Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English

and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Anežka Kalužová

From Graveyards to High Schools: The

Evolution of the Literary Vampire

Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Filip Krajník, Ph. D.

2017

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,

using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Anežka Kalužová

I would like to thank my wonderful classmate, Šárka Nováková, for the moral support

through the most stressful times. Her heavenly patience with my constant whimpering is

deeply appreciated. Also I would like to thank my fiancée for his gentle and not-so-gentle

“kicks to the backside” to keep me on track.

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1

1. The Lawful Evil: Vampires in the Folk Tales .................................................................... 3

1.2 Vampires in the Bible ....................................................................................................... 6

2. The Literary Ancestors: John Polidori ................................................................................ 8

2.1 The Literary Ancestors: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu ........................................................... 9

2.2 The Penny Dreadfuls ...................................................................................................... 14

3. Vampires of the Classical Era: Bram Stoker .................................................................... 17

3.1 Vampires of the Modern Era: Anne Rice ....................................................................... 27

4. Present-day Vampires ....................................................................................................... 35

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 41

Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 43

Summary ............................................................................................................................... 46

Résumé ................................................................................................................................. .47

1

Introduction

There is a plethora of supernatural creatures roaming the pages of novels and

storybooks, but perhaps none are more infamous than the shadow-dwelling, blood-drinking

children of the night – the vampires.

Even those readers that are not much fond of fantasy literature are familiar with the

concept of these dark characters thanks to such legendary characters as Bram Stoker’s

count Dracula. There are, however, plenty of misconceptions fixed in the minds of the

general public. These include such ideas as that all vampires necessarily combust in the

sunlight; that they are only hunger-driven bloodthirsty merciless murderers; or that Bram

Stoker was the first to introduce them to literature; or even that he invented the literary

vampire completely.

The aim of the thesis is to shed some light into the confusion by defining where the

literary archetype of the vampire had first appeared, what were the inspiration behind it and

most importantly to define the colorful development of the archetype through the ages.

In the first chapter of the thesis, the origin of the vampiric creature itself and

determine its key characteristics, based upon the ancient beliefs reflected in folk stories.

These stories were mostly shared by oral tradition, but as the time progresses, the vampire

had started to appear in letter also. Mainly they appeared in various manuals for exorcists

of Middle Age, but a case of vampirism had also appeared in the Bible. This outline is

especially important to create a clear, comprehensible background upon which the next

evolution stages will be illustrated. While the thesis deals with the European idea of a

vampire for the most part, several other instances from different cultures will be introduced

as well.

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The second chapter of the thesis will discuss the elevation of vampires from folk

tales into the realm of serious literature. This shift is illustrated on two notable examples of

the era, John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla

(1872). Both of these works of Gothic fiction draw inspiration from the folk tales, but

skillfully transform it into a complex image that is diametrically different from the vampiric

source creature. The grave-dwelling demons were changed into intelligent, elusively

beautiful royal individuals, which set a precedent for many years to come.

In the third chapter of the thesis, the aristocratic archetype is deepened and taken

even further, as is proven on the protagonists of the novels discussed – Bram Stoker’s

Dracula (1897) and Anne Rice’s twelve-piece series The Vampire Chronicles (1976 –

2014). While Stoker’s vampires are still mostly defined by their blood-thirstiness only,

Rice introduces a new generation of creatures apt to emotions and critical, philosophical

thinking.

Fourth and final chapter looks into the vampires of the 21st century, when they

seeped from adult literature to the books for young adults. In this evolution stage, the

authors revolutionized the vampire genre by spreading the “dark gift” among children and

teenagers and the vampiric creatures once more shifted places – from ballrooms and

chateaus to adventurous quests, as seen in Darren Shan’s The Saga of Darren Shan (2000 –

2004), or to high schools, as seen in the vastly popular teenage romance literature such as

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight (2005 – 2008) or Ellen Schreiber’s Vampire Kisses (2003 –

2012)

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1. The Lawful Evil: Vampires in the Folk Tales

Before elaborating on the evolution of the literary archetype of the vampire, it is

necessary to determine and explain the vampire’s origins. Before it ever became a literary

character, even before books as we know them nowadays existed or were meant for leisure

reading, the vampire was an entity firmly embedded in the minds of people. It was as well a

means of explaining natural occurrences that the humans could not yet fully understand.

The notion of the vampire, as we understand it nowadays, stems from Slavic

legends, according to which such a creature was simply a “revenant,” a reanimated dead

body, which, according to Konstantinos, raised from the grave at night to cause mischief,

but also to visit its loved ones (Konstantinos 5). This notion of an entity was widely spread

across Europe, appearing heaviest in its eastern parts. Various cultures gave it various

names, for example the Greek vrykolakas, or Romanian strigoi (Konstantinos 29,30).

Nevertheless, this concept is not older than a few centuries.

The belief in vampirism is, however, much older than that; the tales about them are

as old as time itself and virtually every culture of the world has its own take on it. As Brian

Righi mentions in his Vampires Through the Ages: Lore & Legends of the World’s Most

Notorious Blood Drinkers, the first solid proof of the belief that vampires existed, was

excavated in the form of pottery shards dating back to 18th century BCE in Babylonia. These

shards depicts creatures drinking human blood. According to the Babylonian image of the

creature that we would nowadays call a vampire was an evil spirit of a human called

ekimmu, who either died an unnatural or premature death; had unfinished tasks to finish;

was not buried properly after their death; or, most importantly, had nobody to leave

offerings at their grave. “If no offerings were left to the spirits,” Righi notes, “they would

became hungry and leave the underworld to seek nourishment from the living” (Righi 63).

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The present thesis will be, however, dealing with the originally Slavic idea of a

“physical” vampire revenant only, and mostly with the romanticized image that came to

existence in the19th century.

1.1 Face to Face with a Vampire

The concept of the revenant vampire in the folk tales could not be further from the

romantic 19th century vision of the same creature. He was not pale, but rather, his skin had

a crimson hue and neither was he thin: he was usually described as plump or bloated. Both

of these characteristics (the crimson complexion and plump figure) were ascribed to their

bodies being over-satiated with consumed blood. Also, the folkloric vampire was not

dressed in a high fashion attire, but since it is a creature which had just arisen from the

grave, it would be dressed in the clothes in which they were buried, or the in the burial

shroud. Apart from that, it would have long hair and long, sharp nails (Jøn; Konstantinos

4).

Some of these original characteristics were, however, adopted by the literary

authors and remained the same. Among these are some of the key aspects of a vampire –

the infamous sharp teeth or fangs, and eyes glowing unnatural colors, such as red or yellow.

According to the legends, there are several means for a human to became a vampire,

the first and most profoundly known being bitten by another vampiric creature. By biting,

the assailant will “infect” their victim, who then “turns” either in a matter of days, or

immediately. In Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles (1976-2014) for instance, a vampire

first drains the blood from the victim “to the very threshold of death,” (Interview with the

Vampire 14), and feed the person with his own blood afterwards. Vampire’s blood will

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initiate the process of gradual death of the victim’s body and grants the vampire fledgling

supernatural abilities, which will be discussed later. (See chapter 4)

These images of becoming a vampire too, are a product of the romanticizing

of the vampires, for the pre-19th century myths describe some less poetic and much more

gory means of turning into a vampire. Certain classes of people, such as executed criminals,

those whose deadly sins were not punished, or those who that committed suicide, were

cursed or hexed; similarly those that were not buried properly according to the Christian

rites were most likely to turn into vampires after their death.

According to the vast majority of books with vampiric theme, vampires are

nocturnal beings that rely on sustenance by consuming human blood. After they are turned,

their organs lose their practical function. One of their most important features is their

severe allergy to sunlight, which is the reason they have to dwell in enclosed caskets, such

as coffins, during the day. As we shall see in the following paragraphs, this is not always

entirely the case.

