Document Type

Thesis

Date of Degree Completion

Spring 2025

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English Literature

Committee Chair

Dr. James Seth

Second Committee Member

Dr. Sarah Sillin

Third Committee Member

Dr. Ali Unal

Abstract

This thesis examines how Christabel (1816), Carmilla (1872), and Dracula (1897), three quintessential texts in the vampire literary genre, speak to the Victorian proliferation of sexual and gender discourses. These texts use the metaphor of the vampire to contradict and sustain 19th-century regulatory dialogues encompassing sexuality, gender, and desire. By investigating these vampire narratives by means of theories of sexuality and gender enumerated in Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality and Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, such as the ideas of “biopower” and “gender performativity,” I contend that these works do more than simply reproduce contemporary outlooks. Instead, these Gothic texts catalyze the assembly and propagation of sexual knowledge, thereby concurrently strengthening and undermining gender and sexual power dynamics. As supernatural Gothic fiction, Christabel, Carmilla, and Dracula create an exceptional discursive space where marginalized subjectivities can be enacted, representing how vampire fiction contributes to the formation of new subjectivities and deconstructs institutionally rooted ideas about gender and sexuality in Victorian Britain. These works instantaneously maintain and threaten the period’s gender and sexual norms via their persistent use of three key features: the polymorphous, fluid vampire body that destabilizes Victorian gender codes; the reversal of traditional power dynamics in intimate relationships; and the depiction of same-sex desires that contest the heteronormative paradigm.

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