A TALE OF TWO MONSTERS; OR, THE DIALECTIC OF HORROR
_______________
A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
San Diego State University
_______________
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
English
_______________
by
Lauren Spears
Fall 2012
iii
Copyright © 2012
by
Lauren Spears
All Rights Reserved
iv
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
A Tale of Two Monsters; or, the Dialectic of Horror
by
Lauren Spears
Master of Arts in English
San Diego State University, 2012
In this thesis, I examined the complex interrelationship between the literary vampire
and zombie both in literature and pop culture depictions such as film and television. I
explored whether these fictional revenants are clearly distinct or aspects of a single, larger
undead archetype. Revenants are currently immensely popular as evidenced by such works as
“Twilight” and “The Walking Dead,” and have endured as popular literary devices or figures,
in one form or another, for centuries. Countless readers and viewers have been exposed to
these figures, and it is therefore crucial that we understand their popularity and what kind of
impact it may have both on individual consumers and on western culture at large. I examined
the story of the revenant by interrogating both primary and secondary sources beginning with
the prehistoric mythical genesis of the walking dead, through the Romantic literary elevation
of the revenant into the Byronic vampire and Shelley’s Creature and the mid-twentieth
century rise of the zombie movie into contemporary literary, film, and television depictions
of revenants. I found that both types of undead tell facets of the same larger cultural narrative
about class and consumption: while sharing the same humble origins in folklore, over time
the vampire comes to represent the aristocratic elite while the zombie mirrors the struggles of
the poor, making each monster a representative of a soldier in class warfare.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. iv
CHAPTER
1
THE BIRTH OF THE UNDEAD ..................................................................................1 The Folkloric Vampire .............................................................................................2 The Vampire and the Creature in the 19th Century ..................................................5 2
THE VAMPIRE OF THE 19TH CENTURY ..............................................................10 Lord Byron, the Quintessential Vampire ...............................................................10 The Lordly Vampire ..............................................................................................12 The Rape Metaphor in Vampire Fiction ................................................................13 Gender Politics and the Female Vampire ..............................................................16 The Dichotomy of Women in Dracula...................................................................22 3
CONTEMPORARY DEPICTIONS OF THE UNDEAD IN POPULAR
CULTURE ...................................................................................................................31 A History of the Zombie throughout Different Cultures .......................................31 The Reemergence of the Zombie and the Vampire in Early 20th Century
Film ........................................................................................................................33 Zombies and Science .............................................................................................37 The Struggle for Power between Monsters ............................................................39 Zombies and Brains ...............................................................................................42 From Shelley’s Creature to Romero’s Zombie ......................................................44 The Zombie Today .................................................................................................48 The Vampire’s Brief Decline into the Proletariat ..................................................49 The Reemergence of the Byronic Vampire ...........................................................51 The Age of Progress in Vampire Fiction ...............................................................53 The Backsliding of Progress in Early 21st Century Vampire Fiction ....................55 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................60 1
CHAPTER 1
THE BIRTH OF THE UNDEAD
A familiar question among horror buffs is this: which do you prefer, zombies or
vampires? Popular culture usually establishes a clear line between the two. There are vampire
stories and there are zombie stories but rarely are there vampire/zombie stories. These
seemingly polar opposite but equally wildly popular depictions of the undead are not all that
different, or at least they did not begin that way. To better understand the differences
between vampires and zombies from the perspective of American contemporary popular
culture, we must interrogate their respective histories and evolution, both of which are long
and immersed in fact, fiction, superstition, film, politics, and culture. These two monsters
originate from the same place: fear and misunderstanding of ourselves. A close examination
of the shifting social and historical contexts surrounding these cultural touchstones reveals
such close links that the very question of their distinction may itself warrant further
investigation. Vampires and zombies might embody tactile differences that are widely
apparent to those who know their lore but in reality the two are in perpetual flux, morphing
one into the other, then back apart. Through this perpetual ebb and flow of old and new
myths, they continue to both evolve and regress, all the while borrowing bits and pieces from
the other’s respective story, thus blending each back together into a singular core being.
Vampires and zombies are not as different as they seem but are really two sides of the same
coin, and their similarities become evident when reading these two creations together.
Although both born of the graveyard, vampires and zombies walk different paths in their unlives because of the social framework placed upon them by their respective cultures
throughout history. Essentially, they are divided by class and social hierarchy. While sharing
the same humble origins in folklore, over time the vampire comes to represent the aristocratic
elite while the zombie remains true to its roots and mirrors the struggles of the poor,
undereducated masses, thus making each monster a representative of a soldier in class
warfare. Because of the fascination with both vampires and zombies in contemporary
American pop-culture, we can presume that these creatures resonate deeply with people.
2
Whether or not people are attracted to their more superficial elements—the sensuality of the
vampire or the goriness of the zombie—ultimately, there is a deeper connection at hand
between people and their monsters. Monsters represent the fears we see within ourselves, and
this thesis will argue that our fear of an extreme binary class system manifests in the stories
of the zombie and the vampire. Because of the immense popularity of these revenants,
especially in contemporary American culture, to ignore the political commentary behind their
representations is to ignore the fears within ourselves of ourselves.
THE FOLKLORIC VAMPIRE
Stories of the undead, which continue to haunt the living, predate Bram Stoker’s
popularization of the myth with his classic 1897 novel Dracula. Although much of the
vampire’s identity that is recognized today originates from this widely popular novel, prior to
its popularity the vampire was a very different being. Bela Lugosi, the actor famously known
for playing the titular role in the 1931 film Dracula, acknowledges the hybridization of the
character a melding of fact and fiction when he explains:
Although Dracula is a fanciful tale of a fictional character, it is actually a story
which has many elements of truth. I was born and reared in almost the exact same
location of the story, and I came to know that what is looked upon merely as a
superstition of ignorant people, is really based on facts which are literally hairraising in their strangeness—but which are true. (Glut 111)
If the vampire of today is a hybrid of folklore and fiction, to understand his current state of
grandeur is to understand his humble origins which predated Stoker by hundreds, even
thousands, of years.
The animated corpse, or “revenant,” has been a fixture in cultures across the world
dating back to ancient times. In his book Vampires Unearthed: The Complete Multimedia
Vampire & Dracula Bibliography, Martin V. Riccardo catalogues the widespread and ancient
belief in the revenant: he explains how “Paleolithic man coated their corpses in blood-red
ocher” (4); how in the British isles “large stones … were placed on graves, perhaps in an
attempt to prevent the dead from rising” (4); how ancient Greeks “pour[ed] blood onto graves
in the belief this could nourish the dead”(4); and how the Assyrian Empire had “a welldefined concept of a being that returned from the dead and fed on the blood of the living” (4).
Riccardo demonstrates a vast range of superstitious belief in varying times and cultures that
3
the dead may rise from their graves, which shows a fundamental uniformity in human’s fear
of the undead. According to the anthropologist Charles Wallace, in many of these same
Paleolithic burials, the legs of the corpse were bound. This practice suggests both a belief
that the dead could potentially walk, and a desire to prevent this from happening. Thus,
reading these preliterate burials as texts, stories of malevolent revenants may be the earliest
stories told. Theresa Bane echoes Riccardo's research regarding the Assyrian’s fearful myths
of the undead in her expansive Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology, and tells us that one of
the earliest extant examples of human writing is a spell to ward off this Assyrian “Ekimmou”
(7).There is no doubt that people feared death, or the dead, across the world but they differed
in their perceptions of the dead. In some cultures, such as the ancient Greeks and those of the
Paleolithic period, the living dealt with the dead by appeasing them with blood. This
relationship seems to show more acceptance of death, or at least a willingness to cooperate
with it. Those in prehistoric Europe and the Assyrian Empire, according to Riccardo, do not
show this same desire to work with the inevitability of death. Instead, they try to run or hide
from it, which in turn leads to haunting, or sometimes worse: their own demise. Being a
reflection of any given culture, as the culture changes so does its vampire. The vampire is the
monster in the mirror: a reflection of ourselves. While the vampire in contemporary popculture is multi-faceted, just as we are, our original relationship with the vampire remains.
Although vampires are known for being blood-suckers, not all folkloric vampires had
such refined tastes and preferred the consumption of human flesh to blood, much like the
contemporary zombie. More of a walking corpse, he simply rose to feed on or harm the
living with no other drive; his actions were mindless, primitive, and zombie-like. In a Greek
myth, the revenant rises from his grave to consume the entrails of the living (Lee 303),
behavior modern readers would associate more strongly with zombies. This particular
creature, called the vrykolaka, might “torture a man or kill him so as to eat his liver and other
inner organs” (Lee 303). The brutal behavior of the ancient revenant is atypical of the
modern vampire who is delicate and refined when preying upon his victim: some even
imbibe blood out of crystal chalices.1 As Paul Barber points out, when discussing some of the
1
This happens in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.
4
differences between the folkloric and fictional vampire, “The [fictional vampire] sucks blood
from the neck of the victim, for example, while the other—when he sucks blood at all—
attacks the chest area of the victim, in the vicinity of the heart, with only rare exceptions” (4).
Again, here is an attack on the body—the vital organs, specifically—which is a target for
modern zombies. The gorging of vital organs is a key trope in the contemporary zombie
genre, especially seen in any of George A. Romero’s films.2 His zombies tear away at a
person and go straight for their entrails. Later, after Romero establishes the zombie in film,
another popular trope which appears is the need for zombies to eat brains—again, another
vital organ—which becomes their primary source of food. Although the contemporary
zombie won’t make an appearance for several hundred years, the genesis of its myth sprouts
from that of the vampire. This blurring of lines between vampire and what eventually evolves
into the zombie occurs several times throughout history as vampires begin to establish a more
complex identity.
Unlike most literary vampires, those who became folkloric vampires upon death were
often the dregs of society in life. Harry Senn, in his work Were-Wolf and Vampire in
Romania, writes:
The lesson of vampire creatures in Romania is that there are people who are
wretched from life before they are ready to give it up; that is, who die a violent,
sudden death. Or, there are others, who commit suicide, whose relationship with
life is no less unresolved. And finally, there are those who die without benefit of
the ceremonies of the Church, and who therefore wander between life and the
other world, unable to enter the latter. (40)
Whereas in folklore those who differed from the norm and were considered socially
unacceptable or sinful were fated for vampirism, subsequent fictional vampires are generally
chosen because something about them is special.3
Whereas the fictional vampire tends to be tall, thin, and pale, the folkloric vampire is
usually short, plump, and ruddy or dark in complexion. The two would be unlikely to meet
socially: the fictional vampire resides in castles and is often wealthy and of nobility, while
2
3
Romero is the father of the contemporary zombie who will be discussed at greater length in chapter three.
i.e. in Interview with the Vampire, Louis is chosen for his beauty; in Twilight, Bella is chosen because of
her ability to block vampires or telepaths from reading her mind.
5
the folkloric vampire takes his rest in graveyards and is of peasant stock (Barber 4). The
folkloric vampire is born from the imagination of the poor who had limited resources and
education, while the fictional vampire was spawned by the nobility, who gifted him with all
of their invaluable assets. There are no reports of folkloric vampires showing any sort of
cunning, strategy or intelligence. Whereas the folkloric vampires rely mainly on brute force
and fear, the fictional vampire possesses the powers of manipulation, coercion, and seduction
to acquire his needs; the last of which has become the trademark for the modern vampire and
one that is absent in the folkloric vampire.
THE VAMPIRE AND THE CREATURE IN THE 19TH
CENTURY
It is in the early 19th century when the shift from undead corpse to undead Casanova
occurs in John Polidori’s 1819 novella, “The Vampyre”. This drastic change is primarily
rooted in the class promotion the vampire receives when he is taken out of the Eastern
European peasant graveyard and placed into Regency England. Because of his newly
bestowed aristocratic rank, the vampire now enjoys the fruits of his privilege: wealth,
mobility, and power. Although the Romantics gave the vampire reflections of their own
sexual liberties and progressivism in gender politics, they also passed onto it their
(respective) nobility.4 The vampire appears in previous English texts such as Byron’s 1813
“The Giaour” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1816 “Christabel” but vampire literature does
not become a genre unto itself until John Polidori’s “The Vampyre”. It is perhaps no
coincidence that this genre was born in England. As Carol A. Senf writes in her book, The
Vampire in 19th Century English Literature, “While the belief in vampires is almost
universal, England seems to have been singularly free from this superstition. Both Kittredge
in Witchcraft in Old and New England and Summers in The Vampire in Europe refer to the
twelfth-century accounts of William Newburgh and William of Malmesbury as the only
historical accounts of this belief in England” (19). The 19th century British Romantic
movement was a perfect laboratory for the development of the literary vampire. Well4
On the issue of gender politics, see “Christabel” and Carmilla, two texts which will be discussed at
length in the duration of this chapter.
6
traveled writers, such as Coleridge, the Shelleys and Byron, brought back with them the
spores of various cultural vampire superstitions to England, whose relative lack of
preexisting vampire myths made it a perfect Petri dish in which the idea could grow. The
English were unique in that they were free from the governing constraints of the more-or-less
universal superstitions that the rest of the world held and were therefore able to create a new
vampire: a hybrid that sprung from a mixture of various folkloric myths coupled with the
untapped imagination of writers who were willing to explore and play with the possibilities
of a creature that had evoked dread in humanity for thousands of years.
In the following chapter, vampire fiction, which began in the early 19th century and
led up to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is explored. Although Dracula is famous for putting the
vampire on the literary map, it is born out of Polidori’s earlier, lesser-known work, “The
Vampyre”. However, regardless of its lack of success in comparison to Stoker’s novel, “The
Vampyre” is responsible for both the inception of the vampire in literary fiction and for
creating the pivotal archetypal vampire which continues to inspire us today. Although
Polidori’s work is the first that contains a vampire in fiction, which in turn influences
countless future authors, he, as a singular entity, is only marginally responsible for the
popularization of the vampire. Byron, although not the author of “The Vampyre”, arguably
had a large amount of influence upon its creation: he is the person on whom the vampire,
Lord Ruthven, is based and the person who inspired Polidori to write the character into
existence. In 1816, during a stormy night in Geneva, Byron challenged his society friends to
a ghost-story-telling competition. The game not only yielded the first vampire story in
literature but is equally responsible for inspiring Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.5
The vampire and the Creature, born together, remain inextricably bound to this day.
Shelley imposes folkloric vampire traits upon the Creature by making him a hideous pariah
while Polidori elevates his vampire beyond these crude characteristics making him a
handsome socialite. After establishing that Dracula is the offshoot of Poldori’s monster and
the Creature and the vampire were born together, Franco Moretti argues:
5
The novel credited for being the first work of science fiction (Ginn).
