Lucy Westenra - Tumblr Posts

Lucy is so clearly stressed about her upcoming marriage even if some of her affliction is somehow tied to Dracula's arrival. I think this is canon, really. She's doing it because she's supposed to, because her mother is terrified of what will happen to her if she doesn't marry well, etc. She may genuinely like Arthur, but we've little evidence that she loves him the way Mina loves Jonathan.

Learning that Stoker was, by his own admission, very attracted to Walt Whitman, I think it's possible* he actually intended for Lucy and Mina to be in love. Mina is actually less likely, despite her admiration for Lucy's beauty and sweetness, because she's so obviously in love with Jonathan. I think Stoker has her go on about how lovely Lucy is as a way of reinforcing it to the reader, rather than to say Mina is in love with Lucy. Mina, I think, is a "good girl," and her devotion to Jonathan is proof of that. Which isn't to say we shouldn't have our own head cannons.

*possible, but tbh, I think it's unlikely. A lot of men of previous centuries could look at the Ancient Greeks and say m/m love had its place, but women were so often condemned for the slightest sexuality of any kind. I don't think being open to m/m love would automatically make Stoker open to lesbian love.

Anyway, all this to say that I have this feeling that Lucy is in love with Mina. And that's a huge part of why her engagement messes her up so badly. And, in addition, I think it could work within what I know about Stoker's conflict over his attraction to men (which, I'll be the first to admit, is limited knowledge). Like, maybe he imbues Lucy with all his own inner turmoil about forbidden love. I do think he did it to an extent with Jonathan (in the scenes we noted were homoerotic with Dracula, as well as Jon's forbidden attraction to the wives). So Lucy is troubled, and

[spoiler ahead please stop here if you don't like spoilers]

[sorry, idk how to do the break thingy I see on some posts]

[this spoiler concerns Lucy, you have been warned]

[it is a Big spoiler]

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[okay don't say I didn't warn you]

Lucy will be corrupted by Dracula and ultimately she will die. Fits perfectly with the homophobia of the time as well as whatever internalized homophobia Stoker was carrying around. I can see her being in love with Mina and wishing she could escape her marriage as fatal flaws that make her susceptible to Dracula, in Stoker's mind. This is speculation. I know about her fate from movies, but I've never read the book and I've only recently read a little about Stoker. I welcome any comments clarifying things if you know more about it, or giving your opinion. 🙂

Lucy! 😭

I bet "quiet joy" looks a lot like "quiet desperation," MINA

I may be ascribing some of my own biases to Stoker, but it's my impression that Stoker is critical of Lucy's upbringing. He has Mina think about how pliable Lucy is due to how her life requires her to be pliable less than a week before Dracula starts preying on her. I see this as intentional. He's saying, "Look, this lovely young woman is entirely unprepared to fend of anyone else's will, and it's the fault of the way society shaped her. This other young woman, free from such expectations and pressures, will have a far better chance." If Stoker was creating this story as a way to illustrate fears of the influence of the Foreign Other, I think there are two possible ways to look at it. 1) The evil foreigners will destroy everything that is most delicate and beautiful in England. 2) We are wrong to raise nice young ladies to suppress themselves because it makes them weak in the face of such an incursion.

How Lucy is treated by all characters in this novel always just. Baffles me. And it's not just a man infantilizing a woman thing either. This conversation today happened between two women. Lucy is a full adult, albeit a young one. Maybe she is at most a year or two younger than Mina. She is about to be a wife. Why is her own mother treating Mina like an adult confidante and her own daughter like a 12 year old who she needs to find a guardian for. Why does Mina think this is normal? Why does Lucy never gets to know anything? How come Mina came away from school with a full profession and her independencewhile Lucy didn't. I would simply chalk this up to Bramathan's ideas of womanhood, except for the fact that once again, Mina is canonically an active independent adult seeming woman. I've been thinking about what he could be trying to say with these choices for months.

Lucy silently weeping... I'm 😭😭😭

It occurs to me that I haven't yet articulated something percolating in my mind. I've never read Dracula but I have been exposed to a (very different) stage production and the 90s movie. And I've seen plenty of references to it in other media and people imitating Bela Lugosi saying "I vant to suck your blood."

