Mutations of the Vampire Motif in the Nineteenth Century Megan Bryan
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Mutations of the Vampire Motif in the Nineteenth Century Megan Bryan PhD University of York English and Related Literature December 2016 Abstract This thesis seeks to explore the figure of the vampire in its specific historical contexts throughout the nineteenth century. It is an in-depth look at the social and cultural events which inspired literary appearances of the vampire from its oral beginnings in the eighteenth century and through each decade of the nineteenth century. It discusses how specific historical events and personal experiences of the authors of vampire fiction might have impacted the presentation of the vampire in those decades. It also details the shifting attributes of what constitutes a vampire, and how the motif is transmitted in terms of literary format. Broadly, it seeks to demonstrate that there is no set vampire canon, and no singular vampire figure. The ultimate aim of this thesis is to challenge received notions about the vampire, to chart its transformations, and thereby to attend to the complexity of a motif being constantly reworked in new historical and cultural contexts. 2 Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….2 Table of Contents………………………………………………………………...3 Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………..4 Author’s Declaration……………………………………………………………..6 Introduction – “He is Known Everywhere That Men Have Been”: Introducing the Vampire Motif………………………………………………….7 Chapter One - “More Remarkable for His Singularities Than His Rank”: The Byronic Vampire…………………………………………………………...56 Chapter Two - “Penny Packets of Poison”: The Vampire in the Mid- Nineteenth Century…………………………………………………………….106 Chapter Three - “No Sacrifice Without Blood”: The Vampire in the Late Nineteenth Century…………………………………………………………….149 Chapter Four - “Up-to-date With a Vengeance”: The Rise of Dracula........................................................................................................187 Conclusion – “Love Never Dies”: The Vampire in the Present Day………………………………………………………………………………...222 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..229 3 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my incredible supervisors, Geoff Wall and Jim Watt, for their constant support and much-needed criticism of my work. Always helpful, encouraging, and honest, but never unkind, their recommendations and advice have enabled me to complete this behemoth, which is a massive task in itself. I couldn’t have asked for better mentors, and I could never have done it without all your hard work. Without being the slightest bit “ambiguous,” thank you both so very much from the bottom of my heart. I had a recent conversation with the author David Stuart Davies, who told me I was very lucky to be able to write on this topic – when he was at university, he wanted to write a thesis on Sherlock Holmes, but was told such a subject wasn’t suitable for academia. Thankfully, times have changed, and popular literature no longer means not suitable for academia. Thank you to all the vampire academics who came before, for helping make this subject a legitimate one. Thank you to Christopher, for being my inspiration, now and always. Also, a huge thank you to J, Harley, and the rest of the Rogues for helping me stay sane during the long process. I am also eternally grateful for Tibby, tea, and The Lord of the Rings soundtracks for getting me through the editing phase – honestly couldn’t have done it without them! Most importantly, thank you to my family for their unconditional love and support – Dad for showing me the 1958 Dracula at an impressionable age, Mom for not thinking my obsession with vampires too weird, and my brothers Sean and Randall for keeping my arguing skills sharp. Also to my 4 dearly loved and dearly missed grandparents, Baa and Kunk, who praised my determination and made me think I could accomplish anything with it. A massive thank you to my goddaughter, Emilia, for being endlessly entertaining, and for making me smile every day. Finally, thank you to all my amazing friends, particularly those here in the UK, who have been there for me this past decade. Thank you for putting up with my numerous rants and various forms of insanity. Assuming I’m granted the doctorate, I promise not to insist on being called doctor by you all. Maybe… 5 Author’s Declaration I, Megan Bryan, declare that this thesis is a presentation of original work and I am the sole author. This work has not previously been presented for an award at this, or any other, University. All sources are acknowledged as References. 