{"id":942,"date":"2023-09-17T16:47:51","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T20:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=942"},"modified":"2023-09-17T16:47:51","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T20:47:51","slug":"lucy-corrupted-oh-god-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2023\/09\/17\/lucy-corrupted-oh-god-no-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucy Corrupted: “Oh, God!” No More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dracula<\/em> is a fascinating novel, telling of many of the conflicting ideals present in the fin de si\u00e8cle \u2013 within it, Stoker\u2019s indirect commentary on many issues such as foreign presence within England, the social place of a woman, religious ideology and the virtues of spreading technology are very present. As Dr. Seward\u2019s diary describes the vampiric Lucy as he, Van Helsing, Arthur, and Quincey stand over her body to, in Van Helsing\u2019s words, help her to \u201cdie in truth\u201d (229), Stoker\u2019s description of Lucy\u2019s body lends itself to a deeper read relating to many of the topics he skirts around.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there; the pointed teeth, the bloodstained, voluptuous mouth \u2013 which it made one shudder to see \u2013 the whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy\u2019s sweet purity\u201d (228). In this passage, \u201csweet purity\u201d can relate to many forms of purity, including religious and sexual \u2013 additionally, as the proper woman during this time was supposed to be above such base inclinations and revelatory expressions, and Lucy has succumbed to corruption in her transition to vampire. Such focus on her mouth as the means of feeding and transmitting her corruption to others also brings to mind sexual undertones \u2013 describing it to have \u201cpointed teeth\u201d, a \u201cbloodstained\u2026 mouth\u201d relates it to greed and unnatural hunger, animalistic and inhuman in nature. This connects Lucy again to religious corruption, as she cannot help but to become a gluttonous version of her former pure self; additionally, much like the vampire women Johnathan Harker witnessed at Dracula\u2019s castle, her mouth is described as \u201cvoluptuous\u201d, and her whole self as \u201ccarnal\u201d. This \u201cdevilish mockery\u201d of the former Lucy\u2019s innocence and vivacity creates a sacrilegious departure from \u201csweet purity\u201d and the goodness of the once-human woman. Van Helsing\u2019s words on page 232: \u201cNo longer is she the devil\u2019s Un-Dead. She is God\u2019s true dead, whose soul is with Him!\u201d illustrate quite clearly that those fallen to corruption \u2013 that of gluttony, lust, or a departure from Christianity altogether \u2013 now, according to the beliefs Stoker is reflecting of his time, belong to the devil.<\/p>\n

Here, we are viewing Lucy corrupted: where before she was sweet and pure, now she is a carnal representation of sensuality, greedy desire, and a \u201cdevilish mockery\u201d of Christian morality and the \u201cideal woman\u201d. Where we see this in Lucy\u2019s corrupted form, the opposite of this is now contrasted through Mina\u2019s representation of an ideal woman, as she comforts Arthur maternally on pg. 244-45. She is continuously attributed as being \u201cone of God\u2019s women\u201d by Van Helsing, and other similar praise-worthy descriptors: dear, sweet, kind; additionally, he later says that she is a woman with a \u201cman\u2019s brain\u2026 and woman\u2019s heart\u201d (250). Despite this and her considerable contributions in aiding their hunt for Dracula, she is excluded from any information regarding the men\u2019s pursuits in deference towards her woman-ness.<\/p>\n

During class, we discussed some of the deeper metaphors behind vampirism in Stoker\u2019s novel. We talked about xenophobia, classism, and immigrants. In this passage, as it relates vampires to the idea of a foreign agent introducing corruption to the good people of England, we see that foreign equals bad things \u2013 indeed, it is equated to the devil. Stoker also equates the loss of purity with being corrupted at all, and adds a new level by linking it to an inherent absence of Christian values, as vampires are repelled by a cross.<\/p>\n

Stoker takes a political stance on multiple levels. In this case the stance is most visible on the topics of women\u2019s place in society and the disapproval of foreign influence on the English; additionally, Stoker is providing indirect commentary on the benefits of innovation. As the paragraph on page 228 continues, Van Helsing uses his scientific knowledge of doctoral procedures (i.e. science) to prevent Lucy\u2019s continuing \u201cUn-Death\u201d. Although Stoker has married the innovation of the Industrial Revolution with superstition, his moral heroes use modern technology such as railways, medicine, typewriters, and telegrams to begin to coordinate their efforts to stop the foreign influence of the pre-Industrial era: see Dracula\u2019s ship, letters instead of telegrams, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dracula is a fascinating novel, telling of many of the conflicting ideals present in the fin de si\u00e8cle \u2013 within it, Stoker\u2019s indirect commentary on many issues such as foreign presence within England, the social place of a woman, religious ideology and the virtues of spreading technology are very present. As Dr. Seward\u2019s diary describes … Continue reading Lucy Corrupted: “Oh, God!” No More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}