The Female Vampire or The Lamia
Though we've dated the first of the vampire stories in English to John Polidori, Byron's physician and friend, the concept of a blood-sucking human-become-demon goes back to most ancient times in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. In Greek mythology, there is a tale of a queen of Libya who enraged Zeus' wife by having an affair with him. According to one version of the myth, Hera devoured Lamia's children by Zeus and then removed her rival's eyelids so that she would have the horrendous image before her forever. It was said that, to try to erase that image, Lamia would devour human children; in this guise, her story was used as a sort of bogeyman (-woman) to frighten disobedient ypungsters.
Over time, however, the story of Lamia became much more complex. She became a seductress, a sort of femme fatale, who came to men in the shape of beautiful woman but whose purpose was to destroy them (sometimes by literally sucking them dry). In part because of her supposed lack of eyelids and her desire to tempt, Lamia became associated with the serpent. Some versions of her story say she is forced to reveal her true nature when she is caught--and when she does, she is a serpent from the waist down (see also the character Sin in Paradise Lost). In the painting at RIGHT she stares fixedly at a snake and, though she is all human, her waist is draped with its shed skin.
Another English Romantic poet, John Keats (1795-1821), wrote a narrative poem called "Lamia" about one of her seductions; it is set in ancient Greece. When she transforms from serpent to woman, like Edward Cullen, she is beautiful and her voice, musical, as she first calls to her next victim. "So delicious were the words she sung, It seem’d he had lov’d them a whole summer long. . . .She was a maid/ More beautiful than ever twisted braid," Keats tells us. After sweet sexual indulgence, Lycius wants to marry her and Lamia, against her better judgement, agrees. But his uninvited tutor and the Corinthian philosopher Apollonius attends the nuptials and the two recognize each other immediately. Staring fixedly at her lover's tutor, she morphs back into a demon and, witnessing what he was about to wed, Lycius falls dead into the arms of wedding guests.
There is no Byronic hero equivalent in the female vampire; the only sad quality to the story is that it seems she truly did love Lycius and that's why she agreed to marriage, rather than just seducing and destroying. The theme, however, is becoming familiar: when a son of Adam sees that a woman is not submissive, she must be in truth a cloaked monster. And that brings to mind the Lilith story, wherein an independent woman leaves the Garden of Eden alone and of her own accord (see below).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), another Romantic poet, gave us a pretty long poem 'fragment' (that does, however, remain unfinished) called Christabel. It's a Gothic narrative set in medieval times wherein we once again have a 'lamia' of some sort but this time her primary victim is female. Christabel, who is as good and sweet as 'beautiful Christ' (her name, after all--RIGHT), is the motherless heir to the estate of her noble father, Sir Leoline, who loves her very much. But one evening, as she is out mooning over a dream she had of a knight who would be her lover, she comes upon the lovely Geraldine who nonetheless is so weak (supposedly having been abducted by thugs) that Christabel must carry her over the threshold of the castle ("Let Me In"?). Geraldine from the onset is mysterious, threatening: as the two pass by dying torches in the castle halls, they suddenly flare up; Christabel believes her mother, dead in childbirth, watches over her as a guardian spirit so, lest that be true, Geraldine mutters a quick curse to drive all guardians away. She sleeps in Christabel's bed with the girl, but Geraldine is a wasted figure to begin with. As she grows stronger and more exotically beautiful, Christabel grows weaker, more subject to bad dreams and sleeplessness, and is at a loss when trying to influence her father who has fallen for the lovely stranger. Indeed Sir Leoline's Bard has had a vision of the innocent Christabel, represented by a dove, caught in the coils of our old friend the snake.
It's a powerful poem, what there is of it, because Christabel, seemingly through no fault of her own other than Christian charity, is becoming someone else, someone lost and in a sense damned by her exposure to the lamia. But it's unclear what moral Coleridge was aiming for--on the first night she lay in Geraldine's arms, troubled by the first bad dreams, Coleridge uses the words "sorrow and shame" to describe why Christabel is suffering and the poem is sometimes taken in modern times to be a lesbian-themed piece. Still it has influenced some aspects of the vampire myth that are more common today than in Coleridge's time: the beauty of the vampire; its association with sexuality; the isolation of the victim from her society. In fact her name shares the same root as Bella's (Isabella means 'beautiful God' or 'God's beautiful gift') and Bella is also effectively motherless and loved by her father; though Charlie is not charmed by Bella's vampire, if Alice Cullen were in some way dangerous to Bella, she might make a Geraldine parallel.
