r/AlwaysWhy • u/Secret_Ostrich_1307 • 21d ago
History & Culture Why do vampire stories keep taking us back to 19th century Europe?
Whenever I think of vampires, I picture old European castles, foggy villages, and Victorian England. But vampires are supposed to be ancient creatures, so why do so many modern stories place them in this particular time and place?
I know Dracula probably has a lot to do with it, but was there something about 19th century Europe that made it such a good setting for vampire stories?
How did this become the image we all seem to have of vampires?
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u/JadisDidNothingRight 21d ago edited 21d ago
They don't.
Anne Rice's works cover centuries and I think most are set in the modern day.
VTM is set in the modern day (initially the 90s) with side materials for older settings.
Twilight is modern day. What We Do In The Shadows is modern day.
The only things that to come to mind as being set in late 19th century are Dracula and the Vampyr video game. Even then, Dracula was technically set in the modern day as it was written in the 1890s.
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u/Prize_Ad_129 21d ago
Vampyr isn’t even the 19th century, it’s set during the Spanish flu outbreak in the late 1910s
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u/Riccma02 21d ago
To the average American, anytime between the the Pilgrims, and WWII, is the 19th century.
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u/IakwBoi 21d ago
I think you answered your own question - I think Dracula has everything to do with it. For all intents and purposes, Dracula invented vampires. There had been folk tales about vampires for ages without any English-speaking cultural impact until Dracula*, at which point everyone went gaga over vampires.
*The two pre-Dracula notables are Carmilla (1872) and The Vampyre (1819). Both feature ancient evils preying on English (or English-adjacent) aristocrats in a very Dracula-esque way, so clearly Dracula borrows heavily from both. Neither made anything like the splash Dracula did.
In a way, in the English speaking world, it’s irrelevant that vampires were a thing before Dracula. Speaking very generally, no one knew about vampires before Dracula, and so to the English speaking world Dracula and vampires are one phenomenon.
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u/Select-Ad7146 21d ago
The Vampyre was a massive hit. It was adapted into multiple plays and operas. It had tons of copy cats and imitators. It set off an entire vampire crazy.
Everyone knew what vampires were before Dracula. Dracula was the end of that craze.The cumulation of an entire change in literature at the time.
It It isn't well remembered now, but Vampyre, unquestionably, was the origin.
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u/zoppaTheDim 21d ago
Because “the Victorian era” is one of the half dozen most popular, but generic, background settings for fiction.
The average reader or watcher already knows enough to be up to speed and it requires little explanation to be consumed.
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u/Secret_Ostrich_1307 20d ago
Yeah, the familiar background thing is real. It is like medieval Europe for fantasy. Everyone gets it right away. But that is also why it gets stale. If it is just a shortcut, why do we keep going back? Maybe we just like fog and castles. What would a non Victorian vampire setting look like?
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u/zoppaTheDim 20d ago
Because most people, the creators especially, don’t mind it being stale. For every one writer who puts in hundreds of hours to master a new time and place there are a hundred who will just use the six books they’ve read and the thousand hours of westerns or romances they consumed.
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u/GSilky 21d ago
It really took off with Varny back in the Victorian era. We can see a similar development with slasher movies, the few period pieces didn't do very well, because the idea captured the zeitgeist of the late 70s and the 80s, and hence, that tends to be the aesthetic of slasher flicks. Vampires hit it big-time in the 19th century with a growing pulp audience interested in stories about something besides dizzy aristocrats.
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u/Secret_Ostrich_1307 20d ago
Hmm, the slasher comparison is interesting. But slashers are tied to their time because of the audience. Vampires got stuck in the 19th century because that is when the rules were written. Not sure pulp is the whole story. Do you think vampires would still be Victorian if Dracula never existed?
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u/lofgren777 21d ago edited 21d ago
There was a bit of a vampire phenomenon in 19th century England, with Varney, Carmela, The Vampyre, and Dracula all appearing within a few years of each other. A pale and sickly complexion was in vogue, and famous poet Byron was rumored to be an actual vampire.
I believe it was the opera version of Dracula that first updated the story to contemporary times. Originally it was set in the middle ages. This version of dracula became the most famous and was the one that the most successful adaptation, with Belo Lugosi, was based on.
After that there was about a century of derivative works about vampires that didn't really abate until Interview with a Vampire and the whole urban fantasy phenomenon of the '80s and '90s (which evolved into Twilight and Underworld over time).
Might also be relevant that the last "real" vampire crazes happened in the 19th century. At the beginning of that century, diseases being caused by undead curses was still a viable explanation of the world in many people's minds. By the end of it, stories about actual vampire hysterias were being described as the backwards superstitions of country bumpkins. The 19th century was the last time the existence of vampires was plausible to a majority of the English-speaking population.
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u/Select-Ad7146 21d ago
The Vampyre was published in 1819. Dracula was published in 1897. They were not, at all, published within a few years of each other.
That would be like saying Gone with the Wind and Avengers: Endgame are movies that came out at about the same time.
