Dracula Chapters 16 - 21
All of them go to Lucy’s tomb which is yet again empty, and so they resolve to wait for her. Van Helsing crumbles a communion wafer at the door, and shortly afterward, Lucy appears with a child and bites its throat in front of their very eyes. They run towards her and she drops the child, but she is prevented from coming to them by the barrier of the communion wafer. Lucy attempts to lure them away and begs Arthur to come to her. She looks beautiful, and the men are tempted but they are ultimately repelled by her overt sexuality. Van Helsing fends her off with a cross, and clears away the communion wafer which allows Lucy to return to her tomb.
The following night, Van Helsing leads the men into the cemetery, where they find Lucy in her coffin. Holmwood hammers a wooden stake through her heart, with Van Helsing’s guidance. He expresses his gratitude towards Van Helsing for saving Lucy’s soul from the evil influence of Dracula. The men agree on a meeting time to discuss their plans for putting an end to Dracula and delivering justice for Lucy.
Johnathan and Mina begin to reside at Seward’s asylum, which allows Seward the opportunity to peruse Johnathan’s diary. He realizes that Dracula resides in the old mansion next to the asylum, where Renfield has attempted to escape multiple times. Renfield is quiet at present, and he wonders what that indicates about Dracula. Johnathan is renewed with vigor at the prospect of bringing Dracula to justice, and he focuses on investigating the boxes that had been shipped from Castle Dracula. He is certain that they all arrived at the Carafe Chapel, but some of them may have been moved to different locations. They are joined at the asylum by the grieving Holmwood and Quincey Morris.
Mina visits Renfield with Seward’s permission, and he interacts with her most politely, however, she doesn’t glean any important information from him. Van Helsing arrives at the asylum, and admires Mina’s work in organizing and transcribing Seward’s observations however, he prevents her from participating any further in the hunt for Dracula. He argues that there is no room for women in Vampire hunting, for even if she weren’t hurt directly, but may sustain injuries to the soul through the horrors that they are certain to encounter. He then addresses the men, and shares with them the legend of Nosferatu. He explains to them the strengths and the weaknesses of a vampire and postulates that the success of their mission would hinge on discovering the location of all fifty boxes of earth.
They don blessed talismans and make their way to Dracula’s chapel, where they find only twenty-nine of the boxes. They are unable to account for any indication as to where the other twenty-one boxes may be located. Their investigation of the chapel is interrupted by a mass of rats that seem to swarm toward the men, but they can repel the vermin using dog whistles. Van Helsing interviews Renfield upon returning to the asylum, but he also fails to gather any clues from the maddened man. Meanwhile, Mina grows anxious about the fate of her friends, and she happens to observe a veil of mist moving toward her through the asylum grounds. She closes the window and makes her way to bed, but she has a restless night. She sees a white face lean over her, and believes that she is having a dream.
Johnathan continues with his investigation about the boxes, and he can discover the location of all the boxes. The boxes are distributed between two London houses and a house in Piccadilly. The last of these locations poses a serious problem because it’s extremely crowded and breaking into it will pose a significant challenge. On the other hand, Seward focuses on the puzzle of Renfield. He interviews the man again and questions him about the lives that he consumes. He asks him about what happens to the souls of the creatures that he consumes, and Renfield shies away from the discussion. He outrightly refuses to talk about souls and ends their discussion. Seward is certain that Renfield experiences guilt about the lives he has eaten, and believes that he may suffer for his sins. The following night, Renfield is found lying in a pool of his blood. With his dying breath, he reveals his collusion with Count Dracula. The vampire had promised to bring him creatures like flies if he would aid him in his plans. Renfield had observed Mina’s pale skin and determined that she had become another one of the vampire’s hosts. He had challenged Dracula on this matter, and had in turn been wounded.
Van Helsing and the others run up to Johnathan’s room, and they are horrified to discover an unconscious Johnathan, and Mina drinking Dracula’s from a wound on the count’s torso. Van Helsing leads the charge against Dracula, but the creature turns to mist in front of their eyes and escapes despite the closed door. Dracula changes into a bat once he is further away and flies off. The men at the asylum discover that Dracula had done his best to destroy Seward’s study to eradicate all the information that they had collected. Yet, the men had outsmarted the vampire as they had made copies of all the documents and stowed them away in a safe. They return to Mina and Johnathan, who is just recovering consciousness. Mina reveals that Dracula had drunk her blood, and forced her to drink his own by threatening to hurt Johnathan. She reveals that he had told her that she would become flesh of his flesh, and blood of his blood, by doing so.
Analysis
Van Helsing reveals the condition of an invitation as a limit of Dracula’s power. In this context, Lucy can be said to be responsible for her destruction since she had been responsible for calling him into her home. Furthermore, Lucy’s depravity is displayed through her preying on children, an act that Johnathan had also witnessed Dracula perform. Lucy’s final scenes focus on her sexuality, with a marked change in the language that is used to describe her. Lucy’s purity is replaced by Voluptuousness. She tempts the man with her sexuality, and so the author argues that she must be destroyed. Very little focus is given to her preying on children in these final descriptions of her as Arthur decides to put an end to her. This reflects the attitude that most men of the time held about promiscuous, and sexually open women. The people of Victorian England believed that women could only ever be virgins, or wives.
Arthur and Lucy are married to one another, but they do not consummate their marriage before Lucy’s marriage. In this way, Arthur’s stake, a phallic object that penetrates Lucy’s body functions as the consummation of their marital bond, or so the author’s description of the event is described. After Lucy, Dracula turns his focus on Mina, and in this way, the invader is depicted as a corrupting influence on Victorian women.
