Stoker's Novel vs. Film - Lucy
Mar. 30th, 2025 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bleodswean posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
the_scent_of_lilacsI would love to be able to write a long-from meta-analysis of Stoker’s Lucy versus film interpretations, but in the interest of timeliness and my own impacted schedule out here, I ask you to suffer a shortened muddle of observations and perhaps in the comments we can hold forth more loquaciously.
Lucy has been infamously brought to life in 1992’s Dracula. The choices made from casting to costuming to characterization are NOTHING like our sweet and curious daughter / fiancé in her novel form. Is Coppola’s Lucy fantastic?? Yes, of course she is! Twenty years later and she would have an OnlyFans site. That girl is on fire, hot to trot, and ready to rock. Not so with novel Lucy who is a sweet friend, a devoted daughter, and a saintly memory to the men who loved her. It is no easy task for novel suitors to dispatch Undead Lucy and by doing so save her immortal soul. Film Lucy appears to have brought on her own terrible destruction through, and here we fucken go, her desire to be a sexual creature. That’s a whole ‘nother conversation and if you want to have it, go for it, but it’s HUGE and even covers Eggers Nosferatu!
Novel Lucy is far more akin to Egger’s Anna than Coppola’s Lucy.
Is she a flirty little thing in the novel? Yes! But it’s a flirtatious innocence borne from being astonishingly shockingly beautiful and having that beauty attract men to her. She doesn’t really know what to do with her wiles and enjoys the attention but truly and undeniably sets her heart and loyalty on Arthur and doesn’t sway from it at all – not to look at a book of sexual positions, not to openly and brazenly flirt with innuendo with Arthur’s friends, not to demonically tease Van Helsing. She is loyal and sweet and sexually curious in that she wants to be married but her virginity is stolen from her by the rape of the Count. UGH!!! She’s sexually abused and molested by an undead creature for his own amusement and ends. At first, he coaxes a healthy sexual curiosity out of her – the scene in the graveyard from which Mina rescues her – but quickly she is drained of her life force and used like a human toy by the monster.
Why did Coppola choose to sex up our Lucy? She’s not a vamp and that’s the most psychologically intriguing aspect of this shift. The cultural succubus, the vamp, all have part in the vampire myth / symbolism but NOT in Stoker’s seminal work! Stoker was not squeamish about vamps – his three women are definitely sexually deviant. They overwhelm Harker who desires nothing more than to kiss one of them.
I’m here to defend Lucy. The young girl on the knife’s edge of womanhood who feels the power of her femininity and her female body but is denied the opportunity to fulfill her sexual dreams because of the monster. This is a worthy symbolic female character and should not be stripped out of film versions.
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Date: 2025-03-30 08:51 pm (UTC)Besides, everyone and everything is sexed up in the movie, even the characters like Van Helsing. With such approach and with the interpretation of Lucy they chose, it would make sense for the creators for her to be especially sexed up.
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Date: 2025-03-30 09:15 pm (UTC)It's discouraging that Lucy is so misrepresented in the '92 portrayal. I will have to spend some time scouring through other versions.
I agree with you now that I've read Stoker! He's so forward thinking and definitely able to imagine worlds unknown to him and his times. I mean this guy essentially penned a love letter to Whitman! What's that all about?! And yes, his wife! I think if he wanted Lucy sexed up for any reason - lust to misogyny - he was entirely capable. Lucy is innocence defiled.
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Date: 2025-03-30 09:33 pm (UTC)I don't like Stoker. I think his writing is mediocre and the flashes of his personality I've seen in his writing feel mediocre to me too. He is forward thinking in some areas like his admiration for female agency and intelligence, but not others like his virulent racism or defence of censorship. Even in his letter to Whitman he said something along the lines that he was brought up in conservative family and conservative country, and when they met, he recommended the poet to tone down his poems so that people weren't so scandalized by them and accepted him more. I think you need to fundamentally misunderstand Whitman to come up with something like that.