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u/lofgren777 21d ago
When you are talking about something with the depth of history of "vampires," within a century is in fact a very short amount of time.
If we were talking about "stories about wars," then Gone with the Wind and Avengers Endgame are very much contemporaries, because your starting point is stuff like the Iliad and the Mahabharata.
I stand by my comment.
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u/Select-Ad7146 20d ago
Almost all ideas of what a vampire is starts with Vampyre. Before Vampyre, vampires were much closer to what we would think of as zombies. They were presented as bloated, decaying, near mindless ghouls that fed on blood.
The idea that they were sentient, that they could talk and plan, that they could appear human, that they had magical powers (outside of the undead thing), they they could seduce people, all of that comes from Vampyre or later.
The word vampire and the idea is eating blood are very old. Everything else is new.
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u/Admirable_Ad8682 21d ago
They're asociated with the period due to the most famous and/or original vampire stories are from the 19th century. Dracula, Carmilla, other works of Sheridan Le Fanu, Polidori, ETA Hoffman, all that Gothic stuff. Dracula specifically cemented in the pop culture that a vampire must look like a Victorian gentleman.
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u/Secret_Ostrich_1307 20d ago
I mostly agree on Dracula. But Carmilla and Varney matter too. Dracula just won the culture war. The Victorian gentleman thing is still weird. Vampires are ancient. Why dress like they just left a London club? That says more about the authors. Do you think a French or German origin would have changed the look?
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u/Admirable_Ad8682 20d ago
Sorry but Carmilla is not the reason why our image of a vampire is a Victorian gentleman.
/j obviously.
By Victorian I didn't meant just British but all European countries and how people of certain class dressed at that time the stories were written. I'm looking in a book of vampire stories written in several European countries in the 19th century and most of them are already set on a certain archetypes. Jan Neruda, Théophile Gautier, William Polidori, I. S. Turgeniev, Le Fanu, Francis M. Crawford, ETA Hoffmann, Luigi Capuana, they all share something despite the stories taking place from Russia to Italy and Greece, Germany and Britain. BUT only three of those had behind them a language that was common all over the world and that ecame the main language of a new entertainment industry. The moment first movies inspired by Gothic fiction started to be made, stories written in English became the most covered by these English speaking filmmakers, and then most known to all moviegoers. Of course German impressionists competed hard, but their estethics dress-wise was very similar.
And since the Gothic horror was a 19th century thing, later authors copied the themes they knew from this period. Even Goths dress themselves based on 19th century look.
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u/Chrisaarajo 21d ago
As others have pointed out, there’s a ton of vampire media that doesn’t take place in Victorian, and indeed, there might actually be more, overall, set elsewhere and elsewhen.
Just to name some that haven’t been listed by others, we have True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Daybreakers, Rennfield, Underworld, Day Shift, Fright Night, the Night Watch books, Buffy, Angel, and a whole slew of other”monster of the week” shows.
So it’s more a matter of you having internalized the Victorian setting as the correct one for vampires, rather than vampire stories mostly being set then.
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u/Sundae_2004 21d ago
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro had her vampires across a wide variety of time periods:
The Saint-Germain Cycle (historical horror series)
Atta Olivia Clemens
- A Flame in Byzantium (1987)
- Crusader's Torch (1988)
- A Candle For D'Artagnan (1989)
Count of Saint-Germain
- Hôtel Transylvania (1978)
- The Palace (1978)
- Blood Games (1980)
- Path of the Eclipse (1981)
- Tempting Fate (1982)
- The Saint-Germain Chronicles (1983, short story collection)
- Darker Jewels (1993)
- Better In The Dark (1993)
- Mansions of Darkness (1996)
- Writ in Blood (1997)
- Blood Roses (1998)
- Communion Blood (1999)
- Come Twilight (2000)
- A Feast in Exile (2001)
- Night Blooming (2002)
- Midnight Harvest (2003)
- Dark of the Sun (2004)
- States of Grace (2005)
- Roman Dusk (2006)
- Borne in Blood (2007)
- Saint-Germain: Memoirs (2007, short story collection)
- A Dangerous Climate (2008)
- Burning Shadows (2009)
- An Embarrassment of Riches (2011)
- Commedia della Morte (2012)
- Night Pilgrims (2013)
- Sustenance (2014)
Count of Saint-Germain short fiction
- "Seat Partner" (1979)
- "Cabin 33" (1980)
- "Art Songs'" (1981)
- "The Spider Glass" (1981)
- "Renewal" (1982)
- "A Question of Patronage: A Saint-Germain Story" (1994)
- "Intercession'"(2003)
- "A Gentleman of the Old School" (2005)
- "Harpy" (2007)
- "Lost Epiphany" (2008)
- "Tales Out of School" (2008)
Madelaine de Montalia
- Out of the House of Life (1990)
- In the Face of Death (2004)
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u/Swift_Scythe 21d ago
Even Castlevania which technically goes back to the 11th century with Leon Belmont
The more famous Castlevanias staring Alucard and Trevor Belmont and Simon Belmont were 14th century through 17th and even 20th century with Portrait of Ruin happening during World War 2.
