Here we are at the end! Seven years later! What is our harem up to?

Presumably Jonathan is writing as he refers to Mina and “our boy”, their son, whose birthday is the same day of Quincey Morris’s death: November 6th, I guess. Mina believes he has some of Quincey’s spirit.

His bundle of names links all our little band of men together; but we call him Quincey.

I love that they call him Quincey, but what is his actual name if it “links our little band of men together”? If it’s initials we have J(onathan) A(rthur) J(hon Seward) A(braham) Q(uincey). Jajaq, a.k.a., Quincey. Or maybe Laqaj if we assume they took the L from “lobotomy.”

They took a trip in the summer to Transylvania, and they don’t say but I assume they took little Jajaq with them to look at Dracula’s empty castle. Jonathan writes briefly about the sense of all the fear that they’d gone through is nowhere to be found.

[…]Godalming and Seward are […] happily married.

Good for them.

After their exploits during the novel proper they put the documents in a safe, which Jonathan returns to now. He remarks that it’s just a bunch of typewriting with very few verifiable documents, so no one would believe anything that happened to them was real.

Van Helsing summed it all up as he said, with our boy on his knee:—

“We want no proofs; we ask none to believe us! This boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake.”

I can’t believe their kid knows about all this crazy bullshit, but I guess he would have to if he ever asked why his name is Jajaq.

Jonathan signs off with his name in caps and we get a big THE END.

So that’s it! I had a lot of fun with Dracula even though it was extremely difficult to turn off my editor brain for the whole thing. It was annoying in parts, but it was also a good time overall I’d say. I wish it had less time dedicated to people talking in dialects about irrelevant things. I think that was my main problem. And there could have been a lot more interesting story parallelism.

As I’ve mentioned this Let’s Read is far from over. I started some stuff that I intend to finish (Reading the Vampire, etc) so the next bit will probably involve a lot of academic posts. I’ll try to make one post a week to get through all of these, and once we’re through all of those, I think we can go back over Dracula as a whole to recontextualize some of the stuff I’ve remarked upon, look at it with the academic point of view in mind with the things discussed (anti-semitism, sexuality, gender, etc) and so forth.

One thing that’s haunting me now as we exit this adventure is: Who is the main character of Dracula, and why is it Mina? I think after reading all the other stuff on my list, I can probably collect some really intelligent insight there.

Right now I’m planning a visit to Dublin next fall (Oct-Nov 2024) but nothing is in place yet. I think sniffing around the area and a following report will be the true finale of Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi. If you live in the area, get in touch!

For soon: a foray into academic discussions of Dracula, Stoker himself, and sexuality with vampires.

For now: a little break and a thank-you for everyone for reading along this far. Stay tuned.

If you’ve enjoyed this blog so far, please consider leaving something in my [tip jar], subscribing to my [Patreon], or joining us on [discord]. I’ve also started a [Dracula Research Wishlist] on Amazon if you’d like to support the reading I’m about to dive into.

Thank you!