Dr. Michael Delahoyde
Washington State University
Texts:
The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories. Ed. Alan Ryan.
NY: Penguin Books, 1987.
"The Vampyre":
Varney the Vampyre:
A stormy setting is established in historical present tense. We linger
in a bedroom, then zero in on a girl:
The vampire appears framed in the window and Flora is nearly paralyzed.
In the next chapter, male characters with militaristic names,
Bannerworth and Marchdale catch a glimpse of the vampire. "'God
help us!' ejaculated Henry" (33).
Throughout volume 1, Miss Flora is attacked again and again. Other
victimizings occur in volume 2, which includes travel to Italy to
attack the daughter of Polidori. Exhausted, bored, and
conscience-stricken (like Barnabus Collins of Dark Shadows),
Varney finally jumps into Mt. Vesuvius. (Blacula may be the next
vampire in the early 1970s to commit suicide.)
Carmilla:
John Polidori's 1819 short story seems to characterize Byron as
the vampire Ruthven.
James Malcolm Rymer's (1814-1881) serial novel -- a "penny dreadful"
-- published 1845-1847 "may well qualify as the most famous book that
almost no one has read." But Stoker did.
A creature formed in all fashions of loveliness lies in a half sleep
upon that ancient couch -- a girl young and beautiful as a spring
morning. Her long hair has escaped from its confinement and streams
over the blackened coverings of the bedstead; she has been restless
in her sleep, for the clothing of the bed is in much confusion. One
arm is over her head, the other hangs nearly off the side of the bed
near to which she lies. A neck and bosom that would have formed a
study for the rarest sculptor that ever Providence gave genius to,
were half disclosed. She moaned slightly in her sleep, and once or
twice the lips moved as if in prayer -- at least one might judge so,
for the name of Him who suffered for all came once faintly from them.
(27)
With the historical present tense and the lingering close focus on
the girl, we as readers are placed in a voyeuristic position. Later
we will learn her name is Flora, "just budding into womanhood, and
in that transition state which presents to us all the charms of the
girl -- almost of the child, with the more matured beauty and
gentleness of advancing years" (27). Yeah, we get it: she's a virgin.
And obviously Flora faces the threat of a kind of "deflowering."
The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back, and the
principle feature next to those dreadful eyes is the teeth -- the
fearful-looking teeth -- projecting like those of some wild animal,
hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like. It approaches the bed
with a strange, gliding movement. It clashes together the long nails
that literally appear to hang from the finger ends.... The glance of
a serpent could not have produced a greater effect upon her than did
the fixed gaze of those awful, metallic-looking eyes that were bent
on her face. (29)
Her hair is her undoing: "the figure seized the long tresses of her
hair, and twining them round his bony hands he held her to the bed"
(30). "The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic
form with a hideous satisfaction -- horrible profanation" (30).
After the prolonged teasing, the story stops at the biting: "The
girl has swooned, and the vampire is at his hideous repast!" (30).
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's (1814-1873) novella (1872) influenced
Stoker. Carmilla succeeds largely because expectations of women
are so minimal. Vampirism here, like lesbianism, is given license
because of the Victorian belief that such things cannot possibly
exist. "If you were less pretty I think I should be very much afraid
of you" (87). No one recognizes the Carmilla anagram in Millarca.
The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories. Ed. Alan Ryan. NY: Penguin Books, 1987.