Liminal Creatures : Representations of Monstrosity, Queerness, and Procreation in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles
- Authors
- Publication Date
- Dec 07, 2021
- Source
- HAL-Descartes
- Keywords
- Language
- English
- License
- Unknown
- External links
Abstract
As metaphors for the human condition, Anne Rice’s vampires are depicted as liminal creatures who tell the stories of their struggle with compulsive thirst, moral guilt, and eternal life, both within and outside the human world. This study analyses that liminality through their monstrous identity, their queer relationships, and their mode of procreation. Drawing on Gothic criticism, theories on liminality, gender performativity, and psychoanalytic concepts, this study considers the oscillations, limitations, desires, and horrors that these vampires experience in their permanent liminality. First, it examines the subjective accounts of Louis and Lestat to demonstrate that the monstrosity of Rice’s vampires is constructed through performative acts and performance. Second, through a series of case studies that look at the experiences of specific vampires, the study explores the temporal, spatial, and bodily otherness that illustrate the monstrous limbos in which Ricean vampires find themselves forever trapped. Aspects of queer desire are considered with a focus on the bisexual love triangles that Rice’s vampires form, thus, demonstrating their liminal sexuality. Finally, the vampires’ instances of procreation are examined through analyses that draw on psychoanalytic concepts and the liminal figure of the trickster to explore the desires and hesitations that vampire makers experience when choosing to transform humans into eternal companions. Rice’s vampires reflect human concerns and fears about invisible otherness, compulsive behavior, and transgressive desires that show how humans are themselves, to some extent, also liminal.
