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hellcorpceo — Lucy
Published: 2012-02-27 05:45:57 +0000 UTC; Views: 34952; Favourites: 2072; Downloads: 394
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I was reading Dracula a while back, and decided to do a painting of Lucy. Lucy gets a bad rap in the movies--Movie Dracula is seductive, and so Lucy is a slutty slutty slut because she falls for him first and gets vampirized. In the book, Lucy is a wonderful woman, and her only real flaw is having idiot friends who are too stupid to actually protect her.Seriously, the thing reads like Van Helsing and his cohorts have some kind of memory disorder. They keep leaving the near-dead Lucy alone, and either Dracula breaks in, or the house staff freaking LETS HIM IN by opening the windows in Lucy's room and taking down all the garlic because it smells bad. This happens again and again and again. Surely, you think, surely THIS TIME Van Helsing will stop being a baby and just spend the night in the room while Lucy's suitors search for Dracula and kill him. But no, nobody does that, and so Lucy has to die. Worst vampire hunters ever.
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Comments: 131
Beautiful work ! I like the character in the book and I was sad when she is dead ):
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Gorgeous painting. A great job of capturing drained youth. Very nice.
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very true, i thought lucy was great, a free spirit, but the movie makes her a trampy strumpet(hooker). thats not fair.
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I think the reason that Lucy's made into a slut in film adaptations is (at least in part) because that's how Stoker wanted the character to be viewed. I'll explain. The Victorian Era had very rigid and strict sexual morals. Talking about sex openly was considered taboo and homosexuality was looked down on, but the moral system was especially strict for women. Women were required to constantly keep a look and appearance of being pure, both before and after they were married. This code of purity required women to restrict their sexual activities to their husband among other strict requirements. Failure to maintain this image, whether it was by engaging in pre-marital or extra-marital sex (whether or not she was willing), prostitution or some other activity considered sexually immoral, led to the woman being considered impure and ostracized by society as punishment for failing to maintain her purity. In Stoker's novel, one of the probably more memorable lines from Lucy is "why can't they let a woman marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble." To many people in the Victorian Era, this would have indicated that Lucy desires, in some form or another, to possess more than one lover, essentially stepping out of reserving sex for her husband. Lucy's transformation into a vampire is also, metaphorically, a departure from this Victorian image. Dr. Seward describes the vampirized Lucy with the words "the purity had turned to voluptuous wantonness." This indicates that Lucy has become the antithesis of the Victorian Ideal of womanhood.
She is shortly afterwards staked and killed by the band of men who've witnessed what she has become. The staking can be seen as a metaphorical punishment for departing from the standards of Victorian morality. The Victorians didn't view Lucy as a tragic victim of an evil creature, but as a sexually immoral woman who got what was coming to her.
As to why this has to do anything with Lucy being made into a slut in the films? Well, we live in a society whose sexual morals are far less strict than the Victorians, (I'd even go so far as to say hyper-sexualized) so people tend to view the Lucy from Stoker's novel in a more sympathetic light. So, when filmmakers adapt the book, in order to keep her being viewed by the audience (who are presumed never to have read the book) as the sexually immoral woman who gets the punishment she deserves, they slutify her. However, I do believe its possible they can go overboard with it. (Like the version of Lucy played by Sadie Frost in Coppola's 1992 film)
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Really almost ALL of the characters get whittled down to two-dimensional caricatures in most of the film versions. It's one of the things I find most disheartening about them.
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I cannot speak for the artist, but in the novel, after she turned into a vampire, Lucy's hair is described as being dark. Part of the reason I love this picture is because it shows the transition of going from light to dark, blond to brunette, pure to living-dead. It's a remarkable picture.
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wow i didnt think of that....that is amazing
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LOL, thank you. Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of my favorite Gothic Victorian Novels. There is an official sequel, Dracula the Un-dead, which is very nice; however, the writing style is too modern-day for my preference.
