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PALGRAVE GOTHIC
Girls in
Contemporary
Vampire Fiction
Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska
Palgrave Gothic
Series Editor
Clive Bloom, Middlesex University, London, UK
This series of Gothic books is the first to treat the genre in its many inter-
related, global and ‘extended’ cultural aspects to show how the taste for
the medieval and the sublime gave rise to a perverse taste for terror and
horror and how that taste became not only international (with a huge fan
base in places such as South Korea and Japan) but also the sensibility of
the modern age, changing our attitudes to such diverse areas as the nature
of the artist, the meaning of drug abuse and the concept of the self. The
series is accessible but scholarly, with referencing kept to a minimum and
theory contextualised where possible. All the books are readable by an
intelligent student or a knowledgeable general reader interested in the
subject.
Girls in Contemporary
Vampire Fiction
Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska
Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora
Jagiellonian University
Kraków, Poland
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Andrzej, Alicja and Maja
—who make it all worthwhile
Acknowledgements
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ix
x CONTENTS
7 Conclusion 257
References 266
Index 269
CHAPTER 1
A lot has gone amiss with Zoey Redbird’s seventeenth birthday. Yet, when
she unwraps a gift from her grandmother, she is delighted to see a signed
copy of the first American edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Reverently
turning its leather-bound pages, the heroine confirms that “that spooky
old story” has long been her favourite novel (Chosen 30; Betrayed 170).
Intrigued, Zoey’s boyfriend Erik begins to read Dracula, but he soon
finds the plotline “a little old school, what with the vamps being monsters
and all” (Hunted 85), indicating that the contemporary vampire has little
in common with the Dracula archetype. This remark is not intended as a
commentary on the evolution of the vampire’s cultural image, although it
certainly could be read as such. Rather, it is of a personal nature, as both
Erik and Zoey, the protagonists of the House of Night series by P.C. and
Kristin Cast, are themselves young vampires.
In her study on teen vampire fiction, Mia Franck suggests that the
vampire phenomenon of today is no longer primarily about horror and
abjection. Instead, it is about “the reading girls” (2013, 211). The
figure of the vampire has long been recognised as holding a particular
fascination for young adult consumers. Scholars, librarians and readers
alike have pointed to the vampire genre’s ability to respond to young
people’s anxieties and hopes about growing up.1 Searching for power,
autonomy, control and belonging, struggling with unfamiliar yearnings
and bodily transformations, breaking rules and rebelling against social
conventions, the vampire can be read, as Byron and Deans propose, as
“[t]he adolescent in a nutshell” (2014, 89; cf. Smith and Moruzi 2020,
612).
The growing popularity of young adult (YA) vampire fiction in the
late twentieth century marked the beginning of the rise of teen Gothic
as a distinct and rich cultural category, with the spectacular success of
Joss Whedon’s TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB, 1997–2001)
trailblazing the way for the teen vampire boom of the post-2000 era
(Byron and Deans 2014, 87; Ramos-García 2020).2 Popular vampire
novels for young readers were published throughout 1990s, granting
vampires a strong position on the young adult literary market; Annette
Curtis Klause’s The Silver Kiss (1990) or the first four instalments of
L. J. Smith’s prominent The Vampire Diaries series (1991–1992) are
notable examples of this trend. However, it is the new millennium that has
witnessed the unprecedented proliferation of the vampire figure in youth
popular culture; according to Michelle J. Smith and Kristine Moruzi, the
vampire has become the central supernatural character of Western young
1 See e.g. Dresser (1989), De Marco (1997, 26), Priester (2008, 68, 72), LeMaster
(2011, 104), Byron and Deans (2014, 89), Piatti-Farnell (2014, 6), and Wilhelm and
Smith (2014, 123–131). The term “genre” in this context, while useful, is more popular
than strictly academic, and should not be read as presenting diverse vampire fiction “as a
univocal form of writing” (Piatti-Farnell 2014, 11). Vampire stories often cross the bound-
aries between horror, romance, fantasy, detective fiction, comedy and more; a combination
that, as Piatti-Farnell proposes, contributes to their appeal (2014, 10–11; cf. George and
Hughes 2015, 5).