Over time, however, the story of Lamia became much more complex. She became a seductress, a sort of femme fatale, who came to men in the shape of beautiful woman but whose purpose was to destroy them (sometimes by literally sucking them dry). In part because of her supposed lack of eyelids and her desire to tempt, Lamia became associated with the serpent. Some versions of her story say she is forced to reveal her true nature when she is caught--and when she does, she is a serpent from the waist down (see also the character Sin in Paradise Lost). In the painting at RIGHT she stares fixedly at a snake and, though she is all human, her waist is draped with its shed skin.
Another English Romantic poet, John Keats (1795-1821), wrote a narrative poem called "Lamia" about one of her seductions; it is set in ancient Greece. When she transforms from serpent to woman, like Edward Cullen, she is beautiful and her voice, musical, as she first calls to her next victim. "So delicious were the words she sung, It seem’d he had lov’d them a whole summer long. . . .She was a maid/ More beautiful than ever twisted braid," Keats tells us. After sweet sexual indulgence, Lycius wants to marry her and Lamia, against her better judgement, agrees. But his uninvited tutor and the Corinthian philosopher Apollonius attends the nuptials and the two recognize each other immediately. Staring fixedly at her lover's tutor, she morphs back into a demon and, witnessing what he was about to wed, Lycius falls dead into the arms of wedding guests.
There is no Byronic hero equivalent in the female vampire; the only sad quality to the story is that it seems she truly did love Lycius and that's why she agreed to marriage, rather than just seducing and destroying. The theme, however, is becoming familiar: when a son of Adam sees that a woman is not submissive, she must be in truth a cloaked monster. And that brings to mind the Lilith story, wherein an independent woman leaves the Garden of Eden alone and of her own accord (see below).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), another Romantic poet, gave us a pretty long poem 'fragment' (that does, however, remain unfinished) called Christabel. It's a Gothic narrative set in medieval times wherein we once again have a 'lamia' of some sort but this time her primary victim is female. Christabel, who is as good and sweet as 'beautiful Christ' (her name, after all--RIGHT), is the motherless heir to the estate of her noble father, Sir Leoline, who loves her very much. But one evening, as she is out mooning over a dream she had of a knight who would be her lover, she comes upon the lovely Geraldine who nonetheless is so weak (supposedly having been abducted by thugs) that Christabel must carry her over the threshold of the castle ("Let Me In"?). Geraldine from the onset is mysterious, threatening: as the two pass by dying torches in the castle halls, they suddenly flare up; Christabel believes her mother, dead in childbirth, watches over her as a guardian spirit so, lest that be true, Geraldine mutters a quick curse to drive all guardians away. She sleeps in Christabel's bed with the girl, but Geraldine is a wasted figure to begin with. As she grows stronger and more exotically beautiful, Christabel grows weaker, more subject to bad dreams and sleeplessness, and is at a loss when trying to influence her father who has fallen for the lovely stranger. Indeed Sir Leoline's Bard has had a vision of the innocent Christabel, represented by a dove, caught in the coils of our old friend the snake.
It's a powerful poem, what there is of it, because Christabel, seemingly through no fault of her own other than Christian charity, is becoming someone else, someone lost and in a sense damned by her exposure to the lamia. But it's unclear what moral Coleridge was aiming for--on the first night she lay in Geraldine's arms, troubled by the first bad dreams, Coleridge uses the words "sorrow and shame" to describe why Christabel is suffering and the poem is sometimes taken in modern times to be a lesbian-themed piece. Still it has influenced some aspects of the vampire myth that are more common today than in Coleridge's time: the beauty of the vampire; its association with sexuality; the isolation of the victim from her society. In fact her name shares the same root as Bella's (Isabella means 'beautiful God' or 'God's beautiful gift') and Bella is also effectively motherless and loved by her father; though Charlie is not charmed by Bella's vampire, if Alice Cullen were in some way dangerous to Bella, she might make a Geraldine parallel.
