“I am not the devil. I am only what lives inside you.”
From Count Dracula to Edward Cullen, the undeniable impact of the vampire on culture remains mystifying, with intoxicating immortality and haunting beauty as some features of the alluring creature. Our encounters with the deadly yet irresistible vampire have no doubt shifted over time, and these encounters maybe even reflect how we view the world and our place within it, especially in regards to the idea of control. The phrase above, uttered by Cynthia Erivo’s Count in her one-woman performance of Dracula on the London West End, is the embodiment of a being void of humanity. It declares the very meaning of being human is the source of our desires and our shame, as beings who want to feel, burned by the cross society deems we must be bound.
According to Thomas C. Foster in his bestseller How To Read Literature Like a Professor, the symbolism of the vampire is rooted in some hidden and destructive behavior or impulse (because there is always more than meets the eye when it comes to monsters). What this behavior or impulse is, however, can vary. A symbol such as this has a root, but its branches extend and wind up to different meanings.
The Classic Monster
Your mind may primarily lean into the classic archetype of the vampire, illustrated by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which essentially provided the foundation for all of those gothic elements: the wooden stakes, spindly coffin, imperious fangs, avoidant of the prosperity of sunlight, isolated castle and Romanian folklore. Or maybe you think back to the first horror motion picture Nosferatu of 1922, known for its lighting and framing reminiscent of German expressionism for a post-WWI Germany, becoming a key artifact of a turbulent social and political time.
Either way, these counts created a definition for vampire within the context of media that would carry forth for decades, as the fascination claims new souls year after year.
The Forever Teenager (featuring sparkling skin)
The 1990s to 2010s, beginning with the television antihero Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, developing in the moody Edward Cullen of Twilight, and transforming into the contrasting Salvatore Brothers of The Vampire Diaries, featured an uptake in the young adult heartthrob vampire, who often fell for the human girl (his would-be prey, if not for his workarounds to the whole human blood thing). What fuels the romanticism of this boy, who sees himself as a threat despite his undying, everlasting love for her?
This boy is trapped in immorality, enchanted by the very aliveness of the mortal girl, and is wise beyond his typically 200 years. Girls create fandoms for these characters as they feel entranced by almost dangerous devotion, layers of passionate depth employed by mystery, and an old-world charm often lost by men in the modern age.
The forever teenage vampire is the subject of fictive crushes and seductive photoshoots and even so reveals a young woman’s own identity. He is one who yearns with the strength of centuries with speed to cross oceans in mere moments for her. This characterization can offer a deeper look into identity and transformation, connecting back to rebellion against traditional gender roles in society, thus representing angst and the desire for independence interwoven in the growing pains of self-discovery.
The Dual Existence
Vampirism often exists within the fields of direct comparison, signaling the duality to which a life of immortality may be endowed upon. Humanity in itself is fleeting, and the impermanence is what makes life beautiful. What happens when, suddenly, one becomes permanent and all that is tangible ceases to be defined?
This concept is seen in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, where a hedonistic Lestat starkly contrasts the existentialist Louis as the two journey down the never-ending road of immorality. Vampirism begs the question of what one would do with an endless expanse of time, with only the capability to let the living natural and human world die and be reborn around you as you stay the same. What happens when the ultimate freedom, the freedom from time, brings about a crushing weight of eternity that swallows more independence than it gives?
The Bloodsucker
Sometimes, the vampire manifests in mortality, where the worst monster rests on the inside rather than on what meets the eye. This analysis is seen through the controversial story of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, a novel following a pedophilic man who becomes sexually obsessed with a twelve year old girl, who eventually becomes his lover.
Herein lies the monster that lurks in the real world, the most terrifying of any fictional monster. It is a story we seem to be unable to rid the world of: a story of the ultimate, evil corruption of a man, the vampire, unto the innocent child. She is the victim, failed by a society and a man of a generation meant to be a gatekeeper of the youth. Used by a man meant to be her stepfather and drained of her youth and innocence.
The Virgin Suicides of Jeffrey Eugenides tells of four sisters who hold the fascination of the town prior to and long past their suicides. The town, posing as the vampire, is exploitative in its romanticizing of the girls’ deaths, fantasizing over their unbeknownst thoughts and intentions. As the story of the girls’ deaths is told posthumously from the point of view of two teenage boys, the readers never know, from the voices of the girls, why they committed their tragic suicides. Yet, from the exploitation that lingers long after their ends, it is evident that their deaths are symbolic of freedom from repression and entrapment.
The Forbidden
The act of vampirism is often interpreted as a metaphor for repressed desire, often in sexuality. The burn of a cross and the acidic tear of holy water epitomizes hidden desire amidst societal repression, and yet people still come to the Count for that intimate way he kills, to feel his fangs on their necks in spite of their impending doom. The vampire reminds society that no amount of repression may quench the urge of desire, even if doing so drains them.
In Victorian times, when stories of the vampire arose, this exhibited itself as a symbol of a time where writing about sexuality in any way was completely barred by society. Vampirism challenged traditional, heteronormative roles laced in descriptions and characterizations. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray balances the tightrope of coded homoerotic subtext within this Victorian time period, shielded in aesthetic obsessions with the youth and beauty of the immortal title character, Dorian Gray.
His soul withers away in a portrait, reflecting the suppression of homosexuality, first in Dorian as his unmet desire decomposes his soul and then more broadly in criticized moral codes leading to personal and societal decay. It is where the true vampiric nature rests.
And so we stay drawn to the vampires, transfixed by their eternal fountain of youth and swept away by the danger flowing through their cold hearts.