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This essay discusses the representation of the female in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire with reference specifically to the character of Claudia. Interview was first published in 1976 and has had to date 8 sequels in the Vampire Chronicles and New Tales of the Vampires series since The Vampire Lestat in 1985.(1) The film adaptation directed by Neil Jordan in 1994 follows the novel fairly closely, but there are significant differences, some of which will be discussed below.
In the novel, Lestat, a decadent, established vampire, initiates Louis, a New Orleans plantation owner. Louis becomes a vampire with a conscience, troubled at taking life. In plague-ridden France, Louis finds a poor young girl, Claudia, whose mother has just died. To rescue her, he tums her into a vampire, thus starting a vampire family in which the young Claudia, fierce, relentless, never ages.
In my own experience, female readers are interested in Claudia, though her character is generally ignored by critics and reviewers, who tend to concentrate solely on Louis and Lestat. Nina Auerbach describes Claudia as "bristling with feminist significance" (154). It is notable, however, that having made this comment, she spends only one page discussing Claudia. This is indicative of the situation I will describe and analyze. Much is made of the freedom and independence of Rice's vampires, as well as their sensitivity and their awareness of their own and the human condition. Previous vampire literature focused on the human characters as potential victims or vampire hunters, while the vampires themselves were alien, other, unknowable and voiceless. Many have claimed that Rice was the first to present vampires as subject, not object, to let them tell their own story.
According to biographer Katherine Ramsland, Rice has stated that she sees her vampires as existing in a state where gender is unimportant: "she views vampires as affording a gender-free perspective, or images of `lovers as equals'" and sees them as "equally franchised human beings" (148). Thus, Rice's vampires are androgynous and sexually ambiguous. Yet, as at least one critic points out, this so-called androgyny or "gender-free" state is contrived by erasing women -- the novel's main characters are male.(2)
Rice has stated that "Claudia is the embodiment of my failure to deal with...