210
PARTISAN REVIEW
Seward, one of Lucy's former suitors . Dr. Seward brings with him
Quincey Morris, an outdoorsy but housebroken American , Lucy's
third suitor. Stumped by Lucy's symptoms, Dr. Seward then calls in
his old teacher, Dr. Van Helsing, for a consultation. Now that the
patriarch is in place, this primal horde comes close to saving Lucy
from herself, from her openness to Dracula. Their treatment, in the
main , is to make Lucy eat a lot, to decorate her person and her bed
chamber with the symbols of Christianity and with garlic plants,
and , above all, to give her transfusions of blood . "A brave man's
blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble,"
says Van Helsing to Quincey Morris. "You're a man and no
mistake. Well , the devil may work against us for all he's worth, but
God sends us men when we want them."
That's what Lucy thinks, too. Flustered at having to turn down
two of her three suitors, Lucy had prettily asked, "Why can't they let
a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this
trouble?" She gets her wish , metaphorically speaking, as the men
empty their vital fluid into her. Each time, the transfusion restores
Lucy's rosy cheeks, but leaves the donor pale and limp. "No man
knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood
drawn into the veins of the woman he loves," says Dr. Seward, with
a sigh. And each time the sacrifices of the men are negated by
women, as Lucy, her mother, or maidservants remove those smelly
garlic plants or crucifixes, or sleep on the job of lookout while the
depleted men try to revivify themselves with sleep, Death's brother.
As Lucy inexorably sinks, all the parental figures die off: Lucy's
mother, Arthur's father , Harker's foster father, even Gerald Swales,
one hundred years old, who had taken Lucy and Mina under his
wing. (Lucy had been fatherless, and Mina had been motherless and
fatherless to begin with.) Parental authority out of the way, Lucy
dies into undeath.
Soon there are newspaper stories of a "Bloofer Lady ," or beau–
tifullady, who kidnaps children and then leaves them where patrol–
ling Bobbies find them dazed, weak, and with pin-pricks on their
necks . Van Helsing knows what is happening, but his comrades re–
fuse to believe him. One night, at the stroke oftwelve, he leads them
to Lucy's grave, so that they can see for themselves. Here, in Dr. Se–
ward's words, is what they see:
... a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of the grave.
We could not see the face, for it was bent down over what we saw
to be a fair-haired child. There was a pause and a sharp little cry,
