Ann Radcliffe, the Vampire Slayer

No introductions, no set-up, let’s just plunge right in, okay?

Suppose that Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer was based somewhat on reality. This means, at a minimum, that undead blood-sucking vampires exist, as does a person known as the Slayer. “In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.” We learn from the series that each Slayer is also given a Watcher, a member of a shadowy cabal that trains, guides and protects the Chosen One. In the series, we are introduced to Buffy Summers, who is, presumably, our present day Slayer.

Over the course of the series (and the related media of novels, videogames and comics) we are given glimpses and tales of other Slayers from history, including the First Slayer, named Sineya, from ancient Africa. Occasionally we learn that actual, historical people were in fact Slayers, such as Joan of Arc in France and Virginia Dare of Roanoke Virginia. (For a full list of Slayers culled from all available media, click here.)

In literature, we can identify some other potential Slayers. Mina Harker, who helped battle Dracula, is one such candidate. Anita Blake, though she lives in a very different world than ours, might be based on a real world Slayer, the same as Victoria Gardella and Damali Richards.
To this growing list of exceptional women I would like to add English author and pioneer of the gothic novel Ann Radcliffe, who lived from 1764 to her death 1823 (it is said she died of pneumonia, but we know better now, don’t we?) The details of Radcliffe’s life are sparse. Naturally reclusive, her husband (and dare I say Watcher?) was very selective about what information he would allow public following her death. According to author Brian Stableford, “…so little material remained a generation later that Christina Rossetti, having set out to write Ann’s biography, was forced to give up for lack of material.”

Born Ann Ward, she married William Radcliffe in 1788, wrote hugely successful novels, becoming he highest paid novelist in the world until 1795, when she stopped writing (at least publicly) altogether, and died 28 years later. She had no children. We do know that she met and inspired Jane Austen, as seen in the movie Becoming Jane. We know that her works were influential on many later writers, including Jane Austen, the Brontes, Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens and Henry James, just to name a few. But major parts of her life are unknown to us, major parts of her life that we can now be pretty sure were spent hunting vampires.

We know this in part, because French author Paul Feval, in 1875, published La Ville-Vampire, which records a story told to him by Ann Radcliffe’s unnamed second cousin, who recounts Ann's journey to the fabled Vampire City, Selene (located, according to The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, in “north-north-west of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, formerly in Hungary. It can be reached from Semlin (today Zemun), either by horse or on foot, following the old Austro-Hungarian military road along the Danube, leading to Peterswarden (or Petervaradin).”
In 2003 Black Hats Press published a new translation of Feval’s work by Brian Stableford under the title Vampire City. The vampires presented here are different from what we are accustomed to. To kill them one needs to surgically remove their hearts, and then use the ash from the burned hearts to destroy other vampires. In the course of the novel, Ann Radcliffe leads a team to the heart of the Vampire City and out again. If her own involvement in the actual slaying of vampires is downplayed, one might ascribe this to either the narrating cousin or Feval himself editing or omitting certain facts so as to not shock Victorian audiences with scenes of so un-ladylike behavior on behalf of such an esteemed literary figure. Neither would be anxious to present Ann Radcliffe as a warrior, this would seem masculine and odd in such a paternalistic society.

If all we had was Ann Radcliffe, fighting vampires in an obscure French novel, then I would grant you, my case is not made. Ann Radcliffe could certainly have accomplished all she did without the added benefit of Slayer abilities. It would be helpful if, in the course of the story, we were given some additional evidence of he Slayer potential, such as kung-fu, super-strength or quick healing. As it happens, we have evidence that Ann Radcliffe had at least one ability known to be common in Slayers.

According to her second-cousin, Ann Radcliffe, “had been subject to fits of ‘second sight’ since the age of nine, and her parents had taken care to conceal that gift or infirmity.” According to Wikipedia: “All Slayers through the ages share a psychic link, manifested in dreams. A Slayer will frequently dream of herself as a Slayer in another time and place. These dreams are usually vague, but can also be prophetic. Dreams exist in their own mystic plane or ‘dreamscape’ where for a Slayer, precognitive sense and the inherited memories of other Slayers can manifest themselves.”

That Ann Radcliffe shared the dreams and memories of Slayers throughout time can be seen through a quick perusal of her novels. We can see elements of Slayer/Vampire mythology running through all her works. Cloaked in Gothic pretense, desaturated of its obvious occultism, the story of Adeline and the Marquis in The Romance of the Forest presents a sort of Slayer versus ‘Master’ vampire trope. In The Mysteries of Udolpho we are presented with supernatural events, a young heroine named Emily, and Montoni, and a textbook gothic villain. All the supernatural events in the novel are explained away, Scooby-Doo-like, with ordinary explanations by novel’s end. Radcliffe must have done this to preserve the secrets of the Slayers revealed to her in dreams. She continues and perfects her themes in The Italian, in which the young protagonist, Ellena, must match wits with the evil monk Schedoni against a backdrop of Inquisition and French Revolutionary horrors. Again, all supernatural elements are removed, and the Slayer/Vampire themes are presented and subverted.

After her death Radcliffe’s last novel was published by her husband. It was a complete novel, but lacked the polish and thematic coherency of her earlier works. For twenty-eight years Ann Radcliffe’s pen was silent. The obvious question is: Why? Was she busy fighting vampires and monsters? I suggested earlier that her husband was her Watcher with little or no evidence. Early on he had encouraged her writing career, perhaps seeing this as a way to deal with and purge the dreams that had plagued her all her life. As time went on, perhaps she didn’t need this psychological release anymore. Perhaps the Watcher’s Council, that shadowy organization that wielded so much power over the Slayers over time, concerned with self-preservation, became concerned that she was revealing too much in her novels about themes such as female empowerment, themes that would ultimately materialize as Buffy Summer’s realization that she didn’t need the Watchers Council at all.

For some reason, Ann Radcliffe stopped writing, and when she died, (reportedly of pneumonia, but as I hinted earlier, we know that Slayers almost always die in battle) she left behind two immortal legacies, the Slayer heritage and the archetypal Gothic romance. I leave it to you to decide which is more important.