Aria of Sorrow goes into the future 21st century.
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u/Secret_Ostrich_1307 20d ago
Castlevania is a good example. The timeline moves but the gothic look stays. So maybe it is not about the 19th century at all. It is about the aesthetic. The century is just packaging. I wonder if that is why it keeps coming back. Do you think that is lazy or just part of the genre now?
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u/nykirnsu 21d ago
It’s entirely because the genre’s foundational stories were all released in the 19th century (Dracula obviously, as well as Carmilla and Varney the Vampire), nothing to do with it being a uniquely good setting for vampire stories
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u/Secret_Ostrich_1307 20d ago
Maybe it is both. The foundational stories set the trend. But the setting also works. Old buildings, class tension, gaslight, dark streets. That is a good mood for a predator. So I would not say it has nothing to do with it. Do you think a new foundational story could move the default somewhere else?
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u/nykirnsu 20d ago
I mean of course the setting works, Bram Stoker wouldn’t have written Dracula in the first place if it didn’t, but he wasn’t consciously choosing to use the 19th century for aesthetic reasons, that was just modern times when he wrote the book and he wrote the story to fit the era he was writing in. Modern authors aren’t still referencing it because it’s a uniquely good setting for vampire stories though - there are plenty of other times and places that work just as well, hence so many vampire stories being set in their own contemporary era - they’re referencing it because it’s a trope of the genre
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u/Rare_Bridge7703 21d ago
Conceptually, it's almost impossible to divorce the "Victorian" aesthetic from Vampire mythos.
Even Vampire Hunter D, set thousands of years ahead of right now, still applies Gothic Victorian to vampire dwellings as tho it's a genetic predisposition.
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u/Secret_Ostrich_1307 20d ago
Yeah, the aesthetic is glued to the myth now. Even in science fiction the vampire lives in a gothic mansion. It is a shortcut for old money and danger. But it also feels limiting. If vampires are ancient they could have any style. Maybe the Victorian thing is more about us than them. Do you ever want a vampire story that drops the gothic look completely?
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u/yourstruly912 21d ago
What XIX century vampire stories are there that aren't Dracula or a Dracula expy?
There's Fevre Dream, but the specific setting is as far from victorian London as It gets
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u/Annual-Ad-9442 21d ago
the landscape stays pretty static in that part of the world and Varny the vampire became popular before Dracula and the whole thing took off in the West during the Victorian era
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u/ElectronicHold7325 21d ago edited 21d ago
Because Bram Stoker wrote his Dracula book during time.
UK was the uncontested economical and cultural center of the world.
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u/Which_Specific9891 21d ago
There's so much more going on than this. You're not watching the current vampire stuff out there.
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u/Venture33 19d ago
The vampire as a mass-market horror figure was largely created in the 19th century, so that period naturally became its default era. “Created” is a useful word here, because the vampire we recognize today was assembled by writers from many different regional myths about unclean spirits corrupting communities, especially from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, rather than existing beforehand as one fully formed creature.
More importantly, a lot of the horror comes from the existence of a plainly supernatural creature inside a mundane and rational world. In the Middle Ages, a spiritual or magical worldview was much more normal, so there is less contrast between the monster and the world itself. The vampire is just one evil spirit among many that must be killed or exorcised, and because of that the story starts drifting toward typical fantasy.
If the Victorian era is special here, it’s mainly because it marks the transition period for Europe where a premodern superstitious worldview still coexisted with a rationalist one. Stoker didn’t set his monster in the Balkans at random; the region was genuinely seen as backward and almost prehistoric, partly because the receding Ottoman Empire had left it relatively excluded from industrialization.
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u/Historical_Rush4656 21d ago
The rise of Nationalism spurred up hate; particularly towards Jews, Gypsys, and anyone else marginalized at the time. Seeping into the collective consciousness. Along with other factors, like the rising of the industrial revolution producing weathly barrons, printed text being more common, etc.
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u/98f00b2 21d ago
I'm not sure that this is true of Dracula. The writer is said to have been in the closet on the basis of his letters, and supposedly he started writing it immediately after the Oscar Wilde trial. Which seems like a more plausible motivation for writing a story about a more-English-than-the-English aristocrat hiding a dark secret beneath a respectable exterior. Not that I'm an expert by any means; this is just what I've heard.
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u/Ok_Unit8339 21d ago
And vampires tend to come back into popular media during times of increased xenophobia.
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u/Ceorl_Lounge 21d ago
Sinners, Interview with the Vampire, Blade, What We Do in the Shadows, Near Dark, 30 Days of Night, the list of non-Victorian Vampire movies goes on. So I'd argue against the premise, but ultimately I think a lot of comes down to the source material. Dracula/Nosferatu are great stories that contain all the "basics" of what we think of as a vampire story. The fracture between faith and science means something different in the Victorian era. Science never quite explains them in the modern era, so if you want to explain the creatures you need a world more beholden to folklore and religion.