[Editorial] My Arms Are Hungry for You-A Study of Lucy Westenra in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

In Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), the story mainly centres around Mina, the fiancée of solicitor Jonathan Harker, and the possible reincarnation of Dracula’s first love, Elisabeta. Mina is prim and proper, showing only the slightest levels of affection for Jonathan before he has to leave her and travel to Transylvania to deal with his firm’s client, Count Dracula. Mina writes lovelorn diary entries about her dear Johnathan and how she wishes to marry him on his return. She is the image of everything you expect a young woman to be in a story set in the 1800s. In truth, she’s a little boring before Dracula shows up. 

But at the other end of the spectrum, is Mina’s best friend, the wonderful Lucy Westenra. Lucy is introduced when Mina mentions that Johnathan doesn't want her to stay with her best friend while he is out of the country. She mentions that this is because Lucy is rich and will potentially spoil Mina, but there are clear hints that Johnathan thinks Lucy is a bit of a bad influence. 

And it’s easy to see why, by 1897 standards anyway, as the first thing Lucy does is giggle with Mina over sexually explicit illustrations in Arabian Nights (1706). Mere moments ago when Mina was alone she glanced at the book and branded the drawings disgusting, but in Lucy’s presence, she’s more interested in the sexual exploits, curious about the types of things men and women get up to when they are alone. 

Lucy is far less embarrassed, and seems far more knowledgeable on the subject, though she and Mina never talk about sex directly, only through double entendre and mentions of Lucy’s sex dreams. You see, Lucy is in love with three different men. And not only does she have no shame about this (and nor should she) but all three men are more than aware of the joint situation they have found themselves in. Dr Jack Seward, Lord Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey P. Morris are all desperate for Lucy’s love, and instead of creating a rift between them, their shared love for Lucy actually seems to have brought the men closer.

Lucy is portrayed as the complete opposite of Mina, even in the way they look. Mina wears her hair tightly pinned, and her dresses are high-necked and have long sleeves. Her outfit reflects her mostly uptight nature, with her always worrying about one thing or another. Lucy, on the other hand, is far more carefree in her approach to life. Her red hair hangs freely around her shoulders, the fabric of her dresses are more light and flowy, and her shoulders are often bare. She stands out because she refuses to conform to the strict standards which were expected of women at the time, but she’s never judged by those around her.

In fact, Mina wishes she could be more like Lucy, who doesn’t feel the pressures of society to act a certain way. Mina is engaged to her beloved Jonathan, and yet, she says she wishes she was as adored as Lucy. She knows Jonathan loves her, but he has clearly never shown the levels of affection that Mina sees lavished upon Lucy by her three suitors. Even when Lucy eventually decides to marry Arthur, she is far more vocal about her love and her happiness than Mina ever has been with Jonathan. She runs into the room, shouting about how much she loves him, not afraid of limiting her affection for him to seem proper or polite. She knows love is complicated, and having made her choice of who she wants to marry, she sees no problem in flaunting it for everyone to hear. 

While Lucy and the men in her life have no problem with her openness and her shocking way of talking, as Mina describes it, it seems the fact that she stands out more than other women is what attracts Dracula to her in the first place. Dressed in the brightest red gown, she looks almost ethereal as she floats out into the garden to find the source of the force calling her. She is the colour of blood, both with her hair and her outfit, so it’s no wonder she stands out to Dracula among the boringness of everyone else. 

It’s also possible that Lucy’s open mind when it comes to love, sex, and rejecting the norms that society places upon women are what makes her mind more open to Dracula’s luring powers compared to Mina. Mina knows something is going on, and even follows Lucy out into the garden in time to see her having sex with the wolf version of Dracula in the garden. Once again Mina finds herself stuck on the side-lines, watching, wanting to know more but too afraid to go any further, and almost jealous of Lucy.

Of course, the main reason Dracula chooses to feed on Lucy instead of Mina is because he sees the face of his human wife in Mina, and comes to London to make her his wife before she has the chance to marry Jonathan. While Lucy is portrayed relatively judgement-free as a woman who enjoys sex and knows what she wants in life, she still takes the back seat as the woman Dracula has sex with and then tosses aside when the real objective of his affection comes along. Mina is swapping one romantic relationship for another, while Lucy is targeted for her body, her sex drive, and her lack of inhibitions. 

After her first encounter with Dracula, Lucy and Mina start to switch roles a little. Lucy is seen as more focused on her marriage to Arthur, as we see her trying on her over the top and very white wedding dress. Her excitement for her newly monogamous relationship has not waned, even though she continues to flirt with the other men, but her focus is purely on her upcoming nuptials. 

