Vampires are almost common place in late nineteenth-century literature. The century begins with the popularity of the Byron-inspired Count Ruthven, then Le Fanu's Carmilla, and closes with Bram Stoker's Dracula, which will be discussed at length. In addition to these well-known texts, European and American vampires are created by Alexandre Dumas (The Vampire of the Carpathian Mountains," 1849), Robert Louis Stevenson ("Olalla," 1885), Guy de Maupassant ("The Horla," 1887), Florence Marryat (Blood of the Vampire, 1897), and Cora Linn Daniels (Sardia: A Story of Love, 1891), which will be examined in this section. Most of the stories just named employ a female vampire, as Mario Perez notes, "In the second half of the nineteenth-century the vampire becomes a woman" (Perez 77).
In both of these late Victorian texts, fears of women's social and sexual independence are encoded into the vampire narrative. While Stoker is more blatant about his vampiric incarnation of the New Woman and her fatal effect on England's male population, Daniels' vampire is used to comment on a self-made woman's psyche and the effect her own tortured conscious has on her life.
Sardia: A Story of Love was published in 1891 by Cora Linn Daniels, an American author. It is a story of a wedding for convenience and money that turns into true love. It is also a story of upperclass intrigue and deception as the reader is introduced to Sybil Vistoni, the last of a line of Italian aristocracy who has come to America in pursuit of a father for her illegitimate son. Sybil is considered a vampire for two reasons. First, because she is called a vampire both by characters in the novel and the narrator. Second, Sybil embodies the traditional construction of the vamp: "The vamp [is] the dark shadow of the Victorian virtuous woman. She [is] immoral, tainted with powerful, dark sexuality" (Melton 627).
Sybil is a magnificent woman who is not only beautiful, but well studied in the arts of the stage, so she is graceful and communicative in her every action. She has dark features, hair, skin and eyes and "scarlet lips" (Daniels 17, 49). Ralfe cites Sybil as having a "wonderful power" (17) Guy states she is a "fascinating, dangerous, subtle woman" (23). Like Bertha, Sybil's creation scene must be pieced together from before and after representations of Sybil. Helen remembers Sybil as "never saying an unkind or evil thing of anyone" who served as "our model for grace of manner" (20, 19). This is a very different image from that of the Sybil who now visits. As Stoker's Lucy reveals herself as a vampire only in sleep, Sybil's inner self shows through as she drowses:
Her countenance assumed a new expression. All the glow, the enthusiasm, the glamour with which she enchanted her adorers faded out. A cold hard malicious sneer tightened the upper lip; the under lip hung loosely down and rolled outward with so animal a look that Lulu in innocent disgust turned away with a shudder (51).
Sybil is revealed to be a grotesque image of herself, so disgusting, the naive Lulu must look away. As will be the focus of Cave's "Stragella," what reveals Sybil's true nature is her lips and the "animal" look they convey. When Ralfe recalls this image of the Visonti, he marks it as a "strange, horrible expression" (76). Lips, as the evaluation of "Stragella" will explore, often symbolize the female genitalia, paralleling a hungry mouth with a ravenous sexual appetite. If Sybil's lips mark are her only physical indication of her vampiric nature, then that nature stems from her sexual behavior.
As evidence of Sybil's creation, Daniels presents the reader with a "before" image of Sybil as remembered by Helen, the current male opinion of Sybil's power, and the image of the concealed Sybil which becomes apparent while she sleeps. Unlike Brontë, however, Daniels allows her vampire a voice and the reader is privy to several ongoing internal dialogues; one of which concerns Sybil's meeting and subsequent affair with Julian Savelli. Julian, like Walter and Rochester, puts Sybil on the path to vampirehood.
After they meet, Julian insists that Sybil belongs to him "body and soul," that he is her "master" (81). Sybil calls Julian a "savage creature" with "flashing eyes" who sweeps her away (81). Julian teaches the young Sybil "his code of existence" which central rule is to "enjoy himself" (86). Julian instructs Sybil on how "[t]o elude, to watch, to risk, to plan, to scheme, and to trust luck" (86). These skills, the traits with which Julian teaches her, marks Sybil now as a vampire. Sybil Visonti feeds from the acquaintances who now surround her. Auerbach notes, "Only when vampires are women do their friends become literal prey" (Our18).
Unlike most women in Victorian literature who bear illegitimate children, Sybil does not die. Instead, she goes mad. Daniels provides hints of Sybil's deteriorating mind throughout the novel. In one instance, Sybil remarks to herself, "Good Heavens! Why can't I keep my thoughts in order? I could once" (Daniels 80). In another moment, the narrator remarks, "[Sybil's] very mind seemed congealed" indicating that Sybil is unable to think of a lie, or some other excuse, to save her from the confrontation she now faces.
The final blow to Sybil's sanity occurs when she kills Julian because he will not marry her. Sybil's madness is not exposed in its entirety until, after witnessing her child call Helen mother, she strikes Helen, knocking baby Ralfe into the snow. The assembled crowd, the narrator informs the reader, concludes, "they were but confirmed in the opinion that Sybil Visonti was hopelessly insane" (291). It is this insanity which removes Sybil from the Fielding's home. A doctor pronounces Sybil "a maniac, dangerous, and incurable" and removes her to an asylum where she will be "properly restrained" (296). Though Sybil does not die a mortal death as far as the novel is concerned, she is successfully removed, incapacitated, and punished. At this moment, the cycle of the madwoman vampire confined and silenced starts all over. Un like Brontë, however, Daniels' makes sure there is just reasoning behind the condemnation.