Feminist vampires and the Romantic

Satanist tradition of counter-readings

Per Faxneld, Department of the History of Religions, Stockholm University, Sweden
Introduction: Vampires and Satanic Feminism
In this paper, I will focus on three well-known pieces of nineteenth century vampire fiction
written by Thophile Gautier, Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker. My readings will explore
how the female vampires in them can be understood if the texts are read as part of an
intertextual tradition concerning Satanism and Witchcraft, in which the Devil acts as the
destroyer of patriarchal ideals of proper womanhood. The aspect of this tradition that
particularly interests me is positive of or at least ambivalent about the freedom Satan brings
women, and could be labeled a discourse of Satanic Feminism.1 If read in isolation from the
aforementioned intertexts, Stokers novel and Le Fanuss short story will not take on a
subversive meaning at all. These two authors themselves probably did not have any feminist
sympathies, or sympathies for vampires for that matter. Gautiers text, on the other hand,
obviously portrays the female vampire in a sympathetic light and Christian patriarchy as cruel
and cold. In this case, the author was also openly hostile towards Christianity. I would like to
propose a reading situating the first two authors in an intertextual relationship with Gautier as
well as with Satanic Feminism. In the concluding part, I shall also discuss how the approach
taken by many Feminist scholars while treating these texts resembles Romantic tactics of
counter-reading.
Breaking free from the confines of life-hating Christianity: La Morte amoureuse
The first story I would like to bring up is La Morte amoureuse (1836), by the infamously
anti-Christian French Romantic Thophile Gautier.2 The authors notorious skepticism towards
Christianity would have been likely to steer many of his readers to conceive of the
representatives of the Church as the villains of his vampire story. Such a view of the tale is, as
we will see, quite logical even without the extratextual biographical support.
The protagonist of the story is the young novice priest Romuald. During his ordination
ceremony he locks eyes with a woman as beautiful as an angel. But is this really a heavenly
creature? The young priest-to-be is uncertain if the fire in her eyes stems from heaven or hell,
and if she is an angel or a devil. Her glances seem to tell him:
If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God Himself in His paradise. The angels
themselves will be jealous of thee. Tear off that funeral shroud in which thou art about to
wrap thyself. I am Beauty, I am youth, I am Life. [] Can Jehovah offer thee aught in
exchange? [] I love thee and would take thee away from thy God, before whom so many
noble hearts pour forth floods of love which never reach even the steps of His throne!3

Tempting as this sounds, Romuald can still not stop himself from saying yes instead of no
when he is initiated into the priestly caste. It is as if though an unknown force makes him say
what is expected of him, instead of what he truly wants to say. Here he draws a parallel that
makes it possible to read the entire story as an allegorical critique of how societal and religious
structures force women to go against their own wishes: Thus it is, perhaps, that so many young
1

This tradition is prevalent especially in genres like Gothic literature, where the three vampire stories in question
belong. Regarding earlier Gothic examples (from the time period 1786-1820) of Satanic Feminism, see my paper
from last years conference (Faxneld 2009).
2
On Gautiers skepticism towards Christianity, see Smith 1969, pp 39-40, Knapp 1976, pp 61, 71.
3
Gautier 1928, pp 28-29.