The Lamia and the Lilith Story
We know the name Lilith from Sarah McLachlan's travelling concert of women performers "Lilith Fair" or as the name of Fraser Crane's difficult ex-wife. But the name goes back to pre-Biblical times and an ancient Sumerian goddess who got imported, by means of folklore, into our Genesis story. It seems that--
"When the Almighty created the first, solitary man, He said: It is not good for man to be alone. And He fashioned for man a woman from the earth, like him (Adam), and called her Lilith. Soon, they began to quarrel with each other. She said to him: I will not lie underneath, and he said: I will not lie underneath but above, for you are meant to lie underneath and I to lie above. She said to him: We are both equal, because we are both created from the earth. But they did not listen to each other.When Lilith saw this, she pronounced God's avowed name and flew into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Creator and said: Lord of the World! The woman you have given me has gone away from me. Immediately, the Almighty sent three angels after her, to bring her back.The Almighty said to the Angels: If she decides to return, it is good, but if not, then she must take it upon herself to ensure that a hundred of her children die each day. They went to her and found her in the middle of the Red Sea. And they told her the word of God. But she refused to return."
Her independence cost her the ultimate curse: she mated with demons at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and her many children became the daughters (and sons, presumably) of Man with whom Cain and Seth married to produce humankind outside of the original garden. The top painting (LEFT) shows the lady Lilith in her temptress manifestation (in other words, a lamia) whereas the statue at the bottom is an ancient and original artifact showing Lilith holding stirrups: she became the 'goddess' of childbirth but as a God-defying demon she would also take the lives of mothers and newborns if she wasn't properly propitiated.
As I mentioned above, women who show independence in a paradise created by a male God for a male human are punished and named demons; lamias, who control the men around them, are described as secretly horrible to look at and desiring only the man's destruction. Only subservient women are welcome in the traditional Judeo-Christian world view. And Bella is independent (see page 1), neither recognizing traditional taboos nor seeking guidance from a husband- or father-figure before she makes her choice. Like Lilith, her choice is not the traditional Adam--as she says at the end of "Eclipse" (the movie), she never felt she belonged in that world. Instead, like Lilith, she has escaped expectations and chosen her Satan to mate with--and by the final episode, she will be one of his (evil?) kind, living beyond the confines of the ordinary, perhaps as soulless as Edward thinks he is.
Milton's Satan famously said it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven--and that's Lilith's (and to some extent Bella's) choice as well.
"When the Almighty created the first, solitary man, He said: It is not good for man to be alone. And He fashioned for man a woman from the earth, like him (Adam), and called her Lilith. Soon, they began to quarrel with each other. She said to him: I will not lie underneath, and he said: I will not lie underneath but above, for you are meant to lie underneath and I to lie above. She said to him: We are both equal, because we are both created from the earth. But they did not listen to each other.When Lilith saw this, she pronounced God's avowed name and flew into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Creator and said: Lord of the World! The woman you have given me has gone away from me. Immediately, the Almighty sent three angels after her, to bring her back.The Almighty said to the Angels: If she decides to return, it is good, but if not, then she must take it upon herself to ensure that a hundred of her children die each day. They went to her and found her in the middle of the Red Sea. And they told her the word of God. But she refused to return."
Her independence cost her the ultimate curse: she mated with demons at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and her many children became the daughters (and sons, presumably) of Man with whom Cain and Seth married to produce humankind outside of the original garden. The top painting (LEFT) shows the lady Lilith in her temptress manifestation (in other words, a lamia) whereas the statue at the bottom is an ancient and original artifact showing Lilith holding stirrups: she became the 'goddess' of childbirth but as a God-defying demon she would also take the lives of mothers and newborns if she wasn't properly propitiated.
As I mentioned above, women who show independence in a paradise created by a male God for a male human are punished and named demons; lamias, who control the men around them, are described as secretly horrible to look at and desiring only the man's destruction. Only subservient women are welcome in the traditional Judeo-Christian world view. And Bella is independent (see page 1), neither recognizing traditional taboos nor seeking guidance from a husband- or father-figure before she makes her choice. Like Lilith, her choice is not the traditional Adam--as she says at the end of "Eclipse" (the movie), she never felt she belonged in that world. Instead, like Lilith, she has escaped expectations and chosen her Satan to mate with--and by the final episode, she will be one of his (evil?) kind, living beyond the confines of the ordinary, perhaps as soulless as Edward thinks he is.
Milton's Satan famously said it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven--and that's Lilith's (and to some extent Bella's) choice as well.
Vampires in Victorian Literature
Throughout the 1800's
