Once Bitten, Forever Shy:
The Companionate Evolution of Vampire Fiction and Purity Culture
Erin Carr, Dominican University New York
Abstract: I have tracked a throughline in vampiric fiction - starting with John Polidori's The Vampyre and Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla all the way through to the present, with works like Twilight and Vampire Kisses- observing that, despite the monster's ever-shifting form, it is uniformly tied to the preservation of purity culture.
The vampire, as a monster, as a hero, as a cultural body, has fascinated the populace, from its humble beginnings in folklore into the cultural entity it is known as today. As Jeffrey Jerome Cohen posits in his seminal essay “Monster Culture,” no monsters ever truly die—but there is something specifically polymorphous about the vampire that allows it to return with each new age in a new form. It begins in the historical folklore and aristocratic folly of its victims before taking on sexuality as its key deviancy. In “Carmilla,” the female vampire longs for a female companion; in almost every iteration of Dracula, the count seeks out women to ‘seduce.’ Much further down the line, Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles again emphasize sexual deviancy, albeit in a new, androgynous light, allowing more compassion for the monster than ever before. As the tragedy of vampirism is depicted, and the push and pull between sex and purity becomes all the more prominent, the vampire becomes a sort of poster child, a helpless, tragic hero, even a victim themselves. Even as we grow to sympathize with the vampire and portray it as our friend, it will still concern itself with sexuality—if it no longer is regarded as a monster who transgresses past the boundaries of purity, it will become a protector of those very same values and police that boundary to the same end.
While Bram Stoker’s novel is the superficial epicenter of the vampire mythos, there are elements of its canon that precede Stoker and continue to inspire storytelling. The two stories that hold the most influence are John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1819) and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1872). Polidori roots his vampire in folklore, evoking enlightenment ideas of a creature that only exists in the minds of the superstitious peasantry, before utilizing that same upper-class, then-fashionable rationalization of folklore as a tool for the monster, allowing him into a world he would otherwise not have access to. As Nancy Gagnier writes in “Authentic Dracula: Bram Stoker’s Hold on Vampiric Genres,” “Polidori’s vampire is dangerous because he is a social being…Here Polidori explores central territory of all classic vampire narratives: the causes that provide the vampire his opportunity to insinuate himself into the community” (295-295). The terrifying fact of Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, is that he always lingered amongst the general populace, waiting for a chance to strike. This idea of a species that has always existed on the fringes becomes central to later vampiric fiction while also begging an important question: what forces allow the vampire into contact with other people?
Where Polidori provides an answer in the blasé dismissal of the bourgeoisie, Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” recognizes friendship and seduction, specifically abnormal friendship and seduction as the lapse that ‘lets the vampire in,’ so to speak. What is striking about Le Fanu’s vampire is twofold. First, she is female, which already makes her an anomaly as far as vampire stories go, and second, her victims are also female. Make no mistake (Le Fanu certainly doesn’t), Carmilla’s victim is a companion, even a quasi-lover, emphasizing the taboo and ostracizing the female vampire further. The novella is full of romantic moments: the vampire is “resembling the passion of love” in her stalking, she expresses a desire to “die as lover’s may” to protagonist (and victim) Laura, and, as she laid kisses on her cheek, professes what can only be construed as desire: “You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one forever” (Le Fanu). As the lines between victim, friend, and lover blur, one thing remains clear: not only does Carmilla desire companionship with a dangerous voraciousness, but, even more horrifyingly, her desire is not for a man. If Polidori’s “The Vampyre” acts as bedrock in the vampiric canon, establishing a norm in which vampires have always existed but only enter general society on occasion, “Carmilla” lays the foundations for the mode in which that occasion appears: the perversion of acceptable sexual activity.
Dracula, which is widely considered the seminal vampire text, flourishes on the foundation set up by its predecessors. There is a subtle sexuality infused throughout the novel’s entirety—even when the monster is absent, his vulgar shadow looms. However, when vampires are present, the sexual allusions are intense and unmistakable. Take Jonathan’s experience with the female vampires for example:
There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips and could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one’s flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer—nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart (Stoker 46).