girls walk to the altar firmly resolved to refuse in a startling manner the husband imposed upon
them, and that yet not one ever fulfills her intention.4
The beautiful woman is later revealed to be the courtesan Clarimonde, who on
her deathbed calls Romuald to her. A kiss they exchange there binds them together, and after
her death she returns as a vampire and they become lovers. Their relationship in which
Clarimonde is clearly the dominant party makes Romuald very happy, and he doesnt mind at
all sharing some of his blood with her. His mentor, the elderly Abb Srapion, is not quite as
pleased once he finds out, and he digs up Clarimondes corpse and destroys the vampire using
holy water. In her final words to her lover, she asks: Wherefore have hearkened to that
imbecile priest? Wert thou not happy?5
Abb Srapion declares his belief that Clarimonde is none other than Beelzebub
himself.6 The choice of this particular name for designating Satan disguised as a woman
further emphasizes something that is indicated in the very title of the short story: the fact that
Gautier draws inspiration from Jacques Cazottes ground-breaking occult novel Le Diable
amoureux (1772, revised edition 1776), where an oddly sympathetic female Satan asks her
human lover to say to her tenderly Beloved Beelzebub, I adore you.7 In Cazottes novel,
Christian moralism gets the last word and the pleasures of the flesh are condemned in a stern
monologue uttered by a doctor of theology. Gautier, on the other hand, lets his hero end the
narrative by lamenting his rejection of earthly love.
La Morte amoureuse is part of a well-established literary tradition, where
demonic women represent an alternative embodying freedom, flesh and fun in contrast to what
Gautier seems to have perceived as the confining and life-hating attitude of Christian
patriarchy. By his sympathetic portrayal of an apparently unholy (she is destroyed by holy
water) vampire woman who rejects the value systems of Christianity and patriarchy, Gautier
could be said to propagate a form of Satanic Feminism.8
A demonic lesbian threat to Christian patriarchy: Carmilla
In Sheridan Le Fanus Carmilla (1872), the lesbian9 vampire who gives her name to the story
infiltrates the household of a noble family. Laura, the daughter in the family, is charmed by the
visitor, if somewhat ambivalent to her homosexual advances.
In her analysis of a cinematic adaptation of the tale, film scholar Barbara Creed
claims that the horrific thing about Carmilla is not only the fact that she turns her victims into
undead creatures of the night, but also that she threatens to seduce the daughters of patriarchy
away from their proper gender roles.10 The combination vampire and lesbian is, according to
4

Ibid, p 28. He further explains: One dares not thus cause so great a scandal to all present, nor deceive the
expectations of so many people. All those eyes, all those wills seem to weigh down upon you like a cope of lead;
and, moreover, measures have been so well taken, everything has been so thoroughly arranged beforehand and
after a fashion so evidently irrevocable, that the will yields to the weight of circumstances and utterly breaks
down. Ibid.
5
Ibid, p 48.
6
Ibid p 39. There is an old tradition of viewing vampirism as almost synonymous with Satanism. These ideas
were propounded in several early learned treatises, written mainly by men of the cloth. As Gordon Melton puts
it, in early modern Christian Europe Vampirism became another form of Satanism and the vampire the
instrument of the devil. Melton 1999, p 199.
7
Cazotte 1979, p 118. My translation. For a discussion of the sympathy for the Devil that is possible to discern
in Cazottes novel, as well as some possible feminist readings, see my introduction to the recently published
Swedish translation of it (Faxneld 2010).
8
The Satanism is admittedly more pronounced than the Feminism here, though. Gautier himself was certainly
not a feminist, and the ideas expressed in many of his works are decidedly male chauvinist and anti-feminist.
9
For examples of her lesbianism, see Le Fanu 1977, pp 98, 106-107, 109, 134.
10
Ibid, p 61.

