Vlood Spirits A cjungian Approach to the Vampire JKyth Catriona Helen Miller Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Stirling Stirling Scotland December 1998 r., 4. , Dedication To my parents, Irene and Jack Miller, without whom.... For all the support, guidance and encouragement above and beyond the call of parental duty. Your many favours can never be repaid. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. John Izod for the skillful and unfailingly tactful supervision of this thesis, and for the companionshipon the j ourney. To Lari, for the chair; the commas and comments;the perpetual phone calls; and for going to Santa Cruz with me all those years ago. To everybody in the Late Late Service for sustenanceof various kinds. And everyone else who asked about my thesis and then listened to the answer without flinching. I also acknowledge the kind financial support of the Glasgow Society for Sons and Daughters of Ministers of the Church of Scotland, and, of course, my parents. Contents Page Acknowlegements i Abstract .v INTRODUCTION PART ONE APPROACH & CONTEXT 10 " The Study of Myth & the Cartesian/Newtonian Framework 11 " The Advent of Psychology 13 " Freud & the Vampire Myth 17 " Beyond Descartes & Newton: the New Paradigm 21 " Jung & the New Model 24 " Archetypes & the Collective Unconscious 31 " The Study of Myth After Freud & Jung 35 The Vampire Myth 40 " I " Jung & the Vampire Myth 41 " Symbols: A Jungian Definition 44 PART TWO ENCOUNTERS WITH SHADOW VAMPIRES 49 " Folklore & Fiction 49 " The Vampire in Folklore 51 " Vampirý Epidemics? 54 " The Shadow Archetype 57 " The Dead 58 " The Living Dead 61 " The Shadow Vampire in the Twentieth Century 65 " Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (Dir: F. W. Murnau, 1922) 66 - ii PART 'THREE ENCOUNTERS WITH ANIMUS VAMPIRES 82 3.1 Creation: Originv of the Modern Vampire 83 " Challenges to the Cartesian/Newtonian Paradigm 85 * Literary Antecedents 1: The Ballad Tradition 89 " Literary Antecedents 2: The Gothic Fashion 92 Literary Antecedents 3: George Gordon, Lord Byron 96 The Legend of Byron 98 Byron & Dr Polidori 100 The Vampyre 1102 Byron & the success of The Vampyre 108 3.2 Evoltition: Dracti the Novel 115 " Count Dracula & the Vampire Brides 121 " Anima & Animus: The Contrasexual Archetype 125 " Jonathan & the Vampire Brides 132 " Lucy & Count Dracula 136 " Mina & Count Dracula 142 3.3 E'laboration: Dracula, the kfovie.v 151 " Dracula: 1931 (Tod Browning) 155 " Dracula: 1958 (Terence Fisher) 158 " Dracula: 1979 (John Badham) 166 " Dracula: 1992(Francis Ford Coppola) 178 PART FOUR UNDERWORLD QUESTS 185 4.1 De.vcenl & Retunz 188 " The Culture & Cinema of the 1980s 190 " The Setting 194 " Encounter with the Feminine; Meeting the Goddess 195 " The Double; the Shadow 197 " The Road of Trials 198 " The Return 199 iii 4.2 Dwelling hi the Underworld 205 " Interview with the Vampire 206 " Anne Rice & the Vampire 208 " Symbolism: Vampires as the Unconscious 212 . " Symbolism: Vampires as Archetypal Constellations . 215 " Louis & Lestat 216 " Louis & Claudia 222 " Louis, Armand & Santiago 226 CONCLUSION 235 Appendix and Bibliographies 239 iv Abstract The aiM of this thesis is to explore the vampire motif using the psychological framework of C. G. Jung, which suggests that the vampire is an expression of archetypal contents from the collective unconscious, and that vampire narratives are variations on the theme of Self. Having establishedthe reasonswhy analytical psychology is a particularly suitable approachfor investigating this kind of popular phenomenon,the examination of the vampire motif falls into three main areas. Dicounters with Shadow Vampires looks at vampires which display characteristics particularly associated with the shadow archetype. This section begins with an examination of the vampire in folklore, with particular attention to the Eastern Europeanvampire, making a careful distinction between the vampire of folklote and the later vampire of Romantic literature. A modern example of this kind of vWpire imagery is explored in the film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors (1922). E'ncounters )Wth Animus Vampires is a three part investigation of the vampire as an expression of the contrasexual archetype. The first, Creation: Origins qf the Modern Pampire, concentrates on the male vampire created by the Romantics. The second, Evohilion: Dracula the Novel, is a Jungian reading of Bram Stoker's novel Dracul The third, Elaboration: Dracula the Movies, shows how the novel has been altered in the numerous film versions of that novel in a way which relates very closely to the prevailing culture of the time. Underworld Quests,is a two part examination of the quest'myth structuresof more recent vampire films: The Lost Bgys and Near Dar (both from 1987) and Interview with the Vampire (1994). These are examples which particularly foreground this V structure and where vampires, as contentsfrom the unconscious,are read as heralding a new ofientation or possibility for the mortal hero. vi gntroduction