Sympathy and Consent: The problems of vampire love

The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion.... In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. -Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

"Resembling?"

I remember reading it the first time. I put down the book, stared up, frowning at the ceiling (light green, artex. My adolescent bedroom), rubbing the tattered paper of the spine.

"Resembling?"

After all, I was a Buffy fan, had seen enough of Angel's brooding, heard Spike's immortal line:

I wasn't surprised to find the idea of vampiric obsession, the idea that vampires were capable of strong, even affectionate, emotion towards humans and each other - what bothered me was the line being drawn. "Resembling."

The affection Carmilla has for the narrator is evident, her passion clear - why, then, the reluctance to call it by it's name?

Dracula, too, is charged with an inability to love, and answers, "Yes, I too can love. You yourselves can tell it from the past." What's more, the person accusing him is one his 'wives' - another vampire, suggesting that love is valued by the Undead, that Dracula's lack of it is an aberration. However, context is important; the 'love' to which the wives are refering involves eating the object of their desire. What's more, Dracula counters their criticism by claiming that he had once loved them in the same fashion - three women whom he seems to ignore when he isn't indulging them with a baby-in-a-bag, women he is in the process of abandoning.

The Dracula we see in the novel is alone, almost tragically so.

Vampiric love, then, is one which it is difficult to seperate from appetite, from death. After all, Carmilla talks of love and passion without reservation, but it is clear she means something a lot less sanitary than chocolate boxes and billet doux. She recalls "a cruel love - strange love, that would have taken my life," believes, "Love will have its sacrifices." Even in Buffy (which was my teen-relationship textbook) vampire romance is never healthy - there's Angel's painful impossible love of Buffy; there's  Spike and his glorious, dysfunctional infatuation with Dru; and there's Dru swooning over Angelus, the monster who drove her insane.

Perhaps that's what Le Fanu was getting at - we can recognise the strength of the feeling, its passion, its realness - but ultimately it either fickle, self-serving, or destructive. It is not a wholesome, it offers no support or strength, can only kill one or both parties. Although similar to love in many ways, it cannot be love because, by definition, its focus, its practicioners are perverse.

Transgression, Perversity and Otherness:

Hmmm. Yes.

Hopefully it is news to no-one that vampires are often used as a sexual metaphor. However, the sex they represent is seldom normative, sanctioned sexuality - monogamous, heterosexual, vanilla, and focused on reproduction. Vampires are used to explore Otherness, and one way to do that is to present them as sexually 'transgressive'. This holds true, even at a surface reading: Carmilla is a lesbian, Spike a male submissive, Dracula a bigamous foreigner. If I started to list the gay vampires out there, we would be here all day.

And one of the ways that Othering dehumanises a figure is to present their emotions and reactions as deviant, immature, perverse. Because they are different to us, because they are 'less' than us, their emotions and motivations can never be as real, important, or respectable as the feelings of mainstream groups.

So just an Other cannot be forthright, but rather is shrill or beligerant, what they believe to be love is not really love. It is merely lust, infatuation, obessession. Their relationships are perversions and inverstions of the ones that 'we' practice, the 'real' relationships. When they run against us, their attentions are clinging, embarrasing, unwelcome. Their influence is corrupting by default.

Yes, this fits the metaphor of vampirism rather nicely, doesn't it?

And metaphors are powerful. If these stories show, over and again, that the only 'right' love is male-dominated, heterosexual monogamy, then anything which falls outside of that, which is represented by vampires, is dangerous, evil, corrupt.

And, like many things didactic moralists preach against, it also looks kinda fun.

Take me away from all this death.

"Make me into one too," said the boy. "Please? I want to be one. I want to walk the night with you and fall in love and drink blood. Kill me. Make me into a vampire too. Bite me. Take me with you." - Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls

 Oh, who hasn't at least thought about it? About being eternally beautiful, unbreakable, strong?

Sympathy for the vampire is not an uncommon reading, or indeed response to the genre, and the reaction against such sympathy it is always strong, morally guided and didactic.It's well known that the British Board of Film Classification pushed for censorship of Hammer's vampire films because of the sexual element of the biting scenes, especially Mina's almost gleeful acceptance of Dracula's advances.

Even today, there are no shortage of people who seem to want to drag vampirism back into the realms of 'good, clean horror'. But these currents have always been there. The real power of vampirism is neither in its desirability, nor its horror, but in the ambivalence it raises. As the narrator of Carmilla says:

In these mysterious moods, I did not like her. I experienced a strange tumultous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her... but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrance. - Carmilla

We are aware of the moral failings of vampires, even as we are drawn to them. They may be tragic and lovely, but they cannot be saved.

Something in him ached for that boy. For the sadness in his face, for his eyes yearning to stay young. He wanted to grab Nothing away from his companions and tell him that sometimes, everything could be all right, that pain did not have to come with magic, that childhood never had to end. And yet he wondered whether Nothing had not known all those things when he made his choice.  - Lost Souls

Writers do fascinating gymnastics to navigate this problem, but ultimately, it will always be as Carmilla says, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so." It is a mad love, is amour fou - another thing which is belittled, mocked, denegrated. It is another thing that is often described as not 'really' being love, only 'resembling' it.

But, oh, it is so very real, and so very tempting. It is a love which transgressive, morally ambivalent, one that can bring with it an entire world of pain. And many vampire writers chase so hard after it, trying to bring it to a happy ending. But tidying away its danger, its nastiness, its utter disregard of morality, it is very difficult to maintain its white-hot intensity. If a vampire is prepared to call your father, 'sir' and wait until marriage, passion can hardly be consuming him that badly, right?

Well, maybe. There is such a thing as self-control. And, after all, Le Fanu speaks of an "artful courtship" of longing for "something like sympathy and consent"?

Take me away from all this death!

That "like" again.


The Boundaries of Metaphor, the Limits of Consent:
 

As mentioned above, the sympathy is easy. It's the heart of the vampire's allure, after all. It is precisely that balance of attraction and disgust. The idea that something about you is being admitted that you would never have owned before. It is about a sense of transgression, of non-normativity. It's about self discovery - and the ensuing shame, ambivalence, emergence.

The reinvention of the vampire as a romantic hero comes from that longing, that desire to put away all the weakness and uncertainty, to have your secret desires unfolded, to be lifted up on a love that is actually forever. So, of course it appeals, it is so tempting to leave it at that. 

But consent? Oh, how on earth do do we negotiate the morality of this?

After all, this is not coming out or getting laid. It's not asking your partner to spank you: we are talking about a vampire. This is someone who kills humans in order to live. So, yeah, you might sympathise, but that won't stop you reaching for the stakes and the communian wafer.

Besides, even if it didn't, can a word like consent actually be used in these circusmtances? The watchword of the BDSM community is SSC - safe, sane and consensual - and if consent is the most discussed, it does not exist in isolation. The three are interdependent - without consent and safety, it cannot be sane; without consent and sanity, it is not safe; without safety and sanity you cannot be said to have consented.

Also, legally, certain things are out of bounds, no matter how much you might want someone to do them to you. Being eaten, for example.

How can vampire romance ever be unproblematic?