Folkloric vampires, however, as opposed to their literary counterparts, were not

necessarily susceptible to sunlight. The fact that they operate at night only stems mainly

from the belief that the powers of evil are stronger after sunset. There are, however,

interesting exceptions from this rule. The Russian upyr, for instance, used to operate in the

hours between noon and midnight. That means that his activities were taking place partially

in the daytime. The means of destroying a vampire by exposure to sunlight remained,

nevertheless, true to the tradition of the majority of folk tales and was later enriched with

modern methods, such as UV-light infused bullets, as seen in the Underworld movie series

(2003-2017). Apart from exposure to sunlight, the next most widely recognized way of

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killing a vampire was driving a stake of aspen wood (sometimes with a fire-scorched point)

through the heart of the monster (Konstantinos 109).

To ensure that the vampiric fiend remain dead it was, however, necessary to employ

several precautionary measures. These included the decapitation of the body, which was

later cremated and dispersed into running water (Konstantinos 110).

In other cases, which have been observed and proven by archaeologists, the

precautions were much more complex. The mouth of the corpse would be filled with

pebbles and the body then buried face down or with the head between its knees. If the body

was buried face down, there would be a large boulder put on its back to prevent any next or

even hypothetical arising from the grave (Konstantinos 115).

1.2 Vampires in the Bible

Vampires, as creatures described above, originally only lived in folk tales that were

spread through oral tradition or appeared in reports of demonologists and exorcists of the

Church. Long before first novels about them were written however, there had been a

character linked to vampires who is associated with the book that every Christian knew –

the Bible. Moreover, it was not just an ordinary vampire, it is the Mother of Demons

herself, Lilith.

Needless to say even though the legend of Lilith is widely spread, the Bible itself

never mentions a character of that name per se. It is a tale of Jewish origin, stemming from

the discrepancies between the description of the Creation of Man in the first and the second

Book of Genesis. According to Ariela Pelaia, an expert on Judaism, “Lilith is mentioned

four times in the Babylonian Talmud, but it is not until the Alphabet of Ben Sira (c. 9th to

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10th century CE) that the character of Lilith is associated with the first version of Creation”

(Pelaia).

Supposedly, Lilith was the first wife of Adam, his mate even before Eve. According

to a Yahwistic account, at first God had created an androgyne, a being both male and

female and then split them, therefore making them equal. But Adam was not of the same

opinion and he demanded that Lilith “lie underneath him” he be her superior. Lilith was

outraged and Adam proceeded to complain to God. The almighty ordered Lilith to be

obedient to Adam, but she refused and in an act of rebellion she ran from the Paradise

(Pelaia).

According to the legend, God sent several of his angels to bring her back, but she

refused again. As a punishment, she was cursed. She was supposed to roam the face of

Earth forever, breeding a considerable amount of demons every day and restricted from

returning to Eden ever again. As a way of revenge, Lilith preyed on pregnant mortal

women and, most importantly, she fed on the blood of newborns (Pelaia).

Her unusual taste in the infant blood links her to the vampiric legend and by some

she is considered the primordial mother of vampires. Even though it is never clearly stated

that she sustains on blood, which is a basic feature of a vampire, some scholars argue that

the character of Lilith may be even older than the Jewish tradition. Sumerian myths

mention a female blood-drinking – vampiric, for that matter – creature called “Lillu.”

Hence, Lilith is oftentimes associated with vampires as their primordial mother (Pelaia; Jøn

97).

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2. The Literary Ancestors: John Polidori

As far as literature, or, rather, fiction in the modern sense of the word, is concerned,

the first vampire appearing in piece of writing as a distinct character with a mind of his own

had appeared almost eighteen hundred years later, penned by the English author John

Polidori (1795–1821). The character was “born” in 1819, in the same year and in the same

place as the a legendary work of gothic fiction – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The tale has

it that Polidori, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley were visiting the countryside

together. The weather was, however, stormy and the three of them were forced to stay

indoors. In the effort to find some activity, they decided to start a competition, who should

write a better horror tale (O’Rourke 368).

This vampire was a main character of a serious story, and most importantly, it was

definitely not a putrid creature lurking in the shadows of a graveyard, as his predecessors of

the folk tales. His name was lord Ruthven and he was a man of manners and of aristocratic

origin. By lord Ruthven, Polidori had brought a revolution into 19th century gothic fiction.

Such a character had never been seen before.

First of all, Ruthven is not a mindless revenant, stuck to the patterns of its previous

life. His purpose is not to deal with unfinished business or visit his loved ones at night, as it

was for the vampires in the folk tales mentioned in the previous chapter. He does not reside

in a graveyard and does not return to his grave in the morning. He is therefore not a

reanimated corpse, but an actual immortal being that prolongs his life by the consumption

of human blood. It is possible to assume that he was probably turned into a vampire by

another vampiric creature, but the tale offers too little information that would enable to

make a clear statement.

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Presumably, Ruthven is a venerable member of society, as he is being referred to as

“Lord Ruthven.” Throughout the story, he attends various social gatherings and parties; he

even dances in the ballrooms of London. He is also mentioned to court women, which

would be probably considerably difficult if he looked suspicious in any way.

As for his looks, Ruthven is described as a mysterious, somber person that entices

the curiosity of people around him to the point that “his peculiarities caused him to be

invited to every house; all wished to see him” (Polidori 1). The picture of Ruthven that

Polidori provides the reader with is elusive and hypnotizing, which might suggest that he

might actually possess some sort of supernatural hypnotic abilities. The author goes as far

as making comments such as “Who could resist his power?” (Polidori 15)

Unlike his folklore-based counterpart, Ruthven is to be imagined as a rather

attractive man, since Aubrey, the young protagonist of the story describes him with words

such as: “the form and outline of his face were beautiful” (Polidori 1).

What is, however, most curious about Ruthven is him not being susceptible to

sunlight, as the reader is able to encounter him during daylight hours, for example on his

travels.

2.1 The Literary Ancestors: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Another charming vampire specimen of the classical era appeared sixty years later.

The eponymous antagonist of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic novel Carmilla shares

many traits with Polidori’s Ruthven, such as his presumed aristocratic background and

bewitching appearance. What makes the character unique is her gender – the vampire that

gave the novel its name is a young woman. That makes her the first female vampire

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appearing in literature ever, who became a prototype and inspiration for a myriad of other

female vampires.

Le Fanu (1814–1873), though treading around it as carefully as expected for the

man of his era, had also set a precedent for the sexuality of vampires. The dynamics

between the characters of Laura and Carmilla are undoubtedly tinged with homosexual

undertones, as can be seen in these two extracts:

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her

cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is

wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength

and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In

the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall

die--die, sweetly die--into mine.” … And when she had spoken such a rhapsody,

she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft

kisses gently glow upon my cheek (Le Fanu 10).

[…]

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would

take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing

softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that

her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardor of a

lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet over-powering; and with gloating

eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and

she would whisper, almost in sobs, “You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I

are one forever.” Then she had thrown herself back in her chair, with her small

hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling (Le Fanu 11).

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Apart from the precedent of loosened vampiric sexuality, Le Fanu introduces two

archetypes that has become a staple in many vampire-themed novels to come. Firstly it is

doctor Spielsberg, who is evidently versed in occult, since he recognizes Laura’s illness to

be caused by a vampire where other doctors tending to her were helpless. Secondly, it is

general Spielsdorf, who is bent on hunting down the vampire that murdered his young

daughter. These two figures are the predecessors of such legendary characters as Professor

Abraham Van Helsing, the nemesis to Bram Stoker’s count Dracula.

Lord Ruthven is very scarcely active in the novel. As opposed to her predecessor,

however, Carmilla is not a passive figure who is only observed by the narrator. Her

character is much more complex and significantly contributes to the development of the

story. Contrary to Ruthven, Carmilla has a clear purpose in the story that, even though it is

revealed only at the end, she actively pursues.

Also contrary to Ruthven, Carmilla’s vampiric abilities, along with some typical

vampiric features, are mentioned in the novel. Even in the opening paragraphs of the novel,

Laura, the young protagonist of the story describes a supernatural event of her early

childhood:

I can’t have been more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and looking

round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was my

nurse there; and I thought myself alone. … when to my surprise, I saw a solemn,

but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young

lady who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a

kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands,

and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt

immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again (Le Fanu 2).

