I’m happy that Stefania Gil agreed to write four amazing posts for the blog about different supernatural characters that make us fall in love in romance novels. This time she’ll be talking about: vampires in literature.
Stay tuned for the next posts, I’ll be publishing them very soon. By the way, if you want to know more about this super talented Venezuelan, I invite you to read this interview I did with her a little while ago: Interview with Stefania Gil
So without further ado, here’s the mega post Stefania Gil wrote for you:
If inviting me to talk about witches in literature is like inviting a little kid to tell you about their experience at Disney, I can’t explain what happens inside me when it’s time to talk about vampires — and even more so when I have to talk about vampires in literature, specifically within the romance novel.
I think that of all the things and characters that can exist within the paranormal, vampires top my list of favorite characters, followed very “very” closely by witches.
My husband looks up at the sky, tired, shaking his head, every time I argue back that he doesn’t know whether vampires exist or not.
It might seem like I’m crazy for arguing about something born of a popular belief in which the dead wake up at nightfall to feed on the blood of their loved ones, but the truth is that when you feel such fascination for a legendary or mythological character, you dream that there’s some minimal scientific evidence to support your theory that it does exist, or did exist, in real life.
So just leave me alone with my thought that, one day, I might run into some nice little vampire I can ask a thousand questions; because I have a thousand questions to ask him, believe me.
But before talking about vampires in literature and the paranormal romance novel, we need to know the origins.
What is a vampire according to popular beliefs?
According to the RAE, a vampire is a “specter or corpse that, according to certain popular beliefs, goes out at night to slowly suck the blood of the living until it kills them.”
I think that definition gives us a pretty good idea of what a vampire is. However, I found a National Geographic article explaining that, in the experts’ opinion, the vampire legend evolved from various popular beliefs born of the fear that the dead would return to harm the living.
All of this came from a lack of knowledge about how a body decomposes, and of course they couldn’t imagine that in a corpse the skin shrinks, creating the illusion that teeth and nails grow longer, while a dark liquid comes out of the dead person’s nose and mouth as a result of their organs decomposing: a dark liquid that could pass for blood to anyone digging around in a dead person’s grave, because since we’re on the subject, I ask myself:
“Who wants to open a grave after a few months to see whether the dead person has risen or not?”
Of course, back then people imagined that certain diseases were caused by the person who had just died, whom they pictured as a dark being devastating the whole community, and that if they put an end to that corpse rising, they’d be free of the disease afflicting them.
It made them feel they had control over the disease, as Mark Collins Jenkins in his book Vampire Forensics writes.
And if we go way, way back…
We’re going to find a character I’ve mentioned before, but in connection with witches, who seems to be the first of the first of all the paranormal creatures we know, because some claim that Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who left him because she longed for independence, turned out to be the first witch to appear in a book; and in the vampire legend we find her again, in that same role of Adam’s first wife, beautiful and terrible at the same time, who left with the devil and is now not only the first witch but also the first vampire.
We’ll find similar characters in ancient Greece and Rome.
But the first vampire documented in a manuscript we’ll find in China, where certain manuscripts from the 3rd century BC suggest that before burying a dead person you should leave them in the sun for a whole day to keep some devilish spirit from taking hold of them and turning them into a bloodsucker.
If we move forward in history…
Moving forward, we’ll find characters who have fed the great imagination of many writers to bring the vampire to life in literature.
But these characters were real.
So we have, in Europe in the 15th century, specifically in France, Gilles de Rais, a worshipper of Joan of Arc, who lost his mind when she was burned and let out his most macabre instincts in his castle, taking the lives of hundreds of children in his search for eternal youth.
The Romanian count Vlad the Impaler, son of Vlad Dracul — which in Romanian means “demon” — and from whom the name Dracula comes, was a bloodthirsty man who also killed many people, and every legend says something different about him.
We also have the Bloody Countess of Hungary, Erzsébet Báthory, who killed 650 virgin maidens because she thought that if she bathed in their blood she would live forever. This woman’s story is truly disturbing because she was unbalanced from a young age. I had to research her thoroughly because I based my fictional character — who brings the vampires of the Guardianes de Sangre series to life — on her real story.
That’s how vampirism spread around the world, causing fear among the living because of the dead or making people believe that the blood of the living granted the eternity and power so many long for.
In 1725 the first trial against a vampire took place in Kisilova, Prussia. They say the peasant Peter Plogojowicz, dead and buried, would rise at night to visit his relatives. The judge decided to put an end to him by driving a stake through his heart, from which fresh blood came out.
And in 1732 the word “vampire” was used for the first time in the French language, implanting it definitively in Europe.
First steps of vampires in literature
We finally reach the topic that interests us: the vampire in literature, whose first appearance originates in the 18th century with an epidemic that sowed panic in Prussia, making people blame vampirism for the symptoms the sick showed: ulcers and rapid weakening of the body, with vomiting of blood.
Various books on the subject were published, and by the end of that century the foundations of vampire literature began to take shape with Goethe’s The Bride of Corinth, and with the manuscript found in Saragossa by the Pole Jan Potocki, published in 1805.
In 1810 John Stagg writes the first vampirism poem, The Vampire, in which the symptoms are described perfectly.
