly a bunch of strong smelling flowers appear in Lucy's room after they left. Yes both of them made the mistake of not telling anyone that the garlic flowers were medicine. However, Mrs. Westenra didn't even question what those were!
Think about the situation! WHO WOULD HAVE LEFT THESE FLOWERS IN LUCY'S ROOM. WHO IS VISTING LUCY FREQUENTLY ENOUGH TO LEAVE FLOWERS THAT SMELL SO STRONG. Jack is starting to lose hope already.
"What does it all mean? I am beginning to wonder if my long habit of life amongst the insane is beginning to tell upon my own brain."
Yet the only thing replaying in my mind is how happy Lucy felt yesterday. She woke up in the middle of the night to write about how happy she was because of the flowers, the care, the words, everything. Lucy even liked the smell of garlic! It was comforting! She was going to have her first time of good sleep in ages.
Those garlic flowers carefully put in all of her room, that beautiful flower wreath around her neck made by the doctor. Ripped away while Lucy was sleeping and vulnerable by a mother who thought that she could because those flowers are just in Lucy's room, so it means they are not important.
All of Lucy's flowers were thrown away. At least Ophelia got to keep hers.
Can this woman treat her only daughter like a person for once?
#''Oh but Dracula-'' don't give me bullshit the Count isn't paying attention to anyone except Lucy#Me to myself: Mrs Westenra is a plot device and she is doing what the narrative needs Mrs Westenra is a plot device and-#I understand that she is an older widow in her last few months to live BUT STILL#More power to the people being sympathetic towards her you are better than me#dracula daily#dracula#lucy westenra#mrs westenra#abraham van helsing#count dracula#jack seward
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I'm generally a fully signed-up member of the Mrs Westenra Sucks Club, but I've found myself pondering more sympathetic ways to interpret her character and actions.
I think the most important thing to remember is that Mrs Westenra is dying, and since she has a 19-year-old daughter, she's probably dying young. If she's around 45, actuarial tables for the 1890s suggest that she would normally expect to live at least another 25 years, probably longer (which I'm mentioning since people normally underestimate Victorian adult life expectancy).
She was expecting to be around to see her daughter securely married and to help with her grandchildren; now there's a question mark over whether she'll even see her daughter's wedding. She's experiencing end-stage heart failure: she's probably in a lot of pain (which in her culture she is supposed to bear with quiet fortitude) and may have other symptoms such as fatigue, depression, nausea, insomnia and cognitive impairment. She's probably not able to think clearly a lot of the time. It's not surprising that she makes some bad decisions.
Is that enough to justify her treatment of Lucy? Maybe not. But on that point, I think it's worth noting that while Mrs Westenra is the worst offender in treating her adult daughter like she's a child, she's not the only one. When Mrs Westenra confides details of her illness to Mina, Mina doesn't seem to push back on the idea that this should be kept a secret from Lucy, even in the privacy of her journal. The idea that things should be kept from Lucy for her own protection is one that nearly everyone who interacts with Lucy shares.
In the novel as it stands (not in deleted sections, admittedly) we also don't see Lucy herself pushing for greater independence. In fact, what she wants from her mother is not more freedom but more comfort, in being allowed to share a bed with her.
A final thought on that. Victorians turned against the idea of bed-sharing because they believed that sharing beds spread diseases:
In her housekeeping guide published in 1892, Mrs. Elizabeth F. Holt warned readers that “the air which surrounds the body under the bed clothing is exceedingly impure, being impregnated with the poisonous substances which have escaped through the pores of the skin.”
(from this article)
In other words, Mrs Westenra might worry that sharing a bed would risk passing on her own illness to Lucy. I think denying Lucy's request could be seen as protective rather than dismissive.
I imagine I'm still going to be really annoyed when she [spoilers redacted]. But I think she could be seen as a tragic and sympathetic figure, not a malicious one. This novel has several characters who want to do the right thing but make mistakes (Seward, Van Helsing) and Mrs Westenra could be interpreted as one of them.
#dracula daily#mrs westenra#to be clear i think it's also a fully valid interpretation to see her as a villain#i'm suggesting this as an alternative not as a rebuttal
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Dracula Daily sketch for August 15th
In which Lucy's mother confides in Mina.