Creed, a happy one, since both figures are represented in popular culture as sexually
aggressive women.11 I find this reading plausible, and will here take a similar approach to the
literary model.
It is not only patriarchy Carmilla is an adversary of, but more specifically Christian
patriarchy. Like most vampires, she has a strong aversion towards Christianity. When she hears
psalms being sung, she brusquely remarks Dont you perceive how discordant that is?, and
she avoids the prayer sessions of her host family.12 When the family friend General Spielsdorf
turns up, having earlier lost his daughter to Carmilla, he takes a religious view of events,
asking why Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of
hell.13
The story ends with Spielsdorf, Lauras nobleman father, a priest, a commissioner
and two doctors digging up Carmillas body from her grave and then decapitating her and
driving a stake through her heart. All the main representatives of patriarchy are present as the
nobleman father combine forces with a military father, and the representatives of church, state
and the medical profession to eradicate the threatening female demon. The penetrating stake
puts the lesbian in place and shows her that the true function of a woman is that of a receiving
vessel. The decapitation is of course also tempting to analyze in Freudian terms, whereby it
becomes a castration, de-masculinizing the female who has expressed an inappropriately
masculine and active sexual desire.
Several female scholars have perceived Le Fanus vampire as something more
complex than simply a horrid monster. Gina Wisker argues that Carmilla is a threatening figure
for male readers, but less so, perhaps, for women.14 Carol A. Senf points out that Lauras life
seems characterized by confinement and a longing for passion and excitement.15 Perhaps the
longing Senf identifies is a good starting point to understand what Carmilla tells Laura about
death. She explains to her that girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally
butterflies when the summer comes summer here probably being the death which leads to a
heightened existence as a vampire, where women can make use of their full potential.16
At the beginning of the story we have been told that the text that follows is taken
from the papers left behind by Laura, who is now dead. On the last page, she writes that her
vampire friend has not entirely left her side, in spite of the measures taken by her male
protectors, and she often fancies hearing the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room
door.17 Perhaps it was, after all, the luciferian lesbian who took her life, or, if one takes such a
view of things, who set her free from her drab existence, shackled by the bonds of patriarchy,
and led her into something more full and free.
Dracula: A feminist novel or an attack on feminism? Satanic manifesto or pious?
When it comes to the depiction of headstrong bloodsucking females in Bram Stokers Dracula
(1897), the most popular vampire story ever, two very different views have emerged in the
11

Ibid, p 59. A (vague) connection between vampires and lesbianism can be seen in a couple of texts prior to
Carmilla as well: Coleridges Christabel (1816) and Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal (1857). In Christabel,
both vampirism and lesbianism are merely hinted at. In Les Fleurs du mal, the connection is that poems about
vampires and lesbians respectively are included in the same section of the book. They do not, however, figure in
the same poems.
12
Le Fanu 1977, pp 113, 145.
13
Le Fanu 1977, p 191.
14
Wisker 2000, p 170.
15
Senf 1979, pp 78-79. See also Auerbach 1995, p 47.
16
Another alternative is of course to interpret Carmillas words as simply referring to the transition from girl to
woman, but I believe my interpretation to be more plausible given the context.
17
Le Fanu 1977, p 270.

debate.18 Salli J. Kline and others have argued very convincingly, and with a firm basis in
biographical data that Stokers vampire women are a malicious portrait of nineteenth century
feminists, which is contrasted with proper women subserviently acting out their designated
role as angel of the house. The other position, championed by amongst others Carol A. Senf
and Stephanie Demetrakopoulos, celebrates Stoker as a dedicated feminist. To Senf, his female
vampires are a feminist response to women who were only ornamental and useless
parasites.19
Regardless of whether or not they are portrayed in a manner intended to be
praiseworthy, these vampires could be considered Satanists due to their relationship to the
novels satanic title character. Dracula is not explicitly the Devil in disguise, but he takes on
numerous traits of that figure and has a very similar function. The alias he uses in London,
Count de Ville, indicates this, as does his own name (Dracula being a diminutive form of the
Romanian word for dragon or devil).20 There are also numerous instances in the novel where he
is connected to the Devil by other characters.21 Further, his physical appearance borrows freely
from traditional representations of the prince of darkness.22 In the Gothic genre, it is a timehonored convention to give anti-heroes traits from Miltons Satan, and such can be found in
Dracula as well.23
Satan was often portrayed as a highly sexual creature, and the witches sabbath as a
sort of sexual orgy. Likewise, Dracula is a far more libidinous character than any of the human
males. When the vampire hunters render his various hideouts useless for him with the help of
holy water and Eucharistic wafers, they tellingly talk of how they sterilize his lairs. This is
similar to how the Church neutralizes the satanic sexuality Clarimonde represents in La Morte
amoureuse, and, if one is prone to Freudian thinking, to the castration of Carmilla.
Dracula never transforms a male into a vampire (though he would have had ample
opportunity to do so with Jonathan Harker), but he attempts to transform both Lucy and Mina,
and he already has three female companions in his castle. Hence, it is clear that he is concerned
primarily with causing a change in women, not in men. This is a parallel to how learned
treatises like the witchhunters manual Malleus Maleficarum (1486) stated that Satan works
mostly by having women join his cult.24 On one level, Dracula could be read as a literary
version of Malleus. The quasi-scientist Van Helsing is then a witchhunter who compiles
documents from an inquest into how women have become demonic by their dalliance with the
Devil, and shows what signs (sharp teeth, increased sexual urges, etc) to look for to reveal their
allegiance to the dark lord (just like Malleus advocates looking for the witches mark). It is
even possible that Stoker intended his novel to metaphorically be precisely such a manual, to
18