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This paragraph refers to the folkloric tradition of vampires entering the bedrooms of the

living at night and their hypnotic powers. When Laura continues to mention that the lady

vanished, she refers to the fact that vampires are oftentimes told to attack only in a form of

a spirit. To support this argument, Laura furthermore experiences nightmares of being

attacked by an apparition of a “sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat” later on

in the story (Le Fanu, 12). Those nightmares are in fact Carmilla feeding on her at night.

When describing her dreams, Laura mentions a typical effect of a vampire on the living –

she has trouble breathing, is unable to move or call for help. Also, right before the creature

bites into Laura, she sees nothing more than its eyes, which is also mentioned in the folk

tales of old.

Most importantly, however, in her narration of the supernatural event, she recollects

that she “was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the

same moment” (Le Fanu 3). This could very well be considered a first detailed account of a

vampire feeding on a human being in the modern sophisticated literature.

Apart from her spirit form and the inherent blood-drinking, Carmilla possesses

several other typical vampiric traits that were not mentioned in Polidori’s Vampyre. First,

shortly after Carmilla’s arrival to castle Karnstein, young females of the area are one by one

taken by a mysterious malady that later claims many of them. Multiple inexplicable deaths

in one particular area were usually the most dominant reason people may start to worry that

there is a rampant vampire.

Vampires, being dark and demonic creatures, are typically portrayed as repelled by

anything holy, such as crosses or holy water. Throughout the story, Carmilla never joins the

family in their prayers and Laura can be even witnessed pondering whether she even prays

at all:

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I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. I certainly had

never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long

after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawing room to

attend our brief evening prayers in the hall (Le Fanu 14).

Apart from refusing to participate in prayers, Carmilla can be observed reacting

profusely negatively to religious chants. When on a walk with Laura, they encounter a

Christian funeral procession of one of the young women taken by the vampiress. Out of

respect, Laura joins in the singing of the hymn, after which Carmilla is almost taken by a

hysterical fit, claiming that it “tortures” her how discordant it sounds and that it made her

very nervous (Le Fanu 11). She is even being rude to the point of insensitivity leaving

disrespectful comments such as:

“Well, her funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung; and our ears shan’t be

tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me nervous. Sit down here,

beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it hard-hard-harder” (Le Fanu 11).

Laura then continues to describe her seizure:

Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even terrified me. … It darkened,

and became horribly livid; her teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned

and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and

trembled all over (Le Fanu 12).

Carmilla also possessed several physical characteristics typical of a vampire that are found

in folk tales. She is photo-phobic – even though not entirely allergic to sunlight – and is

seen sleeping through most of the day, which is by the residents of castle Karnstein usually

ascribed to her nightly “sleepwalking.” When her coffin is opened in the short story’s

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finale, she is found to be “still tinted with the warmth of life” (Le Fanu 32), her limbs

flexible and her skin perfectly elastic, despite being over one-hundred and fifty years old.

In the final passages of the novel, the reader is presented with the traditional

annihilation of a vampire – Carmilla’s body is exhumed, impaled with a stake through the

heart, decapitated and subsequently cremated. Her ashes were then disposed into a stream

of running water (Le Fanu 32).

All in all, the development of the first generation vampires had been a turbulent and

distinctive. Literary vampires had become independent, self-aware beings capable of

plotting and accomplishing complex schemes, instead of being bound by the patterns of

their previous lives or potential business they left unfinished. The creatures of the night

were almost magically transformed from noxious, grisly grave-dwellers into charming men

and elusive women of status; lords and ladies even. They were transferred from the

frightening cemeteries straight to chateaus and grand ballrooms of London.

2.2 The Penny Dreadful

Before we move on to the legendary vampire count who brought the true

renaissance into the vampire genre, let us very briefly mention stories of the so-called

penny dreadful, which were cheap booklets, published from the 1830s until the end of the

19th century, of serial literature printed on wood pulp paper, costing exactly a penny each.

Popular among the young Victorian English working males, it featured sensational tales of

criminals, the supernatural and detective stories. Although it might seem that these were

merely unmemorable, generic stories, there are several stories that were originally

published in the booklets, but gained their renown nevertheless. These include for example

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The String of Pearls: A Romance (1846-47), that first introduced the devilish barber of

Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd.

On the context of the topic of this thesis, however, the lengthy collection of penny

dreadful stories under the name Varney the Vampire; or The Feast of Blood (1847), is of

particular interest. It was penned by James Malcolm Rymer (1814–1884) and reprinted as a

book just between the publishing of The Vampyre and Carmilla. The enormous collection,

consisting of nearly nine hundred double-columned pages remains largely unknown with

the contemporary readers. However, scholars such as E.S. Turner and A. Asbjørn Jøn agree

that it was one of the sources of influence to many well-known vampire stories, including

Le Fanu’s Carmilla mentioned above and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Turner 5; Jøn 97).

The protagonist of Rymer’s story, Sir Francis Varney, introduced several

stereotypes to the vampiric genre that became inseparable from the image of a literary

vampire. Most importantly it is the infamous pair of animal-like fangs that leave the

archetypal set of puncture wounds at the neck of the victim: “teeth—the fearful looking

teeth—projecting like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like”

(Rymer 5). Apart from the these, Varney also possesses supernatural strength and hypnotic

abilities:

But her eyes are fascinated. The glance of a serpent could not have produced a

greater effect upon her than did the fixed gaze of those awful, metallic-looking

eyes that were bent on her face (Rymer 6).

All of Varney’s abilities are presumable in Polidori’s The Vampyre, as the modern audience

naturally attributes them to vampires according to its own experience, but they are not

specifically mentioned by Polidori. In case of Carmilla, on the other hand, which was

published only after Varney the Vampire, the puncture wounds – interestingly not the fangs

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though – hypnotic abilities and supernatural strength are graphically depicted inside the

novel. Citation of the first two have been already given, and for the record, the supernatural

strength in Carmilla can be found in following passage, where the vampiress is able to

wrestle a full-grown man:

Before I could utter a scream, he struck at her with all his force, but she dived

under his blow, and unscathed, caught him in her tiny grasp by the wrist. He

struggled for a moment to release his arm, but his hand opened, the axe fell to the

ground, and the girl was gone (Le Fanu 29-30).

Apart from the above-mentioned characteristics, Rymer introduces a trait in a

vampire that went unnoticed for many years only to resurface in the 20th century, mainly in

the Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice – remorse and sympathy. Contrary to

Carmilla, Ruthven or even Dracula himself (see the following chapter), Varney at length

confesses of resentment towards his prolonged existence and the fact he is a slave to it no

matter what he does. As E.S. Turner puts it – despite dying several times, Varney could not

lie down and rest (Turner 10). His frustration reaches to the point, where the vampire

voluntarily commits suicide by diving into the crater of Mount Vesuvius in the postscript to

the story:

“You will say that you accompanied Varney the Vampire to the crater of Mount

Vesuvius, and that, tired and disgusted with life of horror, he flung himself in to

prevent possibility of a reanimation of his remains.” Before the guide could utter

anything but a shriek, Varney took one tremendous leap and disappeared into the

burning mouth of the mountain” (Turner 5 – 6).

Though Varney had committed many atrocities in his lifetime, he had to pay the ultimate

price to prove the readers that he too, developed conscience and felt remorse.

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Having just discussed the features of the first literary vampires, let us now move to

the icon of the genre, that shaped the vampiric creatures into the popular image the general

public recognizes nowadays.

3. Vampires of the Classical Era: Bram Stoker

As the previous chapters explained, the general opinion of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

being the original literary vampire is not entirely correct. While vampire might not be

Stoker’s initial invention, he deserves the merits of skillfully gathering the aspects of his

predecessor’s characters. By combining them with traditional features and building on both

of the groups, he created a balanced character that later on became a template for many a

writer aspiring to contribute to the vampiric lore.

The first easily noticeable aspect of Dracula that distinguishes the book from the

works of Stoker’s predecessors is that it is formatted as an assembly of letters and journal

entries. And in the first entries of Jonathan Harker’s traveling journal the reader uniquely

encounters the folkloric and superstitious roots of the vampire legends. As Harker travels

through the Carpathian mountains to meet the elusive count Dracula, he receives a severe

warning from a local elderly woman to tread carefully:

“It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock

strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know

where you are going, and what you are going to?” She was in such evident

distress that I tried to comfort her, but without effect. Finally she went down on

her knees and implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting.

