With This Ring, You’ll Be Dead: Violence Against Female Protagonists in Romantic Vampire Fiction: Part 4: Marriage

Breaking Dawn: Part 1

Editor’s Note: content warning for violence, abuse, and potentially triggering subject matter.

Marrying a vampire is a terrible idea. Just ask Dracula’s brides. As much as I love Bram Stoker’s novel, most of Dracula’s “romantic” encounters are nonconsensual. He uses mesmerism or some other form of mind control to seduce his prey and then he uses the bodies of his victims until they have nothing more to give. Who are The Brides of Dracula? What do we know about them? We know very little about them beyond the fact that they are apparently three sisters, two with dark hair and eyes, one with blonde hair and blue eyes. We know that they are undead like Dracula, but how long have they been vampires? We know that they are beautiful and use their powers of seduction to entrance men before devouring them, but they seem to have a preference for eating babies. Who are they? Where did they come from? Did they each have their own wedding ceremony? A honeymoon? Are we to consider them a harem? Based on their behavior in several film adaptations of the novel, it would appear that they are in an open marriage with Dracula, since they not only drink the blood of their male victims, but also engage in sexual acts. What happens to them after Dracula leaves Transylvanian for England? Does he simply abandon them while he goes in pursuit of Mina Murray?

Typically, in vampire romance, there is no such thing as divorce for vampires. They take that whole “till death do us part” thing very seriously. Happily ever after or not, vampires remain married to their spouses until one of them dies. So, what happened to Dracula’s three brides in Transylvania? Did he leave a note telling them he went out for a pack of cigarettes and just never came back? Or, did he pull a Henry VIII and kill them before looking for his next wife? Stoker may have gotten the idea for Dracula’s brides from folktales like “How the Devil Married Three Sisters” (Italian), which is closely related to “Bluebeard” (French), and “The Robber Bridegroom” (German). In each folktale a monster (or man) pretends to be something he isn’t and tricks women into marrying him. As long as the women behave and do as they are told, nothing bad will happen to them. How do you think these tales end? Not happily ever after. Dracula’s brides didn’t get their happily ever after either.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

In part 2 of this series that dealt with seduction, I posited that rather than viewing a vampire’s predatory behavior like stalking as romantic, perhaps we should be reading romantic vampire fiction as cautionary tales. In part 1 I looked closely at the behavior of stalking and like serial killers, vampires stalk their prey/love interests in order to learn their routines and secrets, usually while their victim is asleep, or at least unaware that they are being watched. And, in part 3, I talked about the dangers of dating a vampire and becoming too comfortable with their violent lifestyles. Because after the vampire stalks and seduces you, and you agree to date them exclusively, the next logical step, at least in their minds, is matrimony.

Traditionally, marriages had nothing to do with love and everything to do with building alliances between families to secure wealth. Marriages were typically arranged and usually involved an exchange of money, goods, or property. A rather cynical, but perhaps realistic view of marriage, given its extremely sexist origin story, is that marriage was created as a legal contract by which a man could acquire a female slave. This reference isn’t about the transatlantic African slave trade, but rather ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman traditions. Women and girls were viewed as property and were given to a man and his family through a marriage ceremony for better trade, social status, and economic growth.

To a certain extent, vampires view their mates as property. A trope within romantic vampire fiction suggests that vampires are very territorial when it comes to their land, wealth, and property, and by extension, anyone they love or have a sexual relationship with. Modern vampires still have rather antiquated views of love and marriage. Which shouldn’t be surprising since most of the male vampires in romantic vampire fiction are at least over one-hundred years old. Matthew Clairmont is over 1500 years old, and he became a vampire at the age of 37. To say that he is old-fashioned would be an understatement, but he also has some very modern views around science and balks at some of the traditions around vampire courtship and marriage. He is expected to consummate his relationship with Diana Bishop before they are wed as a sign of his true feelings for her. When Diana and Matthew travel back in time in Shadow of Night, the second book in the All Souls Trilogy, Matthew’s vampire father, Philippe de Clermont, forbids Matthew from sharing a bed with Diana until they are wed, because he has chosen not to fully consummate their relationship yet. Philippe is trying to teach Matthew a lesson about the expectations of vampire culture that dictate a need for proof of a relationship between a vampire and his mate. Philippe makes a point of smelling Diana, which enrages Matthew because he views that as a threat to her safety and a challenge to his manhood, given how delicious Diana smells (her Weaver witch blood), and the fact that her scent and Matthew’s aren’t commingled enough to show a serious connection between them. Oh, and there’s the small problem of vampires being forbidden to marry and mate with witches.

