Lucy Westenra

Where lies the true horror? In the story of Bram Stoker’s Dracula we tend to think of the horror of blood and vampire fangs. Such things are the thrill of 19th-century sensational melodrama, but what makes such gothic classics endure is the way in which they tug us towards deeper truths that we all at some level recognize, and we recognize them because they somewhere lie within our own personal experience. 

In Stoker’s narrative it is the events which occur both to and around Lucy Westenra that form a pivotal focus in the story. In spite of the heroic efforts of the Dutch vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing to prevent the encounter, Lucy is stalked and bitten by Dracula. She wastes away and apparently dies, but her coffin is later discovered to be empty. Lucy has become one of the ‘Un-Dead’; has herself become a vampire.

It is the true horror of possession, of desiring total mastery over another, which we recognize. Lucy is no longer ‘Lucy’. She becomes a sad walking puppet, a thing of unnatural desires neither living nor truly dead. We ourselves perhaps know of someone in our own circle of acquaintances whom we feel has been ‘taken over’ by another, who has become so compliant to the will of that other person that they adopt that person’s mannerisms, figures of speech, ways of dressing, view of things. Just think of the many religious cults and the way in which they maintain their members. Vampirism of the mind is still vampirism, and the legions of these particular 'undead' are real enough.

My video of Dracula featuring this painting of Lucy can be viewed on YouTube here: Dracula: Darkness Rising.