Let's Talk Books

Let’s get some technicalities out of the way:

1. When I say ‘vampires’ I am exclusively talking about the blood-sucking, usually undead, type.
2. Just because I am going to be discussing the inherent queerness of vampires as an archetype, does not mean I am suggesting all individual vampire characters are LGBTQIA+.
3. This is going to be literary. It’s going to accessible (I hope) but at the end of the day, it is literary theory. Please note, I am not talking queer in the ‘real-life, people you know’ sense. I am talking about it as a literary lens, as a set of theories and ideas with which to analyse other things.

Is everyone with me? That last one, number 3, that’s the biggy. This post is a bit of fun, and I don’t want anyone thinking I’m taking aim at anyone, or suggesting things about real LGBTQIA+ people you know. I’m not. Queer theory is separate from queerness, just as feminist theory is separate from the actions of real life feminists, or gender theory is separate from the lived experiences of Trans people. There’s overlap, sure, but one is theory, and one is practice.

Let’s talk about queer theory first. Now, nothing is definitive in the world of theory and criticism. What one theorist purports, another may argue vehemently against. What one person seeks to prove, may be later disproved by someone with more time, or better research skills. The Arts are not like the Sciences (although STEAM is by no means a bad thing) in the sense that the Arts are about what you can argue, and how effectively you can make that point. As your teacher might once have said, there are no wrong answers in English. Which isn’t strictly true, but isn’t really untrue either. Queer theory is not a monolith. Yet, whilst there are many ideas that make up what we might consider ‘Queer theory’, most of those ideas will conform to a core principal : literary queerness exists where heteronormativity fails.

Heteronormativity, hegemonic masculinity, societal ideals, the perfect feminine, all of these things co-exist. They are the unaddressed foundation of most literary criticism. They are, if you like, the givens. The things that we assume largely apply, so that we can get onto talking about the things we’re interested in. In Queer theory it is these very givens that we are addressing. Now, to reiterate from my point above, I am talking about theory as it applies to writing, not as it applies to people. The characters, works, authors, and interpretations of writing do not need to be queer for Queer Theory to be applicable. Don’t get me wrong, if you signed up for a Queer Lit. module at uni, 9 out of 10 times you will be looking at works by or about queer people. But, just like feminist readings, Queer readings have literary scope outside of their obvious applications.

In this post I am going to be looking at vampires as an archetype through the lens of queer theory. I’m going to use queer time, gender stereotypical non-conformity, and symbolism. I am not going to be talking about ‘homoeroticism’ because, despite its more casual uses in online book communities, in literary criticism homoerotic doesn’t mean what you think it means. To be precise, whilst it does mean a desire to be attractive to people of the same sex, it does not mean (necessarily) to be sexually or romantically attractive. Think of all those bad Tinder or Hinge profiles you’ve seen, men showing pictures of cars, fish they’ve caught, or their PB at the gym. Those profiles, for all their masculinity, are homoerotic; they are more appealing to other men, who have the same interests, than they would be to women looking to date these men. That’s a pretty broad-strokes generalisation, I’ll admit, but I think you get my point? Homoeroticism has no place in this post because I am not talking about it in relation to queer theory, and because in order to do so we would need to have a much bigger conversation about whether or not homoerotic themes denote homosexual themes; which in turn requires a much bigger conversation about masculinity in society, and before we know it I’ll be 10 paragraphs deep and you’ll be bored of me.

Vampires:

Vampires are pretty obviously queer. Anyone who has ever read Carmilla or Dracula could tell you about the implications of same-sex seduction. Carmilla feeds on willing young women, ingratiating herself into their homes, and playing on their naivety. Her role in the novel, and indeed in any of the sexploitation Hammer Horror adaptations of the 60s and 70s, is not unlike that of the Rake. She is seducer, seeking to lower the inhibitions of unwitting and unprepared young women so that she may more easily have her way with them. For his part, Dracula traps Jonathan Harker in his home, and tells his brides (in no uncertain terms) that Jonathan is his to have. He shows a genuine jealousy, furious that they might take from him the prize of Jonathan’s first time.¹ However, outside of these more explicitly queer vampires, there are several places were vampires (even the Mormon coded Cullens) are theoretically queer.

