As the twentieth-century draws to a close, the frequency in which vampires, female vampires, are found in popular media is at an all time high. Aside from their presence in cinema (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire) and television (“The Kindred,” “Forever Knight,” “Sesame Street,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Series”), the female vampire, and vampires in general, have been raised to cult status and often function as champions in much of contemporary vampire literature. That is not to say, however, that the vampire is always a positive image. The presentation of the vampire is often still that of a predator that must be killed. Auerbach notes that the female vampires of the 1980s are “particularly horrible vampires whose destruction we should not mourn” (Our 217).
The final two works examined in this paper are the first book of Nancy Collins' Sonja Blue series Sunglasses After Dark (1988) and Jonathan Nasaw’s Bay Area-based novel, The World on Blood (1996), about recovering vampires who are really just humans with quirky genealogy. Collins’ novel is an excellent example of the female vampire as champion, while Nasaw’s novel presents the female vampire as the traditional overtly sexual, male threatening monster who must be reined in by the dominant power structure or be killed.
Nancy Collins’ novel is as much of a psychological novel as it is a vampire narrative. Like many of her contemporaries, Collins creates her vampire Sonja Blue as a multi-faceted character, one who questions her identity as both a living being and a vampire. In Collins’ presentation of the vampire, the author constructs Sonja as a champion who combats human evil as vampire evil. At the same time, Collins addresses and disputes practically all of the traditional representations associated with the female vampire.
Collins writes her novel with two story lines occurring simultaneously. First and foremost is the story of how Sonja Blue became the vampire hunter to whom the reader is introduced and what that identity means. The second story line is how Sonja Blue protects Denise Thorne’s parents from extortion and blackmail at the hands of Catherine Wheele. The vampire Sonja Blue is created from the human Denise Thorne who is raped and left for dead by one of the most powerful vampires in the Collins world. In addition to hunting vampires and trying to find and kill her rapist, Sonja is trying to figure out who she is. Auerbach comments on placing a female in a vampire hunter role that “to believe in vampires is to believe in the possibility of her own empowerment as a woman” (Our 143). When human, at 17, Sonja was Denise Thorne, daughter of a multi-millionaire. Sonja, who is born from Denise’s creation, parallels the appearance of a second personality when an individual has faced extreme trauma. “The Other,” as Sonja calls her, operates as a second protective personality, repeatedly taking over Sonja’s consciousness when Sonja is faced with extreme danger, and roughly translates into a voice and persona that is Sonja’s unconscious.
Sonja, when taking account of her life, notes she has been, “Socialite, hooker, vampire hunter, vampire” (Collins 120). Collins sets Sonja concretely on a path of ever increasing power: from victim to avenger. Collins uses Sonja to address issues revolving around insanity, identity, rape, prostitution, and patriarchy from a female perspective. Ultimately, Collins’ vampire, exemplifying the trend in vampire fiction, is more human than vampire.
When first introduced, Sonja Blue, like Bertha, is in a lock-down mental facility. As Rochester introduced Bertha to Jane, a male night orderly, Claude Hagerty, introduces the reader to Sonja, “All he could see of her face, hidden by a filthy tangle of hair, were eyes that resembled twin bullet holes. . . . She looked like a mistreated ragdoll” (19). Sonja escapes Bertha’s fate by behaving like the men in Stoker’s novel: both Dracula and Jonathan climb out a castle window. Sonja does so to escape her cell.
Collins incorporates several scenes which can be interpreted as Denise Thorne’s creation. Sonja’s memory of the rape by Morgan which created her is the most startling and violent of all the creation scenes. Denise, in Paris on holiday, naively takes a ride from a handsome dark stranger who turns into a vampire before her eyes, “He opened his mouth and his canines grew, extending a full inch. . . .The whites surrounding his eyes looked like they were bleeding” (61). The extension of Morgan’s fangs parallels his erection. What follows is a brutal and disgusting rape scene where Denise is penetrated first orally, then vaginally, “He drove his fangs into her arm the instant he shoved himself between her legs” (62). Unlike the creation scenes of Stoker’s vampires which possess an underlying sensuality, Collins' scene is nothing but violent and horrific. Collins rewrites the sexualized making-of-a-vampire scene, cinematically represented by the female tilting back her head and emitting orgasmic moans while the male vampire drains her, and recreates this scene from the victim’s perspective of fear and pain.10
When Morgan finishes with Denise, he leaves her for dead. This is when Sonja is born, “The horror of what was happening to her broke through the shock barrier her mind had erected to protect itself. Everything that was Denise Thorne disappeared, raped into oblivion by her demon prince” (62). Collins effectively subverts the myth of the Prince Charming with the reality of the Prince of Darkness.