7
Frankenstein and Dracula lead parallel lives. They are indivisible, because
complementary, figures; the two horrible faces of a single society, its extremes:
the disfigured wretch and the ruthless proprietor. The worker and capital: ‘the
whole of society must split into the two classes of property owners and
propertyless workers.’(67-68)
As brothers, the vampire and the Creature represent the twin-faced nightmare of social
extremes: the wealthy elite who prey upon the less fortunate and the oppressed nameless
member of the working class who is exploited by his oppressors and marginalized outside of
the ranks of high society. Reborn as children of the industrial revolution, the revenants of
folklore take on new life in popular and literary culture beginning with the Romantics and
their new twist on an old story. With several people involved in crafting these horror stories,
ideas were borrowed, exchanged, and refined within their peer writing group: Lord Byron is
often credited ownership of the ideas for the respective works despite not having written
either. It is then no surprise to find that the Creature and the vampire are more similar than
realized at first glance. Both are, essentially, the typical Byronic hero: a brilliant but selfdestructive type who wanders and searches, usually plagued by some dark secret or sin, who
appeals to modern readers because he stands apart from society. He is “larger than life”, and
“with the loss of his titanic passions, his pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses also
his status as [a traditional] hero” (Thorslev 187). Although we dislike them, we understand
and feel compassion for their flaws, which conflicts our feelings about their behaviors or
achievements. Although Lord Ruthven is far less of a sympathetic character than the
Creature, he still evokes a sense of excitement in his readers when juxtaposed against the
rather impotent Aubrey. In all actuality, it is probable that the Creature is the more likeable
and more “human” in character of the two monsters; initially, the Creature’s only flaw is his
hideousness while internally he is filled with empathy, compassion, and caring for others.
Lord Ruthven is the inverse of the Creature: although he is stunningly handsome, his internal
qualities do not match his exterior. He is selfish, cruel, and enjoys the suffering of others.
Whereas the Creature longs for companionship and acceptance among humans, Lord
Ruthven is a solitary creature, “a lover of solitude and silence” (Morrison and Baldick 13).
Physically, outside of their aesthetic appearances, both wield supernatural strength and the
ability to destroy at will with the slightest of touches. Both display keen intelligence,
although Lord Ruthven is introduced as already cunning while the Creature (like all humans)
8
must work for his wits and toil through books and histories in order to attain an
understanding of philosophy, art, and language—in a word, humanity. Because his fictional
birth coincides with his textual birth, he is more malleable as a character, unlike the vampire
whose birth is implied before his appearance in text. The Creature models himself after the
De Lacey family, saying, “I looked upon them as superior beings, who would be the arbiters
of my future destiny (Shelley 81). He isn’t born with the extraordinary gifts of knowledge
and compassion, he must learn them and although he acquires some of this knowledge
through books, the rest must be learned by observing humanity itself. Lord Ruthven already
possesses intelligence and understands how to work within human culture, thus he doesn’t
appreciate these gifts as well as the Creature might. In fact, he uses his knowledge of
humanity directly against humanity itself by hunting in plain sight throughout the upper class
streets of London.
Examining the monsters side by side, it becomes apparent that while the Creature
looks and is treated like a folkloric revenant, he possesses more internal traits of the
contemporary vampire than Lord Ruthven does. Lord Ruthven, although now at a substantial
distance from his humble folkloric predecessors, is far less sympathetic than the Creature and
the contemporary vampire he so closely resembles. The contemporary vampire remains in
perpetual struggle with his “nature” and conscience. He is drawn toward humans, no longer
just to feed, but to observe, understand, and even love them. He values their mortality as a
gift of fleeting beauty that he is no longer capable of holding. Many contemporary vampires
have become quite similar to Shelley’s creation of 1816. Yet when most people today think
of the Creature, they often don’t recollect him for his admirable traits. Popular depictions
have reduced him into a mindless hulk that seeks to destroy thoughtlessly. Consider the way
he is portrayed in popular culture, whether it is in film or a Halloween costume. He does not
speak or think, he only grunts or growls. Although never described as nimble, Shelley’s
Creature did not have difficulty getting around, whereas today he walks laboriously, hulking
around slowly and dragging his feet, at times with his arms outstretched as if under
hypnotism. Upon his inception, Victor describes him as having yellow skin, while today’s
Creature is generally depicted as having green skin. In observing the combination of these
new depictions of the Creature, it becomes clear that over time he has changed. Yet, his
change is not as gracious as that of the vampire. Although his potential for humanity far
9
outshines the 19th century vampire, because he is a social outcast, the Creature is degraded in
future depictions. Despite his efforts to become part of the world, the world consistently
shuns him—whereas—the vampire, who is socially accepted, has no interest in society other
than exploiting it. Despite his honorable intentions, without property, wealth, or social status,
the Creature is destined for failure in a growing capitalistic society. Regardless of how hard
he tries, instead of evolving into something more like us, the Creature, at the hand of society,
devolves into what the vampire once was—a zombie. However, this transformation doesn’t
even begin for at least another hundred years, and the Creature as a character outside of
Frankenstein is non-existent in the 19th century. It is only in the 20th century when
Frankenstein’s Creature is resurrected from his grave and given a new face. Meanwhile,
during the remainder of the 19th century, the vampire receives ample literary attention.
Therefore, the second chapter traces the literary history and career of the vampire and its
relation to cultural mores in the 19th century while the third explores the vampire’s place in
20th century culture, when the Creature/zombie figure of folkloric origin—repressed in 19th
century depictions—returns in force.
10
CHAPTER 2
THE VAMPIRE OF THE 19TH CENTURY
When the 19th century Romantics retold the folkloric stories of Eastern Europe, they
forever altered the face of the vampire making him an enemy of both the lower class and
women. By removing him from serfdom and placing him among aristocrats in Regency
England, he became the quintessential rags-to-riches story. Whereas vampirism was
previously fated for the allegedly worst members of society who deviated from social norms
such as the insane, the sinful, and the outcasts (Senn 40), it is now reserved for the social
elite. This accelerated promotion in class allowed for a creature that operated on pure id to
now disguise himself amidst the highest ranking socialites, thus introducing the hybrid of
monstrosity and elitism, a combination that remains characteristic of the vampire today. His
newfound aristocratic provenance grants him unmitigated freedom to indulge his primal
desires, principally his sexuality. Whereas the folkloric vampire certainly indulges his
primordial instinct by force, he would not be described as sexual or sensual, two terms
frequently applied to later vampires. The Romantic vampire enjoys seduction and revels in
the conquest of his victims, a pivotal point in the vampire’s evolution. This chapter focuses
on the social advancement of the 19th century vampire and how his endowment of power,
wealth, and rank makes him sexually desirable and grants him allowance for greater sexual
freedom than in his preceding years, while simultaneously acknowledging the roles and
gender politics of women, both as vampires and victims of vampires. Tension over the false
dichotomy of female identity, with women being categorized as either pure or unholy, begins
as early as “Christabel” and eventually “The Vampyre”, but after the popularization of
vampire fiction through the 1845-47 series, Varney the Vampire, it becomes a clear and
recognizable trait of the genre in Dracula.
LORD BYRON, THE QUINTESSENTIAL VAMPIRE
The vampire of the 19th century is unprecedented. He is able to exist within society,
masquerading as human. He has learned social mannerisms, politeness, grace, and etiquette.
11
Yet despite all of its extraordinary new human characteristics, he still embodies the sign of
Other to its human companions and acquaintances. Although he is able to fit into society for
the first time, upon closer inspection he is recognized as something different. He is an
outcast, a rebel, a melancholy tortured soul. These new traits can be traced back to the source
of the newly emerging vampire of the 19th century as we look back at the Byronic hero found
in Byron’s first widely popular work, Childe Harold, in 1812.
Lord Byron’s thinly-veiled autobiographical work, Childe Harold, lays the
groundwork for the emergence of the soon-to-be vampire. Particularly in Cantos 1 and 2,
Byron paints himself (via his protagonist) as larger than life. Harold is “shameless” and
“given revel to ungodly glee” (McGann 14-15). He has grown bored of “earthly things”
(McGann 16) as he has exhausted himself with lechery and sexual escapades. Harold simply
goes through the motions of life; although he is alive, he doesn’t find much that makes life
worth living. He is, metaphorically speaking, the living dead. These descriptions become
synonymous with future vampires as they, too, lead lives of decadence and lechery which
almost always gives them reason for unhappiness and lack of fulfillment throughout their
eternal damnation. Infamous vampires of the 20th century like Angel from Joss Whedon’s
1997-2003 television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Edward Cullen of Stephanie Meyer’s
2005 novel, Twilight, and Louis from Anne Rice’s 1976 novel, Interview with the Vampire,
and future segments of her series, The Vampire Chronicles, all share this fate, a topic that
will be explored more deeply in the subsequent chapter. Both Byron and the literary vampire
crave something beyond what they already have—in Byron’s case, Lady Charlotte Harley or
Ianthe (her fictional characterization in the poem), the person to whom the poem is dedicated,
and in the case of the vampire, his former mortality. They are both driven by the
unattainable, and in pursuing it they wreak havoc on those who stand in their paths—usually
young women.6
Byron’s personal physician and friend, John Polidori, had firsthand insights into
Byron’s proclivities for women and witnessed the way in which he abused his position of
6
The concept of women as vampire victims also becomes popularized in the 19th century. This literal
attack upon women becomes more deeply explored throughout the chapter while interrogating future texts
which are modeled after Byron’s.
12
power as a nobleman. After experiencing his fill of his friend’s exploitations, he produced
“The Vampyre”, the novella responsible for fusing together the many disparate parts of the
vampire myth into a coherent literary genre (Hamilton 138). As Ana María Hernández notes
in her article “Vampires and Vampiresses: A Reading of 62”, by “deal[ing] with the
destructive effects of an uncontrolled boundless egoism” (571) and directly modeling his
antagonist Lord Ruthven (the same name used for another thinly-veiled and negatively
portrayed Byron in Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon) after Lord Byron, Polidori
created the prototype for generations of future vampires to come—a seductive nobleman who
delights both in preying upon the innocence of women and in the misery that consequentially
plagues their male protectors after he defiles their women.
THE LORDLY VAMPIRE
“The Vampyre” is both historically and mythologically significant in that it moves
vampire folklore out of the village and into upper-class society. By giving him high social
rank and the means for international travel, Polidori sets the momentum of the aristocratic
vampire in motion and inspires later vampire nobles such as Sir Francis Varney in Thomas
Peckett Prest’s 1845-47 series, Varney the Vampire, Countess Mircalla Karnstein in J.
Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872, Carmilla, and undoubtedly the most famous vampire to date,
Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s 1897, Dracula, the novel that superseded Polidori’s in
defining lordly vampirism for over the last century (Morrison and Baldick xii).7 But before
examining his successors and understanding the influence his work had upon them, it is
necessary to study the crucial transformations that begin to take place with Polidori’s “The
Vampyre”. Polidori critically changes the mythos when he graduates the vampire from
haunting the decrepit graveyard to strolling along the bustling streets of high-society. Beyond
his material conditions having changed he also evolves from grotesque to dapper and from a
mindless hungry beast into a polite, well-spoken socialite who dazzles and charms. Herein is
born a new hunting ground, not to mention a new hunter, with new prey. Lord Ruthven is a
7
Scholars often contest to whom the work, Varney the Vampire belongs, the main credit usually attributed
to Thomas Peckett Prest or James Malcolm Rymer. Also, some scholars believe that due to the epic length of
the text, various other unknown authors may have contributed to the series as well.
13
threat to polite society and its values of chastity and purity: “…his character was dreadfully
vicious, for that the possession of irresistible powers of seduction, rendered his licentious
habits more dangerous to society” (Morrison and Baldick 7). He enjoys corrupting the core
of these values from the inside out as he purposely seeks to defile the innocent and pure,
most notably women. Lord Ruthven’s victims “should be hurled from the pinnacle of
unsullied virtue, down to the lowest abyss of infamy and degradation” (Morrison and Baldick
7). Not only do his powers of seduction gain him the blood he needs to “live,” but he also
enjoys the game of cat and mouse that goes along with it and the surge of power he
experiences in bringing someone high-class down to the lowest depths of society. Lord
Ruthven, or the vampire itself, has at this point in history become more than the stuff of
nightmares born from the villages of peasants. He sits at the top of the food chain as a
symbol of wealth and nobility, and here begins his reign of class and sexual warfare upon the
less privileged or fortunate. Lord Ruthven’s nobility is worth more than human nobility
because he is literally a superior being to humans; he is a new class or übermensch who treats
those beneath him as mere playthings. The vampire, through his nobility and superhuman
powers, is thereby able to have anything or anyone he desires.
THE RAPE METAPHOR IN VAMPIRE FICTION
Although it is obvious that Lord Ruthven preys upon women in a sexual sense, this
trope of the vampire does not become overt until the next majorly popular piece of vampire
fiction, Varney the Vampire. Not generally praised for its literary quality, the monstrously
lengthy serial (estimated at over 650,000 words) was published in cheap pamphlets known as
“Penny Dreadfuls”, which were inexpensive at a penny per purchase and thus widely
accessible to larger audiences. In James Twitchell’s book The Living Dead: A Study of the
Vampire in Romantic Literature, he writes that “Varney established the vampire solidly in
the culture of the most common reader, where he has still continued to thrive” (124). If
Varney is responsible for popularizing the genre of vampire fiction because of its
accessibility to the middle-class masses, then it is equally accountable for popularizing one of
the most infamous literary tropes in vampire fiction emulated nearly 50 years later in
Dracula and countless other vampire stories today—the vampire attack as metaphor for
male-on-female rape:
14
With a sudden rush that could not be foreseen—with a strange howling cry that
was enough to waken the terror in every breast, the figure seized the long tresses
of her hair, and twining them around his bony hands he held her to the bed. Then
she screamed […] Shriek followed shriek in rapid succession. The bedclothes fell
in a heap by the side of the bed—she was dragged by her long silken hair […]
The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic form with a hideous
satisfaction—horrible profanation, he drags her head to the bed’s edge […] He
forces it back by the long hair still entwined in his grasp. With a plunge, he seizes
her neck in his fang-like teeth—a gush of blood and a hideous sucking noise
follows. (Prest)8
The entwining of Sir Varney’s hands in his victim’s hair implies a direct controlling of her
sexuality: her hair is described as “long” and “silken” and mentioned several times
throughout the passage as a reminder of her fairness and femininity—here— juxtaposed with
a violent and aggressive act committed against her. The link between hair and sexuality is a
common symbolic device, as seen in other well-known 19th century English works such as
Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover”.9 In “Goblin
Market” Laura “clipped a precious golden lock […] then sucked their fruit globes fair or red”
(Abrams 126-128) in a clearly sexual exchange, while in “Porphyria’s Lover” the narrator
focuses several times on her “yellow hair” (Abrams 20) that tumbles freely around her “white
shoulder bare” (Abrams 16) and eventually her hair, as symbol for her sexuality, becomes the
very thing which destroys her when the narrator strangles her. One still might argue that
Varney’s passage contains coincidental symbolism between hair and female sexuality, but
when looking at the description of “the bedclothes […] in a heap by the side of the bed”, it
might be hard to defend why Varney would need to disrobe the bed of his victim before
dining upon her. The imagery of the sheets and blankets upon the floor suggest the need to
clear the bed of any obstacles that might interfere with his conquest of her. The use of the
word “bedclothes” may also imply the nightgown of his victim, that which raises an entirely
new question: why would Varney need to unclothe his victim before sucking her blood? He
also takes delight in the victimization of the woman, just as Lord Ruthven is entertained by
defiling innocence. As Judith E. Johnson notes in her article, “Women and Vampires:
8
9
There are no page numbers in the serial, only chapters.
Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, also is known for his artwork in which women are depicted with
long luxuriant hair. In addition to this familial connection, Christina Rossetti is also the niece of John Polidori.
15
Nightmare or Utopia”, “He wakes her in order to enjoy her screams while he yanks her about
by the hair in an exaggerated, stereotypical cave-man style violation” (74) as his eyes run
“over than angelic form with a hideous satisfaction” (Prest). And perhaps the most forward
language of all that depicts rape is the “plunge” of his fangs followed by “a gush of blood”;
the loss of a girl’s maidenhead, followed by “sucking noise”, a parallel to the erotic sucking
heard in Rossetti’s Goblin Market: “She sucked and sucked and sucked the more / Fruits
which that unknown orchard bore; / She sucked until her lips were sore” (Abrams 134-136).