#art#artists on tumblr#character design#digital art#dracula#dracula daily#dracula fanart#Mina Murray#Mrs Westenra#Cartoon#Horror#Gothic horror#gothic literature#August15th#Victorian
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Dracula is so dependent on the characters being British. Let me tell you had Mrs. Westerna been Balkan she'd have seen Lucy in her garlic wreath and immediately returned with 2 more cloves for each nostril
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Mrs Westenra highkey reminds me of a couple of relatives so I got solidarity with both girls rn. Not getting into spoilers but Lucy is totally aware her mom isn't the person to confide with or even seek comfort from unless she's at her wits' end, and according to Mina she's cagey about her trouble to Mina too especially now that she knows Mina is anxious. We know Lucy studies people and her own face in the mirror, she knows, but all her life she's raised to hide, like a "bumb (silent) animal" like she had compared herself to in her unabridged letter:
"I almost envy mother sometimes for her knowledge when she can talk to people whilst I have to sit by like a dumb animal and smile a stereotyped smile till I find myself blushing at being an incarnate lie."
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@re-dracula how dare you conjure up such vivid imagery that I sat on a London bus visibly cringing at Mrs Westenra's dying noises while the lady next to me inched away nervously
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Honestly, I'm of the opinion Lucy knows. Lucy knows something is up with her mother. Furthermore, Lucy probably knows there her mom isn't in good health and likely suspects this what her mother is keeping from her.
You can't keep a heart issue like that a secret from someone you live with. There ARE physical signs of a weakening heart.
I'm feeling sort of odd about the recent update with Mrs. Westenra because I'm seeing it also in real life. Thankfully, my own parents are very open and truthful about medical matters with my sisters and I, but I know people whose parents aren't.
And it hurts people when they know something is up and they know it's bad. Also, their anxiety ramped up because instead of knowing how much time they had left with their loved one, they were constantly worried that this might be it.
In the end, it is Mrs. Westenra's choice, but it's really foolish of her to think she can hide it from Lucy (also the REASON she is hiding it is just incredibly stupid). And to have Mina (who is already stressed out enough) keep this a secret from Lucy, like, that's a pretty shitty situation to put someone in.
Honestly, Mrs. Westenra strikes me (ironically, considering how she views her daughter) as naïve. Not stupid, note. Just without the emotional maturity that both Lucy and Mina have. Lucy especially is always keyed in to the mental state of everyone around her, and Mrs. Westenra seems to have to be actively ignoring the growing distress within the Whitby house currently.
#dracula daily#dracula#re: dracula#mrs westenra#lucy westenra#mina murray#mrs westenra is not cruel or evil#but i truely believe shes one of those people#who have their own view of how the world works and thats what she's always going to go with#idk
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Mina listening to Mrs Westenra talk about sleepwalkers walking along a cliff and then falling over “with a despaired cry that echoes all over the place”
#dracula daily#dracula#lucy westenra#mina murray#mrs westenra#she has read too many books#or is this what her husband did??#I feel like Mina was sitting there so awkwardly#like now she’s just made Mina SO much more anxious
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Look, yes, Van Helsing needs to talk more about what he’s doing and why. He needs to tell people his suspicions so they can help in the right way.
But.
This one is not on him. He didn’t tell Mrs. Westenra that the flowers were important because she hadn’t seen them. She hadn’t seen them because she wasn’t there. Up until last night she has spent her time avoiding her daughter and ignoring her health issues. Why would Van Helsing suspect that she would go into her daughter’s room in the middle of the night and remove all the flowers so stealthily that she did not even wake Lucy while removing the flowers around her neck? The flowers that were so obviously there intentionally, and in a place she has thus far so carefully avoided. Was Van Helsing supposed to seek her out to tell her this? If she’d come when Lucy was awake, Lucy could have told her. He told Lucy they were medicinal, same as he told Mrs. Westenra.
Van Helsing’s flaw may be keeping information too tight to the chest, but Mrs. Westenra’s flaw is being completely unavailable in a book about closeness.
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Dracula and new medicine
A lot has been said about the use of blood transfusions in Dracula and how it (at the time) was a new breakthrough in medical technology that the odds of surviving was about as safe as flipping a coin due to blood types not being discovered yet.