Passerbys carry Sonja to the nearest hospital where she remains unconscious for nine months, same as the gestation period for humans. Sonja’s creation is a slow process. Once she escapes from the hospital, she happens upon Joe, who quickly has her prostituting, “It was perfectly natural that I should walk the streets and proposition strange men and give my money to Joe. Didn’t every woman?” (65). This question, as the scene is a source of a flashback and Sonja’s commentary occurs in the present time of the novel, is rhetorical. While the obvious answer is “no,” the question casts an interesting lens on Sonja as a female vampire. From Stoker’s vampires and the threat Dracula posed to London, historically, female vampires have consistently been their male counterparts’ creatures, whether they pose a fatal threat, as do the vampire sisters to Jonathan, or they help the hunting party catch the Count, as does Mina. Sonja is first a product of her father, her socialite status; then a product of Morgan, a vampire; and finally a product of Joe, a prostitute. Even when she becomes a vampire hunter it is with the aid of Dr. Ghilardi, though she continues this occupation after his death.
It is through Joe’s beatings that Sonja arrives at a consciousness of what she really is. During a severe beating, Sonja’s fear of Joe turns to hate, and then her hate changes into an entity: “Suddenly, my hate changed. I felt it curdling and churning inside of me, transforming itself into a force I couldn’t contain. I opened my mouth to scream, but all I could do was laugh. And laugh. And laugh” (67). This is when the Other first appears. Sonja’s next conscious moment is finding a horribly mutilated and very dead Joe with all “the long bones snapped in two” (67). It is this incident which not only brings on the Other, but shocks Sonja back into consciousness, remembering her previous life as Denise and remembering how she came to be Sonja. It is not until the Other kills Joe that Sonja has a hunger for blood. This first creation scene begins with the rape and death of Denise Thorne and ends with the birth of the vampiric force of the Other and Sonja’s own consciousness of self.
Sonja does not know she is a vampire until she witnesses the aftermath of the Other’s murder of Joe and looks in the mirror to find fangs, “They emerged from my gums, hard and wet, stained with stolen blood. I cried out and pressed my hands over my mouth in an attempt to hide my shame” (68). While this can be viewed as a phallic scene, representing the ongoing aftermath of a rape victim, more accurately, this is a scene of birth. It is not until this moment that Sonja realizes who and what she is. This image of her fanged-self shocks her into remembering her rape, places her on a quest for her identity, and because she is a vampire, makes her capable of seeking revenge on Morgan.
For the reader, Sonja is vampire when Claude names her as such earlier in the novel, “the vampire left him a flashlight in case he had to find the john in the middle of the night” (57). In this scene, the naming of Sonja as a vampire is oddly coupled with a rather considerate and kind act, while Sonja’s own realization of her vampire self occurs when she kills someone, drinks the blood, and realizes she has fangs. Hagerty views Sonja as the reader does, as nearly or mostly human; while Sonja as the narrator of her own story interjects the internal personification of the vampire. In short, Hagerty’s perceptions present Sonja as human, while Sonja herself reminds the reader that Sonja is indeed a vampire.
The second creation scene occurs in one of Claude Hagerty’s dreams. Hagerty is an empath and is aware of the incongruity between Denise Thorne and Sonja. In the middle of this dream, Hagerty is speaking to Denise Thorne, as she was before her creation, a well-clad vision of the early sixties, then “Lozenges of mirrored glass dropped from her brow ridge, merging into the cheekbones and sealing away her eyes. Her hair wreathed, drawing in on itself. Darkness welled from her scalp, radiating outward like ink in a water glass” (37). This presents a very different synthesis between Denise and Sonja. Sonja perceives Denise’s death, an absence, allows for Sonja’s existence, while Hagerty presents the conflicting view that Denise became Sonja. The images of creation are less like a replacement of Denise with Sonja and more like an armoring of Denise. The mirrored glass is reminiscent of a shield, so that her eyes are sealed, protected; even her hair pulls back, with language which also describes a coiling snake preparing to strike.