… She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to

me. I did not know what to do. ... She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for

18

she put the rosary round my neck, and said, “For your mother’s sake,” and went out

of the room (Stoker 3).

When Harker does not heed the woman’s warning, the rest of the local folk display an array

of superstitious behavior and customs. They are heard discussing supernatural forces,

directly addressing them by the local expression for a vampire:

I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many

nationalities in the crowd; ... amongst them were “Ordog”—Satan, “pokol”—hell,

“stregoica”—witch, “vrolok” and “vlkoslak”—both of which mean the same

thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either were-

wolf or vampire (Stoker 4).

While foreshadowing of the vampiric creature is not a new aspect, as it is also observable in

Le Fanu’s Carmilla, it is a first instance of addressing the matter directly and also of

revealing the true nature of the antagonist beforehand; making the vampire openly present

throughout the whole story.

In Carmilla, for example, the reader can only assume that the supernatural

occurrences are to be ascribed to the vampiress, in Dracula, the presence of a vampire is

more than obvious. More so, when Harker begins to describe his horrifying experience in

the Castle Dracula, beginning with watching the owner of the castle crawling face down the

mansion’s walls (Stoker 18) and ending Harker being openly attacked by Dracula’s female

vampire companions (Stoker 19).

As mentioned above, Bram Stoker skillfully gathered many a characteristic that the

authors before him ascribed to their vampires and made them legendary. First of all,

Dracula joins the ranks of nobility along with the lords and a lady described in the previous

chapters. Just the same as Carmilla, Stoker’s vampires are vulnerable towards holy objects.

19

Van Helsing, however, newly introduces the usage of a Host: “As to Van Helsing, he was

employed in a definite way. First he took from his bag a mass of what looked like thin,

wafer-like biscuit, which was carefully rolled up in a white napkin” (Stoker 98).

As for the supernatural abilities of the vampires, Stoker had endowed them with

superhuman strength, hypnotic conduct and shape-shifting. In the novel, he is being

mentioned to shape-shift at will into the form of a bat, dog or a wolf and into the form of a

cloud of fog or mist, while Carmilla was only able to shift into the giant black cat, as was

mentioned before.

Similarly to Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Stoker’s Dracula is also being associated with a

certain degree of vampiric hypersexuality, even to the point of the erotic aspect of the book

standing as a challenge to the traditionally puritan Victorian morality. Most notably is this

fact observable in the following paragraphs, describing Dracula’s brides assaulting Harker:

I was not alone. … In the moonlight opposite me were three young women,

ladies by their dress and manner. … There was something about them that made

me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart

a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good

to note this down, lest someday it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain;

but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed—such a

silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come

through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness

of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head

coquettishly, and the other two urged her on (Stoker 19).

Harker’s agitated reaction to the mere presence of three beautiful women might represent

the both vampire and human sexual urges and overall sexuality that were generally

20

unsolicited and largely repressed in the Victorian society – other than that, it might simply

be an exhibition of the hypnotic powers of the vampires, same as Carmilla’s or Ruthven’s.

While Le Fanu treads around the vampire sexuality very carefully and the erotic

innuendos are quite subtle, Stoker is being significantly more explicit. For example,

Dracula beckons his victims to invite him into their bedrooms (bringing forth another

folkloric aspect of vampires, that they cannot enter a human settlement without being

specifically and voluntarily invited inside1) and while thence feeding on them, he thrusts a

hard object into their bodies in such a way it makes them bleed.

Women thus afflicted turn from virtuous and chaste women into wanton creatures.

This transformation is observable in Lucy Westenra, who is turned into a vampire by

presumably Dracula himself, since Mina Murray witnesses a tall figure with “white face

and red, gleaming eyes” leaning over her. After that incident, two tiny red marks are found

on Lucy’s throat and as far as the reader knows, there was no other vampiric creature

present in the area, that would inflict those injuries (Stoker 44).

However, before Lucy succumbs to the vampire poison, she is attacked by a rogue

wolf escaped from a local zoo and killed (Stoker 77). In a turn of events, she does not

remain dead and returns from the dead as a vampire, which may very well be an instance of

a literary vampire turning a human being into one of the undead.

As a vampire, Lucy starts projecting her wicked taste for blood, and most

importantly giving a vent to her sexual desires. These were suppressed in women

significantly more than in men. In fact, sexuality was something wholly undesirable in

1 “He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to

come.” (Stoker 112)

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women during the Victorian era in England. During the encounter with the undead Lucy,

she is being described as a cruel and wanton sexual predator by Harker:

The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to

voluptuous wantonness. … Lucy’s eyes in form and color; but Lucy’s eyes

unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. … As she

looked, her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a

voluptuous smile. … There was a cold-bloodedness in the act which wrung a

groan from Arthur; when she advanced to him with outstretched arms and a

wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in his hands.

She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said:—

“Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for

you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”

There was something diabolically sweet in her tones—something of the tingling

of glass when struck—which rang through the brains even of us who heard the

words addressed to another (Stoker 102 – 103).

In the continuation of the situation, the vampiric ability of hypnotizing the living is

observable yet again: “As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his

face, he opened wide his arms” (Stoker 103).

This “wantonness” of female vampires is also observable in Dracula’s mates that

Jonathan Harker encounters while staying at castle Dracula. While a vampire taking a

human woman as a mate has appeared in Polidori’s Vampyre, the fact that Dracula is being

openly polygamous – and living unwed at that – is a novelty. It, however, seeped into the

22

modern literature, where vampires are sometimes described as polygamous or poly-

amorous, as will be discussed later.

Both Le Fanu and Polidori’s vampires would be, apart from being a supernatural

creature sustaining on human blood, considered well-mannered member of the society.

Stoker, however, breaches the Victorian moral tradition on several other instances than

being explicit with sexuality. I have previously discussed this topic in my essay The

Rebuking of Victorian Values in Bram Stoker's Dracula, therefore I will offer a summary of

my research.

Through Dracula, Stoker completely perverts the Victorian value of family. Most

importantly, Dracula and his mates live unwedded, as was mentioned above.

Second such breach in the values is observable in the situation, where Dracula

brings his mates a substitute nourishment when they are denied to feed on Jonathan Harker:

“Are we to have nothing to-night?” said one of them, with a low laugh, as she

pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as

though there were some living thing within it. For answer he nodded his head.

One of the women jumped forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me

there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half-smothered child (Stoker 20).

This suggests that Dracula indeed offered his mates to feed on an innocent child to which

they willingly oblige. Considering the core interest of a nuclear family is to care and

provide for their offspring most of their lives, the vampiresses mercilessly murdering the

23

child2 for their own sustaining of immortality is a complete rebuke of the very principle of

a family (Kalužová 4).

There are several folkloric aspects of a vampire that Stoker adopted that his

predecessors did not and which contributed much to the modern perception of a vampiric

creature. For instance, Dracula is the first vampire to be susceptible to sunlight. As was

stated in the previous chapters, Polidori’s lord Ruthven was able to operate in the sunlight

without any particular complications. While Le Fanu’s countess von Karnstein is avoiding

full daylight most of the time, she is seen outside while the sun is still up.

Count Dracula on the other hand avoids sunlight altogether. Even though it is never

stated that Dracula would disintegrate in sunlight, Van Helsing mentions that it makes him

considerably weaker. He is therefore being active at night only and regularly hibernates in

an enclosed coffin at night, as Harker himself discovers:

There, in one of the great boxes, of which there were fifty in all, on a pile of

newly dug earth, lay the Count! He was either dead or asleep, I could not say

which—for the eyes were open and stony, but without the glassiness of death—

and the cheeks had the warmth of life through all their pallor; the lips were as red

as ever. But there was no sign of movement, no pulse, no breath, no beating of the

heart (Stoker 24).

The custom of sleeping in a coffin is a more glamorous twist on the folklore-based vampire

revenant mentioned in the previous chapter, that raises from a grave to wreak havoc on the

living.