David Morrill explains the correlation between Rossetti’s vampiric imagery and her Uncle
John Polidori’s work, “The Vampyre”: “The implications of pleasure, pain, sucking, and
enervation suggest some sort of vampirism, however muted and altered, and Polidori’s work
would have given Christina Rossetti free and unmistakable access to the psychodynamics of
the myth” (2). Rossetti also perpetuates the vampiric trope of male-on-female rape when the
goblins violate Laura by both physically harming her and forcing sexually symbolic foreign
objects into her mouth. The goblins:
Elbowed and jostled her
Clawed with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,
Twitched her hair out by the roots,
Stamped upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat. (Abrams 400-407)
This now commonly critiqued trope of male-on-female rape, as well as other now-common
vampire tropes in contemporary vampire tales, was popularized by Varney and its mass
following. Vampire scholar, James B. Twitchell argues:
One cannot dismiss Varney, especially because of its clear and continuing impact
on the vampire stories of the midcentury, to say nothing of our own cultural
resurrections of the vampire. The initiation of the heroine through sex, the
vampire’s middle-European background, the quasi-medical scientific
explanations, the midnight vigils, the mob scene (which became so stylized in
James Whale’s horror films at Universal Studios), the hunt and the chase, all these
and more are in Varney. They have all become clichés today, not because we have
sifted through the story to find the moments of impact, but rather because our
great-grandparents did. In fact, much of the credit we give Bram Stoker really
belongs to the authors of Varney. (124)
16
Often overlooked because of its poor literary quality, Varney does not receive the amount of
attention warranted in literary criticism concerned with the vampire fiction genre. Although
the story is at times irregular, haphazardly written, and lacking depth, it is important because
its wide contemporary popularity makes it responsible for diverse changes in the face of the
vampire in fiction. Though still a nobleman, Varney, the first vampire available to the
masses, is written as an ambassador of the larger cultural mores of the time, rapidly
approaching Victorianism, and the vampire’s sensuality becomes more about male assault
and less about female sexuality, as it was in Coleridge’s earlier work “Christabel”.
GENDER POLITICS AND THE FEMALE VAMPIRE
Carmilla, the novel based upon “Christabel”, despite being published after Varney, is
far ahead of its time: it depicts an overt sexual relationship between the first female vampire
in fiction, Carmilla, and her female victim/lover, Laura. In addition to the progressive themes
of bringing a female vampire into the genre and using solely female characters as the focal
points for the story, Anne Williams, editor of Three Vampire Tales, claims:
Carmilla (1872) is the most significant of the Victorian vampire tales because it
links Romantic vampires and their late-Victorian ‘grandchild,’ Dracula. Like
Coleridge’s poem, “Christabel”, which LeFanu had read and admired, Carmilla
concerns the introduction of a female vampire into the household of a widowed
father (whose name we never learn) and his motherless daughter Laura. (11)
The presence of the female vampire in this story, and in its spiritual forebear, Coleridge’s
“Christabel,” makes the absence of female agency in Stoker all the more remarkable: clearly,
by Dracula’s time, it is possible to imagine both a female vampire and a vampire story in
which demonstrate agency.
In addition to influencing LeFanu and Stoker, Coleridge’s “Christabel” is an
important component in the development of the vampire myth in literature. Although
composed in 1797, it was not published until 1816—at Byron’s insistence, according to
Coleridge. Also at Byron’s request, the Romantic poet party of 1816 at Villa Diodati amused
themselves by reading Gothic novels as well as Coleridge’s poem, “Christabel” and only
after exhausting the entertainments of the poem did Byron propose the ghost story
competition (Williams 7). “Christabel”, an undeniable influence upon the works created that
evening, echoes similar themes to those of Mary Shelley. Both are interested in gender
17
politics and equality. Shelley, the renowned female Romantic, was concerned with such
social issues partially due to the influence of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the
1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Other than creating a monster that represents
the disenfranchised class, Shelley also uses him to demonstrate the costly price of oppressing
women—every woman who comes in contact with his prideful, selfish creator dies. As the
daughter of the woman who composed the first feminist text, while influenced by the
progressive views of women in Coleridge’s work, Shelley and her peers explore more
progressive depictions of women in the Romantic age.
In “Christabel”, the first female vampire, Geraldine, is a brand new take on viewing
the female as both monstrous and alluring. Geraldine is a direct representation of sin as she is
described with serpent-like features and makes hissing noises as she “[draws] in her breath
with a hissing sound” (Coleridge 447) and looks out with “those shrunken serpent eyes”
(Coleridge 591), both allusions to the biblical serpent that represents sin. Yet upon her first
introduction, she is described as a lovely vision in white with jewels in her hair and a soft,
sweet voice. Although women have been cast in a role of sin many times before (most
notably in the Bible’s account of the Garden of Eden, what makes Geraldine more
threatening than usual is not just that she tempts others into sin, but specifically that she
tempts another woman into sin and thus defiles her innocence. Whereas men are typically
accepted as being those who eventually take a woman’s innocence, and society has no
qualms with this, Geraldine steps into this prescribed male role, thus stripping power and
privilege from them. She feminizes men and takes from them what they conceive of their
right—sexual access to a woman’s body—and therefore becomes demonized for being a
woman who behaves in the same way a man might. When the story is retold much later at the
outset of the Victorian era, this possibility of female sexual empowerment is quickly stifled, a
good reason why many contemporary readers are unfamiliar with LeFanu’s work. Christabel,
on the other hand, represents all that is pure and holy. Her name is an overt Christian
hybridization of the biblical characters Christ and Abel, both of whom are figures of purity
who inevitably are forced to suffer for their goodness. Although the poem exhibits mutual
attraction and fascination, as opposed to the rape scenes described in other vampire literature,
“Christabel” juxtaposes sin and evil against virtue and innocence by casting each extreme
respectively on Geraldine and Christabel, and in doing so reveals that all that is both pure
18
and sinful originates from women and thus that all moral responsibility must lie upon
women. The choice to make all characters in these stories women is no oversight. Arthur H.
Nethercot writes, “Geraldine and Carmilla are female vampires; and female vampires are
comparatively rare, at least in the earlier period of vampirology. More than this, the main
victims, Christabel and Laura, are women; and such restriction of sex—women to women—
is even rarer” (32). Coleridge places women in a great position of power by labeling them as
binary extremes within a moral framework which in turn leaves no place of worth for men.
In addition to the threat that a woman can defile another woman’s purity, another threat
present in both stories is that of women in positions of socio-political power. Geraldine’s
father is a Lord, and it is therefore inferred that she, too, is of nobility. She introduces herself,
“My sire is of a noble line, / And my name is Geraldine” (Coleridge 77-78). When the story
is essentially retold in LeFanu’s novella, Carmilla is not just a young maiden in distress but
also a powerful Countess hailing from a “family [that] was very ancient and noble” (LeFanu
30). Coupled with her powers of temptation and sin, arguably female traits, the new female
vampire also possesses the power of the noble elite and thus becomes a larger threat than her
male vampire predecessors. This threat to male patriarchy is further exposed in Carmilla
because of the work’s length and development of ideas in relation to the much shorter poem,
“Christabel”. A long courtship and intimate portrayal of Laura's and Carmilla's relationship
is shown throughout the novella. Whereas Geraldine and Christabel are thrown into a
seemingly torrid encounter during the first night of their acquaintance, Laura and Carmilla’s
relationship grows over many years. Within a few hours of meeting one another, after
drinking wine, Christabel lays upon her bed in a relaxed pose, propped up by her elbow and
watches Geraldine sensually undress herself:
Beneath the lamp the lady bowed
And slowly rolled her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud,
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom and half her side—
A sight to dream of, not to tell! (Coleridge 239-247)
19
The unbridled display of passion between the two women is found in Geraldine's languid eye
rolling, the sucking in of her breath while shuddering, and of course by disrobing before her
newfound acquaintance, Christabel. The stripping of the bedclothes, although this time
sensual and welcomed instead of a forceful violation, echoes the scene in which Varney, too,
removes the “bedclothes” of his victim prior to ravishing her. Yet this time, the vampiress
Geraldine removes her own clothing before Christabel’s eyes and lures her with sensuality
rather than imposing her sexuality upon her as Varney does to his victim. The enjoyment of
the encounter is mutual as it is written that the sight of her nudity, only visible to Christabel
is “a sight to dream of, not to tell” (Coleridge 247). Assuming this is Christabel's perception
of the situation, being that she is the only person available to react to the display of
Geraldine's body, it means her response is conflicted. While she sees Geraldine's nudity as
something dream-worthy, it is also perceived as something she must never divulge to
anyone—not the experience she witnesses nor her pleasurable reaction to it. Christabel fears
her awakening sensuality because it threatens her sexual innocence while concurrently
stirring her sexual desire for another woman.
Despite the prudish patriarchal climate in late19th century mainstream English
society, under the influence of Coleridge, LeFanu shifts the typical vampire novel from a
dominating, heterosexual, male-centered point of view and revolutionizes the traditional
vampire story. Carmilla gives voices to women, one of whom is an all-powerful vampire.
Although while initiated by metaphorical rape, which Laura seems to enjoy, their relationship
is free of male dominance and concentrated on female desire. Prior to Carmila the sensuality
of the vampire solely resided in his skills of seduction, but she is the first vampire to make
the bite itself overtly sexual and pleasurable to her victim—a similar reaction of pleasure in
conjunction with violation is found in Laura of Rosettti’s “Goblin Market”. Carmilla begins
the affair by forcing herself on Laura when she is a small child. She metaphorically rapes her
by sneaking into her room at night, like a succubus, and as Laura accounts, “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. I was wakened by a sensation as if
two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried out loudly”
(LeFanu 8). The experience, although an obvious euphemism for rape like most vampire
attacks, is one that Laura recalls fondly. It is a memory she calls upon year after year until
20
Carmilla eventually comes to visit her once more, as a young adult. Here is not the vicious
attack of Varney but a memory of delight which she invokes repeatedly throughout the novel.
Then, of course, that is disrupted by the penetration into her breast. Although some folkloric
vampires have been known to feed upon the chest, the deliberate word choice of “breast”
creates a sexual implication that is not present in prior vampire literature. Never before has a
vampire feeding taken place in such an intimate and sexualized part of the female body. But
much like the feeding of the vampire, the sucking of fruits found within “Goblin Market”
specifically mirrors the female sexual relationship of Carmilla and Laura when sisters Lizzie
and Laura enjoy the erotic fruits together.10 Lizzie cries to Laura:
Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Nevermind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura make much of me. (Abrams 464-472)
Although Lizzie and Laura are sisters who overcome the goblins together, they find
redemption for their sexual sins in one another’s love. While continuing to “suck juices”
from one another, Rossetti perpetuates the eroticization of the poem by retracting the power
of sexuality from the men and placing it within the hands of the women. Between Laura and
Lizzie, there is no forced penetration of objects into their mouths, as with the goblins, only
mutual consenting love. Carmilla, however, forces her fangs inside of Laura’s body and
stands in accordance with a more phallic style of rape.
Whereas Laura and Lizzie feel unabashed love for one another, Laura’s feelings
towards Carmilla are conflicted. She describes feeling “drawn towards her but there was also
something of a repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction
immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indescribably
engaging” (LeFanu 27). Once again, the motif of the female vampire being both beautiful
and hideous rears its head but despite the nagging unease in Laura’s stomach she gives
10
It is interesting that the character name “Laura” appears in both texts.
21
herself over to the mystical allure of Carmilla. Finally, in one of the most overtly sensual
scenes that depicts their fully blossomed romance, Laura recalls:
…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 love; 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. (LeFanu 32)
This slow building of desire and friendship between the women, which literally takes years,
demonstrates a more realistic view into their relationship not only as lovers but as individuals
as well. Instead of characterizing each woman as the embodiment of either good or evil, they
are written as whole characters, each driven by their own personalities and desires. Despite
the immense growth LeFanu gives these characters, they are still subject to the rules of the
patriarchy. For engaging in a sexual relationship, one that completely omits men, they are
both punished for their sins.11 Stoker responds to this new breed of vampire by painting
Dracula as the only male and central vampire while four of the five women are vampires
subordinate to him: eroticized monsters solely driven by their lust for blood. Daniel Farson
points out that Stoker’s personal life may have led to a negative view of women. He writes,
“When his wife’s frigidity drove him to other women…Bram’s writing showed signs of guilt
and sexual frustration…He probably caught syphilis around the turn of the century, possibly
as early as the year of Dracula, 1897” (Farson 234). By feeling forced to indulge in improper
sexual relationships outside of his marriage during a chaste Victorian era, it is likely that
Stoker resented women because of his wife’s rejection and the illness, and eventual death,
brought upon him by a sexually transmitted disease. Filled with resentment for women, by
eventually omitting the echo of Carmilla in the deleted chapter of Dracula, entitled
“Dracula’s Guest”, and also by recasting the female vampire as subordinate to her male
11
Carmilla is sentenced to a beheading and Laura is haunted by the memory of her.
22
counterpart and by stripping her of her nobility, keeping her sinful sexuality as her sole
defining trait, he reduces her to a pittance of her former self.12
THE DICHOTOMY OF WOMEN IN DRACULA
Bram Stoker’s Dracula—arguably the best known vampire novel to date—appears in
the late 19th century. This widely-read and canonized work is still looked to as a source of
sorts for our mainstream legends regarding vampires. Once Stoker remolded the vampire, he
relegated women to powerless victimhood and created the mold for future vampires—rulingclass monsters who use their power not only to oppress the lower classes but also to oppress
women. After he became known as the author who “introduced” the vampire to literary
fiction, some began to criticize Stoker’s capacities of imagination and innovation. In a
negative criticism by A. N. Wilson, who wrote the introduction of the 1983 reissue of
Dracula published by Oxford University Press, he claims:
Stoker was obviously well-enough versed in the better-known sensationalist
vampire literature—Varney the Vampire, Carmilla and so on. It seems that he did
some—but very little—research for his fantasy and that, like Jonathan Harker, he
‘had visited the British Museum, and made a search among the books and maps in
the Library regarding Transylvania’…[Stoker’s] imagination was not a uniquely
original one. Vampires from Varney and LeFanu; a setting and a personage
hastily ‘got up’ from a few hours in the British Museum. What is there left to say
of Bram Stoker’s originality or achievement? (43)
Wilson makes his opinion clear regarding the ineptitude of Stoker’s scholarship and
originality. Perhaps his criticism is a bit harsh as, although Stoker is clearly influenced by
former works, it would be disingenuous to say that any author is not, at some point and by
some measure, inspired by another. To what extent Stoker was “lazy” about his research is
questionable, too. This is, after all, a work of fiction—fantasy no less—which Wilson is
discussing. Nevertheless, he accurately points out that Stoker is not alone in constructing the
new image of the literary vampire.
Yet, what is worthy of even more criticism is Stoker’s omission of “Dracula’s Guest”.
This title, published as a short story two years after Stoker’s death by permission of his wife,
Florence Stoker, appears to belong to the original Dracula manuscript. Leslie S. Klinger, a
12
“Dracula’s Guest” is discussed at length in the next subsection.
