Lucy In Dracula Unearthed

In trying to unravel the puzzle of Stoker's narrative decisions, one must keep in mind that Seward's relation to Lucy, both in the finished novel and in the aforementioned outlines, cannot be purely romantic – it must also professional. Unlike the idealized but frequently absent Arthur, Seward must balance his desire for Lucy as a suitor with the detachment that is eventually expected of him as her doctor. In the novel as published, this tension between these dual roles is explicit, with Seward confessing after his initial examination of Lucy that he is unable to take “the full opportunity of examination such as [he] should wish” regarding her, as their “very friendship makes a little difficulty which not even medical science or custom can

Clive Leatherdale, in his Dracula Unearthed, for example, goes into detail about what he perceives to be typical protocol for Victorian gynecological exams, explaining how a physician such as Seward would be required to “grope upwards through layers of garments” and quite possibly involve the insertion of “blunt and crude instruments.” Leslie Klinger, in his New Annotated Dracula, carries it a step further, inserting into his notes a reproduction of Jacques-Pierre Maygrier's1 supremely awkward 18222 illustration “The Standing Touch,” which shows a young doctor groping about underneath the skirt of a rather exasperated looking female

Seemingly benign actions that Seward takes as Lucy's doctor would have taken on a different character should she have reciprocated his romantic interest. At one point, for example, he sleeps in a room adjoining hers with an open door between them. (117) While this arrangement seems innocent enough for the purposes of a doctor tending to his patient, there is a scenario in Stoker's Lady Athlyne in which this selfsame configuration of sleeping bodies is used to provide a legal basis for the assumed, albeit not actually enacted, consummation of Joy and Athlyne's