Archetypes and Vampires

Ok, so in my Dracula post, I mentioned that sparkly vampires don't "fit the archetype". I also said that I might go back and explain that sometime. I figured now was as good as any other time, so before I dive into the murky world of folklore vampires. let me just make sure no one has eaten recently.  If so, please take this opportunity to ensure that you have no problem with gory details.

What do I mean by "archetype"?

An archetype need not mean anything more than a repeated motif or pattern in stories and cultures from around the world. It is not bound by time or geography, and it doesn't change. For example, nearly every culture has  Trickster character, whether he be Tortoise, Fox, Raven, Coyote, or even Bre'r Rabbit (who comes from both African American and Cherokee stories).

Ok, so what do vampires have to do with archetypes?

The vampire of pop culture is smooth, sexy, immortal etc. He is also an embodiment of death, darkness, and dismemberment according to Guerin's "A Handbook of Critical Applications to Literature". That would be because he belongs to an archetypal group known as the Demon Lover. Cheerful sounding, isn't it? The Demon Lover archetype is the male counterpart to the femme fatale character, a classic example of appearances being deceiving. If I were to merely list the character traits of the Demon Lover, it's probably a pretty safe bet that the first characters you'd think of would be vampires. That's Bram Stoker's doing, you can thank him for Twilight. 

Here's the thing, though: the stories about vampires are far older than Stoker, or even John Polidori's short tale The Vampyre (which is most likely the first portrayal of the vampire as the demon lover in fiction). Tales of vampirism in Eastern Europe can be found even in the 17th century, and they certainly didn't sparkle or say "Bleh, bleh bleh!"

If a typical vampire of folklore, not fiction, were to come to your house this Halloween, you might open the door to encounter a plump Slavic fellow with long fingernails and a stubbly beard, his mouth and left eye open, his face ruddy and swollen. He wears informal attire--in fact, a linen shroud--and he looks for all the world like a disheveled peasant.

-Paul Barber, "Vampires, Burial, and Death", page 2 

Gross-out Warning now in effect

Just in case you're still thinking "Vampire=Pretty", this is a list of some of the common "symptoms" of  vampiric corpses...and the reasons behind them.

Keep in mind, during these early centuries, medical and scientific knowledge were limited.

1. His hair and nails are still growing! When bodies start to decay, the skin pulls back from the follicles and cuticles, making them appear to be longer. 

2. The body is not stiff! Rigor mortis is a temporary state: the body isn't supposed to stay like that.

3. There's fresh blood around the mouth! Okay, there's two different reasons for this one. In some cases, it was acid from the stomach leaking and making blood come out the mouth. In other instances, the blood in the mouth could be from leftover symptoms of tuberculosis, which I'm fairly certain was incurable back then. 

4. He's plumper and redder than ever! Uh, no. No he's not. That's the gases of decomposition swelling him up like a balloon, and there's a fair chance that he might explode. (all together now, EWWWW!)

5. We dug him up and he didn't even smell bad! Ok, first of all, why would you even do that?! What are you, ghouls?! Second of all, I refer you to the account of Pitton de Tournefort from the beginning of the 18th century in Greece.  Mass hysteria led to the claims that the body had no odor, even when the medical staff were so overwhelmed by the noxious stench that they had to burn incense, which only made it worse.

Gross-out Warning ends here

Now that we've endured those lovely descriptions, do vampires still sound like Prince Charming? I should very well hope not, but that is unrealistic. The fact is that some authors are just going to keep writing vampires as something akin to a re-telling of Tam Lin. Vampires aren't scary anymore folks, they're just another inhabitant of Faerie--where we send all our folk heroes and domesticated monsters.