Summary
The morning after Ruthven’s death, one of the robbers informs Aubrey that they moved the corpse to the top of a nearby mount. This is because they promised Ruthven that his body “should be exposed to the first cold ray of the moon that rose after his death.” Shocked, Aubrey goes to the mount, determined to bury Ruthven’s body. But upon arriving he finds no trace of the body there.
Aubrey leaves Greece and arrives at Smyrna. There he inspects Ruthven’s belongings. He finds a case that matches exactly with the strange dagger that he found at the scene of Ianthe’s death. Both the dagger and the case have drops of blood on them. Aubrey wishes to disbelieve but feels he can no longer deny this proof that Ruthven is a vampire and is responsible for Ianthe’s death.
Aubrey travels on to Rome, where he inquires about the daughter of the countess who Ruthven once tried to seduce. He learns that her parents’ fortune has been destroyed and that the young woman has not been heard of since Ruthven’s departure. He fears the worst and worries about harm coming to the people he holds most dear.
Finally, Aubrey returns to England and reunites with his sister. Miss Aubrey is eighteen and she is ready to be introduced into society at a drawing-room event in the hopes of finding a suitor. Aubrey is overcome with melancholy due to all that he has experienced. But he tries to put this aside for the sake of his sister, and they go into town for a drawing-room event.
At the crowded event, Aubrey stands alone in a corner and recalls that this was the first place he encountered Ruthven. Suddenly, someone grabs his arm and says in his ear, “Remember your oath.” It is Ruthven. Aubrey is in shock and barely manages to make his way to his carriage to be driven home. He wonders if he is imagining things and decides he will attend another event to put his doubts to rest. At a later gathering, Aubrey sees his sister surrounded by several people in conversation. Appalled to find Ruthven among them, he grabs his sister and forces her onto the street, again hearing a whisper in his ear reminding him of his oath.
Aubrey remains shut up in his room in a state of distress. He hardly eats. He worries about the terrible bind that the oath has put him in. Then he leaves his room and wanders the streets at all hours in a disheveled state. Suddenly, Aubrey changes his strategy, thinking it best to “enter again into society” so as to protect his friends and family from Ruthven. However, he has become so suspicious-looking that his sister begs him to stop making public appearances. Finally, emaciated and incoherent, Aubrey retires permanently to his room, where a physician attends to him.
On the last day of the year, Aubrey overhears one of the guardians saying that his sister is to be married the following day to the Earl of Madsen. Aubrey, believing the Earl to be a respectable man he once met, is pleased and calls for his sister. When she comes he hugs her joyfully. But then he finds her wearing a locket containing an image of her future husband, who looks just like Lord Ruthven.
Aubrey seizes the locket and tramples it. When his sister asks why he has done this, Aubrey begs her to swear that she will never marry this man. Yet he is unable to finish his explanation of the man’s terrible deeds, as he hears a voice reminding him of his oath to Ruthven. Aubrey’s guardians and physicians separate him from his sister and ask her to leave. Aubrey begs them to delay the wedding just one day, but they believe he is insane.
The reader learns that Ruthven managed to gain Miss Aubrey’s affection by calling the morning after the drawing-room and pretending to be very concerned about Aubrey’s health. With his power of words, he won the young woman over. Ruthven also said he needed to leave town to assume an important title. For this reason, they rushed the marriage.
Aubrey is distraught. He writes a letter to his sister begging her to delay the marriage for just a few hours, but Aubrey’s physician decides it is best not to deliver the letter. Aubrey becomes frantic as he hears preparations for the wedding are underway. The servants watching over him, curious to watch the wedding, sneak away and leave an old woman to guard Aubrey. Aubrey escapes and enters the apartment where the wedding is proceeding.
Ruthven is the first to see Aubrey. He reminds him of his oath and says that his sister’s name will be dishonored if they do not marry that night. Ruthven pushes Aubrey toward his servants, who take him to bed. In his rage, Aubrey breaks a blood vessel. Ruthven and Miss Aubrey are married and leave London.
