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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Lucy and Sexuality:
As Arthur, Van Helsing, Quincey, and Dr. Seward enter Lucy's tomb in Chapter 16 to dispose of the vampire, they encounter a woman much changed from the person they knew, both in visage and demeanor. Stoker uses visceral imagery to showcase this change:
My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.
Lucy's appearance as a vampire is contrasted with her former visage—one, for the men who view her, is the Un-Dead image of sexual impurity; the other, lately deceased, was a woman of the utmost chastity and Christian "purity." These dual images reflect the sexual mores of Stoker's time, where women's morality was heavily tied to their "sexlessness"; or, rather, their ability to transcend baser animal instincts. As a sexual being, Lucy's vampire persona must appear much different from her human persona, in both word and deed. In order for Lucy to remain a moral character, in spite of the vampire's pollution, she must remain sexually pure in contrast to the vampire. This dichotomy is an important one, appearing throughout the text of Dracula.
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