2 Many scholars have discussed young adult (YA) fiction as a genre that resists clear-cut
categorisations, appealing to various age cohorts and often crossing over to the adult
market (see e.g. Cart 2010; Cadden 2011; James 2009). As a socially constructed cate-
gory, the notion of “young adult” itself is open to various interpretations, ever-adapting
to the changing cultural, historical and political contexts. In this volume, YA fiction is
understood as cultural texts typically featuring protagonists in their late teens (16–19) and
marketed to high-school-age readers (while often appealing also to older consumers). For
the purpose of this study, I use the terms “young adult” (YA), “adolescent”, “youth”
and “teenage” interchangeably. I recognise that in other contexts the conflation of these
terms may be problematic or misleading (see e.g. Kokkola 2013, 10).
1 VAMPIRE FICTION, GIRLS … 3
adult Gothic fiction, effectively gaining the upper hand over all the other
Gothic monsters and ab-humans (2020, 611–612).3
The tremendous commercial success of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire
saga Twilight (2005–2008), dramatised for the big screen in a series of
five blockbuster movies (2008–2012), has brought the narratives of girls
and vampires into the cultural spotlight.4 The Twilight books have sold
nearly 160 million copies worldwide, with the latest addition to the saga,
Midnight Sun, reaching one million copies within the first week after
its release (Milliot 2020). Inspiring frenzy among adolescent and adult
fans and anti-fans alike, and riveting both media and scholarly attention,
the cultural and commercial phenomenon of Twilight has kindled a new
interest in teen Gothic and paranormal romance, resulting in a rapid rise
in the numbers of vampire fiction marketed to young readers, especially to
girls (Byron and Deans 2014, 88; Franck 2013, 211; Smith and Moruzi
2018, 9; Ames 2010).
Yet, despite their mass-market appeal—or possibly for that very reason
for, as Sady Doyle observes, such popularity “rarely coincides with literary
acclaim” (2009, 31)—vampire stories marketed to adolescent women are
often marginalised, derided and condemned, provoking a sense of disdain,
unease and suspicion among critics and educators. Alarmed by their super-
natural and sexual content, individuals and organisations have called for
the removal of vampire books from public and school libraries.5 Although
rarely backed by scholarly evidence, voices of concern have been raised
about the dangers of vampire fiction and its presumed, if unspecified,
3 According to Smith and Moruzi, vampires feature in at least half of the YA Gothic
novels listed on Goodreads and the sites of major booksellers (2020, 611–612).
4 Except for the four original novels, the series encompasses three companion volumes:
The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (2011); Life and Death (2015)—the
reimagining of the original story grounded in the gender-swap of the central protagonists,
and the recently released Midnight Sun (2020)—the retelling of the first volume from
Edward’s point of view.
5 For instance, the entire House of Night series by P.C. and Kristin Cast and the Vampire
Academy series by Richelle Mead, including volumes to be yet written at the time, were
banned in 2009 from a school in Texas “for sexual content and nudity” (Doyle 2010, 4,
6). The House of Night series and other YA vampire books were further challenged at the
Austin Memorial Library in Cleveland, Texas (2014), where a local minister asked for the
“occultic and demonic room be shut down, and these books be purged from the shelves,
and that public funds would no longer be used to purchase such material” (Doyle 2015,
4). See also Doyle (2011).
4 A. STASIEWICZ-BIEŃKOWSKA
6 Basu’s text on the alleged negative impact of vampire fiction on girl fans in India and
Western countries can serve as an example of such a trend.
1 VAMPIRE FICTION, GIRLS … 5
“What makes good literature? Who gets to decide? Twilight has a female
fan base. Is that why it is not regarded highly by critics? It is meant to be
something for women to enjoy. And I enjoy it. Isn’t that good enough? I
just want to stand up and say that it is good enough! (Wilhelm and Smith
2014, 139)
This volume offers a critical analysis of the representations of girls and girl-
hood in the twenty-first-century vampire fiction marketed to adolescent
female readership. With the powerful allure of the vampire in contem-
porary popular and youth cultures and the figure of the girl continuing
to rivet both public and scholarly attention, these representations offer
intriguing possibilities to explore the complexities of growing up a girl
in the Western culture of today.7 In Monstrous Bodies: Feminine Power
in Young Adult Horror Fiction, June Pulliam identifies YA horror as
“uniquely able to examine the challenges facing young women” and to
interrogate the gender positions and roles that girls are encouraged to
adopt (2014, 11). A mirror held up to the complex and often contradic-
tory cultural beliefs about women, vampire stories have been recognised
as particularly revealing of social and cultural gendered hierarchies, rules
and regulations (Anyiwo 2016, 173; Hobson 2016, 3; Wisker 2016).
