Broders S (2015)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2015
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Edited Volumes: Beyond the Night Creatures of Life, Death and the In-Between
City/Town: Newcastle upon Tyne
Pages Range: 65-94
ISBN: 978-1-4438-7750-3
The House of Night novels focus on a heroine who is part of three marginalized groups at once: Native American, female, and pagan, Zoey Redbird is Marked as a vampyre fledgling and joins the House of Night school, where she is trained to become an adult vampyre – the ultimate Other to her patriarchal, evangelical stepfather.
By returning to the older spelling 'vampyre' instead of 'vampire', the House of Night series rejects patriarchal interpretations of the myth in a similar way as neo-pagan religious movements defy the Christian patriarchal subjugation of women and aim to return to a pre-Christian, balanced relation between the sexes. Consequently, the novels' mythology centres around two deities, the vampire goddess Nyx and her male consort Erebus. Zoey's favourite novel Dracula serves as a foil, a cliché of chauvinism overcome by modern vampyres – a powerful metaphor for the search of young women for their place in a male-dominated society. While the Cain's mark on her forehead branded Mina as 'tainted' by vampirism, Zoey receives intricate tattoos that identify her as a vampyre, a mark she wears with pride. Instead of the archetypal wise old man, Zoey's Native American grandmother and her female vampyre tutor serve as mentors, completing the pagan triple goddess of Maiden, Mother and Crone. Male characters play a minor part, either as sexually possessive vampire mates from whom Zoey emancipates herself, or as human consorts in distress, passively waiting to be rescued. Otherness, sexual, ethnical and religious, becomes a source of power and transformation. This essay compares the depiction of female empowerment in the House of Night series to the image of women in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series as well as to the vampire Menolly in Yasmine Galenorn's Otherworld/Sisters of the Moon series.
APA:
Broders, S. (2015). 'The Heartbeat of Outsiders' – Vampiric Otherness as Female Empowerment in P.C. and Kristin Cast's House of Night". In Nadine Farghaly (Eds.), Beyond the Night Creatures of Life, Death and the In-Between. (pp. 65-94). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
MLA:
Broders, Simone. "'The Heartbeat of Outsiders' – Vampiric Otherness as Female Empowerment in P.C. and Kristin Cast's House of Night"." Beyond the Night Creatures of Life, Death and the In-Between. Ed. Nadine Farghaly, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. 65-94.
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