Vixen, virgin or vamp? Female characters in vampire literature past and present.

摘要

Many critics read vampire literature as inflexible and confining in its attitudes toward women. The issue of social commentary in vampire literature is far more problematic than such a reductive analysis suggests. Female characters and female bodies are often used in these texts as tools for questioning existing patriarchal practices and expressing social concerns relevant to specific ages. Women throughout Western history have had more stringent social expectations placed upon them than have men, especially regarding their freedom of sexual expression and the fulfillment of "traditional" gender roles. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when vampire literature became popular, women with "inappropriate" sexual proclivities were categorized as deviant or criminal. Given the obviousness of negative images of women in the genre---as victims, as vampires, and as sexualized objects who are preyed upon---and the ambiguity that vampire literature often embraces, one should consider the possibility for an empowering message within the texts discussed here.;Tracing the classical connections among blood, sex, women, and vampire lore, specifically through representations of Lamia and Lilith, establishes the importance of this confluence of concepts. The very reason that the sucking of blood now has sexual connotations is because of earlier beliefs in the necessity of blood in order to procreate. The ancient Greeks, who believed that blood created all body fluids, and early Christians, who appear to have believed that the blood and the soul (or life force) of a person were inextricably linked, created the first female blood drinkers in Western civilization. Understandably, the importance women hold in the vampire mythos has evolved over time, but the ways in which women, sexuality, and blood are linked has been an ever present aspect of vampire literature.;This dissertation examines several works which utilize female characters in the ways that I am addressing: John William Polidori's The Vampyre , Elizabeth Grey's The Skeleton Count or the Vampyre Mistress , Joseph Le Fanu's Carmilla, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series, and Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works appear, on the surface, to have used female characters as a means of reinforcing patriarchal precepts and mandating the role of the "angel in the house" as the only viable option for women who wish to survive unscathed. A reinforcement of patriarchal precepts, however, is not all that these works have to offer. The vast majority of vampire literature addresses, investigates, and problematizes issues of female agency and sexuality. Over time, the vampire genre has reinforced, brought to light for examination, and has finally, with Laurell K. Hamilton's work, gone through and beyond the confining framework of categorizing women as only vixen, virgin, or vamp. Therefore, the behaviors of women, as well as the behaviors toward women in each of these works comments on and reacts to societal attitudes toward women and female sexuality and also offer potential avenues of social change.