2 Similarly to Lucy, a young newlywed wife, preying on a child, when she should be striving to

conceive and provide for a child of her own.

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As Konstantinos mentions, the common way to protect oneself from a vampire is to

carry an amount of garlic on the person (Konstantinos 21). This folkloric superstition was

also embraced by Stoker. After Dracula infects Lucy Westenra with the vampire poison and

she falls ill, professor Van Helsing is summoned to attend to her sickbed. Being based on

Le Fanu’s general Spielsdorf, Van Helsing is aware of the existence of vampires and has

his fair share of knowledge about the creatures. After he realizes that a vampiric presence is

what ails Lucy, he recommends her to garnish her room with garlic and also makes her

wear a garlic wreath around her neck:

We went into the room, taking the flowers with us. The Professor’s actions were

certainly odd and not to be found in any pharmacopoeia that I ever heard of. First

he fastened up the windows and latched them securely; next, taking a handful of

the flowers, he rubbed them all over the sashes, as though to ensure that every

whiff of air that might get in would be laden with the garlic smell. Then with the

wisp he rubbed all over the jamb of the door, above, below, and at each side, and

round the fireplace in the same way. … We then waited whilst Lucy made her

toilet for the night, and when she was in bed he came and himself fixed the wreath

of garlic round her neck (Stoker 62).

After that is done, Van Helsing is certain that he can sleep in peace because Lucy is

protected against the vampiric fiend or illness. That assumption, however, turns out to be

completely wrong, as later the reader discovers, that Lucy’s mother had removed all of the

garlic from her bedroom, leaving her vulnerable and causing her to relapse back into

sickness.

25

Van Helsing also mentions that Dracula does not throw any shade and does not

reflect in mirrors, but not before Harker himself discovers the fact during his stay in castle

Dracula:

Having answered the Count’s salutation, I turned to the glass again to see how I

had been mistaken. This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me,

and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the

mirror! The whole room behind me was displayed; but there was no sign of a man

in it, except myself (Stoker 29 – 30).

Konstantinos suggests, that this might stem from the belief that vampire is but a solidified

ghost and therefore there is nothing solid, that would reflect in the mirror (Konstantinos

117).

The most profoundly different aspect of Dracula that can be labeled as folklore-

based, is Stoker’s inspiration for his character of the titular vampire villain. Vladimír Liška

mentions several inspiration sources from Ireland’s – as it is Stoker’s native country –

mythology in his book, for example the Irish or respectively Celtic legend of the evil

wizard Abhartach.

Abhartach was infamous for his cruelty and despite being killed several times, he

kept returning to terrorize his subjects and to feed on them. He was then banished by a

Celtic druid and eliminated in the typical fashion discussed in the previous chapters.

Suchlike story is the story of the cruel earl, Cormac Tadgh McCarthy who gained

his fame for drinking the blood of those who would oppose him. The apparition of this

cannibal then started attacking wayfarers and feeding on them (Liška 25 – 26).

The most important inspiration source for Stoker was, however, the legend of the

Wallachian prince, Vlad III of Romania. The legendary voivode was born in 1431 and

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during his reign over the Romanian parts of Wallachia, he was also known by the names of

Tepes – which translates as the “Impaler” from Romanian – or more importantly, Dracula.

(Pallardy).

Luckily, Vlad’s taste for blood remains only a matter of unsubstantiated rumors

and metaphors. The Wallachian prince is infamous and widely known for his cruel conduct

against those who would oppose them, most notoriously for impaling masses of his

enemies on the stakes and allegedly also having the execution as an entertainment to go

with his supper (Liška 28).

While The Impaler was never proven to consume blood in his daily life,

Konstantinos quotes the Romanian author Radu R. Florescu on an account of Vlad dipping

his bread in a goblet of blood during his dinner (Konstantinos 70).

Dr. Elizabeth Miller, a world renowned academic expert on Bram Stoker, is,

however, of the opinion that Stoker himself knew very little about Vlad The Impaler, and

she argues in her book Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (2000, rev. 2006) that Stoker’s

inspiration was very loose. Even when taking her account on the matter into consideration,

the resemblance between the two is observable. In the context of the evolution of the

literary vampire, Stoker had been the first author to base his vampire on an actual historical

figure.

There are, however, some attributes of Stoker’s vampires that were actually the

author’s own invention, but many of them are still attributed to the literary undead,

nevertheless.

Firstly, count Dracula possesses a certain degree of almost magical powers. For

example, he is able to defy gravity – crawling walls head-down – and also vanish in one

place to reappear again somewhere else. As Van Helsing notes, “he come on moonlight

27

rays as elemental dust” and both Dracula and Lucy are able to shrink in size that they can

“slip through a hairbreadth space” (Stoker 112).

Dracula is also able to control animals and bend them to his will, for example the

wolves Harker encounters during his travels to castle Dracula in the first chapters, or the

swarm of rats the count incites against Van Helsing, Harker, Seward and lord Godalming in

the chapter nineteen (Stoker 116).

Even though there is plenty of misconceptions and rumors floating around Bram

Stoker’s Dracula, it is absolutely without a doubt that his ingenious combination of folk

tales and the best of his predecessor’s work had become a legend by itself, and also kick-

started the vampire genre into a new dimension that would probably be impossible without

him.

3.1 Vampires of the Modern Era: Anne Rice

Finally, we are now leaving the 19th century and embarking into the twentieth, when

in 1973 Anne Rice, mourning the death of her young daughter, revised her short story she

had written and reworked it into a bestseller and yet another icon of the vampire genre –

The Interview with the Vampire (1976). It is definitely not an understatement that Rice had

revolutionized the approach to the vampiric characters, but first, let us look into the aspects

that were discussed previously that she kept, but gave them her own individual twist.

Firstly it is of course the canonical attributes of vampires. They are sustained on

human blood and Rice’s literary offspring is no exception to that rule. Rice, however,

implements new details concerning the vampiric feeding. The reader can now see vampires

sipping their blood from glasses as if it was wine and learns that through poisoned blood,

the vampire will be poisoned as well.

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The vampiric allergy to sunlight reaches an imaginary peak – while neither

Carmilla, Ruthven or Dracula would be killed by the sun, the vampires of The Vampire

Chronicles would most definitely die upon contact, as the central figure of the series, Lestat

de Lioncourt, explains to his newly turned fledgling Louis de Pointe du Lac in the first

chapters of the Interview with the Vampire: “...it's almost dawn. I should let you die. You

will die, you know. The sun will destroy the blood I've given you, in every tissue, every

vein” (Interview with the Vampire 18).

The vampires of the Chronicles possess a wide array of supernatural abilities, but

they are different than those described before. Rice’s vampires are capable of telepathy,

superhuman speed, mind-reading and increased healing rate3. Through consumption of

blood of other vampires, the receiver can increase his or her powers. For instance, after

Lestat receives blood from several ancient vampires, such as his creator Magnus, Marius

and the vampire queen Akasha, he is afterwards granted with the gifts of pyro kinesis,

levitation or telekinesis.

On the other hand, Rice rejects many of the traits that were ascribed notably to

count Dracula. Her vampires are not afraid of anything holy – on the contrary, many of

them are of religious nature. Nor are they capable of turning into mist and slipping through

small spaces (The Interview with the Vampire 17).

Secondly, Rice had fully embraced the nobility status of vampires and even elevated

it, so to speak. Similarly to Polidori’s lord Ruthven, the vampire of the Chronicles are often

3 The healing speed explains why Lestat was able to survive being poisoned, his throat being cut

and then he himself being dumped into a bog by Claudia and Louis during the events of The Interview

with the Vampire.

29

seen to frequently attend not only various dances and social gatherings, but also theaters

and music halls. Contrary to Dracula living in a decrepit castle, or Carmilla’s setting in a

solitary chateau, much of the Interview occurs in the city of New Orleans. Both of an

aristocratic origin, Lestat and Louis “richly dressed and gracefully walking through the

pools of light of one gas lamp after another” (Interview with the Vampire 30) lived lavishly

throughout the events of The Interview with the Vampire – in fact, Lestat would often

interrupt his narrative to remind the reader what he’s wearing.

