Human beings possess an innate drive to create tension; psychologist
Carl Jung will
argue that this is because the unconscious mind contains animalistic
desires that are socially
unacceptable and must be suppressed. However, these dark cravings of
sexuality and violence
manifest in other, more tolerable, forms, such as literature. For
centuries, authors have projected
their inner wishes into writing, allowing themselves and their audience
to enjoy what is normally
disapproved. Vampire and werewolf topics especially serve as a means to
express sexual and
aggressive urges. Although sex and violence are considered far less
taboo acts in today‟s world,
earlier time periods rely on stories to illustrate what is denied by
society‟s standards, particularly
in the Victorian era. The Victorian period builds upon the Gothic
ideology created during the
Romantic era, so Gothic ideas do not disappear with the passing
decades—its exploitation of
forbidden desires continues to influence Victorian writers, like Bram
Stoker and Clemence
Housman.
During this time, arguably the greatest vampire novel (in terms of its
effect on vampire
culture) emerges when Stoker introduces Dracula to Victorian
England and to the world. While
this signifies a monumental moment for vampire intrigue, werewolf
stories do not collect as
much literary regard until years later. No great werewolf novel is
created for Victorian England;
instead, several short stories develop, such as Housman‟s “The
Werewolf.” Yet even these
stories fail to compare to Dracula. One must ask why this is this
case. Both werewolves and
vampires symbolize the socially unacceptable “other,” where the term,
“other,” represents the
socially deviant outsider who fails to conform (sometimes by choice) to
societal standards. Even
so, Victorian England still identifies more with the vampire
manifestation of this “other.” To
thoroughly examine a vampire versus a werewolf, one finds several
similarities in terms of
violence and physical origins; however, werewolves express a less
humanistic, sexually
repulsive, nature, which causes society to initially reject them.
When studying the origins of vampire and werewolf myths, one discovers
that there are
historical examples for both of these supernatural ideas. Essentially,
true, physical cases of
lycanthropy and vampirism exist, evidence that enhances the fear and
intrigue behind the myths
and behind the stories created with these myths. In her anthology of
short werewolf stories,
Charlotte Otten points out this very concept, noting,
It is dizzying, however, to enter the world of the fictive werewolf. It
is not an isolated,
artificially constructed world. Outside the fictive world of werewolves
there exists a
world in which the actuality of werewolves has been validated…the world
of werewolf
fiction is so unsettling because luring in the culture are documented
instances of
lycanthropy. The distinction between fiction and actual life blurs. The
horror intensifies
(xxxi).
