Tracing the Bloodlines of the Modern Vampire

On May 3^rd,1890, Jonathan Harker arrives in Bistritz. His fresh legal expertise has caught the attention of one Count Dracula, a Transylvanian noble looking to stake his claim on London property. A full-ride getaway to the Carpathian Mountains as his first professional task? A dream come true. But as his rendezvous with Dracula draws near, so too does a growing dread; for the townsfolk bring warnings of a great evil. A brutish, bestial, bloodthirsty evil. By the time it all sets in, he’s already at Dracula’s doorstep. So begins the harrowing events that would haunt Harker’s life forever…

It’s no secret that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the blueprint for modern vampirism. When one thinks “vampire”, a certain picture’s usually painted: a sinister aristocrat with an equally-as-sinister castle, complete with a coffin, a cloak, and centuries of baggage. Indeed, Stoker certainly wasn’t the first to depict Romantic vampirism on paper. He had lesser-known predecessors in John Polidori, whose The Vampyre was famously written for the same contest as Frankenstein, and Carmilla author J. Sheridan Le Fanu. And though neither came close to Dracula’s cultural impact, each work convinced the world that the vampire—an immortal, immoral corruption of man—was here to stay. Why do we, as readers and storytellers, continue to revisit the Romantic vampire? What of the 19^th-century paradigm has stayed? What has changed, if anything?

Welcome to Monster of the Week, a new F(r)iction Log series exploring the origins of classical monsters and their impact on storytelling. The answers may leave you thirsty for more.

The origin of the vampire (or upir, or oupire, or vampir) is rooted in folklore. Vampire scholar Nick Groom traces its ancestry to Eastern Europe; though undead revenants have existed since time immemorial, creatures like Romanian strigoi directly inspired the vampire’s earliest incarnations. “The return of the dead is a primaeval fear”, and this is reflected in its folkloric origins. But the vampire itself is no primaeval being; it’s a creature influenced profoundly by contemporary thought.

So, what truly defines the vampire is its emergence in response to historical change—”change” being both scientific advancement and moral panic. As a living dead monster, they’re defined by their transgression of normality. They embody questions of human ambiguity; formative questions that were already being asked by thinkers of the century. Like the vampire, their hypotheses sparked confusion in a society dedicated to its principles. To quote Groom, the vampire became “a powerful tool for making sense of the human predicament”… and in the hands of the 19^th century author, they became a tool to inflict fear.

Bestial and Bloodthirsty

The rise of new-age theory played a massive part in popularising the vampire. In a society shaped by spiritual belief, intellectual movements like the Enlightenment and Romanticism were only the beginning. Charles Darwin’s theories of natural science, for example, challenged human exceptionalism. The thought that humans were not a unique body, but instead derivative of animals, was unthinkable. Fearing an animal lineage evolved into fearing the cross-contamination of bloodlines; and once this fear bled into literature, its influence became grounds for monster stories. Vampires were, essentially, a “fantastically rational” explanation of Darwin’s human-animal body as monster.

From Harker describing Dracula as reptilian, to Carmilla appearing to Laura as a predatory beast, this fear of human-animal consanguinity pervaded the 19^th century vampire novel. It solidified vampires not just as monster, but as “Other”—a sick, sanguinary perversion of the human body.

Filthy Rich and Fanged

Vampiric aristocracy existed long before Stoker’s Count. Its roots lie in political allegory, symbolic of predatory oligarchs who leeched life from working class prey. Thinly veiled references to real-life aristocrats can naturally be found in the 19^th century vampire. Dracula’s connection to Vlad the Impaler undoubtedly comes to mind, though Polidori’s Lord Ruthven—cunning, charismatic, and stinking rich—was himself a caricature of Romantic writer and hedonist Lord Byron. Another was Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian countess and alleged serial killer who targeted poor young women. Legends describe her as “blood-bathing” for eternal youth, and it’s believed that these accounts partially inspired Le Fanu’s sapphic horror-tragedy Carmilla.

Jabs at the upper class weren’t exactly subtle in 19^th century horror, and drawing parallels to notorious real-world nobles underlined vampirism as the Other. In this way, vampires became both physiologically and culturally inhuman; representative of a class hungry for power, youth, and blood. In every way, they resembled parasites more than their former human selves.

Fresh Blood

Much has changed in the vamp-paradigm since Dracula. Stories such as Twilight and The Vampire Diaries reframe Romantic into romance, while others like the Castlevania games tap into the vampire’s fantastical potential. But what’s most notable is how modern writers have redefined the vampire’s original purpose as a symbol of transgression. Under its darkly comic pastiche of vampiric aristocracy, for example,FX’s What We Do in the Shadows presents an immigrant narrative—in which a coterie of multicultural characters struggle fitting into a society that rejects them. Urban fantasy TTRPG Vampire: The Masquerade explores class divide, systemic violence, and the (in)human condition through the World of Darkness’ clan system. And recently, we’ve had Ryan Coogler’s Sinners conflate racism with blood-sucking monstrosity; vampirism becomes a backdrop to exhume a repressed, bloody history.

Each work mentioned draws from the same vein. Whether forbidden by law or by social intolerance, characters are inclined to hide their vampiric identity. They are monster; they are animal; they are completely and unequivocally Other. Most importantly, they represent a shift in the system. Instead of the unreachable Other—bestial tyrants terrorising those deemed beneath them—modern vampirism has now come to represent social monstrosity… or, more accurately, monstrosity in the eyes of the human ideal.

But there is refuge in this reclamation of the Other. To reframe vampirism as a foundation for solidarity fosters new understanding. It’s for this reason that vampire fiction has prevailed: it unearths the stories of those shunned by society, standards, and systemic prejudice. And it’s through representative storytelling that these bloodlines will endure and evolve, even in (un)death.

These narratives are exactly what we’re hungry for at Brink Literacy Project. From fresh blood to elder bats, our coven feasts heartily on tales from underserved and undersold talent. Through our education programs, we draw blood from Othering to empower and embrace shared storytelling. Only by working together shall our cauldron thrive in adversity. If this sounds like your kind of literary scene, then you’re cordially invited to sink your teeth into our stories. Don’t worry—we don’t bite.

Additional Reading

• “Summer Home” by Brett Riley
• “The Purpose of Monsters” by Dani Hedlund

Sources:

1. Nick Groom, The Vampire: A New History (Yale University Press, 2018), 4–5.
2. Groom, xv.
3. Matthew Gibson, “Jane Cranstoun, Countess Purgstall: A Possible Inspiration for Le Fanu’s Carmilla” (Le Fanu Studies, 2007).