The Blood Of The Vampire

Despite being published around the same time as Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, Marryat presents a vastly different and original tale. The ‘vampire’ in this novel has been argued to be a metaphor for hysterical woman, which, given the time period this book was published, would be a reasonable assumption. This ‘hysterical’ vampire, who ‘sucked’ the life out of the people around her, is shrouded in ambiguity, leading to two very different interpretations of this novel…then again, she was probably just a vampire. With such vivid and intriguing melodrama, Marryat presents a painfully accurate image of an estranged, Victorian lady, while providing readers with a story that does not conform to the overused paradigm of a blood-sucking vampire. As a truly horrifying and ‘muted’ Gothic novel, this book’s realism makes it all the more frightening for readers.