Vampire culture has some very strict rules about wedlock. In Jeaniene Frost’s First Drop of Crimson (2010), Spade explains the cultural practices around vampire marriage in internal dialog after he explains to his love interest, Denise, that he was married when he was human, but no longer married since his wife has been dead for two centuries:

Marriage in undead terms was far more rigid than a human marriage. He’d be risking Denise’s life if he were married by vampire law. The punishment for anyone committing adultery with a vampire’s spouse was death without reprisal, should the wronged spouse choose to exercise his or her right. With their very long lives, no wonder marriage was an uncommon state for vampires. Humans have enough trouble with marriage when it was only a half-century commitment at best (pg. 218).

A vampire marriage must be witnessed by other vampires and usually involves an exchange of blood and an oath. And, in many cases, a couple must consummate their marriage either before or after the ceremony in order for vampire society to accept the union. If you have the ability to live for more than one-thousand years, marriage would have to be a serious institution within that culture. Which is why, in each of the popular vampire romance examples I talked about previously — Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy, and The Vampire Diaries (TV adaptation) — the male vampire lead stresses to the female human (or witch, or dopplëganger, etc.) how serious the union they are agreeing to really is within vampire society. There is no going back once they say “I do.” In the Night Huntress series, several vampires marry women who aren’t vampires. At least, not at first. They have public marriage ceremonies as a celebration to acknowledge how serious the vampire is about the woman, but under vampire law, until that woman becomes a vampire she is not considered a true spouse.

Which brings me to the fact that if you plan on marrying a vampire and want to have your eternity of happily ever after, the man you love will have to kill you and raise you as one of the undead. I’m going to reiterate that. The person you have grown to love, trust, and share your most private moments with must drink all of your blood until your heart stops and then force-feed you his blood and then human blood after that so that you can have a legitimate marriage. You will be murdered in the name of adhering to a societal rule that governs who is and is not recognized as being married to each other. Much like interracial couples who wished to marry in Jim Crow America, they couldn’t have a legally binding ceremony except in certain states. When they returned to their own state, the marriage wasn’t recognized, and it was illegal to live as a married couple due to miscegenation laws. The landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia began the process for states to change their laws around interracial marriage. I wonder when vampire society will catch up and accept the marriages between vampires and humans (or witches, or demons, or dopplëgangers, etc.) as legally binding contracts. Until they do, charming, handsome vampires will continue to murder their lovers in order to prove that their love is genuine.

Of course, if you’re Bella Swan, you will only agree to get married if your fiancé agrees to kill you and make you a vampire before you turn eighteen, which as we all know, is the last birthday you should ever have to celebrate if you hope to remain attractive and relevant. What’s that saying? Live fast. Die young. Leave a pretty corpse? Vampires can’t take all the credit for the disturbing behavior found in romantic vampire fiction. In the preface of Breaking Dawn, Bella acts as narrator and explains her thoughts on what it means to love someone:

I’d had more than my fair share of near-death experiences; it wasn’t something you really got used to. It seemed oddly inevitable, though, facing death again. Like I really was marked for disaster. I’d escaped time and time again, but it kept coming back to me. Still, this time was so different from the others. You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated. All my reactions were geared toward those kinds of killers — the monsters, the enemies. When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved? (pg. 1-2)

Does that sound like love to you? It shouldn’t. Dying to save a loved one, or to protect and keep them safe is one thing. Doing so is tragic, but somewhat heroic. Dying at the hands of a monster simply because they love you and you love them doesn’t sound very romantic to me. Giving your life to make a vampire (or anyone else) happy isn’t a sacrifice, it’s suicide. Assisted suicide, but suicide nonetheless. Bella’s insistence to die in Edward’s loving embrace makes me think that she would be a perfect candidate for the Manson Family. She’s willing to die in order to be worthy of the love that Edward is offering. She would give anything, including her life, to be by his side. What’s really strange about this scenario is that he isn’t the one pushing for her to change. Edward tries to postpone murdering her indefinitely. He wants her to enjoy her human life, and he experiences a lot of guilt around the fact that by becoming his wife, Bella will be giving up her ability to grow old and have children. But, those are some of the consequences of falling in love with a vampire when you are human.

