The Vampyre

This weeks reading was difficult for me to get through. The sentences were very long and complex and at times hard for me to understand. One part that I understood right away and found interesting was the beginning of the story where the vampire is being described. “His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement... were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention” (Polidori 7). At first this struck me as odd. If this guy was a vampire then why weren't people afraid of him? Vampires, when first created at least when portrayed on film, were visibly different than normal people, and not in a good way. I just watched the movie Nosferatu, which is the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, in another class. The Vampire in the movie, Nosferatu, is facially deformed with a rather large nose, dark eyes, pale skin, and claw like fingers. This is what I expected to read about in The Vampyre. Instead I was reminded of the effect Edward Cullen has on girls and women today. Even though he is a fictional character, there are people who “wish[] to see him” and if he was real, i'm sure he would be “invited to every house” (Polidori 7). People seem to have this fascination with him because of the way he looks, or rather the way Robert Pattinson looks portraying him in the movie, and the way he acts. The ladies particularly seem taken with him just like the women in The Vampyre were taken with “the vampire”. Many women “attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection” (Polidori 7). They would do anything to get him to notice them like one Lady Mercer who “threw herself in his way, and did all but put on the dress of a mountebank, to attract his notice” (Polidori 7). I was surprised at how similar this description and reaction were to the vampire entertainment of today. Today's portrayals of vampires are genuinely good looking, buff men and women who want to be loved like everyone else.