So people tidy things up. They removed the Otherness of vampires,  stop them being killers, make them just humans with better hair and super-strength. But this overlooks the power of that Otherness, the importance of vampire mythos to groups who have been Othered, told their desires are dirty, immoral, or just worthy of mockery.

Contemporary vampire novels are frequently queer, or kinky, or else the dream relationships of lonely women of various ages*. To love a vampire is to desire to turn outsider status in to the ultimate in-group, to rewrite loneliness and frustration in to endless pleasure, to cast off low self-esteem nd find body confidence, beauty and sexual agency.

So we write stories where there are 'good' vampires, where they have souls and don't eat humans, and it becomes all about the metaphor. These are good people, just like us, facing unfair discrimination. The fact they must live in secrecy is unjust. The huge taboo surrounding vampire love is misguided.

However, as an idea of 'devaint love reclaimed as permissible', vampirism is a flawed model. To be able to embrace it wholeheartedly involves tidying away the ugliness, the whole vampire bit of vampirism. Female sexual agency isn't actually fatal, and lesbianism is does not cause aneamia. There is a lacuna between the metaphorical truth of vampirism-as-sexuality and its narrative reality. A young queer person may be justified in feeling that coming out will get them treated like a monster - it happens far too often - but they will never become one. Kinky sex (or, honestly, just sex) may feel dangerous, furtive and transgressive - but it should never actually be so.

Vampirism is. Its whole draw is the idea of being wanted so badly by someone that they will devour you. But this isn't a brutal slash and hack job - it is tender, loving, slow. It is romantic, sensuous, arousing.

And it will kill you.

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* Mine is, arguably, all three. 

Time's Fool - coming in to the light

My debut novel Time's Fool is now live on the Unbound site.

Regular readers of this blog will know how much supernatural fiction means to me. Time's Fool is my lovesong to the genre - an homage to Dracula and an edgy, contempory take on the conventions of the Victorian Gothic. 

Please, do pop over there and check it out.

What I've been Reading: The Princess Bride, The Count of Monte Cristo

Inconceivable!

I suppose after last week's little rant about idiot abridgements, it was only natural I returned my attention to the most lauded and memorable 'good bits' version it's been my pleasure to read. I am talking, of course, of S. Morgernstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The Princess Bride, abridged for us lesser mortals by William Goldman. This was partly because of a recent argument I got involved in regarding the sexism that pervades said text (no matter how much I love it, it does. There is. Sob. Sorry) and partly because of the way Goldman's attitude towards adventure fiction reveals a parallel, but very different course, to my own.

The Count of Monte Cristo was written at a time when the genre lines that govern fiction were not so strictly defined. We do Dumas as much as a disservice by pigeon-holing him as a historical Romance writer as we do by perpetuating the myth that he wrote children's books. The 'Rome' section (the bit I've just read) is as pure and concentrated Gothic as Udolpho. It's all Italian banditti, Edmond-the-Vampire and slightly strained reference to Lord Byron. In fact, the novel itself follows the pattern of a Gothic beautifully,we follow our hero from pastoral (or perhaps maritime) idyllic poverty, through terror and bondage (and that word is ruined forever) into the more violent, 'primitive' places where different rules govern behaviours and men - remote islands, Italian forests, the Eternal City - only to bring that terror back with us to the stylish salons of the so-called civilised world. In fact, the evidence is that Dumas really wanted to write a Gothic in the truest sense of the word, in that he wanted to start the book in Rome, have us meet Edmond-the-vampire before we met Edmond-the-poor-but-honest sailor. Like the ambiguous, Byronic villains whose apparent supernatural origins are eventually explained away, we were supposed to be mystified by the terrifying, 'savage' honour of 'Sinbad the Sailor' before we understood the betrayal that had shaped him.

Thanks to the intervention of Auguste Maquet, however, that is not the story we have. So we, with our more rigid interpretations of genre conventions, we find ourselves expecting Napoleon, vengeance, true love and high adventure and instead get dropped in the catacombs of San Sebastiano with a bunch of Byronic bandits. 

Well I, for one, am not complaining. *Whistles innocuously*

Mmm. Edmond Dantès

But coming back for a moment to The Princess Bride, Goldman perfectly captures the savage realism and emotional challenge that novels like Monte Cristo offer to young readers. Especially denuded of the societal satire, the dirty bits and the political context, these stories are incredibly shocking beneath their veneer of 'far away and long ago.' The Three Musketeers is a tale of friendship that overcomes all odds and then just sort of... ends as the four men go their separate ways. The Count of Monte Cristo is about a man getting vengeance on his betrayers, on the man who stole his future and his wife and then, all obstacles removed, their enduring love for each other admitted, he.... goes off with someone else. The Princess Bride is about a couple who brave the the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fireswamp, torture, only for one of them to die and the other to marry another. No one even 'gets' Humperdinck!


They aren't fair, these novels. There is no Providence, no ever loving God looking out for the virtuous. And actually, come to think of it, our heroes aren't that virtuous. Goldman captures - perfectly - the frustrations of a child who has grown up with the sanitised, naive, 'happy ending' versions of these stories, only to discover in adulthood that they weren't simple or as reassuring, that the undercurrent of discomfort they created was their real legacy, their enduring power. 

After all, Who said that life was fair? Where is that written?

Won't Somebody Think of the Children? Problems of gender in vampire fiction, part 3:

This is the third in a series of posts about 19th and early 20th Century vampire fiction, the first and second can be found here and here.

Bad Motherhood and Hungry Vampires:

Perhaps the most significant difference between male and female vampires in the late 19^th Century is this: female vampires are hungry.

Oh, male vampires eat people, don't worry about that. But they are not ravenous about it. No. Male vampires may be calculating, conniving, vengeful, insidious. They may be as loathsome and inexplicable to good WASPy masculinity as any stereotypical seducer, but of the bunch only Varney approaches that desperation, that female need for his victims. Besides, even when he gets to that state of frantic single-mindedness, the object of his interest is beautiful, innocent young women. It's peculiar, perhaps, but it isn't unhealthy. Female vampires can't even manage good ol' heterosexuality. Oh, they may bite the odd, unwary man but that's more of an afterthought. Female vampires have a very particular form of sustenance.

Children.

The fear in these narratives, the terror of female sexuality is as nothing to this fear of the influence a corrupt woman might have upon the innocence of youth. As early as Varney, the Vampyre we are told that this is the peak of all horrors the vampire can bestow. When asking Charles Holland if he would wed a woman who has experienced vampiric attack, Marchdale's strongest argument is, “if you wed, you would look forward to being blessed with children—those sweet ties which bind the sternest hearts to life with so exquisite a bondage. Oh, fancy, then, for a moment, the mother of your babes coming at the still hour of midnight to drain from their veins the very life blood she gave to them.”

What an image! It calls to mind Lilith birthing monsters, of Lady Macbeth calling on the spirits of the air to 'unsex' her. A woman who walks outside the divinely ordained strictures of behaviour is, after all, made unfit for her purpose. That purpose being, of course, the nurturing children.