Aubrey grows weaker and loses blood. He calls on his sister’s servants, and when midnight strikes he relates to them everything that he knows about Ruthven. He dies immediately after and the guardians go after Miss Aubrey in the hopes of protecting her. But they are too late: Ruthven has disappeared and Miss Aubrey has already “glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE.”
Analysis
The Vampyre introduces a number of elements that continue to form a central part of vampire literature and cinema to date. One such element is the representation of the vampire as fatally seductive. In contrast with prior vampire tales, here the vampire’s pursuit of blood for physical nourishment seems to be almost secondary. The novella includes relatively minimal descriptions of blood and gore. Rather, Polidori puts the emphasis on the erotic, libertine aspects of the vampire’s pursuits.
Ianthe and her family tell of the vampires' "nocturnal orgies" in the woods, clearly associating these supernatural beings with indiscriminate or disapproved sexual activity. Ruthven himself is a rebel and a deviant who totally disregards social standards with regard to romance and sexuality. When Aubrey asks if he plans to marry the young Italian woman he is pursuing, Ruthven merely laughs. In this section, we learn that the young girl has disappeared and her family’s fortune is ruined. It is clear that Ruthven takes particular pleasure in corrupting young, virtuous women.
Yet women have very little voice in Polidori’s story. They are either vice-ridden "female hunters of notoriety" with "affected virtues," or else they are completely innocent, ignorant, and ultimately helpless. This seems to be the case of Miss Aubrey, who is Ruthven’s final victim in the novella.
This situation reflects the double standard with regard to female sexuality at the time of the publication of The Vampyre. If unmarried women have romantic or sexual experience, 19th-century English society looks down on them as corrupted, used-up, dishonest or fake. Yet if they have no experience, they are easy victims for the men who may prey on them, such as Ruthven. While Ruthven’s form of preying is literal—he sucks their blood—the metaphor may also extend to the way male society mistreats women more broadly.
In the case of Ianthe, the narrator describes the encounter with the vampire in violent terms that almost resemble rape. Ianthe lets out dreadful shrieks. Her breast and neck are covered in blood. Once she is dead the narrator remarks that she has “fallen with the flower of life…” The narrator’s portrayal of Miss Aubrey’s death—also the novella’s closing line—is less descriptive, stating only that Aubrey's sister “had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!” In both cases, the women seem to fall easily and helplessly into Ruthven’s trap.
It is worth noting several other elements that Polidori’s novella introduced and which continue to be central to many modern vampire stories. In The Vampyre, vampirism is not only a physical phenomenon but also a psychic or psychological one. Ruthven does not merely suck his victims’ blood. He also preys on and drains their wealth, good looks, vitality, social status, and relationships with loved ones.
The most striking representation of this is the fate of Aubrey himself. It is not clear that Ruthven sucks Aubrey’s blood. Yet the narrator presents Aubrey as a psychological victim of Ruthven’s. Ruthven seems to haunt Aubrey; the latter constantly thinks of Ruthven, hears his voice and sees his image. Ruthven disturbs Aubrey’s relationships with his friends and family and kills the two people he loves most: Ianthe and his sister. Finally, Aubrey becomes “emaciated,” “haggard,” “suspicious,” and “incoherent” until he dies.
In this way, Ruthven takes the ultimate revenge on Aubrey. Aubrey is doomed to watch Ruthven corrupt and kill those he loves most. In the case of Ianthe, her death is in a way Aubrey’s doing, since he didn’t heed her warning to return home by nightfall. In the case of his sister, Aubrey feels that his oath to Ruthven prevents him from saving her. Moreover, his crazed state caused by his encounters with Ruthven lead others to question Aubrey’s sanity and ignore his warnings. The novella reaches its climax as Ruthven apparently returns from the dead and preys on Aubrey’s sister.