EIntroduction Vampire: vam)gir (n) in eastern European folklore, a dead person that leaves the grcn,e fo prey upon the living., a blood sucker.I ":" Few people, in the late Twentieth Century, would argue for the objective existenceof vampires and yet vampire stories seemto be more popular than ever. A searchof the World Wide Web on 1.12.98,for the word "vampire" on the Infoseek searchengine, revealed 92,603 sites, while an Alta Vista search, which included non-English language sites, produced 452,050. These range from chat-rooms, newsgroups,fan sites for specific books (like Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles) or role-playing games or films, to club and society advertisementsand even a site dedicatedto the "Temple of the Vampire" an "authentic, international church.... legally registered since December 1989 with the U. ý. Federal Government."2 On British television this year, Channel 4 transmitted a new six part drama series Ultraviolet beginning 15.9.98, and perhaps a little more'bizarrely, on 31.10.98 The Mag a children's entertainmentshow on Channel 5, had, as a guest, a member of the London Vampyre Society (complete with coffin handbag) talking about "vampire fashion" with models exhibiting the'look'. The BBC will begin broadcastingthe US series Builf]y the Vampire Slayer sometime in 1999. On the big screen, Blade (Dir: StephenNorrington) was releasedNovember 1998 in Britain, starring Wesley Snipes and based on a Marvel comic-book character, while a second Hollywood vampire production, starring James Woods, called Vampires (Dir: John Carpenter) was releasedin the States. A British production The Wisdom of Crocodiles (Dir: Po Chih Leong) and starring Jude Law is awaiting a distribution deal. This thesis will attempt to establishreasons for the vampire's continuing popularity. ChambersTwentieth Century Dictionary (1983). For an extensive look at the possible etymology of the word varnpire, seeJan Perkowski: The Darkling: A Treatiseon Slavic (1989) 2 -V=iriSm Quoting from the Temple of the Vampire website viewed 30.11.98. 1. The vdmpire, or vampire-like creatures,appear to have been part of world mythology for an extremely long time. One of the earliest recordedcreatures exhibiting vampire- like behaviour dates from the SecondMillennium BC. The Mesopotamian demoness Lilitu (sometimes connected with the Hebrew Lilith) was said to roam thq night attacking men as a succubus and drinking their blood. She was depicted as being winged and surroundedby other deadly hunters of the night like the owl and j ackaO In The Odyssey Odysseusis advisedby the witch Circe to take counsel from the dead. The hero digs a pit and fills it with the blood of sheep sacrificed to the god of the underworld. Many ghosts are attracted to the offering, but the dead seer Tiresias drinks the "dark blood"4 and then foretells the future. Writing in Twelfth Century England, the chronicler William of Newburgh (1135/6- 1208) recountsfour tales of the recalcitrant dead. In Book 5 he says "It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally... from their graves and should to the terror destruction the living did frequent wander about or of ... not examples, in times, to the fact 15 occurring our own suffice establish ... The vampire of Eastern Europe appearsto be the more familiar kind of vampire, at least to Twentieth Century Westerners. Thesevampires appearto have their roots in ancient Slavic beliefs, nurtured (as will be discussedbelow) by the Christian dualist heresiesof the middle ages, and were in fact of widely varying type and disposition. Thesemonsters of an older age were the inspiration for certain Romantic writers who usedthe 'exotic' folklore of EasternEurope for their own ends. Then, atthe end of the Nineteenth Century, the Irishman Brain Stoker created probably the most famous 3 See Jeffrey Burton Russell: 11w Devil: PerceZions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive CMstianily: p.92 More examplesfrom world mythology are mentioned in Part Two Encounters svithShadou, Vampires. 4 Homer The Qdysseý::Book 11, line 32ff. English trans. A. T. Murray William of Newburgh: The HistojX of William of Newburg p.658 2. vampire of them all, Count Dracula. The Count has been immortalised. in innumerablefilm adaptations,the Most recent of which was releasediii 1992. Vampires have variously been pagan gods or demons; mischievous spirits of the dead; blood drinking corpses of the dead given an evil life; suave but cursed noblemen and women who drank blood; non-corporeal entities draining psychic energy from the living; alien parasites and much more. For the purposes of this thesis, the word 'vampire' has been taken to mean parasitic creatureswhich drain the energy of humans (often in the form of blood) to prolong their own existence. However, it should be pointed out that an exact definition of what constitutes a vampire has not been of primary concern and the examples chosen have been intended to display the most typical characteristics of the vampire in its broadest sense.