In this first novel, Collins does not resolve Sonja’s identity crisis. If the reader sides with Sonja’s perspective, the reader must view Sonja as a perversion of Denise. Sonja then becomes a vampire-tainted Denise who has no redeeming human qualities and is no better than the typical female vampire, like Brunhilda and Stragella. Auerbach categorizes female vampires of the 1980s: “they became nonhuman, obstructive, inert, but also susceptible to destruction” (Our 176). Auerbach’s observation only partially applies to Sonja, in that Sonja experiences pain and near death. Alternatively, however, if the reader sides with Hagerty, the reader then sees Sonja as a super-human Denise—rather than non-human—which is the only way Denise is able to survive her encounter with the decisive representation of destructive patriarchal force: a power-hungry male vampire. In either view, Sonja does finally represent the anti-thesis of the traditional female.
Like her creation scenes, Collins provides several death scenes for Sonja. A mock death scene occurs while Sonja is trying to terminate Catherine Wheele. Wheele and Sonja do not battle in the physical realm, but the unconscious realm. Wheele enters Sonja’s mind, presenting herself in a dream-like state as traditional vampire hunter in a traditional vampire death scene culminating with Wheeler searching for the correct grave site, “The vampire killer had to hurry if she was going to catch the beast asleep in its coffin” (Collins 174). Sonja, completely subverting Wheele’s construction of the vampire legend, springs from a coffin and slams a pie in Wheele’s face, then proceeds to tear apart the scene, revealing the cobwebs as “spun sugar,” the coffin as Styrofoam, and dismissing the garlic, rosary, and holy water (175). The end result is that a vampire is a much more complicated being than popular opinion would report.
Wheele regains control of the scene and is able to pierce Sonja with a burning blade, “The vampire screamed, arching her back as the sword pierced her heart. . . .Blood seeped from the corner of the vampire’s eyes. The vampire was laughing” (176). Sonja, the real vampire hunter of this story, refuses to be contained by the role the traditional vampire hunter constructs. Sonja is able to survive this attack because she doesn’t play by the traditional rules, operating outside of the dominant power structure which constructed such rules in the first place.
Sonja does, however, face death, and is resurrected. While she is trying to save Hagerty from Wheele’s henchmen, bullets are fired at her. Though usually impervious to gunshot wounds, Sonja realizes the fragments from the dum-dum bullets have damaged her spinal cord, “the vampire’s Achilles’ heel” (157). In this scene, the vampire’s death is told from the vampire’s perspective, “But the agony she now felt was unrelenting and quadrupled with every breath, like sunlight reflected in a house of mirrors” (157). Instead of actually dying, Sonja has a near-death experience, complete with dead friends telling her that it is not her time to die, “‘[T]oo much depends on you’” (158). The scene closes with Sonja being healed by an inhuman creature with golden eyes, “The serph trilled a crystalline bird song and thrust a gleaming hand into Sonja’s guts. . .” (159). When the vampire faces real death, the reader sees Sonja’s physical wound of “blood and exposed intestine,” feels her agony, witnesses what the vampire herself thinks is a “dream before dying ” (157, 159). The reader is made to be completely sympathetic to Sonja’s death. Not only is Sonja viewed as human, mortal in her death, but parallel to the myth of a champion, the reader learns that Sonja has some greater purpose to fulfill.
As touched on earlier, Collins has constructed a very different set of rules for her vampire: religious relics, garlic, and stakes through the heart have no effect. Collins’ vampires are always male, like Stoker’s Dracula. In her rendition, however, the human-turned-vampire has no allegiance to her creator, and more importantly, takes action to kill him. Instead of Sonja participating in the dominant power structure, similar to Stoker’s female vampires, Sonja behaves more like Tieck’s Brunhilda and refuses the typical subservient role.
