AUTHOR’S GAB, READER TALK.
A LETTER TO YOU, THE READER, SO THAT YOU CAN FINALLY FIGURE OUT WHAT I’M THINKING.
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THIS MONTH: The Origin of Vampires
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“‘(Bella:) ‘—and he was telling me some old legends—trying to scare me, I think. He told me one…’ I hesitated.
(Edward:) ‘Go on,” he said.
(Bella:) ‘About vampires.’ I realized I was whispering. I couldn’t look at his face now. But I saw his knuckles tighten convulsively on the wheel.
(Edward:) ‘And you immediately thought of me?’ Still calm.
…(Bella:) ‘So I’m wrong again?’ I challenged.
(Edward:) ‘That’s not what I was referring to. ‘It doesn’t matter’!’ he quoted, gritting his teeth together.
(Bella:) ‘I’m right?’ I gasped.
(Edward:) ‘Does it matter?’
(Bella:) I took a deep breath.”
-From pages 183 to 185 in Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Dear Reader,
Stephanie Meyer didn’t start it all. Sure, when she created Edward, Meyer made vampires sexy and sparkly again. But, people’s obsession with vampires goes farther back than that. Way back.
“Myths of the blood-sucking undead have been part of human culture for thousands of years. But, our current image of the vampire, an aristocrat with a dark obsession, is considerably more modern,” the narrator in History Channel’s documentary about vampires, “Vampire Secrets”, said.
Indeed, versions of the vampire myth have origins in many cultures, much like fairy tales.
Most of these legends come from ancient Asia, including China, India and Malaysia. In China, for instance, the Jiang Shi (also present in Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese cultures) was a re-animated corpse which would arise at night, arms outstretched and hopping, to kill the living and consume their life-force. Much of this was also tied to how ancestors would punish a family if sacrifices to them were not maintained.
It’s not clear, but it seems Europeans started believing in vampires during the time they were exploring Asia. They simply borrowed the idea of vampires from Eastern cultures to explain why people died suddenly of unknown causes.
Back then, there wasn’t a “Center for Disease Control”, nor did modern medicine exist; so, there weren’t many definite solutions about how the body worked or how it decomposed after death.
“But, before the advent of modern medicine, the solution was often magical,” Theodora Gross, a writer for Realms of Fantasy, a bi-monthly magazine which publishes fantasy fiction and artwork, wrote. “…In such rituals, the vampire functioned as scapegoat. Staking, decapitating, or burning it allowed the villagers to confront their fears, expel the contagion that had come to their village, and heal the community after a period of grief and loss.”
Exhuming and “annihilating” corpses they believed to be vampires only confirmed European villagers’ suspicions, convincing them there had really been a vampire attack. Villagers would often cite the pale, bloated look of the body, receding nails and hairline and what appeared to be blood running down from the corpse’s mouth as evidence.
In reality, however, all this “evidence” was just ignorance of signs of the decaying process.
“These decomposition signs match 100 percent with all alleged vampire signs that were ever reported,” Dr. Mark Benecke, a forensic biologist, said on “Vampire Secrets”. “…The time span between the fresh corpse and the skeleton can be very, very long. It can be 100 years, 200 years, 2,000 years, and the stages in between can be interpreted as vampire signs.”
Nevertheless, vampire hysteria wasn’t going away. Taking off during the 1700s, when people actually attempted to kill vampire-like corpses, vampire hype finally materialized itself into pop culture in 1897, when Bram Stoker published his novel, Dracula.
In a brillant move combining very basic elements of classic vampire stories and bits of history, Stoker firmly planted Count Dracula in Transylvania and in the mind of his readers. Yes, there had been vampire stories before his, notably John Polidori’s Lord Ruthven in “The Vampyre”; but, Stoker’s Dracula was, by far, the most popular.
One of the main historic characters Stoker used was Vlad Dracula the Impaler, a 15th century Romanian prince who is said to have enjoyed executing his enemies via impalement.
From there it gets questionable, but Stoker likely created vampire’s blood urge to stay youthful from Countess Elizabeth Bathory, “The Blood Countess”. A well-connected Hungarian noblewoman of royal blood, Bathory’s obsession with vanity led her to kill young virgin women and bathe in and drink their blood to stay youthful. She was eventually convicted, however, and suffered life in prison for her crimes thereafter.
