3.1.7
Chapters 15-16
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Chapters 15-16: Summary and Analysis
Here's a summary and an analysis of Chapters 15-16:
Plot summary
- Following rumours of ‘The Bloofer Lady’ attacking children, Seward accompanies Van Helsing as he breaks into the Westenra tomb and discovers - to Seward’s amazement - that Lucy’s coffin is empty.
- Accepting Lucy is now a vampire, Arthur grants Van Helsing permission to save his love’s soul by staking her through the heart, removing her head and filling the neck with garlic.
Seward's theory - body-snatcher
- Seward is appalled by Van Helsing’s claim that Lucy is the Bloofer Lady, yet agrees to accompany Van Helsing to the Westenra tomb at night.
- Clinging to his rational, logical mindset, Seward suggests that the reason for the absence of Lucy’s body from her coffin is due to a body-snatcher.
Finding Lucy's body
- Stoker presents Van Helsing’s frustration (perhaps mirroring that of the reader) of Seward’s obstinate refusal to suspend his disbelief as he realises that “we must have more proof.”
- Glimpsing a white streak between the trees of the churchyard, the two men then return to the tomb during the day and, to Seward’s dismay, find Lucy’s body back in the coffin.
Lucy feeding
- Dramatic irony plays a significant role as the reader discerns that vampire-Lucy has been feeding: just as Jonathan described the Count in Chapter 4, Lucy’s lips are “redder than before” and there is a subversive “radiant beauty” to her physical appearance, despite her monstrous actions of feeding off innocent children.
Van Helsing and Dracula parallel
- The syntactic duality in Van Helsing's polite request to desecrate Lucy’s corpse (“May I cut off the head of dead Miss Lucy”) conveys that he is a figure of good, yet one who must also perform horrific deeds - this, Van Helsing considers, is his “duty” and yet the barbarity of the act highlights another parallel between Van Helsing and Dracula.
Chapters 15-16: Analysis (Cont.)
Here's an analysis of Chapters 15-16:
Blood-stain clothes motif
- The encounter with vampire-Lucy is quintessentially Gothic. “Dressed in the cerements of the grave”, the motif of blood-stained clothes is exacerbated as in contrast to dropping of blood from Chapter 8, a “stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.”
Subverting maternal love
- The subverting of a traditional image of maternal love shows just how far Lucy has fallen in her vampiric state. She is clutching a fair-haired (symbolic of innocence) child to her breast - a description that implies she is breastfeeding.
- However, perversely, it is Lucy who is feeding on the child and, once finished, she callously discards it on the floor.
Semantic field of monstrosity
- Zoomorphism and a semantic field of monstrosity are again employed to depict the vampire as Lucy both “snarls” and “growls”, looking at the men with eyes “unclean and full of hell-fire.”
- Lucy’s evil metamorphosis is compounded as the “remnant of [Seward’s] love passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight.”
Good and evil - non-binary
- The oxymoronic way in which Seward talks of destroying Lucy implies that all humans are capable of violent urges and, certainly for a modern reader, good and evil are not necessary binary labels to be assigned to Stoker’s characters.
- Van Helsing speaks of a higher purpose, of a duty to God to save Lucy’s soul. Yet, as Arthur stands over Lucy, striking with “all his might”, Seward is reminded of the Norse God, Thor.
Graphic violence
- The graphic violence with which the vampire version of Lucy “twisted in wild contortions [...] the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam” again evokes Gothic ‘horror’ - something the initial reviews of the novel were critical of - and reflects a restoration of the patriarchal status quo.
Phallic symbol - stake
- The stake that pierces Lucy’s heart could be seen as a phallic symbol.
- They could not be together in life, but Arthur’s love for Lucy means that it is fitting that he should be the one to penetrate her body and save her soul, symbolically consummating their relationship.
1Context - Gothic Literature
1.1Origins & Conventions of Gothic Literature
1.2Vampires in Gothic Literature
1.3'Terror' & 'Horror'
1.4Narrative Features
2Context - The Victorian Era
2.1The Victorian Era
3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
4Character Profiles
4.1Archetypal Gothic Characters
4.2Count Dracula
4.3Other Main Characters
4.4Minor Characters
5Key Ideas
6Writing Techniques
7Critical Debates & Interpretations
7.1Initial Reception of Dracula
7.2Modern Reception of Dracula
Jump to other topics
1Context - Gothic Literature
1.1Origins & Conventions of Gothic Literature
1.2Vampires in Gothic Literature
1.3'Terror' & 'Horror'
1.4Narrative Features
2Context - The Victorian Era
2.1The Victorian Era
3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
4Character Profiles
4.1Archetypal Gothic Characters
4.2Count Dracula
4.3Other Main Characters
4.4Minor Characters
5Key Ideas
6Writing Techniques
7Critical Debates & Interpretations
7.1Initial Reception of Dracula
7.2Modern Reception of Dracula
Practice questions on Chapters 15-16
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- 1
- 2Complete these quotations describing Lucy's appearance:Fill in the list
- 3Which quotations are used of vampire-Lucy?True / false
- 4
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