Saturday, May 16, 2009

16 May

Chapter 4
Jonathan Harker's Journal

16 May—I awoke in my own bed. If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count must have carried me here. I tried to satisfy myself on the subject, but could not arrive at any unquestionable result. To be sure, there were certain small evidences, such as that my clothes were folded and laid by in a manner which was not my habit. My watch was still unwound, and I am rigorously accustomed to wind it the last thing before going to bed, and many such details. But these things are no proof, for they may have been evidences that my mind was not as usual, and, for some cause or another, I had certainly been much upset. I must watch for proof. Of one thing I am glad. If it was that the Count carried me here and undressed me, he must have been hurried in his task, for my pockets are intact. I am sure this diary would have been a mystery to him which he would not have brooked. He would have taken or destroyed it. As I look round this room, although it has been to me so full of fear, it is now a sort of sanctuary, for nothing can be more dreadful than those awful women, who were, who are, waiting to suck my blood.

4 comments:

Chris said...

At this point I think you should climb out of the window or make some sort of rope with your sheets and get out of there!

Unknown said...

I am enjoying this novel far, far more than I have any right to...

Unknown said...

Poor Mina - she surely can't compete with the excitement mixed with guilt that must be in Harper's mind at the moment!

Matthew Slepin said...

You don't get a much more Victorian schizoid feeling towards sex as this scene with the Wives. Voluptous, terrible, ecstatic, awful--a great scene.

I guess--and it's just that--that the coda with the baby is to show a kind of inverse to the acceptable idea that sex is for procreation. Here, sex is linked with killing babies. Creepy.