23
scholar who worked directly with Stoker’s original manuscript, in his 2008 book, The New
Annotated Dracula, says the following regarding its connection to the novel:
And so what may we make of ["Dracula's Guest"]? Without the name "Dracula"
appearing in the title and [Dracula's] message [sent to the narrator], there would
be very little to connect this traveler's tale with [the novel Dracula]. The style is
completely different; the narrator shares few characteristics with Jonathan Harker;
and the action somehow fails to connect the story set forth in [Dracula]. However,
there are numerous references in the [Dracula] Manuscript to some version of the
tale eventually published as "Dracula's Guest." Most likely, a different draft —
one that identified the narrator as Harker — was included in ... an early version of
[the Dracula manuscript]. It may be that Stoker's publisher requested that the book
be shortened, or the publisher (or Stoker) may have felt that the "stylistic" aspects
of the narrative were more important than its veracity. For whatever reason, the
material was excised, and only later did Stoker return to the material and work it
into its published form. (515)
Yet this deleted ten page chapter is hardly lengthy in comparison to many others: a reader is
left pondering why this particular one was chosen for removal. While Stoker may have been
initially influenced by Carmilla, the novel is far too sexually liberated and progressive
regarding gender politics for mainstream Victorian values, and it is likely that his brief
allusion to the Countess Mircalla in “Dracula’s Guest” conflicted with his (and/or perhaps his
editor’s) overall rudimentary, dichotomous view of women and therefore becomes a very
likely reason as to why it was removed. Concurrently with the removal of this chapter came
the removal of the revolutionary character Carmilla: a female, noble vampire sexually
interested in women. Stoker, upon striking her from his novel, effectively strikes her from
history and devolves the vampire story back to its male-dominated foundation, a genre in
which men decide the fates of women and extort and exploit their sexuality for their own
pleasure.
The women in Dracula differ from the complex and sexually liberated women of
Carmilla by demonstrating a simplistic and shallow paradoxical nature: they are either
visions of Victorian purity and chastity or sexually promiscuous beasts. After vampire
depictions move away from the sexual liberation bestowed upon them by the Romantics,
Stoker’s Victorian prudery molds his female characters into overly simplified women who
lack complexity and realism. There is, however, one female character of Stoker’s that is not
depicted as either of these shallow false dichotomies. In “Dracula's Guest”, an unnamed
wanderer, probably Jonathan, encounters a female vampire while on his way to the Count's
24
castle. The narrator wanders into a haunted graveyard and happens upon a white marble
sepulcher flooded in moonlight which reads:
COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ
IN STYRIA
SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH
1801. (LeFanu 62)
The parallel between the deceased in “Dracula’s Guest” and the vampire heroine, Carmilla, is
no coincidence. Carmilla opens with, “In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent
people...” (LeFanu 5). Styria is also echoed upon the Countesses' tombstone. This is now the
third time in literature that vampires are represented as members of the noble class, the first
two being in Polidori's “The Vampyre” and again thereafter in LeFanu's Carmilla. But
furthermore, what links Dracula and Carmilla even more intensely through this small epitaph
is the still unique character of a vampire noble, and even rarer, one who is a woman.
Although Carmilla is followed more intimately and for a longer duration throughout
the novel, and we therefore have a better understanding of her political, social, economic, and
persuasive powers than the undead Countess Dolingen, the latter's short story reveals her
own strength and power. The elusive Countess Dolingen is more or less an implicit character
as the connection between herself and the wolf, which appears at the end of the chapter, is
not overtly expressed. Yet, because of Dracula's ability to shift into animal forms, one being
a wolf, there is a connection between the undead countess and the animal.
Shortly after reading the tomb marker, Jonathan finds a warning atop of the sepulcher
which reads, “The dead travel fast” (Stoker 62), a phrase that resounds in Francis Ford
Coppola’s 1992 film, Dracula. Seeking refuge from a storm in the ominous Countess’ tomb,
two flashes of lightning briefly illuminate the darkness. The first exposes “a beautiful
woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier” (Stoker 62), and the
second flash “seemed to strike through to the earth, blasting and crumbling the marble, as in
a burst of flame. [Thereafter] The dead woman rose for a moment of agony, while she was
lapped in the flame, and her bitter scream of pain was drowned in the thundercrash” (Stoker
63). The last thing he hears before losing consciousness is her scream mingled “with the
howling of the wolves” (Stoker 63). Although it is never stated who this woman is, it is
probable that this is the Countess Dolingen. She is depicted as both beautiful and terrifying,
both displays of power, and her cries or screams are linked with the cries of the wolves. Once
25
Jonathan regains consciousness he is unable to move or feel much other than what he
describes as “an icy feeling at the back of my neck and all the way down my spine […] but
there was in my breast a sense of warmth which was, by comparison, delicious. It was a
nightmare—a physical nightmare, if one may use such an expression; for some heavy weight
on my chest made it difficult for me to breathe” (Stoker 63). The weight described, in the
context of a nightmare, resembles the legend of the succubus haunting her male victims in
the middle of their slumber as she was said to perch upon their chests and subsequently cause
difficulty breathing. On the other hand, as the succubus legend goes, he experiences pleasure
from the encounter—the only pleasure throughout his entire body that is simultaneously
wracked by cold, numbness, and fear. However, Jonathan does not encounter the
aforementioned beauty in the tomb sitting atop him, but instead finds a wolf. With something
lapping at his throat, the area at which vampires now feed, Jonathan sees above him “two
great flaming eyes of a gigantic wolf […] its sharp white teeth gleamed in the gaping red
mouth” (Stoker 63). The fixation on the red mouth and gleaming teeth is seen over and again
throughout Dracula when any of the female vampires or Dracula are physically described. In
Dracula, when Jonathan first sees the Weird Sisters, he describes their beauty and lastly
focuses on their mouths: “All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the
ruby of their full lips” (Stoker 43). Another interesting parallel between Jonathan’s encounter
with the wolf and his encounter with the Weird Sisters occurs in this same part of the novel.
He is conflicted by the opposing feelings he experiences by being in their presence. He says,
“They made me feel an uneasy mix of emotions. They were lovely, and yet I felt a kind of
deadly fear” (Stoker 43). Similar to his confused bodily sensations while the wolf is licking
his neck, Jonathan is torn between sensuality and the fear of sensuality, explicitly the
sensuality of an aggressive woman.
Before Carmilla, fiction had not yet been introduced to the female vampire and since
Stoker was influenced by LeFanu's work, he carries on this new character-type in the omitted
chapter. Yet, regardless of Stoker's admiration of LeFanu's work, and his homage to it in
“Dracula's Guest”, that chapter which was heavily based around such a progressive vampire
was removed. In Our Vampires, Ourselves, Nina Auerbach argues that, “...Stoker's most
significant revision excised from his manuscript the shadow of Carmilla and everything she
represented” (66). While Auerbach, too, acknowledges the importance of the removal of this
26
chapter, she does not ask why; the answer simply enough more than likely lies within the
changing literary values from the Romantic period to Victorianism. Particularly Shelley’s
and Coleridge’s works, and their influence upon their peers, lent to more progressive
depictions of the Romantic age which were then marshaled by a more conservative Victorian
morality. LeFanu’s work, Carmilla, was not published until 1872, a time long after
Romanticism, and is a direct descendent of its Romantic predecessor, “Christabel”. However,
despite the omitted chapter and reference to Carmilla in “Dracula’s Guest”, the rest of
Dracula depicts the female vampire in a completely new way, discarding all potential of
what she might have been. Whereas Carmilla is an independent, strong female character who
bows to no man and is completely autonomous, Stoker’s Weird Sisters are submissive to the
patriarchal Count Dracula. He cares for them by giving them shelter and provides them
babies on which to feed but in return they must obey him completely. Not only does Stoker
reinforce patriarchal dominance over the Weird Sisters, he removes identity and character
complexity from his female vampire characters as well. The Weird Sisters have no names nor
do they display any real depth of character. They essentially are creatures of pure sexuality,
an unfavorable trait in Victorian women yet one that is often found in Victorian literary
depictions of women in a character type known as the “Madwoman in the Attic”. This
concept is born from “patriarchal culture that impose[s] Otherness on its women by forcing
them the twin myths of angel and monster” (Auerbach, “Review of the Madwoman” 505).
Consider Bertha of Jane Eyre, a madwoman locked away in the attic because “her excesses
had prematurely developed the germs of insanity” (Bronte 261), the “excesses” being her
numerous infidelities against her husband. Meanwhile, Jane is idealized as the perfect
woman, such as Mina. Bertha is even compared, by Jane, to a “vampyre” (Bronte 242). Like
Stoker’s focus on the vampire’s mouth, Jane too says “the lips were swelled and dark”
(Bronte 242) while also invoking demonic imagery while describing her wild red eyes—all
indications of her sexual promiscuity. Stoker introduces a number of significant changes to
the vampire in Dracula, such as ties to Christianity and xenophobia, but perhaps one of the
heaviest focuses of the novel is Victorian prudery and how it casts women in extreme binary
roles. Dracula is the novel many look upon to inform their present understanding of the
contemporary vampire, but preceding vampire fiction not only influenced Stoker and aided
27
him in laying the groundwork for his novel, but also reveals far more about the vampire’s
identity.
Dracula, a novel rife with social commentary regarding chaste Victorian values,
paints women in one of two ways: The Madonna or the Whore. Mina is the epitome of a
Victorian lady, so much so that Jonathan fails to write much on her during the first few
chapters of the book and instead focuses more on his lurid encounter with The Weird Sisters.
Although his first mention of Mina, his wife-to-be, occurs on the first page, it is in a note
reminding himself to get the recipe of a chicken dish he wants her to learn for him. Instead of
recalling his fiancée romantically or missing her, he thinks of her in terms of domestic
servitude. Because Mina is the archetypal figure of chastity, her own husband not even
sexually interested in her, she is later able to fight off the vampire infection and maintain
control of her body thus ridding herself of the disease. But Lucy on the other hand is wanton
and demonstrates this when she inquires, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as
many as want her, and save all this trouble?” (Stoker 77), thus condemning herself to
monstrosity. Lucy is far too free-spirited in her views regarding sexuality and speaks of the
possibilities of a woman taking multiple men to her wedding bed, an unseemly and
unforgiveable trait in a woman belonging to prudish Victorian society.13 Even after she is
infected by the disease of the blood, a recurring euphemism for being unclean or tainted by
sexual perversion, the men try to save her by multiple blood transfusions; this scene sprawls
over thirty-three pages during which four men, Arthur, John, Professor Van Helsing, and
Quincy all donate their blood to try and save Lucy. The literal transmission of fluids from
several men into one woman becomes a section of transfixion for Stoker. The men, who all
share affection for her, are in competition to try and save her with their blood and say things
like, “It is a strange and wonderful feeling for a man to watch his own lifeblood fill the veins
of the woman he loves” (Stoker 159). Here John Seward, an admirer of Lucy who cannot
have her, gloats over the fusing of his body with Lucy’s. The blatant metaphor that John has
entered Lucy’s body makes him feel “proud to see a faint tinge of color steal back into the
pale cheeks and lips (Stoker 159), an allusion to the post-orgasmic flush of the face. The
13
Or even now.
28
symbolism of the scene is not lost upon Van Helsing when he quietly whispers to John as he
departs, “Tell Arthur nothing of this. It would frighten him and make him jealous as well. So
not a word!” (Stoker 159). Arthur’s fiancée’s life is slipping from her and the concern is that
he will be jealous if another man has given her his blood. The men, viewing Lucy as a sexual
object, all scramble to donate their fluids and are even competitive about being the last to
enter her. Even they are shocked at how much her body has been invaded when Seward
exclaims, “You’re telling me that in ten days, that poor pretty creature has had the blood of
four men put into her veins?” (Stoker 183). Of course, Lucy cannot be saved. She is, in the
words of Mina regarding her own disease of the blood and body, “Unclean! [With] polluted
flesh!” (Stoker 332). Whereas the human women of Dracula struggle to adhere to the strict
rules of behavior society assigns to them, the other females in the novel are vampires, a
creature which Lucy eventually becomes, and they are the representation of women gone
astray, lacking chastity and prescriptivism to their proper societal roles.
Female vampires have lost their upper hand in Dracula. They are second-class
citizens, stripped of their noble lineage, and are portrayed as women who have fallen from
grace and are subject to the rules of men. Lucy eventually must be destroyed by her own
fiancée and other male protectors for trying to find her own way in the world after
discovering her sexuality and primal self, and the Weird Sisters are held in subjugation by
their master, Dracula. He provides them with housing and food, albeit on his terms. When the
sisters try to feed upon Jonathan, Dracula throws a fit and snaps, “How dare you touch him,
any of you? How dare you look on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This
man belongs to me!” (Stoker 45). Dracula demonstrates ownership over Jonathan and his
female cohorts fall back in submission while whining, “You yourself never loved! You never
love!” (Stoker 45). Although Dracula responds that he has in fact loved long ago, he does not
show the Sisters love now. Love amounts to mutual respect, equality, and sharing, all of
which Dracula refuses his companions. He is far more interested in sexual conquest and
possession of others. This is apparent when he seduces Mina and tells her of his intent:
“While [the men] were out playing detective, I was taking their best beloved one and making
her flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. Later you will become my companion and my
helper. […] You will come whenever I want you. When I say ‘Come!’ you will cross land or
sea to do whatever I say” (Stoker 326). Dracula’s conquests are not simply sexual: he also
29
delights in stealing away the women of other men, a trope discussed earlier in Polidori’s
“The Vampyre”. The women in this novel are mere pawns or trophies, which the men use to
boost their own egos and inflate their male power. Consequently most of the women die
because of the deadly game into which they have been forced.
One of the most widely discussed and blatant metaphors in the novel is the female
vampire as the woman devoid of virtue. Stripped of her previous nobility, she is reduced to
the wanton desires of a commoner who lacks poise and restraint. The Weird Sisters, the
antithesis of Mina, are sensual, seductive, coy, mysterious, and overtly lascivious. They are
driven by their passions and primal urges to both engage in sexual behavior and consume
flesh. In Jonathan’s encounter with them, he is “inflamed by a sense of delightful
anticipation” (Stoker 44) while he feels the breath of one of the vampires upon himself. He
describes in great detail the moving of their lips and tongue over his neck as one in particular
“sank to her knees, and bent over [him]”, a very clear image of oral sex. Jonathan describes
the experience as “both thrilling and repulsive” (Stoker 44) and compares the licking of her
lips to that of an animal. Laura, in Carmilla, experiences this same inner-conflict during her
interactions with Carmilla. She says, “I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that
was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. […] I was
conscious of a love growing into admiration, and also of abhorrence. I know this is a
paradox, but I can make no other attempt to explain the feeling” (LeFanu 32). Jonathan, like
Laura, is both repelled and attracted by the arrant sexuality of vampire women worshipping
and pleasuring him because he is both human and Victorian. Although the novel focuses on
the chaste feminine ideal, it focuses just as heavily on female sexuality. Jonathan wants both
aspects but cannot reconcile the two in the same woman, and therefore women who possess
such control over their own bodies and choose to celebrate their sexuality are compared to
animals and, essentially, monsters.
Stoker’s novel brings an entirely new dimension to vampire lore. In addition to
characterizing female vampires as lowly beasts, he also introduces several new myths that are
commonly referenced today: vampires morphing into animals such as wolves and bats, the
physiological need to sleep in dirt or coffins, dematerializing into mist, fear of the cross, and
30
the fear of the vampire as Other.14 One other important new trope occurs in Stoker’s novel—
the vampire is no longer a solitary creature. Now a pack animal, the vampire needs not only
blood to feed upon or humans to conquer but he needs a companion, or sometimes several. It
is this change, this need for interpersonal connection which is analogous to Shelley’s
Creature, that ultimately leads to some of the most well-known works of the 20th century
which alter the face of the vampire into something more human than ever seen before.
