Lucy Westenra is a fictional character in the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. She is the 19-year-old daughter of a wealthy family and is Mina Murray's best friend. Early in the story, Lucy gets proposed to by three suitors, Arthur Holmwood, John Seward, and Quincey Morris, on the same day. Turning the latter two down due to already being in love with Arthur, she accepts his proposal. Before getting the chance to marry, Lucy becomes Count Dracula's first English victim, and despite Seward contacting Abraham Van Helsing for help, she transforms into a vampire. Following her return as a vampire and attacks on children—dubbed the "Bloofer Lady" by them—she is eventually cornered into her crypt by Van Helsing and her suitors who destroy her, putting her soul to rest. Lucy has appeared in the majority of adaptations of Stoker's novel, although many aspects of her character are changed, such as she and Mina having their names switched; one example being the 1927 stage play.

Character history

Lucy Westenra is a woman, "blonde, demure, and waiting for the right man to come along to marry her". She is, however, not a passive woman: she has three suitors, and writes to her friend Mina that she would like to marry all of them, so none of them will feel sad. All three propose to her on the same day—Arthur Holmwood, the wealthy son of Lord Godalming; Quincey Morris, an American adventurer; and Dr John Seward, a psychiatrist—and she chooses Holmwood. Lucy falls ill, and much to the men's dismay no explanation can be found as to why her strength is leaving her. It is then that Dr Seward summons Dr Abraham Van Helsing from the Netherlands, who is able to deduce that a vampire has been feeding on her. Van Helsing attempts to thwart Dracula by securing the house with garlic but is unsuccessful when Lucy's mother, not knowing the effects that garlic has against vampires, removes it. While Van Helsing and Seward are absent, a large wolf (either implied to be Dracula in a different shape or controlled by him) attacks them resulting in the death of Lucy's mother from a heart attack and her daughter is close to death when Van Helsing and Seward visit her with Arthur and Quincy the next morning. However, under the vampire's influence, she becomes prone to sleepwalking and is drawn outside, where the count fatally drains her of blood. In her final moments, her vampiric side emerges and nearly tries to bite Arthur, but Lucy regains her human senses and before dying asks Abraham Van Helsing to protect Holmwood. A week after her burial, Lucy rises from the grave as a vampire, attacking children, which Van Helsing identifies by the telltale bite marks on their necks, the timing of her death and the start of the attacks. While visiting her tomb after dark, the men encounter her undead corpse feeding on a child. Far from the pure, kind-hearted young woman she was in life, she appears as a predatory temptress. Seward notes this corruption, describing the vampire as: “Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.” She attempts to seduce her former fiancé, but Van Helsing repels her with a crucifix. Her vampire form flees into her tomb as the sun rises, allowing Van Helsing and her suitors to open her coffin and drive a wooden stake through her heart, destroying the vampire form and allowing Lucy to rest in peace. To ensure that Dracula will not reclaim her, they also fill her mouth with garlic before decapitating her and soldering the lid to her coffin. Lucy's death motivates her suitors and Mina to join forces with Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker in hunting and destroying Dracula in retaliation.

Historical background

According to Sally Ledger, Lucy "is at first sight an archetype of Victorian femininity" but later shares characteristics with the then-feminist ideal of the New Woman. Leslie Ann Minot pointed out, in a 2017 essay on Lucy Westenra and other 19th century female characters, that if Dracula is an overt portrayal of a sexualized monster then Westenra is problematic since her attacks on children would then equate to "the sweet Lucy sexually molesting toddlers"; Minot sees this as one reason why the character has received less attention than others. She historicizes the character (and the novel) by placing it against a backdrop of a number of well-publicized cases of molestation and abuse of children by mother figures, particularly in the context of baby farming, citing the case of Margaret Waters. Victorian society had begun to take an interest in the welfare of children, resulting in the Factory Act of 1891 and the foundation of the SPCC, which would become the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Stoker was well aware of these developments and was close friends with W. T. Stead, the newspaper editor who supported the SPCC, published lurid accounts of child abuse and was himself jailed for the abduction of a 13-year old girl, which he organized as a demonstration. Stoker used newspaper clippings in the novel that are pastiches of the sensationalist writings of Stead and others about child prostitution, in particular Stead's "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon", and he describes the lower-class victims in much the same way. Their childish talk leads to "bloofer lady" as a child's way of saying "beautiful lady". This "bloofer lady" talks to children and lures them with the promise of riches and games, and after returning, bearing bite marks, they become emaciated and weak and wish to return to the "bloofer lady". All this is described in language similar to that of newspaper reports on women seducing children into prostitution. Minot also called Lucy "a demonic mother-parody, taking nourishment from children instead of giving it".

Appearances

On screen

Characters based on Lucy

On stage

In novels

In comics

Radio

In 1938, the CBS radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air made its debut with Dracula. Lucy appears in the middle of the broadcast as the ill fiancée of Arthur Seward, and it is only later established that she is a victim of Dracula. Elizabeth Farrell performed as Lucy, opposite Orson Welles.