The Gendered Subtext of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles

200 Pages·2011·4.46 MB·English

In the Shadow of the Night:
The Gendered Subtext of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles

by
Shakira Hoosain

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Magister Artium (English)

in the

Faculty of Humanities

University of Pretoria

Pretoria
March 2011

Supervisor: Ms Molly Brown
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©© UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff PPrreettoorriiaa
Declaration

I herewith declare that “In the Shadow of the Night: The Gendered Subtext of Anne
Rice‟s Vampire Chronicles” is my own work and that all the sources I have used have
been acknowledged by means of complete references

______________ _____________

Date Sign

i
Acknowledgements

Mulder: When convention and science offer us no answers,
might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?

Scully: ...What I find fantastic is any notion that there are
answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there.
You just have to know where to look.
Scully: Have you ever entertained the idea of trying to find
life on this planet?
Mulder: I have seen the life on this planet, Scully, and that is
exactly why I am looking elsewhere.
(The X-Files)

To my parents who gave me books, made me read and taught me that words shape
worlds. Thank you.
To the staff of the Department of English, and especially my supervisor, Ms Brown
for believing in my crazy ideas born out of the scraps of an examination answer, thank
you all for your support and encouragement over the years. To Mrs Idette Noomé for
her helpful advice, editing and colourful commentary.
To the vampyres of the cathedral, Lily, Lanu, Nick and Dev for always indulging Pan
and qL. Thanks to my friends F-Z and Ebrahim for listening to me ramble on about
post-modernism, despite the fact that it bored you to death. To Hamish Hoosen Pillay
for reading revision after revision and assuring me that it all made sense. Special
thanks to Farah Ismail, for the many discussions and ideas that we have bounced
around on our travels- some absurd, some intelligent, but always fun. And finally, to
the book nerds who always wondered what lay between the lines.
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Abstract

Anne Rice writes popular fiction. She is best known for her iconic Vampire
Chronicles series. This thesis focuses on the first three volumes of this series:
Interview with the Vampire (1976), The Vampire Lestat (1985), and The Queen of the
Damned (1988).
The main objective of this thesis is to show that whilst Rice‟s novels often seem very
liberal, an examination of her subtext reveals a conservative message. This message
helps entrench socio-cultural and political hegemonies because it does not challenge
the status quo.
In order to see how these conservative leanings are entrenched by Rice, this thesis
examines archetypes of the female and the Feminine. Louis is male, but can be
viewed as a Feminine character because of his meek subservience to Lestat (the
protagonist of the series). Claudia is their daughter, but she is also a woman trapped in
a child‟s body. Claudia seems to have great intellectual freedom, but she is trapped
within her body and cannot mature. Gabrielle is Lestat‟s mother. When Gabrielle
becomes a vampire, Rice tries to empower Gabrielle by androgynizing her character.
However, we find that this androgyny is not empowering because Gabrielle returns to
her role as a mother. Akasha is the ancient queen and source of vampirism. She wants
to bring about a radical, gynocentric world by killing most men. But subtextually,
Akasha‟s defeat represents the defeat of feminism in favour of patriarchy. Despite the
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seemingly liberal nature of the texts, subtextually there is a trend towards negating the
power these characters carry in the text.

To explore the flux between the text and the subtext, an array of post-modern reading
tools and theoretical approaches have been used. The primary reading strategies
include a close reading of the novels, informed by Feminist perspectives, together
with other reading strategies such as, Queer Theory, Marxism, deconstruction and the
role of the Fantastic.

Little academic study has been devoted to Rice‟s work. Her work shows deep
philosophical and artistic integrity which lends an elegance and beauty to her texts,
but this is undermined by the conservative undertones of her work.

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Key Terms

Anne Rice
Vampire fiction
Vampire Chronicles
Feminism
Queer Theory
Archetypes
Fantasy
Popular fiction
Interview with the Vampire
The Vampire Lestat
The Queen of the Damned

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Contents

Declaration i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Key Terms v

Chapter 1 Introduction: “The World is a Vampire, sent to Drain” 1
Chapter 2 Interview with the Vampire: “Don‟t call me Daughter, not fit 41
to [be]”
Chapter 3 The Vampire Lestat: “Lightning crashes, an old mother 107
dies”
Chapter 4 The Queen of the Damned: “Here we are now, entertain 133
us...”
Chapter 5 Conclusion: “The Sun may rise in the East; at least it settles 170
in the final location...”

