The Evolution of Female Vampires

Female vampires have been around for just as long as their male counterparts in literature and film. Their role has changed immensely over the past two centuries. Today I am taking a look at six of the most memorable female vampires. These characters go beyond being Mary Sues for their respective creators and advance the role to another level.

1. Carmilla (novella) – Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella was written in 1872, twenty-five years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The title character was a vampiress who terrorized the Austrian country side. The vampire falls in love with a human girl, leading to her eventual downfall.
Carmilla’s theme of latent homosexuality in vampires is repeated again and again in vampire literature and film. She is also unapologetic and evil, killing without remorse to ensure her continued survival yet risking her very existence to try and win the affection of a human to take as her immortal companion.

2. Brides of Dracula – Dracula (novel) – Stoker’s novel was heavily influenced by Carmilla’s setting and muted sexual overtones. The three females who dwell in Dracula’s castle are never referred to specifically as his brides, but this is how many readers interpret their existence. In the novel, both Jonathan Harker and Abraham Van Helsing are strongly attracted to the brides but repulsed by their abhorrent actions. They exist by the whim of Dracula, surviving off of the babies and villagers he brings them. They are sensual yet depraved, showing little or no ambition to do anything other than serve their evil master.

For better or worse, the stereotype of the submissive female vampire devotee was born from these three vampire women.

3. Mekare and Maharet (Rice’s Vampire Chronicles novels) In their human lives, Mekare and Maharet had the uncanny ability to speak with spirits. After drawing the wrath of a king and queen, Mekare summoned a minor demon to frighten the monarchs. The demon fused itself with the queen, creating the first vampire. The queen turned her king into a vampire and removed Maharet’s eyes and Mekare’s tongue so they could never communicate with each other again. A vampire servant of the king and queen turned the girls into vampires in order to raise an army against the evil vampire duo. They were captured and set adrift in stone coffins in opposite directions. Maharet follows her human offspring though the years and Mekare lives wild in the jungle for nearly six millennia. Eventually, they come together with others of their kind to kill the vampire queen, Akasha, with Mekare consuming Akasha’s heart and brain to become the new “Queen of the Damned.”

Mekare and Maharet are never depicted as evil. They are a marked departure from previous female vampires in that they act to protect someone other than themselves.

4. Drusilla – Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel (series) - Once a pious young woman so faithful that she had the potential for sainthood, Drusilla is tormented and made a vampire by Angelus, the most evil of vampires. She immediately becomes a dangerous predator, taking on the very worst characteristics of her maker. Throughout the Buffy and Angel series, Drusilla was a powerful antagonist, displaying ruthless and sadistic joy in killing and maiming her victims. She also creates the vampire, Spike, who would later become one of the primary heroes of the series.
Drusilla is powerful and evil yet fragile at the same time. Her volatile mental state and tortured existence make her one of the most three-dimensional female vampires of all time. She is more than simply evil, yet far from good.

5. Eli – Let the Right One In (Swedish film) - Eli is a centuries old vampire who looks like a twelve year old girl. She does whatever it takes to survive, even murdering the man who served and protected her for years. Despite her evil nature, she forges a friendship with a bullied eleven year old boy, Oskar. Their friendship is so strong that she kills to protect Oskar from his bullies when their actions become potentially fatal.

Eli is both vulnerable and frightening as she struggles to find a way to exist in modern times. She adds another layer to the female vampire formula by exhibiting that the duality of good and evil can still exist in a supposed “evil” being.

6. Seline – Underworld series (films) – Seline is a death dealer: a vampire charged with eradicating werewolves. In the first Underworld film, she learns that all she has been taught about the “werewolf menace” was a lie. She becomes the reluctant protector for a human who has the potential to unite the two species, vampires and werewolves, with his unusual blood.
Seline represents the most recent iteration of the female vampire: the heroine. She is powerful, sexy, and morally ambiguous, but still acts to save the day in the end.
These are six (well, eight since there are three brides) of the most memorable and influential female vampire characters of all time. The role of the female vampire has evolved from subservient sexpot to butt-kicking warrior. I look forward to seeing the next step in the process.
Agree? Disagree? What characters would you add to the list?

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Using a Strong Female Protagonist - Kathy Bell

I guess I should start my discussion with a definition of the strong protagonist. She is someone who already has the skills and abilities required to solve whatever problem the author is going to throw at her during the story. She is a woman with a sense of self and purpose. She has brains, perhaps even brawn, and does not hesitate to use it.

You walk a fine line when using an already well-skilled protagonist in any story, and possibly stand to alienate some readers. But, even more worrisome than this issue is the possible loss of a story arc – that of character development. By character development, I mean the learning and growing type of development rather than the slow and steady revelation of the character traits of your main characters. The more competent your main character is to begin with, the less opportunity you have to teach her new skills.

Think of Sarah Connor at the beginning of Terminator. She is unassuming, very feminine, and physically fairly weak. During the story she develops into the woman who will train the leader of the future rebellion. Half of the movie would not have happened if she had been a fully prepared character. So, you must ask yourself, does your character need to be fully developed at the start, or can she learn some of her skills as she goes along?

There are two approaches which accommodate the use of a truly capable heroine. Science fiction lends itself to plot-driven stories anyway, and so often the stories populated with strong female characters are those of that genre. When a story is focused on the dramatic action, there is less of a need to ‘train’ your heroine, and more emphasis on the scenes taking place. If you are an action oriented writer who knows exactly where your story is going before you have even created characters to populate it, then the strong heroine will likely fit well into the story.

Another approach you can use with the well-equipped lead is to place her in a completely untenable position where all of her skills are of little use for, or even detrimental to, the realization of her objectives. For example, in my own story the main character is very skilled and capable because she has actually relived her life a number of times and is able to unconsciously call upon those memories for use in her current life. (Apparently I wasn’t quite obvious enough with that fact, because a few readers took a real dislike to the MC because of her skills, without getting the idea that she developed them through multiple lifetimes)). Even with all of that to call upon, she must give up the family that is dear to her heart because her skills and abilities are needed to save the world. In this case, her strength actually works against her goal of returning to the life she had lived before, and (I hoped) made the sacrifice that much more poignant.

In closing, I think the strong protagonist –female or otherwise – works well in a plot-driven novel but should perhaps be toned down in a story emphasizing character development because you will lose readership if your character begins the story with few flaws and thus has little distance to go to reach her objectives. If things come easy, there is no story to tell!

Kathy Bell's debut novel, Regression became an Amazon Bestseller in Science Fiction and Fantasy as a new release, peaking at #17 on that list and remaining in the top 100 for 28 days. The sequel, Evolussion has just come out and is already receiving rave reviews from early readers. Find Kathy on Twitter @kathybellauthor, on Facebook , or at the Infinion Series website. Follow her blog tour