But it is in 1816 when John William Polidori wrote the first vampire story of contemporary literature, titled The Vampyre, at the Villa Diodati.
Théophile Gautier published The Dead Woman in Love in 1836, a vampire story; and this was the era when the Gothic novel about ghosts was at its height, which would influence Lovecraft.
In 1837, Alekseí K. Tolstoy wrote a story titled The Family of the Vourdalak, in which he left a detailed description of the Slavic village vampires.
The famous short story Carmilla appeared in 1872, from the pen of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, this story becoming the novella Carmilla: A Vampire Story. This was one of the first European vampire stories, and the one that most influenced Bram Stoker, who later, in 1897, published Dracula, the story of the most famous vampire in literature, which would inspire most later works.
Evolution of vampires in literature and their presence in the romance novel
When talking about vampires it’s inevitable to think of a being that appears at night, is frightening because it is one of the living dead, has sharp fangs, is violent, has superhuman strength and flies — at best, because on other occasions it turns into a bat—.
They sleep in coffins, have no reflection in mirrors, are incinerated by the sun, enjoy eternal life, fear crosses, holy water and being related to evil, can be reflected in mirrors and die definitely only when a wooden stake is driven directly into the heart.
In some cases they also cut off heads to make sure the vampire can’t revive by burning it.
That’s the version they’ve sold us in the original stories that, by themselves, are terrifying because they’re supposed to have been created by their authors.
So the vampire in literature stayed fairly original and within a framework of terror and darkness until, at the end of the 20th century, Anne Rice gave life to Lestat and Louis, completely changing what we knew about the vampire up to that moment.
It was in 1976 when Interview with the Vampire caused a complete stir because its vampires have dilemmas that make them human.
They still have superhuman abilities and largely maintain the essence of the original vampire but now they are attractive, seductive, elegant, extroverted and eccentric.
They also show themselves to be intellectuals, which makes sense taking into account that they have lived a very long life that has granted them a great deal of knowledge and experience.
Then we start to see vampires more condescending towards humanity, with new characteristics or with others that are totally different; as is the case of Los Cullen, famous family of the Twilight Saga written by Stephenie Meyer and which has been a worldwide sales success.
The Cullen family, enjoys some classic characteristics of the vampire in literature and presents us with some novelties such as that they shine when under the light of the sun; and if I remember correctly, these vampires are not staked but must be decapitated to be able to kill them.
We also have other stories in which vampires don’t turn humans with a bite but are born with the vampire condition and it is not until the age of twenty-five that their fangs come out and they stop exposing themselves to the light of the sun to become a fairly classic version of the behavior and habits of the living dead. This is what can be found in the Saga of J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood.
The Salvatore brothers and the Mikaelsons, who can walk under the light of the sun because the witches made them talismans for that purpose.
Not only do we notice changes in the characters but also a version of these beings in an internal struggle between good and evil that urges them to desire to have a normal life and seek ways to incorporate themselves into society in order not to raise suspicions, because they want to belong, to be accepted, and in the process, they find love.
That’s where we see beings that by nature are predators; that have an animal instinct that forces them to hunt, kill, possess; subdued as soon as the loved person appears.
That person is the one who will bring peace, happiness to that dark life of vampires and it’ll be that light that helps them maintain a balance between good and evil.
And I’d dare say this is what has generated the success of these characters in romance literature because it is a genre read mostly by women and we assume, along with the protagonist, that the vampire will always be our hero and it is our love that will save him.
Some vampire romance novels you can’t miss:
After telling you all this, I have to get my hands to work and start recommending everything I know about vampires in literature, which in theory is not much but now, with these recommendations, you will see that the theory and practice are not the same.
If I have to talk about my favorites in the world, those who know me and follow me on social media know that my absolute passion is vampires. I am in love with Black Dagger Brotherhood. I am a declared fan of these characters. I love their stories because they are original, passionate, intense, full of romance and eroticism.
But I can’t leave Edward Cullen aside.
Twilight, for me, was the introductory world to the new vampires I fell madly in love with.
Yes, I’m a declared fan of this saga too.
- Charlaine Harris with her Sookie Stackhouse Adventures Saga gives us a vision of a world full of very exciting vampires.
- Bella Forrest and her Saga The Shadow of the Vampire.
- Christine Feehan has an extensive series of vampires that are very seductive.
- Between Vampires by María José Tirado.
- Rotze Mardini with her series Children of Leiah
- The Vampiric Moons series by writer Mariela Villegas.
Vampires in literature you should give yourself the chance to read:
Of the vampires in romance literature you’ve read about… Which has been your favorite and why?
I’m Kassfinol, a Venezuelan author of paranormal romance published on Amazon KDP since 2012. Vampires hold a special place in my catalogue: in my Invocation Series the vampires are neither the terrifying monsters of Gothic literature nor the sparkling teenagers who don’t bite anyone. They are characters with centuries of history behind them, with a character shaped by everything they have lived and lost, and with romances that carry the weight of someone who has had far too much time to think. If vampires with a real personality in English are what you’re looking for, I’ll be waiting for you there. And if you’d first like to try without committing, I have more than 40 free short stories available on this website.