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Vampire Lit and Feminism

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Vampire Lit and Feminism Empty Vampire Lit and Feminism

Post  Aslinn Dhan Sat Mar 03, 2012 3:41 pm

The author only talks about Twilight and Vampire Diaries and mentions Buffy, the soft pedal Vampires, but it is an interesting discourse. What do you think? Is Vampire lit misogynistic? Do they take a woman's power away from her?


Learning From Vampires: High Stakes Vampire Literature
By Elaine Schnabel 27 February 2012

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/152956-learning-from-vampires/

Here’s my dirty little secret: I like Twilight.

That said, I was never really into the vampire craze, and 500-page rhapsodies to true and blood-based love (I am speaking of Breaking Dawn and the ilk) make me sick. So my even dirtier secret is that for the past week I’ve been ensconced in a show called The Vampire Diaries.

Stake me now.

Outside of campy entertainment I will never advocate the show, but the vampire craze is worth a second look. For one thing, every civilization of every age has been drawn to the myth. As Bella’s unprofitable Google search back in 2003 proved, there are thousands of variations on the vampire theme: stakes, sunlight, coffins, fangs, mirrors, blood consumption, holy water, exorcisms, crucifix allergies, and so on. From Hebrew demonology to Madagascar’s ramenga (who eat the toenail clippings of nobles!), it’s clear that humans have always been fascinated by blood-suckers.

If that’s not disturbing enough, look at the vampire myths from a gender perspective. The central theme of VampLit is the strong (and beautiful and centuries-old smart) male vs. the weak, virginal female. Many variations—I would place Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire among them—nearly ignore the romantic relationship between a vampire man and a human woman. They often focus instead on religious themes. Is the vampire damned or not? What is the point of this nearly immortal life?

Then there was a brief reclamation of the vampire myth for female empowerment in Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake. But ever since Twilight, vampire retellings have harkened (sometimes disturbingly for the feminists among us) back to the sexism of Bram Stoker’s original.

Myriad angry articles are out there about Bella Swan’s domestic side—love of doing laundry and cooking—and endearing clumsiness juxtaposed to Edward Cullen’s emotionally abusive tendencies. But there’s no reason to discuss those as you could look up the definition of “imbroglio” on your own.

The recent surge in vampire stories displays a hunger in our society for the stability often found in traditional gender roles. Stephenie Meyer’s Mormonism has drawn a lot of heat from critics of the book, but her portrayal of Edward and Bella’s relationship has undeniable appeal to women. Recent social changes have created a void where once we had carefully defined functions. Men were men by assuming such roles as dedicated employee, faithful husband, loving father. Women were women by becoming competent and loving housewives and tender mothers who always have an after-school snack prepared for their children.

But today it’s more complicated than that: a person’s assumption of certain roles no longer defines his or her masculinity or femininity. With divorce rates skyrocketing and sex outside of marriage no longer considered fornication by the average citizen, a wedding and subsequent family life is no longer a given. The current fluidity this has caused in society leaves men and women noticeably lost, bouncing from partner to partner, comfortable but unhappy with the idea that love is relevant and sex is meaningless.

This is where the vampires come in.

The romance part of current VampLit it is old news. For nearly every period in history, romance novels have outsold (by the millions) and thus supported the literature of publishing houses. Women always have and, if book sales are anything to judge by, always will enjoy reading about their ideal man, picturing themselves as the idealized woman.

But using VampLit as the pattern by which masculinity and femininity are now being measured by women this is what we find: the ideal man is beautiful and brooding, impossibly strong, but just as impossibly sweet. He is the perfect boyfriend: willing—torturing himself—to listen. And he’s a vampire—so fast and strong that no human—man or woman—could conceivably compete.

This is the important detail.

There’s nothing wrong with the female heroines of these novels. (Get off Bella’s back, women. Not everyone is coordinated, nor is there anything extraordinarily anti-feminist about a girl who likes to cook and hang around the home reading literature.) In fact, these girls are often extraordinary in some way. But they are human and are therefore dependent on their vampire boyfriend: dependent on them to protect them from other vampires and inform them about vampire-y things. Fantastically-contrived dependence: female leads are still modern, independent women, as strong as a human (man or woman) can be expected to be, and yet there is someone on whom she can and must always rely on to protect her and must listen to because she can’t be expected to know the details of the vampire world. He is her manly provider.

One of the most common complaints about these vampire love stories is how quickly the characters declare their love and their intention to be together forever. Within hours—days maybe—fate has arranged their relationship thus that no man or plot contrivance (the impossibly sweet Jacob Black included) could ever separate them. An arranged marriage, in other words: a marriage wherein she—sweet and supportive—depends on him, and he—reliable, attentive, and faithful—actually is dependable.