Bibliography 182

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Chapter 1
Introduction
“The World is a Vampire, sent to Drain”1
Anne Rice‟s novels, such as Interview with the Vampire (1976), The Feast of All
Saints (1982), The Vampire Lestat (1986) and The Queen of the Damned (1988) have
been adapted for Hollywood and television, as well as for Broadway. Some of the
most famous names in contemporary popular culture – such as Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt,
Kirsten Dunst and Elton John – have worked on projects involving her work and
characters. This has given her work considerable stature.
To gain some insight into such an influential figure, it is helpful to look at her
formative years. Anne Rice was blessed with imaginative, but eccentric, parents
(Ramsland, 1992). She was christened Howard Allen O‟Brien in 1941, but she
changed her name to Anne when she first began to attend school. She grew up in a
family that encouraged creativity and self-expression, but that also gave her a
staunchly religious upbringing (Ramsland, 1992). It is therefore not surprising that her
writing is littered with religious imagery and hints at deeply-seated existential
questions. The creative energy within her family also extended to her late sister, Alice
Borchardt, who wrote a popular series on werewolves set in medieval Rome. Rice was
born in New Orleans, but she moved to Texas when her alcoholic mother died and her
father remarried. There she met Stan Rice, whom she would later marry. Rice‟s

1 Line from “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” by Billy Corgan, The Smashing Pumpkins (1995)
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formative years and the tragedy of losing her mother, as well as of living with her
mother‟s alcoholism, seem to have moulded self-destructive behavioural patterns
which Rice would repeat in adulthood (Beahm, 1996).
Following her marriage to poet and painter Stan Rice, she gave birth to a daughter,
Michele, in1966. Sadly, Michele contracted leukaemia and died in 1972 (Beahm,
1996; Ramsland, 1992). This traumatic event sparked a crisis of faith in the then
deeply Catholic Rice. Both she and her husband, finding no solace in faith or God,
turned to alcohol instead (Beahm, 1996). Later, Rice ended her self-destructive
addiction by turning to fiction as a means of exploring her private grief. Interview
with the Vampire (1976) started out as a short story, and in some senses, Michele was
reincarnated as Claudia, the beautiful doll-like child who would never die.
Interview with the Vampire (1976) was “written in one sustained piece in five weeks,
[and] pulled together Anne Rice‟s trademark writing skills: the textured history, the
sublimated eroticism, the philosophical questions. Going for baroque, Rice‟s horrific
tale transmuted her personal pain into a tale laden with symbolic overtones” (Beahm,
1996:12). It is the tale of the vampire Louis, who tells the story of his life to a
journalist. Louis sets a dramatic narrative in motion against a backdrop of rich
historical detail. He tells the story of how he is turned into a vampire by Lestat, the
ego-fuelled, hedonistic protagonist of The Vampire Chronicles, and how they live
together with their child-vampire Claudia, and how they part. Louis reveals all his
sadness and anger, while also demonstrating his profound sense of humanity even
though he is considered to be a monstrous figure by the journalist, Daniel, who is,
nevertheless, enthralled by Louis‟s tale.
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In 1976, the novel Interview with the Vampire was published by Knopf. The novel is
the first of the original trilogy – consisting of Interview with the Vampire (1976), The
Vampire Lestat (1985) and The Queen of the Damned (1988) – of The Vampire
Chronicles series. The series includes many other novels, some of which are Pandora
(1998), Merrick (2000), The Vampire Armand (1998). The series ends with Blood
Canticle (2003). Interview with the Vampire (1976) propelled Rice to cult status in
some sub-cultural circles, such as the burgeoning gothic groups that had splintered off
from the punk rebels of the 1970s. Some internet forums and fan sites suggest that
Rice‟s vampires were responsible for the phenomenon of Vampire Goths – they dress
up in a similar fashion to Rice‟s vampires, whom she often presents as wearing the
opulent frock coats and ruffled lace sleeves and shirts of the eighteenth century.
However, despite the elegance, lucidity and quality of her writing, Rice‟s fan-base did
not extend to literary critics, who may have been, as popular cultural critic George
Beahm (1996:12) suggests, “put off by the subject matter”. James R. Keller‟s (2000)
research into gender studies confirms the tendency by critics to dismiss Rice‟s works,
adding that “Rice was sad and disappointed when she did not receive recognition as a
serious writer after the publication and success of her first novel, Interview with the
Vampire” (Keller, 2000:6). He describes Rice‟s reaction to the reception of Interview
with the Vampire by critics as being one of
…astonish[ment] that her first novel could be dismissed by
critics and reviewers simply because she chose to exploit the
genre of horror fiction, and her point is well taken. While the
adoption of the vampire story is often correctly conceived as a
signal of the author‟s desire to appeal to a mass audience, such
considerations do not necessarily subvert the effort to make
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