Vampire Characters

Vampire Characters

            The debate on the existence of vampires has been receiving different forms with the development of each vampire story. Several writers have based their works on vampire stories to benefit from the advantage due to the significant interest of readers in vampire stories. Vampires have characters that can be seen as similar to rational human beings’ characters. However, vampires are presented as creatures with powers higher than human beings. Vampires are always viewed as blood feeders with several writers presenting different kinds of vampires depending on the methods used to get blood. Some writers have presented vampires as human hunters while others present vampires as friendly creatures who only feed on blood from volunteers. Sex and death have been presented in Carter’s Lady in the House of Love and Le Fanu’s Carmilla to be related. The act of blood sucking has been attributed to orgasmic sexual pleasure by several vampires. Also, several vampires have succumbed to death due to their sexual desires that affect the decision making of the vampires.

Several writers have presented sexual lust as a major reason for the fall of several vampire characters. Vampires are known to remain secretive in conducting their activities and that being identified by ordinary human beings can only be responded to, by killing the human victim. However, the desire for sex has been associated with mistakes that have made vampires to make wrong decisions concerning being identified by human beings. The decision by vampires to keep human beings that should be killed has cost several vampires their lives and freedoms. In Angela Carter’s The Lady in the House of Love, the Countess makes a grave mistake that leads to her death. The Countess should have murdered the soldier before letting him come close to him. However, the countess was overwhelmed by her feelings towards the soldier and thought that the soldier was the right man to marry her. However, the belief by the countess only led to her death thus leaving the soldier willing to resurrect the Countess.  The decision by the countess to let the soldier lick her blood instead of having killed him before makes the ancestors furious, and they turn away their faces from the countess. In Carmilla by Le Fanu, Camilla equates love to death when she says, “As loves may die together, [in order] to live together.”

Love has been presented in the form of dreams in the vampire texts. Most interpreters have always likened death to a state of prolonged unconsciousness. For vampires, death can be related to a vision in a dark void where interaction with other beings is impossible. The use of dreams to present love is symbolic in showing the unconscious love that various vampire characters possess in terms of love and the possessive nature of vampires’ desire for love and affection. Most vampires are presented as being lonely and bitter, but a different nature comes out when they experience love, which probably leads them to their deaths. Laura has resistance towards her love for Carmilla. On one side, Carmilla is interested in possessive love and a strong desire for sex. On the other side, Laura has not had a friend in the world for a significant time and thus is only looking for a friend. Laura does not initially cooperate with the feeling that she and Carmilla were mutually attracted to each other. However, the love of Laura is expressed through the nightmare was Laura dreams seeing Carmilla at the foot of her bed, an instant that makes Laura scream so hard that she even scares her dog. The nightmare symbolizes the unconscious but strong love that Laura has for Carmilla. On Carter’s book, the Countess dreams about something unlikely: her dream is different from the dreams she had been having before. Later, the Countess realizes that she was dreaming about the soldier. The strangest thing about the meeting between the Countess and the soldier is that it goes to an unexpected direction. The Countess falls in love but does not seem to accept and later dies for the mistake. The countess is presented to have a bit of unconscious love for the soldier but later dies after accepting to fall in love with a human being.

The sexual desires of most vampire characters have been likened to death in morality. Most vampire territories are governed with rules that define the borders that cannot be overstepped on social matters. Vampires are expected by their ancestors to conduct themselves in acceptable and responsible sexual behaviors. The relationship between vampires and other creatures is highly discouraged since such interactions might lead to exposure of critical secrets that ought to remain at the confidentiality of the vampire territories. However, the desire to contain vampires from seeking sexual satisfaction from other creatures such as human beings has almost been impossible. The rampant interactions have been presented in the literature to have caused adverse consequences on the vampire kingdoms. The Countess in Carter’s The Lady in the House of Love leads to her death by falling in love with a human soldier. The mistake can be blamed on the vampire kingdom for letting the countess live such a lonely life that would later lead her to seek love and compassion. Instead, the system blames the Countess for allowing a human being to love her and the ancestors leave her to die. The death of the Countess would have been avoided if she had killed the soldier like any other man, but her possession with love brings out a better person in her, a situation that angered the ancestors. From Le Fanu’s Carmilla the desire for same-gender romance is an act of a dying societal morality. Carmilla and Laura fall in love with each other. Also, Carmilla is said to have been possessed by a desire to fall in love with young women more frequently. The lesbianism nature of Carmilla does not go down well with the vampire society although no one comes out to condemn her for her sexual orientation.

The relationship between sex and death is presented by the way the vampire characters have sexually charged dreams. The use of sexually charged dreams is symbolic in showing that the vampire characters have been through experiences that kill their real sexual abilities in real life and can only experience them through dreams. A sexually dead life can be related to apparent death since the characters are unable to lead normal family lives. Also, the presentation of the vampire characters as motherless could be seen as to mean that the family structure should be destroyed for vampire kingdoms to stand. The death of the characters’ mothers can be attributed to their relationship with the characters’ fathers who kill human fathers after having sex and siring with them. The fact that several vampires engage in intimate relationships with human ladies and kill them immediately after delivering their children gives a broader relationship between sex and death. In Carter’s Lady in the House of Love the Countess is motherless. Also, the appearance of the soldier is revealed through a sexually charged dream. The Countess also gets sexual dreams during the night that she takes the soldier to the blood chamber. In Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Laura gets sexually charged dreams each night and later decides to fall in love with Carmilla. Despite having dreams about Carmilla, Laura does not share the same feeling in the real world, and that could mean that her ability to love is dead. Laura struggles to stop the feelings that are developing between her and Carmilla but Carmilla’s desire for sex and affection kills Laura’s dream of not falling in love with her. The character of Laura is however related to that of Carmilla in that they both have killed their moral standards. Similar to Carmilla, Laura has been seeking company from several young Ladies being driven by a desire for sex and love.

Carter and Le Fanu have used their stories to give a similar presentation of female sexuality as being based on a desire for sex and satisfaction. Sexuality is viewed as a weakness for women and that the female characters have difficulties in controlling their sexual desires. Carter presents the countess as a character who has been strong before the feelings of affection and desire for sex contaminate her personality. The Countess had been viewing human beings as preys to provide blood for her food. However, the appearance of the soldier and the desire of the Countess to be loved bring out the excellent personality in her. According to Carter, human weakness is a weakness that leads to the downfall of many ladies. Le Fanu presents female sexuality by presenting women as sexually immoral beings. The presentation of lesbian characters may be viewed as to mean that ladies do not dare to approach their male counterparts for sexual favors but decide to approach their fellow ladies. Le Fanu’s Carmilla appears to be mo subversive in a bid to deploy lesbianism as an act that should be allowed in the society.

In sum, several writers have based their works on vampire stories to benefit from the advantage due to the significant interest of readers in vampire stories. Sex and death have been presented in Carter’s Lady in the House of Love and Le Fanu’s Carmilla to be related. Generally, Carter and Le Fanu have used their stories to give a similar presentation of female sexuality as being based on a desire for sex and satisfaction.

References

Carter, A. (1975). The lady of the house of love. The Iowa Review, 134-148.

Le Fanu, J. S. (2013). Carmilla: A critical edition. Syracuse University Press.

Pérez-Gil, M. D. M. (2016). A Vampire in Plato’s Cave: Mimesis, Anamorphosis, and Simulacra   in Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary         Fiction, 57(5), 512-520.

Whelan, J. F. (2017). J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla: A Tri-Part Exploration of the Vampiric       Novel (Doctoral dissertation, Creighton University).