Sexuality is also an issue throughout The Vampire Chronicles. This is, however, an

issue that Rice is giving her own interpretation. In Dracula, even though the erotica is easily

distinguishable from the point of view of the modern reader, it is strictly heterosexual. In

Le Fanu’s Carmilla, the homosexual innuendos between Carmilla and Laura are only

presumable and are never actually confirmed. Rice’s vampires, however, have the leisure to

choose their partner – sexual or romantic – among both of the genders.

If we take to consideration Lestat’s relationships, he is being portrayed as bisexual,

though majority of his romantic interests are male, being it Louis de Pointe du Lac, whom

he claims to have fallen “fatally” in love with, simply for the fact that he reminded him of

his best friend and first lover, Nicolas de Lenfent (Vampire Lestat 385).

Another character of the Chronicles, Armand, has lived a portion of his life under

the roof of an older vampire, Marius de Romanus, along with several other boys and young

man, whom Marius teaches and provides for. Armand’s life is being described in The

Vampire Armand, and his relationship to Marius takes up a substantial part of it. Armand

admits loving Marius and to further prove the homosexual nature of the relationship, Rice

openly describes an erotic scene between the two:

30

His generous lips parted, and I saw only a human's white teeth. He put his hands

beneath my arms, lifted me and kissed my throat, and the shivers paralyzed me. …

His face was right before me. Kiss me again, yes, do it, that shiver, kiss- … He

threw back his head. He gave way to ringing laughter. He lifted a handful of water

again and let it spill down my chest. He opened his mouth and for a moment I saw

the flash of something very wrong and dangerous, teeth such as a wolf might have.

But these were gone, and only his lips sucked at my throat, then at my shoulder.

Only his lips sucked at the nipple as I sought too late to cover it (The Vampire

Armand 28).

A certain level of homosexual tendencies are observable in the behavior of other boys of

Marius’ household.

The Interview with the Vampire’s Louis, had also fallen in love with Armand as

they traveled together for a portion of the novel:

I turned to Armand again and let my eyes penetrate his eyes, and let him draw close

to me as if he meant to make me his victim, and I bowed my head and felt his firm

arm around my shoulder. … “Yes,” I said softly to him, “that is the crowning evil,

that we can even go so far as to love each other, you and I. And who else would

show us a particle of love, a particle of compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing

us as we know each other, could do anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each

other” (The Interview with the Vampire 248).

On the other hand, Louis also addresses his young female fledgling Claudia as his “lover”

even though that everything between them remained purely platonic.

There was, however, a reason that their relationship never crossed the line between

romantic and intimate and that reason is one of the unique aspect of The Vampire

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Chronicles that was never seen before. Claudia was only five years old, when she was

turned to vampire by Lestat during the events of The Interview with the Vampire. Since

vampires are canonically either aging very slowly or not at all, Claudia matures only

mentally, but not physically. That makes her the first child vampire to ever appear in

modern literature.

In context of various vampire societies in literature, creating children vampires is

usually forbidden for several reasons. Rice was, however, the first to describe an actual

functioning vampire society to begin with. Her vampires were no longer scarce loners,

Louis and Claudia even actively searching for other members of their kin. They started

forming various communities and cults. This includes Louis and Lestat’s familial circle

with Claudia, but more interestingly for example Marius’ boys of The Vampire Armand;

Armand’s community that formed in the Théâtre des Vampires under his command in The

Interview with the Vampire, or the cult of The Children of Darkness that also appears in

The Vampire Armand.

Every community has their own values and rules which the protagonists of the

novels encounter and sometimes clash with. For instance Armand’s Théâtre des Vampires

members consider Louis and Claudia a pair of criminals after they attempt to murder

Lestat. Since Armand holds his creator Marius in almost religious respect, he transfers his

beliefs on his followers and therefore the community considers the murder of a creator a

cardinal sin punishable by death. The vampire Santiago clearly explains the fact:

“Yes, there is a crime. A crime for which we would hunt another vampire down

until we destroyed him. Can you guess what that is?” he glanced from Claudia to

me and back again to her mask-like face. “You should know, who are so secretive

about the vampire that made you. … Can you guess what that crime is? Didn't your

32

vampire master tell you? ... “It is the crime that means death to any vampire

anywhere who commits it. It is to kill your own kind!” (The Interview with the

Vampire 190)

Let us take The Children of Darkness as another instance, along with the clash of their

philosophy with the way of living of the vampire Marius. This group of vampires abides by

the rules that their master explains to Armand, after they have attacked and murdered

Marius:

“We are the Children of Darkness,” he explained patiently. “We vampires are made

to be the scourge of man, as is pestilence. We are part of the trials and tribulations

of this world; we drink blood, and we kill for the glory of God who would test his

human creatures. … It's forbidden to us to use our talents to dazzle mortals. It is

forbidden us to trick them with our skills. It is forbidden us to seek the solace of

their company. It is forbidden us to walk in the places of light. … We are as the

bees that sting, and the rats that steal the grain; we are as the Black Death come to

take young or old, beautiful or ugly, that men and women shall tremble at the power

of God” (The Vampire Armand 214, 216).

And since Marius “knew these things, but he was of a pagan time, obdurate and angry, and

refusing ever the grace of God,” according to The Children of Darkness, he had to be

removed (The Vampire Armand 216).

Also, Rice’s vampires are no longer only beastly creatures that exist to terrorize the

living only. While the novels being written from the perspective of the vampires and not

their victims is not entirely a novelty, as is proven in the previous chapter concerning

Varney the Vampire; or The Feast of Blood, Rice endows her supernatural children with

33

emotions, conscience and the ability – if not willingness – to ponder philosophical

questions, such as the existence of God, the evil nature of vampires, or the purpose of life.

This is especially the case with Lestat, who is undoubtedly the greatest philosopher

of the Chronicles, but a great portion of The Interview with the Vampire is concerned with

Louis and Claudia’s search for the answers about the actual origin of the vampire race, as

proven by his conversation with Armand:

“I'm not certain,” I said, unable to keep my eyes off that awful medieval Satan. 'I

would have to know from what...from whom it comes. Whether it came from other

vampires...or elsewhere. ... Then we are not...” I sat forward. “...the children of

Satan?”

“How could we be the children of Satan?” he asked. “Do you believe that Satan

made this world around you?”

“No, I believe that God made it, if anyone made it. But He also must have made

Satan, and I want to know if we are his children!” (The Interview with the Vampire

179)

Sir Francis Varney starts regretting the atrocities he has committed only in the

autumn of his long life, but Louis for example dreads the destiny of vampires from the very

moment he had been turned into one. For a portion of his immortal life, he refuses to feed

on human blood and sustains himself solely on animals, as he mentions during his

interview with Daniel Molloy:

“I killed animals. … Both of us had hunted the Freniere plantation, Lestat for slaves

and chicken thieves and me for animals.” “You were killing only animals?” “Yes”

(Interview with the Vampire 31, 32).

34

Even after he relented to drinking human blood, he prides himself on being very reasonable

about feeding only when he truly had to, much contrary to Lestat, as Louis explains:

Lestat killed humans all the time, sometimes two or three a night, sometimes

more. He would drink from one just enough to satisfy a momentary thirst, and

then go on to another (Interview with the Vampire 31).

Anne Rice’s vampires also all have an intricate backstory, often interwoven into one

another, contrary to other vampire specimen discussed in the previous chapters, about

which the reader gets minimum to zero information and they are defined by their

vampirism and nothing else. Uniquely, the whole vampiric society has their own history.

What Louis and Claudia had been searching for in The Interview with the Vampire, the

reader discovers in the third book of the series, The Queen of the Damned, and that is how

exactly the vampire race came to existence.

At the beginning there were two sisters residing in ancient Egypt, Maharet and

Mekare. The twins were powerful witches and their power attracted the attention of a royal

couple of Egypt, queen Akasha and her husband king Enkil. Upon encounter of the twins

and the royals, Mekare had summoned a spirit called Amel to display her power. That,

however, displeased the queen, who had decided to throw the sisters to prison and to punish

them by public rape.

