They Walk Amongst Us: A History into Vampire Class and Social Anxieties, An Online Exhibition

My target audience for my online museum exhibition is lovers of the gothic, more specifically vampire stories. I am targeting those who enjoy watching shows such as What We Do in the Shadows or the BBC’s recent adaptation of Dracula. This target audience will appreciate the Gothic and its media but won’t have any academic knowledge on how and why vampires are constructed to be these noble, aristocratic characters.

When looking at the demographics of What We Do in the Shadows, the viewership is extensive. On the daily, it is watched on average by an audience of 190,000 people (audience demographics via US TVDB, 2025), with the largest age range running between people aged 25-54. This exhibition focuses on viewers at middle of the age range (ages 30s-40s) and assumes a left leaning politics due to the shows openly crude nature and modern approach to sexualities. The main reasoning behind this audience would be the assumption that they have grown up with shows like Buffy, True Bloods or can relate this to the aristocracy you see in Interview with the Vampire.

Walsh notes that ‘the general user [of online exhibitions] and the non-professional user generally receive less attention’ [Walsh, P. 2]. I have constructed this exhibition in ways that make the information particularly accessible to this ‘non-professional’ audience. When curating this exhibition, the order in which the exhibits lie are important to the consumer and their knowledge. Walsh states that most ‘average viewers’ of virtual exhibitions have ‘lower levels of cultural heritage’ [Walsh. P. 85]. As my audience isn’t going to one with extensive vampiric knowledge, I will start with Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s Monster Theory: Reading Culture, to establish what makes a monster and how it relates to the vampires we see today.  Then, move on to Calmet to establish where Vampires come from and their depiction, then going to the upper society of Lord Ruthven and then ending with Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows, to not only add a sense of familiarity to the audience, but also to show that the class systems within vampires is still prevalent in modern media.

Artefacts:

Exhibit 1: The Seven Thesis: Monster Theory: Reading Culture by Jeffery Jerome Cohen

Exhibit 2: Dom Augustin Calmet’s Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits, et sur les revenants et vampires (1746)

Exhibit 3: The Introduction of Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819)

Exhibition 4: The introduction of Lord Ruthven in The Vampyre 

Exhibit 5: Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows

Exhibit 1:

The Seven Thesis: Monster Culture in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

Before looking at the history of vampiric class, we must establish how a ‘monster’ or Vampire is constructed.  In Cohen’s Monster Theory: Reading Culture (1996) he suggests seven thesis that constructs a monster.

1.     ‘The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body

2.     The Monster Always Escape

3.     The Monster is a Harbinger of Category Crisis

4.     The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference

5.     The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible

6.     Fear of the Monster is really a Kind of Desire

7.     The Monster stands at the Threshold of Becoming’

Monster Theory, Cohen, 1996

The most permeant thesis here, is the vampire body being a ‘cultural body’. Almost every modern depiction of a vampire, their being is created at a ‘certain cultural moment’ [Cohen, P.4]. This means that most vampires are created during a key dominating historical or cultural event. Afterall, monsters are constructed out of what we fear. It is a way to push these fears onto a physically being.

Think of Nadja in What We Do in the Shadows and her constant connection to her Romani culture or how her Greek village was raided and destroyed and therefore she was born into a life of poverty and famine (see episode ‘Colin’s Promotion’, 2020) and was then subsequentially chased off her island once she had turned.

This construction of ‘monstrous’ relates to social classes. The ‘cultural bodies’ peasants and the ex-communicated are all ‘at the threshold of Becoming’ when they’re being brought from the dead and this can be documented as early as 1746.

Exhibit 2:

“Oupires or Vampires”: Hajduks, Peasants and the Ex-communicated

Dom Augustin Calmet’s

Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits, et sur les revenants et vampires (1746)

Dom Augustin Calmet (1672 - 1757) was a ‘distinguished biblical scholar’ [Morris, P.183] during the time of enlightenment. A time where men started to ‘have courage [in their] own understanding’ [Kant, P.1] and begin to question the invisible, societal boundaries of religion. From this, he then produced Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits, et sur les revenants et vampires (1746), a psychological and philosophical analysis of the vampire hysteria that was sweeping through eastern Europe. This is where we start the journey in to vampire class, at the beginning.

When looking at his dissertation, he starts off with your usual depictions of vampires – “suck the blood of their relatives” “dead for several years” “come again and walk about” [Calmet, P.180] – yet when he goes into the accounts of these “vampires” you’ll realise how they stray from the usual, aristocratic depictions of vampires.

