Random thoughts about Dracula:
Money is really helpful! As the story progressed, I found myself thinking to myself a few times that, geeze, it's really useful to be fabulously wealthy (I'm looking at you, Lord Godalming). Throughout the book our group of BFF's/vampire hunters uses their wealth and status to their advantage quite a bit. When, at one point, Mina remarks in her diary how fortunate they are to be wealthy to fund their activities (buying a freaking steam boat and half a dozen horses, in this instance), I was happy that Bram Stoker mentioned it. If the vampire hunters were a bunch of poor people, there is no way they could have been successful against Dracula. So, uh, thank god for rich people because only they can kill vampires.
Another thing that I kept thinking about now and then as I read was: what if Van Helsing was an insane guy who was draining peoples' blood and fooling everybody all along. My tinfoil hat theory kind of fell apart when the finally found Dracula and killed him (and, I guess, vampire-Lucy), but before that it was semi-plausible-ish and kept me entertained.
Van Helsing would come in during the night drain the women's blood via two needles in the neck. He makes up the stories of vampires and convinces first Dr. Seward, and then the rest of the group, that it is the doing of vampires. He plants fake evidence pointing to Dracula. Johnathan's bad fever that he suffered after leaving Dracual's castle -- all his memories were actually results of those feverish nightmares -- The Count was just an innocent weirdo, not actually a Vampire. When Van Helsing says he's going back to Amsterdam for a day or two, he's actually just leaving to continue his plot and set evidence and distractions.
I mean, honestly Van Helsing is pretty weird. Everybody he meets he professes his undying faithfulness, friendship, and love for. Where is he getting all this vampire knowledge? He's making it up!
Well, I could probably find some better examples to support my conspiracy theory given time and if I had my book handy, but it's just a silly theory that I entertained myself with as I was reading.
I really like how you talked about the wealth of the "hunting party", because that stuck out throughout the novel for me as well. I also liked how the author pointed this fact out himself, but I felt like he could done so a little sooner. It seemed amusing when the rich (who were capable of doing battle with vampires and travelling across continents) struggled so much to figure out how to pull off a simple crime like cracking a lock. Maybe this was a little bit of a joke at the character's expense.
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