In this excerpt, all aspects of standard Victorian sexuality are turned upside down. The eroticism horrified contemporary readers in a society which, according to Kathleen Spencer’s “Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic, and The Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis,” was chiefly concerned with “purity,” “a reduction of ambiguity,” and “the preservation of boundaries” (203). Boundaries in particular were of interest to the late Victorian, boundaries “between male and female, natural and unnatural, civilized and degenerate, human and nonhuman,” all of which were perceived to be crumbling (Spencer 203). With this context, it’s easy to see how the vampires in Dracula were so specifically terrifying: the vampires break down these distinctions one by one. By having the female vampires acting as the aggressor and Jonathan Harker as the ‘swooning maiden’ in this unambiguously sexual exchange, there is inversion of gender roles. By describing the vampire moving past the lips and toward the neck, what is expected and—as much as the Victorian is loath to admit—natural in such an encounter, is also reversed. Even the line between man and beast is called into question, as Stoker compares the vampires who are, at least, humanoid in form, to animals. The vampires in Bram Stoker’s Dracula not only utilize sexuality to gain access into society (as opposed to the obscurity they had once lived in), but also continue to use that sexuality to tear down the tenets of said society.
Of course, the female vampires are problematic to the Victorian imagination, but, as the principal monster, Count Dracula serves as the embodiment of formlessness, a destroyer of good society. Keenly, rather than allowing the Count to simply exist as an outsider entering the once safe haven of British society, Stoker instead incorporates aspects of that safe haven into Dracula and his behavior, at once demonstrating not only the dangers of his perverse behavior but also the slippery slope in which another could arrive there. There are plenty of examples of this duality—“his roots are Slavic, Catholic, peasant and superstitious where England is Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, industrial and rationalist”—but there is nothing more important to the Victorian imagination than control, something Count Dracula, even for all his aristocratic manners, lacks (Spencer 213). Spencer notes his lack of control as the key, as the average Victorian “know[s] that civilized adult men control their appetites; his failure to do so marks the crucial distinction between Dracula and his opponents: he is degenerate” (213). It is the Count’s lack of handle on himself (chiefly his appetite) that makes him monstrous to the Victorian. Despite all his sophistication, he is a slave to this dark instinct to bite, an urge that is time and time again conflated with sexual urges. In a society that sought distinctions between groups, the vampires in Dracula present a perhaps troubling prospect by their mere existence, but it is not until they display that gateway trait, that lack of control that threatens to unite them with us, that they are truly dangerous.
This pattern of monstrous lapses in control is the throughline of both the text and the era, and nowhere is this better illustrated than in the character of Lucy Westenra. On the surface, she appears to be the picture of purity, an idealistic Victorian woman—she does little else besides “looking pretty in her white lawn frock” and discussing romance with Mina, but Stoker places an important crack in the facade of her perfect porcelain: she does not have her sexuality under perfect control (Stoker 74). There is the moment in which she professes her unrestrained desires—“Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?”—but even when she denies this the next second, what is undeniable is her actions, or, rather, her lack thereof (Stoker 69). Her resistance to entreaties from other men (sexual and, therefore, collusive with the monstrous) as well as from the monster itself, are really only true in words. In practice, she is anything but in control. This is made the most evident by her sleepwalking, in which she unconsciously (or subconsciously) places herself in a sexually vulnerable position. In “Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal Fantasies in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Stephanie Demetrakopoulos comments on this looseness as well: “She never attempts herself to resist Dracula; she must be rescued, transfused by men…she acts as a sort of passive catalyst” (109). Her lack of vigilance in the face of sexual danger not only causes Dracula to attack her, but causes the average Victorian reader to believe, at least on some level, that she deserves it.
Even without the interrelation between Dracula and sexuality though, Lucy still falls short. She only chooses Arthur Holmwood in words, and only after “she has a whole gaggle pursuing her” (Demetrakopoulos 109). The ‘gaggle’ is never completely shut out, either—even in death, she keeps her connection to all three men. When, at Lucy’s funeral, Arthur professes that they are legally wed because his blood runs in her veins, he unwittingly weds her to both of her other suitors as well as Dr. Van Helsing (Stoker 194). It’s undeniably sexual and past control, to the point that the characters themselves acknowledge it. Christopher Bentley notes the undertones in his article, “The Monster in the Bedroom: Sexual Symbols in Bram Stoker’s Dracula”. He writes, “Van Helsing’s many scholastic accomplishments may not include the ability to speak idiomatic English, but it is evident that he fears Lucy’s fiancé will be sexually jealous of the man who has been privileged to give her his blood” (Bentley 28). He and Seward agree never to tell Holmwood of the fact that Lucy was given blood from all the men, but the fact—and more notably, her transformation into the fully sexualized vampire—remains. Her unconscious sexual indulgence allows the true threat into society, and, once she crosses that line, she cannot be forgiven. As both the novel and Victorian society illustrate, it is the allowance that has made her monstrous, a remedy that can only be found in her violent death.
