” Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. Van Helsing stepped out, and, obedient to his gesture, we all advanced too; the four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. Van Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide; by the concentrated light that fell on Lucy’s face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.” (Stoker,Chapter 16)
In this blog post, I will discuss the femme fatale as it’s relation to Lucy and the rest of the book. As there is no exact origin to the femme fatale, the differences have been boiled down to four types. In terms of the 4 kinds femme fatale, the one I will be focusing on is the witch as it has the most pertinent relation to the story. The witch is basically any woman with power over/superior of that of a man (fucked up i know). In this quotation, this is after Lucy drains a bunch of kids of blood, and is visibly stained with blood. Only in figure resembling a woman, but not in soul or emotion. The power that Lucy has over the men is that of fear. Fear is a strong power in Dracula, it motivates a lot of the plot as it goes along, whether it’s presence or absence is felt. The reason that it is important to bring up the fact that Lucy, in this moment, is a femme fatale or a female with any semblance of power is the brutal scene to follow. It is very important to note that this scene was written by a man, who either didn’t understand, know or care that this scene reads like a terribly brutal rape scene. It should not be understated that the only woman who was given a ‘power’ albeit considered ‘evil’ is murdered in such a way. To add insult to injury, Mina is kept in the relative dark about all of this, indirectly causing her eventual, unfortunate demise.
I really like your analysis of this scene and I agree that Stoker attempts to present the dangers of Women having even the slightest bit of power using the femme fatale template. This quote also reminds me of the victorian era fears that men had towards women especially in regard to sexual activities. This could be a reach but I believe that Lucy in this scene also represents the danger of giving women to much freedom in regard to sexual activity, not only that but I also believe that this scene could showcase to men the fact that they need to keep tight control over women or danger will arise.
I completely agree with everything said in this post. I want to add on and emphasize the fact that Mina is the one saved. Throughout the book, Lucy is the one that had multiple men into her. This meant from the beginning she had more power. Mina only ever cared about Johnathan. This makes her much less of a threat to the status quo. I think that if Mina was the femme fatal rather than Lucy, then she would have been the one to die.