6 Introduction – “He is Known Everywhere That Men Have Been”: Introducing the Vampire Motif Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for all its canonical status and huge influence in subsequent popular culture, is not the whole story. The vampire motif is rich and complex. I use the term “motif” to describe the vampire throughout this thesis – the word is used in many disciplines including music theory, visual arts, and literary narrative, as well as among folklorists to describe elements of folklore, and identify recognizable patterns in folk art and traditions, according to Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955-58). The vampire, while also originating in folklore, contains similar elements and patterns throughout its history, and thus motif is the appropriate word to describe it. Its distinctive attributes include, among other things, the blurring of lines between the living and the dead; the exchange of bodily fluids, primarily blood; the theme of parasitism; and the allure of a perverse eroticism. The vampire motif circulates in the form of collective fantasies, literary fiction, and popular scandal. It is transmitted through coroners’ reports, medical texts, case histories, legal cases, and religious discourse, as well as via literary texts. My thesis focuses not only on specific vampire texts, but also on their historical and cultural contexts, in order to analyze the changing forms of the motif itself. Broadly, this thesis seeks to examine the vampire motif in the specific historical and literary context of the nineteenth century when it became an object of knowledge and fascination in a wide range of fields and disciplines. Generally, the subject of a historical literary vampire is a broad one, with a wide range of writers examining its place from the nineteenth century to the 7 present day. Glennis Byron and David Punter in their chapter on “The Vampire” in the Blackwell guide to the Gothic, state that, “confounding all categories, the vampire is the ultimate embodiment of transgression, but while most critics agree in reading the vampire as a transgressive force, the psychological or social significance they attach to this figure varies considerably.”1 Perhaps predictably in an introductory guide to the subject, the chapter makes sweeping statements about the vampire figure which upon closer examination do not ring true. For instance, Glennis Byron and David Punter emphasize the chronological progression of the vampire as a linear trope, claiming: “one of the most significant shifts in the movement from folk- lore to literature is the vampire’s transformation from peasant to aristocrat.”2 As my thesis will demonstrate, this idea of a linear evolution of the vampire figure is erroneous. The vampire does not transform, but rather appears in a multiplicity of guises which all exist simultaneously. Another sweeping statement made by Glennis Byron and David Punter characterizes vampires as “not only aristocrats, but also seducers, and from the start the vampire has been associated with sexuality.”3 My thesis also seeks to contradict this interpretation, since contemporary reviews of early vampire stories do not explicitly connect the vampire with sexuality. It is in the early twentieth century, when psychologists such as Ernest Jones draw explicit parallels between the vampire and sexuality, that such readings begin to emerge. The majority of this thesis seeks to interpret how the vampire may have been 1 Glennis Byron and David Punter, “The Vampire,” in The Gothic, eds. David Punter and Glennis Byron (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 268. 2 Byron and Punter, “The Vampire,” 269. 3 Byron and Punter, “The Vampire,” 269. 8 viewed in its contemporary historical context, rather than looking back on the figure through twentieth and twenty-first century critical lenses. Ernest Jones explicitly associated the vampire with sexuality as early as 1912, but the critical study of vampire texts did not take off until the 1970s. Detailed readings of the vampire as a symbol of transgressive sexuality were first proposed by C. F. Bentley and Carol L. Fry in 1972. Their essays, “The Monster in the Bedroom: Sexual Symbolism in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and “Fictional Conventions and Sexuality in Dracula,” respectively analyze the vampire motif as a metaphor for a range of sexual transgressions. This work was built upon by Christopher Craft in “‘Kiss Me With Those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1984) and Nina Auerbach in Our Vampires, Ourselves (1993). Both Craft and Auerbach focus on Dracula and on the vampire motif’s sexual symbolism. Adele Olivia Gladwell and James Havoc in Blood and Roses: The Vampire in Nineteenth-Century Literature, also heavily associate the vampire with sexuality, declaring: “a vampire’s spectre augers erotic deliria: carnal debilitation, auto-erogenous metempsychosis, fetishism and lesbianism, necrophiliac dementia, auto- symbolic incest, masturbation…The male vampire is a catamenial harbinger supping blood from