Now that a foundation for a relationship between vampiric fiction and purity culture has been established, its transformation can now be tracked across the century: through film adaptations, other popular vampire novels, and more. One of the first and most important steps in this evolution occurs with Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931). Here, while there are many differences between the novel and film, there are two keys to understanding its connection to Modern-era attitudes regarding sex. First, unlike in Stoker’s text, Dracula employs overtly seductive techniques to tempt both Lucy and Mina. Gagnier tracks how a contradictive metanarrative emerged from the numerous adaptations of Dracula, and how that metanarrative wormed its way into the canon of vampiric fiction—vampires are at once the villains while also, over the years, slowly garnering sympathy from audiences. On the 1931 film, she notes “this is the first of many vampire films to follow in which Count Dracula enters fashionable society and befriends his potential victims” (Gagnier 297). In the film, Dracula is arguably more explicitly sexual and more present, both in society as well as the narrative.
The other key difference between the film and the novel is that, in the film, Dracula is portrayed by Bela Lugosi. Lugosi, outside of a few interestingly chosen characteristics, is a far cry from the monster Stoker described. Interestingly, the few traits that do track over are the most striking, the most conventionally attractive: the “strong aquiline” nose, the “lofty domed forehead,” and a chin that is “broad and strong”. What Lugosi definitively does not possess are the traits that made Dracula a monster, or, if not a monster, an outsider from the first glance. Gone are the “massive” eyebrows, the “bushy hair,” and the mustache so heavy it hides the mouth (Stoker 23-24). In Lugosi, there is a vitality, a sort of human aspect that is utterly absent in Stoker’s novel. This new characteristic along with the more overt seduction reflect a shift from the source material: now, there is something more human within the sexual monster, and perhaps, something more alluring as well.
This forbidden magnetism of the sexual monster is born out of an era where all normative distinctions are being called into question. As Victoria Harris illustrates in “Histories of ‘Sex’, Histories of ‘Sexualities’,” the twentieth century reveals an incredible new variety of attitudes towards sex, where “revolutionary liberalizations and conservative backlashes occur in quick succession” (295). The modern era ushered in constant and exponential change. It saw people challenging long standing beliefs regarding purity and promiscuity while trying to build new ones in the same moment. Out of the chaos, Dracula and other vampires stand as almost emblematic in their formlessness—still a monster in fact, of course, but as sex became “central to individual identity,” a representative of sorts (Harris 295, emphasis added). In its purest form, vampirism is about individual desire, especially at the cost of the confusing, ever-changing collective society. As Dracula himself becomes more physically attractive in adaptations, that sexual individuality (something Gagnier refers to as “spiritual isolation”) grows more attractive in the face of ever-changing cultural attitudes.
This is not to say that vampires are transformed into romantic heroes overnight, but in these early adaptations, the seed is planted, and it is quick to sprout. By 1958, Christopher Lee plays the Count in The Horror of Dracula, a film that Gagnier notes is remembered best for “the seductive appeal of Dracula” and, more specifically, “the sexual nature of the vampirizing scenes” (298). Another reviewer goes even further to mention “an intense infusion of overt animal sexuality” (Czarinaboomkat). Lee in particular stands out, walking the line between Dracula’s monstrous sexual aggression and something Lee himself refers to as “the loneliness of evil” (qtd. in Gagnier 298). Again, the allure of the isolated monster rears its head, this time to an even more profound effect. Focusing in on that loneliness, brought about by a society that does not accept his ‘unconventional desires,’ Dracula is construed further away from transgression, towards victimhood. After all, there is a strange quasi-tragedy in his death that dates back all the way to Stoker—when he is seconds away from nonexistence, there is “in [his] face a look of peace,” as if this was his destiny from the beginning, and he is glad to be free of life and its tumults (Stoker 419). Homing in on this aspect going forward, the vampire shifts again. He is no longer just a nominal representation of the outsider, but suddenly, a tragic representation, a creature doomed to follow his own impulses despite himself, even to the end. Instead of existing as the enemy of society as Dracula and other vampires had, there is now an inkling of the opposite: vampires as the alienated, as the victim.