I here assume that the story is so well known to all that I need not recapitulate it.
Senf further opines that Stoker makes a point of portraying the many male authorial voices in the text (it
consists of letters and excerpts from diaries) as unreliable and full of platitudes, which makes the reader question
the values propagated by the men (traditional assumptions about the relationship between the sexes and
accepted cultural beliefs about the role women should play within society). Senf 1979, p 199.
20
Melton 1999, p 601.
21
Stoker 2003, p
22
On this, see Faxneld 2004 and Kline 1992, pp 53-54, 59-60.
23
Most obviously, his statement that I have been so long master that I would be master still or at least that
none would be master of me (Stoker 2003, p 27), echoes the individualist Lucifers defiant attitude towards God
in Paradise Lost (The phrase Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven is often incorrectly attributed to
Lucifer in Miltons poem, but is in fact spoken by his henchman Mammon. Lucifer himself does, however, share
this sentiment.) Draculas grand words about himself, me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and
fought for them, hundreds of years before they [the vampire hunters] were born (Stoker 2003, p 306), recalls the
proud warlord Lucifer at the beginning of Miltons poem. His declaration that he loves the shade and the
shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts if I may could be an echo of the brooding Satan we meet further
on in Miltons narrative. Stoker 2003, p 31.
24
The best English translation of this work is by Christopher S Mackay (2006).
19

help men identify the signs of satanic suffragetism in women.

The coven of witches in Draculas castle
In the scene where Jonathan Harker encounters Draculas three brides, the standard reading is
to highlight a reversal of gender roles. Jonathan becomes passive, quietly waiting to be
penetrated by the sharp teeth of the sexually aggressive women.25 The penetration never comes,
however, since the Count himself interferes and offers the ladies a sack containing a child to
devour instead.
Draculas castle here emerges as a sort of Blkulla or Brocken, the demonic and
strange place where Satan would hold feasts for his witches and have sexual intercourse with
them. These feasts would typically involve the inversion of societal norms (comparable to how
the ladies here take on what is encoded as a masculine role) and cannibalistic orgies where
babies were consumed. The hostility of vampire ladies and witches towards children probably
signify that they are both the very antithesis of proper women, whose role it would be to
nurture and care for the young ones. Jonathan later writes of the women: Faugh! Mina is a
woman, and there is nought in common. They are devils of the pit!26 From the castle he
escapes to a convent, and the care-giving nuns there form the ultimate contrast to the sexual yet
child-hating vampire women. He is also married to Mina in the convent, underscoring that she,
unlike her friend Lucy, is a chaste and proper woman with no sexual desires.
Senf claims the three brides are killed simply because they are sensual and sexually
aggressive and for violating the male characters opinion of what women should do and be.
Here, however, she conveniently forgets the fact that they have actually also consumed a baby.
This is, in other words, a demonstration of how the urge to make heroes of vampires sometimes
makes for somewhat tendentious interpretations. Another solution, if I may be so bold as to
step in and give a helping hand, would be to perceive the murder of the child as potentially a
symbol of rejecting child-rearing as womens sole purpose, or as a symbol of womens right to
abortion (murder of children, according to some).
Lucy the luciferian freethinker
Dracula later adds a young British girl named Lucy to his coven of witches. She is something
of a rebel from the start, whose name etymologically linked to Lucifer could be an
indication of her rebellious nature.27 For instance, after having received three marriage
proposals in one day she writes her friend Mina: Why cant they let a girl marry three men, or
as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it.28
Later, bed-ridden after her encounters with Dracula, her facial features change in a
way not unlike that which is described in accounts of how possessed persons look. She also
becomes a satanic temptress, asking her fiance to kiss her. Van Helsing violently stops him
from fulfilling her request, and functions as a guardian of morality keeping sensual urges at
bay, much like Abb Srapion in La Morte amoureuse. If these two stories are read against
each other, a new light is cast on Van Helsing in which he looks a lot less likeable.
After her death, Lucy becomes a vampire and starts attacking children, making her
witch-like in the same manner as Draculas three brides in the castle. Demetrakopoulos
speculates on this issue: Overburdened by motherhood, women readers might I believe, have
25

