(I know it's technically not accurate since Renfield wasn't facing Seward when he entered the room, but I felt like drawing horror at the time so shhhhh ! 🕷🕸)
Now, I do not believe stabbing people is an okay thing to do, and I do love Doctor Seward, but if I was Renfield I would have also stabbed my psychiatrist.
I’m so upset I’m so upset because we immortalize Renfield as Dracula’s bug-eating minion. Dracula’s faithful servant. But do you know what he did? HE DIED PROTECTING MINA. He was the only one protecting Mina at the time. He died trying to selflessly protect somebody because they were kind to him. Because they treated him like a person. Because he couldn’t stand the idea of them being slowly drained and killed. He physically fought Dracula and it cost him his life. And maybe it’s just because I don’t know my Dracula adaptations all that well…but I don’t think how Renfield actually dies is talked about enough. I don’t think it’s appreciated how, here is somebody who believed they could prolong their life by consuming other lives…but in the end he GAVE his life for another.
I'm happy to see all the meta this year, re: the parallels between Jonathan and Dracula at the castle versus Renfield and Seward at the asylum bc last year, it wasn't really a popular topic of analysis from what I remember, and without spoiling anything, I do think doing a read-through of Dracula last year put Renfield in a different light on a re-read, and it's honestly a relief to see Renfield being treated with more respect and sympathy this time around, as opposed to him being a joke character, prop for Seward's storyline, or his mental illness being stigmatized as something that makes him evil, creepy, and undeserving of sympathy and compassion.
Likewise, as someone who does like Seward as a complex and very flawed character, I'm glad to see more discussion about the way he and Dracula are foils to each other instead of such posts being dismissed as character slander - a lot of characters in the novel parallel Dracula in unique ways, so it's a legitimate topic of analysis if approached in good faith! - as well as viewing his treatment of Renfield in a more critical light bc while he isn't actively malicious in terms of intent, it was a little frustrating last year to see some of that critique reduced to how it's unfair to hold him to modern standards when his actions still nevertheless caused harm and some Victorian contemporaries would have seen them as wrong, not to mention that many of our 'modern' standards regarding mental illness are not progressive at all.
Jack Seward at his phonograph: I do believe I have been making a breakthrough... I am so close, so close to unraveling the enigma of the machinations of his MIND
Renfield, listening in his room, sipping tea, pinkie out: Weirdo.