Fans of the Loving Husband Series know that I’ve written about a vampire or two. Maybe three. Four? To be honest, I still don’t read anything bloody or violent since I’m not into the horror genre. I won’t go into how I came to write Her Dear & Loving Husband (it’s here if you’re interested), but come to write about vampires I did, and in the process I became fascinated with the history of the supernatural legend. 

In the dim corners of European folklore, the vampire was a revenant, a corpse that refused to stay still. The vampire was a story for the frightened and the faithful, and in a time before science could explain things, the vampire legend became a way to make sense of what could not be understood through reason. As time passed and superstition gave way to science and art, something remarkable happened–the vampire began to reflect not only our fears of death but also our fears of ourselves.

Romantic Era Vampires

The earliest literary vampires emerged from the Romantic imagination. John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) was written in the same ghost story contest that gave us Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, is not a creature of the grave but of the drawing room. Ruthven is a man of wit and appetite who devours not bodies, but souls. I’ve just read The Vampyre, and while it’s not heavy on vampire lore, it’s the first time we see vampires as aristocratic, elegant, and morally corrupt. In fact, Polidori based Ruthven on Lord Byron.

Varney the Vampire (1854), attributed to both James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, did more to shape our modern vision of vampires since many of our common vampire tropes began here. Varney has fangs. He has superhuman strength. I may have used that one myself once or twice–the superhuman strength, that is. Unlike James Wentworth and other vampires since Nosferatu, Varney can stand in the sunlight. Like James Wentworth, Varney despises his vampiric nature yet he is controlled by it. Carmilla (1872) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is the story of a young woman caught up in the charms of a vampire who appears to be a young woman herself. It’s a short read, but it’s a fascinating look into the hold that the supernatural are believed to have over humans. 

Dracula

When Bram Stoker published Dracula (1897), we received our best known vampire. Count Dracula is a symbol of everything the Victorians could not name aloud, such as the fear of the foreign, the allure of the forbidden, and the secret pulse of desire beneath a polished veneer. In Stoker’s hands, Dracula is both a predator and a reflection of our hidden selves. I read Dracula for the first time when I was writing Her Dear & Loving Husband and I loved it. I loved the way Stoker used an epistolary format of letters, articles, and shipping reports to tell the story. I loved the suave nature of Count Dracula himself. It’s easy to see how this novel added ammunition to a vampire craze that continues to this day. 

Moral Introspection

Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) reimagined the undead as beings of immense sorrow, trapped by their conscience. Rice’s vampires contemplate eternity as a burden rather than a gift, and they are damned not for feeding on blood but for their endless capacity to feel. Rice’s vampires are philosophers of the dark, forever asking whether immortality absolves or condemns. I may have pulled a few ideas for my own vampires from Interview with the Vampire. 

Contemporary Vampires

In the 21st century, the vampire has splintered into countless interpretations—each a mirror held up to a different human anxiety. They wander through fiction, television, and film, sometimes monstrous, sometimes mundane. In Justin Cronin’s The Passage they embody the collapse of civilization. In Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling they become a meditation on identity and belonging. The vampire has shed its aristocratic cape but not its shadow. What remains constant is the way the vampire invites us to question what it means to consume endure. Perhaps that’s why the vampire never fades. It is not only a monster but a symbol for the darkness that accompanies us.

In its long literary life, the vampire has moved from graveyard to conscience and from horror to heartbreak. What fascinates me the most is not the vampire’s thirst for blood. I’m more interested in the vampire’s struggle to find meaning in its endless existence. Beneath the darkness lies a yearning for a peace that never comes and a desire to make sense of their endless memories. Perhaps that’s why I write about them–not to chase the monster, but to listen for the echo of the human it once was and perhaps still longs to be. 

Happy Halloween!

Categories: Books, News, The Loving Husband Series, VampiresTags: Anne Rice, Bram Stoker, gothic literature, modern Gothic, Romanticism, symbolism in fiction, The Loving Husband Series, vampire books, vampire legends, vampires as metaphor