Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship 2015 Adaptable Monsters: The aP st, Present, and Future of the Vampire Narrative as a Metaphor for Marginalized Groups Alexa Wei Scripps College Recommended Citation Wei, Alexa, "Adaptable Monsters: The asP t, Present, and Future of the Vampire Narrative as a Metaphor for Marginalized Groups" (2015). Scripps Senior Theses. 678. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/678 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scripps Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ADAPTABLE MONSTERS: THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF THE VAMPIRE AS A METAPHOR FOR MARGINALIZED GROUPS by ALEXA WEI SUBMITTED TO SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS PROFESSOR NICOSIA PROFESSOR BHATTACHARYA 24 APRIL 2015 Wei 1 Abstract This thesis paper gives a brief history of the vampire narrative and its role in representing the collective anxieties of an age as well as serving as a metaphor for oppressed peoples. It uses Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla as historical examples of how the vampire adapts to suit issues of the day such as reverse colonization and female sexuality, respectively. The latter part of this paper speculates on the future role of the vampire in literature and proposes that the vampire could be used to discuss transgender issues as well as challenge the gender binary. It addresses the suitability of the vampire narrative in particular for representing gender as a spectrum using the lenses of Foucault’s heterotopias, Kristeva’s abject, and Freud’s uncanny and pulls examples of early evidence of this trend from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.