So these vampire-women are a monstrous inversion of the female-biology-as-destiny. Not only are they 'failed' women, rendered incapable of 'normal' reproduction - their appetites, their hunger, lead them to steal that role, that purpose from other women. Harriet Brandt – oh, unwittingly – causes the death of Margaret Pullen's baby by her smothering, off-putting attentions. Sarah, cruel, wicked, sexually deviant, steals the village children to extend her cursed life. Lucy Westernra is a siren, calling toddling East End babes from their games. Dracula's 'brides' fawn and squabble until they are handed what is generally assumed to be a baby in a bag.

The combined image of violence and motherhood – the vampire in her bloodstained shroud, clutching a child to her breast, her face buried in its neck – is such a stark perversion of breastfeeding, of a mother's kiss, that it sits uneasily even with the modern imagination. If we add to the mix the Victorian preoccupation with eugenics and social reform, we see the vampire as the 'unfit' mother, causing the death of her own, and other women's babes. In the light of the high infant mortality rates of the time, this serves to make all women deeply suspect.

Of course, male vampires also suggest an amalgamation of violence and reproductive capacity but, with women, this implication is intensified by the non-supernatural reproductive aspect of femininity. The preserve of life and death, the role of judge and creator are – in Christian iconography – male. The taking and creation of life is pre-ordained – it is God's will, God's plan.

Vampires reproduce in a way that has no divine sanction, they live through taking life. They are an attempt, by a bodily entity, to take control. It is no surprise that Dracula is an alchemist, a proto-scientist, a necromancer trying to wrest control away from divinely ordained means. In becoming a vampire, he is seeking knowledge that, properly, belongs to God. Vampire women, too are attempting to move one step up that hierarchical ladder that places men above women, God above men. They are taking agency, attempting to control their own reproduction. But, like Dracula, they merely find themselves sliding lower. As he attempted to attain the heights of knowledge, of immortality, he became instead grotesque, sub-human, effeminate. Likewise, these women become not liberated or rational, they become mindless sleepwalkers, clutching after their own failed femininity. They become desperate gluttons, furious seductresses, snatching the children they have denied themselves with bloodied hands.

By inference, of course, this warning applies to all men who would be gods, to all women who would be men, who would through sexual agency, through abortion or contraception, seek to attain the male privilege of manoeuvring in the world. By seeking to become masculine, all these women do is fail in their femininity. The men have it worse, of course, by seeking Godhead, they fail in their humanity, because what fate could be worse than becoming a woman?

The Vampire as Cougar:

Of course, if it's difficult being a young, sexually desirable female vampire/victim, if it is all always your fault on account of your weird sexual desires, your frankly alarming reproductive capability, and your inexplicable desire to be something more than a smiling supporter of the substandard men in your life, it sucks¹ even worse being a female vampire if you are past nubility.

After all, the sole function of both women and sex is the divinely ordained function of reproduction, and that power is made to be legislated and controlled by men. So, if you can keep these naturally perverse women under control for long enough, then at the age of... oh, somewhere between 35 and 50... they politely disappear. God alone knows where they go, although we suspect its something to do with charity drives and hospital visits. It's not like they have anything left to live for.

Bitter irony aside, even I was surprised by the number of these 'middle aged' female vampires. Oh, they have no representatives as iconic as the white whiskered Dracula, but they exist in some numbers, and the chaotic implications effect they have upon patriarchal and reproductive norms is remarkable. Not only do these cougar-vamps refuse to have the decency to remain in their places and their graves, they have the unspeakable audacity to want to cling on to life beyond their reproductive prime. Again, it's almost as though they want to be men.

They can't manage it, of course. So, we have Mrs Amworth (1922/3), a widow and gadabout who stirs up a small rural community with her whist drives and dinner parties. How are these men to cope? Especially as she refuses to do the decent thing and quieten down into respectable, invisible middle age? Yes, that Mrs Amworth, who has the audacity to look ten years younger than her actual age! I mean, what kind of irresponsibility is that? She might almost be giving the message to men that she is reproductively available! Heavens, if she looks that young, they might almost be deceived by her!

Still, she embarrasses herself as our culture tells us all mature women must do if they attempt to be sexually active. She throws herself at confirmed bachelors, makes unwelcome moves upon respectable, married women and tries to bite the boy who mows her lawn. Shocking stuff. No alternative but to drive a stake through her heart.

Or we have Lady Duncayne (1896), a withered old hag: improper, idle, grotesque. She is a contradiction, a recluse who spends her year circling the pleasure spots, she hungers after continued life long past the date that nature would have told her to be off this earth, to stop being a bother.

Hugely rich, she squats over opulence that she cannot enjoy; too much money to spend it,too much life to enjoy it, she clutters up the fictional landscape, monopolising doctors, hotel rooms, attention, refusing to move over and accept that her bit is done. She employs young women, healthy, robust, nubile young women, steals them away from families and beaus, stifles them in aged company and lack of occupation. If this weren't enough, of course, she literally steals their life, transfusing their fresh, young blood into her withered veins. There is a terrible selfishness in Lady Duncayne; refusing to accept that her day is past, that all the things her gold can buy should pass on to other, younger pairs of hands. She even tries to steal the love interest of the heroine, buying his services as a doctor so that he would be incapable of marrying, of joining the wider current of young, attractive life.

And, like the vampires that have gone before them, these women are effeminate rather than masculine. In refusing to be demure, retiring, they have cast aside what little elevation brought to them by the civilising property of being 'feminine' and are instead sunk to the level of 'bad women'. They are immoral, lacsivious. Lady Ducayne, we are told, reads French novels and laughs at them, while she sleeps through English sentimental literature. She thinks that anyone, anything can be bought. Her power of temptation is not her sexual allure, but her money - the filthy lucre offered to those for whom liquidity is a pressing need. The cost, however is either the life or the morality. She is the Marxist vampire in the truest sense, exploiting the working poor, bleeding them dry, failing even to show the 'feminine charity' expected in one of her rank.

Mrs Amworth seems harmless in comparison, a mere gossip, a mayfly, a flirt. Still, she is disturbing to the established order. She dares to be sensually aware after the death of her husband and her fertility. She speaks warmly, even lasciviously, of the caress of the earth which one feels in the grave – that perverse female sexuality at work again. When she desires a man,she will claw at his window, screeching and battling to get in. If she slips through a crack in his armour, she will stifle him with her neediness. The image – a woman-become-animal scrabbling for admittance – leaves one in no doubt as to the view of female desire or affection held by the authorial voice. To let her in, after all, is to chance damnation. It is telling that she is 'discovered' by a trope often found in the folklore surrounding witches – an injury inflicted in her transformed state being noticeable upon her human body. Like a folkloric witch, she is a mature female body out of control, in need of reprisal.

Just as male vampires defile the sanctity of female chastity and young female vampires bring corruption to the sacred role of motherhood, so mature female vampire unsettles the balance, the equilibrium of the family unit. If Mrs Amworth can get a respectable village of middle-aged rustics behaving like excitable teenagers, what hope then for the younger generations? And it is at the younger generations that she is casting her cap, barging younger, more viable, women out of the way. Who does she feed upon but her gardener? A scarcely legal boy, who is doubtless utterly overcome by the attentions of an experienced woman who looks younger than her years. And when the gardener ails, she attempts to 'trap' other men into relationships, or she displays her sexual ambiguity by attacking a woman only identified as 'the Major Pearsalls's wife.'