Right now though, after today's update I thought it was interesting to think of Mrs. Westenra's actions in the context of Germ theory. AKA the theory that says that sicknesses are caused by bacteria and viruses.
See for thousands of years the predominate medical belief was the Miasma theory, or that bad smells cause sickness. A medical belief that was seemingly strengthened by the 19th century sanitation movement.
"See guys! People were constantly getting sick when there was poop and garbage in the street! Now that there's far less poop and garbage in the street way less people are getting sick! Getting rid of that bad smell saved lives"
(An example of correlation does not equal causation but I digress)
Germ theory didn't become studied until the late 1800's and it wasn't until 1880 that the miasma theory was fully debunked and Germ theory was the conclusive belief. Dracula takes place in 1897.
For context, assuming Mrs. Westenra is about 40, that would mean she would have spent nearly a decade being taught that bad smells cause illnesses, and wouldn't learn otherwise until she was in her early to mid 20's.
With that in mind, it makes perfect sense for her mind to instinctively go, "the smell of garlic is making Lucy feel worse. I'll keep it away from her and give her some fresh air."
After all, to some people, the idea of microscopic creatures entering the body to make you feel sick, could be just as unbelievable a concept as vampires.
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For this entry I have to say first that I know I can't rightly judge victorian standards of child raising since we in the 21st century aren't really better regarding it. Plus, since I am from a latinoamerican country a.k.a. Colombia, my perspective of family affection is very different from victorian english upper class people. Moreover, that cultural difference affects how I read, and analyse the text.
But the fact that Mrs. Westenra simply refused to let Lucy, her own fucking daughter, sleep with her out of "worry" makes my blood boil like no other.
"She seems not too well herself, and doubtless she fears to worry me."
How does this help anyone? How the fuck does this could help Lucy when Mrs. Westenra dies? Why is this woman who has a few months to live at best so hellbent in not spending a single caring moment with her daughter?
Yes, I know all of the doylist reasons for this plot point, I know the foreshadowing of Mrs. Westenra's character as a very upper class lady who raised Lucy perfectly, BUT STILL. The thing that gets me is that this woman is so close to death, and yet treats Lucy like this. I would think that even if Mrs. Westenra doesn't tell Lucy about her illness (a mistake on itself) she would at least try to spend time with her, because you know she is going to die.
It's a cultural thing from my part? Of course it is! Here in Colombia a parent will always offer you comfort, hell I am an adult and if I have my worries over something before sleeping, my mom will offer me to nap with her for a while until I feel better. It's basic affection, there may be some faults in this culture regarding some things, but you can bet that at least a mother will say to her distressed daughter to stay awake for a while.
Lucy already has to consider, conceptualize, and care for the happiness of everyone around her all the time. Her comfort always comes last, on top of balancing Mrs. Westenra and Arthur's perspective of her with a fine pen because Lucy can't let them see her actual face, instead of her perfectly crafted mask.
And Lucy doesn't even get the small comfort of her own mother being at her side before going to sleep. She is so afraid of sleeping alone that she was going to stay awake all night, but Lucy's tiredness won, and certain Count took advantage of this to keep drinking her.
Mrs. Westenra really denied one of the most basic comforts to her own daughter, and in turn Lucy will never tell her about the symptons, and both of them will trap eachother in a societal circle where neither of them will know what is happening out of worry.
#I'm finally off work!#What the fuck mrs Westenra hug your daughter!#If this sounds very emotion driven it's because it is I'm sorry#Maybe it's a cultural thing but I can't fucking believe that someone SO close to death is just ignoring HER ONLY DAUGHTER#dracula daily#dracula#lucy westenra#mrs westenra
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Today we get to the part of the novel were everyone screws up because no one talks to each other.
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In today's Dracula Daily, Mrs Westenra is an anti vax mom
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Van Helsing: How is Lucy?
Mrs. Westenra: Much better now that I got all that garlic out of her room and opened the window!
Van Helsing: You what
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might draw this later
#dracula#dracula daily#abraham van helsing#john seward#mrs westenra#van helsing#jack seward#vri says things
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