Vampire Love
          Sexual Symbolism in British Vampire Literature

          by: Kevin Alvey

          During the nineteenth century, the Victorian minds of Britain were very fertile. In a time when sexual explicitness was unheard of, a surplus of erotic energy had to be vented in a different fashion. What better outlet to emit this repressed energy than in the lore of the vampire? The first to do this in novel form were Dr. John Polidori, with The Vampyre (1819) and James Malcolm Rymer, with Varney the Vampire or The Feast of Blood (1847). Next came the short story "Carmilla" (1871), by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu. With "Carmilla" as a great influence, fellow Irishman Abraham (Bram) Stoker wrote the most famous vampire story to date, Dracula (1897). "It is certain that Stoker had read LeFanu's story, and it is fair to assume that its portrait of a seductive female vampire may have influenced his treatment of the demonic damsels who not only outnumber Count Dracula but also sometimes overshadow him." (Bleiler 376.) LeFanu's influence can be detected in Stoker's notes for Dracula, in which the Count's castle was originally to be located in Styria, the setting of "Carmilla". However, Stoker replaced Styria with Transylvania as the site of Castle Dracula. Although many insignificant similarities may be compared between the two stories, the major similarities are the underlying tones. The most significant of these undertones is that of a refrained sexual nature. Possibly due to great personal tragedies, both LeFanu and Stoker included erotic undertones in their most famous works, "Carmilla" and Dracula.

          The word "vampire" (or "vampyre") is derived from the Magyar vampir, and is of Slavonic origin. The creature of the night is also known as vrokolaka, vurkolak, vurculac, and wampyr. The origin of vampire lore is in eastern Europe, from the Carpathian Mountains to Transylvania and Wallachia. According to the popular legend, there are three ways of becoming a vampire. First, an evil spirit may take over a corpse and use it for its own evil purposes. Second, the soul of a person who is considered too wicked to be allowed into heaven or hell may continue to inhabit its own body as one of the un-dead. Finally, the most common method of becoming a vampire is to become a vampire's victim. After the blood is drained from your veins, you physically die, but your soul becomes condemned to walk as one of the un-dead for eternity. The Transylvanian vampire has a "gaunt appearance and pale complexion" (Vampires Galore! 432). Other features include full, red lips, pointed teeth, long, sharp fingernails, eyebrows that meet, and hair on the palms of its hands. It is also said to have foul breath and superhuman strength. Despite a vampire's strength, he is easily warded off by chalk and holy water or a crucifix. However, killing a vampire requires much more effort. The most direct method is to drive a stake, wooden or iron, through the vampire's heart as it lies in its grave, weakened by the daylight. To be sure it is dead, cut off its head and stuff the mouth with garlic.

          The extensive reports of vampires in eastern Europe may actually have a medical explanation. In the late Middle Ages, interbreeding among eastern European nobles led to a rare genetic disorder known as erythropoietic protoporphyria. Because of the similarities between the symptoms of this disease and the appearance of a vampire, many doctors believe sufferers of the disorder were accused of being vampires. Porphyria caused the body to produce too much porphyrin-a substance found in the blood. The symptoms were redness of the skin, eyes, and teeth, a receding upper lip, and cracks in the skin that bled when exposed to light. Since doctors of the time lacked any effective treatment, they resorted to locking patients away during daylight hours and encouraging them to drink blood to replace what they lost by bleeding. Rumors of these victims could have led to a widespread belief in vampirism in the region.

          The first British author to effectively introduce sexuality through vampirism was Joseph Sheridan LeFanu. Born in Dublin, Ireland on August 28, 1814, LeFanu was privately educated by his father until 1833, when he entered Trinity College. In 1844, LeFanu married Susan Bennett, the daughter of a Dublin attorney. LeFanu adored his wife, and he never recovered from her death in 1858. The man who had been an outgoing, social person turned into a virtual recluse. His mind dwelled on death, contributing to his success as an author of the supernatural. His series of powerful supernatural stories began in 1863. "The mysterious and the terrible are his dwelling-place and the most materialistic reader can scarcely suppress an atavistic shudder on entering with him into the ghostly realm" (Howard 376). LeFanu would draw power from the surrealistic images given to him by his dreams. He eventually began a nightly ritual which was conducive to his creativity. To prepare himself for bed, he would drink large amounts of tea. At about midnight, he would take about a two hour nap in which he would hope to experience a few nightmares. He would then get up and write until daylight. LeFanu followed this ritual until his death on February 7, 1873.

