Vampirism Through the Lens Of Religion and Queer Identity

“The only power that exists is inside ourselves.” ― Anne Rice

          Interview with the Vampire is a novel by Anne Rice about a vampire recounting his life to a journalist in the late 20th century. Since its publication, the book has grown tremendously in popularity, inspiring a movie adaption starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and a TV show currently airing produced by the streaming service AMC. The gothic novel is notably known for the homoerotic relationships it portrays, but ultimately, what lies beneath the sensuality and romance is the longing these creatures have to understand their purpose and their worth. The foundation these characters are built on is molded from their desire to be accepted and loved by God and by humanity, a sentiment that mirrors the reality of living in the world as a queer person. In Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice cleverly displays the overlapping parallels the themes of queer love and vampirism share while viewing them through the lens of religion.  

          Early in the book, the reader is transported to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1791, where the protagonist, Louis de Pointe du Lac, is in a vulnerable state of mind as he mourns the death of his brother. When suddenly, a French vampire named Lestat enters his life, sweeps him off his feet, and offers him the dark gift of vampirism. Louis, in awe of Lestat, says, 

The moment I saw him [Lestat], saw his extraordinary aura and knew him to be no creature I'd ever known, I was reduced to nothing. All my conceptions, even my guilt and wish to die, seemed utterly unimportant. I completely forgot myself. And in the same instant knew totally the meaning of possibility. (Rice 12)

In this passage, Anne Rice beautifully displays the joys of falling in love as a queer person. Living in this world is hard enough as it is with all the death and sorrow it contains, but as a queer person, these issues are magnified. That only makes falling in love an even greater transformative experience because it serves as a reminder of the importance of life. Louis, like many gay people, learns to live again when he finds solace in someone else. Instead of falling into the depths of despair, he finds hope and possibility through the vessel of a lover.

          According to the thesis, Camp is Undead(?): Queer Vampire Becoming in the Age of Nonconformity, “[Interview with the Vampire] demonstrates the paradox of vampirism between boundlessness and stifling immortality, godhood and monstrosity, and the ways these paradoxes live over time” (Thayer 39). These paradoxes are very evident when Louis says, 

I saw my life as if I stood apart from it, the vanity, the self-serving, the constant fleeing from one petty annoyance after another, the lip service to God and the Virgin and a host of saints whose names filled my prayer books, none of whom made the slightest difference in a narrow, materialistic, and selfish existence. (Rice 12) 

Interview with the Vampire (2022)

Looking at Lestat’s preternatural face, Louis realizes religion does not lie in gods high above or devils cast out of heaven but in the eyes of a gorgeous man with blood smeared on his chin. Louis understands at that very moment that to live his life to the fullest; he needs to strip himself of the shame and guilt that plagues him and believe in something that loves him back. This is a lesson every gay and transgender person learns at one point in their life because of how interwoven queerness and religion are. A lot of LGBTQ folks find themselves tied down by the shame instilled in them by religious people, but what liberates them from these chains is self-acceptance through romantic love. Through the eyes of another, queer people can see how beautiful every part of them is, especially the part of them that has created an innate understanding of the other person. This intimate bond emulates the relationship between a god and servant, between a higher being and a devotee. Anne Rice writes about this dynamic in a vulnerable and transcendental way, emphasizing how queer relationships exist in a supernatural realm because of how they are othered by society. In Interview with the Vampire, vampires are vessels for queer love and acceptance, and religion is the light that illuminates them to reveal their divine design. 

          Despite the self-acceptance that starts to bloom when falling in love for the first time, queer people’s feelings of guilt and shame do not disappear altogether. If anything, these feelings can arise even stronger. The sobering state some individuals enter after the honeymoon phase ends makes them realize they are doing something they were told their entire lives was wrong and unnatural. In the gothic novel, Louis finds himself in this exact position after making his first kill as a vampire, proclaiming, “Am I damned? Am I from the devil? Is my very nature that of a devil?” (Rice 73). Regardless of the euphoria he felt from Lestat turning him into a vampire, he found himself caught in the sticky web of remorse. Nancy Gagnier echoes this in her book Gothic: Undead Subculture, “[Anne Rice] creates in Louis a reluctant vampire, one who experiences both the ecstasy and the repulsion of the kill” (303). The newly-turned vampire lives in two states of extremities: one that will grant him satisfaction if he gives in to his desires and true nature and the other that denies his flesh’s natural appetite and thrives off of self-damnation.