To a certain extent, Luella Miller (1903) can be seen in this way, although she is by no means 'aged'. She is desirable, improperly so for a married woman. She draws people in – male or female – she enchants them, makes them lose all sense of self-preservation. Like Harriet Brandt, she is suffocating, bringing on an unexplained malaise to all who are foolish enough to help her. Again, like Harriet, she seems unaware of the effect she has. However fatal, she is no femme fatal. The pain she causes leaves her hurt and bewildered – pathetically so.

Pathetic is the word for it: A feminist hatred of effeminacy? 
 

To stay with Luella Miller for a moment, it's interesting the way this discourse of good and bad women plays in to early feminist discourse. After all, much has been made of Wilkins Freeman's feminism, the way that her story critiques the society which requires women to be beautiful but useless, the way she contrasts Luella Miller's repellent babyishness with the brusque, working class practicality of Lydia Anderson. Yet however scathing a critique this is of the society that keeps women of a certain class unable to help themselves, the very vitriol of Lydia's narration establishes it as a tale of woman against woman.

Lydia's first grief with Luella is that ever popular one, the one that stems from the fear patriarchal culture drills into women from so young an age – the belief that other woman are the enemy because they are trying to steal your man. Indeed, the whole conflict of the story is framed as the struggles of a 'good' woman against a 'bad' one. After all, Luella is indolent, alluring, and callous whilst Lydia is hard-working, compassionate, practical, something that echoes the femininity/effeminacy discourse so closely that I am uncomfortable to claim Luella Miller as a feminist vampire text. Yes, it begins to unsettle that set of expectations but the demands of the vampire narrative are too strong. Luella's behaviour could easily be understood through the prism of Mrs Amsworth, Harriet Brandt. She preys on the children she teaches, the much younger men who admire her. Young women, full of hope and life, fall victim to her unnatural, widow's vanity. Rather than settle to housework and charity to her neighbours - as a woman without a man should, as Lydia did - she continues to intrigue. She even (how dare she?) marries again.

No, Luella is not the model of sedate, culturally acceptable femininity. She is a caricature of effeminacy, she is all the worst bits of which a bad woman is capable. That these are the necessary product of constructed, social femininity is besides the point. Everything she gets is got on the back of those feminine wiles of hers. A 'good' woman has no time for those - Lydia, pipped at the post on her one prospect of heteronormative life settles herself down to spinisterhood, to housework and to helping her neighbours. However, we know Luella is a bad 'un, from a patriarchal perspective, because before she married, she even worked. Shocking, isn't it?

Unsettling the misogynist discourse – where is the blame?

So, for all the questioning that Wilkins Freeman did of that model of gendered expectations (and Lydia certainly does unsettle them) the only vampire story I have found that directly addressed this culture of blame, of 'bad' women, is August Derleth's The Drifting Snow(1939). Here, the vampires are oddly helpless, revenants who have no power to leave the place where they died, no hope but to lure those who wish to aid them out to the same snowy death they encountered on the hill.

Their method of hunting is, of course, codified as feminine: their very existence draws men to them. And, of course, it is always men. The helplessness of these vampires entices the virile, the courageous to assist them, any 'feeding' that occurs is the parasitic effect of weakness upon strength. Naturally, in being drawn to this softness, the man is emasculated, is made a soft snow-vampire, is forced to wait and draw the attentions of those stronger than himself. We could expect, then, the old saw that if a woman is attractive to a man in any way, the consequences of that attraction are entirely her fault.

But Derleth undermines this, specifically and directly. “One night” the explanation goes, “[my father] found out that one of my brothers... had been very familiar with one of the servants, a very pretty girl, older than I was. He thought she was to blame, though she wasn't, and he didn't find it out until too late.”

"Though she wasn't". Three words. Three words and this story is turned on its head. The first vampire, it seems, is a woman wronged, a woman whose obvious allure meant the blame for a man's corruption was laid upon her head. But that assignment of blame is incorrect – the simple fact of her attractiveness does not excuse the male approach. The woman's death, cruel and unearned, finally imbues her with that power, that ability to draw men in to their destruction. But it is interesting that she does it not through her wiles, but through her very real, irredeemable helplessness - a self-effacement that is feminine rather than effeminate, a state to which she was already condemned by the moral laxity and prejudices of men. In under ten words, Derleth addresses the underlying prejudice of most late 19^th and early 20^th Century vampire fiction, "He thought she was to blame, though she wasn't".

The Alchemy of the Screen Vampire:

But here, in 1939, we have a break, because here comes the screen vampire, the cinematic history. Certain expectations, certain cliches emerge from the stories and become gospel. The vampire ceases to be an almost-ghost, an almost-witch, a borderline thing and becomes, triumphantly, a genre in its own right. There come a generation of vampire writers who have not read Dracula, or at least not until after they have seen Lugosi and Langella and Lee. 

What this does to the perception of the vampire as a gendered being may go some way to explain why a woman's lust for a vampire goes from deviant to predictable, and why it becomes so much harder for women to become vampires at all. 

Part 4 will come after a short hiatus.

1Pun totally intended.

From Resistance to Weakness: problems of gender in vampire fiction, part 2

This is the second part in a series of blog posts about late 19th and early 20th Century vampire fiction. The first can be found here.

From Flora to Lucy, resistance to weakness:

While the vampires in early vampire fiction are encoded as effeminate, they find their sustenance, their reproduction, in the weakness, the leakiness, of women. True, not all women succumb. Much of the point of Varney, the Vampyre – if that particular book has a point¹ – is that most young women of virtue will not be won over by a well dressed stranger with a charming tongue. Even the narrator of Carmilla, half-seduced, draws back from her vampire-lover's overt declaration of romantic love.

It is only in The Vampyre that we see women as wholly, irrevocably flawed, that we see this effeminacy an innate characteristic that even the most 'feminine' possess: "Remember your oath, and know, if not my bride today, your sister is dishonoured. Women are frail!"

Towards the end of the 19^th Century, and beginning of the 20^th the frail nature of femininity, its tendency towards effeminacy - become the crux of the vampire narrative. Damn these women, after all, with their bodies that don't give clear signals, their endless 'potential' that only serves to tempt upstanding men! Damn the way the fall out all over the place, their ... fleshy appendages, their wandering wombs, refusal to be contained by our discourses of virtue, of femininity.

Okay, maybe not that thin

And as the female victims fail to remain in their divinely ordained place, so the male vampires cease to be contained by the their skins. From the sang froid of Ruthven, the skeletally thin Varney with his flat, tin coloured eyes, we move the Von Klatka (1860) and Dracula (1897) – no longer serpentine agents of seduction but undeniable lumps of carnal flesh.

Beginning their stories withered, thin, even desiccated, the blood they drink destroys their masculinity. Their cheeks and lips are rouged by it, their mouths become fuller, more sensual. They grow lethargic, glutted and glutinous, getting something of Carmilla's languor with nothing of her cool attractiveness. Yet, despite becoming less male, less 'human', despite becoming more of the body, despite slipping back into their grave-dirt and ruins and shrouds, all of a sudden, women are no longer able to resist them.