Christopher Craft talks of a woman whose demonism is figured as the power to penetrate. Craft 2004, p 261.
Carol A. Senf is of the opinion that the vampire ladies are so-called new women, since these were often
associated in the public mind with topsy-turvy sexual roles. Senf 2004, p 337.
26
Stoker 2003, p 61.
27
This is pointed out by both Joseph Andriano and Clive Leatherdale. Andriano 1993, p 108, Leatherdale 1985,
p 136.
28
Stoker 2003, p 67.

found in these episodes a release for latent hostilities toward their duties and roles as
mothers.29 The outright evil deeds of Lucy are thus transformed by feminist criticism into
symbolic release from patriarchal pressures.
The vampire hunters corner the undead Lucy in her crypt, where they cut off her
head and drive a stake through her heart. Van Helsing tells Arthur to strike in Gods name,
and during the gruesome deed the men around him constantly pray. Afterwards, Dr Seward
writes in his diary about the creatures carnal and unspiritual appearance, seeming like a
devilish mockery of Lucys sweet purity.30 Just like in Gautiers tale, Christianity and the
power of God is the cure for wicked and carnal females.
Mina the proper woman
Mina, on the other hand, is singled out by Van Helsing as one of Gods women;31 but even
she comes under the threat of becoming a vampire. In an encounter with Dracula, Mina is
forced to drink from a wound he opens in his chest. This bizarre breastfeeding is yet another of
the transgressions of gender boundaries that seem to be so typical of vampires. It also resounds
with the hermaphroditic Satan, often depicted with breasts, familiar from Christian
iconography, and with French occultist Eliphas Lvis famous 1855 engraving of Baphomet (a
sort of Satan-figure in Lvis occult system).32 The obscene kiss in an altogether inappropriate
and unclean spot (a wound) that Dracula forces Mina to give him could also be considered
analogous with the witches supposed kissing of the Devils anus. The mark on her forehead
that Mina gets from a Eucharistic wafer has parallels with the mark Satan was considered to
put on his followers (in many accounts on their forehead), and with the mark of the beast
mentioned in Rev. 14: 9-10.33 Van Helsing calls what has happened the Vampires baptism of
blood,34 making one think, perhaps, of the Devils supposed baptism of his adherents.35
In the novels climax, Van Helsing protects Mina from Draculas brides by placing
her in a circle of Eucharistic wafers, which she could not leave no more than they could
enter.36 This circle distinctly marks the boundary between proper and improper females. The
brides cry out to her: Come, sister. Come to us. Come! Come!37 Kline argues that these siren
calls would have reminded contemporary readers of how suffragettes held public meetings and
tried to persuade housewives in the crowd to join their cause.38 Minas utter horror at the
attempts of the vampire brides to lure her from the protective circle shows that she is still
bound by the rules of patriarchy, which she has internalized entirely, and that she can be
successfully re-integrated into society again, unlike her friend Lucy.
As we have seen, Stokers novel depicts something with strong similarities to
witchcraft and Satanism. Whether or not it also is a pro-feminist and pro-Satanic work is
another matter entirely. That it does connect feminism with Satanism should now be clear,
29

Stoker 2003, p 107.

