Vampire novels have a specific quality about them that places them in the consciousness and interest of young adults and teens, almost as a right of passage. We can all recall an occasion where we have read a form of vampire fiction, or at least watched a production involving vampires, this trope somehow having a place in every part of our youth. For me, at least, it seems that there has been a form of vampire fiction for every stage of my life. It following me, almost gothically, as I have aged and changed over time. Vampire fiction appears to have prepared a work for each scenario, finding a place for itself however you may develop, with an ironic sense of immortality in the literary sphere.
But what is it about this type of fiction that can find itself in our youth time and time again? For me, it is the comfortable discomfort of a monster that appears human, not a massive and encroaching beast that breathes fire or has red horns, but instead a being that almost entirely embodies a figure of humanity we can recognise, except is everything humanity runs from.
The element of secrecy and ‘forbiddenness’ associated with the trope is equally alluring. In my own lifetime, my age and interest in vampire fiction has strongly correlated, where it began with Sienna Mercer’s YA series ‘My Sister the Vampire’, followed by the infamous Stephanie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ saga, and then the classic gothic novel which started it all: Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. In each of these, the vampire figure has some element of secrecy attached to it, where we as readers are trusted with the knowledge of who is a vampire where the rest of the fictional world are not. In ‘My Sister the Vampire’, we follow two sisters attempting to keep the secret that one of them is immortal, this model similarly uptaken in ‘Twilight’, where the Cullen family, and later the protagonist Bella, must also keep their secret from society. This sense of exclusivity around the immortal figures makes us as readers feel like comrades to the supernatural, humans entrusted with a dark secret, a bridge between the everyday and supernatural worlds.
Vampire fiction (often set in the present and recognisable everyday) gives readers access to a whole new version of the world as they know it, letting us in on something different and special, a revision of the life we know or have accepted. For teens especially, vampire fiction presents a world similar to the one they exist in, but with an alluring twist that lies on the cusp of believable, where they can find themselves part of something, part of a secret, and hopeful it might be really happening somewhere in their life unbeknownst to them.
When I finally went on to read ‘Dracula’ in my late teens, the book itself had to do very little work to entice me, as its very name was backed by years of interest in vampire in fiction. Though the story covers heavier themes and greater contexts than the vampire novels I’d previously read, ‘Dracula’, and the very figure of an alluring immortal being, was already fated to be one of my favourites.
Finding a place for itself throughout my life, vampire fiction is a unique corner of the literary world which appears to fall outside of the norms of ‘trends’ or popularities. It has this strange and enduring quality that somehow surpasses the bounds of time, perhaps because it is a timelessly popular trope, or perhaps due to some other-worldly gothic quality, casting readers under its beautiful, immortal spell.