Which brings me to my point. Up until recently reading Dracula Daily, I just never even questioned the concept of Dracula, and most vampires in general, wanting to hunt and kill people for their blood. Like, blood is their food; when they are hungry they want human blood, like mosquitoes or ticks or whatever.

However, since reading Lucy's description of her experience being preyed on by Dracula, it's made me think I have been missing Stoker's point. And that many vampire story creators also don't address (and they certainly don't have to).

Dracula is feeding on Lucy's soul. The blood is incidental. He's draining her of herself. That's why strength of character makes a difference. Mina has built her character, the strength of her soul, in ways Lucy was always prevented from doing. Same with the captain of the Demeter. As captain, he was a stronger character than any other crew member, so he could resist being consumed. It's about way more than blood.

Idk if I'm conveying my epiphany very well. It's not that the idea of vampires eating souls is new to me. It's more that I think the blood part of it has been way overemphasized. Blood consumption has become the defining characteristic of vampires, and I think it's not at all what Stoker was trying to convey. They are demons that consume the spirit of a person. That's what makes what they do so evil and devastating. If it was just blood, it could be neutral in certain circumstances. But it's not blood. It's everything that makes a person who they are.

As I said in a previous post, I played Lucy in my middle school's production of Dracula. Now, this was sixth grade, and I am autistic, so to say I felt awkward and behaved in cringey ways towards the boy who was Arthur is... putting it mildly. He did not take it well and got vocally frustrated with me. So I didn't like him, and as a result, I have lingering hostility towards Arthur! 😂

Today's entry did nothing to soothe my feelings towards him:

"When Arthur came to lunch he looked quite grieved when he saw me, and I hadn't the spirit to try to be cheerful."

So I may be overreacting but fck that guy. *He* was grieved? Like, come on, man. Her mom is dying, her friend is gone, and she's sick. Step tf up, Art. You're it. Be the change you want to see, my dude.

I'm confused. A lot of people seem to be taking the Lucy letter in stride. I see a lot who are confident she's lying. But if so, is she really in London and making almost all of it up? Others think she went back to Whitby from London and aren't fussed that she says it's been a week while five days ago she was wasting away in London. They take most of what she says as truth.

My first assumption when I read today's email is that Stoker made another timeline mistake, and this letter should have gone out before the diary entry. I've never read the book. From what one person mentioned, in the book her health seesaws, so my theory is probably wrong. But it makes more sense to me than anything else. Why would she go back to London for just a little while and then return to Whitby? She was on holiday in Whitby, right? It makes sense that the letter should come...

WAIT.

Okay no.

For a second I thought I'd figured it out. I thought maybe the letter was sent awhile before the London diary entry and we were reading it when Mina received it. But the emails are based on when a letter is dated, as we saw with Sister Agatha's. So that's not it.

Anyway, as I was saying. It makes sense that there would be a period of time after Dracula left for London, when Lucy would remain in Whitby to finish out her holiday. And of course during that time she'd feel so much better. Dracula's hold on her mind would be gone, so no sleepwalking. No bad dreams. And physically she'd recover, too.

/Then/ when she left Whitby and got to London, triggering Dracula's vampy sense and bringing him to the yard and all, things would go bad fast. /Then/ the London diary entry makes sense.

All other considerations aside, this:

"Mrs. Westenra has confided to me that her doom is spoken—disease of the heart—though poor Lucy does not know it yet. I am sure that there is something preying on my dear girl's mind."

Like. Arthur. Maybe it's as simple as, Lucy has a clue about her mom??

I mean of course *we* all know that's not it. But it doesn't even occur to Arthur?

*grumbles*

Ship-wise, I didn't much like Seward included in the polycule, tbh. I like morally ambiguous characters a lot, but Lucy doesn't need Jack's brand of dysfunction. She already feels way too responsible for others' happiness. Seward + Van Helsing, though? I love it. I'm not always a fan of the teacher-student transgression romance but these two seem perfect for each other. Jack is already morally gray and prone to boundary stomping. And VH strikes me as a *really* out there guy.

What is up with Renfield?

Pure speculation to follow, no spoilers (that I know of). So. We have Renfield having tantrums at noon and at 6pm, right? But not at dawn (correct me if I’m wrong). And he then becomes despondent and returns to his old ways with the flies and spiders. And then flips on that, throwing out the box of flies. 