14
Many of these new tropes are the result of xenophobia and orientalism at its peak in that it mystifies and
condemns the practices and beliefs of Eastern Europeans. Ultimately, this story is about the fear of the foreigner
taking British women for his own and sullying them with his uncouth and horrific ways.
31
CHAPTER 3
CONTEMPORARY DEPICTIONS OF THE
UNDEAD IN POPULAR CULTURE
In 1968, George Romero gave the world Night of the Living Dead, the cult classic
zombie movie that kicked off a zombie craze which would continue for decades. Popular
legend regards it as the first, or most relevant, zombie flick, as it sets the mark for others to
follow. It is therefore a pivotal work in this regard, but this discourse leads one to the
possible misconception that pop culture embraced the zombie over night. In this chapter, the
development both of zombies and their vampire brethren as permanent fixtures in pop culture
will be assessed, including how and when the two mythologies overlap. The zombie and the
vampire are forever locked in a deathly embrace, for they are one and the same; they ebb and
flow together and away from one another, borrowing from and lending to each other's stories.
The 1816 ghost story competition at Lord Byron's estate in Geneva is one of the most pivotal
nights in their respective histories; two myths of the undead were told, one that continues to
evolve into the vampire we know today, and the other that was destined to devolve into what
we now recognize in pop culture as the zombie. Although at first glance, it might be hard to
recognize Frankenstein's creature as a prototype for the modern zombie, there are a variety of
connections which link the two, their similar origin stories, overall appearances, and socioeconomic backgrounds. For now, we will begin with the reemergence of the zombie, a figure
seemingly lost over the past several hundred years.
A HISTORY OF THE ZOMBIE THROUGHOUT DIFFERENT
CULTURES
The concept of the animated dead or revenant is by no means new. As argued in
chapter one, the original vampires of folklore are essentially zombies, though they were not
known by that name. If our earliest ghouls that fed upon humans were known as vampires,
how did the shift (or the split, rather) from vampire to zombie occur? Just as an ancient
vampire prototype is found in ancient folklore, the same is true for zombies—to an extent.
32
Early Jews told stories of the “golem.” In his article “Have I Got a Monster for You,” Mikel
J. Koven explains that:
The basic outline of the story concerns a wise and righteous Jewish scholar who,
in contemplating God's creation of life, endeavors to create life himself. He
fashions a man out of mud or clay, and brings it to life by inserting the ShemHamforesh (the secret name of God) written on a piece of paper (variants include
insertion into the ear, mouth, or into an amulet hanging around the golem’s
neck)…(218)
This animation of the un-living into the living resonates with similarity next to the zombie
myth but differs in the sense that zombies aren't formations of clay upon which life is
bestowed by holy source; instead, they are the undead, something distinctly apart from unliving, which means, zombies are born out of their own human deaths. As Koven points out
in his paper by quoting Aharon Nissan Vraday, “A golem must be formed by ‘pure’ soil, by
this I mean according to the concept of purity in the Jewish tradition. According to the
traditional Jewish worldview, death is the negation of life, life being a state where goodness
can be done on earth, purity is related to an object's proximity to life. Therefore, a corpse and
a cemetery are conceptually related to impurity” (223-224). Despite its pure origins and
connection to holiness, the longer a golem lives the more likely it is to break free from its
creator’s control and run amok causing mayhem for the true living, similarly to
Frankenstein’s Creature.
Whereas the Golem indicates the ancient existence of zombie-type creatures, the
Haitian zombie is a far more direct progenitor of the Creature, and one that identifies key
features in the modern version. The very real Haitian religion Voudon has long been a
subject of American fascination with the mystical. Although the word “zombie” is Haitian in
origin, the modern American conception of the zombie has mutated so far from the Haitian
revenant that the use of the word “zombie” to describe it now seems ironically inappropriate.
While a discussion of the Voudon zombie’s complex role in Haitian belief structures is
beyond the scope of this thesis, American pop-culture’s simplified perception of “voodoo”
includes this idea of the zombie. The Jewish golem, though it is conceptually connected to
righteousness, still shares similarities with the “voodoo” zombie: a corpse raised from the
dead, also created by religion. Though both are resurrected by magical practices, the voodoo
zombie is more closely related to the contemporary zombie than its distant relative, the
33
golem, in that it is a corpse. Through magic, voodoo zombies are controlled and made to
fulfill their master's desires through an unconscious, hypnotic haze. They are devoid of
autonomy, will, or self-awareness and are only driven by the need to comply with the orders
given by their master, or magician. It is this type of zombie that is first introduced into
mainstream American culture by Universal's 1932 horror film, White Zombie.
THE REEMERGENCE OF THE ZOMBIE AND THE VAMPIRE
TH
IN EARLY 20 CENTURY FILM
Like their twin births in 1816, the vampire and the Creature are reborn together in
1931 with the simultaneous release of Dracula and Frankenstein from Universal Pictures. As
Gregory Waller points out:
Ever since Universal Films released both Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, then
re-released the two movies as a double feature, and brought Count Dracula,
Frankenstein's creature, and other monsters together in films like House of
Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), the story of Frankenstein and
his creation has remained an essential comparison point for the vampire story. (9)
However, the zombie also enters the stage in Universal’s 1932 release, White Zombie. This
new story never quite reaches the popularity of Dracula and Frankenstein but because of its
proximity to them it becomes intertwined with them and influences their trajectory here on
out—one example being that it is the basis of the conflation between the Creature and the
zombie.15
Released within a year of one another, Dracula and White Zombie both feature Bela
Lugosi in the role of antagonist, leading to several parallels between them. In what is often
regarded by film critics as the first full length zombie film, a young, married American
couple, Madeline and Neil, take a holiday to Haiti. While most of the residents of the town in
which they stay are Haitian natives, the master of the mansion on the plantation in which
they reside is an affluent white man. Coveting Neil’s wife, he has the local voodoo priest,
Murder Legendre, played by Bela Lugosi, turn her into a zombie so that he may have her.
The parallel between the white plantation owner possessing black slaves and exploiting them
for their labor and his desire to physically possess a woman, one who is married to another
15
Note that the story of the zombie is not new, per se. It is, however, at this time, new to American
mainstream audiences.
34
man even, primes the zombie for its future role as a powerless, mindless drone that is forced
to act by a greater power than itself. This subjugation of will is equally found in Universal’s
Dracula with the Count’s mystical powers of hypnotism over others which lead them,
ultimately, to do his bidding. Either Lugosi was not a very diverse actor, or he saw the
zombie master and the vampire as one in the same. In either case, in playing both Murder and
Dracula, Lugosi melds the vampire and the zombie in film solidifying their brotherhood once
again.
Madeline more closely resembles a living woman under the thrall of Dracula than she
does a zombie. Like Murder’s other zombies, she does not prey upon humans nor does she
look undead. Madeline maintains her ethereal beauty despite her death and rebirth as a
walking corpse, always clad in flowing white gowns, her blonde hair immaculately coiffed in
perfect ringlets. She is remarkably similar in appearance to Mina in Dracula and is treated in
the same manner. Mina, like Madeline, is an object over which the men fight for possession.
They are equally held in thrall by the domineering force of Murder and Dracula, respectively,
and they are equivalently a fantasy for the men of the films who desire her, as she represents
a completely subjugated and willing object that is incapable of denying them. Those who
create zombies are concerned with control over the body. If Dracula is capable of enforcing
control over the body through means of his own, then it stands to reason that he, too, is
capable of creating a type of zombie. Just as the plantation owner controls the physical
bodies of his Haitian slaves to propel his business in the sugarcane industry further in White
Zombie, he also wishes to control the body of the woman he sexually desires. Both situations
are terrible as each demonstrates a powerful white man oppressing either black slaves or
women but lacks the grotesque horror we have come to associate with zombies: brain-eating
monsters that will stop at nothing to feed their insatiable appetite. This familiar ghastly
zombie does not appear until nearly forty years later in Romero's Night of the Living Dead,
and its transformation happens gradually over the years through various other films.
Around the same time the film White Zombie was released, Universal Pictures was
working on and releasing the remainder of their big-hitting horror films. These include The
35
Mummy in 1932, Dracula in 1931, and Frankenstein in 1931. 16 Although all of these films
are considered cult classics by many, two of them have transcended the status of B-movie:
Dracula and Frankenstein. Both films have changed the way in which we look at each
creature. Along with casting Bella Lugosi, a man who was considered remarkably handsome
during his time, Universal introduced to its viewers for the first time a visual and overtly
seductive representation of Dracula. On the appearance of the Count, Dracula scholar,
Donald F. Glut writes:
Bela Lugosi […] established the film vampire that would endure for decades.
Although audiences knew he drank blood, they were shown neither blood nor
fangs. The true repulsiveness of the traditional vampire, including hairy palms
and a breath that reeked of decay in the grave, were eliminated in favor of a
Dracula who was immaculate, well-mannered and desirable to women. He was
more the mysterious and romantic continental rather than a reanimated corpse—a
Rudolph Valentino of sorts, with a cape and a coffin to sleep in during the day.
Most subsequent vampire films featuring undead nobleman would imitate
Lugosi's count Dracula. (120)
This classic imagery of the mysterious, elegant Count garbed in a long black flowing cape
lined with red silk and white-tie formalwear, with sleek combed-back black hair lives on in
popular culture today—every year during Halloween it is nearly impossible to go about our
holiday’s festivities without coming across this iconic costume. Dracula was well on his way
to becoming a sex symbol. His trajectory in becoming so was set in the early 19th century.
The same cannot be said for Frankenstein's Creature. Originally portrayed as an intelligent
and sensitive being whose primary reason for lashing out is society's inability to love and
accept him, Frankenstein’s creation loses many of his noble attributes in his future depictions
in film.
In Universal Pictures’ 1931 rendition of Frankenstein, the Creature is portrayed for
the first time in a mainstream full length film.17 Although the film remains more faithful to
16
Two more of Universal’s classic monster films, The Wolf Man and The Creature from the Black
Lagoon, were released much later, in 1941 and 1954 respectively. While American popular culture places them
alongside the other Universal monsters in the ‘halloween monster’ pantheon, it is important to note that these
later additions to the Universal stable stand apart not only in time, but as monsters that are not undead, as the
first generation all were.
17
The first motion picture adaptation of Frankenstein was made in 1910 by the Edison film company,
directed by J. Searle Dawley. A short silent film, just under 13 minutes long, it was possibly made more to
showcase the special effects in the monster’s creation scene, than to portray an accurate or close representation
36
the novel than any of its future versions, it is still responsible for a distorted representation of
the creature. There are three main differences between the novel and the film in how the
creature is portrayed, the first being his creation. In the novel, the moment he is brought to
life is not filled with grand overtures and sensationalism as in the film. It occurs in a small
underwhelming paragraph, a mere fraction of the novel, as Victor narrates:
It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my
toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments
of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that
lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally
against the, panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, by the glimmer of the
half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed
hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. (Shelley 35)
The brevity of this moment is nearly as quick to pass as the spark used to infuse life. For
Victor, the moment of horror occurs after the Creature's birth. Once he sees what he has
brought into the world, his guilt continues to plague him throughout the duration of the story.
Yet, in the film, the moment of horror is crystallized in the unforgettable scene where the
mad scientist is down in his basement laboratory with his odd-looking assistant, harnessing
the power of lightning to bring the creature to life.18 The focus of the creation scene in the
film Frankenstein is not as focused on the Creature but rather on the science itself, and
Frankenstein’s relationship to it. The lab is arranged with strange-looking devices pulsing
with electrical light while at the center of the room is the operating bed, fitted with
restraints.19 Meanwhile, Frankenstein darts about frantically, wide-eyed and fanatic about his
experiment, garbed in an odd lab coat which resembles a straightjacket, wildly shouting, “It’s
alive!” As science and technological advancement begin to accelerate, the horror in the film
of Mary Shelley's novel.
18
Although electricity was a hot topic for many of the Romantic writers, it is perhaps nowhere better
illustrated than in the film versions of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The notion that it might somehow hold the
key to life is found once again in the second half of the 19th century in one of the many versions of Sir
Varney’s resuscitations from death. In Chapter 77, “Varney in the Garden—The Communication of Dr.
Chillingworth to the Admiral and Henry”, Doctor Chillingworth uses galvanism to restore life to the dead,
hanged body of Sir Varney. Whereas most vampires then and now are created by biting one another and/or
swapping blood, in this particular case, the vampire Varney mirrors the very distinct creation tale of
Frankenstein's creature, thus continuing to demonstrate the unbreakable link between the vampire and
Frankenstein's creature.
19
This scene is picked up again in Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation, Frankenstein (1994).
37
exists in the plausibility of the laboratory scenario being real. This scene has become so
famous, so intimately connected to the Creature’s inception, that those who have not read the
novel sometimes assume that this is the way Shelley writes the Creature into existence as
well.
The second difference between novel and film manifests in the Creature’s movement.
Although he is never regarded as the epitome of grace, his physical abilities are shown to
trump those of human beings. He is larger, stronger, and faster than the average human,
which Victor recognizes as he describes the creature’s approach: “I suddenly beheld the
figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He
bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature,
also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man” (Shelley 68).20 Yet in the film,
although he retains his strength and size, he is slow, clumsy, and awkward.
The third, and most noticeable, change in his demeanor is his inability to speak.
While the creature had to teach himself how to speak and read in Shelley's novel, which
shows his strong determination in his “long[ing] to join them” (77), to become a part of
human society, the film’s Creature is incapable of learning language. Unable to
communicate, he is only able to grunt, grumble, and growl. By removing one of his most
human attributes, the film essentially makes him more monstrous, a trend which not only
continues in his future depictions but worsens as he begins to mutate from Shelley's vision
and slowly becomes less human-like and, specifically, more zombie-like.
ZOMBIES AND SCIENCE
Frankenstein's creation is in line with the contemporary zombie myth: Science gone
wrong. While the vampire yearns for a return to traditional aristocratic customs, zombies are
the scientifically-produced face of lower-class modernity. In contemporary American popular
culture, zombies are not supernatural; they are mishaps of manmade creations. Frankenstein's
20
It is arguable that one of the reasons Frankenstein fears the creature is that he potentially may have
created a being superior to humans, one which could render them obsolete. In Young Frankenstein(1974), the
scene in which Dr. Frankenstein forms a bond of friendship with the creature, he explains to him why he is so
loathed by others:“People laugh at you, people hate you, but why do they hate you? Because…they are jealous.
[…] Do you wanna talk about physical strength? Do you wanna talk about sheer muscle? You are a God”.
38
ambitious “eager desire to learn […] the secrets of heaven and earth […][and] the physical
secrets of the world” (Shelley 19) leads to the so-called abomination. The creature resembles
the Jewish golem in that he is fashioned and given life by a human creator. In his poem
“Golem”, David Moolten identifies their literary kinship: “At their command like the Golem
roaming / The streets of Prague, the Jewish Frankenstein / Who defended his ghetto from the
mobs” (153). While Frankenstein is narratively descended from the golem, the creature is a
corpse and therefore also related to the Haitian voodoo zombie. He is made from dead body
parts and infused with life—importantly—through scientific exploration and blunder, akin to
the contemporary zombie. Victor's hubris and insatiable hunger for knowledge and
domination over nature itself leads to the disastrous evocation of non-biological life.