Let’s start with queer time. This is going to be a quick and dirty explanation, for a much better written look at queer time in relation to paranormal romance, see Erin S. Young’s “Flexible heroines, flexible narratives: the werewolf romances of Kelley Armstrong and Carrie Vaughn.” Queer time relies on two primary principals 1) there is an essential timeline of heteronormativity, based on the average life-span, and the average window of fertility 2) departing from that timeline is inherently queering. The essential timeline really boils down to a few things, the ideal straight, cis-gendered individual reaches adulthood, gets married to someone of the opposite sex, produces 2.5 children, leads a life, and then dies. There are some variations within that, divorce, hardship, affairs, infertility, etc. but largely this is the idealised, stereotypical plot of a socially acceptable heteronormative life. Indeed, even characters who are actually queer may conform to the sister of this ideal, ‘Homonormativity’: being involved in a homosexual relationship, but otherwise conforming to the trappings of heternormativity – marrying, having children, living in the suburbs etc. Homonormativity also requires the rejection of stereotypical queer behaviours, for example refusing to engage with the club scene, drag, or Pride. For an example of this, think the husbands Roger and Jerry in the 2004 Stepford Wives film adaptation – post microchip, or Oliver Blackwood from Alexis Hall’s London Calling series. Why is departure from the timeline queering? Because if conformity is an acceptance of, or an acquiescence to, heteronormativity, then nonconformity is a rejection. If one rejects heteronormativity, then all that remains is queerness. Assuming the two are diametrically opposed, an assumption I am making for the purpose of this post.

With that in mind it becomes clear how vampires could be read as intrinsically queer through the theoretical lens of queer time. Vampires are immortal, they are unable to reproduce, they are physically unable to undertake religious sacraments like marriage, (although an argument could be made regarding legal marriage,) and they do not die. Not in the traditional sense at least. All these things take them out of the heteronomrative timeline. They cannot conform to a timeline that relies on the standard life-span, nor the window of fertility; their existence as paranormal entities precludes them from meeting both conditions. Even in stories, like the Twilight saga, where vampires do marry and bear children, it is not within what we might call the assumptive timeline or indeed in what we might consider the traditional way.

A brief reminder about point 4 on my list, the following is in no way an indictment of anyone in real life. Theory requires certain presumptions to operate, nothing can be notably outside of the stereotypical, if we cannot define the stereotypical.

Let’s get back to queer time, in the assumptive timeline we might expect people to get married between the ages of 20 and 40, and bear children within that period too. They would raise those children, retire at some point around 60 or 70, and live another 30 or so years before dying. With that assumptive timeline in mind it becomes even clearer how the vampires in Twilight, in particular, can be read as queer through this lens. Both Carlisle & Esme, and Bella & Edward marry when one or both parties is a) over the age of 100 and b) dead. Of course it isn’t just their marriages that are outside of the heteronormative timeline, nor the only elements of their lives that we might consider non-traditional. For both couples having children is something that involves death, and for both the arrival the first child happens before the re-birth of the mother. In the case of Edward he is turned before surrogate mother Esme, becoming the first member of the Cullen ‘family.’ For Rennesme her gestation is what weakens her mother, with Bella barely scraping by, and dying during delivery. Her return to ‘life’ happens only after the child is born. For both Esme and Bella, and thereby for both of their husbands, their timeline is totally rearranged. For Bella it is marriage, death, motherhood. For Esme it is even more unusual marriage, death, marriage, motherhood. In both cases the couples have been taken out of the heteronormative, reproductive, and assumptive timelines, something that is only possible because of what they are.

Twilight is just one example, but you can find cases of vampires departing from the heteronormative timeline across paranormal fiction. In romance especially, where the final goal of marriage and / or children is a convention of the genre, the paranormal nature of these character’s prevents them from achieving their conventional happy ending. In this way paranormal romance fiction is aligned more closely with queer romance fiction, wherein a conventional happy ending may also not be possible. Now, and one must again nod towards homonormativity which does allow LGBTQIA+ romance novels to hit upon thoroughly conventional endings, it cannot be said that in order for a queer romance to match its own conventions it cannot have a happy ending. Quite the opposite in fact, but the happy ending of most queer romances cannot be totally conventional, if for no other reason than unavoidable delays to the timeline. Queer characters in contemporary romance may be able to marry, but both surrogacy and adoption take time. In a similar way, the vampires of paranormal romance, even those who chose love-filled lives with humans or other paranormal entities, may be faced with obstacles; thus preventing a conventional heteronormative happy ending, and again enforcing a queer time reading. Still, happy endings and timelines are not enough to firmly characterise vampires as a queer archetype