First off, speculation about the timing of the tantrums. 6pm makes sense, if that’s when Dracula wakes up. But what’s going on at noon? Drac should be asleep? Unless he isn’t. Best guess: Drac doesn’t go to bed when the sun rises. He goes to bed at noon. Maybe the early morning sun isn’t enough to really make him uncomfortable. Not until it’s at its height. I think maybe Renfield is our window into Drac’s sleeping habits.

Renfield’s upset over his hopes being dashed implies that either Dracula got annoyed with him and told him to buzz* off (*flies, buzz hee hee, yes I know I’ll stop) or Drac didn’t speak to Renfield directly but simply left. Lucy is also improving, so I’m going with option B. Dracula had some business to attend to elsewhere for a day or two. But what? Why is he giving Lucy a break? So she can heal and produce more blood? But then, why would Renfield get upset? No, I think it’s more than Dracula playing with his food. I think he left. That’s what freaked Ren out; Drac left without telling Ren he’d come back. I wonder if we’ll ever find out what happened?

Of course, Dracula did come back, and either he does deign to reassure Ren (telepathically, I guess? Or does he visit him in some animal form?) or Ren just senses his return. This is not good news for Lucy.

Okay so I *know* Mrs. Westenra is deathly ill. I still kinda resent that she was so quick to distance herself from her daughter.

The utter inadequacy of any adaptations, film and stage, to represent the devastation of watching Lucy's destruction. I'M JUST. UGH

Someone here asked why Jack doesn't yet suspect that someone is preying on Lucy, and it got me thinking. It's a great point. The Jack the Ripper murders predate Dracula by a few years. Why wouldn't Jack, a man who deals with people like Renfield every day, think of the Ripper and begin putting together a theory of some madman (his term) crawling through Lucy's window at night?

I poked around Google to see if there's any connection between Stoker and the Ripper. Aside from him meeting two men suspected of being the Ripper (did he know they were suspects? it didn't say), there doesn't seem to be much there. One source did mention that he made a comparison between the evil of the Ripper and the evil of Dracula. So we know Stoker was aware of serial killers; hence Seward should be, too.

Anyway as I was reading my findings I was struck by something else. In multiple sources people dismiss the idea that Dracula was based on the Ripper because the Ripper tortured and killed prostitutes while Dracula "romantically" preys on high class ladies.

You guys.

Okay, to be clear, I don't see much evidence that Stoker based Dracula on the Ripper.

But like. Did any of these people read the book? Romantically? Ffs.

Also (and this is the point I've been working towards, believe it or not) the idea that Dracula doesn't prey on poor sex workers just annoys me. We have no idea. No one would tell us, in this epistolary novel, if sex workers were turning up dead in London gutters. It's not newsworthy when a sex worker dies looking pale but otherwise unharmed. We've seen that Drac has a huge appetite (*cough*Demeter crew*cough*). The fact he *hasn't* killed Lucy yet implies an almost guarantee that he's eating other people. Who better than sex workers? Maybe some vagrants here and there, too. The way they die would likely mislead most people who found the bodies into thinking it wasn't by violence, too.

Dracula likes to slowly torture and draw out his kill when it comes to Lucy. Is she the only one? We have no idea.

Aaand now I want a story about Dracula's unknown victims.

Okay, so what about the fact that London isn't becoming overrun with fledgling vampires? Well, idk if Stoker ever gives us an explanation for how Drac makes new vampires, but it's clearly not an automatic thing, or Transylvania would have a lot more of them (a lot of them babies--yikes).

Will someone pretty please write the story of these missing victims?

Maybe I'll take a crack at it...

I love the Dracula Daily progression of:

“Uh, adaptions seem to not know what to do with Jonathan. That sucks, he deserves better :/“

“Adaptions have Mina fall in love with WHOM?? Why would they do this to her??”

“I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL ALL THOSE WRITERS FOR LUCY, GET ME MY KNIFE—“

😬

I am, admittedly, *increasingly* biased and irrational about Lucy.

But.

For FUCKS sake, Mrs. Westenra.

WHERE did you think those flowers CAME FROM. Did you even bother to ask the staff, who undoubtedly could tell you the DOCTORS put them there?

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS

UNOPENED

WHAT DO YOU MEAN UNOPENED

Of wolves* and bats...

*A response to DD September 18 in two parts; I talked about wolves in another post.

