Lucy Westenra

Lucy was born into money, and has been kept rather sheltered from the world. Though she's a young adult, and eager for marriage, she's rather innocent and somewhat immature. She's in love with Arthur Holmwood, a young noble, heir to Lord Goddalming, but has also charmed his friends, Jack Seward and Quincy Adams, since Arthur's been slow in making his affection known. This has been going on for some time. All three are in love with her, and all three would love to marry her. Though she mourns that she has hurt Jack and Quincy, she delights in being the center of so much attention.

She's rather unlike Mina, but the two are close friends regardless, and though now separated by distance, regularly write and visit each other. At the beginning of the story, Mina's correspondence to Lucy has dropped off, perhaps because their lives are starting to grow apart, as happens with childhood friendships.

Lucy's father is dead, and her mother is not in good health, with a heart condition. A large number of parents in this story are absent, dead, or ill, and, indeed, people simply didn't live as long in the 1890's as they do today. The average life expectancy was 50 or so, and sterilization and anesthesia in medical procedures were still new techniques. Since it occurs so often in this story, however, the death of parents – and the subsequent coming of age that must happen – is symbolically important in a story where in order to defeat the enemy, the characters must reexamine that which they've held dear and let go of old assumptions.

Not much to say about Lucy right now, though that will change when I get to her part of the story.