“I went out on the stairs, and found a room looking towards the South. The view was magnificent, and from where I stood there was every opportunity of seeing it. The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.
But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view I explored further; doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit.
The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!”
Here I would like to relate Lucy’s and Jonathan’s struggles or the connection they might have in different but similar situations. We know that in the early times girls were expected to marry a suitor early and they had duties to take care of which mostly included them looking after their husband and children. We see Lucy struggling to find a way out of the three proposals and she felt like a “prisoner” like Jonathan did in chapter 2. Lucy was not really a prisoner but the fact that she had to choose a man to marry and to have to reject and move on to the next is like a closed feeling trying to make a way out of it “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? … I know I would if I were free. ” chapter 5. Though Jonathan was not a prisoner either he was said to be a guest but seeing Dracula and his doors mostly locked and him being in a closed area made him feel so. These two events can be connected as per my understandings.
Lucy’s letter mentions:
“I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. In my manner of doing it there was, I now see, something of cruelty. I seemed to wish to keep him to the point of his madness—a thing which I avoid with the patients as I would the mouth of hell.” chapter 5.Â
We can see the use of Gothic terms Lucy is using. She uses the words “hallucination” we have learned in class that that the Gothic ideas came by imaginations and hallucination is can be like feeling something that is really not reality. This happens mostly in the Gothic related books like Dracula. Is Dracula a true story? No it really is not it’s more coming from imagination and not reality.
She uses the word “cruelty” which can be related to like evil can also be related to Gothic terms.
Lucy felt restless and started to sleep walk as Mina mentioned in her journal. It seems like Lucy’s father had the same problem but I think this was something more. The restlessness and the sleep walking suddenly shows that the author has more to the story. The point of view was hidden. This seems like Lucy is going to intrude into more of the Gothic themes. “At first she did not respond; but gradually she became more and more uneasy in her sleep, moaning and sighing occasionally.” We see how Lucy was struggling in her sleep like she saw a ghost. This was like opening doors into a more Gothic theme like how the horror movies show us the first ideas of a change. ““His red eyes again! They are just the same.” She was definitely seeing something that was not a human.Â