Bats. VAMPIRE BATS, specifically.

Today our beloved cowboy, Quincey, relates the story of the overnight exsanguination of a horse, *relating the incident overtly to Lucy's illness." He describes damage to the "gorge" aka throat.

I have to conclude this was Stoker slapping the reader upside the head just in case due to their inexperience with vampire fiction they might not yet have figured out what was going on with Lucy. What with Victorian Lady Dying Disease being a thing, or whatever it's called.

But come on, Seward. COME ON. Did you not JUST NOTICE that Lucy's throat puncture marks look mangled? Have you not been racking your brain to think of how she could possibly be losing blood? Have you not SPOTTED BATS flying around in the sky?

I'm certainly not suggesting Jack should realize it's a vampire monster. But when Quincey told his story how could Jack not respond "HOLD UP. A bat drained your horse of blood overnight, you say? And Van Helsing insists we keep the windows shut in Lucy's room? DEATH TO BATS!!!"

"Yes but Cherry, vampire bats aren't native to England."

Of course not, but ships are docking in London from all over the world, friend. You really want to argue that ONE vampire bat couldn't have stowed away?

I get that up until now it was reasonable for no one but VH to have a clue about what the illness afflicting Lucy could be. But Quincey dropped *that* story and Jack didn't pick it up I'm dtvgdggdhhgjj

One thing I appreciate about Lucy’s death/transformation scene is that through it all, she still has agency. Her behavior changes depending on whether she’s awake or asleep, and it matters which of those states she’s in when she dies, because whenever she’s conscious she is doing everything she can to fight back against the transformation. She used to be very much the ingenue of the story, but now there’s the sense that she knows what’s happening to her - or at least knows more than any of the other protagonists bar Van Helsing - and it’s something of a role reversal that she is now the one asking him to protect Arthur.

Then, too, the vampiric Lucy who comes briefly to the fore seems not to be Lucy so much as a monstrous Something Else mimicking her from inside herself. That echoed phrase, like a skipping record - “Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come!” If this were still essentially Lucy, just a Lucy who’s had her free will subverted and all her values turned forcibly upside-down, why would she repeat herself so exactly? It feels much more like imitation, like Something seizing on that line as a point of entry into Lucy’s vocal patterns - actually, it reminds me of that Doctor Who episode Midnight, if you’ve seen that. And if vampiric Lucy is the subjugation and mocking mimicry of ordinary Lucy, rather than being her forcibly-altered truest self, it means her mind and heart can’t be stolen out from under her by a vampire’s predation, even if her life can be. She might die, she might turn, but she is not willing, and nothing Dracula does can make her so. Even after it is conquered, her will remains her own.

Here it is! The exact conclusion I've been gnashing my teeth and tearing my hair out over.

"We asked [Doctor] Vincent to what he attributed [the puncture marks on the throat of the hospitalized child], and he replied that it must have been a bite of some animal, perhaps a rat; but, for his own part, he was inclined to think that it was one of the bats which are so numerous on the northern heights of London. "Out of so many harmless ones," he said, "there may be some wild specimen from the South of a more malignant species. Some sailor may have brought one home, and it managed to escape; or even from the Zoölogical Gardens a young one may have got loose, or one be bred there from a vampire."

WHY IS SOME RANDOM HOSPITAL DOCTOR FIGURING THIS OUT AND NOT SEWARD?

*grumbles*

It's actually a flaw in the novel, as far as I'm concerned. I really don't believe that Seward would be able to bob along empty-headed for this long wrt to Lucy's illness. And he's like, thunderstruck when VH describes vampire bats and meanwhile (*eye twitch*) Quincey said the same thing.

It makes Seward seem stupid and he's not supposed to be stupid. This should have come up chapters ago. The only reason it didn't is bc Stoker would have had to find a way to keep Seward from moving the plot forward too quickly. Well, Stokes, that's writing. You don't just hand wave the only logical thing your character would do because it's inconvenient. You have to let them do it and then deal with it.

Seward should have built a theory around some sort of animal attack. Bat, rat, weasel. He should have tried to verify it. And Dracula, because he is, in fact, Dracula, and not a simple animal, should have found a way to discredit the theory.

So. I am amending my fervent wish for a meticulously faithful adaptation of the novel. I want it to be a faithful adaptation except Seward has a clue.