These contrivances harkens back to traditional female roles in a way that has not gone unnoticed. However, the vampire love story isn’t about putting women back in “their place,” but about bringing relationships back to a different time period, when men knew how to be manly and women knew how to be womanly. When there were rules and a structure and something more than relativism.

Fiction has provided the arena wherein reality can be manipulated so that this more traditionalist dynamic in a relationship can exist while both characters maintain their status in modern society. Edward may be whipped, but he’s still hot and could take any guy in the school who might dare. Bella might be totally dependent on her vampire for love and safety, but she’s still Bella—smart, quirky, and intensely loyal to her family and friends.
Vampire literature is an attempt to give women some cake and let them eat it, too.

And yet, hunger doesn’t begin to describe the way women all across the age spectrum lusted after Meyer’s “bizarrely moral” Edward Cullen. And that is because Edward is (forgive me) exactly their brand of heroin. He wants Bella. He is inexorably drawn to her: not only sexually and vampirically, but—perhaps most importantly—mentally. Bella is the only human whose mind he can’t read. We can all write that off as a stupid plot-contrivance (and, believe me, I know it is), but it’s important in understanding what women want. Not someone who can read her mind, but someone who wants to. Perhaps that’s why Stephan and Elena (a la The Vampire Diaries) fall flat for me. He doesn’t thirst for her thoughts the way Edward did with Bella, and Elena doesn’t have half of Bella’s mind.

Stephenie Meyer had her finger on the pulse of what women want far more than Mel Gibson ever could have. Women want to be listened to, to be interesting, to be wanted, so there’s Jacob Black and maybe even the hapless Mike Newton. But women also want—desperately—to have someone to rely on without being weak. So there’s Edward Cullen, who is impossibly older and stronger than Bella Swan. Where the fantastical contrivance falls apart is that woman want someone to depend upon—not necessarily be dependent on. There is a difference, and I believe that difference is impossible to show in VampLit and is therefore the crux of the misunderstanding revolving around the new vampire craze.

Interestingly, Bella (and most female leads in VampLit) cannot depend on her human girlfriends. Even more interesting is that the male vampire often does have a brother or a coven on which he can rely. Much is made about the isolation of adolescent boys in our society, but the isolation of the adolescent female is intense as well, and if the age-spectrum of Twilight’s audience is anything on which to judge, it doesn’t end with pimples. It appears that modern women view modern men as Edward is—isolated in his own thoughts, but always supported by other men. But they identify with Bella—alone and searching for someone who can keep up with them, support them.

Just like in VampLit, women aren’t looking for that support in other women, but in a man. Most have learned a long time ago—maybe when their best friend stopped talking to them because she was too popular for her, maybe when she “stole” the guy she liked—not to trust their girlfriends. Twilight critics can rage about how Bella ignores her friends for her new boyfriend, but I think it would be hard to deny that with or without Bella’s example, Girl World has been in trouble for a long time.

This feeling of isolation amidst the jungle of Girl World is another symptom of the uncertainty surrounding gender roles today. Men don’t know how to be men, and women don’t know how to be women. There’s no playbook anymore, no accepted standard. We’re leaving Leave It to Beaver behind to form a much more muddled society, some bad, some good. Equality for women in society and the workforce (while undeniably not yet reached), is a beautiful step in the right direction. But closely following on its heels is this confusion about roles in society.

The recent phenomenon of VampLit indicates dissatisfaction with this muddle. It indicates that women are looking for stability and reliability (not exactly breaking news), and also—more notably—that they might be willing to sacrifice quite a bit of independence for it. But if a woman doesn’t have a vampire—or at least a dependable someone who loves her unconditionally and thirsts for her thoughts—why would she sacrifice her cake for an apple?
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Post  Guest Sat Mar 03, 2012 7:56 pm

I found it to be a very interesting article. I don't think that they tend to take a woman's power from them in any way that the women in question aren't willing to give up. Temporarily at least.

To be honest I think it's more about old fashioned courting. As so called independent modern day women we have come to live in our day of confusion and instability. It is really something to be "courted" and to have that single minded attention. I think part of the thrall of the vampire is in the fact that they can think faster than mere humans and they have been around long enough to know what they want. Once they make up their minds, it takes a very long time to change it.

Is it right for them to tell their intended what to do and who they can be around and such? In normal society I would say absolutely not! This is not normal society tho. In time, as they become more accustomed to who is safe and what is going on behind the so called scenes, then they can regain that independence but at first it's more about being taken care of and protected. I'd much rather have a vampire (or man!) who is protective then one who lets you sink or swim!