Stoker 2003, p 228.
31
Stoker 2003, p 201. He also praises her by saying that she is [s]o true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist
and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so sceptical and selfish. Ibid.
32
On depictions of Satan as hermaphroditic, see Faxneld 2010, pp 12-13. On Lvi and Baphomet, see Faxneld
2006, pp 21-28, 101-107.
33
The parallell to Revelations is Clive Leatherdales. Leatherdale 1985, pp 183-184.
34
Stoker 2003, p 343.
35
On such baptisms, the obscene kiss that witches gave Satan and the mark he put on their foreheads, see for
instance Guazzos Compendium Maleficarum (first published 1628) pp 14-17, 35, 89, where these practices are
also depicted in famous and frequently reproduced woodcuts.
36
Stoker 2003, p 391.
37
Ibid.
38
Kline 1992, p 258.
30

though. Hence, viewing the female vampires as feminist heroines or martyrs as several
feminist scholars do is to some extent a form of feminist Satanism.
A feminist revival of Romantic techniques of counter-reading
In all three texts, the vampires are either female (Gautier and Le Fanu) or mostly female: four
out of the five vampires in Stokers text are women, and the Count himself is seemingly
concerned exclusively with women (and is further depicted as feminine to some extent, as
when he nurses Mina at his breast). All the vampires are explicitly hostile towards Christianity.
Gautiers and Stokers vampires also absorb traits from Satan, and Draculas relationship to
women echoes that of the Devil to women. To summarize, the vampires constitute a satanic
feminine alternative to patriarchal Christianity. Whether or not this alternative is portrayed in a
positive or even ambivalent manner is a different question. Considering the texts as parts of a
larger Gothic corpus, where a rather ambivalent attitude towards villains is often present,
would make it more plausible to interpret the vampires as morally ambiguous or even
appealing in their rebellion.39
Many feminist scholars have a tendency to make allies of monsters, something that
I would contend makes them contributors to the discourse of Satanic Feminism that I
mentioned in the introduction. For instance, Nina Auerbach perceives, in her research and
apparently also her private life, the vampire as a secret talisman against a nice girls life. She
continues: Vampires were supposed to menace women, but to me at least, they promised
protection against a destiny of girdles, spike heels, and approval. Auerbach has even explained
that she wrote her widely acclaimed book Our Vampires, Ourselves (1995) partly in order to
reclaim them [the vampires] for a female tradition, one that has not always known its own
allies.40 In an earlier book, she claimed that Draculas greatest power was his ability to
catalyze the awesome changes dormant in womanhood.41 Carol A. Senf takes a similar view,
and considers Dracula a liberator, a missionary of desire whose true kingdom will be the
human body, who relies on womens desire to emulate his freedom from external
constraints.42
These ideas are not unique. The vampire myth in popular culture has in our own
time evolved to a point where the vampires are heroes almost as often as they are villains.43
This is part of a broader cultural tendency to make heroes of monsters, and a far-reaching
fascination with anti-heroes.44 The truly visible rise of the anti-hero could perhaps be located to
the mid 1960s, when the counterculture started looking for subversive icons to symbolize their
resistance against mainstream values. This tendency then quickly came to color most forms of
popular culture, since so many of the creative minds of the following decades had their
background in the counterculture. It was not just the arts that saw an influx of talent with this
background; many of the sharpest minds in academia during the last few decades have been
shaped by the same milieu. It is therefore only logical that scholars of literature also have
39