According to Collins, when a vampire drains a human, and does not fatally wound the corpse, a “low level demon” enters the host body and takes up existence on the human plane. If the transition is quick, the new vampire resembles a normal human, with memories and intellect. If the transition is delayed, the new vampire is all but brain dead and appears to humans as a ghoul or a zombie. What sets Sonja apart from any of these vampires is that she never died. Collins interjects technology into the scheme of things, “new blood was forced into my veins, diluting, if not completely neutralizing, the virus polluting my flesh” (84). It is interesting to note that the physical change from human to vampire is referred to in medical terms as a virus. Through this analogy, Collins continues the conversation begun by Stoker by equating a sexually transmitted disease of the blood with vampirism (in the 1890s it’s syphilis, in the 1980s it’s HIV).
Along with the injection of the vampire-creating agent, vampires who bite a human also inject, “part of themselves,” thus explaining why Sonja’s body physically changed after Morgan bit Denise, “No wonder they never found me. Even my face [changed]” (105, 68). Like the genetic code enacted when cells split to become a fetus, new vampires are comprised of both the humans they were and the vampires who bit them. Sonja’s change of physical identity parallels her mental identity as well; like the vampire who erases human identity, the dominant power forces conformation with a penalty of death.
What aids Sonja in her role as vampire-hunter is that, as a vampire, she possesses the ability to see the Pretenders, those that appear to other humans as humans, but are not: the vampire, the incubi, succubi, serph, ogre, and werewolf, to name a few. If the reader is to carry Collins’ parallel between the dominant culture and the vampire hierarchy, then Sonja, like Nasaw’s January, is able to see the reality of the power structure enabling her to bring about its demise.
Sonja uses this vision to view herself several times throughout the novel which provides the reader with an interesting view of Sonja’s identity. Shortly after this moment, Sonja meets another vampire who appears to humans as a distinguished gentleman, but she is able to see him as an ancient being with paper-thin skin clinging to a corpse-like body. Sonja looks at herself in a mirror: “Although my reflection wasn’t that of a withered hag, I was outlined in a faint nimbus of reddish light. . . My reflection smiled at me. I put my hand to my mouth, but my mirror twin didn’t. A long pointed tongue, like that of a cat, emerged from my duplicate’s lips” (78). The second time, Sonja describes herself as “surrounded by a crimson nimbus that strobed and pulsed with my heartbeat. I looked like an Eastern Orthodox saint” (114).
When Sonja visits her parents for the first time since Denise’s disappearance, Sonja enters her mother’s mind and finds the image of Denise that her mother has been keeping alive all these years, “An umbilical cord, as thick and black as a snake, emerged from Denise’s belly, fastening her to Mrs. Thorne’s unconscious. The Denise of Shirley Thorne’s obsession smiled beautifically, glowing like an Orthodox saint, untouched by the corruption it generated” (154). When Sonja views this aura around herself, it denotes her power; it marks her as a vampire, a member of the non-human race, but for the Denise in Mrs. Thorne’s mind, the aura marks the purity by which this mother remembers her sixteen year-old daughter. The author does not indicate what the reader should make of these parallel images. What can be inferred, however, is that somehow Sonja, like her Denise counter-part, and like Stoker’s Mina, has been untouched or even enhanced by the possible corruptive experience of becoming a vampire.
At Sonja’s height of power, she is likened to goddesses of destruction, “She was Shiva. She was Kali. She was all that is dark and terrible in nature, adored and scorned, worshipped and revealed” (171). In her culmination, Sonja comes to represent a whole; two sides of a coin: that which is adored and scorned. She transcends the standard Madonna/whore dichotomy ascribed to women because she is neither independently; rather, she unites the aspects of both. Unlike most of the other vampires examined, Sonja does not only represent the negative, but the union of negative and positive aspects. More importantly, Sonja as vampire is not inhuman: “the evil that radiated from her wasn’t evil incarnate conjured forth by centuries of theologians in an attempt to shift the blame. It was human evil, nothing more . . . . its source was mortal, not diabolical” (171). Whether this is to suggest that Sonja, because the human soul never left her body, is still human or that the vampire is human, is uncertain, though the former seems most likely.
Collins sequel novels In the Blood (1992) and Paint It Black (1993) conclude the Sonja Blue series, in which Sonja fulfills her quest to revenge herself against her rapist and subsequent vampire father, find out more about the Pretenders who roam the Earth, and ascertain more about herself and how the Other and Denise figure into Sonja’s identity. Throughout the series, Collins consistently subverts both the traditional vampire story and images, including Morgan screaming “Unclean! Unclean!” when silver penetrates his skin, as Mina does when the Sacrament is placed on her forehead. The closing of the third novel leaves Sonja as the caretaker for the next generation of humans, in total opposition to the traditional view of the perverse vampire mother who feeds on and destroys children.
