“She Lives In You”: A Dive into the Lesbian Vampire and Sapphic Culture
- Arcoiris MHQC
- Nov 15
- 7 min read
The night is chill; the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek—
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
Hush, beating heart of Christabel!
Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
— Christabel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Vampires have long been considered the agents of the dark and death; temptation and sin; the desirable and the repulsive. These vicissitudes, contained in a vessel that seeks to invite and defile the pure and the innocent, make for the perfect cautionary tale narrated in hushed tones around candlelight, staving off the fear dark nights brought two centuries ago. Then, the vampire was a warning—an unspeakable creature of defilement and torment, an undying, blood-sucking monster that deviates the good from the path of righteousness. Louis de Pointe du Lac, self-hating and hopelessly compliant to his own vampiric nature, puts the desirable detestation of the Undead quite succinctly: “How do we seem to you? Do you find us beautiful, magical? Our white skin, our fierce eyes? 'Drink,' you ask me, do you have any idea of the thing you will become?”
To Louis, vampirism was tantamount to two things: his eternal existence, sustained by the blood of those he slaughtered to quench his thirst; and his reluctant, deep sexual desire for his sire, Lestat. Raised to be a devout Christian, his desire cannot demand a man; it is a sin, and a most grievous one at that. Leaning into his homosexual desire for Lestat is to put himself out of the safety of the familiar and the known, into the embrace of the dark and the sinister.
It is no shock, thus, to understand that vampires have been equated with queerness. As society demands heteronormativity—man should be with woman, and every other shade of sexuality is a ‘sin’—the vampire, being a symbol of forbidden temptation, becomes an outlet for the exploration of queer want. To exist out of the confines of society, to want, and to take without shame—to exist without shame—is undeniably vampiric—and queer.
Sapphics regard vampires as a cultural symbol. Lesbians have historically either been erased—based on their degree of attractiveness to the male fantasy—or persecuted, when they did not perform for the said fantasy or chose to live outside it, thereby challenging it. Elizabeth Bathory, who formed the blueprint for the lesbian vampire, for instance, was convicted of torturing and murdering hundreds of girls and imprisoned for life in the Castle of Csejte. The accusations against Bathory were sensational, graphically repulsive: she slept with young women; she slaughtered hundreds of them; and to preserve her beauty, she bathed in the blood of virgins. Her sexuality is contested today, as are most historical figures’— (‘heterosexual’ icons never seem to undergo similar scrutiny, amusingly)—but it is still interesting to note how easy it was to besmirch the name of a powerful, wealthy, husband-less woman then. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu would go on to draw inspiration from Bathory to write his magnum opus, Carmilla.
The lesbian vampire has been an object of male repulsion and desire simultaneously; A common theme running in them featured sapphic vampires preying on women and consequently being killed by men—or vilified and rejected altogether in a very similar manner in the early works of vampire literature. The male fantasy seeks to conquer and subdue women- punish the evil seductress and protect the innocent Madonna. In Carmilla, the titular character encapsulates the Victorian era’s anxiety surrounding the unconquerability of female sexuality. Women’s desire invoked fear; a woman who desires is dangerous. For to desire, one exercises autonomy of the mind and the body; if the woman is not made to fear her desire, her mind cannot be controlled; and when her mind cannot be controlled, she cannot be made to birth children who will keep the cogs of the machine running.
Laura, Carmilla’s ‘victim’, is torn between wanting Carmilla and fighting with her own internalised repression of sexuality. She says:
“In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt to explain the feeling.”
Carmilla professes her love for Laura, seducing her, day by day:
“I have been in love with no one, and never shall," she whispered, "unless it should be with you."
How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!
Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled.
Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, darling," she murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so."
I started from her.
Laura falls for Carmilla; her ‘repulsion’ for Carmilla subsides, replaced by love. But given the nature of the novel, they are not meant to be. Laura’s health declines because of Carmilla feeding from her; and, of course, as is the message of novels typical of the time, Carmilla is exposed and killed by good, righteous men. Laura never recovers from the episode. The conclusion of the novella hints that she still longs for Carmilla, equal parts attraction and disgust:
“We remained away for more than a year. It was long before the terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations—sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.”