          The title character in LeFanu’s short story "Carmilla" is very different from the stereotypical vampire. Unlike Dracula, who was a male, shrouded in a black cape, living in a decaying castle, Carmilla was a bright young girl. The reader is prepared for the entrance of Carmilla by two events. The first such event occurs when Laura is only six years old. She has a dream in which she is approached by a beautiful young girl and experiences two needle-like pains in her breast:

              I began to whimper…when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed…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 loudly (153).

          The second event occurs later in the story when, expecting a visit from one of her girlfriends, Laura learns of her mysterious death. Shortly after, Carmilla’s wagon breaks in front of Laura’s house, and Laura’s father graciously offers to take Carmilla in while her mother finishes her business. A mysterious illness then begins to sweep the countryside, killing mainly young peasant girls. Rumor has is that an "oumpire" is responsible. As the story progresses, LeFanu intensifies the relationship between Laura and Carmilla. While the lesbian implications in "Carmilla" have been strongly emphasized by some critics, there is some distortion to the lesbian approach. However, these elements are too strong to be ignored. As Laura and Carmilla’s relationship progresses, "Carmilla woos Laura with the ardor of a lover" (Magill E.S.S. 1799):

              She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmer with her lips near my ear…In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life and you shall die—die sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love…trust me with all your loving spirit. And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek (168).

          However, there is more here than just sexuality. The eroticism evoked by this scene is linked to thoughts of death. In a contemporary style, LeFanu makes explicit (although restrained) use of the sexual connotations of vampire myths. This sexuality is admitted by LeFanu, via Laura, in the conclusion of "Carmilla":

              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, and drained the very life of its coveted victim (211).

          Influenced by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Abraham (Bram) Stoker became "one of the least-known authors of one of the best-known books" (Farson and Dematteis 249). While Dracula is often considered a second-rate work of literature, it is still of interest for its intriguingly macabre subject matter. Born on November 8, 1847, Stoker attended a play starring Henry Irving and gave him rave reviews. The actor was so flattered, he asked Stoker back to his room for a private reading of Thomas Hood’s poem "The Dream of Eugene Aram." Stoker later wrote of this encounter: "Soul had looked into soul! From that hour began a friendship as profound, as close, as lasting as can be between two men." "Though he would have been appalled by the suggestion of anything physical, Stoker had fallen in love" (Farson and Dematteis 248). Following this experience, Stoker bacame manager to Henry Irving and served him for many years. Critics have often pondered what happened on the night of the reading and questioned the nature of Irving and Stoker’s relationship.

          Stoker did, however, have a wife. He was married to the beautiful and flirtatious Florence Ann Lemon Balcombe. Florence was often portrayed as a cold woman who was more interested in society than her husband or son. Stoker’s granddaughter, Anne McCaw, said of her grandmother: "I think she was quite put off…she refused to have sex with Bram after my father was born." Stoker died on April 20, 1913 in London, leaving doubts behind him as to the cause of his death. The exact cause was not known until 1975, when it was disgnosed as locomotor ataxia (the tertiary stage of syphilis) and exhaustion. It is now believed that his wife’s lack of interest in sex after their son’s birth led Bram to prostitutes, from one of whom he must have contracted the disease. This might explain both his conscious, public advocation of censorship, as expressed in an article in Nineteenth Century, and his unconscious, strange sexual symbolism in Dracula.

          Stoker’s inspiration for the development of his character, Count Dracula, came one night at a dinner party. A Hungarian traveler, adventurer, and professor, Arminius Vambrey, recounted the legends of vampirism in eastern Europe. Vambrey, who would later become the basis for the heroic Dr. Van Helsing, told Stoker of the Rumanian tyrant Vlad Tepes, nicknamed "Vlad the Impaler." Vlad earned this name by his means of executing 40,000 people—impaling them on long sticks. Passed to him by his father, Vlad also had another nickname, "Draculaea", which is a Rumanian word meaning "son of the devil." "Draculaea" ruled Wallachia, which is now part of Rumania, from 1456 to 1462.