Sonja is an unquestionable champion, specifically for the victimized woman. She is powerful, strong, and intelligent. At the same time, she is both destroyer and savior. At the end of the series, she is the chosen protector of the newest species of human. For Sonja to fulfill these roles, in Collins’ construction, Sonja must be a vampire. It is the only way for her to have the power, insight, and perspective that she needs to accomplish the tasks before her.
Because Collins, in her construction and story of Sonja Blue, subverts and re-writes the traditional vampire characteristics and stories, the author creates a new female vampire which denies all the typical assumptions of the female vampire. Sonja’s feeding is likened to that of an animal. She does not leave delicate, pin-pricks in the throat of her victim but rather, rips large holes in the neck. Her feeding does not promise the sexual titillation Stoker’s vampire sisters or Moore’s Shambleau represent. Sonja does not see herself as separate or better than the humans around her and does not echo Brunhilda’s sentiments that those who die at her hands are simply leaves who fell in the breeze.
Because Sonja is created as a result of a violent rape, she symbolizes the victimized woman who uses the ordeal as a source of strength and further, the woman who would seek revenge on the man who violated her. In the first novel alone, Sonja threatens or kills men who have been involved in gross sexual violations or who perpetuate the victimization of women through the sex trade: pedophiles, gang rapists, pimps, johns, or her own would-be rapists who don’t know they’re dealing with a vampire. If they are not sexual miscreants, the men she kills are always under the assumption that she is not dangerous because she is a female. Like Smith who mistook the Shambleau as submissive and demure, the men who cross Sonja Blue and do not defer to her strength because she is female, end up dead.
Although Sonja is a vampire, and because of this is able to carry out the tasks before her to their needed ends, Sonja is also still viewed as human. She is emotional, considerate, and on a search for her own identity. She is the central character of a psychological novel. It is because of her human qualities, however, that she is capable of taking on the tasks set in front her, which ultimately culminate in protecting the children of the future. The capabilities that Sonja has because she is a vampire allow Collins to create a super-hero who can confront and destroy the vilest of not only vampires and other Pretenders, but humans as well.
There is no female protagonist figure in Nasaw’s The World on Blood. The two main protagonists are male. Nick and Whistler represent the two opposites of the vampire spectrum. Nick, the narrator of the story, and protagonist, views his vampire-state as that of an addict and coerces all of his fellow vampires to take this view. Whistler, on the other hand, comes from a long line of vampires and views vampirism as part of his culture. Nick and Whistler battle to win over the other seven characters. January, motherless and friendless, alternatively hopes to find personal acceptance from Nick and familial inclusion from Whistler. She is ultimately denied by both men. January serves as the antagonist of the novel; a female vampire who poses the most threat to the order established by the dominant power, she embodies all the traditional associations made with the female vampire.
Nasaw’s rules, like Collins', are varied and uncommon. Nasaw’s vampires are simply humans who are capable of using human blood as a drug. When ingested by a human who is sensitive to it, blood provides the drinker with all the powers and common associations made with vampires: enhanced senses, amazing strength, red eyes, sensitivity to sun light—but no fangs. Because they are human, Nasaw’s vampires have no deterrents. Garlic, crosses, holy water and the like have no more effect on the vampire than they would on the human. As Sonja viewed the agent which turned her into a vampire as a virus, a disease, Nick views the vampiric state as a “condition.” At the opening of the story, with a group of said vampires at a V.A. meeting, Vampires Anonymous, these humans view their vampiric state as an addition, and like alcoholism, is treatable.