To complete his masterpiece, Stoker relied heavily on Gothic fiction, a genre combining horror and romance which was popular in the early nineteenth century.
“Gothic fiction traditionally includes elements such as gloomy castles, sublime landscapes, and innocent maidens threatened by ineffable evil,” Sparknotes, a website explaining classic literature to students, writes. “Stoker modernizes this tradition in his novel, however, moving from the conventional setting of Dracula’s ruined castle into the bustle of modern England. As Stoker portrays the collision of two disparate worlds—the count’s ancient Transylvania and the protagonist’s modern London—he lays bare many of the anxieties that characterized his age: the repercussions of scientific advancement, the consequences of abandoning traditional beliefs, and the dangers of female sexuality.”
Stoker’s success, however, was also probably due to his timing.
With the turn of the century, pictures were first being made, movies were first being seen and technology was rapidly advancing. Suddenly, vampires leapt out of dusty old legends and onto movie screens, like Count Orlock from Fredrich Wilhelm Murnau’s 1992 film, Nosferatu, and in the 1931 film adaption of Stoker’s Dracula.
“In Dracula, we find most of the rules that modern vampires have inherited: the vampire cannot be seen in the mirror, he can transform into a bat, and he must be invited in,” Gross wrote. ” These are staples of vampire movies, although the most important rule of all comes not from Dracula but from the movies themselves: Count Dracula is not affected by sunlight, and one of the most frightening moments in the novel occurs when Mina Harker sees him walking about in the middle of the day in Piccadilly Circus. It is in the movies that vampires become creatures of the dark.”
But, it’s also here that vampires officially start to become romanticized, or just plain sexy. Some vampires even become victims, protagonists, as in “Dark Shadows”, recently remade this year. Particularly, Anne Rice’s vampire novels in the 1990s establish the link between sex and vampires.
But, here’s the rub: it might have just been about sex all along. Of course it was.
“Now, let’s think about this for a moment,” Thomas Foster writes in his book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”. “A nasty old man, attractive but evil, violates young women, leaveshis mark on them, steals their innocence—coincidentally their “usefulness” to young men—and leaves them helpless followers in his sin. I think we’d be reasonable to conclude that the whole Count Dracula saga has an agenda to it beyond merely scaring us out of our wits…In fact, we might conclude it has something to do with sex.”
Or, as Foster continues, just simply about exploitation.
“That’s what this figure really comes down to, whether in Elizabethian, Victorian, or more modern incarnations: exploitation in its many forms,” he writes. “Using other people to get what we want. Denying someone elese’s right to live in the face of our overwhelming demands. Placing our desires, particularly our uglier ones, above the needs of another. That’s pretty much what a vampire does, after all.”
Today, following the fad, there are those who claim to be vampires and a whole industry attached to vampires in general. Vampires have evolved with time from downright scary to glitzy and sexy.
Therefore, to be truthfully honest about the origin of vampires, this article is only a summary. There is also a whole past, years worth of vampire-like material, to sort through to really do vampires justice. Even Meyer admits she really didn’t do her research before writing the Twilight saga.
One thing does stand out, however: vampires seem, like many monsters throughout the years, to appeal to our most basic fears and desires. That’s horror, after all. But, from my research, for vampires, I would say death, sex and exploitation are the three big ideas.
Happy Halloween!!!
Sincerely, Your Writer,
Jessica Anne McLean
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Links for More Information/Sources:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSuOVEM_fLg
- http://www.rofmag.com/folkroots/vampires-in-folklore-and-literature/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Shi
- http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/jpullia/asianvampirelore.htm
- http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/v/vampire_the_legendary.html
- http://bshistorian.wordpress.com/tag/james-spalding/
- http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dracula/context.html
- http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/bathory/countess_1.html
- http://www.wisegeek.org/what-characterizes-gothic-fiction.htm#slideshow
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/nosferatu/
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021814/
- How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, Chapter 3: “Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires”, as well as Chapters 16 and 17 for further reference.
- Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
- “Dark Shadows” (2012)
The Rose 