I think the other appeal is in that the vampires don't expect you to either work and support them, nor to stay at home raising babies and be a slave to housework. You are pretty well left to whatever makes you happy in whatever form that takes. In the meantime you are expected that your intended will be your very best friend and lover, the one with whom you share everything. That two way street where they share with you takes alot longer, but it does happen. In the meantime there are always lots of adventures. You never hear the female heroine saying she can't go do whatever because she has to wash her hair or because the laundry needs folding!

Taking a woman's power away from her? I don't think so. If anything you have to be a pretty tough cookie to be around a vampire for long. I think it actually increases a woman's power but in more of the old fashioned feminine sense. Of course, implicit in there is that the woman not be a fang banger. It has to be a vampire of true emotional worth to her or she does risk becoming a non person, but that is true no matter what the sex of the human I think.
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Post  Aslinn Dhan Tue Mar 06, 2012 4:30 pm

One of the things I think is interesting about this sort of thing is the fact most Vamp lit in the beginning was about women. For every Varney the Vampire and Dracula there were tons of stories and poetry which cast women in the role of the Vampire. Even the beginning of the myth for us begins with a woman who for one reason or other becomes a Vampire. Lamia and Lilith and the goddess Kali and various other writings from the Giaour to Carmilla we have women who are Vampires.

I think the thing that is a major stumbling block is age. As the writer of the article notes, Bella is a girl in high school when she meets Edward, the 400 year old Vampire. And though Edward is interested in Bella, he is still pretty much robbing the cradle. You could make similar arguments about Bill and Sookie, Bill is 175 years old and Sookie is 24 or 25 when she meets him. Sure, she is in her majority, but she is very young. This tends to play on our imaginations of the cradle robber, where the male Lothario is seducing the young maiden. And don't even get me started with Eric, he is way older than Bill and Sookie and he is...well...he is Eric...what more can I say.

I think the thing that is interesting about the teen Vampire stories, which often have everything adult Vampire stories have, is the whole Romeo and Juliette sort of quality about them. The notion that he is immortal and will eventually, unless he makes her Vampire, watch her die is part of the tragic romance of the Vampire.

One of the interesting things about the writer's choices of Vampire lit to critique, she chose one that was least likely to be a book that encourages the feminist ideal and that is The Twilight Series. Stephanie Myers is writing from a religion and culture that has less than feminist rules for appropriate female living and this is reflected in her writing, while I would say Buffy the Vampire Slayer is written from more secular positions in the world and though I have never read them, I would say The Vampire Diaries would be the same. So I think the writer should have branched out a bit before she painted Vampire Lit with a broad brush of misogyny.

The Sookie books to me are a strange mix of misogyny and liberation for women. The most irritating thing I think about Sookie is she tends to play both sides of the coin with Eric and Bill. She wants to be independent and she wants her own life but at the same time, she wants to be cherished and protected. She and Bill argue in book two about him setting up accounts at clothing stores and hair salons because it makes her look like a kept woman and in book three she is moaning and groaning about needing financial help and thinking she would sit down and speak to Bill about it if she ever got him out of this mess.

In other facets of her life, Sookie often has fend off Bill's and more so Eric's proposals to come live with them in their homes. Sookie likes maintaining her own home and in light of Bill's fiasco, this is probably a good thing. And Sookie can chose with whom she can sleep and the men oblige her by jumping in the sack with her, or out of her sack when she wants them gone. Bella is the one who wants to sleep with Edward and he doesn't do it, mainly because he is afraid of turning her, but also because Meyers writes within the confines of her particular moral system that sets limits.

In skipping out on the Sookie Books as reference points of the article, the writer overlooks the most obvious sign of feminine liberation in the person of Pam. Pam is a very strong example of the liberation of the female sex because of the intervention of the Vampire. She is free to do as she pleases and she has Eric to thank for that. When she was made Vampire, she was able to throw off the artificial constraints of her time and be the woman she desired to be. She was free to do as she pleased and have sex as she wanted with as many people, both male and female, as she desired. And Eric gives her all the responsibility she desires. With the exception of looking over the receipts at night, Eric lets Pam run Fangtasia.

But I suppose the Vampire Story can work both ways for women, they can either be empowering to women to go out and get what you desire, or to become a victim. That is true of any story telling, I think. The thing with Vampire stories is everyone becomes a victim to the Vampire, whether they are male or female, at one time or another and it is really unfair to judge Vamp Lit as anti-feminist when we could all be lunch, regardless of our gender.




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