In a completely unexpected turn of events, vampires can apparently impregnate human women in the Twilight Saga. While on honeymoon, Edward manages to knock up Bella. Edward is unaware that this is a possibility, because vampires and humans don’t marry and mate. It’s forbidden. And, I’m guessing the reason it’s forbidden is the potential for hybrid vampires. Turning a child into a vampire is a crime punishable by death within their vampire society, but since hybrid children are so rare, who knows how the Volturi will respond to this abomination. Because it’s a weird monster baby, the gestation period is much quicker than if she were pregnant to a human. Bella’s pregnancy, regardless of how short it is, is an excellent example of body horror. Becoming pregnant with a monster is a common trope in horror fiction, with the most famous example being Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967). Not only do mothers of monster children experience traumatic and painful pregnancies that endanger their lives, but the mothers also tend to be insanely protective of the monstrous offspring inside them. So, whether you’re pregnant with the Antichrist, or a vampire hybrid, chances are that your fragile human body will be no match for the monster growing inside you. In fact, as it turns out, Edward isn’t really the one who kills Bella. Her child nearly kills her, and Edward ends up turning her in order to save her.

You’d think that this was a unique set of circumstances in romantic vampire fiction, but no. Matthew Clairmont manages to impregnate Diana Bishop in Shadow of Night. Matthew and Diana are able to procreate because she is a special kind of witch, a Weaver. Weaver magic is different than other witches’ magic and their DNA is compatible with vampire DNA for some reason. Again, Matthew did not know it was possible for vampires to create children and he is, like Edward, horrified. Not only because he is worried about the health and safety of his mate, but also because the rest of the world will absolutely lose their shit when they find out about this creature. Again, mixing between the species is forbidden and Diana’s pregnancy gives us a bit of insight into why.

While Diana Bishop’s pregnancy is troublesome, the more pressing issue that underlies her relationship with Matthew Clairmont is that part of his attraction to her is the fact that much like the rare wines he collects, Diana’s Weaver blood is intoxicating to him to the point of addiction. Her scent is enough to drive him crazy, but his desire to taste her blood is extremely dangerous in his case since he suffers from a rare form of bloodlust. Essentially, Diana is the most delicious woman Matthew has ever dated. While many of us have fantasized about being devoured by a gorgeous monster, there’s a very fine line between arousal and hunger when it comes to vampires. Matthew’s signals might get crossed and then he’d bleed Diana dry.

A Discovery of Witches

In A Discovery of Witches, while having a romantic moment with Matthew, Diana asks a question (much like Bella) that teeters on a tightrope between flirtation and an open invitation to murder her. Without thinking clearly about the fact that she’s alone with a vampire who has not only been stalking her, but has also appointed himself as her personal bodyguard, she asks him what she’d taste like as they are casually discussing wine preferences. He becomes upset and reminds her of the potential danger he poses to her, but not before he wraps his arms around her, presses his nose to her skin, and then describes her scent the way a sommelier would describe a fine wine. The scene is weirdly erotic, while simultaneously being a textbook example of red flags to avoid in a relationship.

While there are some obvious perks to marrying a vampire — wealth, sex appeal, old-world charm, rapacious sexdrive, access to a staggering amount of White privilege, and the possibility of eternal youth coupled with superhuman strength — the cons often outweigh the pros. Most notably, the fact that your lover will eventually murder you if the relationship is going to last. And then, you will become a murderer, despite whatever aversions you might have to serial killers.

After reading this series of blog posts, you might be inclined to think that I wish to discourage people from enjoying romantic vampire fiction. That was never my intention. In fact, I love reading this subgenre of fiction, and while I know falling in love with monsters is a terrible idea, I still think vampires are smoking hot and I get aggravated when female protagonists wrestle with the idea of whether they should or shouldn’t develop a sexual relationship with a vampire. Is it a bad idea? Yes. Should they do it anyway? Absolutely. Do I think romanticized violence is problematic? Of course I do. But again, I strongly recommend reading these novels as cautionary tales to help us identify abusive and narcissistic partners. Vampires are undoubtedly sexy, but we shouldn’t use them as benchmarks for finding a mate.