Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

'Discuss why Lucy is so susceptible to Dracula's powers'
Plan
•Lucy's immorality (vanity/sexual nature)
...

•Weak Subconscious/Childlike state (sleepwalking)
Lucy throughout the novel symbolises the early, very stereotypically Gothic interpretation of a
female figure
...

Lucy's character first and foremost, is overtly sexual in it's nature which at the time during the
Victorian age of sexual suppression and prudery, was a sharp deviation from traditional
'womanly' values and in this way somewhat foreshadows her eventual domination by Dracula
...
Dracula, already established as a desire driven
being, is naturally attracted to Lucy's trates and so she is in this way left vulnerable to his power
...
If her inclination toward
the sexual in a Victorian society wasn't enough, her subversion of 'ladylike' characteristics;
making romantic advances on men opposed to men playing the dominant role in the
relationship, makes her ever more tempting to the Count, her exclamation of, "Arthur! Oh, my
love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!" outlining her new found sexual-physical freedom
which leaves her open to Dracula's will
...
The
aforementioned female archetype that embodies fragility and frailty makes up her character,
and so in this way she is destined from the start of the book to play not a motherly role such as
Mina, but one that concludes in her transformation into a femme fatale, similiar to that of the
Dracula's maidens
...
[from] around her neck", Van Helsing's immediate concern evident in his face
turning "ashen grey", althought the garlic is a detterant, no mention is made on her reliance on
her own strength to defend herself, thus we assume that her safety is reliant upon a inanimate
flower which further outlines her true vulnerability to Dracula
...
Stewards lapse in attention leads to Lucy's
violation; so not only must she relly on a man for protection, but also must use his blood for
survival, representing the pinnacle of her vulnerability, in a physical sense but also sexual sense
as Seward comments after their transfusion, "No man knows till he experiences it, what it is to
feel his own life blood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves", the act of him saving
her was sexual in nature and required Lucy's absolute compliance further perpetuating her role
as a submissive female figure in Gothic literature, and outlining her vulnerability in relation to
Dracula
...
” a thought on a worrying tangent for such a sound mind
...
Furthermore Lucy's tendency to sleep walk; "Then,
too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep
...

To conclude, it is a combination of Lucy's natural beauty, permiscuity, 'inferior' gender (in the
eyes of Victorian Gothic) and childlike inclinations that makes her vulnerable to Dracula's Power

---