January is noted as being “attractive” (Nasaw 113). Because it represents the month of her conception, her name is sexualized. The reader’s first image of January is through eyes of Lourdes, another member, during her first V.A. meeting: “The youngest of the vampires, a gangly narrow-skulled girl of twenty or so. . .” (22). January’s hair is cut in an angular punk wedge with lavender streaks; she wears a torn black leather bomber jacket and several earrings in each ear. Though January seems pleased that her sobriety has lasted eleven months, three weeks, Lourdes likens January’s eyes to those belonging to “a cat bristling in an empty room” (22). The next definitive image of January occurs at a following V.A. meeting when she mistakenly thinks the group has forgotten the occurrence of her first year’s sobriety: she throws a folding chair across the room and stands “with her fists clenched, bent forward slightly from the waist as if the muscles of her tight belly were clenched as well” (68). Whistler notes the “pure animal heat” coming off her (69). At the receipt of her one year chip, “the tears disappear as completely as the rage they had replaced” (69). The violence of January’s character is even incorporated into her later failed sobriety: accidentally tasting someone else’s blood while in a moshpit at a concert. These two images of sex and violence permeate January’s characterization.
Because Nasaw’s vampires are indeed human, January’s creation scene is unlike any previous creation scene that has been evaluated thus far, containing elements that are unique to the novel. Unlike the creation of other human vampires, like Sybil’s creation by ideas or Bertha’s creation the reader never sees, January’s creation takes a physical manifestation. Paralleling the awakening of sexual awareness, January is twelve when she first realizes she is a vampire by an encounter with her mother’s lover, Wayne: “‘He woke me up out of a deep sleep and said here drink this . . . It was Glory’s blood, it was my mother’s blood’” (70). Once high on blood, “‘we went into the bedroom and told Glory I was a vampire, and drank some more and fucked each other in every combination there was—the three of us” (70). January’s creation scene is blatantly sexual, and with her mother as a sex partner in the ménage à trois, the sexual act is perverse. As a result of January’s creation, her mother, Glory, kills Wayne and then kills herself by walking into the ocean and drowning. Unlike Sonja, however, this seemingly sexually perverse creation scene does not haunt January in and of itself. Only Glory’s death disturbs January.
January as sexually aggressive female and male threat occurs from the novel’s beginning. January coerces a male high school student to follow her back to her residence hotel with the promise of sex: “‘Lean down’ she whisper[s], puckering her lips. As he d[oes] so, she dr[aws] her head back, then br[ings] it forward violently, shattering the bridge of his nose with the top of her forehead” (258). In this scene, like Cave’s orgy seen aboard the ship with Stragella, violence is substituted for sex. It is important to note that January’s treatment of her female blood sources is very different, even amiable, if not completely acceptable: “‘She’s never been laid so good in her life’” (273). Nick uses this as an indication that January’s social skills have “advanced” (272). Clearly, like Bertha, January is only a threat to men.
January’s death occurs after she escapes from the basement dungeon she has been locked in for stealing Nick’s son. While still locked in the basement, January is not a threat to anyone, but Whistler insists, “‘She has to be stopped’” (317). She nearly kills Whistler when he comes downstairs to speak with her. Later, Nick echoes Whistler’s sentiment when speaking directly with January, “‘But I won’t let you just swim away either. You know I can’t let you do that’” (319). A final image of the traditional sexually aggressive female vampire as male threat precedes January’s death. When January requests of Nick, “‘You could fuck me, then,’” in a final attempt for his acceptance, Nick responds in the negative. January turns an intimate, not necessarily sexual encounter into a image of sex and death: “‘Just hug me then.’ She was within arms reach” (320). Instead of returning to the shore with Nick, January “kisse[s] him—then her arms tight[en] convulsively, driving the air out of him with a rush” (320). Nick combats January until he is almost unconscious and is finally saved by Whistler, “As he struggle[s] to bring his feet up and force her away with his legs, suddenly there [i]s a hideous rolling, popping sound, like somebody cracking ten knuckles at once, or twisting a sheet of bubble wrap between both hands” (321). Nasaw abandons January’s death and instead provides the reader with similes rather than exposed intestine (Collins), a frothing, champing corpse (Stoker), or even a disembodied scream (Cave).