Shelley's criticism of megalomania concerning scientific advancements is equally reflected in
zombie movies, comics, and television shows today. More often than not the dead rise from
their graves in a feeding frenzy due to either man-made scientific experiments going terribly
wrong or by government-made biowarfare being accidentally released into the public.
Harkening back to the quintessential zombie film, Night of the Living Dead, Romero's
zombies rise because a space probe on a mission to Venus explodes near Earth before
reaching its destination. The radiation from the man-made craft rains down into the Earth's
atmosphere and wreaks havoc down below. In the film 28 Days Later in 2002, which depicts
newly evolved superfast zombies, scientists conduct experiments upon monkeys with a manmade disease. Animal rights activists release the infected monkeys, and before long the
infection runs rampant throughout the country, infecting nearly everyone. Likewise, today's
widely read comic series and AMC television show The Walking Dead implies the recurring
theme of science gone wrong as the remaining human characters stress the necessity to locate
and investigate the Center for Disease Control to solve the mystery of the zombie
apocalypse. Frankenstein's Creature is the gateway for all these contemporary zombies; he
opens the door to the genre of science fiction—and even more specifically, he serves as a
warning against amoral scientific exploration and demonstrates the calamitous events which
may result from hubris in the face of nature along with the inability to recognize and set
ethical boundaries while seeking human advancement.
39
THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER BETWEEN MONSTERS
Although some change is seen in the Creature's main film debut, the pivotal moment
of his transformation toward becoming a zombie takes place over a decade and a half later in
a subsequent Universal film, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948, specifically
under the influence of Dracula, once again played by Bela Lugosi. 21 In this film, not only
does the Creature begin to show his first concrete contemporary zombie-like traits but he's
also inseparable from his familiar counterpart, the vampire—in this case, specifically
Dracula—who struggles to take power and autonomy from the Creature. What is particularly
notable about this film is that it is a comedy rather than traditional horror. After
contemplating the events of WWII and those that followed, John L. Flynn writes, regarding
this shift, “America had been scared by monsters far more terrifying than Count Dracula. The
technological horrors imposed by Nazi Germany, the atom-bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, and the threat of nuclear war with the Soviets were all very real terrors, much
worse than any imaginary monster a screen could produce” (58). The world was on the verge
of ending, as far as it could tell, due to major technological advancements which all pointed
toward extinction. In wake of this, along with the second Red Scare rearing its head,
American audiences felt they had far more to fear from advancing Communists than movie
monsters, which leads to a shift in horror—from scary to silly.22
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein revolutionizes our two most famous horror
stories by not only combining the Creature's and the vampire’s lore, but by mocking them. It
takes familiar tropes and highlights them to the point of silliness. By implementing parody,
audiences are able to look upon the genre through a more critical lens as its commonly used
literary devices are placed on display. An example of this is when Costello, as Wilbur,
desperately tries to communicate to his friend Chick, played by Abbott, the behavior of both
21
Although the film title implies that Abbott and Costello meet Victor Frankenstein, they instead meet his
creation. Victor is not ever seen in the film, nor referenced. The spotlight is reserved for the creature. This
comes as no surprise as the Creature not only requires a name but is also entangled in the complex binary
relationship between Victor and himself; they are one and the same.
22
This trend of comedy-horror bleeds well into the 1950s and 1960s through film and late-night horror
television with hosts such as: Vampira, Zacherle, and Elvira, and even appears in primetime television shows
such as The Munsters; a family sitcom that boasts a Frankenstein-like father figure alongside of a vampire
father-in-law.
40
the Creature and Dracula by pantomiming their trademark movements as codified in their
respective earlier Universal films. This scene in which Wilbur mimics, or mocks, the
monsters comprises several minutes of physical comedy. Holding his arms out before him,
elbows locked, fingers downward, Wilbur slowly drags his feet while emitting low
incomprehensible groans, in his impersonation of the Creature, which all sounds and looks
quite zombielike. He then imitates Dracula's mannerisms, too, whisking his imaginary cloak
up to his eyes as he stares intensely at his bewildered friend while using his hand and fingers
to gesticulate what we can only assume to be mind control. Although only a few minutes
long, and mostly devoid of words, this scene speaks vastly of the nature of each monster.
One is perceived as a mindless, giant oaf and the other, a cold calculating mastermind.
Through parody of the most ridiculous aspects of the monsters are the central focus and by
way of this distillation of each into their core essences, the tropes of the vampire and the
zombie become deeply embedded in popular culture.
The film muddles and hybridizes the individual stories of both monsters. First, both
the Creature and Dracula are introduced by emerging from coffins which, prior to this, was
exclusively a vampire trait. Secondly, in Barton’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,
Chick says, “Frankenstein gave the monster eternal life with electricity…” Not only is the
idea of eternal life never discussed in Frankenstein, but once again the Creature adopts
another vampire trait.23 Beyond these overt intertwining of stories, a new tale is told that
weaves our antagonists together. The central plot revolves around Dracula's desire to have
absolute control over the Creature. To accomplish this, he needs to provide the creature with
a new and simple brain so that, according to Dracula in Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein, he will “have no will of his own, no fiendish intellect to oppose his master.”
23
Also, in all three films, Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, and Young Frankenstein, at some point the
action takes place within “Castle Frankenstein”—a newly conceived place that does not exist in Shelley’s novel.
Like Dracula, Frankenstein is moved into the living quarters of nobility. Even further, like Dracula,
Frankenstein’s castle is surrounded by fearful villagers who eventually rise up as an angry mob to snuff the
monsters, respectively, out of existence. And, thirdly, the most apparent connection between the interweaving
of Dracula’s and Frankenstein’s stories is when the action is moved to a spooky castle in a small fictional city in
Germany called “Transylvania”; in the film Young Frankenstein (1974) after reaching the Transylvania station
by train, Dr. Frankenstein is transported to a castle on a mountain through a forest of heavy fog while the
howling of wolves echoes around him—yet another reference to Stoker's Dracula and a way the two monsters
are conflated in the public imagination.
41
He desires to strip him of all autonomy and ability to think for himself to have him
completely under his command. But in order to achieve this he must acquire a new brain for
the Creature—implying that the brain he already has is intellectual. This is the only time in
film history when the Creature is depicted, albeit implicitly, as a capable, functional, and
rational being. Yet it is Dracula’s goal to destroy these individualistic traits and render the
creature useless unless under his command. Dracula seeks to remove the epicenter for
autonomy: a coherent and competent brain. As Dracula, Lugosi seeks to control both the
body and minds of his victims, just as his former character, Murder Legendre, does in White
Zombie. In Barton’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Dracula says to one of his
female victims, “I am accustomed to having my orders obeyed, especially by women...”
After using his hypnotic powers upon her, he bites her neck, which seals their bond and
forces her into subservience as she answers, “Yes, Master.” The phrase, “Yes, Master”, is
also used in the 1974 film, Young Frankenstein, by the lab assistant, Igor. Although
preceding characterizations of Igor do not popularize this catchphrase, which is now
synonymous with the transcendent Igor character, their interactions with Frankenstein
demonstrate their subjugation to him. 24 This type of master/slave relationship, for Dracula,
is of long standing and is illustrated in Stoker's novel as Renfield, too, refers to the count as
his “Master” and willfully does his bidding. Essentially, Igor is to Frankenstein as Renfield is
to Dracula. Dracula makes his victims into his own personal slaves, or zombies. Although he
does not kill Sandra, he has complete control over her actions just as Murder has over
Madeline in White Zombie. 25
The Creature is both undead and under Dracula's control, thus fitting into the
paradigm of the Haitian zombie. But Dracula's control over the Creature does not come from
the same source by which he controls humans. Although Dracula uses mind control over him
which causes him to respond with “Master”, he is unable to exercise his mental coercive
force in the same way as it applies to humans. Instead, he requires the aid of a nameless
electronic gadget to force his will upon the Creature. Because the Creature is an invention of
24
Also spelled Ygor.
25
The woman he hypnotizes in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
42
science it is reasonable that he only responds to scientific forms of manipulation. However,
the gadget loses potency as the film wears on, and it is therefore necessary for Dracula to
complete his domination over the creature. In Barton’s Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein, Dracula wishes to literally replace his brain with one that is “so simple, so
pliable, he will obey [him] like a trained dog.” Although Dracula’s motivations for
attempting to gain complete control over the Creature are never addressed, his desire to do so
is perhaps the most predominant theme in the film. Dracula needs to be in control and is used
to having his way over others in an effortless way. The Creature, one who is not as easily
manipulated is a both a challenge and a threat to his superior self-image. It stands to reason
that if the Creature represents the masses driven by science and technology, and America
views itself as the elite capitalistic vampire, that this film is critical in determining why the
Creature is reduced to a zombie with the vampire determined to be his lord and master.
Dracula (America) is at the top of the food chain and wishes to maintain his hierarchical
position, especially during a time when the Creature (the Soviets) is gaining popularity in the
mainstream audience. By subjugating him and claiming ownership of him, he regains his
prestigious monster king title while making a mockery out of the once larger-than-life
Creature.
ZOMBIES AND BRAINS
The brain, or more specifically, the educated brain, is the key to autonomy and
individuality. To control the brain of another is to render them ignorant and faceless among
the masses. As noted, the key to controlling the Creature lies within the brain. Whereas the
Creature as conceived by Shelley was an intelligent, cultured, and sensitive being, he is now
reduced to a mere shell of his former self. Dracula's desire to transplant a barely functional
brain into the monster to dumb him down and enslave him is stressed throughout the film.
Although the brain is for the creature, Dracula is a surrogate for the organ as he repeatedly
echoes his need for brains. At one point in Barton’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,
he remarks, “What we need today is young blood and brains”, with a long extension and
emphasis on the last word: “braaaains.” The drawing out of this word in a monotone is
easily recognizable as one of the most stereotypical zombie tropes—their monosyllabic drone
for brains. Yet, it is uncertain where this trope started. An article by Eric Spitznagel in Vanity
43
Fair contains an interview with George Romero, where the following conversation regarding
the mysterious lore of zombies eating brains unfolds:
Spitznagel: Zombies have the weird fixation with eating human flesh and brains.
What is it about being undead that makes somebody so ravenous?
Romero: First of all, why does everybody say that zombies eat brains?
Spitznagel: Because… it's true?
Romero: I've never had a zombie eat a brain! I don't know where that comes
from. Who says zombies eat brains?
Spitznagel: I remember brains being a big zombie menu item in Return of the
Living Dead back in the mid-80s, but I'm not sure if that's where it started.
Romero: Whenever I sign autographs, they always ask me, “Write ‘Eat Brains’!”
I don't understand what that means. I've never had a zombie eat a brain. But it's
become this landmark thing.
Spitznagel: Well, what about gorging on human flesh? Your zombies do that,
right?
Romero: Definitely. (Laughs.)
Although Romero's “seminal zombie masterpiece from 1968” (Spitznagel), along with his
subsequent zombie films, features zombies solely dining upon human flesh, even he finds it
undeniable that their successors are ravenous for brains. While it is true that comedy-horror
the 1985 film, Return of the Living Dead, emphasizes the need for zombies to consume
brains, to further answer Romero's question regarding the origin of this trope, both he and his
interviewer need only look back some 40-odd years at the other comedy-horror film in
discussion, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. 26 The zombie mantra for brains is
echoed not only by Dracula but by Wilbur, too. In Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Wilbur declares, “Sandra’s gonna use my brain to make a bigger dummy out of the other
dummy. […] I've got too much of what they want—brains.”27 Again, the phrasing of this
word left dangling alone at the end of his sentence is unmistakably reminiscent of the future
zombie call. If the Creature, as depicted in this film, is a prototype of the contemporary
American zombie, then the reason zombies are insatiable for brains is because a brain is the
only way to reclaim their autonomy and individuality. The zombie is pure id and only knows,
26
Return of the Living Dead is directed by Dan O’Bannon.
27
Wilbur, a buffoon, is who Dracula chooses as a brain donor for the Creature.
44
perhaps on some instinctive level, that it requires a brain to function properly again.28 This
leads it to the primitive behavior of cannibalism and the idea that ingesting something allows
one to take in the power of the object consumed. Zombies may be propelled on some visceral
level to eat brains to reclaim their former selves, which is why no matter how much they eat,
they are always hungry for more. This point also speaks to the spread of the zombie infection
from zombie to zombie. After the initial disease or scientific malfunction is released upon the
general public, the most common way to become a zombie is to be bitten by one. Because
they are taking in the body of another, they steal autonomy from their victim, thus rendering
their victim helpless, incapable, and ultimately just like them, yearning to return to their
former complete selves. This endless cycle of taking from others to fulfill the emptiness
within the attacking zombie leads them to be perpetually unfulfilled and plagued with
constant hunger.
FROM SHELLEY’S CREATURE TO ROMERO’S ZOMBIE
Although Romero is not directly responsible for the trope of zombies eating brains, he
further solidifies the link between Frankenstein's creature and contemporary zombies in his
1985 film, Day of the Dead. In the aforementioned article, Romero says, “I […] have a soft
spot for Bub from Day of the Dead, which was a brilliant performance, worthy of Boris
Karloff” (Spitznagel). In Day of the Dead, a team of scientists and military personnel are
working in an underground bunker while the world above is overrun by zombies. Bub, as he's
affectionately called, is the subject of their study. Although Bub is originally seen as a key
opportunity to better understand the world's most threatening enemy, he becomes more than
a mere subject of scientific inquiry. To the head scientist, Logan, he is a newborn child
awaiting patience, discipline, education, and reward. Logan explains his motives for taking
Bub under his wing by succinctly explaining to his companions in Day of the Dead, “it
means controlling them.” Just as the many zombies discussed prior, the issue of control over
28
In Romero's Day of the Dead, the “mad scientist” Logan, also frequently referred to as “Frankenstein”,
explains the significance of the brain within the zombie: “the brain is the engine, the motor that drives them”.
Although they don't physically need to eat, Logan explains that what drives them is a “deep dark primordial
instinct”. This is why, in contemporary American zombie myth, a surefire way to permanently destroy a zombie
is to destroy its brain, the remnants of who it once was.
45
the body is at hand once again. In the aforementioned interview, Romero makes evident the
connection between his amiable character Bub and Frankenstein's Creature. By comparing
his performance to Boris Karloff's in Frankenstein, Romero himself, father of the
contemporary zombie, draws his inspiration for the amiable zombie Bub from the Creature.
Aside from the parallel drawn by Romero in the interview, his film, Day of the Dead, itself is
basically a remake of the sprawling Frankenstein myth, ranging from Shelley’s novel, up
through the Universal film adaptations, and finally into Mel Brook’s parody, Young
Frankenstein. In fact, he echoes Shelley’s warning and the philosophy of the Romantics
regarding scientific reductionism in the speech given by John, one of the heroes of the film,
regarding Sarah’s obsession with trying to figure out what might be causing the zombie
apocalypse. In Day of the Dead, John says
We don't believe in what you're doing here, Sarah. Hey, you know what they keep
down here in this cave? Man, they got the books and the records of the top 100
companies. They got the Defense Department budget down here. And they got the
negatives for all your favorite movies. They got microfilm with tax return and
newspaper stories. They got immigration records, census reports, and they got the
accounts of all the wars and plane crashes and volcano eruptions and earthquakes
and fires and floods and all the other disasters that interrupted the flow of things
in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Now what does it matter, Sarah darling? All this filing
and record keeping? We ever gonna give a shit? We even gonna get a chance to
see it all? With an epitaph on it that nobody gonna bother to read. Now, here you
come. Here you come with a whole new set of charts and graphs and records.
