We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked.
– Bram Stoker
Dracula, Chapter 17. Mina thinks that that all women have a motherly nature. She is certainly imbued with the "mother-spirit" and comforts Arthur Holmwood when he sobs like a baby over Lucy’s death. She holds him as a mother would a child and they promise to be good friends, Arthur asking her to "let me be like a brother, will you not, for all our lives."