" He was often among those females who form the boast of their sex from the domestic virtues. as among those who sully it by their vices (p.7)."The story of the vampyre imagines femininity and womanhood best as being chaste. In Polidori's tale, the vampyre was only attracted to women that fit the gender conforming ideology that exists in present time, of what it is to be a woman. As Lady Mercer "threw" herself at the vampire, she almost seemed detested for her desire. "It was innocence, youth, and beauty, unaffected ....(p.9)."Women are to be void of sexual desire just as children and only celebrated or admired for their youth and beauty. This is played out in the story and in many vampire-esq movies, where the beautiful, unassuming damsel gets the vampires attention and his unyielding and undying love. Hyper-feminism is often a common theme in depicting women. In The Vampyre, Abrey is followed by the light step of a cashmere butterfly chasing woman (p.9).
The vampire image alone is significant to this image because more often than not the vampire character is a male unable to control his lusts and the woman; his lured pry is often some poor soul in need of direction and unaware of her "woman-ness". If a woman is placed in a vampire role, she is a temptress and not to be trusted.
For more interesting information on gender and the vampires http://axwoundzine.com/twd.htm
Tiffany, I'm glad that you took on the role of femininity in the Polidori story, but I do wish you had discussed that link a little more. There's some very interesting stuff in that zine. Something that struck me was the way the author discussed the rigidity of gender roles in Victorian society, stating, "In particular, feminine sexuality and gender roles were topics of much concern, as it became vitally important to delineate male from female in the realm of the intimate." We might consider the time in which The Vampyre was written and the shifting gender roles in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe. Consider when Polidori went to Lake Geneva that he hung out with Mary Godwin (who would later become Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein) who was at that time *gasp* not married to her lover the poet Percy Shelley. It's interesting to me that Polidori would paint such a stock innocent in the character Ianthe even though he certainly had other representations of womanhood at his disposal. Was it to juxtapose the viciousness and corruptness of the vampire figure?
ReplyDeleteHowever, we might also want to compare Ianthe's vapidness with Miss Aubrey's character. She is described as not having "that winning grace which gains the gaze and applause of the drawing-room assemblies...Her blue eye was never lit up by the levity of the mind beneath. There was a melancholy charm about it which did not seem to arise from misfortune, but from some feeling within, that appeared to indicate a soul conscious of a brighter realm." In other words, Miss Aubrey seems a bit more intelligent and thoughtful than the other primary female character in the novel. Why do you think this is the case?