Women in vampire texts have long been narrated as either helpless
prey and a “motivating force for the vampire hunters”, or sexualised
monstresses that abjure traditional gender roles and embody the trans-
gression of socially sanctioned notions of femininity (Hobson 2016, 3;
Anyiwo 2016, 173). Today, vampire fiction for teen female readership
is often seen as aligning with conservative and patriarchal discourses.
However, it can also offer radical imageries of young female power, a
celebration of girl agency and sexuality, depictions of girls as agents of
social and political change and as a force to undermine the cultural
7 Although the scope of this project does not allow for a systematic study of fans’
interactions with vampire fiction, on several occasions I do look at fans’ reviews and
discussion fora in order to shed light on the meanings produced by their engagement
with the text, particularly in relation to more controversial topics (all readers’ comments
are quoted as they originally appear online).
6 A. STASIEWICZ-BIEŃKOWSKA
prohibitions inflicted on women; and even the texts that are deemed
conservative are not void of moments of resistance and emancipatory
possibilities. Engaging with the scholarship from a number of critical
frameworks and utilising a variety of perspectives originating in cultural
and literary studies, sociology, feminism, gender and queer studies, and
the interdisciplinary research on girlhood and on the vampire, this volume
considers the figure of the girl in YA vampire fiction as a terrain for nego-
tiating a myriad of competing ideologies of girlhood, and as reflecting the
changing expectations surrounding girls in the Western world.
∗ ∗ ∗
8 See e.g. Auerbach (1995), Williamson (2005), Ní Fhlainn (2019), George and Hughes
(2015, 7, 15) and Butler (2016, 193).
1 VAMPIRE FICTION, GIRLS … 7
9 A systematic review of vampire scholarship lies beyond the scope of this volume;
however, some recent examples of the trends specified above include Dunn and Housel
(2010), Khair and Höglund (2013), Bacon and Bronk (2013), Stephanou (2014),
Browning (2015), Baker et al. (2017), and Ní Fhlainn (2019).
10 It is noteworthy that, in addition to the chapters on Meyer’s Twilight , L.J. Smith’s
The Vampire Diaries , and Whedon’s Buffy, Open Graves, Open Minds includes other YA
vampire texts, like Daniel Waters’s Generation Dead and Marcus Sedgwick’s My Swordhand
Is Singing.
11 For instance, Wilson Overstreet looks into the ways in which vampires in YA novels
relate to folkloric conventions and adult vampire texts, or studies the depictions of human
vampire hunters. However, as only two of the volume’s chapters are devoted to these
representations (with others encompassing introductory information on vampire fiction,
a detailed examination of a non-literary vampire text—Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or a
8 A. STASIEWICZ-BIEŃKOWSKA
summary of the chosen novels and annotated bibliography), many aspects of the analysed
fiction are necessarily dealt with in a cursory manner or left out of the study.
12 In the first chapter of the volume, Andrew M. Boylan traces the presence of the
vampire in Western European and North American children’s media throughout history
(2018). See also Palmer (2013), chapter 14, for an overview of the American literary,
cinematic and televised vampire narratives for children.
13 Considering Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Paul E. Priester elucidates the
ways in which the vampire figure can be read by a teenage girl as a metaphor and a
warning against drug abuse; or how the contemporary vampires’ agony over their moral
choices can reflect an adolescent’s decision to become a vegetarian (2008, 71). See also
Schlozman (2000), for the use of Buffy in adolescent therapy.
14 The sheer amount of scholarly works considering these three texts, particularly Buffy
and Twilight, renders a comprehensive survey both difficult and superfluous for the
purposes of this volume; some of these works are referred to in the relevant chapters.
1 VAMPIRE FICTION, GIRLS … 9