Proposal

I plan on writing a paper for my final literary analysis project. I want to look at Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I will also be bringing in some of Candace Benefiel’s Blood Relations: The Gothic Perversion of the Nuclear Family in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.
I want to look at the use of a family in both of these novels. Benefiel says, “The figuratively incestuous family of vampires can be traced in rudimentary form to Stoker’s Dracula… Dracula is first presented in his Transylvanian castle with three brides/daughters (Stoker 71-73)…Anne Rice however, expanded on this considerably in Interview with the Vampire, making the nuclear family of vampires a major theme in her novel (Benefiel 263). Both of these vampire families are presented in different ways. Dracula and his brides/daughters are not nearly as close to a family unit as Lestat, Louis and Claudia. I want to examine possible reasons for the differences, but also look at why both authors seem to use this idea of a family when relating to vampires.
I believe that this use of the family when relating to vampires can be seen as slightly uncanny. Family is a very familiar thing to everyone here in the United States, but it takes on a whole new quality when applied to vampires. It makes us question what family really is, if vampires can be family then what qualifies as family. In class we talked a lot about the queering of the traditional American nuclear family as it applies to Louis, Lestat and Claudia and I would like to expand on this idea and also apply this “queering” to Dracula and his family. Dracula had three wives. This is definitely not the traditional family we are used to. Dracula does not really seem to care much about these three women. He tells them what to do, but is more interested in having them come around only when needed. They do not seem to be with him and keep him company. In Interview with the Vampire the vampires are in the family unit for company. They do not want to be alone. Lestat had his real father before creating Louis and after creating him he tried to trick Louis into staying with him by withholding information from him. Then right before Louis wants to leave Claudia is made and Louis just cannot leave her. He feels this need to care for her. This is more like a family then anything else. They need company. The vampires in the novel who do not have a family or other vampires around to communicate with are portrayed as completely uncivilized and wild. This seems to suggest that the vampires need a family type of unit to be civilized and to function in the world. Anne Rice seems to be suggesting that everyone needs a family to survive and be civilized. I think that vampires are used in these novels to represent a superior race of humans. They are what humans should and ultimately do strive for in life. It seems that the family is something that needs to be strived for in humans.
In my final paper I want to look at these ideas and examine them more closely and really expand on them. I think it is interesting to compare the families of vampires and then apply these families to Americans and see what the authors are saying. I also want to examine the uncanny aspect of all of this.