Mina Murray Characters

Mina Murray is first introduced as an assistant school teacher. According to Bram Stoker, The role she is currently playing is that of a fiancé that genuinely wants to help the man she is in love with since she is learning to use the typewriter and using shorthand (55). This is the ideal Victorian women. It shows a level of maturity and respect that she has for her fiancé. She wants to help him and be useful to him in the future. She is portrayed as one of the protagonists of this story. However, her friend Lucy is a lot more outgoing than Mina. The character or Lucy Westenra is introduced as a friend of Mina and is the more social one of the two although being more innocent and naïve as well. While Mina is engaged, Lucy has three suitors.
It is as if it is childlike. The marriage proposals and how she handles them show some of that innocent childlike personality. She cares deeply for them and cried for them even. The first proposal from Dr. John Seward is one where she is nervous and realizes the man’s true feelings. Stoker, from Lucy’s viewpoint, states, “Being proposed to is all very nice and all that sort of thing, but it isn’t at all a happy thing when you have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and looking all broken hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may say at the moment, you are passing quite out of his life” (58). Lucy is insisting that although she understood John’s feelings she could never return them. She acknowledged the feelings and instead of a cold demeanor toward the person, she was genuinely upset over the ordeal. She cares for the person but not in the way they want her to but he still accepts friendship. The second proposal’s reaction is much different. A person, who is from America, by the name of Quincey P. Morris from Texas, asks for her hand in marriage. Lucy and Quincey speak in a more relaxed tone to one another. A couple of comments she made though stood out and showed a side of her that was vulnerable. Stoker, from Lucy’s viewpoint, states, “Oh why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are a lot of girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on? I know I would if I
Stoker states, “Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned into adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness” (187). Stoker is insisting that Lucy had another side to her that was hidden from almost everyone. While she did have a role that she played perfectly a part of her always wanted something more. Carol A Senf, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, states, “Dr. Seward's analysis of the change in Lucy reveals certain preconceptions about women's nature. Believing that the true Lucy is characterized by her soft eyes, docile nature, and tenderness, he cannot recognize the increased strength or the sharp white teeth and the potential for pain, aggression, and violence which they suggest as part of her character” (43). Senf is insisting that the character John Seward cannot fully comprehend the situation. He only sees the part of Lucy that he wants to. That is how the rest of the society viewed a person. Refusing to accept any changes by simply ignoring what was in front of them the entire time. At the end though Lucy managed to return to her normal looking self after Arthur plunged a stake through her heart (Stoke 192). Lucy is a character that was physically beautiful and had an innocent view on life. Those traits made her an ideal victim since she could be easily be coerced. Her transformation threatened the societal norm that was