Outside of a queer time lens, there are still other factors that make it possible to critically read vampires as a queer archetype. For one thing gender non-conformity is rife within paranormal romance as a genre, and that is as prevalent in vampire fiction as it is in any other. Let’s look at Twilight again, whilst Bella does birth her child, it is Carlisle, and not Esme, who is the ‘life-giver’ of the Cullen children. Although an asexual form of reproduction, and despite the fact that Carlisle is not strictly fathering so much as siring, there is a definite inference that he is the parent. In fact, Myers adherence to her Mormon beliefs, and her desire to ensure a heteronormative romantic life for Carlilse, result in an unavoidable ‘Trans-ing’ of the reproductive process. Carlisle is the life-giver, even after his marriage, even once a female vampire is available to ‘bear’ their children, he continues in that role. Whilst in non-paranormal situations it would be almost impossible for a lone male to procreate, in paranormal fiction it is not uncommon at all. In fact, across paranormal fiction I would hazard a guess that most vampire sires are male. Typically we only meet a vampire dam when a truly evil, morally bankrupt vampire is needed. Beyond this we see an inability for female vampires to reproduce sexually, whilst there is more than one example of a male vampire sexually reproducing with a human woman.

Further to that, we see female vampires repeatedly seen to be more callous, violent, or specifically anti-child. In Dracula both the brides in Transylvania, and Lucy Westenra in England, feed on babies and young children. Van Helsing posits that this could be because Lucy is newly turned, but we know from Jonathan’s journals that the brides do the same, and we presume from the narrative that they are much more seasoned vampires. Thus we are left with a different conclusion: not only can female vampires not produce babies, they want to consume them. Rosalie is also preoccupied with children, whilst hers is instead a desire for them, we are shown repeatedly that Rosalie is aggressive. Her taking out of them men that assaulted and almost killed her is framed in a very different way to Edward’s ill-conceived time as a vigilante. Thus on both sides of the binary gender divide there is a non-conformity to stereotypical gender roles.

Finally, that gets us to my last vamp-y point. Symbolism. Now, each novel will have its own symbols, each author their own lexical and semantic fields, their own preferred motifs, or themes, but some symbols are universal. And a vampire bite is one of those. No matter the vampire fiction you watch or read, there is one unavoidable truth about a vampire’s kiss: it is penetrative. The bite, by itself, is a symbol of intercourse; an exchange of fluids and intimacy. Thus the teeth become phallic by association. In situations wherein both vampire and victim are male, or indeed where vampire is male and victim is anything other than male, the interaction is queer, or not queer, based on the genders of those involved. As the wielder of the phallic symbol the vampire is always the giver, and the victim always the receiver. In the case that the vampire is female this becomes even more queering. As the one doing the biting, as the person therefor wielding the phallic symbol of the teeth, she takes on a masculine role. A bucking of gender norms, that, regardless of the gender of the victim, leaves the female vampire perpetually queer; she either bites the woman, playing the masculine role of giver, and thus is symbolically involved in same-sex intercourse, or she bites the man, reversing their stereotypical gender roles and, in an even more convoluted way, remains figuratively involved in same-sex intercourse.²

To recap, vampires cannot conform to the heteronormative timeline because they are immortals, largely incapable of reproduction, and hit the milestones of the timeline after death. Vampires are intrinsically gender non-conformist, female vampires especially, in no small part thanks to the phallic and sexual symbolism of the vampire bite. Building on that, the very same symbolism results in an unavoidable link between the vampire and same-sex intercourse, again, this is particularly true of the female vampire. And so I conclude: the vampire can be read as queer, because core facets of the vampire as an archetype are inherently queer. To return to my earlier assertion that queerness and heteronormativity are diametrically opposed, and accepting also that gender non-conformity itself can be read as queer, we must accept that by virtue of sitting outside both heteronormative ideals and gender norms, the vampire is ripe for queer reading.

So, what was the point of all this? Vampires are having a bit of a boom right now! And refreshingly it seems queer-er than ever, sapphic retellings are especially popular. This month Kiersten White’s sapphic reimagining of Dracula, Lucy Undying, is published (I DNF’d it, but it might be your jam!) And Rachel Harrison drops a feminist vampire thriller So Thirsty! Last month K.M. Enright dropped Mistress of Lies, a vampy fantasy joining the ranks of Young Gothic (queer POV characters), When Among Crows (queer POV characters), and The Revenant Games (some queer rep) all of which have come out in the last 12 months. With so much new content its only natural that vampires again come to the fore in bookish spaces, finally giving me an opportunity to word vomit about my all time favourite archetype!

1. In this post I am not going to talk about the way the vampire bite can be read as a symbolic rape. That being said, it is a popular interpretation, and I would urge caution if you wanted to do further research, that some of it may be unexpectedly triggering. ↩︎
2. I took out my explanation for this bit, because even I was finding me confusing, but essentially what I’m getting at is, if person A is literally male, and person B is wielding a phallic symbol (and thus symbolically masculine, if not male) then the application of said phallic symbol to A by B, becomes figuratively same-sex. ↩︎