Female sexuality as deviant by default:

Franziska, of The Mysterious Stranger would “rather be tyrannized over, and kept a little under” than “loved in such a wearisome manner.” The suitor whom she thus insults is the quiet, kind and cultured Franz, a man who 'serves' her in very much the way traditional Christian rhetoric suggests that Christ serves the Church. She, of course, refuses to submit to his affections. Yet despite her scorn, Franz is the perfect Enlightenment man, a being of the head rather than the body, a creature of reason, not of instinct. It is ironic, therefore, that she levels at him the charge of effiminacy because he does not present something that appeals to her sexuality. Each evidence of his 'true' masculinity is seen as a flaw. Because Franz is rational, she finds him wearisome, because Franz is prudent, she believes him cowardly, because Franz is chivalrous, she thinks him lacking in spirit. Of course, from the moment she meets Azzo Von Klatka - ugly, rude, animalistic - she is utterly taken with him.

“Women, eh?” we're supposed to say, reading from the script of 'Nice Guys' everywhere, “Look at everything I've done for her and she runs off with that jerk.” But then, that's women for you, isn't it? Irrational. Dangerous. Sexually deviant. They sleep with lepers, you know?

The women of Dracula don't fare much better. Oh, the don't seek out the vampire with quite Franziska's single-mindedness, but there is something of duplicity implied about them. Of course, with their 'man-brains' they do not want the vampire to attack them, but in their 'woman-hearts?' Why, Mina even states, “I was bewildered and, strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him.”

How do we explain this?

Well, in what is probably the novel's finest double entendre, Dracula announces that the men “should have kept their energies for use closer to home.”

Yes, “While they played their wits against me... I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now to me flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood... You shall be avenged in turn, for not one of them but shall minister to your needs.”

Who wouldn't want that?

Put simply, guys, while you're too busy being macho men, your girlfriend will be getting her kicks by sucking off some backwoods freakshow with hairy palms.² If there was ever an exercise in heterosexual male paranoia...

The message of Dracula, of The Mysterious Stranger is that women, however good, however pure, are not to be trusted. They are the flaw by which these entities are able sneak into your circle, they will be turned against you by their inexplicable lusts. Oh, of course, they might be the sweetest, kindest, most sensible of women; they may be the most feminine creatures you can imagine, but when push comes to shove, it is that effeminacy that will show through. Effeminacy is nature, it seems, femininity is the construct of society.

It isn't even the vampire's fault, you know, the narratives are pretty clear on that: these women will not want to hinder him.

Male desire, feminine perversity:

Men, of course, fine upstanding, mindful creatures that they are, don't find themselves drawn to such revolting beasts as Dracula or Von Klatka. No. The female vampires that seduce them are much more alluring. Oh, evil, sure, but there is enough there for the attraction to be understandable, even natural, in some measure.

Just as Carmilla is beautiful, forward and unsettling, Harriet Brandt (1897) is “slight and lissome” and desperately improper, Sarah (1900) has a face that is “beautiful in spite of its horror”. The women in Dracula are of “intolerable, tingling sweetness”, they have a “deliberate voluptuousness” which is both “thrilling and repulsive.” It's no wonder the men are attracted to them really – they have all manner of female wiles with which to ensnare him. They do it through that time honoured means, through an appeal to his base nature, through exciting his... flesh³.

Your classic vamp.

The important thing to remember is that men aren't weird about it. These girls are hot. The desire of the heroes is understandable, given the circumstances. It is sinful, yes, but it is straight-forward rather than duplicitous and self-deceiving. Men are drawn in by these women's deliberate wiles, not led astray by their own, faulty natures.

And these vampire women are studies in effeminacy, too. They are not soft, they are not retiring. If anything they suffocate, they engulf. Gone is Carmilla's light, tripping intensity. Dracula's 'brides', Lucy Westernra and Countess Sarah are seductive, voluptuous. Harriet, more sympathetic, is eager, girlish, hungry for attention, for love, and it is this neediness that smothers those she adores.

The fear against them is simple: these women want. They grasp, they summon. Oh, yes, they are pretty, they are alluring, but to allow these women in, to allow one's lust for them to arise, is to to be seduced, to be made unclean, to be bitten. This, indeed, is a feature of Victorian vampire fiction: one need not, as in the modern myth, 'consent'. One does not need to does not need to drink of the vampire's blood to be turned. In order to be corrupted, all that is needed is to yield to that seduction, to allow oneself to succumb to that bite.

If the men forget their virility, their upstanding virtue and yield, if they show a moment of feminine softness, let themselves be governed by their bodies rather than their minds, then these tempters in such pleasing array will slide in and make leaky vessels of the menfolk, too. Gone will be good sense, intelligence, honest chivalry, worthwhile pursuits. They will be degraded, become decadent, indolent, hysterical, effete. Masculinity will fly out of the window. They will become, in short, effeminate.

But the cause of this is not some inherent flaw of masculinity. Oh, no. The blame is upon these damnable women for desiring, for wanting, for – as the phrase goes – 'asking for it.'

Essentially, you have the classic double bind: it is always the woman's fault.

Vampire women symbolise the lust which will capture a man if his energies are not properly spent. While it is better to marry than to burn, it's better still to be out doing masculine, homosocial things and leaving that wife at home. Sexuality might be a natural drive, but getting so hung up on it, y'know, actually spending time with your missus? That's unhealthy.

Women, of course, are another matter. If you do leave the wife at home, the bizarre perversity of her nature will mean she is not content sitting alone and practicing short-hand – or whatever it is these girls get up to. No. She will allow entrance to a vampire, that weird looking cove who really is repellent in all ways. Yes, the vampire man, that's who she wants, the one who symbolises all that energy that women just cannot expend healthily, all that eternally possible sexuality that cannot be trusted in anyway. Look, when it happens to the ladies, it isn't like you nearly getting bitten that time, no. This is perverse.

Hysterical lot, the females, aren't they?

If they're not utterly overpowered by those wandering wombs, a woman has a very definite place in vampire fiction. That place is... er... not doing whatever it is that she is doing. 

Part Three: Won't Somebody think of the Children

1Questionable, I'll warrant.

2Physically impossible to make someone drink from your chest in that position. Just sayin'.

3No giggling at the back there.

The Vampire as a Leaky Vessel: problems of gender in vampire fiction, part 1

This is the first in a series of blog posts that will update weekly, addressing late 19th and early 20th Century vampire fiction:

So, I'm not entirely sure where I first encountered the expression, “the female body is a leaky vessel”, but I know it was at some point during my BA. I was reading one of those books I used to get to peruse – the ones with titles like, Queering the Middle Ages¹. Anyway, I liked the phrase. It stuck with me all through the writing, reading and note-taking I did on archetypes in folk ballads and the legality and theology behind pre-1750 marriage, simply because that is a brilliant way of looking at the whole squeamish, misogynist mess surrounding bodies in our culture. The female body is leaky.