Mina, however, has started hanging out with Dracula in his more human form and falling for him hard. She views herself as the more innocent and proper of the pair of the friends, and yet she willingly heads out on secret absinthe drinking dates with a man she’s just met while her finance is in another country. Lucy is completely open about her love for more than one man, but Mina keeps her relationship with Dracula a secret, viewing it as shameful. The more comfortable she grows with Dracula, the more she starts to look like Lucy, wearing her hair down in loose ringlets, and showing her chest and shoulders more in her outfits. It’s as though she feels like she needs to mirror her more sexually liberated friend the more risks she takes with Dracula, but her approach is very different to Lucy’s. She wants to try to be everything Lucy is, starting with the way she looks, but her mentality is very different.

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The minute Mina gets a letter confirming that Johnathan is safe and well she reverts to her old fashion sense, tight and controlled once again. She abandons the freer side of her life at the first sign of trouble to go back to a life of conforming to the expected standards. She clearly feels shame at what she’s been doing with Dracula, but Lucy doesn’t feel ashamed of her actions, she simply follows her heart, trying her best not to hurt anyone along the way. 

At this point, both women are being pushed towards marriage, something they both want but are confused by. Lucy wants to marry Arthur and finally have the committed relationship she craves, but there’s no denying she still loves Jack and Quincey. Mina desires the normal life she has been dreaming of with Johnathan, but her time with Dracula has opened her eyes to real passion and desire. Both options have the potential to make the women happy, but once they commit to marriage, they know they will be stuck with their decision forever, even if it turns out to be wrong. 

When Mina finally marries Jonathan in Romania, Dracula returns to Lucy’s bedroom and feeds from her for the last time, killing her. Does he return to Lucy as a second choice because Mina has finally rejected him? Or does he kill Lucy as punishment for Mina betraying him? Either way, Lucy suffers because of Dracula’s rage.

After her death, Lucy is dressed in the wedding dress she never got to wear in life and placed in a glass coffin, much like Snow White. Like the mourning dwarves, her three lovers stand around her for the last time. Lucy was such a free spirit in life, and yet in death, they try to give her the appearance of the virginal bride, every inch of her skin, even her auburn hair, covered in bright, white fabric. The wedding dress hides every inch of what made Lucy her.

By this point, her three suitors and Van Helsing know that Lucy was killed by Dracula, and so they decide to kill her vampire form to save her soul. When they arrive at the mausoleum, hoping to strike, Lucy is out feeding, returning a short while later with a child for dinner. In Sady Doyle’s book Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power (2019) she points out that this scene contains a “mean joke embedded in the fact that the vampire Lucy eats children; as soon as a girl gets engaged, the joke goes, she starts wanting babies.” Just maybe not for dinner. As a vampire, Lucy will never be able to have the babies she potentially craves, and so, she must steal them from others to fulfil that need, even if her bloodlust takes over. Much like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead (1978) return to the mall because it’s the only part of their human lives they remember, Lucy’s vampire form seems to retain part of her desire for a family but has twisted it into something much darker. 

While all three men who loved her are willing to come on the journey to save her soul from damnation, it is decided that Arthur should be the one to drive the stake through her heart. Lucy is portrayed as a sexual person, but every time she is penetrated, it is against her will. From the sex with the wolf Dracula to the many times he fed on her, to Arthur piercing her chest with the stake, she has no authority over her body and what is done to her. Rather than experiencing her wedding night with Arthur in her grand dress and starting the next chapter of her life, she is once again penetrated without consent.

This never happens to Mina, as when she is eventually bitten by Dracula, she fully consented to the experience, asking him to turn her into a vampire so that she can spend eternity with him. Even though this is gothic horror rather than a slasher, Mina is still given the final girl treatment. Lucy is too sexual, and has sex, even though it’s not consensual, and so she’s doomed to die. Mina's love for two men is shown in a nicer light, with Mina's love for Dracula eventually setting his soul free before she returns to the love of Johnathan. Lucy’s love for three men is portrayed as risque, even though no one involved has a problem with it, and as the men carry out their revenge mission for their beloved Lucy, one of them is killed in the process. Even in death, Lucy is shown to be causing trouble for her suitors, while Mina is portrayed as a saviour of hers.

In her final moments, Lucy is still flirty and outrageous, refusing to be something she is not. Mina's character is all over the place throughout the film, either being forced by the perceptions of what she needs to be as Johnathan’s wife or being controlled by Dracula’s mind powers. Lucy is always true to herself, spewing blood at the world when it tries to make her be smaller and be quiet. Lucy may not be the final girl of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but she’s certainly my favourite.

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