Lucy Westenra Flashcards
“I suppose we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him”
Chapter 5
- misogynistic
- paints women as weak and unable to fend for themselves
“She put her hand to her throat again and moaned”
Chapter 8
- hiding her neck: shame
- marks on neck: typical signs of early sexual experimentation
“Something like life seemed to come back to poor Lucy’s cheek”
Chapter 10
- blood transfusion initially has a profound impact; reinforces the idea that science is good
- by the end of the transition she has the blood of 3 men inside her; symbolic of her desire for 3 husbands
“Soft voluptuous voice… kiss me!”
Chapter 12
- pre modifying adjective
- newly found fowardness
- demands sexual satisfaction
“Canine teeth looked longer and sharper”
Chapter 12
- alerts the reader she has moved into the supernatural realm
- Seward notices change in her teeth
“All Lucy’s loveliness had come back to her in death!”
Chapter 13
- appeal of her beauty increases when dead
- first sign of life after death
“Her face of unequalled sweetness and purity”
Chapter 16
- restored sexual innocent
- her second death is salvation
- draws a close to phase 2 of the novel
Boundaries Crossed by Lucy
- promiscuous vs traditional
- human vs liminal
- dead vs undead
Meaning of the name ‘Lucy Westenra’
- ‘West’enra: contrasts Dracula coming from the East
- connotes ‘Lucifer’: fallen angel?
- link to 7 deadly sins: lust
“I must say you tax me very unfairly with being a bad correspondent”
Chapter 5
- playful and passionate
- contrasts Mina’s serious letter
“Men like women, certainly their wives, to be quite as fair as they are”
Chapter 5
- relies on men to feel fulfilled, as seen by her desire to get engaged
- contrasts Mina, who is more modern
“Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it”
Chapter 5
- verb
- sexual connotations
- would be frowned upon in Victorian times
- shows her trust for Mina, to admit this to her
“Although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep”
Chapter 6
- creates a sense of danger and vulnerability
“There are two little red points like pin-pricks, and on the band of her nightdress was a drop of blood”
Chapter 8
- alludes to attack by Dracula
- her previously white dress is covered with blood; alludes to sexual desire
“I was wakened by Lucy trying to get out”
Chapter 8
- drawn by the supernatural force
- AO3: Victorians feared that sexually liberated women because sexually insatiable
Why might Lucy’s death be so prolonged?
to show that vampirism is a degenerate disease (link to attitudes towards STIs)
“To be able to think and move about is like feeling sunshine after a long spell of east wing out of a steel sky”
Chapter 10
- simile
- the ability to think is relieving: emphasises the pain she had gone through
“Thank everybody for being so good to me! Thank God! Good night, Arthur.”
Chapter 10
- exclamatory
- thankful for science AND religion (crossing boundary)
“I shall hide this paper in my breast […] God help me!”
Chapter 11
- ready to die
- the reader can trust the information as it comes from Lucy
“By her side lay Lucy, with face white and still more drawn”
Chapter 12
- Dracula has fed from her
- closer to death than the dead
“In the long hours that followed, she had many spells of sleeping and waking and repeated both actions many times”
Chapter 12
- drifting between consciousness and full control over her thoughts to a state of hypnosis
“We thought her dying whilst she slept, and sleeping when she died”
Chapter 12
- death has repurified her
“Bloofer lady”
Chapter 13
- ‘bloofer’ is Victorian slang for ‘beautiful’
- Lucy is drinking children’s blood, a vampire
- physically dead but becomes undead (crossing boundary)
“I drew near and looked. The coffin was empty.”
Chapter 15
- reflects Jesus’ resurrection; Jesus ascended but Lucy has not, she is undead
“The lips were red, nay redder than before; and on the cheeks was a delicate bloom”
Chapter 15
- colour imagery
- pre modifier
- sexual connotations, Lucy has become promiscuous now she is undead
“Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”
Chapter 16
- imperatives connote sexual energy
- reflects Harker’s seduction by the Weird Sisters
- blood and sex starved
“If ever a face meant death - if looks could kill - we saw it at that moment”
Chapter 16
- appears as more like a wraith/ghost haunting her cemetery
- contrasts her angelic appearance when she was alive
“Lucy as we had seen her in her life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity”
Chapter 16
- Lucy’s true and pure soul is released in heaven
- her soul is restored to a socially desirable state of monogamy and submissal
“She is God’s true dead, whose soul is with Him!”
Chapter 16
- the vampires themselves are trapped. they have become infected with evil
- peace in her final moments
“Then we cut off her head and filled the mouth with garlic”
Chapter 16
- graphic imagery, chilling
- violence is enacted upon by her close friends: a metaphor for how Victorian England treated people who had sex outside of marriage - cut off and thrown out of society
“It is her body, and yet not it.”
Chapter 16
- parallel phrasing
- it is her physical body, but it isn’t truly Lucy
