The series of books and novellas featuring Anita Blake, Vampire Executioner, in a sense “jumped the shark” when author Laurell K. Hamilton abandoned her formerly prudish and chaste heroine’s values and set her adrift on a sea of polyamorous adventures which became entwined with the abilities she has acquired in the now 22 books describing her interactions with vampires and other paranormal creatures. Blake’s sexual power is called the ardeur and, although she remains technically a human, it makes her into a kind of psychic vampire in the terminology of Nina Auerbach. In this paper, I use the ideas of psychologist Melanie Klein to examine Hamilton’s work in particular as representing vampire novels since Anne Rice. The protagonist in these works is the one who tames the ferocity of the mother as it is internalized through eating, rending and sucking, the projection Klein calls the “bad mother” or the “bad breast.” In my view, the protagonists of contemporary vampire stories identify with a cohort of attractive vampires in response to the greed rampant in our society. In particular, I argue that, despite the struggle to control the ardeur, which has alienated some of Hamilton’s earlier readers and won her different ones (most of her work has debuted on the N. Y. Times Bestseller list), Anita Blake grows into her power by accepting the gnawing, rabid strength of the vampire. This force allows her to overcome her socialization and provide a human perspective to the paranormal creatures in Hamilton’s universe. Through these interactions, Anita Blake is able to mother and care for others while having, if not the peace of a fulfilled life (there is no “happy end” in these dark stories), at least the sense of control needed to confront the rapacity of our age.
About the presenterEva Maria Thury
Associate Professor of English and Philosophy at Drexel University. Co-author, with Margaret K. Devinney, of Introduction to Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths, 4th edition.