Femininity In The Vampire Diaries

(Franiuk and Scherr 19). The female characters in The Vampire Diaries are magically enamored to the vampires, due to their stereotypical masculine portrayal. The beginning of the human/vampire relationship is connected to masculine depictions by the male vampires. Stefan, for example, demonstrates his skills on the football pitch before Elena and he get together (20). Elena is a down to earth girl with brunette hair and although she is popular at school and has some admirer, she does not present herself as arrogant. It is quite the contrary, she is being “caring, mature, and concerned about her drug-taking brotheroften playing the caregiver role with him in place of their dead parents” (Thurber 69).
In most vampire fictions, “the focus on
femininity) is Katherine. Katherine is a five-hundred-year old evil vampire, who dated Stefan and Damon about one hundred and forty-five years before Elena was born. Damon is still in love with Katherine, although she tells him that it was always Stefan she adored. In episode one of season two, which is called The Return, Katherine tells Damon to “’kiss her or kill her’” (Thurber 72). The scene turns into a passionate act in which Katherine professes her sexual dominance by thrusting Damon to the ground in order to give him the first kiss. Thereupon he stops Katherine abruptly and asks for a pause. This proofs that, even he tries to maintain his masculinity, he slips into being the new type of vampire by “reversing the gender expectations since it is normally the female who is portrayed as the one asking for a pause during heated sexual moments” (72). She gets frustrated and pushes him from her and waits for him to tell her the reasons. The following dialogue takes place, in which she takes over the male part and seems to be sexually frustrated, due to his emotions
From a contemporary cultural view, Dracula might appear to be more than just an old man, who tries to find white young women to satisfy his sexual appetite and his bloodlust (Stevenson qtd. in Durocher 57). This old and creepy man Dracula impersonates is far away from the depiction of modern vampires, who are young, sexually desirable and handsome. Nevertheless, vampire men stay a danger, also in modern novels and television shows, such as Twilight, or The Vampire Diaries, because they can still threaten cultural and gender norms. Dracula was displayed as an outsider, who used white women to practise his masculinity, and while contemporary male vampires are no outsiders anymore, but a component of society, the link between power, masculinity and superiority subsists (Durocher