In Calmet’s writing, “vampires” (towards the end of the dissertation, he debates whether they do exist) were commonly associated with the lower class, common criminals, peasants, or individuals that have been ex-communicated from the church.

Here, you can clearly see how early vampiric folklore overwhelmingly linked vampirism to lower classes, the ex-communicated and hajduks. These figures – peasants, criminals, and those cast out by the church were depicted as threats to the social and even religious order. There was one account about a peasant rising from their graves and another about ex-communicated corpses returning from death to disturb the living reflects on the fears of the socially marginalised. Furthermore, the association with hajduks reinforces the idea of older vampire depictions as lawless figures more than the aristocratic figures you see today. Just look at Polidori’s description of Lord Ruthven (as seen in Exhibit 4) or Anne Rice’s ‘humanist vampires’ [Cohen, P.226].

It is suggested in both Calmet and William Patrick Day, a scholar who focuses on horror/ gothic literature, that this rise of vampire hysteria is from widespread fatal illnesses, it was a way of giving a ‘human shape to viruses or bacteria’ [Day, P.12]. This links to a fear of disease that comes from unsanitary conditions of lower classes.

There is an account in Calmet’s writing where a vampire who returned from the dead was killed again and the body was burnt, however the smell was so bad that frankincense was burnt, however, ‘the smoke mixing with the fumes of the corpse, increased the stink and began to heat the poor people’s brain’ [Calmet, P.253]. This links to a key concept of the Gothic, abjection. Kristeva’s definition of abject is something ‘radically separated and repugnant’ [Kristeva, P. 126]. These ‘human shaped viruses’ existing or bodies burning is inherently abject by this definition. A body is there, which is recognisable, but ‘separated’ from life, or the aspect of a burnt body, with crisped, blacken skin, is the definition of ‘repugnant’.

This ‘peasant culture’ [Day,P.] was the basis of Vampires and yet, this is not what we see in modern depictions.

Exhibit 3:

Arnold Paul, the Heyduk: Polidori and Calmet

After establishing how vampires are established societally with Calmet, we can then move on to John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). But not before looking at the introduction.

Part 1: The Introduction

On page 202 of Camet’s Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits, et sur les revenants et vampires, Arnold Paul is also mentioned. By having the story of this Serbian ‘Heyduke’ [Polidori] in the introduction highlights the class tensions in The Vampyre and Britain at the time.

As established by Calmet, traditional vampiric folklore starts with peasants, and yet this is a stark contrast to how Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, is conveyed, an aristocrat who blends in with high society. By having this well documented case of a peasant turning in to a vampire reflect the anxieties of the middle and working class would have towards the aristocrats of early 1800s Britain. During this time, ‘noblemen’ [Polidori] or the word aristocrat was a ‘polemical term, a negative construct’ [Goodrich, P. 390] of a class that holds ‘social privileges and disproportionate wealth’ [Goodrich, P. 390], so if Lord Ruthven started as another Arnold Paul, what’s to stop others doing the same.

Arnold Paul represents the real-world vampire hysteria that shaped class fears, while Lord Ruthven is the literary evolution of those fears, that is then turned in to an aristocratic predator. He is a reinvention of this abject corpse that we see in Calmet writing presented as this charming but dangerous nobleman.

Furthermore, this quote, seen further in to The Vampyre:  

‘Those who had dared to question their existence, always had some proof given, which obliged them, with grief and heart breaking, to confess it was true’

The Vampyre, Polidori

Situates the reader firmly in the belief of Lord Ruthven being a vampire. It is mentioned by his eventual victim, Ianthe, when she is talking to Aubrey about her belief in vampires. Just like Ianthe and Aubrey, the reader too is given proof before the short story begins of vampires, meaning they too, could suffer an end like Ianthe’s.  This pushes the narrative that it is truly possible for vampires to walk amongst upper society, therefore adding to the negative narrative of such a class that is already upheld.

Part 2: Calling to Calmet

In part 2 of the introduction to The Vampyre, Calmet is referenced to provide historical and perhaps scholarly evidence of vampires. By calling to Calmet and ‘his great work’, Polidori almost situates The Vampyre in the vampiric folklore documented by Calmet. This only intensifies the social anxieties. Between the years of 1800-1812, there was a ‘revolution in communications’ [Colley, P.101] throughout Britain, where newspapers were becoming readily available.  This call to Calmet shows that there is extensive research into these vampires, and that it can now be read.

