CHAPTER 11. LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY
12 September.--How good they all are to me. I quite love that dear Dr. Van Helsing. I wonder why he was so anxious about these flowers. He positively frightened me, he was so fierce. And yet he must have been right, for I feel comfort from them already. Somehow, I do not dread being alone tonight, and I can go to sleep without fear. I shall not mind any flapping outside the window. Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late, the pain of sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown horrors as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams. Well, here I am tonight, hoping for sleep, and lying like Ophelia in the play, with'virgin crants and maiden strewments.' I never liked garlic before, but tonight it is delightful! There is peace in its smell. I feel sleep coming already. Goodnight, everybody.
“I shall not mind any flapping outside the window.”
Lucy mentioned “flapping or scratching” outside her Hillingham window back on 25 August, but hasn’t mentioned it since then. She does seem to connect it to her illness, though without any obvious reason, just as she feels the garlic flowers are helpful, even though she doesn’t know why they should be.
It is tempting to suggest that, as a 19-year-old woman, Lucy is being infantilized by Van Helsing— but Seward is equally shut out of the professor’s confidence. I think Van Helsing is rightly fearful of being labelled a quack and a crank, even by his former pupil. Perhaps he has already had a taste of that from his colleagues or patients in the Netherlands.
Posted by: Most Significant | September 12, 2022 at 03:05 PM