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Date: 2025-03-30 10:37 pm (UTC)I'm inclined to think you're going to be correct about Coppola creating a new characterization of Lucy. That film has some flaws, but before reading the novel, I didn't think the Lucy portrayal was one of them!
I am loving Stoker! He possessed a massive intellect and a sharp sense for myth, folk tale, and fable. He also reveals through the novel a quick and accurate perception of psychology. He embraced folk horror a century before it became a thing. The fact that Dracula was a mid-late-life offering says to me that it was a story his psyche needed to tell. I don't find the novel mediocre but rather a freshman effort, an untrained writer telling a story through a formula he was comfortable with! As to Whitman, don't forget he spent years admiring from afar and discussing the poet with his contemporaries. I'm certain during those conversations he found that Whitman had to be defended first before his art could be appreciated and his advice to the outrageously flamboyant American would have been sound to his more circumspect experience. Although, I'm inclined to think that something in Walt's throbbing love for the world spoke to Stoker on a level he hadn't experienced through the craft of writing.
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Date: 2025-03-31 12:23 am (UTC)Also, I agree about the 1992 film version of Van Helsing. Hopkins at the time was a younger version of the classic character, and he's shown to be attracted to Mina. I think he dances with her at one point, and then later, there's that vampiric seduction scene, where he happily kisses Mina when she comes on to him, until he comes to his senses (but only after she threatens him) and whips out the holy wafer.
Re Stoker's Novel - Stoker gave an "everyday" feel to his novel, as everything was revealed through the characters' first-person letters and journal entries, as well as newspaper articles. At the time, this was a very fresh and modern approach, which lent the book a realistic sense of immediacy that likely struck a cord with Victorian readers.
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Date: 2025-03-30 11:47 pm (UTC)Agreeing that Book Lucy is a flirt, but innocently so. Even having multiple suitors is quite properly Victorian, as young ladies in that era were expected to gather around them an assortment of respectable beau from which to choose. And she's shown to be sincerely in love with the man she ultimately decides upon, Arthur Holmwood.
In the novel, Lucy suffers bouts of sleep-walking. This renders her susceptible to Dracula's lure and hypnotic control. Here, Stoker's subtext implies that Lucy not only suffers blood loss by the count, but also a loss of innocence. Nothing explicit, mind you (considering the era), but enough is insinuated that Victorian readers would certainly get the gist.
As we know, Coppola decided to make this subtext main text. The arrival of Dracula on the Demeter, and the storm he raises, is depicted as a catalyst for the arousal of the female characters.
For example, Lucy and Mina suddenly kiss in the rain
And later, for the infamous werewolf scene, an already over-stimulated Lucy (who, like her book counterpart, is prone to sleep-walking) is easily lured to the garden and Dracula's clutches.
Lucy's red costume in this scene symbolizes her connection to blood and to her fall from grace with Dracula. That this takes place in a garden is no coincidence, as the symbology of the Garden of Eden and the temptation of Eve by the Serpent, is also made clear - and once again by costume. In the party scene, where Lucy flirts seductively with her three suitors, she's clad in a green gown patterned with snakes. Quite different from the more demure green gown that Mina wears for the scene, with its motif of leaves (the signature motif for Mina / Elisabeta).
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Date: 2025-03-31 12:16 am (UTC)It's hard to forgive Dracula his abuse and destruction of Lucy. "Don't see me".....
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Date: 2025-03-31 02:14 am (UTC)Yes, the abuse of Lucy is appalling. Dracula only stops when he sees Mina, and realizes that his long lost true love is witnessing his bestial attack on her best friend. Don't see me indeed!
Significant too is that Mina, for a very quick moment, is able to see Dracula's human face, hidden beneath the beast. As his soulmate, she can recognize him even in such a degraded state.
Of course, this illustrates how far Dracula has fallen on a soul level. Which ties-in to his later confession to Mina when he admits who and what he is. Gary Oldman conveys the character's deep shame perfectly.