For examples of such ambigous and appealing anti-heroes in Gothic literature, see the discussion in Faxneld
2009.
40
Auerbach 1995, p 4.
41
Auerbach 1982, p 24.
42
Senf 1979, pp 207-208.
43
Many authors and filmmakers have contributed to this development, but the most important of them all must
surely be Anne Rice with her Vampire Chronicles series of books (1976-2003), starting with Interview with the
Vampire in 1976.
44
The exact reasons for this are of course complex beyond measure, but one reason could be the demise of the
grand narratives (to use Lyotards often criticised terminology) that would earlier have served to keep mythical
villains like Satan and vampires in a fixed position as evil whereas they now are cut loose from their original
context and can assume new roles combined with the spread of moral relativism through postmodernist
deconstruction of absolute values.

embraced figures like the vampire as a hero.

Given such a cultural framework, it is reasonable to assume many readers in our
time with feminist sympathies would read Gautier, Le Fanu and Stoker much like Senf and
other Dracula-friendly scholars do. If one is interested primarily in what for instance Stokers
own intentions were, such a reading could justifiably be called superficial and careless (as
Kline Describes Demetrakopoulos interpretation).45 But in a long-term reader-response or
history of ideas-based perspective, there is nothing to say that the (conscious or subconscious)
intentions of the author are to be used as a corrective. Determinants of meaning such as the
impact of genre conventions, intertextual connections or later interpretative strategies (e.g.
Satanic Feminism) that gain ground are just as important. The meaning of a text does not,
after all, arise in the mind of the author, but rather when the text is later read and interpreted by
others.
Even if the pro-vampire feminist reading of these works is not true to the original
context in which they were produced, or the intentions of the authors, it is interesting as an
example of how a counter-discourse is established. This discourse has, I would contend, gained
so much ground that it in itself now constitutes a valid matrix for interpretation if you have an
interest in reader-response and intertextuality. Readers in our own time who are well versed in
this mode of thinking are likely to perform readings in accordance with it when they partake of
literary works portraying monstrous women.
To make heroes of Carmilla and the vampires in Dracula,46 one has to perform
counter-readings that interpret the literary texts in a way contrary to their surface meaning. In
doing so, the feminist scholars who want to make the Count a champion of suffragettism bear a
certain resemblance to the late eighteenth century Romantics (Blake, Byron, Shelley, et al) who
celebrated Satan as the hero of Miltons Paradise Lost.47 The pattern of re-interpretation is
somewhat similar: famous texts from an earlier generation are re-interpreted according to ones
own ideals, and an ally is sought in the misunderstood villain of the piece. Further shared
traits are the strong attraction to everything that overthrows societys power elites, and the use
of symbolism and mythology in a struggle against dominant symbolic value systems.
It seems likely Gautier intended his female vampire to come across as a positive
contrast to what he perceived as the stifling morality of the patriarchal Catholic church. Le
Fanu and Stoker, especially the latter, probably had the opposite intention: they wanted to use
the vampire women as a symbol of precisely what a woman should not be. Just like Milton
never intended Satan to be interpreted as the hero of Paradise Lost, Le Fanu and Stoker
probably did not mean for readers to make heroes of Carmilla or Dracula and his vampire
brides. But in the same way Milton got his Blake, Byron and Shelley, Le Fanu and Stoker have
gotten their Senf, Demetrakopoulos and Auerbach.

45

Kline 1992, p 127.

As previously stated, making a hero of Clarimonde does not require any manhandling of the text, as she is
explicitely portrayed as a loving and gentle liberator from oppresion.
47
On Romantic Satanism, see Schock 2003.
46

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London, 1995.
Auerbach, Nina, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth, Harvard University
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Cazotte, Jacques, Le Diable amoureux, Garnier-Flammarion, Paris and Montral, 1979.
Craft, Christopher, Kiss Me With Those Red Lips: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stokers
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