The spirit Amel had become enraged with the humiliation of the sisters and started

terrorizing the king and queen. Along with several other nobles, Akasha and Enkil attacked

Amel later on, but only the royal couple had survived and was never seen in the sun again.

After they’d been stabbed by the spirit, Akasha turned on Enkil, consuming his blood and

feeding him her own, effectively becoming the first blood-drinkers.

35

To test their new powers, the couple turned on the king’s steward Khayman, also

turning him into a blood-drinker. He then spreads the “gift of the night” to Maharet and

Mekare and the three of them started turning more and more people to create an army to aid

them in the battle of Akasha and Enkil, thus creating a generation of vampires known as

“The first brood.”

4. Present-day Vampires

After Rice’s initial creation of a complex, functioning vampire society, this aspect

had become an inspiration and a staple for many authors after her. Namely for instance the

Irish author Darren O’Shaughnessy, also known by his pen-name, Darren Shan. Thanks to

Shan, the phenomenon of vampires had finally made its way into the young-adult literature

genre at the dawn of the twenty-first century. And presumably since Shan’s books were

primarily meant for youngsters, the twelve-piece Saga of Darren Shan, or Cirque du Freak

Series, as it is also known, Shan completely reworks and rewrites almost everything that

the readers knew about vampires so far.

The first and the most striking difference of all, the protagonist of the series,

carrying the same name Darren Shan as his literary father, is a young boy of twelve. Even

though creating children vampires is technically illegal in the world of the Saga, Darren is

turned into a creature of the night in exchange for his friend’s life. The way the turning

happened is very peculiar and unique in the general vampiric lore. Instead of the vampire

creator biting into the jugular vein of the new fledgling, the blood exchange happens

through small cuts on the fingertips of all ten fingers:

He raised his left hand and pressed the nails of the right into the fleshy tips of his

left-hand fingers. Then he used his other set of nails to mark the right-hand fingers

36

in the same way. … He dug his nails into the soft tips of my fingers, all ten of them

at once. … He put a couple of my fingers in his mouth and sucked some blood out. I

watched as he rolled it around his mouth, testing it. Finally he nodded and

swallowed. “It is good blood,” he said. “We can proceed.” He pressed his fingers

against mine, wound to wound. For a few seconds there was a numb feeling at the

ends of my arms. Then I felt a gushing sensation and realized my blood was moving

from my body to his through my left hand, while his blood was entering mine

through my right. It was a strange, tingling feeling. I felt his blood travel up my

right arm, then down the side of my body and over to the left. When it reached my

heart there was a stabbing pain and I almost collapsed. The same thing was

happening to Mr. Crepsley and I could see him grinding his teeth and sweating. The

pain lasted until Mr. Crepsley’s blood crept down my left arm and started flowing

back into his body. We remained joined for a couple more seconds, until he broke

free with a shout. I fell backward to the floor. I was dizzy and felt sick (A Living

Nightmare 80).

Curiously though, Darren is not turned into a full-fledged vampire, but rather only a half-

vampire by his creator Mr. Crepsley’s choice. If he would want to turn Darren into a full

vampire, they would have to stay joined longer, so more of the vampire's blood enters the

body. (A Living Nightmare 80).

Shan’s vampires are different from any others for a multitude of reasons. First of

all, unlike any other literary vampiric specimen listed previously, they are not to be

considered beautiful in any way. Most of them are heavily scarred and rather unattractive,

as is obvious from Darren’s first description of Larten Crepsley:

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The lights went down low and a creepy-looking man walked onto the stage. He was

tall and thin, with very white skin and only a small crop of orange hair on the top of

his head. He had a large scar running down his left cheek. It reached to his lips and

made it look like his mouth was stretching up the side of his face (A Living

Nightmare 32).

Also, Shan’s vampires are nowhere near to the living standards of their predecessors. While

most of them are scattered around the world, their home is in the bowels of a mountain and

rather lacedaeamonian and very old-fashioned, as the reader discovers in the fourth part of

the saga, The Vampire Mountain.

Secondly, the way they feed. They do not possess the traditional set of fangs, but

rather only very hard and resilient teeth. These are, however, not used for the extraction of

blood from their victims, for this purpose they use their just as hard and sharp fingernails –

they make a small incision on one of the large veins on human body, for example under the

knee, from which they extract blood for either immediate consumption or for storage and

later use (The Vampire’s Assistant 13).

This extraction is rarely ever fatal for the victim, for Shan’s vampires do not kill

when feeding and they generally value human life, contrary to other vampiric specimen

listed above. A curious detail about Shan’s vampires feeding is also the fact that they

cannot consume blood of cats, snakes and rats, since it is poisonous to them.

Similarly to Rice, Shan also omits the traditional fear of crosses or garlic, the ability

to shape-shift or immortality. His vampires also do not have the rapid healing factor at their

disposal, and even though they are fitter and more resilient than humans – having stronger

bones, for example – it is possible to kill them with enough damage inflicted. They also do

not immediately combust upon contact with sunlight like Rice’s vampires, but the sun

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burns them and if they spent too much time in the sunlight, it would kill them nevertheless.

They are able to move at a very fast speed, – in Shan’s cannon this is called “flitting” – to

the point where human eye is unable to follow their movements. This ability is similarly

used by Louis in the first chapters of The Interview with the Vampire:

The vampire reached across the table now and gently brushed an ash from the boy's

lapel, and the boy stared at his withdrawing hand in alarm. “Excuse me,” said the

vampire. “I didn't mean to frighten you.”

“Excuse me,” said the boy. “I just got the impression suddenly that your arm was ...

abnormally long. You reach so far without moving!”

“No, I moved forward much too fast for you to see. It was an illusion.” “You moved

forward? But you didn't. You were sitting just as you are now, with your back

against the chair.”

“No,” repeated the vampire firmly. “I moved forward as I told you” (Interview with

the Vampire 19).

Contrary to Dracula, Shan’s vampires do reflect in mirrors. On the other hand, it is

impossible to take a photograph of them since, as Mr. Crepsley explains, the atoms of a

vampire body are moving too fast for the camera to capture and therefore the pictures

always turn out to be blurry. Generally, most of the abilities of the Saga’s vampires are

explainable by reason and obey the laws of physics instead of relying on the supernatural.

Following the idea of a vampiric society, Shan also created one for his Saga of

Darren Shan and The Saga of Larten Crepsley4. Rice’s vampires usually create small

familial groups and are brought together as a clan only in the events of Prince Lestat

4 A four-part prequel to The Saga of Darren Shan, describing the life of Darren’s creator, Larten Crepsley.

First part was released in 2010.

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(2014), the eleventh installment of The Vampire Chronicles. Shan’s vampiric society is

more sophisticated in detail.

Throughout the Saga of Darren Shan, the protagonist and subsequently the reader

gets familiar with many aspects of the society and its values – which the whole society

holds as true, rather than each and every group having their own – from their strict, almost

military-like hierarchy to their approach towards love and romantic partnership.

One of the values is the value of human life. While Shan’s vampires consider

human race to be somewhat inferior to their own, they generally value human life,

occasionally even mingling with mortals and creating friendly or romantic relationships

with them. On top of that, as was stated before, they never kill when feeding.

That is, however, not true for every vampire and Shan therefore creates a unique

schism, splitting the society into two large groups according to their opinion in the matter

of human life. The other group under the name of “vampaneze,” consider humankind as a

source of nourishment only. When they feed, they kill their victims by consuming all of

their blood. As a consequence, their skin gains a reddish or purple color. The vampaneze

are an elegant rollback to the inherently evil vampire revenants from the folk tales. (See

chapter 1.)

This vampiric dichotomy between good and evil had seeped into several other

vampire-themed young-adult novels, such as the vastly popular four-part romance series

penned by Stephanie Meyer, Twilight. While Darren Shan’s books are presumably more fit

for the male part of the young adult audience, Meyer had largely popularized the vampire-

themed literature in the girls department. Since then, the romantic aspect had become

largely used, as well as the patterns of vampires living an ordinary life among the mortals.

