"Nearly every adaptation turns Lucy into a sexually promiscuous and flirty girl, with the exception of the 2013 television series (which turns her into a lesbian instead). In the novel she's a pure maiden who loves multiple men, but this gets turned into her lusting after all her potential suitors. Her sole ambition is to marry before she turns 20, though an upper class Victorian woman wouldn't be expected to have more ambition than that. The novel makes a point that Lucy cares for and possibly loves all her potential suitors, but that normally gets lost in adaptations that portray her as a shameless flirt. Kate Beaton, author of the webcomic Hark! A Vagrant cited this incident, noting:
- Here we have Bram Stoker's Dracula, a book written to tell ladies that if you're not a submissive waif, society goes to hell and ungodly monsters are going to turn you into child killing horrors and someone is going to drive a bowie knife through your heart/cut off your head/etc. As you deserve!"
Why is this under Values Dissoance? This example seems like it's more about people misinterpreting the novel (including the Hark! A Vagrant quote, which implies that the "Lucy is a slut who deserves it" interpretation is part of the original novel, whereas the rest of the example talks about how that was added by later versions)
Regarding the What An Idiot section - actually, it's demonstrated pretty thoroughly in the novel why Harker doesn't escape until the day the vampires plan to kill him. First, there's basically no alternative ways out that aren't a virtual guarantee of death anyways. Dracula's wolves surround the castle, the closest human dwellings are miles away, and there's only one door that Harker can find leading to the outside because the castle is surrounded by walls and on a steep incline—the door in question is perpetually locked. Harker identifies pretty early on that the only way out is scaling the castle wall and cliff completely vertically, something he sees Dracula do more than once when Dracula goes out to hunt. Harker doesn't directly state why he doesn't go out the window during his captivity, but his reason is heavily implied to the point of obvious - attempting to flee out his window high above the base of the wall and the cliff, surrounded both by wolves that he himself has witnessed eat people alive and do Dracula's bidding and by a dense haunted forest he isn't familiar with, all in hopes of maybe reaching human civilization before he dies while only knowing the vague direction in which other humans are located, is a bad and almost certainly fatal idea. Up until the point at which he knows with certainty that he will die if he stays, he's still more likely to survive longer inside the castle than outside if it. Dracula even exploits this in his mind games by listening to Jonathan's request to leave and even opening the castle's gate for him, but also surrounding the entrance-way with wolves in order to force Harker abandon his request to leave and make Harker himself request for his exit to be closed. Harker escapes on the day the vampires plan to eat him because he finally was forced to take his way of last resort. So... yeah, Harker's actions as described in the What An Idiot entry are actually pretty throughout explained by the context of the situation as made clear in his previous journal entries.
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