Chapter 6
Includes the September 29th morning and night entries of Dr. Seward’s diary.
That night, Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Arthur, and Quincey Morris go to Lucy’s tomb. As Van Helsing promised, it is empty. Van Helsing seals the Westenra vault with communion wafers and the four men hide and wait. After a while, a figure in white carrying a child appears. In the moonlight, it is unmistakably Lucy although far more cruel and wantonly sexual than she was in life. At Van Helsing’s signal, the four men surround her. She urges Arthur to come to her, calling him “my husband,” and Arthur begins to move toward her as if under a spell. Van Helsing, crucifix in hand, intercedes. Lucy tries to enter her tomb but cannot. Van Helsing asks Arthur if he can proceed with what must be done, and Arthur grants him permission. Van Helsing then removes the Host from the vault door, after which Lucy slips through the tiny opening back into her tomb. The child is hurt but still alive, and as before, they leave him on a path for a policeman.
The next day, they return. After they open the tomb, Van Helsing promises that if Lucy is killed, her soul will be free and with God. He also explains that anyone who dies as the hands of the undead become vampires themselves. Arthur takes the stake and hammer, and he stakes Lucy through the heart. As it happens, the body writhes and screams. After the deed is done, Lucy once again looks as she did in life. The sharp teeth are gone, and her face shows she is at peace. Arthur and Quincey leave the vault, and the two doctors decapitate Lucy and stuff her mouth with garlic. Van Helsing then urges the three men to help him: he wants to track down Dracula himself and destroy him. All four men swear solemnly to work together until Dracula is no more.
Taken from the September 29th entry of Dr. Seward’s diary and the September 29th entry of Mina Harker’s journal, interspersed; the September 30th entry of Dr, Seward’s diary; the September 29th entry of Jonathan Harker’s journal;
The Harkers come to stay with Seward at the asylum. Mina listens to Seward’s diary and transcribes it (she is very impressed by the idea of a diary kept on phonograph), and Seward, in turn, reads the journals of Jonathan and Mina Harker. In reading Jonathan Harker’s journal, he realizes that the Count’s new estate is at nearby Carfax, and that Renfield’s behaviour might be connected to the vampire’s arrival. Jonathan attempts to track down the boxes of earth and learns that all fifty of them were delivered to Carfax, but he fears that some may have been moved. He and Mina put all of the journal entries, letters, and newspaper clippings in order.
The next day, Arthur and Quincey Morris arrive. Mina gives them the papers for study. Arthur is still overcome by grief. Although he and Mina have never met, he opens his heart to her, crying bitterly while she comforts him. A little later, Mina offers the same comfort to the more restrained Quincey Morris.
Includes the September 30th entry of Seward’s diary; the September 30th entry of Mina Harker’s journal; and the October 1st entry of Seward’s diary.
Mina wishes to see Renfield, and is persuasive enough so that Seward allows it. Before she enters, Renfield swallows all of his flies and spiders. He treats her with extreme courtesy, and his speech becomes suddenly coherent and articulate. He even spouts philosophy and diagnoses his own former condition former, that is, according to him.
Van Helsing arrives. On learning that the journals, letters, and articles have been compiled at Mina’s suggestion, he praises her virtues and her intellect but warns Seward that the men must shield her from the difficult business of destroying the vampire. The whole group meets after reading the compiled papers, and Van Helsing warns them about the monster they face. To fail is to become a vampire and to be eternally damned, but they must not shirk from their duty. He lists the vampire’s powers: he has unbelievable physical strength; he can see in the dark; he can vanish and reappear; he can change his shape at will, to mist or wolf or bat or elemental dust; he can summon animals to do his bidding; and he can control the weather near him. But he is stopped by garlic, crucifixes, and the wafers of the Host; a sacred bullet, decapitation, and a stake through the heart can kill him; he loses his power at sunrise and must return to his coffin to rest; only in unholy places can he change his shape at will (otherwise he can only change at sunrise, sunset, or at noon); he can only cross running water at low or full tide; and he can only enter a place if he is invited though, once invited, he can come and go at will. At this point, they are all shocked by a gun-shot. Quincey Morris, who has just gone outside, has shot at a bat. The men decide to go to Carfax to see if all of the boxes of earth are present. Just as they are about to leave, an attendant tells Seward that Renfield wants to see all of the men. Speaking like a sane and very articulate man, he begs to be released. Eventually begging even to be released still chained, as long as he is out of the asylum. He warns the men that there will be dire consequences if he is not released, not as a threat, but as the words of a man who does not wish to be guilty of something. When Seward refuses, Renfield asks Dr. Seward to remember that Renfield tried his best to convince him.
Analysis
In this section, Lucy’s transformation reaches its terrible end. Lucy is now a perversion of the two most sacred female virtues in Victorian England: maternalism and sexual purity. Mina voices an expectation of Victorian culture when she writes, “We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked.” Like the three women Harker meets in Dracula’s castle, the undead Lucy counters this “mother-spirit” by preying on innocent children. Rather than providing them with nourishment and protection, she stalks and feeds on them. The hideous transformation of this once beautiful woman into a demonic child-killer demonstrates the anxiety the Victorians felt about women whose sexual behaviour challenged convention.
Van Helsing’s band of do-gooders feels this same anxiety about female sexuality as they face off against its hypersexualized opponent. As the men confront Lucy, whose purity has changed to “voluptuous wantonness,” we note the rather limited vocabulary Stoker uses to paint the scene. Lucy is described almost exclusively in terms of her sexuality: her face becomes “wreathed with a voluptuous smile,” and she advances with “outstretched arms and a wanton smile.” Lucy’s words to Holmwood echo her dying wish for his kiss: “Come to me, Arthur. . . . My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!” Her words are both a plea for and a promise of sexual satisfaction. Van Helsing and his crew’s response to Lucy’s words illustrate that the men are certainly aware of the words’ double meaning. The men are equally attracted to and horrified by the woman who would make such a bold proposition: “There was something diabolically sweet in her tones . . . which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another. As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms.” Dracula’s power is indeed considerable, as it tempts even morally righteous men who are aware of the count’s diabolical plans.
Tempted as the men are by Lucy’s carnal embrace, they are equally eager to destroy her. Throughout the descriptions of Lucy’s voluptuousness runs a strong indication of the men’s desire to annihilate her. Dr. Seward writes, “[T]he remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight.” Having paid for sexual curiosity with her eternal soul, Lucy must now pay an equally steep price for her sexual appetite.
The act of Lucy’s final destruction strongly resembles an act of sexual congress. Holmwood’s piercing of Lucy with his stake unmistakably suggests intercourse: her body “shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions. . . . But Arthur never faltered . . . driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake.” Holmwood’s attack restores Lucy’s purity and soul, thus implying that Holmwood returns Lucy to the socially desirable state of monogamy and submission. As her fiancé, Holmwood cleanses the “carnal and unspiritual” from Lucy by consummating a sexual relationship that, without Dracula’s interference, would have not only been consecrated by God, but also would have legitimized Lucy’s troublesome sexual desires.
