what would you have me do?

you don't need to write a dark deconstruction of Peter Pan where he's willing to kill people and his state of eternal childhood makes him morally ambiguous, JM Barrie already wrote one and it's called Peter Pan

In Emma, the incident that sparks the story isn't a death or a loss of fortune or even someone new coming to town. It's a wedding. A happy event, usually the end of a story. But I like how this acknowledges that even a happy event like a wedding can bring its own kind of sorrow. Emma's happy for Miss Taylor, but she still mourns the way that her life has to change. Marriage can massively alter social circles, especially for women, taking them away from the home sphere and into a new life, and forcing the people they leave behind to deal with the loss. Here, it's a good change, but it's still a change.

Emma's in a unique position among Austen heroines. She's got money, a comfortable home, a loving father who would prefer she stay in his household for the rest of her life. She doesn't have to consider matrimony as a business arrangement the way some heroines have to. If she marries, it's going to be almost solely for companionship.

Because that's the one thing Emma lacks. She's lonely. She loves her father, but he's not someone she can engage with socially or intellectually. She ranks above everyone in town, so there's no one who can be on an equal level with her. Her father won't travel, so she can't get involved in social events with people who are of her rank and happen to live a little further out. Her attachment to Harriet is a desperate attempt to create a companion of her own social rank, and then marry her to Elton so she can remain in Emma's social circle. Mrs. Martin would be just another farmer's wife who sits below Emma's level; Mrs. Elton can be her equal.

But we can't overlook the fact that Emma makes the situation worse through snobbery. She's not only of a higher social rank than the people around her--she feels herself superior to them. Her father has plenty of friends, but to her, Mrs. Goddard and Miss Bates are just "prosy old ladies". Which is fine--they're more of her father's age, not hers. But it does indicate a wider personality problem. There's more than a hint of Mr. Darcy about the way she goes about detaching Harriet from Mr. Martin because he's so "coarse and vulgar", and trying to raise her up to Emma's standards of what's acceptable.

So, anyway, Emma's uniquely positioned in a story where friends-to-lovers has to be the character arc. And in the process, she's got to overcome her sense of superiority that makes it so difficult for her to classify people as friends.

Just subscribed to the daily Dracula email even though I've read the book three times, and it's making me want to cry because not only is it free and making the novel available to just anyone who has an email, which is by far the most integral and necessary aspect of subscribing or interacting with anything these days in a formal way, but it's introducing this story in an ingenious, new format that gets the readers to interact with it not as a novel but as if, our dear Jonathan Harker, is emailing us personally. It's becoming a personal one-to-one interaction with the material in a digital age that has sadly moved away from the experience book-readers would get from reading the print or reduced it to "well, I read that book for a grade." And though I don't think nor do I want regular books to all to become ebooks or in digital format (especially by email), it IS a creative and smart way to get people to interact with and love CLASSIC material. As a bookworm, I really can't express correctly just how happy this is making me. Sign up here. The site also has an archive page for anyone who needs/wants to catch up!

On another note, this is incredibly silly and accurate to how the book is, and I'm obsessed. That's it. That's the book.

okay jokes aside dracula daily is such an ingenious way of promoting and enjoying classic literature. bringing back the experience of reading it like a serial novel but through email?? connecting the narrative experience to the textual form but in a modernised way?? the epistolary novel at its peak!!! that shit is so cool!!!! and seeing people reading it for the first time and getting their live reactions?? fucking blessed!! maybe it’s the nerd in me but i think it’s genuinely awesome

hey btw if you wanna read dracula in real time as it happens you can have the chapters delivered to you via e-mail by signing up here:

it’s fun

these tags are so funny

#like a lizard you say

THE LIST OF THINGS NINTENDO PREDATES INCLUDES, BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO:

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES FRANCHISE

UNITED STATES PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISHENHOWER’S BIRTH

THE NOVEL “DRACULA”

THE NOVELS “THE TIME MACHINE” AND “WAR OF THE WORLDS” BY H.G. WELLS

THE FIRST MODERN OLYMPIC GAMES

THE DISCOVERY OF HELIUM ON EARTH

… Okay. I believe you. But like… how?

NINTENDO WAS FOUNDED IN 1889 AS A CARD GAME MANUFACTURER AND ALL THOSE OTHER THINGS HAPPENED IN 1890 OR LATER

WHAT THE FUCK I THOUGHT DRACULA WAS EARLIER WHAT THE FUCK

YOU COULD WRITE A DRACULA FANFIC WHERE DRACULA TRAVELS TO JAPAN AND BUYS A PACK OF NINTENDO BRAND PLAYING CARDS AND IT WOULD BE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE. SAME DEAL FOR SHERLOCK HOLMES.

No no no no no!

Don’t write fanfic!

Those things are in the public domain!

You can legally write, publish, and sell a Dracula book where Dracula travels to Japan and buys a pack of Nintendo brand playing cards!

Same deal for Sherlock Holmes!

what if you write a book where dracula and sherlock holmes travel to japan at the same time and reach for the last pack of nintendo brand playing cards that they both wanted

19th century books will kill off a main character in one sentence and then spend 3 pages describing a street