Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

184Demonic Texts and Textual Demonsmonster is their generic precondition), but it makes possible deliberate responsesto this condition. Rice’s vampires confront the “old vampire” (thearchetypal monster) early on in the series, perceive it as a “mindless, animatedcorpse”, and kill it. 51 After this “Oedipal” act they narrate to eachother new myths, and new definitions for what it means to be a vampire.Desire to know is also fundamentally a desire to exist (after all, these “obsessivestorytellers” live under the same condition as Scheherazade: capturethe interest of the audience, or perish).Their characterisation as modern, conscious individuals (with an insatiablebloodlust) makes Rice’s novels both explorations into unrestricted individuality,and dramatisations of conflicts inherent in this individuality.The great demarcation line that runs through these novels is death, as itseparates the “common herd” of humans from the superior (if cursed) creaturesthat feed on them. Nina Auerbach has recently researched vampires as“luminaries of the twilight zone,” or of those limits and social norms whichrestrict individual self-realisation. She focuses especially on the forbiddenrelationship between members of the same sex, and points out the existenceof a tradition of sensitive and sympathetic vampires. This interpretationshows how these monsters are actually an “alien gender,” and (in their subversivebehaviour) offer encouraging objects of identification for sexual minoritiesand other socially suppressed groups of people. “More than our heroesor pundits, our Draculas tell us who we were.” 52The homosexuality, or homoeroticism (as vampires do not actually getinvolved in genital sex) of Rice’s vampires is a noteworthy feature, and connectedto their general impetus to be transgressive characters – to step beyondall the limits that confine mortal existence in reality. In an earlierwork, Woman and the Demon (1982), Auerbach has made a forcible claimthat the demonic features connected with the female energy and mutabilityhides in its essence “a dream of transfiguration whose power over lives aswell as literature has lasted well into our own century.” 53 Even the(post)modern loss of self is, according to her, actualised in celebration ofcharacters’ “perpetual metamorphosis,” especially by such authors as VirginiaWoolf and Hélène Cixous. 54Auerbach emphasises an important positive dimension, central for anyattempt to understand the enthusiastic response and “cult” following thatRice’s vampire novels have inspired. The positive aspect is notable in thegradual process of revelation that creates a whole alternative universe on thebasis of one conscious (vampire) self. On the other hand, it would be unwiseto forget the deeply troubled nature of this individual. Not only feelingsof empowerment, but feelings of self-hatred, rejection and impotenceare thematised in these texts. Furthermore, the negative aspect is more char-51 IV, 207.52Auerbach 1995, 42, 112.53 Auerbach 1982, 34.54Ibid., 228.