212
PARTISAN REVIEW
Lucy's sweetness turns into heartless cruelty, her purity into
voluptuous wantonness, her gentle orbs into unclean hell-fire, her
beautiful color into a livid flush. And because of these changes, Dr.
Seward's love turns into hate and loathing. "Had she then to be
killed," he says, "I could have done it with savage delight." The
single catalyst for these transformations is the element of sex. All
that has been perceptibly added to Lucy is sexuality. "Come, my
husband, come!" she says, like many an exasperated wife before
her. But before Arthur can come, Van Helsing intervenes, as he had
intervened once before, as Dracula has intervened between Jona–
than Harker and the vampire ladies. And as though she were not
already hateful enough, Lucy "with a careless motion" flings the
child from her breast, where instead of nursing it, she had been feed–
ing on it. An aroused female sexuality, that is, does not nurture chil–
dren and husbands; it drains them dry and tosses them aside . Fe–
male sexuality is insatiable and selfish, indifferent to the decent self–
restraint, the self-sacrifice and suppression of appetite, upon which
survival of the family depends. It is the very antithesis of mother–
hood . Thus the Light of the West goes out. No wonder the men
agree that the next day at noon they will put a stop to the nonsense
once and for all.
As they look down into Lucy's coffin, any qualms they may
have felt are quenched by her debauched aspect, by "the blood–
stained, voluptuous mouth - which it made one shudder to see - the
whole carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a devilish
mockery of Lucy's sweet purity." As Lucy's fiance, Arthur has best
claim to do the honors - "the work of her destruction was yielded as a
privilege to the one best entitled to it." He places the point of a shar–
pened stake over her heart, so that you can "see its dint in the white
flesh," while Van Helsing reads a prayer for the dead. "Then he
struck with all his might," and Dr. Seward's choice of words makes
us see an even more primal scene behind the one he describes:
The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, bloodcur–
dling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook
and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white
teeth 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 mercy-bearing stake, whilst the
blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it.