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Well, if Dracula is one of your favorite Novels, then I would like to recommend the Un-Dead Joel H. Emerson. Its a retelling of Dracula with the characters and events that Stoker had to delete from the original novel reinserted into it. Some of the new characters in the novel are Francis Aytown (An artist who falls under Dracula's influence) and Cotford (a police inspector sent in to investigate the death of Arthur's father Edward) and some new events include Jonathan having adventures in Munich and Quincy Morris going on an adventure to Transylvania. There are some changes taken from other sources (such as Renfield being made into a solicitor, which is taken from the 1931 Universal film, and there's a new subplot concerning the Holmwoods that pretty much is Emerson's invention) but I highly recommend the book to any fan of Stoker's original novel. (Which I have to say I am honestly not)
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Your Welcome! You can find the book on Xlibris.com. For a quick shortcut, go to the artpiece titled "if your there, knock once" by LilithRow. You'll find a link in the comments that will take you directly to the spot on Xlibris.com where you can purchase it.
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thanks 4 the awesome work
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I know the same feeling for poor Lucy.... I haven't had the ;luxury' of seeing the movies, but I absolutely adore the book... But I have a question- why do you think Dracula smiled when he was finally staked? I think there might be more to the story.
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You are probably right! The book is so good and meaty--there's a lot of different things you can get out of it.
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Definately a delicious bit of literature, to be sure! Btw, good job on the work- I kindof geeked out first- my bad.
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Haha, no, don't apologize! I am happy you like it, and I always love getting comments. 
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Beautiful work! I love the composition and how haunting this image is.
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Lucy in movie versions always reminded me of the character Scarlett from 'Gone with the Wind' someone who got her own way, acted a bit obnoxious and a flirt...i never really paid much attention to the character. But i love this!
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well, Stoker wanted to have her stabbed*, so she had to get vampirized first. Plus she regrets not being able to marry 2 guys at once ( or is it 3 ? can't remember ) so in victorian terms she was a total slut and got it coming.
But you're entirely right in your assessment of that part which is the weakest of the novel ( a weak novel in my opinion )
* it's been rather convincingly argued the stabbing scene is as much of a gang-rape as could be written at the time
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Umm...technially Lucy wasn't stabbed, she was staked through the heart. Just thought I'd tell you.
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silly me
otherwise I still think I have a point…
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today there's only 2 of us… tomorrow the world ! XD
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Your fantastic work has been featured in Friday Night Features .
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I agree; in the movie Lucy is a slut. :T It's disappointing! HOWEVER this piece of art makes me forget about that mishap. Well done! Awesome colors and hair. o_o
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I totally agree with you! Poor Lucy.... Have you ever read Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape? It's the events of the original book Dracula, only from Dracula's point of view, and it explains a WHOLE LOT.
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Speaking of points of view, does anyone wish that someone would write a version of Dracula that tells it from Lucy's perspective? It would be interesting if we could figure out what her thoughts on the story's events were.
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That WOULD be interesting.
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Yeah. The idea itself raises some interesting questions. Like, "How would the other characters in the novel be depicted?, How would Lucy react to her transformation into a vampire?, How would she react when she finds out that Arthur has married?" Each has multiple possible answers.
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Hmm... I never gave Lucy a lot of thought, to tell you the truth. You pick up on some pretty neat stuff. c:
Just love her hair!
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I saw her in the bram stoker one with gary oldman. I didn't think she was slutty, she just fell in love! I mean she was a flawed character but when she was seduced I understood her. but maybe I'm a slut deep down too haha.
love the piece SO MOODY
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The thing is, in the original book, NOBODY was seduced, and nobody fell in love. They were victims of Dracula, who was genuinely repulsive and horrible.
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right right, i was just defending the "slutty" movie lucys!
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I know, right? She gets total slut treatment in all the movie adaptions.
DADGUMMIT I LOVE YOUR ART.
This is beautiful.
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hahahaha i remember all of this XD never seen the movie though..
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really awesome, i love that the entire painting looks bitten, bleeding, and gaping
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Poor, poor Lucy. Aside from Dracula himself, she was my favorite character in the book. I just finished re-reading Dracula for the umpteenth time today, actually.
I like how her hair kind of melds with the clouds in the background. I also like how you kept the color kind of neutral, because Stoker's character descriptions in general (barring Dracula himself) are very vague. I've seen her depicted with almost every natural hair color ever. :\
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i really need to read the classic horror stories. i'm tired of feeling out of the loop.
excellent work by the way. spooky too.
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It looks like she was suckin' blood in zero gravity! Kinda adds to the surreal, deam (or should I say nightmare?) like quality. Very cool!
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Agreed! They were really stupid. Your painting is lovely though.
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