Blood Ties: The Vampire Lover in the Popular Romance

A perusal of the popular novel section in any bookstore will affirm that the paranormal, and specifically the vampire figure, is enjoying a resurgence of interest among readers. Not to be outdone, the film and television industry is currently benefiting from this interest and producing works like the film Twilight, based on the book by Stephanie Meyer, and the TV show True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series. That these particular examples originate from novels that fall into the popular romance genre is not unexpected. According to statistics brought out by Romance Writers of America, in 2009, the paranormal subgenre made up 17.16% of the popular romance genre, which in itself comprised 54% of all books sold by the publishing industry.1 Until a few years ago, only a few popular romance authors, for instance, Christine Feehan, Emma Holly, and Sherilyn Kenyon, were writing paranormals. Since then, this subgenre, and with it the preponderance of vampires as lovers that feature in these books, has increased exponentially in terms of sales and popularity; so much so that well established authors in the field who were usually linked to historical or contemporary romances, such as Norah Roberts, Heather Graham, and Christina Dodd, are now writing paranormals. That the paranormal, and by extension the vampire figure, would appear so prominently in popular romance novels is not altogether surprising as the romance genre is one that is dynamic and constantly reflecting and lending itself to the inclusion of current social and cultural trends.2 In the paranormal romances, the conventions and practices of the vampire found in horror novels are appropriated and transformed by popular romance writers into the essence of women's fantasy heroes. In these novels, the image of vampire as predator and, more importantly, the taking of blood or the blood exchange between the protagonists become the very elements that enhance, consolidate, and secure the couple's romantic relationship. Though the traditional vampire with its association with evil or its persona as an agent of the devil may seem an unlikely model for the archetypal popular romance hero, the vampire hero, in fact, follows closely the paradigm of what Jane Gordon calls the sympathetic vampire. Gordon differentiates between the vampire figures in horror novels as inherently evil "whose power over [their] prey is both extraordinary and cruel" (230), and the sympathetic vampires who rather than being "super-killers" are "super-survivors" (230). These vampires "must live in harmony with their world, be flexible, adaptable, and possess stamina," writes Gordon, adding that in this new depiction the sympathetic vampire "retains its strength, but loses its terror" (230). Gordon goes on to suggest that generally women who write about the vampire avoid the horror genre as, in that particular genre, power relations reflecting the cultural male view where the female is subjugated to his will are reproduced. In contrast, according to Gordon, in women's vampire fiction there is no hierarchy of power where either the male or female are the dominant figures but instead a partnership based on equality is formed. The relationships reflect "female notions of power" where "[the] power does not involve a rigid chain of command or competition; instead it focuses on cooperation and endurance" (230). This view is especially pertinent when considering the vampire romance novel (a genre predominantly written by women for women) which sets out to redefine perceptions of the traditional vampire and vampire lore. Typically, the vampire archetype in the paranormal romance adheres closely to the model of the Gothic romance hero in the Heathcliffean or Byronic mode, a standard in the romance novel genre. In the gothic romances, the hero is usually depicted as "dark and brooding, writhing inside with all the residual anguish of his shadowed past, world-weary and cynical, quick-tempered and prone to fits of guilt and depression. …