# Lucy Martin — The Last Man character guide

> Lucy Martin in The Last Man by Mary Shelley.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Lucy, Poor Lucy

**First appearance:** 0002-the-last-man

## Snapshot

A servant whose plain devotion and quiet endurance make her, in a dying world, the last keeper of ordinary human decency and ritual.

## Who they are

Lucy Martin belongs to the household circle around Idris and Verney, a woman of narrow horizon but deep feeling, whose loyalty never wavers as the plague empties England. When Verney finds her alone beside her mother's corpse, sewing a shroud by hand, her stubborn insistence on the customary rites of burial becomes almost unbearable to witness. She yields only to duty — the orphaned children need her — and in that small surrender Shelley shows how tenderness survives even when the world it belonged to has vanished.

## In the story

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_last_man_se/chapters/volume-iii-iii)

A devoted daughter left behind with her paralyzed mother; she writes a desperate letter to Idris asking for help.

### [Chapter IV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_last_man_se/chapters/volume-iii-iv)

Found watching over her mother's corpse; Lionel convinces her to leave and care for Idris's children.

### [VII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_last_man_se/chapters/volume-iii-vii)

Dies at Dijon after nursing the sick; her death is mourned as the loss of peculiarly English feminine virtues.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_last_man_se/characters/lucy_martin
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_last_man_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_last_man_se/characters