Anne Rice’s intentions of writing vampirism as a metaphor for queerness are as clear as day: The kill represents homosexual attraction, the maker (Lestat in this case) represents the person someone falls in love with who introduces them to the lifestyle, and Louis’s emotional turmoil is a direct comparison to what a gay person can deal with emotionally throughout the process of coming out. 

          Furthermore, the intensity of Louis’s suffering is intrinsically tied to his fear of God’s judgment. Later in the book, Louis walks into a cathedral in anguish because of his vampiric nature. He has a vivid vision of the building crumbling and of rats destroying the holy altar. The vision occurs because he expects and, in truth, wants this to happen when he enters a church. Louis needs a sign that there is a God that condemns him and, most importantly, explains the meaning of life. When nothing happens and the building stays intact, Louis confesses his sins of murder to a priest, who immediately scoffs in disgust. Fueled by his frustration with God, Louis exclaims, “Do you see what I am! Why, if God exists, does He suffer me to exist!” (Rice 148). His distress reverberates a lot of queer individuals’ battles with their identity. If God created everything, and all that he made was good, then how come queer people are said to be the exception? Contrastingly, in another vampire novel titled Carmilla, the vampire rejects the very notion of God when he is mentioned:

Carmilla disdainfully replies, "Creator! Nature!. . . All things in heaven, and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains" (Le Fanu 42)

Carmilla, in distinction to Louis, has a strong conviction that the idea of a god or creator is foolish and instead sees that everything living is interconnected and worthy because it exists in accordance with nature. Interview with the Vampire and Carmilla are two examples that parallel the reality of the queer experience: For some, it comes easy to accept their identities and see them for the natural product of existence they are, and for others, it is a long, arduous process that requires facing their worst fears. 

          Above all, Anne Rice’s writing demonstrates that if it is possible to humanize and sympathize with a blood-thirsty monster, it is possible to open up one’s heart to real-life humans living outside society’s norms. As Renee Vincent says, “Conventional wisdom states that as bloodthirsty killers vampires must exist outside of civilized society. However, in reality, they have been welcomed into the hearts and homes of the population at large” (Vincent 2). The fictional vampire is a gothic incarnation of the outsider, the gay individual. Seeing people love creatures who were created to be unlovable and repulsive makes the queer person who was told the same thing feel loved. It opens up a world of hope that the world can change and be as accepting of the LGBTQ community as it is of gruesome, dead monsters. 

          In summary, by telling the story of the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, Anne Rice captures the joy, pain, religious guilt, and transfiguration inherent to the queer experience. Jonathan Tyler says it well, “None of these [vampire] novels have been told from a vampire’s point of view. Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) changes this scenario and in doing so gives a sympathetic treatment to the vampire, which is really sympathy for queer individuals” (Tyler 30). Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire transforms the grotesque into the beautiful. She uses the tool of gothic storytelling to remind readers of the humanity everyone carries, even those deemed unholy by the world. 

References

Gagnier, Nancy. “The Authentic Dracula: Bram Stoker’s Hold on Vampire Genres.” Gothic: 

          Undead Subculture. Ed. Lauren M.E. Goodlad & Michael Bibby. Duke University Press. 2007. 

Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan. Carmilla. Wildside Press, 2000. 

Rice, Anne. Interview With the Vampire. New York, NY, Ballantine Books, 1997.

Thayer, Maelcum. Camp Is Undead(?): Queer Vampire Becoming in the Age of Nonconformity. 

           Skidmore College. PhD dissertation. 2023. creativematter.skidmore.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=peri_stu_scholar

Tyler, Jonathan. The Trail of Blood : Queer History Through Vampire Literature. University of Alabama in Huntsville. PhD dissertation. 2017. louis.uah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=uah-theses. 

Vincent, Renee. “Vampires as a Tool to Destabilize Contemporary Notions of Gender and Sexuality.” Ellipsis: Vol. 42, Article 25. University of New Orleans. 2015.

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