GEORGE STADE
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. Fi–
nally it lay still. The terrible task was over.
The hammer fell from Arthur's hand. He reeled and would
have fallen had we not caught him. The great drops of sweat
sprang from the forehead, and his breath came in broken gasps.
It had indeed been an awful strain on him. . ..
213
The sympathy, which has a narcissistic ring to it, is all for poor
Arthur, maybe because Lucy seems to be having the best orgasm in
recorded history. Either way you look at Arthur's mercy-bearing
stake, Lucy is the sole beneficiary, either of a saved soul or a satiated
body. No doubt that is why high duty shone on Arthur's face-which
only shows how easy it is to do one thing while your mind is on
another, a sleight of mind not restricted to bedrooms of the Victorian
era. That high duty, we gather, is to give Lucy in spades the punish–
ment she was asking for, but the trick lies in not letting yourself
know that you enjoy doing it. The knowledge would cancel out the
enjoyment. One therefore does one's duty, but the strain is awful.
If
Lucy becomes an epitome of what is horrifying about
women, Mina is an exemplar of what women must become to avoid
the mercy-bearing stake. Oh, she is enough of a woman to fall some
distance into vampirism. ("I suppose it is some of the taste of the ori–
ginal apple that remains still in our mouths," as she herself
observes.) But she does not go all the way. The traits that enable her
to hold back from going all the way are the traits that make her an
exemplar offeminine virtue. For one thing, she knows enough to put
her fate into the hands of men. When the men decide to keep her in
the dark about their plans for destroying Dracula - "It is too great a
strain for a woman to bear," says Van Helsing- she agrees that they
know what is best for her: "I suppose it is one of the lessons that we
poor women have to learn," she says.
For another thing, she understands that her gender-specific
purpose in life is to be of service to men. While still only engaged to
Jonathan she studied shorthand, timetables, and business law, so as
to be "useful" to her future husband. "I must attend to my husband"
is her constant refrain. But if she is wifely to Jonathan, she is
daughterly to Van Helsing, sisterly to Quincy Morris, and motherly
