I really, really liked the idea of getting Mina's side of the story, and of having Mina be lass passive and perfect and more passionate and strong. I mean, the story is so wrought with Victorian fear of female sexuality and human passions in general, so to have it told by a female character who is neither sinner nor saint but just human and humanly flawed, with human cravings - it fills the tale out and makes it more authentic and powerful to me. I think that same dissatisfaction may have been the impetus for Essex's reimagining of the tale, at least in part. I was thirteen, and I devoured it, but in some ways, it left me unsatisfied. It's been a long, long while since I read Dracula. Because for Mina, the story begins long before Jonathan travels to the continent to do business with a Count. There is so much more to Mina's story, things her husband and the doctors and lovers who have spun the story so far have no idea about. But thinking, feeling, intelligent Mina isn't having it. True to their Victorian beliefs and morés, the men have cast the women of the story as either saints of harridans, relegating them to sidelines to seethe or swoon as they may. No, it is a sort of feminist retelling in which Mina asserts that the story that everyone knows, the story that's been told by men, is false. Dracula in Love isn't just a fill-in-the-gaps retelling of Dracula, fleshing out the story from Mina's point of view.
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