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Date: 2025-03-30 11:59 pm (UTC)1931 Film Lucy, like Book Lucy, is shown to be an innocent flirt. She's depicted as a classic "bright young thing" of the era, stylish, and initially attracted to the suave count in his elegant tuxedo.
Of course, like all the other Lucys, she too becomes a tragic victim of Dracula.
In the 1979 Dracula (with Frank Langella as the count), the characters of Lucy and Mina for some inexplicable reason are transposed. Lucy becomes Dracula's love interest and Mina is given Lucy's role as victim.
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Date: 2025-03-31 12:49 am (UTC)I, too, don't find Lugosi that sexy. Maybe he was sexier while playing Dracula on stage? It appears that Dracula just became a placeholder for the tropes set by other vampires. The more I hear about old vampire stories, the more I'm convinced that seductive vampires were not that uncommon in the 19 century literature, if anything, it's Stoker who decided to deviate from popular tropes and make his vampires unambiguously evil, mostly devoid of depth and not having much page time at all.
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Date: 2025-03-31 02:59 am (UTC)Re Seductive Vampires - here's some earlier ones that fit the description.
“The Bride of Corinth” by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1797) - In this tragic tale, a defiantly pagan female vampire is betrothed to a Greek man, who's Christian.
“Christabel” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (approximately 1797-1800) - This partly completed poem is thought to have inspired Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, as its main character is a mysterious female vampire, who the poem heavily implies is gay.
"Carmilla" by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu (1872). Written in first person, and with its main character a seductive lesbian vampire, this pre-dates Stoker and is considered to have been an influence on him (although Dracula in the novel is a far cry from a sexy, seductive vamp). Fun Fact: Sheridan le Fanu was Stoker's mentor.
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Date: 2025-03-31 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-31 07:40 pm (UTC)I haven't seen that mini series, will have to look for it.
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Date: 2025-03-31 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-31 10:26 am (UTC)One very interesting treatment of Lucy turns up in the Claes Bang version of Dracula, which was first shown on BBC 1 and then on Netflix, where I think it is still available. It's a spin on the Dracula story which is different and it has flaws but it has strengths too. In it Lucy is portrayed very differently, though even here there are issues.
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Date: 2025-03-31 01:42 pm (UTC)Coppola certainly rocketed his vision into the cultural stratosphere, and it's been relegated to seminal. I'm so happy that I've read the book now and wish I had done so long ago. There's years of compare / contrast and deep analysis of all the interpretations! If one is so inclined.
The garden scene in '92 is outrageous and fantabulous, as is most of the film. It's an opium dream in many ways.
I liked the Bang miniseries.
I love Nosferatu, but the women are still....dependent upon their male creators.
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Date: 2025-04-01 07:32 am (UTC)Re what you say about the Nosferatu women is true but hmm, Anna has a lot of control over her devoted husband, so perhaps we can say that she has adapted to her situation perfectly. Ellen though, doesn't feel like a male creation. She can't fit in, can't adapt, can't be... When Orlok tells her she is not for the living, not for humankind, I think he means all of it, including the male dominated world that calls her crazy and tightens her corset strings. Of course, Orlok is a different kind of dominance but she called him, she was the active agent then. So I don't know.
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Date: 2025-03-31 02:26 pm (UTC)Despite being defiled and attacked by Dracula, she remains an innocent character (at least up until she rises from her grave and starts attacking local children).
She welcomes whatever help Van Helsing and her friends can give her.
Re The final attack scene on Lucy: The death of Lucy's mother from shock and fear, and the appalling aftermath for a heart-broken and terrific Lucy, who's all alone to face Dracula (the servants having been conveniently drugged), is what makes this scene truly horrific.
Of course, for plot purposes, Van Helsing and the friends are elsewhere for this scene, although in a real situation like this, I think they'd be sticking pretty close.
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Date: 2025-03-31 02:39 pm (UTC)That scene is so wrenching and terrible and the corpse of her mother and oh wow. I think it's skillfully executed and emotionally affective.