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UMI ANNE RICE'S USE OF GOTHIC CONVENTIONS IN THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES by Nicole B Tanner Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August 2009 © Copyright by Nicole B Tanner, 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre inference ISBN: 978-0-494-56362-5 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-56362-5 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extra its substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY To comply with the Canadian Privacy Act the National Library of Canada has requested that the following pages be removed from this copy of the thesis: Preliminary Pages Examiners Signature Page (pii) Dalhousie Library Copyright Agreement (piii) Appendices Copyright Releases (if applicable) In memory of Forrest J Ackerman (24 November 1916-4 December 2008) Monster Kids around the world will miss you, Uncle Forry. Thanks for making it ok to be the weird kid. iv - TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .. vii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction . 1 CHAPTER TWO: "We Were Lovers, She and I": Incest in the Early Vampire Chronicles.... 5 2.1 "Father and Daughter. Lover and Lover" 7 2.2 "She Was Flesh and Blood and Mother and Lover" 19 2.3 "The Mother and the Son" 28 CHAPTER THREE: "This is My Body, This is My Blood": Cannibalism in the Early Vampire Chronicles....36 3.1 "This is My Body..." 37 3.2 "... This is My Blood" 47 CHAPTER FOUR: "Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned": Catholicism in the Early Vampire Chronicles...57 4 I'T Was a Catholic; I Believed in Saints"....... 61 4.2 "I Rather Like Looking On Crucifixes" 70 CHAPTER FIVE: Conclusion 82 ENDNOTES 87 BIBLIOGRAPHY 88 v ABSTRACT This thesis will explore the ways in which Anne Rice uses the Gothic conventions of incest, cannibalism, and anti-Catholicism in her novels Interview with the Vampire (1976), The Vampire Lestat (1985), and The Queen of the Damned (1988). Rice's Vampire Chronicles blend Gothic with the postmodern, and thus she challenges the Gothic meta-narrative through the revision of these conventions: instead of victimizing an innocent young girl or horrifying a young man, Rice depicts incest as empowering and it gives three (vampire) women the strength they need to challenge patriarchy; rather than evoking feelings of abhorrence, flesh-eating cannibalism is presented as a positive practice that reveres the dead, and blood-drinking evokes sympathy as it is essential to a new vampire's survival; and Catholicism, usually a source of horror and terror in traditional Gothic novels, is a means of comfort for the vampires, who embrace, rather than fear, the religion's holy relics. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank Anne Rice for writing The Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches novels, and thus giving me something to do as a teenager while everyone else was busy destroying brain cells with drugs and alcohol. I would also like to thank Dr. Julia Wright for all of her help and guidance throughout this seemingly never- ending process; for unrelated conversations about the Gothic, horror, and sci-fi; as well as for listening to my rambles, even when they didn't really make much sense to me. Thanks to my friends and family, who haven't really seen me since I switched my undergrad major to English. I hope to remedy that soon. Thanks to Max and Simon, the most adorable cats on the planet, for their unconditional love and often-conditional patience. And finally, I'd like to thank Glenn for his patience and understanding when my stress was at its worst, and, as always, thanks for The Terminator. vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Since the publication of Interview with the Vampire in 1976, Anne Rice has been a leading figure in modern Gothic and horror literature. In the Vampire Chronicles series, Rice tells the stories of a group of vampires and their struggles to survive and the moral questions that survival raises. In "Living with(out) Boundaries: The Novels of Anne Rice," critics Lynda and Robert Haas state that Rice's novels are "an intriguing combination of Gothic literary conventions with a postmodern sensibility about identity formation, sensual/sexual embodiment, and historical perspective" (56). Indeed, while Rice uses Gothic literary conventions, she also challenges those conventions in new ways. "Beginning in 1976 with Interview with the Vampire," Haas and Haas continue, "Rice has consistently and successfully combined many of the Gothic conventions initiated by Horace Walpole in The Castle ofOtranto (1763) with her own unique style and with the concerns of postmodern philosophy" (56). The early Gothic emerges in relation to modernity, and therefore Rice's revision of that traditional Gothic, along with her overthrowing of standard views on gender, cannibalism, and other issues, is allied with the postmodern; in fact, she offers a postmodern Gothic in distinction to the modern Gothic traced by Hogle. In this thesis, I examine Rice's use of three traditional Gothic conventions—incest, cannibalism, and anti-Catholicism—which are significant in the early novels of Vampire Chronicles: Interview with the Vampire (1976), The Vampire Lestat (1985), and The Queen of the Damned (1988). As Rice challenges these 1 conventions, she subsequently revises the Gothic meta-narrative as she destabilizes patriarchy, gender categories, and boundaries between human and monster. In Chapter One, I discuss the significance of incest in Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and The Queen of the Damned. Incest is a common concern in the Gothic novel, as "the ambivalence and complicated feelings of an incestuous exchange are built into the conventions of the standard gothic novel" (Perry 266). My focus will be on the relationships between Louis and bis vampiric daughter Claudia, Lestat's relationship with his mortal mother Gabrielle, and Lestat's relationship with Akasha, the Mother of all vampires. Contrary to traditional Gothic works, such as Walpole's The Castle ofOtranto (1764) and The Mysterious Mother (1768), Parsons's The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793), and Shelley's The Cenci (1819), that "[express] the latitude and longitude of a particular kind of 'evil', namely the fear of and desire for intrafamilial sex" (Perry 266), incest in Rice's novels is not condemned or deemed perverse; rather, it is represented as an act that empowers the women involved in the incestuous relationships and aids them in their respective rebellions against patriarchy, Claudia, forever trapped in die body of a child, uses her relationship with Louis, her vampiric father, to gain the strength denied to her due to her small frame. She uses this strength in her attempt to kill Lestat and, eventually, to leave Louis as well to live with her vampiric daughter Madeleine. Gabrielle is an eighteenth-century woman who is suffocating under the constraints of the patriarchal society in which she lives. Because of their Oedipal relationship, Lestat transforms Gabrielle into a vampire rather than let her die of consumption, and, after spending some time with Lestat as his lover, Gabrielle is able to exist on her own without a male guardian. Akasha, the first and thus Mother of all 2 vampires, uses her relationship with Lestat to manipulate him into helping her destroy patriarchy on earth and establish a matriarchy, where all women will be free from the constraints and violence of male power and authority. While these attempts to rebel are not successful in each case, as both Claudia and Akasha are destroyed for their transgressions against male authority, their incestuous relationships give them the strength to at least struggle against the patriarchal power that controls them. In Chapter Two, I examine Rice's use of cannibalism in the early novels of The Vampire Chronicles. As Malchow states, cannibalism "is such an obviously available trigger for sensational emotion that virtually all gothic literature employs some anthropophagic element" (45), and Rice's novels are no exception. However, Malchow states that the act evokes "fear/disgust" (45), as it certainly does in Gothic novels such as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1846-47), Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), and Stoker's Dracula (1897); yet, the cannibals in Rice's novels evoke sympathy and understanding.