#my own personal hc for jack seward is that he was brought up in an isolated seaside town (harwich‚ maybe?) and went to university in london

[popsicle-stick]

I don't know anything about England but I'm interested in how the characters' locations inform their characters like Seward's. I'd like to know more about the implications of being from Purfleet/Essex for example (Though iirc Stoker immigrated from Dublin well into adulthood so I don't know how well he knew all the cities.)

there's so much to be said! i really don't think that stoker meant much intentionally, but the placement of the asylum in purfleet specifically is interesting.

long post so i'm cutting this!

the asylum at purfleet, essex, is an example of the common 19th-early 20th century phenomenon of establishing psychiactric hospitals in the rural counties surrounding london - simultaneously serving as a 'tranquil' location away from the city, while also serving the dubious, cruel purpose of squirelling away would-be patients into residences away from the city - out of society, out of sight, out of mind.

in terms of jack seward himself, purfleet is a kind of an in-between, nothing place - things and people pass through, not much stays. (there's a reason why whitby is remembered as 'the dracula place', and not purfleet.) it's quite literally on the edge of london - of society - and in that scene where jack's looking despondently towards the sun setting west over london, his own isolation becomes palpable - from society and from the world as a whole. the endless, transient, liminal feel of the essex saltmarshes just....gives the vibe. this was a scene that felt particularly gothic to me - jack is the custodian of his very own haunted house, here, in all its bleak, isolated glory.

It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all.

this is an fascinating parallel with the count's situation in transylvania, which is NOT the topic du jour here so i'll stop before i ramble but compelling nonetheless! like the count, though, he's a liminal figure - in london, but not quite in london. in the group, but not in the group. alive, but not really living. wide awake in the witching hour, unsure how to re-integrate with society.

it's also worth noting that the opening of dickens' great expectations has pip in his childhood home on the kent marshes - which would pretty much be the opposite bank of the thames from purfleet. in great expectations, pip's village serves a similar role - the quiet, bleak, nowhere-place directly placed against the bustling cosmopolis of london.

in terms of other characters and locations, i've written a bit before about jonathan (and mina possibly) hailing from exeter, devon, in the south west of england - which is much further from london.

jonathan and mina, in terms of the group dynamics, are outsiders: they're very much lower middle class, hyper-aware of the importance of money and societal etiquette as a means for survival and social betterment. this is a personal hc of mine, but i like to think of jonathan as having the long supressed remnants of a devon accent. south west accents are often the subject of a lot of ridicule and mockery in the UK (akin to a southern US accent) and hiding that regionalism, in both the 1890s and today's britain, would be a means of survival and progress for him - i think the fact that he's always given a standard home counties RP accent in adaptations cuts out a major aspect of his character. he's a devon boy!

in contrast to all this, lucy's hampstead residence shows her affluence. it, too, at risk of breaking my social isolation metaphor, was on the edge of london at the time - but was known more as a wealthy suburb with huge areas of greenery at hampstead heath and highgate. there's something to be said, though, about a place like highgate cemetery - a liminal place between the dead and the living, between city and country, haunted at night by a vampire - and the same could be said for purfleet.

arthur is hard to pin down - for the life of me i CANNOT work out where 'ring' is supposed to be - at first i thought it might be a shortening for ringwood, hampshire, which could work! but i just don't know. his character does scream privileged southern/home counties though, and if anyone has any followups on 'ring' and its wherabouts i would LOVE to know because this has been bugging me for ages. lmao

tl;dr, psychology and sociology as informed by place is SO fucking fascinating to me like it just. it affects so much. from the liminality of certain places lending themselves to the supernatural, to characters being mirrored by their surroundings and vice versa, to the social implications of where you call home. it's just!!! interesting!!