Dracula 5

"I feared she might catch cold sitting there, and asked her to come in and sleep with me, so she came into bed, and lay down beside me; she did not take off her dressing gown, for she said she would only stay a while and then go back to her own bed. As she lay there in my arms, and I in hers the flapping and buffeting came to the window again. She was startled and a little frightened... I could hear her poor dear heart still beating terribly. After a while there was the howl again out in the shrubbery, and shortly after there was a crash at the window, and a lot of broken glass was hurled on the floor. The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt grey wolf. Mother cried out in a fright, and struggled up into a sitting posture, and clutched wildly at anything that would help her. Amongst other things, she clutched the wreath of flowers that Dr. Van Helsing insisted on my wearing round my neck, and tore it away from me. For a second or two she sat up, pointing at the wolf, and there was a strange and horrible gurgling in her throat; then she fell over—as if struck with lightning, and her head hit my forehead and made me dizzy for a moment or two. The room and all round seemed to spin round. I kept my eyes fixed on the window, but the wolf drew his head back, and a whole myriad of little specks seemed to come blowing in through the broken window, and wheeling and circling round like the pillar of dust that travellers describe when there is a simoon in the desert. I tried to stir, but there was some spell upon me, and dear mother's poor body, which seemed to grow cold already—for her dear heart had ceased to beat—weighed me down; and I remembered no more for a while."
Chapter 11, Page 157

This is the passage in which Lucy witnesses her mother's death, described in grisly detail. First, the mother lying next to the daughter as thought the daughter was protecting her, and then the mother dying, is symbolic of the daughter being dangerous and a foreshadowing of how Lucy is almost a magnet for danger, and she is becoming that danger herself. The wolf is a tool, used by Dracula as a method of breaking into Lucy's room and frightening the mother into removing her protective garlic necklace. The mother herself has proven before to be a danger to her daughter, by previously removing the garlic in her room, and even in death she causes her danger by freaking out and falling on top of her almost as though she wanted to pin her to the ground. Once Lucy is pinned and incapable of resistance, something resembling a sandstorm flies into the room, compared to a simoon, or a harsh Arabian wind. The entire passage is tailored to effect a mood of horror, and when Lucy finally passes out, the scene immediately, almost physically, stops.