Carmilla, thus, was meant to invoke anxiety. And it was successful—the lesbian vampire disappeared for a while, to make an appearance again in a different genre of media: exploitation films.
These films leaned more heavily into explicit territories; the sensuality the lesbian vampire possessed was abandoned in favour of more explicit, more graphic degrees of sex. Sex in these films was not necessarily empowering to women; rather, it was for the pleasure of male viewers.
Dracula’s Daughter (1936), for instance, was far more explicit in its portrayal of sapphic undertones. Given the rise of modern psychology in that age, it attempted to ‘explain’ queerness as an affliction—an uncontrollable condition one is born with—via Dracula’s daughter, Countess Zaleska. The Countess tries to deny herself blood—only to fail in stopping her desire and inviting a sex worker to model nude at her place, from whom she feeds.
Generally, exploitation films were criticised due to their blatant objectification of women. The homophobia and misogyny in them cannot be denied; however, due to the lack of queer representation at the time, these exploitation films have achieved cult status in lesbian and sapphic communities—and even pioneered sapphic vampires in the current day.
Sapphic vampires today aren’t only defined by their sensuality and how men treat them. Present-day lesbian vampires, especially those written by women, are being seen not as entities that invoke fear and disgust, but as empowering beings who actively challenge patriarchy by their existence. For instance, The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez is about the experiences of a Black runaway slave-turned-vampire across time—from 1850 to 2050. The Girl, who is the protagonist of the book, is rescued by a vampire named Gilda. Gilda is the madam of a brothel. She kills the Girl’s captor and gives her the life she always wished to have; they become polyamorous lovers, and the Girl also wishes to be a vampire of her own volition.
The desire to consume blood, thus, is consensual between the sapphic vampire and her lover. They are no longer separated by repression or guilt; they are joined in a reciprocal romance. The creation of new (un)dead life requires no man; mutual exchange of blood is enough to birth a new vampire. Thus, sex between the vampire and the mortal is no longer a means to an end—it is reciprocal, and mutually desired.
Today, lesbian vampires can be found in popular media, who are true queer representation—Marceline and Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time, Striga and Morana from Castlevania (Elizabeth Bathory makes an appearance as Erzabet in the sequel of the series, Nocturne, as an antagonist), Goody and Stacy from Vamps, and Carmilla and Laura from the 2014 reboot of Le Fanu’s novel. The Lesbian Vampire, thus, has transcended the paltry, superficial confines of sexuality that serves the male gaze, into a greater form of sapphic representation.
References:
User, G. (2024, October 6). The Lesbian Vampire: Fantasy or fear? — Divination Hollow reviews. Divination Hollow Reviews. https://divinationhollow.com/reviews-and-articles/the-lesbian-vampire
Women’s Wrongs Zine. (2023, November 21). How Lesbian Vampires were Resurrected: Carmilla, lesbian porn, and male Impotence. https://womenswrongs.cheesegratermagazine.org/how-lesbian-vampires-were-resurrected-carmilla-lesbian-porn-and-male-impotence/
Barbara Jane Brickman. (2016). “A Strange Desire That Never Dies”: Monstrous Lesbian Camp in the Age of Conformity. Discourse, 38(3), 356–389. https://doi.org/10.13110/discourse.38.3.0356
Johnson, J. E. (1993). Women and Vampires: Nightmare or Utopia? The Kenyon Review, 15(1), 72–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4336803
Lau, K. J. (2018). The Vampire, the Queer, and the Girl: Reflections on the Politics and Ethics of Immortality’s Gendering. Signs, 44(1), 3–24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26553056
Louis: How do we seem to you? Do you find us beautiful, magical? Our white skin, our fierce eyes? “Drink” you ask me, do you have any idea of the thing you will become? (n.d.). https://www.quotes.net/mquote/47178
Crémieux, A. (2015). Exploitation cinema and the lesbian imagination. Transatlantica, 2. https://doi.org/10.4000/transatlantica.7869
Carmilla. (2025, October 4). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10007/pg10007-images.html
Rice, A. (1997). Interview with the vampire. Ballantine Books.
Written by Joshita Ghosh, 2nd Year, English Hons
Comments