This book, available freely for
download at Gutenberg.org. The authorship is quite confusing: on the one hand, I had thought that the novella was written by Polidori. Then, having read the letters at the front and back of the story, I thought that Lord Byron had written it. Having now read the Wikipedia article about it, I no longer feel confusion and understand why I was confused in the first place. Polidori, in an attempt (I assume) to promote his book, put Byron's name on the cover to help move sales.
The introduction, titled, “Extract of
a Letter from Geneva” includes a rather negative comment about
women writers. Or, rather, a compliment of one particular female
writer, Madame de Stael, followed by comments disparaging other
female writers:
...that astonishing woman Madame de
Stael: perhaps the first of her sex, who has really proved its often
claimed equality with, the nobler man. We have before had women who
have written interesting novels and poems... but never since the days
of Heloise have those faculties which are peculiar to man, been
developed as the possible inheritance of woman.
I almost dropped the book on that
paragraph. However, being a short novel, I decided to push through. I
don't suppose the author of that letter (I don't know for certain if
that is Polidori himself or someone else) thought it possible that
writing and education were discouraged of women. Often, women would
hide their true gender behind male names in order for their writings
to be taken as seriously as their male counterparts.
Aubrey is born to wealth, but not to
parents who are deceased. As a result, his head is full of the
romanticism of poetry, and entirely neglectful of the harder
realities of life.
He makes a friend, Lord Ruthven, who is
a character described as gladly giving to charity only when those to
receive the alms are wanting to 'wallow in his lust, or to sink him
still deeper in his iniquity, he was sent away with rich charity.' He
loses in gambling those who ruin the desperate, the very money that
he has won from the desperate.
He receives a letter from friends
warning him away from Lord Ruthven, but he ignores their advice.
Lord Ruthven's hobby seems to be to
ruin the good. As a result, Aubrey becomes a target of Lord Ruthven,
who sets up a scenario where he is wounded. He pretends to be on
death's door and asks Aubrey to grant him a dying wish. He does so,
and Ruthven requests that for one year Aubrey would not speak of him
no matter what would happen or be said. He agrees. He does not know
that he has made a pact with a devil.
Ruthven targets Aubrey's sister. Aubrey
wants to warn her, to stop her from marrying him, but he is chained
to his word to Ruthven. I guess he never thought that Ruthven had
deceived him by pretending to die, and therefore it would annul his
own bond. In any case, the day before he is to be released from his
pact, Ruthven marries his sister, presumably lies with her (thereby
taking her virginity/innocence), and is then able to do what vampires
do.
The story is a good short fiction. It's also a first for the genre. There's something especially sweet about reading books or novellas which are literary firsts.
There is another bit at the end about
Lord Byron and how great Lord Byron is for caring little about
literary profit (easy to say when one inherits wealth, though I
recall reading he managed to waste it all).
Apparently this was the first instance of turning the shallower vampire myth into the romanticized version we know today. I wonder, knowing more about it now, if the first letter was written in an attempt at voicing another opinion rather than his own. There is mention of Mary Shelly. So, I'm not sure about his true opinion on that matter (and opinions change).
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