January’s dead body is not mentioned until two chapters later when Whistler reflects on the corpse: “the head had been turned the wrong way around” (325). He, however, does not state that he is the one responsible for January’s broken neck, but Nasaw assures the reader that Whistler does not regret what he has done “having little choice in the matter if he wanted to save Nick” (325); rather inconvenient, however, had he hoped to save January as well. Whistler sees his act as justifiable homicide, if not “outright self defense,” although both he and Nick insisted on putting themselves in harms way only because they refused to believe that a young female vampire could truly be a threat (332). While it was their mistake, January paid with her life. Here, as Dracula saves Jonathan from the vampire sisters, male alliance and suppression of female power and anonymity are sustained. Of course, an investigation of those responsible for January’s death never happens. Whistler has far too much money for that inconvenience, and January has no family to make inquiries regarding her whereabouts. January is buried on the grounds of Whistler Manor, in an unmarked grave, “He looked down at the brilliant patch of green sod. ‘It ain’t a headstone, m’dear, but it’ll have to do’” (335). In an attempt to prevent a similar death in the future, the Winter’s Night Foundation is established so that vampires are able to “‘try to take better care of one another, all year round’” (334). The two main male vampires use January’s death as evidence that fellow vampires need to form an alliance that will support vampires who behave like vampires: they drink blood. Of course, had this been the goal from the beginning, January probably would not have died in the first place.
January is a vampire when she experiences the side effects of being able to use blood as a drug. January as vampire, a female human on blood, embodies several of the traditional female vampire images including the relationship to sex and violence, the sexually aggressive female vampire as male threat, and, like Bertha, the female vampire as insane.
Descriptions of January on blood paint her as highly animalistic: “January still had a distinctly feral air, but with an edge of sleekness. . .” (239). As the novel progresses, the descriptions of January shift to include not only animalistic qualities but the distorted image of the vampire of excess as well, “It was indeed a vampire—January, looking all bowed and enormous through the fisheye lens. . .” (304);
January smoothed back the sides of her blood splattered purple hair, and attempted with limited success to wipe her face clean of the clots with the hem of her ribbed poorboy, the front of which was black and heavy with spilled blood (309).
January as the excessive vampire is no longer seen as a vampire by her peers, “‘January’s running outside totally werewolf. . .” (315). When Nick sees January naked, he even alludes to her as not being of the same species as other women (241). Though others see January as not a vampire, but a werewolf and not a woman or even of the same species of women, January sees being a vampire as part of her identity as a human, “She’s always assumed that being a vampire was, well, a state of being. . .” (257). January’s self identity and the opposing view of her by others is similar to the tension Collins creates between the identity of Denise Thorne and Sonja Blue. While previous vampire authors go to great length to describe, explain, subdue, and often destroy the vampire, both Collins and Nasaw devote much of their novels to deciphering the humanness of the vampire.
When she is on blood, January is able to conquer her greatest fear, her fear of swimming, or more accurately, drowning, “No longer afraid of drowning—no longer afraid of anything, now that she knew what was going to happen...” (318). This new found confidence seeps into all aspects of January until she is able to see the truth of every situation, “‘I don’t think anybody can ever bullshit me again’” (319). When January is on blood, when she is a vampire, she is perceived as being inhuman, a werewolf, a different species; while January herself reflects that she is a complete human who lacks fears and is incapable of being duped. January is Sonja’s dichotomy reversed.
Perhaps this is ultimately why January must die, why Nasaw created her as the crazy, excessive vampire—January does not think her vampire self needs to be managed. She does not follow the rituals of the elder tradition of vampire, nor does she simply use blood as a way to enhance her life, as do other female vampires in the novel. Most importantly, as a vampire, January operates independently of the structure the male vampires have created. January has to die because she is too dangerous.
January, on and off blood, is consistently represented as insane. When referring to January, Sherman leads the introduction with, “‘Speaking of nuts . . .’” and Selene notices, “the sense of danger Selene was picking up, beyond January’s usual radio beams from just over the border of madness” (305). Like Bertha, January is now viewed as inhuman and insane. She also symbolizes a male threat, both from pure physical force and as the sexually aggressive female vampire. Whistler, who is infinitely more intelligent than January, sends the youngest and most inexperienced member of the group to retrieve Nick. January kidnaps Nick by force, while all the other vampires are coerced into drinking blood of their own volition, non-violently. Because of the violent nature of Nick’s kidnapping, as perpetrated by January, she symbolizes violence.
When Whistler checks on January who is upset after being locked downstairs, following the image of January as the excessive vampire, she attacks Whistler, nearly fatally, who takes on a patriarchal, paternal tone, “‘Jan, Jan, Jan. Now what are we going to do with you?’” (309). January’s violent response of almost killing Whistler is a response to the patriarchal family that Whistler represents.