What you gonna do? Bury them down here with all the other relics of what...
once... was? Let me tell you what else. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you what else. You
ain't never gonna figure it out, just like they never figured out why the stars are
where they're at. It ain't mankind's job to figure that stuff out. So what you're
doing is a waste of time, Sarah. And time is all we got left, you know.
This speech is the central thesis of the movie. John wishes to move on, to repopulate the
earth, and be done with the horrific past, which he claims they’ll never understand. Like
Shelley’s criticism of hubris and obsession in seeking unknowable or unreachable answers,
or to attempt to “unlock the physical secrets of the world” (Shelley 19), John tries to speak
sense into Sarah (also a scientist) persuading her to let go of her obsession with providing
answers to why the catastrophe happened. John believes that living in the present is what
matters, not chasing unattainable, potentially harmful, or even potentially useless knowledge.
Romero, the man responsible for formalizing the contemporary zombie, therefore both
implicitly (in his film) and explicitly (in his own words) states his influence in linking the
46
Creature born from Shelley’s imagination nearly 200 years ago to the zombie we know
today.
There are similarities in both appearance and behavior that link the pop culture
Creature to Romero’s zombies: First, they both have green skin. In Shelley's novel the
Creature is described as having yellow skin, but in his future film, and contemporary pop
culture appearances, his skin is green. 29 Zombies, in Romero’s films and in the pop culture
eye, are also green.30 Secondly, they share similar facial expressions. Both, for the most part,
lack a wide range of expression; their faces are mostly set in a slack-jawed, glassy-eyed gaze.
Thirdly, they exhibit similar behavior: Both walk the same, as if under a hypnotic spell, and
they also use the same sorts of vocalizations such as long, low groans. And fourth, the wellknown Romero trope of zombie hands and arms plunging through walls, doors, or bursting
up from their graves is also seen from the Creature in Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein.
However, the most stunning connection between the Creature and the contemporary
zombie is found in Bub of Day of the Dead. Bub is a sympathetic zombie who we wish to
succeed. He starts out much like Frankenstein's creature, a blank slate without any concept of
civility, knowledge, or humanity, but far worse because he is still a zombie and therefore
contains the grotesque characteristic of being ravenous for human flesh. However, through
time, diligence, and patience of the scientist who studies him, and eventually comes to care
for him, Bub echoes Shelley's Creature by learning how to become more human. The main
difference between Bub and Shelley's Creature is that Bub has the fortunate opportunity of
being guided and cared for, setting him on the path toward humanity.31
29
His appearance, grotesquely ugly, demonstrates some of the remaining characteristics of the prevampire being adopted by the Creature. Also, the early Universal movies were released before the arrival of
color film, but detecting the color of the makeup used on Karloff is easy enough by simply looking at theatrical
release posters. Also, it’s popular knowledge that Karloff’s makeup was green. Although color film was readily
available during this time, Romero deliberately chose to shoot his first film in black and white, perhaps as
homage to the earlier horror films which undoubtedly influenced him.
30
Zombies, too, were originally presented to mainstream viewers in black and white film, as sallow and
ashy, but as the zombie genre exploded, future zombie films soon adapted to color and zombies became
increasingly green.
31
Another film in which zombies are trained to coexist with humans is the zombie spoof film Shaun of the
Dead (2004). This concept, that zombies can become better and assimilate, is also seen in 21st century vampire
47
Although Shelley's Creature is not as fortunate as Bub, despite his tenacity in learning
and his admirable drive to become a part of something larger than himself, he ultimately
lacks a liaison that might introduce him, and help ease his transition, to the human world.
However, in Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein, the happy ending does occur. In this comedy
classic, a parody of Son of Frankenstein, the grandson of Victor Von Frankenstein, known as
Dr. Frankenstein ultimately rights the wrong his grandfather made decades ago. 32 In Mel
Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, he delivers the following heartfelt speech to the creature:
Listen to me, you are not evil. You… are… good! (The Creature weeps) This is a
nice boy. This is a good boy. This is a mother’s angel. And I want all the world to
know once and for all, and without any shame, that we love him. I'm going to
teach you. I'm going to show you how to walk, how to speak, how to move, how
to think. Together, you and I are going to make the greatest single contribution to
science since the creation of fire!
As Dr. Frankenstein and the creature embrace one another, the Creature weeps with joy and
relief over the acceptance and love from his creator, and a cathartic feeling sweeps over the
viewer as this is the outcome one may have hoped for Shelley's Creature. In a small scene
filled with simple kind gestures, Dr. Frankenstein gives his Creature all he ever wanted:
compassion, love, and someone willing to help guide him through the world—essentially, a
father. And because of the love bestowed, the Creature is able to live out a long, happy life
filled surrounded by those who care about him.
A similar father/son relationship occurs between Day of the Dead’s mad scientist
Logan, aka “Dr. Frankenstein,” and Bub. Although Bub begins as a mere test subject for
Logan's experiments, a bond steadily increases between them. The nickname “Bub” is
Logan's deceased father's nickname, thus indicating a desire to create a familial relationship
with his test subject. During his domestication of Bub, he provides him with several human
stories such as Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series and Charlene Harris’ True Blood. Yet, vampires aren’t
trained to coexist as the zombies are—instead they fight for their civil rights to be accepted among humans.
32
The nobiliary particle, “von”, first appears in Son of Frankenstein, in which it is part of an even larger
title, “Baron Wolf von Frankenstein”, which is interesting for three reasons. (1) Since Universal Pictures was so
fond of interweaving the storylines of their monsters, the incorporation of the name “Wolf” raises the possibility
of connection to Bram Stoker's Dracula, as one of his powers was the ability to turn into a wolf. (2) The
newfound nobility, which was not present in Shelley's novel, of the Frankenstein family is possibly a conflation
of the nobility of Universal's other popular horror figure, Count Dracula, and (3) it is possible, and worthy of
further research, that Universal may have been working on the concept of The Wolf Man, if not already filming
it, which potentially provides further connections between the slew of monsters in the Universal family.
48
things with which to interact, one of which being the 1975 book, Salem’s Lot, by Stephen
King. Salem’s Lot tells the story of a man who returns to the town in which he grew up only
to discover that its residents are all becoming vampires. The allusion to this work shows the
clear parallel between zombies and vampires; Logan wishes for Bub to learn how to read
from subject material that is both relevant and familiar to him. This scene in which Bub
interacts with the more mundane objects is touching. The music is whimsical, the curiosity
behind Bub’s eyes is inspiring, and the moments in which he makes connections regarding
the significance, or purposes, of these items is overwhelmingly emotional. Bub, with the help
of Logan, just like the Creature with the aid of Dr. Frankenstein, slowly learns to make
meaning and by doing so grows increasingly more human before our eyes. Although both Dr.
Frankenstein and Logan provide the same affection and education to each of their respective
creatures, Dr. Frankenstein's creature has a happy comical ending, which ends in a marriage;
the same cannot be said for Bub. Upon finding his murdered “creator”, he openly grieves
over the loss of a loved one and seeks revenge upon his executioner, indicating another
aspect of his humanity, albeit a dark one. As Romero says, Bub’s performance is worthy of
Boris Karloff because he is a unique zombie, one who transcends their grotesque stereotypes
and their horrible fates, but more so he reminds audiences of who the Creature in Mary
Shelley's novel once was. After years of being misrepresented in film, Shelley's Creature was
ultimately led to his tragic and inevitable devolution into the zombie, a mere sliver of his
former self. But Bub gives hope for the restoration of Mary Shelley's vision and reminds us
that his heroic ancestor is nobler than any of his vampire contemporaries.
THE ZOMBIE TODAY
Today the zombie is more or less formalized, leaving little to the imagination
regarding how it may behave or what its motives are. The trajectory of the zombie myth
neatly follows the trajectory of the masses—serf, slave, and proletariat—enslaved by
superstition and religion, enslaved by the aristocracy, enslaved by science and the relentless
gears of progress, and finally, enslaved by raw consumption in a ‘social’ framework that is
the legacy of that rational progress. Besides Bub, few zombies have challenged the
established narrative structure, leaving them predictable, although widely popular, in the
public imagination. Although popular critical analysis has categorized them as metaphors for
49
consumer culture and left-wing class warfare raging against advanced capitalism, Romero, in
response to these critiques says, “it got analyzed and overanalyzed way out of proportion”
(Sptitznagel) and has always maintained that his films are not about zombies necessarily, but
“about humans and how they react, or fail to react, or react stupidly. I’m pointing the finger
at us, not at the zombies” (Spitznagel). Regardless of Romero's intention, the reader’s
response to zombies today dictates otherwise, as the genre has exploded into mainstream
culture with events such as the yearly Zombie Walk, an event in October when people dress
up like zombies and trudge through city streets across the country merely for the fun of it,
and the constant (now verging on annoying) pop cultural references on TV, the Internet,
books, high school lesson plans, and in the general public discourse regarding the allegedly
impending zombie apocalypse. 33,34 Zombie-mania is now a contender with the vampire craze
that continues to captivate America, perhaps because zombies speak to a part of our
American culture: The zombie is a drowning face in the sea of the masses. It is dirty, wears
tattered clothing, cannot speak, cannot think, and lives merely to consume. It is devoid of
identity, autonomy, intelligence, social mobility, and remains perpetually famished. The
zombie, a creature with an indistinguishable fraction of the vampire’s resources, is destined
to remain a metaphor for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the hungry unless given a unique
opportunity by others to rise up and out of its horrific social conditions.
THE VAMPIRE’S BRIEF DECLINE INTO THE
PROLETARIAT
The vampire’s journey through popular culture is long, but not nearly as arduous as
the zombie’s. Although countless films have told and retold the story of Dracula throughout
the 20th century, the vampire has more or less stayed true to its original depiction and the
man upon whom it is based: Lord Byron. There are two main exceptions: the 1922 German
33
See parodies of classic literature such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies(2009) by Seth GrahameSmith, as well as works by Max Brooks like World War Z (a fictional work about the zombie apocalypse) and
The Zombie Survival Guide (a tactical guide on how to survive the zombie apocalypse).
34
See Chris J. Park and Heather K. Lye’s work entitled, “How Many People Can Fit on [sic] the National
Mall//Zombie Attack”, whose abstract reads, “Students analyze items from the media to answer mathematical
questions related to the article. Estimating the size of the crowd at the Obama inauguration leads to estimating
skills and finding areas, whereas the Zombie epidemic leads to modeling infectious disease.”
50
Expressionist film Nosferatu35, and the 1954 novel I Am Legend, a far more pivotal work
responsible for the interwoven tapestry of the zombie and the vampire, a book that turns
vampires on their heads and reminds them of their humble zombielike beginnings, a book
that “is the direct antecedent and the ‘inspiration’ for George A. Romero's 1968 apocalyptic
horror film, Night of the Living Dead, which depicts undead flesh-eating zombies rather than
bloodthirsty vampires” (Waller 6).
Although Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend is technically a story about
vampires overrunning the Earth and wiping out humanity, save one human man, these
creatures resemble popular zombies far more than they resemble their Byronic predecessors:
the novel is another zero point during which vampires and zombies flagrantly converge once
again in their dance macabre, this time, into a nearly indistinguishable hybridization.
Matheson’s story removes the vampire from the realm of the supernatural and places him
into the lower class realm of science fiction, the birthplace of the zombie. Removing many of
the vampire’s traits audiences have come to expect—such as its fancy titles, frilly clothing,
and dashing looks—he is robbed of his social privileges. This reduces the vampire very much
to its formative self, or much of the way it was once perceived in folklore of old. Although
they look and behave very much like contemporary zombies, they still maintain components
of now traditional vampire myths: sexuality, being staked through the heart to be killed,
being unable to venture out into the sunlight without being destroyed, and being fearful of
crosses. 36
Written in an age when America continued to feel the threat of Communism looming
over it, the book demonstrates what could potentially happen to the individualistic wealthy
vampire after being reduced to the lower class collectivist zombie. However, the central
focus of the novel rests on the lone human whose world is overtaken by the Other and his
futile desperation for the restoration of humanity. As Mathias Classen points out:
35
This is a film that remains an outlier in the development of the vampire genre. Although it demonstrates
the backsliding of the vampire into a more monstrous version of itself, its filmmaker, F. W. Murnau, was far
more interested in creating an offensive racial stereotype of the Jew rather than focusing on a tale of the
vampire.
36
Not sensuality. Unlike their Byronic predecessors, their sexuality is raw and bestial.
51
The horror critic Mark Jankcovich identifies a group of 1950s horror texts, I Am
Legend included, that are characterized by a 'preoccupation with the figure of the
outsider, and their experience of alienation, estrangement and powerlessness.' As
he notes, the concept of conformity in 1950s USA was not just highly prevalent in
social discourse, but highly ambivalent. The paradoxical motif of being alone
among others is one that finds currency in a paranoid Cold War cultural climate.
(321)
The merits of individuality is questioned when the sole human character is left isolated in a
new world overrun by a different species of being. The irony of the story is that the last
human is, in fact, the monster in this brand new world.
THE REEMERGENCE OF THE BYRONIC VAMPIRE
Two decades after Romero's rearticulation of I Am Legend, novelist Anne Rice
arrives on the scene and pulls the vampire out of the muck, by not only reclaiming his noble
heritage but also by catapulting him to new heights. In her first novel, Interview with the
Vampire (published in 1976), the familiar face of the Byronic vampire reincarnates in Lestat.
As an aristocrat with indispensable income which permits him every luxury while enjoying
complete social mobility, he is the epitome of the 19th century vampire. In addition, he and
his vampire companion Louis are plantation owners in New Orleans and own hundreds of
black slaves. Just as Dracula, in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, needs to control
others by turning them into his slaves, or metaphorical zombies, Lestat does the same.
Regarding his view of humanity and his superiority over it he explains:
Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich
feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without
regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately. He takes the richest and the
poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like
Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the limits of hell but wandering His
earth and all its kingdoms. (Rice 87)
By rationalizing the subjectivity of evil, Lestat justifies his behavior of feasting upon
humans, whom he perceives as inferior to his own kind. Like his noble predecessors, he
reckons himself above those he preys upon and likens himself to God, his permissive
aristocratic doctrine giving him free reign to do precisely what he wants when he wants,
without accountability to others. Yet as the Vampire Chronicles series progresses Lestat,
under the influence of the compassionate and humanistic Louis, evolves into a humane being
with a conscience. Similarly to “Varney the Vampire, serialized in the middle of the 19th
52
century, the undead creature exhibits remorse for his crimes—ultimately killing himself
rather than continuing as he is—it is not until Anne Rice's works that we have our first truly
sympathetic view of the vampire as a self-aware creature capable of choosing not to murder
innocents” (Wilcox and Lavery 149). Although Varney displays conscience, he does not
display restraint. Rice’s vampires are more human than ever before in that they not only
wrestle with the guilt of their vampire identities but behave contrary to their innate predatory
nature.
