A Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls - By Red Page 0,20

that would be eighty-one years before that Bram Stoker guy wrote that book called Dracula.

Now, we’re going to leave aside speculation on the nature of the relationship between Polidori and his “good friend,”

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Lord Byron. One thing we can say with a fair amount of confidence is that the vampire in Polidori’s tale was a thinly veiled depiction of Byron himself: mesmerizing, scheming, deceitful, womanizing, eccentric, and, in his own strange way, utterly charming. Remind you of anyone you know?

Perhaps Damon Salvatore?

In this first literary vampire tale, written long before Ian Somerhalder smirked his way onto the camera, a young, wealthy Englishman named Aubrey befriends Lord Ruthven, a popular if somewhat aloof member of London society who invites Aubrey to go abroad with him. The two travel to Italy, where Aubrey discovers that Ruthven enjoys making others miserable and robbing innocent young women of their virginity (perv!). Aubrey decides to leave Ruthven’s company, pausing just long enough to prevent one girl from being dishonored (what a guy!), and finds some peace in Greece, where he falls in love with a local peasant girl. It’s there that he first hears of creatures called “vampyres,” and they remind him of Ruthven in a way he cannot quite put his finger on (creepy!). Soon after, the peasant girl is killed by a vampyre and Aubrey is nearly driven mad with grief. When he recovers, he finds that Ruthven has been caring for him during his time of mourning. He feels he owes a debt to him, so he agrees to travel with him again. Soon after, they are ambushed by robbers and Ruthven is mortally wounded. On his deathbed, he makes Aubrey swear that he will not talk about him or his death for a year and a day. Somewhat confused, Aubrey agrees (sucker!). Once back in London, he discovers, to his horror, that Ruthven is still alive, posing as 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 53

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• A V i s i t o r ’ s G u i d e t o M y s t i c F a l l s •

the Earl of Marsden, and wooing Aubrey’s pure, virginal sister. Forced to keep silent, unable to save his sister, Aubrey has a nervous breakdown. By the time he (finally!) resolves to break his oath and tell them all the truth about Marsden/

Ruthven, they all think he’s totally insane and discard his claims as delusional. On the day before the oath ends, his sister marries Ruthven. The next day, Aubrey is able to calmly and clearly tell them everything, and this time they believe him (why now?). But then he dies. His friends and caretakers try to save his sister, but they’re too late. The last line reads, “Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey’s sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!”

One of the things most striking to a modern reader about

“The Vampyre” is its blatant objectification of women. The two female characters, Aubrey’s Greek girlfriend and his sister, are utterly helpless and little more than scenery and tools for Ruthven to drive poor Aubrey mad. Neither of them have a single line of dialogue or character development. Well, unless you consider dying to be character development. In an introduction to “The Vampyre,” Polidori describes the author Madame de Stael as “perhaps the first of her sex, who has really proved its often claimed equality with the nobler Man.” So I think it’s pretty clear how he views women in general.

After Polidori’s book, but still twenty-five years before Dracula, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu wrote the first story about a female vampire, Carmilla: A Vampyre. The title character is said to be based on the historical figure of Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian countess who bathed in the blood of virgin 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 54

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servant girls to keep her youthful appearance. In the story, Carmilla is a two-hundred-year-old upper-class teenage girl who preys on other upper-class teenage girls by first becoming their BFF, then killing them at a sleepover. The lesbian undertones are pretty hard to miss and it’s difficult to know if the author was exceptionally liberal and