Lucy Westenra, one of the major characters in
On July 24, Lucy met Mina at the Whitby station, and they retired to the home at the Crescent where they would stay for the next several weeks. On July 26, Mina noted that Lucy had begun walking in her sleep . On August 8 a sudden storm hit Whitby and the Demeter, the ship on which Dracula came to England, wrecked on shore. On August 11, at 3 A.M., Mina discovered Lucy had left her bed, and she went in search of her. Lucy was on the East Cliff in their favorite seat. As Mina made her way to Lucy, she saw "something, long and black, bending over her." When she called out, the something looked up and Mina saw Dracula's white face and red eyes. After she helped Lucy home, she saw two tiny marks on Lucy's neck. Over the next few days Lucy grew more and more tired and the wounds on her neck did not heal. At this juncture, Lucy seemed to get better and Mina, having finally heard from her true love Jonathan Harker on August 19, left for Budapest to join him.
Lucy returned to London where Holmwood joined her, and they set plans to marry on September 28. However, her condition worsened, and Holmwood called Seward in to examine her. Unable to figure out what was wrong, he called Abraham Van Helsing as a consultant, as Van Helsing knew of obscure diseases. Lucy seemed to improve, but then turned pale and lost all of her strength . Van Helsing prescribed a blood transfusion. As they were about to perform the procedure, Lucy's fiance Holmwood arrived and the blood was taken from him. Later a second transfusion was taken from Seward and then, without giving his reason, Van Helsing surrounded Lucy with garlic.
Dracula returned to attack Lucy on September 17. The attack followed the removal of the garlic that Van Helsing had ordered to be put around her neck. Morris was next in line to supply the blood needed to preserve Lucy's life, but by this time it was already too late; she was turning into a vampire. She died and was laid to rest in the family crypt. Van Helsing immediately wanted to treat the body as a vampire. Holmwood (who by this time had inherited his father's title as Lord Godalming) opposed any mutilation of the body. Though they had not married, he saw Lucy as his wife. In his opinion, the transfusion had served to marry them; they were married in the sight of God.
While the men rested, reports surfaced of missing children who, upon being found, told of being with a "boofer lady." Van Helsing persuaded the men to institute a watch at Lucy's tomb. They viewed her empty coffin and finally saw her walking around. In the end they cornered her in her coffin. Holmwood assumed his responsibility and drove the stake through her chest. At this point, it was noted that the harsh, fiendish expression, which had characterized Lucy's appearance at the time of her death, departed, and a face of sweetness and purity returned. Van Helsing cut off her head and filled her mouth with garlic. The men then turned their attention to killing Dracula.
When Dracula was brought to the stage and screen, the character of Lucy was handled quite differently. She disappeared completely from Nosferatu Eine Symphonie des Garuens (1922) and Hamilton Deane's Dracula play. She returned in John Balderston 's revision of Deane's play for the American stage, though now she was Lucy Seward, Dr. Seward's daughter. Both she and Mina returned in the 1931 films, in both the English and Spanish versions. In 1958's The Horror of Dracula Lucy was transformed into Holmwood's sister and the fiancee of Jonathan Harker. She was given strong parts in the Jack Palance version of Dracula (1973) and became central to the Frank Langella's Dracula (1979) . She was returned to a role more closely approaching the one in the novel in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).
