Lucy: An Innocent Character In Bram Stoker's Dracula

The character Lucy is described as the most innocent character in “Dracula” which is why she is loved by both the characters in the novel as well as the reader. Lucy is thought to be a more traditional woman, in the sense that she is chaste and pure, making her more desirable. She has three different men proposing to her and has the ability to choose the one that she likes the best. Lucy’s purity is sought after because this is how a traditional Victorian woman should act in the eyes of society.

Lucy’s transformation from the traditional Victorian woman to a impure Victorian woman began as soon as she became Dracula’s first victim. Her once innocent beauty became more dark and sexual, changing her purity into evil. Her transformation can be seen by the passage, “The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness” (Stoker, 324). The idea of a “new woman” was a

When Lucy turns from an innocent girl to having a sexual personality, Stoker could be trying to show the potential for both the good and evil in a woman. As a vampire, we see Lucy do things that were against her virtues while living. She attempts to seduce Arthur, she feeds off a child and then throws it to the ground, and becomes furious when Van Helsing presents a crucifix to her. She completely changes from her innocent ways. This light and dark aspect that Lucy portrays as a natural and a supernatural shows the duality of a woman.

Society can be seen as giving a woman a template of how they must act, taking away a lot of their freedoms. Dracula can be seen as “society”, or the outside force causing Lucy to become this way. Lucy is not really given a choice since she doesn’t have any parental figures in her life. She is altered by Dracula and her husband Arthur, two men, which can be mimicking the influence or control men have over women during this time