For we have, do we not, a dichotomy in the dominant social discourse? A myth of two genders who fall under that generic term of 'mankind'. Two genders, one of which does it all properly, and another which doesn't exactly play ball, which is – not to put too fine a point on it – faulty. After all, women don't have a discreet pattern of arousal. They don't have nice, neat interaction with the reproductive process, an inoffensive little flap of tissue that hangs down, and – in theory - only makes its presence felt, only making a mess when it is called upon to do its duty. If the male member realises that it is not wanted, it can – at least theoretically – make its retreat. After the business is done, it need only wash itself and we are back to square one, back to the unperturbed, normative, sexless body of inert masculinity.

Without that pattern of arousal, while the female body can never be considered entirely sexual, it is also never - socially, politically, or even physically – inert. In terms of sexuality, the female body is leaky.

If it were not enough that women can't have a man's proud, upstanding organ, not enough that their bodies have – potentially – limitless ability for sexual performance², women menstruate. If you have unprotected sex with them, women drip. And after that there is pregnancy with all its discharge, morning sickness, blocked sinuses, swelling middles and stress incontinence. There is labour with all the blood, faeces, vomit, amniotic fluid and 'show' – that nightmare combination of sneeze and nosebleed which makes its presence felt through jellied lumps sliding from woman's vulva just as she enters active labour. (Consider this a public service announcement for all expectant mothers. No-one ever tells you about 'show'.)

I apologise to any gentlemen who are now running for the smelling salts, but suffice to say all this unspeakable mess doesn't even take us to the baby, which (covered in meconium or otherwise), flops out, followed by a blue-white sinew of umblilical cord and a chunk of bloody yech that is the after birth. When that's all done, then comes the lactating: tits like Catwoman's, and the superpower of being able to shoot milk across a room, ruining five bras in half an hour.

Honestly, if you're beginning to sympathise with some of the more paranoid ramblings I encountered during my degree, I can see your point. You may sympathise with that old moderate, St Jerome, who got his head in such a twist over the idea of pregnant women that he had the urge to punch them in the bump.³ Or you may feel there was some grounding in the medical treatise that claimed women's menstruation was how they rid themselves of the impurities they got from congress with lepers.

Lovely.

Also, what?

We went pretty quickly from 'ugh, girl cooties' to 'fornicating with lepers'. What with the moral and social stigma attached Hansen's disease and extra-marital sex in that period, that's a pretty extreme explanation for a routine process of ejecting useless tissue.

But that's just it, isn't it? This discourse of leaky women who drip and bleed and gush plays very easily into a belief that women are leaky in their moral, as well as physical selves. After all, to the medieval imagination, women, were the agents of the fall. In the dichotomy of heaven/earth, king/state, head/body, women were very much supposed to occupy the latter position in each balance. This rhetoric is remarkably pervasive. Go to the right places, you'll still hear it today: “Just as Jesus is the head of the church, so the man is...”

God created mankind in his image. He created women in his image, as well. He just created them a bit different, a bit more bodily, a bit more earthy, a bit, well, leakier. So it stands to reason, doesn't it, that if something is bodily rather than spiritual, animal rather than civilised, 'faulty' rather that 'normative', it is simultaneously less male, less human. Indeed, it becomes female.

I promised you vampires, didn't I?

There are lots of ways this nasty little myth wriggles itself into our culture. There are lots of ways it played out in the medieval discourse that I'm not going into here. What's interesting me right at this minute is the way my passion number one (perceptions of gender, sexuality and marriage, particularly in the medieval and early modern period) has a curious intersection with what is probably passion number three.

Namely, vampires.

Yes, that's it. Sorry it took me so long.

What this is really all about is a vague trend I have noticed from reading far, far too many vampire novels: the later the narrative, the more likely it is that male vampires will be portrayed as attractive, as desirable, as sympathetic. A female vampire not only retains a more or less steady attractiveness over time, but is in fact far less likely to occur the later the narrative.

The folkloric vampire and its liminal state:

We don't really see vampires as bodily any more. No, don't start listing all the gruesome vampire films you've seen – if you're reading this, you're probably an expert and therefore don't count. Instead, go and ask an average seven year old what a vampire looks like. Because in this, post-Dracula world, most people's first impression of a vampire is essentially a smoothed down version of Bela Lugosi – male, adult, white.

We all know what a vampire looks like

The image is cartoonish in its ubiquity. It is a Hallowe'en caricature: smooth skin and slick hair. Its colour come in bold blocks and contrasts: white shirt, black jacket; white skin, red eyes; black cloak, red lining. Even the much maligned Robert Patterson/Edward Cullen look feeds into this photo-shopped perception of vampirism: hair in such rigid spikes it looks carved that way, skin with something of a lacquered finish, eyes a bright amber under manga-distinct brows. Vampires these days are not physical, they do not smear themselves across our consciousness. They are complete, discreet, self-contained. They have the same studied passivity of religious icons.

Vampires didn't used to be like that. They didn't even, in the words of a thousand internet warriors,used to be 'bad-ass'. No. Vampires used to be leaky.

They are spirits, characters, identities that cannot be contained within the useful boxes that society and morality would teach us. They are death leaking into life, sexual desire seeping into the virginal bed. They are a combination of hysterical grief and lust. The folkloric ghouls, squeezing bloated from their graves, dripping blood from rotting maws, crawling back to infect those they beloved with the miasma of death and they are leaky in the extreme. If it is better to marry than to burn, traditional vampires reminded people of the destructive power of desire which had no respect for the proper sacraments, for holy days, for the fact that marriage lasts only until death. Like corruption, like the pox, the vampires trickle in to any crack left in the vessel – any invitation, any little flaw in your armour of hygiene and righteousness.

Yes, newsflash, vampires are about sex. No, not only about sex, of course, but it plays a major part. They are about morality, about corruption, about disease. They are about damnation and sin. They were created in a culture that saw no clear distinction between spiritual, moral and physical cleanliness. What better way to reject one's spiritual nature than to remain on earth in physical form? What better way to spread damnation than to crawl from your grave and corrupt your spouse, your children, your family - those connected to them through bodily means.

As much as from medical ignorance, from fear of illness, the myth of the vampire arises from fears of intimacy, of the way an 'earthly' bond can override the moral strictures of community and faith. It has its foundation in the obsessive attachment that strictures of religion and custom are intended to contain. Vampires were unreasonable, unreasoning in their appetites. They put human interaction before the law of God.

In the head/body, male/female dichotomy, these are female flaws, female traits. Whatever their gender, vampires were codified as female, as the the body, and as such, they leak.

What I've been reading: Wicked and various short stories.

Ugh. Soooo many vampire stories.

For various reasons of a masochistic stripe I have read every vampire short story in my possession that I don't know more-or-less by heart already, and a few that I can get for nowt online. I have done this regardless of whether they are any good or not. Naturally, being the ones I have read less often, they tend to be somewhat less inspiring. Still, a few treats were to be found, foremost The Drifting Snow, which was an unexpected delight - especially as it was written by the much maligned August Derleth.

Anyway, more about vampires later. Is that a what? A threat? A promise?