Exhibit 4:

“All wished to see him”: The Depiction of Lord Ruthven

This is the first paragraph to The Vampyre. This passage strongly establishes Lord Ruthven as a member of aristocracy, a far cry from the vampire Arnold Paul that the reader’s would be familiar with.  

John Polidori’s The Vampyre presents a striking shift in the depiction of vampires. He transforms them from the heyduks, criminals and peasants in Calmets writings to an aristocrat, a lord.

From the very beginning of the short story, Lord Ruthven is clearly an established member of high society. The narrator describes him as a ‘a nobleman, more remarkable for his singularities than his rank’ [Polidori, P], indicating that while his status is unquestioned, his behaviour is still seen as unnormal. In this introductory paragraph, you see Lord Ruthven (later revealed to be a vampire) moving effortlessly amongst London’s elite who ‘all wished to see him’ [Polidori] which can also be interpreted as him being higher than the elite. By constructing this character of aristocracy on him, it almost masks his predatory behaviour.

This ‘mask’ relates to the Freud’s gothic theory of the ‘uncanny’. Lord Ruthven being known amongst this class resonates the uncanny as he is ‘frightening’ but ‘leads back to what is known of old and familiar’ [Freud, P.220] to this upper social class not only in the story but to the reader’s understanding of this class as well.

This would’ve resonated with the readers of the time, reflecting societal anxieties of Britain. Between the years 1803 – 1815, just 4 years before this was published, there was a series of wars that ‘were vital agencies of social change’ [Colley, P.100]. So, already there was a huge rise of class consciousnesses, and now there’s a story of a murderous, seductive aristocrat.  Secondly, the depiction of aristocracy at the time was a person ‘governed by few’ [Goodrich, P. 370], which is seen directly here. Not only in the way Lord Ruthven is depicted but by the way he is controlling the narrative surrounding him in the passage.

In Goodrich’s writing she states that during the early 19th century, the time of publishing, there was a shift of the understanding of aristocracy from ‘political to social’ [Goodrich, P. 383]. Lord Ruthven here and throughout The Vampyre, would reflect this class anxiety as it adds another layer of reality, can someone like Lord Ruthven, who’s openly promiscuous or who will openly kill, walks amongst a common ‘social’ class.

Exhibit 5:

“We were so poor”: Nadja’s escape from poverty through Vampirism, the Modern Depiction.

What We Do in the Shadows is a sitcom that humorously deconstructs vampire mythos, portraying them as both scary and almost human. They of course keep the classic tropes of a ‘face that never gains a warmer tint’ [Polidori] or garlic aversion, but still relatable.

However, in a very Anne Rice style, they are still ‘awash[ed] in wealth’ [Cohen, P.228]. Especially Lazlo and Nandor. Nadja, however, embodies a trope of vampirism as an escape from poverty as she started at a famine stricken Antipaxos in Greece (the Balkans in Calmet’s writings). Now, she wears luxury, albeit Victorian, much like Lord Ruthven, clothing and wanders the streets as if she owns them. Therefore, showing the perfect amalgamation of Vampiric class history in a comedic modern depiction.

Bibliography:

Walsh. D, Characterising Online Museum Users: A Study of the National Museums Liverpool Museum Website. March 2020. Accessed 18/02/2025:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326210463_Characterising_Online_Museum_Users_A_Study_of_the_National_Museums_Liverpool_Museum_Website

Polidori. J, The Vampyre; A Tale, Sherwood, Neely, and Jones Paternoster Row, London, 1819

Cohen, J.J. Monster Theory: Reading Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 1996

Calmet, D. Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits, et sur les revenants et vampires, 1746, accessed on Archive.org

Day, W. Day, Vampire History, Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most, University Press of Kentucky, 2002

Goodrich, A. Understanding a Language of ‘Aristocracy’ 1700-1850, The Historical Journal, Vol.56, No. 2 2013

Colley, L. Whose Nation? Class and National Consciousness in Britain 1750-1830, Past & Present, No. 113, 1986

What We Do in the Shadows: audience demographics, accessed on 18/02/2025: https://ustvdb.com/networks/fx/shows/what-we-do-shadows/

Clement, J. What We Do in the Shadows. FX, 2019

Kristeva, J. Approaching Abjection, Oxford Literary Review, Vol.5, No.1, Oxford, 1982

Freud, S. The ‘Uncanny’ or ‘Das Unheimlich’, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, The Hogarth Press, London, 1917