As vampire fiction continues to progress, there grows a period where literature seems to agree that vampires are certainly victims of something. As to what exactly they were victims of, people seemed unsure. Answers varied, but for the most part, opinions fell into one of two camps: either vampires were victims of their own uncontrollable urges or they were victims of a society that disallowed them from existing with those urges. Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, a defining work in the genre, highlights this duality in her vampire characters, despite their both being slave to the same hunger. There is Lestat, who indulges his desires at every turn, and Louis, who is much less willing to kill. Louis is representative of victimhood at the hands of uncontrollable thirst, part of a then-recent trend of reluctant vampires in fiction. Gagnier observes the tragedy in the trope: even if the vampire attempts to revert back to human, “the cures fail, leaving the vampires more desperate for blood and love” (301). Louis is no exception to this rule. He experiences the ecstasy of the kill as well as the repulsion that comes with taking life, illustrating his conflicted and isolated existence. He is no longer human, but he cannot embrace vampirism, for, in order to do so, he must transgress past his own morals. Louis is still monstrous—even as a human, there are aspects of his character that are reprehensible—but his helplessness in this specific case allied with his own moral qualms garners sympathy from the audience.
Louis’s struggle, despite its poignancy, has one hole, one seemingly obvious solution. Gagnier writes that “his acutest suffering arises from the conviction that there must be moral significance to his condition” (303). If Louis—through no fault of his own—can no longer be human, why should he be plagued by human moral sensibilities? Why cater to a society that seeks to alienate him anyways? Rejection of society seems obvious. Lestat, Louis’s foil in this regard, represents that rejection to the highest degree. James Bell compares the hedonism of Lestat to the aesthetic dandyism of the late nineteenth century in his article “Decadence, Dandyism and Aestheticism in The Vampire Chronicles.” This predilection towards beauty for its own sake, at the price of all moral limitations is nowhere better illustrated than in Lestat’s philosophy of “Savage Garden.” Described by Bell as a dogma “in which Beauty is the supreme quality, transcendent over unverifiable and transitory concepts of good and evil,” it is a rejection of every human limitation (287). In Savage Garden, there are no rules: “you walk as if it is your garden to do with as you please” (Rice 132). In Lestat, there is none of the reluctance that is in Louis. However, there is much less tragedy in him as well. Here the individualistic vampire is taken to the highest degree, and interestingly, he is among the least victimized.
Another aspect of Lestat that differentiates him—as well as other vampires in Rice’s work—is his explicit sexuality. As opposed to before, where there were merely sexual undertones in vampiric encounters, now there is not just overt sexuality to the vampire, but overt deviant sexuality. Gagnier writes “Rice extends the erotic nature of the vampire by emphasizing the androgyny of vampiric relationships. Companions can be of either sex, and the ecstasy of the kill derives solely from the kill and in spite of gender” (303). As the act of sex had become much more normalized over the years, Rice reinstates a new taboo in highlighting the queerness of her vampires. The first installment in the series, Interview with a Vampire, was released in 1976, a couple years before sodomy laws had even been challenged, and a lifetime before same-sex marriage would be legalized in America (Richards). Purity culture had not so much as died down as it had shifted focus, from all sexuality to homosexuality, and, as it always has, the vampire shifted to embody that anxiety.