On a related note, if you see a copy of this book second-hand,  it's probably worth your coin for the Saki story alone. Still, I maintain it displays considerable cheek to call adoorstop sized collection 'GREATEST VAMPIRES' and only have about seven vampire stories in the whole volume. Technically the title is Greatest Vampires and other horrors but that last part is in teeny tiny, near illegible font, so the point stands. Some fab ghost stories in there, though, and as I found my copy in a recycling box, I can hardly complain.

Speaking of 'other horrors', Gregory Maguire's Wicked is an incredibly ruthless book, far more so than I'd expect from the hype surrounding the musical, and something of a shock to a person who only has faint memories of The Wizard of Oz. While it isn't an entirely consistent novel, which I've come to expect from works which cover such a long timespan, it is enjoyable throughout. I would say the middle of the book is the best, possessing a page turning intensity and a fine irony in the telling. The beginning is rather slow, though, and the ending felt somewhat forced and hurried. The reason for this is probably lie in the fact that Wicked is derivative fiction, and was thereby constrained by the events and timespan of The Wizard of Oz.

Quite compelling.

Most effective was Maguire's early stance that Elphaba should not receive inferiority, and the book suffered when he backed down on that. The impression that she is an utter enigma is so heavily played upon throughout the novel that by the time she takes the 'narration' Maguire seems unwilling to undermine that by giving his readers to many answers. To me, at least, this made her actions seem disjointed, her actions inexplicable even to herself. Of course, with her so isolated at the novel's end, it would have been hard to reframe the narrative in terms of another's viewpoint, but to do so successfully would have been all the more effective because of that.

So, flawed and a little unsatisfactory, but it was haunting. While I'm not convinced of it as a portrait of causes and complications of the Wicked Witch's wickedness, it was a solidly enjoyable read, offering a very approachable exploration of prejudice, privilege, historical blindness and the slow encroachment of intolerance. Maybe I will watch that musical after all.

Dance of the Undead: Why I don't like zombies and why that doesn't matter

The tide, thank Gods, has finally turned. Twice, twice! in the last two days, my twitter feed has revealed to me people disparaging zombies and the zombie genre. It's overdone! Give it a rest! Too mainstream!

Yippee!

I'll be honest with you: I've never had much time for zombies. If we're going to have revenants emerging grisly from their tombs, I prefer them to be incorporeal. If we're going to have monsters ravening for the flesh of the living, I prefer them to be equipped witty conversation and reasonable dress sense. Between friends, I'm a ghost girl, I'm (and I'm sure this will be a surprise to everyone) a vampire girl.

Zombies. I just don't like 'em.

What? You need reasons from me?

Okay. I think my first reason is the type of surface narrative zombies seem to engender: post-apocalyptic worlds, scratching faceless hordes, heroic (or anti-heroic) types marching round the place toting huge-arsed guns. It's food supplies and water filtration and constant, knife-edged danger. That's... well, that's okay, I suppose. It's not really my scene. I don't, in my escapist moments, imagine myself as some kind of tooled up commando, fighting for survival in a ghost world. I am not hard-bitten and taciturn, I am loquacious and somewhat effete.I know that there are vampire narratives like this, and I don't read those much, either.

Then, there's the second reason. Zombies are, actually, that little bit too scary for me. Perhaps it's just paranoia, but the idea of some huge population disaster that leaves us scrabbling around in the ruins of our civilisation seems just a mite too plausible. As, for that matter, does a worldview that sees a significant chunk of the population as faceless, needlessly destructive, and possible to be killed with a clean conscience. This is the kind of world I dread leaving to my children. I have nightmares about zombies. That this counts as a point against zombies troubles me, but it brings us to reason number three.

Zombies just aren't any fun.

Even the worst, most hackneyed vampire narratives are entertaining to me, whereas bad zombie narratives are just dull. Even good zombie stories only serve to make me jumpy, and while maybe that's part of what they are supposed to do, I just don't get off on that, thank you very much.

Thing is, the function of literature, should always be, to some small extent, to give your reader their jollies. Sure, hurt them; don't pull your punches, kick 'em while they're down, give them nightmares so bad they sleep with the light on for weeks*, or make them feel so sick that they can't eat for three days;** but while you're at it, throw them a fucking bone, won't you?

We escape, we fantasise, we fancy dress. We flinch from crucifixes.

Which brings us to four: from the little I've seen, zombie narratives seem to be more about the survivors. You didn't get bit so you acclimatise yourself to grief, to killing the monsters who wear the faces of your loved ones. You survive at all costs and maybe you lose. You try to live with yourself, with others, with terror, with grief. It is humans put in extremis - the zombies are more of an environmental hazard. And, again, this is too much like life. Vampires stories, ghost stories - these are far more concerned with the monster and that is where my interest lies, especially if we're given a ton of that pesky moral grey.

But... but... but... All this is personal taste. I'm convinced there is some brilliant zombie fiction out there, inspired, intelligent, gripping stuff. There is also a lot of enjoyable dross, and reading is something we do for pleasure, right? Zombie fans, go out and enjoy yourself, gorge yourself on the current glut.

Don't mind me, I'll be lurking with a well thumbed copy of Dracula.

So why the "yippie"?

Well, here's the thing: for the past five years I've heard one heck of a lot of "Vampires, oh God, that is so mainstream and overdone... Zombies, now they're hardcore." I've heard Goths (Goths, for Pete's sake) talk about how vampires have become 'stale' and how they are really pushing the envelope with 'zombie chic' (also, actually, zombie chic? WTF?) and been roundly mocked and condemned for my continuing allegiance to the children of the night.

My point is this: zombies, vampires, ghosts - they are all mainstream, they always have been. One comes to prominence for a bit and everyone jumps on the gravy train until the non-core fanbase get fed up and the wheel turns again. Vamps have had their turn, zombies, take a bow and slip back beneath the ground for a bit. It won't be for long.

So why the "yippie"?

Because you notice the third article on that list?

Come on, Montague Rhodes James!

*or too afraid to turn the light on because then they can see it coming for them...
** I'm looking at you, H.P Lovecraft

Incidentally, if you are a zombie fan, even after my reasons as to why you shouldn't be, check out the Science Museum's Zombie Lab: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/Home/visitmuseum/events/festivals/zombies.aspx

Anne Rice: On falling in love with one's characters and 'the iron bar' factor

I have very recently come into possession of the majority of Anne Rice's 'The Vampire Chronicles'. So now I've got them all, and I've been reading them. Well, okay, not Blood and Gold or Mnenoch the Devil because the person who gave them to me didn't have those ones. Never mind, eh? Not like I've missed anything controversial or direction changing about the series then.

Now, I've always enjoyed Anne Rice, but, before I begin I will admit to a couple of pet peeves. There's the small matter of continuity – exactly how her vampirism works, as well as the physical characteristics and ages of her changeless vampires are somewhat open to discussion. Is Armand auburn, or is he strawberry blond? And, curly? Did his hair always curl? And is this blog really the place for insanely geeky speculations about relative strengths and telepathic abilities of her vampires?

I can answer that last one: No. So, Alys, stop it. Now.

