Lucy Westenra

Lucy Westenra is a fictional character in the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The 19-year-old daughter of a wealthy family, she is Mina Murray's best friend and Count Dracula's first English victim. She subsequently transforms into a vampire and is eventually destroyed. Character history Lucy Westenra is a woman, "blonde, demure, and waiting for the right man to come along to marry her". She is, however, not a passive woman: she has three suitors, and writes to her friend Mina that she would like to marry all of them, so none of them will feel sad. All three propose to her on the same day—Arthur Holmwood, the wealthy son of Lord Godalming; Quincey Morris, an American adventurer; and Dr. John Seward, a psychiatrist—and she chooses Holmwood. Lucy falls sick, and much to the men's dismay, no explanation can be found as to why her strength is leaving her. It is then that Dr. Seward summons Dr. Abraham Van Helsing from the Netherlands, who is able to deduce that a vampire has been feeding on her. Helsing attempts to thwart Dracula by securing the house with garlic but is unsuccessful when Lucy's mother, not knowing the effects that garlic has against vampires, removes it. While Van Helsing and Seward are absent, a large wolf (either implied to be Dracula in a different shape or controlled by him) attacks them resulting in the death of Lucy's mother from a heart attack and her daughter is close to death when Van Helsing and Seward visit her with Arthur and Quincy the next morning. However, under the vampire's influence, she becomes prone to sleepwalking and is drawn outside, where the count fatally drains her of blood. In her final moments, her vampiric side emerges and nearly tries to bite Arthur, but Lucy regains her human senses and before dying asks Abraham Van Helsing to protect Holmwood. A week after her burial Lucy rises from the grave as a vampire, attacking children, which Van Helsing identifies by the telltale bite marks on their necks and the timing of her death and the start of the attacks. While visiting her tomb after dark, the men encounter her undead corpse feeding on a child. Far from the pure, kind-hearted young woman she was in life, she appears as a predatory temptress. Seward describes the vampire as: “Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.” She attempts to seduce her former fiance, but Van Helsing repels her with a crucifix.