Favourite Charles Courtney Curran paintings (1861 - 1942): i. a breezy day ll ii. sunshine and haze
Franz Wiesenthal (Hungarian, 1856 - 1938) - A sunlit courtyard
THE LADY OF THE LAKE by Sir Walter Scott (various publishers) Illustrated.
Dumb gender thought of the day: "Sure, you could say I'm a woman - in the same way you could say that a dolphin is a fish."
If your first thought was: "okay, so you're definitely not a woman, got it." Congrats! You're correct!
If your first thought was: "well, actually, that depends, as the cultural definition of 'fish' has varied throughout time and context, such as in kashrut, which classifies all fully aquatic animals as 'fish,' with only the ones having fins and scales being kosher, and that's not even getting into cladistics, wherein 'fish' is not a category that you can meaningfully define without including all mammals, and...." Mazel tov! You're also correct (and also a nerd)
And also because fish are parve! Like your gender!!!!
Sorry I mixed you up with @hachama
An honor, really. @hachama is an excellent human!
(and tbh you weren't wrong about me being parve-gender either)
Good news!
Getting a good grade in Jumblr is both normal to want and possible to achieve!
Rainy Day 7 - Alice Brasser , 2021.
Dutch, b. 1965 -
Oil on perspex on wood, 20 x 17 cm.
When I managed to restore her she was as weak as water, and cried silently between long, painful struggles for breath. When I asked her how she came to be at the window she shook her head and turned away.
This is the most heartbreaking passage today, though it is rivaled by Mina's frustration and fear on the line: "I do not understand Lucy's fading away as she is doing." But Lucy crying while struggling for breath is utterly horrible, and the silent refusal (inability?) to speak at all about what she's experiencing even in such a moment is heart-rending. I think even if she is physically able to speak, in that moment it would be impossible for her to dismiss as just a dream. And while I wish that pushed her over the edge and got her to confess (much the way Mina couldn't help but talk about Jonathan when too many influences hit her exhaustion) sadly Lucy seems to have gone the other direction and just shut it all out. If indeed she had any choice at all.
Imagine both of them trying to go to bed again after that. Trying to sleep, but instead just laying there silently, afraid and confused, with only the sound of each other's breathing to be a small comfort.
Feels like the trouble with breathing is apparent the more she gets fed on, it's like a respiratory disease causing sleep apnea. I guess that could make a doctor suspect tuberculosis... Before all those bites it doesn't seem that Mina has been reporting breathing issues (unless I misremember).
She talked about her color and I think weight, but I don't recall any mention of Lucy's breathing (other than "breathing softly" while sleeping). And there were some good opportunities: they climbed all those stairs to the graveyard quite often, and went on several long walks/hikes. If Lucy were prone to any kind of breathing trouble I'm sure it would have come up before now. I'm certain this is from the drinking... symptoms of anemia include shortness of breath, after all.
I always figured Lucy's difficulty breathing was down primarily to throat pain
It's probably not a difficulty in breathing; it's a lack of oxygen. She doesn't have enough blood to properly supply oxygen to her body so she's trying to take in more air to compensate. She's suffocating.
Okay that is actually worse, that is so much worse.
Fausto Giusto (Italian, 1867-1941) - Place de la Concorde, Paris
I think one of the keys to reading Dracula is to accept that he can and does represent multiple fears at once. The tendency to project the fear of sexuality in Jonathan's diary (and I stress that this is fear of same sex attraction when it comes to the Count) creates a blind spot to other readings.
Take this description of Lucy: "She eats well and sleeps well, and enjoys the fresh air; but all the time the roses in her cheeks are fading, and she gets weaker and more languid day by day"
It reads not like a fear of sexuality, but rather as a fear of unknown and incurable illness. Which, given Bram Stoker's unexplained childhood illness, was probably a very present fear for him. Dracula shifts from a figure who represents illness that is able to strike a young person without warning and without explanation.
There is no sexual figure seducing Lucy, there is just the slow decay of health with no explanation, even for someone who is young and has their life ahead of them.