Then there are the more significant concerns: her pervasive tendency to preach, whether her ideology of the moment is materialism, secularism or Catholicism; the absolute, conspicuous consumption of all her main characters as a way of burning through their obscene, nay, limitless wealth; her occasional, and irritating lapses of voice; the minor, subsidiary and unconvincing roles of her female characters; her bizarre, and frankly patronising, conception of age (especially annoying in the historical circumstances;) her total, I mean absolute inability to to write a convincing English gentleman, and her insistence upon narrating an entire book from such a vantage point.

The fact is, Anne Rice is a flawed writer, but I would argue that, in some measure, it is her flaws which make her lovable; I want to assure you of that before you come to the conclusion that I'm having some manner of apoplexy. So, while in several matters or style, taste and skill Anne Rice is far from perfect, she is still a remarkably compelling writer. And, for the record, I loved Merrick and think David Talbot is wonderful – he's not English by any stretch of the imagination, but he's none the worse for it.

So, for a quick review: although I found The Vampire Armand dragged in places, I've never had that much time for him as a character anyway, it was amusing enough. Pandora was a refreshing and thought provoking look at one of her much underused minor figures. Yes, Merrick stumbled in places, and Blackwood Farm in others, but both were well rounded, enjoyable reads – and to be honest, meeting some new faces was rather pleasant after so long with the same old crowd. Throughout all of these books there is a commitment to character and world development in the aftermath of the events of Mnenoch the Devil; events of which, I'll admit, I have only the foggiest understanding.

Which brings us to Blood Canticle. Which brings us, if I'm honest, to my biggest misgiving about the entire Vampire Chronicles series, a misgiving standing – as he so repeatedly tells us – 6 foot tall with his blond hair, blue eyes¹ clad in understated designer clobber or else in velvet, leather and lace. Yes, dear old Lestat; Lestat, the Brat Prince who breaks down the fourth wall with all the subtlety of a bulldozer. Lestat, the demon turned anti-hero turned rock-star turned demi-God turned Saint turned... no, hang on, I'm a bit lost. Er...

Let's start again. Without Lestat, there would be no Vampire Chronicles; okay, we might have Louis moping into eternity with his irritating but compelling melancholy, because his Lestat is not our Lestat. Without Lestat, it is arguable that the world – and certainly Rice's fictional universe – would be a duller place. I have no problem with Lestat. I even have no problem with Lestat being snatched up into the ether and going on some strange, metaphysical journey, meeting Saint Veronica, meeting Chris and converting back to Catholicism. I don't mind that Lestat wants to be good; on some level, Lestat has always wanted to be good. At times, I might argue, he even succeeds.

No, my problem with Lestat is that he and Anne Rice get a little bit too close. Always, he has been given too much emphasis, too much power, too many excuses. Every now and then, his voice slips and we see no longer our alluring, conceited murderer desperate for redemption but a writer who wants us, who needs us to believe that Lestat is really okay. That what he did to Louis, or Claudia, or David, that any of that can be shunted under the carpet; that really, this being is a consummate charmer, a doomed individual worthy of our sympathies, of our love.

I can understand why Rice does this; she loves Lestat. From what I understand of her biography, he is, to an extent, her mirror. When we love someone, we invariably want the world to focus on their good characteristics – their flaws must always be seen as forgivable. When I write, before I get heartily sick of my protagonists and start being really unpleasant to them, I want the same thing: I want them understood, nurtured, I want to hand them over to people who will understand them in all their complexity. And in the intimacy of the first person, the confessional nature of it, this impulse is very hard to ignore.

Rice is lucky, of course. Lestat is very easy to love, if you're into that kind of thing; mouthy, attractive and impulsive, tortured, affectionate, sexual – oh, so very sexual – and dangerous, too. Readers who enjoy her books are generally willing to forgive him – at least, within the scope of the books themselves. All is well; the Brat Prince receives the adulation that he so clearly wants, and which Rice desperately asks. Then... then Mnenoch the Devil, which I haven't read.

After that, a slew of books about other people; Lestat is a minor figure, comatose and tragic, or else moving slowly and plagued by doubts. Taken from the limelight we can feel the equal measures of devotion and scorn which he invokes; and because David loves him, because David has forgiven him, we love him also. Quin falls in love with him on sight, and Lestat behaves with a charity suitable to the capricious and ardent nature we've seen elsewhere. Everywhere, he is shown to inspire love and to make some effort to be worthy of it. That's it – Claudia, Louis and David, that poor girl in Tale of the Body Thief who's name I've forgotten, all those past betrayals brushed under the carpet. The massacre of some thousands of men in Queen of the Damned of no further import. Impulsive, yes. Mislead, yes, easily mislead, but evil? Well, only enjoyably so.

On to Blood Canticle, and, as the effusive blurb informs us, “Lestat really is back with a vengeance”, an expression which will henceforth fill me with as much enthusiasm as a Doctor Who story entitled 'Insert appropriate noun of the Daleks'².

Yes, Lestat is back, and Lestat is pissed off that people aren't taking his redemption seriously. Lestat is back and, however much he might doubt it, something important happened to him, dammit! Lestat is back and Lestat is... whining. He wants us to understand, wants us to see how important and seminal his experiences were and how we've no right to speak about him as a fictional character and complain that his behaviour has become inconsistent, just because he's changed. “How can I be inconsistent,” he asks, “when I'm as badass as ever?”

And this is my complaint: here he is inconsistent, here he is no longer being badassed. Frankly, Lestat is exactly the type of Vampire I'd expect to have some massive, spiritual experience. The image of him soaring up to heaven, plummeting down to Hell, drinking the blood of Christ himself and stumbling back into the modern day with an insanely valuable relic is his style precisely. If he's going to go all 'born again' on us, I wouldn't expect him to do it in any kind of understated, 'good works and clean living' kind of way; after all, in Queen of the Damned he didn't just bring the Vampires out into the light – he pretty much brought about their extinction as a species. What I don't expect him to do is mewl about it; “It's not my fault, it's not fair,” is the kind of thing Armand, might say, although even he'd say it with more dignity.

The whole problem, for me, is summed up in the character of Mona. About a third of the way through the book, she writes a little essay on what it means to have become a vampire, having been a committed Catholic until that point. Written in the style of a first year Lit student, it's main point seems to be that as Vampires can no longer be assessed within the human moral framework, she cannot know until she dies whether they are part of God's plan and can still achieve a form of salvation, and therefore can but try. All well and good – what else would a Christian, even a lip-service Christian, be worrying about after getting turned if not salvation, damnation and one's altered place in the grand scheme of things. Thing is, this is nothing new – this is what Rice was getting at in the first four bloody books. And the sixth. And the seventh. It takes Lestat 200 fucking years, and God knows how many pages, to reach the conclusion that 'maybe there is a God and, if there is, maybe he has a place for me and I'm not damned after all. I can't be sure though, as the only way to find out is through snuffing it, which I can't do. Cue existential despair.'

We get it, Anne Rice, we bloody well get it. It sounded better the first six times.

1Unless they're purple – I forget.

2This article was written, obviously, before Asylum of the Daleks, which, aside from a few minor points, was a marvellous example of storytelling. Well done, Moff. Keep up the good work.