Concurrently, Rice adds another dimension to the vampire which is the need for
human companionship. Armand explains to Louis that many vampires do not have the
stamina for immortality because they are unable to cope as permanent fixtures within an
ever-changing world. The novel, which at times takes place in the late 20th century, is worlds
away from the 18th century, or the time in which Louis and Lestat were born. In order to
survive, they are forced to evolve, accepting a modern world lest they perish in their
nostalgia for the past. Lestat has a hard time accepting the evolution of the world as it
progresses through time. He, like Byron, is nostalgic for the 18th century, a time in which
aristocratic privilege and dangerous liaisons trumped all.37 As Lestat moves into the 20th
century, nobility and the privileges that accompany it is an idea of the past which is
especially evident in America, the eventual country in which Louis and Lestat reside. The
world as they knew it hundreds of years ago is replaced by modernity, so-called social
justice, and the exponential acceleration of science and technology—the world of the
Creature/zombie. Humans change and adapt and are therefore the vampire's gateway into the
modern world. Mortals become an integral part of the vampire's life who wishes to
assimilate. Yet outside of their necessity for humans, vampires also find mortality beautiful
because of its brevity. They live vicariously through human lives by following them,
watching them, befriending them, protecting them, and sometimes taking them as lovers;
humans remind them of their former selves. 38 Louis, in defense of human life and refutation
37
Although Byron is of the 19th century, he seems far more suited to the 18th century world of aristocracy
and lived in ways which emulated that life.
38
Anne Rice also brings back the homosexuality of the vampire. Instead of lesbian vampires, like
LeFanu’s, her male vampires are implicitly written as either bisexual or gay. Yet, Rice also brings back the
progressiveness of the female vampire outside of her sexuality. Rice’s female vampires are strong, independent
53
of Lestat’s subjective philosophy on evil, explains after emerging from an existential crisis,
“And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man
would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually... it doesn't matter. Because if God does
not exist, then life...every second of it...is all we have” (Rice 235). Rice's vampires are the
first to hold humans in such high regard because they come to the realization that fleeting life
is far more precious than the monotony and meaninglessness of immortality, which
ultimately is akin to the monotony and meaninglessness of the aristocracy. Echoing the
dilemma of Childe Harold, although infinitely wealthy, able to travel the world and a
moment’s notice, take the lover of their choosing, and wield supreme power over the masses,
what is left to be desired? Rice's vampires take a step away from the aristocracy and into the
life of the everyman which causes the reemergence of the vampire genre. Rice breathes life
anew into a tired and dated archetype, giving it relevance to the New World and this slowly
begins to bridge the gap between vampires and ourselves.
THE AGE OF PROGRESS IN VAMPIRE FICTION
As a result of the born again vampire, the critically-acclaimed, television series Buffy
the Vampire Slayer (produced from 1997 to 2003) and its spinoff series, Angel (produced
from 1999 to 2004) emerge. Creative mastermind behind the project, Joss Whedon, broke
ground after giving the world Angel and Buffy, unprecedented progressive characters who
tear through the constraints of traditional vampire fiction: Angel, a formerly evil vampire
turned good fights alongside Buffy, the strong, independent heroine, to save the world from
the vampire apocalypse. Whedon’s vampires express the full range of vampire types, from
the zombie-esque who claw out of their graves with glazed eyes and insatiable appetites, to
the sympathetic and transcendent vampire Angel, who abstains from drinking human blood,
and sleeps in a bed rather than a coffin. Angel, an outgrowth of Rice's vampires, struggles
with his vampirism. Once hailed as the most heinous vampire of all time, he now loathes and
resents his vampire nature after being cursed with a soul by a band of “gypsies.”39 Along
with his soul comes the torture of conscience and loneliness. He yearns for mortality, which
types who live outside the rules of vampire society.
39
Vampires in “Buffyverse” have no souls, which makes them inherently evil.
54
he reclaims to a certain extent through his mortal companions and human lover Buffy. Tim
Kane draws the same parallel as he writes, “Creator Joss Whedon wanted to exemplify the
loneliness of the vampire… Whedon calls the vampire a creature that's ‘in the world but not
part of it.’ In this aspect, Angel is syntactically similar to Louis from Interview with the
Vampire” (113). Whedon’s brief description of the vampire is remarkably similar to Louis’
formerly quoted speech regarding their fixed nature in an ever-changing world and is just as
relevant to Shelley’s Creature—both are plagued by alienation. However, Angel transcends
both the Creature and Rice’s vampires in that he actively seeks redemption for the sins he has
committed against humankind in his formative evil years. This extra step beyond merely
feeling mournful over losing his humanity, like the Creature and Rice’s vampires, to taking
the time to right his wrongs by actively seeking out and assisting humans in distress, presents
an unexpected growth in the vampire; Angel is in fact a guardian angel of sorts and the
implication behind his name implies a transcendence to the heavenly. But Angel, too, is a
product of his time. Grounded in his desire for humanity he leaves his nobility behind and
lives among the ordinary. He surrounds himself with people, works a full-time job, and wears
casual clothing. Outside of his supernatural powers, Angel is an everyman, a middle-class
guy who is a happy medium between the Byronic noble elite vampire and the destitute
poverty-stricken zombie. If zombies and vampires sit on the same scale representing
socioeconomic status, Angel resides somewhere in the middle. While he still has monetary
resources, social privilege, and supernatural powers, he is humble, hard-working, and gives
back to his community.
Like Angel, Buffy subverts her stereotypical role. A review of Buffy entitled “Power
Girl/Girl Power”, states, “Buffy as [a] heroine is most unusual. Since the first Gothic novels
appeared in the mid-18th century, Gothic heroines have tended to be extremely sensitive,
intelligent, and curious, but overly imaginative and passive. By granting Buffy fighting
power against evil and the ability to foresee the future in her dreams, Whedon creates a
heroine opposed to a long tradition” (Walsh and Walsh 503). She is a unique human female
character in the vampire genre in that she is anything but weak or impressionable. She is
“The Slayer”, or “The Chosen One”, who is ordained to save the world from impending
apocalyptic evil. She is a superhero in her own right: a fierce, strong, smart, independent, and
quick-witted girl who, despite falling in love with the vampire Angel, does so on her own
55
terms. Their courtship is devoid of any supernatural influence; it is a relationship of
unconditional love and mutual respect. Buffy is arguably stronger than Angel, both mentally
and physically, a paradigm never seen before in the vampire genre.40 Buffy, like Angel,
transcends her formative restrictive stereotypical role in that she is a positive female role
model who teaches women their strength and self-worth. In a time when “girl power”
became a catch phrase and shortly after Third Wave feminism was born, Buffy is reflective
of her era. Both she and Angel are the most positive role models of their respective
archetypes in the history of the vampire genre.
THE BACKSLIDING OF PROGRESS IN EARLY 21ST
CENTURY VAMPIRE FICTION
After Buffy and Angel’s departure from television came the regression of the
vampire. He begins once again to resemble the controlling 19th/early 20th century vampire
who controls his victims as though they are his zombies. Although two contemporary bestselling texts—Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series and, Charlene Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse
series (which was adapted into the popular HBO series True Blood—are responsible for the
explosion of the vampire genre in contemporary popular culture, they are equally responsible
for stripping it of the newfound progressivism instilled in it by Joss Whedon. It is arguable
that True Blood deals with social issues in a progressive manner, but if it does, it does so
disingenuously. The story is set in the Deep South, making vampires easily identifiable as a
metaphor for minority groups who suffer from racial injustice and bigotry. Some struggle for
acceptance as equals in society and openly defy those who would force them to live in
segregation, or even worse, seek to destroy them. However, there are many vampires who
remain uninterested in coexisting with humans and view them as nothing more than food.
Their closed-door exclusive society harkens back to the aristocratic elite: they even appoint
kings and queens. Yet the disingenuous approach to race and class is visible in the way
Harris portrays vampires in comparison to the real destitute characters who suffer from class
and race warfare. To paint vampires as synonymous with poor black people trying to gain
40
And one rarely found in the horror genre where women are more often depicted as victims rather than
warriors.
56
equality in a white, rich world is laughable. Firstly, most of the show’s vampires are white
and more importantly, they retain their socio-economic privilege from centuries past. Harris’
vampires remain the wealthy elite, not the downtrodden disenfranchised: they own successful
nightclubs and live in mansions. The true horror of True Blood is the rampant poverty that
plagues the majority of other supernatural characters as well as humans. While privileging
the aristocratic vampire elite by trying to help earn them a place in society, Harris demonizes
the poor. Some of the show’s worst characters are defined by their poverty: Tara’s mother,
Lettie Mae is a poor, single black woman who drinks excessively and abuses her daughter;
Crystal (named after the slang word for methamphetamines) and her family are mere
rearticulations of the socially constructed stereotype of the “white trash redneck”: dirty, poor,
uneducated, inbred and incestuous, living in a shantytown and supporting themselves by
manufacturing and selling methamphetamines; Sam’s trailer-dwelling parents are
opportunists who turn their other shapeshifter son out by forcing him to participate in deadly
dogfights so they can make a buck. Generally, those who fit the stereotype surrounding poor
southern culture are those who are depicted as the worst types of people. Harris doesn’t even
use zombies as a metaphor to make a class distinction in her show—in her world, literal poor
people are the monsters.
True Blood and Twilight are both culpable for the backsliding of the main female
character: she is once again weak, sexually objectified, and now more eager than ever to be
submissive to, while reveling in mistreatment by her vampire lover. While True Blood
contains Nan Flanagan and Pam Swynford De Beaufort, two strong female vampires who
parody anti-feminist sentiments, the central focus of the 21st century vampire story tends to
revolve around a frail and emotionally dependent human girl and her romantic relationship
with the possessive and domineering vampire, which reinforces the twisted myth of this
particular idealized love story.41 In addition to the vampire genre’s heroine receiving a
demotion, the contemporary vampire devolves into a lascivious, manipulative, and
domineering male who preys upon the weaknesses of women under the guise of good nature.
41
Although Sookie is half-human, half-faerie, she tends to get most of her physical/supernatural strength
from her faerie side. As a human, Sookie perpetually places herself in danger because of her differing vampire
love interests.
57
Yet J.M. Tyree defends the modern vampire because he believes that it might have an
influence on the way we think about contemporary romantic relationships. He writes:
Edward is the perfect gentleman. He struggles successfully to resist smoldering
jailbait come-ons, and he can move at lightning speed from driving a car to
opening its passenger door for his date. Bill is literally an old-school Southern
gent—his good manners derive from his upbringing in Antebellum Louisiana.
[…] a metaphor for our age’s fantasies of non-exploitative tolerance and
relatively equitable love relationships. (Tyree 32)
Firstly, “old-school Southern” door-opening gender relationships are perhaps the pinnacle of
patriarchal condescension and disempowerment. Secondly, to assume society at large is
pining for said ideals while domestic violence, rape, homophobia, racism, and sexism run
rampant, is charitable at best. And thirdly, are we really going to give Edward our approval
for being “strong enough” to resist pedophilic urges? We have reached the point at which we
are more concerned with defending the vampire rather than the victim. Although they might
sometimes appear wholesome and gentlemanly because of their good looks and silver
tongues, their underlying motivations are not driven by neither love nor respect for the
women to whom they are attracted, but by selfish desire, and contemporary readers do mental
gymnastics to convince themselves that this is somehow acceptable and even desirable.
By mainstream standards today's vampire is something to aspire to. The shift into the
contemporary depiction of zombies—to an ever-more undirected consumerism—is paralleled
in vampire stories in the 21st century. Deviating from the progressive representation of Buffy
to a more strictly controlled vision of female sexuality that is reliant on a strong male figure
for validation, with a heavy focus on aesthetic and status, 21st century vampires (and their
groupies) feed into patriarchal, exploitative fairytales. As Natalie Wilson puts it, “On a
mythic level, Twilight validates patriarchal capitalism and suggests that married monogamy
creates a stable society while at the same time bolstering readers’ worth by feeding longstanding beliefs such as ‘true love conquers all’” (18). The vampire represents the height of
societal expectations: he is the epitome of coolness, sexiness, mystery, and power. He's
white, privileged, heterosexual, well-dressed, extraordinarily beautiful, and widely desired:
some even sparkle in the sun like diamonds.42 He is a bona fide celebrity (the nobility of our
42
This is an attempt by the Mormon Meyers to depict her vampires as “good” or angelic. In reaction to the
58
age) and is adored by both in-text characters and real-life audiences. And just as celebrities
frequently do wrong in the public eye, so do vampires, and we are quick to forgive them and
once again worship at their feet. Both Edward and Bill repeatedly mistreat their leading
ladies: Bella and Sookie are treated as prizes in male competitions, disingenuously seduced
for gain (each have a quality that is inaccessible to the vampire unless he claims the girl to
whom it belongs), and perpetually placed in life-threatening situations. Yet they are still
mesmerized by the vampires’ multi-faceted representation of power and, displaying a
horrifying lack of self-worth, Bella and Sookie continuously look into the face of danger
while desperately vying for male attention and validation. Whereas in the episode “Him”,
Buffy says, “No guy is worth your life, not ever”, Bella is willing to make the ultimate
sacrifice and die for her beau, and eventually does. Yet some regard Twilight as “a sweet and
innocent love story” (Blasingame 629); it has, after all, sold over 100 million copies
worldwide. But by praising Bella's willingness to die for love and become a vampire herself,
is to make her subordinate to Edward and reinforces gender roles rooted in inequality. She
casts aside all components of her identity to be with him and, essentially, to be like him.
Bella's willingness to reinvent herself for Edward is praised as romantic despite its regressive
patriarchal implications. The overall behavior of the contemporary vampire is reminiscent of
the loathsome behavior of some of the original literary 19th century vampires. They are
equally patriarchal, domineering, selfish elites who serve their own interests. However, the
one distinguishing characteristic the new vampire claims from contemporary lore is
sympathy, consequently making him more heinous than we have formerly imagined, because
not only is he once again monstrous, but now we like him for it. When Whedon introduced
the progressive vampire, he concurrently introduced the amiable vampire. Yet once his
progressive voice left the arena, all that remains is a love affair with a monster.
Zombies and vampires are equally popular today. Both are contenders for the
competitive title “coolest monster,” but at their essence they are not all that different. As we
have discussed, they originate from the same humble place: the graveyard of peasants. The
new vampire trait there was a huge backlash in pop culture, mainly by anti fans of the series. Although most of
the gory horror of the vampire is gone, this negative popular reaction shows that audiences have certain
standards regarding the depiction of vampires.
59
revenant reflected their humble lives and it was only after the upper-class Romantics
produced their innovative tales of the undead, that the story becomes muddled. Essentially,
rich, upper-class elites took the story back to England, retold it as it applied to their own
lives, and thus the split between the zombie and the vampire occurred. The English noble
vampire was born and has since made his way to America, while his original grassroots
identity remains left behind with the Eastern European peasants who brought him into
existence. The undead is the undead and, in the case of the zombie and vampire, what merely
appears to separate one revenant from another ultimately boils down to distinctions in
culture, class, and time. If then vampires and zombies are reflections of ourselves rooted in
our respective times, what is the future of our monsters? Seeing how each is popular in its
own right and the vampire arguably has already had its heyday, perhaps we should turn our
eyes to the zombies and listen more closely to what they're trying to tell us about ourselves.
The reality is most of us are not similar to vampires and will never be similar to vampires;
the reality is most of us are far more similar to the zombie than we like to think. In an age
driven by science and technology which propels our consumer culture, we desperately try to
claw our way out from our proletariat graves and grab onto anything which permits us better
material conditions. How long can the zombie and the vampire sustain their current
respective un-lives? Their social classes are so far divided that a revolution is bound to occur
and when it does, it will be a fascinating time: one that allows us to examine the continuing
changes in our most beloved monsters and, more importantly, within ourselves.
60
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