The addition of romance also caused a new boom in the vampire-themed literature. Notable

40

titles in this category are for instance Ellen Schreiber’s Vampire Kisses (2005 – 2013),

Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy (this series of novel combines a plethora of other

supernatural creatures though) or L. J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries.

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Conclusion

Even though many books had been written in the vampire genre, the creatures are

still being wrongfully accused of being generic and one-dimensional characters. Strictly

speaking, this statement would be true for the very first literary vampire specimen. These

characters were, in fact, defined by their inherent blood-drinking. Their purpose in the

stories of which they were the antagonists, was to wreak havoc and to bring destruction

upon mankind. Nevertheless, this is definitely not true for the characters that had evolved

ever since.

Nowadays, however, the reader no longer encounters vampires in decrepit castles

and graveyards only. Gradually, they integrated into the high society and to their palaces

and ballroom of great cities such as London or New Orleans. As the time passed, they even

started to mingle with “the common folk,” and they became ordinary high school students,

parents, modern families, lovers even. As they gained more and more intelligence, they

started forming complex societies of their own, both secluded and hidden in plain sight of

the mortals. They created their own rules and values, adding more diversity to the years-old

vampiric lore and some of them even started to rewrite it by large – explaining or refusing

the characteristics that their predecessors flaunted. By that, they became more believable

and closer to the reader.

As the education and understanding of the natural occurrences of the people grew,

they stopped believing the supernatural folk tales. They discovered a scientific explanation

for the superstitions of their ancestors – the natural decomposition of the body or the

porphyria sickness, for example. The vampire disappeared from the minds of the general

public and became a creature of pure fantasy. At that instant, basically any characteristic

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could be ascribed to them. In many ways, they started to resemble the “mortals,” more than

ever, while still keeping their sovereign flare that makes them exclusive.

Most importantly, however, vampires are a reflection of their literary “mothers” and

“fathers” and the era in which they were born. Every single author, that ever decided to

give life to another vampiric creature, has the leisure to describe their literary “children”

any way they want, and every author contributes their own unique tinge to the broad

spectrum that are the vampires.

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Polidori, John William. The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre. Oxford: Oxford UP,

2008. Print.

Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. New York, NY: Ballantine, 2014. Print.

---. The Vampire Armand. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Print.

---. The Vampire Lestat: Book II of The Vampire Chronicles. New York, NY:

Ballantine, 1989. Print.

---. Prince Lestat: The Vampire Chronicles. New York: Anchor, 2015. Print.

---. The Queen of the Damned. New York: Knopf, 2006. Print.

Rymer, James Malcolm. Varney the Vampire; or The Feast of Blood. Booklassic,

2015. Electronic.

Shan, Darren. Cirque Du Freak: A Living Nightmare. New York: Little, Brown, 2001.

Print.

---. Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. Print.

---. Trials of Death. New York: Little, Brown, 2003. Print.

---. Vampire Mountain. New York: Little, Brown, 2004. Print.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000. Print.

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Vampires.” Australian Folklore: A Yearly Journal of Folklore Studies (2001): 97-

106.Www.researchgate.net. 10 Apr. 2017. Web.

<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280805194_From_Nosteratu_to_Von_C

arstein_shifts_in_the_portrayal_of_vampires>.

---. “Vampire Evolution.” METAphor 2003.3 (2003): 19-23. 20 Apr. 2017. Web. 30

Feb. 2017.

<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283318599_Vampire_Evolution>.

Kalužová, Anežka. Rebuking of Victorian Values in Bram Stoker's Dracula. 2017. TS

Konstantinos. Vampires: The Occult Truth. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2010.

Print.

Liška, Vladimír. Upíři a Vlkodlaci v Českých Zemích. Prague: XYZ, 2011. Print.

Righi, Brian. Vampires through the Ages: Lore & Legends of the World's Most Notorious

Blood Drinkers. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2012. Print.

O'Rourke, James. “The 1831 Introduction and Revisions to ‘Frankenstein’: Mary Shelley

Dictates Her Legacy.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 38, no. 3, 1999, pp. 365–385.,

www.jstor.org/stable/25601400. PDF.

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Lilith.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia

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<https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lilith-Jewish-folklore>.

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Turner, Ernest Sackville. “Chapter 1 – Gothic Hangover.” Boys Will Be Boys: The Story of

Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton Et

Al. London: Faber and Faber, 2012. Web.

Miller, Elizabeth. Dracula: Sense and Nonsense. Desert Island, 2006. Print.

Pallardy, Richard. “Vlad the Impaler.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica,

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Summary

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the shifts in the portrayal of the literary

archetype of a vampire. This evolution shall be illustrated on the key works of the genre.

These include John Polidori’s The Vampyre, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Bram

Stoker’s Dracula, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and Darren Shan’s The Saga of Darren

Shan.

The literary character of a vampire had first appeared in Polidori’s short story, The

Vampyre. While mostly sticking to the folkloric origins of the creature, Polidori introduces

the archetype of a royal vampire. Also, his vampires are freely mingling within the mortal

society, rather than being a mindless revenant stuck to the patterns of their previous lives.

Le Fanu later includes women into the vampiric race and also starts the precedent of

vampiric hypersexuality.

Inspired by his predecessors, Bram Stoker builds off of the characteristics portrayed

in the novels preceding Dracula on one hand, yet on the other omits some of them and adds

several traits of his own invention. Sexuality is again an issue, yet Stoker treats it more

candidly than for example Le Fanu, reflecting the traditional values of the Victorian

England. Anne Rice deepens the precedents set by previous authors and adds a unique trait

of emotional life and the ability of critical and philosophical thinking to her vampires.

Centering his work around the idea of a child vampire, as Anne Rice introduced it,

Shan offers a completely different view of the vampiric lore. He proposes a complex and

self-functioning vampire society independent of the human world. In the context of young

adult vampire literature, the aspect of romance is added, vastly popularizing the genre.

47

The conclusion of this thesis is that the literary vampire had underwent a dramatic

development and had been mythologized and de-mythologized several times. In the end,

however, the portrayal of the vampire is always in the hands of the author and the authors

reflect themselves and the era they live in through the creature.

Résumé

Hlavním záměrem této práce je analýza změn ve zobrazování literárního archetypu

postavy upíra. Tato evoluce bude ilustrována na klíčových dílech žánru, jakými jsou

například Polidoriho The Vampyre, Carmilla Josepha Sheridana Le Fanu, Dracula Brama

Stokera, série The Vampire Chronicles Anne Riceové a The Saga of Darren Shan od

stejnojmenného autora.

Upír se jako literární postava poprvé objevil v povídce Johna Williama Polidoriho

The Vampyre. Ačkoliv se autor veskrze drží folklorního původu upíra, zakládá také

archetyp upířího šlechtice. Jeho upíři se také volně pohybují v lidské společnosti, než aby

byli pouze bezduchými navrácenci fungující na vzorcích chování z jejich minulých životů.

Le Fanu později zavádí precedent upíří hypersexuality a představuje do žánru i ženy –

upírky.

Inspirován svými předchůdci, Stoker na jedné straně staví na vlastnostech upíra

popsaných v předešlých dílech, na straně druhé však některé z nich vypouští a na jejich

místo doplňuje vlastnosti své vlastní invence. Sexualita je opět výrazným tématem, Stoker

se k ní však staví otevřeněji, než například Le Fanu. Tím také odráží tradiční hodnoty

společnosti viktoriánské Anglie. Anne Riceová prohlubuje precedenty dané předchozími

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autory a přidává svým upírům schopnost kritického a filozofického uvažování a též emoční

život.

Darren Shan staví svoji sérii The Saga of Darren Shan na principu dětského upíra,

jak ho představila Anne Riceová. Díky tomu uvádí oblast upíří literatury v kompletně

novém světle. Představuje také komplexní, soběstačnou upíří komunitu, nezávislou na světě

lidí. Do kontextu young adult upíří literatury je také uveden aspekt romance, který upíří

žánr velmi zpopularizuje.

Závěrem této práce je, že literární upír prošel dramatickým vývojem a byl

několikrát mytologizován a naopak. V konečném důsledku je však zobrazení upíra v rukou

autora a ten na svých upírech reflektuje sám sebe a také dobu, ve které píše.