This section will review how Lucy is seduced by Dracula, vamped, and then staked by the crusading vampire hunters- Van Helsing, Holmwood,... to "save her soul". I will be looking at how different film adaptations have interpreted Lucy and her vamping, as well as comparing Lucy to our modern society, who first is raped by vampire inculturation, is then seduced by Dracula in a true Stockholm-syndrom fashion.
"...it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell...
There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. I called in fright, "Lucy! Lucy!" and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes"
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Chapter 8
"When he again lifted the lid off Lucy's coffin we all looked, Arthur trembling like an aspen, and saw that the corpse lay there in all its death beauty. But there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy's shape without her soul. I could see even Arthur's face grow hard as he looked. Presently he said to Van Helsing, "Is this really Lucy's body, or only a demon in her shape?"
"It is her body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you shall see her as she was, and is."
She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there, the pointed teeth, the blood stained, voluptuous mouth, which made one shudder to see, the whole carnal and unspirited appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy's sweet purity....
"Go on,"said Arthur hoarsely."Tell me what I am to do."
"Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place to the point over the heart, and the hammer in your right. Then when we begin our prayer for the dead, I shall read him, I have here the book, and the others shall follow, strike in God's name, that so all may be well with the dead that we love and that the Un-Dead pass away." Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing opened his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as well as we could.
Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might.
The thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous, bloodcurdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions. The sharp white champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercybearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it. The sight of it gave us courage so that our voices seemed to ring through the little vault.
And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The terrible task was over."
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Chapter 16
"The contemporary horror fiction turned the vampire into "a metaphor for the human condition" (Holte
1 15), and explored its tormenting struggle to survive in the Western culture at the end of millennium. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's series of over thirty vampire novels (Hotel Transylvania, 1978, Blood Games (1979), A Flame in Byzantium, 1987, etc.), Fred Sabgerhage's Berserker Series (The DraculaTape, 1975, The Homes-Dracula File, 1978, etc.), Nancy Collins's Midnight Blue novels (Sunglasses after Dark, 1990, In the Blood, 1992, and Paint It Black, 1995), Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles (Interview with the Vampire, 1986, The Vampire Lestat, 1985, The Tale of the Bodv Thief, 1992, etc.) are among the best known productions of the genre. All these reinterpretations of the myth attempt to reveal the humane dimension of the character, his heroic, almost Romantic temperament, turning him into a familiar, and therefore less fearsome presence" (Popa, 41)
"The attraction for the vampire figure, with all its connotations of immortality, immorality, forbidden desires, rebellion, power, and eroticism reflects nothing else but the fascination with the darker side of our nature, as well as our subconscious longing for a metaphysical escape." (Popa,45)