          Modern critics have pointed out the strong, symbolic, and sometimes explicit sexuality of Dracula. Two predominant sexual symbols of the novel are blood and the stake. The stake, seeming to symbolically punish the woman for her seductiveness, is a violent metaphor for sexual intercourse. It is an "obvious phallic symbol, and it is noteworthy that the only stakings in the novel are of women by men" (Farson and Dematteis 255). The first such incident is when Arthur Holmwood drives a stake into Lucy’s voluptuous body as she lay in her coffin. Later, Van Helsing does the same to the three women at Castle Dracula after resisting their attraction:

              She lay in her vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder. There is some fascination, surely, when I am moved by the mere presence of such an one, even lying as she lay in a tomb fretted with age and heavy with the dust of centuries (309).

          The other clear sexual symbol of the novel, blood, appears to be a metaphor for semen. Lucy’s fiancee, Arthur Holmwood, feels that by giving his blood to Lucy via transfusion, they are somehow married. Van Helsing then warns Seward and Morris not to tell Holmwood that they, too, have all given blood to Lucy, as if that would be a betrayal of his trust. Other, lesser symbols in the novel include those of sex role reversal, parricide, and the killing of children by their parents. Stoker made the women in Dracula sexual aggressors. The reaction of the males to this sexual aggression of the females is a mixture of anticipation and repulsion. Jonathon Harker expresses these feelings as he explores Castle Dracula:

              The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive…Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat…I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstacy and waited—waited with beating heart (39).

          Another scene in which the female takes an aggressive role is also the only scene of vampirism that is described in detail. This is when the four men break into the Harkers’ room and find Jonathon dazed and confused while Mina sucks the blood from Count Dracula’s chest:

              Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was the white-clad figure of his wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black. With his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white night-dress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress (238).

          What Dracula displays is human sexuality invading Victorian society. The eroticism is mainly disguised and symbolical. "Stakes penetrating the heart, the gushing of blood, and much other Gothic horror imagery were exploited for their erotic undertones when sexual explicitness was banned" (Scott-Kilvert 344). Dracula also represents our sexual repressions. "Sigmund Freud painted a picture of a Western civilization that had a dangerous quantity of sexual energy repressed by the institutions of the monogamous family" (Scott-Kilvert 346). Dracula is considered by some to be another source of that outlet. The un-dead in Stoker’s novel symbolize the conventional woman, and Dracula’s power is that he is irresistible to women.

          Because of Stoker’s own sexual frustration, he may have unconsciously vented this overflow of energy in his most famous novel, inspired by LeFanu. "It could hardly have been Stoker’s conscious intention, but his selection and rearrangement of various vampire myths created a story whose subtext is a succession of seductions and rapes" (Bleiler 377). Without Stoker’s creation, would we today have the popular vampire novels and movies? Did he set the tone for many supernatural writers to come? Stephen King may not have been as creative, certainly not creative enough to write Salem’s Lot, which he calls his "tribute to Dracula". Had it not been for LeFanu, Anne Rice would not have been as likely to include homoerotic and incestuous undertones in her famous series, including the popular Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. It is evident that not only did the works of Stoker and LeFanu do a great deal in fertilizing the minds of Victorian Britain, but they continue today to enlighten people all over the world.




          Works Cited

          Brennan, Eric. Personal interview. 21 February, 1995.

          Bleiler, E.F. Bram Stoker 1847-1912. Supernatural Fiction Writers. 1985

          Comire, Anne. Stoker, Bram. Something About the Author. 1982

          Howard, Stanley J. LeFanu, Joseph Sheridan. British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. 1964.

          Kilvert, Ian-Scott. Gothic Novel. British Writers. 1980

          Farson, Daniel, and Philip B. Dematteis. Bram Stoker. Dictionary of Literary Biography. 1981.

          LeFanu, Joseph Sheridan. Carmilla. Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural. New York: Doubleday. 1985.

          Locher, Frances C. Stoker, Abraham. Contemporary Authors. 1982.

          Magill, Frank N. Bram Stoker. Magill Surveys—English Novel. 1980.

          Magill, Frank N. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu. Magill Surveys—English Novel. 1980.

          Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Airmont, 1965.

          Vampires Galore! Strange Stories, Amazing Facts. New York: Reader’s Digenst, 1980.

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