The Vampire: A Brief History

This spooky season I find myself falling headlong back into the clutches of vampire fiction, a turn of events spurred on by the fantastic new television adaptation of Interview With the Vampire. Ever since HBO’s bonkers True Blood ended, I’ve been craving something that truly gets the horror, the thrill, the sheer camp of vampires. Pop culture needed a bit of a break from them, but this fall we have four new vampire book adaptations airing. We’re back, baby! And we (vampire fans) are getting everything our goth little hearts desire. For too long it’s been all about zombies. Enough. Time for the return of decadence. 

For the past couple hundred years, vampires have enjoyed a stable presence in literature, waning in and out of fashion. And while people might still roll their eyes at the concept of vampire romance, probably bemoaning the cheesiness of Twilight, the fact of the matter is that for as long as there have been vampires in fiction, they have been intrinsically tied to romance—or at least, to desire. In 1700s Western Europe, the novel as we know it was in its fledgling form, and much of the written content was meant to be lurid and titillating (often under the guise of morality-teaching) for a newly widespread audience (think Fanny Hill or Pamela). Around the same time, Eastern Europe was gripped by a “vampire epidemic”; a sort of mass hysteria that caused townsfolk to exhume corpses they were convinced were coming back to life. Shortly after this time period came Gothic literature. The motifs are familiar: decaying castles or abbeys, vengeful murder, damsels, lascivious villains, and so on. Basically, Gothic fiction was the height of melodrama (for a crystallization of all of these themes and more, see 1796’s The Monk by Matthew Lewis). 

Vampire fiction didn’t really make a splash until the 19th century, but it certainly seems congruous with those transgressively erotic early novels. The Vampyre by John Polidori was published in 1819 (still in the Gothic tradition) and gave the world its first seductive, devilish, aristocratic bloodsucker, inadvertently launching the vampire genre as we know it today. Polidori’s version was based on frenemy and societal menace Lord Byron who, after a little holiday with friends Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley (yes, that one), proved so callous that Polidori went and immortalized him as a villain (which happened more than once). But of course, I would be remiss to gloss over the “seductive” of it all. The titular vampire cuts a rather dashing figure and uses his appeal to lure in unsuspecting victims. And it’s this aspect that really carries on through the genre. 

Much of the appeal of Gothic fiction lay in the transgression of social norms; it was a way to explore the taboo and contend with a strict patriarchal society. Vampires, like so much horror going back to Frankenstein, are a vehicle to safely explore the underside of humanity. Irish author Bram Stoker gave us the legendary Dracula in 1897, at the tail end of the Victorian era—an era so stuffy (tight corsets! Fainting couches!) that all the salacious stuff had to come out sideways. Stoker’s novel, in this sense, is super-duper Victorian. His Count Dracula isn’t exactly a looker, but he and his vamp ladies still represent a sexual threat, particularly to “English womanhood”, which in the novel is symbolically corrupted by becoming a vampire (sprinkling in a little xenophobia for good measure). Becoming a vampire endows women with sexual agency (note the scene where the hapless Jonathan Harker submits to being bitten by three female vampires), a big no-no in Victorian England. Honestly, Dracula is a fascinating read just for the gender politics alone. 

Alongside gender and sexuality is the common thread of queer desire. In 1872, another Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu published Carmilla, about a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire. And while earlier Gothic works were careful to drape their debauchery in conventional morality, no matter how dubiously, Carmilla is notable for its moral ambiguity; Carmilla’s attraction to her female love interest is not celebrated, but it’s not antagonized either. If we jump ahead about 100 years, we find Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, starting with the 1976 smash hit Interview With the Vampire, which gets progressively more queer as the series goes on. Interview is more or less the story of vampires Louis and Lestat’s dysfunctional marriage and messy divorce. It is deeply toxic but also deeply romantic (something the new show is nailing). 

There’s really no overstating the influence Anne Rice had on the genre as we now know it. Firstly, New Orleans is now intrinsically tied to vampires (visitors to the city can take any number of Anne Rice walking tours). Craft-wise, Interview shifts the perspective away from human victims to the vampires themselves. Now, the vampire figure is used to explore the blessing/curse duality of immortal life, and the ethics of feeding off humans for survival. Rice positions the hedonistic, European dandy Lestat against the shame-ridden, moralistic American Louis (who, in his human years, was a plantation owner). From this we get a new vampire archetype: the sad-boy, the tortured immortal at war with his nature as a killer. You can guess where we go from here: Twilight’s Edward Cullen, and even True Blood’s (based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris—also set in Louisiana) Bill Compton. 

Truth be told, I was never a Twilight girlie. Its vampirism doesn’t have any stakes (or any teeth—both appropriate metaphors). There is, of course, the much-maligned glittering-in-the-sun thing (as opposed to, you know, burning to a crisp), as well as the fact that Edward and co just…go to high school forever? Talk about eternal damnation. My main issue is that it’s all very soft. Good vampire fiction contends with not only the allure of vampires, but with the horror as well. That dichotomy is what makes them so compelling. For as much as they’re charming, they should also still be a threat! It’s why the fan favourite of True Blood was Eric Northman and not Bill. Stephanie Meyer’s bloodsuckers are tempered by her conservative Mormonism that just bleeds through the text. How are you going to make vampires sex-negative?! Pass. 

Are you a fan of vampire literature? Or maybe even vampire movies? Let us know in the comments! 

About Alyssia

Alyssia is an Adult Services Librarian at the Vaughan Public Libraries. Nothing makes her happier than a great book and a great cup of coffee. She loves fiction in all formats - books, movies, television, you name it - and is always on the lookout for awesome new music.  |  Meet the team