By kidnapping Nick’s infant, like Brunhilda who threatens the lines of the noblemen in the surrounding lands, January also threatens the patriarchal authority represented by a first-born son. The kidnapping of the child represents January’s revenge as the kidnapping of Nick represented Whistler’s revenge, “Nick had to know who’d taken his baby, and what would be done about it, otherwise it wouldn’t really count as her revenge this time” (302). To her credit, however, in stealing Nick’s son, January does not completely perpetuate the image of the vampire mother who drains the children she encounters, “she realized she couldn’t carry her anger at Nick over to little Doofus here” (303). January is not only an agent of violence, but like Sonja and Brunhilda, an agent of her own revenge. January, who takes the product of Nick’s coupling with another woman, seeks revenge for Nick’s rejection of January.
January’s sexual encounters and perceptions are violent and often deadly. She inquires of Nick, “‘Dja ever kill a donor while you were fucking? . . . It’s fun. Right when you come you bite into their throat. It’s like poppers, only a hundred times more intense” (242). January is joking, however, but still muses, “‘But you gotta admit it sounds cool” (242). When January approaches Nick in hopes he will help keep her from taking blood, he restrains her with “a collection of S&M gear he’d never been able to bring himself to throw out” specifically handcuffs (167). In this subdued state, January is perceived to be the young woman that she is, “She look[s] heartbreakingly young, curled up on her side with her mouth open, one arm flung out carelessly...” (165). The S&M cuffs, standing for sadism and masochism, sexual interaction based on dominant and submissive sexual roles of participants, puts January in the role of the submissive. The submissive January is perceived as more human than the aggressive January.
Once she returns to her acceptable role of a submissive to the dominant power structure, January is depicted as returning to the human self she feels she has retained throughout the novel. This does not, however, work against the construction of January’s character. The reader is sympathetic towards January for several reasons. The first is the dramatic and deadly associations surrounding January’s discovery of her vampiric capabilities: her mother’s death. The second is because Whistler and his girlfriend set January up as a scapegoat early in the novel. Ultimately, the reader wants January to be safe. It is for this reason, though, that January’s death makes the reader question why Whistler and Nick don’t just leave January alone, or at least wait for her high to dissipate before they approach her.
January is the excessive vampire, the only kind of vampire that can threaten a society of vampires. With Nasaw’s vampires as human, to create a vampire antagonist, he must create the most horrible, deadly vampire possible. Nasaw creates an uncontrollable female vampire who represents all of the traditional characteristics of the female vampire. Nasaw characterizes January as a male threat via sexual aggression, even a sexual deviant; as insane, as excessive. January as an agent of revenge is acceptable so long as she serves one of the males vying for dominant power, but as soon as she acts on her own volition, kidnapping Nick’s son, the dominant males insist “she must be stopped.” Like Stoker’s Mina, Lucy, and vampire sisters, Nasaw’s January is potentially more damaging and destructive than the male of the vampire species. January’s presence in the text enforces the original view regarding female vampires: whether the dominant male power is human or vampire, the female, of any species, must be subservient and controlled, or she will be killed.
The female vampires created by Collins and Nasaw seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum with one exception: in one way or another, the reader perceives both Sonja and January to be human. Collins' Sonja, both human and vampire, is a destructive force taking on a dominant male vampire culture, as does January, but while Sonja is viewed as the savior of the future human race, January, also both human and vampire, must be destroyed. Perhaps it is because they represent such extremes of representation that the humanness the authors ascribe to each of these vampires is striking. Both Sonja and January are symbolic of a female power that each of these authors creates as human rather than vampiric. This is a significantly different representation from Brunhilda who Tieck assures his reader is unquestionably inhuman. By blurring the line between human and vampire—those traits, negative or positive, that are ascribed to female vampires—authors more directly contribute to the female human. In doing so, unlike Stoker who masked his commentary on the emerging Victorian New Woman by describing lascivious and insubordinate vampires, these two authors shift the metaphor from commenting on the female human by describing the female vampire to using the characteristics of the traditional female vampire to comment on the female human.
Next Chapter: Conclusion: Divergence of Tradition