Lestat in particular is representative of a ‘new’ vampire, as he is not only queer in his monstrosity (taking Louis as his companion and ‘adopting’ a child with him), but also in the few years he is human—the vampire that turns him, who was once his lover (blurring that line again), was male. As Bell observes, “while always present as international cultural phenomena, the dandy and the vampire (and those who are both) are strongest during such transitory periods when questions of identity come to the fore of cultural consciousness” (292). In Lestat’s success in the rejection of society, he pokes holes in its justification to exist as an all-encompassing entity, especially when compared to his miserable-yet-socially-acceptable counterpart, Louis. If one continues to draw the lines between queerness and vampirism, the contrast only grows more potent. Lestat, who indulges his natural urge without regard to convention, is generally a lot more successful than Louis, who tries to bury his urges to please a society that would reject him anyway. Of course, in the end, as predominant culture reigns, Lestat is punished for his single-minded extravagance and ‘killed’ (he comes back later, as vampires tend to), but Rice’s Vampire Chronicles’ emphasis on sexuality and complexity of character marks a shift in the canon of vampiric fiction: one in which the vampires, even in their sexual deviancy, may not necessarily be monstrous in their entirety.
Going forward, there is more sympathy for the vampire than ever before. Even in contemporary adaptations of Stoker’s original tale, a narrative shift has taken place. Take Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for example. Reinstating the tragedy in Dracula’s death, the movie homes in on the end not as a vanquishing of evil but a resolution to a troubled, unfortunate life. Nearing the end of the twentieth century, vampires have shifted completely. Constant adaptations, metanarratives, and shifting cultural attitudes have “transformed Stoker’s Dracula from evil predator to romantic and tragic hero” (Gagnier 300). Now, having evolved, vampires are granted more freedom in their symbolism. While sexuality seems inherent to their form, there’s suddenly a lot more nuance to their need to express that sexuality, where there was a blanket disgust in the past.
In fact, as we entered the Postmodern age and society at large was becoming much more open regarding sex in all its forms, the whole idea of the sexual monster was losing its strength. Rather than continue to try and maintain the villainization of the overtly sexual, the vampire morphs once again. In a culture where—according to pro-sex advice columnist Dan Savage—“99% of the world” is dating to “mate,” it is unusual if you’re not (qtd in Gupta 131). In “Compulsory Sexuality: Evaluating an Emerging Concept,” Kristina Gupta comments on how society has become so sex-positive that now the sheer fact of not having sex can turn a person into a pariah. So, amorphous as ever, vampire fiction depicts creatures who don’t have that urge as their kind does. Whether it’s on moral grounds or out of a more biological repulsion, there is suddenly another ‘new’ vampire: one who doesn’t bite at all.
Even in an age where vampires are predominantly romantic, their sexuality is largely removed. Ananya Mukherjea notes this chaste shift in her article “My Vampire Boyfriend: Postfeminism, ‘Perfect’ Masculinity, and the Contemporary Appeal of Paranormal Romance”. She illustrates how, as feminism complicated what used to be set roles in heterosexual relationships, the ‘vampire boyfriend’ sought to uncomplicate them again, promising “stable and secure gendered expectations” (Mukherja 1). In Twilight, Edward Cullen resists both his instinctual urge to feed as well as his carnal urge towards Bella, as the pair doesn’t consummate their relationship until they get married. In Vampire Kisses, the case is similar—vampire Alexander resists his “intense urge to bite Raven” (his human lover), even though Raven expresses her “intense desire for him to do so” (Mukherja 10). Mukherja elaborates on Vampire Kisses in particular:
for such a chaste series, sex, power, and risk are implied constantly, and the reader is repeatedly made aware…that passionate love and sexual exploration come laced with the subtext of potential harm. It is the vampire boyfriend who enforces restraint and responsibility and protects the heroine’s innocence for as long as possible (11)
Now, although the means have completely changed, vampires are enforcing the very same ideas that they were in Stoker’s Dracula. Only where before they were the transgressors, they are now, due to their hard-fought sympathy from audiences, the protectors.
The fate of the vampire seems cyclical as we reach the current moment. There are some works that break the mold—the queer aspects of The Vampire Chronicles have been made even more overt in the recent television adaptation, and films like Byzantium (2012), A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014), and Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) all place female vampires back on the center stage to interrogate gender roles—but for the most part, vampire stories remain as puritanical as ever. Even when they are extravagantly and deviantly sexual, as is the case for Lestat in The Vampire Chronicles, they are ultimately punished (in the very least nominally) for their aberration, so that a sense of normalcy within the predominant purity culture can be returned. Of course, it’s only in the text that these distinctions exist. Audiences celebrate the appeal of sexual deviancy dating all the way back to Dracula, but when it comes to vampire fiction, even in some of the most egregious cases, purity reigns supreme.
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