Although we must be cautious not to get too attached to the genders of the characters in the Oedipal drama, I would like to pursue the mother-son version of this vampiric duet for a little while longer, since so much of the Oedipus myth points in that direction.
Moreover, the maternal aspect of the myth is important, since the feminine vampire inevitably leads us, in this chapter as in the last, to the shadow of the mother archetype.
The energy of the shadow mother, which Jung refers to as the Terrible Mother, makes two early appearances in Oedipus's life. The first occurs when Jocasta binds her baby's feet and sends him to die in the wilderness, in order to protect the life of her husband king and, not coincidentally, her queenly status as well. Faced with such a Terrible Mother (in both the archetypal and everyday senses of the term), Oedipus is left to rely on fate and his own fortitude in order to survive. In this case, Oedipus is like many of us who have become champions in our adulthood; we have had to develop our champion strength in order to survive the danger of our childhoods, when we were unprotected or abused by our supposed caretakers. Like young Oedipus, we struggle to survive.
Not only does Oedipus survive, but he even lands a cushy deal as the princeling son to another set of royal parents, who seem to care for him a great deal more than his birth parents did. But the pain of our original parenting can't be neatly swept under the carpet of denial-not in our external lives, not in our internal lives, and not in the life of Oedipus, either. In Oedipus's case, the truth returns in the form of the first Delphic oracle, which serves both to warn him about his familial fate and to drive him toward it. In an effort to escape the oracle, Oedipus leaves Corinth on the road to Thebes, and there he has his second encounter with the Terrible Mother, this time in the form of the Sphinx.
The Sphinx is well suited to this role-so much so that Jung once referred to her as the synthesis of the Terrible Mother.* She is cunning, alluring, enigmatic, devouring, and widely present in global culture. The Sphinx challenges Oedipus to answer her riddle, with the intent of devouring him when he cannot beat her at her own game. But Oedipus is prepared for the Terrible Mother this time, perhaps as a result of his earlier encounters with her energy. He outwits the Sphinx and thereby destroys her. This would imply that Oedipus is well armed against the dark aspect of the Great Feminine, as long as She presents herself in an explicit form, such as the monstrous Sphinx.
* The Sphinx herself has an illuminating history, one with which Sophocles' original audiences were surely familiar. She was originally sent by the goddess Hera to punish Thebes for the death of the boy Chryssipus, who was a favorite of Hera's. Chryssipus had been abducted by King Laios, who had forced him to serve as his catamite-a sexual enslavement that eventually led to Chryssipus's death. The more we get to know about Laios and Jocasta, the more it seems merciful of the Fates to have reared Oedipus outside of his family of origin. But then, as Jean Bolen has observed, there are no good marriages or happy families in classical mythology.
Unfortunately, Oedipus is not so well prepared to survive his next encounter with the dark feminine when she appears in the form of Jocasta-a widowed queen who trembles precariously (and prettily) between the throne of a large realm and the next man who wishes to ascend it. Jocasta desperately needs a champion to ensure her security and status when, lo and behold, here is her champion-the man who has vanquished the Sphinx and liberated Thebes. Who this may have been in the moment of his birth does not matter to Jocasta. Her concern is for her survival, rather than for the sanctity of the young man's soul (or her own, for that matter). And besides, he adores her so much! In the end, we can suppose, Jocasta comes to love Oedipus as many devoted women love their champions, even unto the most terrible consequences.
We can also imagine what a boon Jocasta's love must have been for the ambitious young Oedipus-a queen and a kingdom, ripe for the rescuing! What champion, particularly a champion already given to hubris, could resist the offer? The queen and the Theban people are only too happy to encourage the champion's inflation so they can benefit further from his largess of life force the more blood he pumps, the more they can reap the fruits of his power. And just in case all this adoration is not sufficiently alluring bait, Oedipus is attracted by one more powerful motivator thrown into the deal-the pulsing promise of sexual gratification by the beautiful Queen Jocasta. The importance of sexual heat cannot be overstated with regard to the dance between feminine vampires and masculine victims. It is the crux of the feminine vampire's ruse that her victim will
experience sexual transcendence-an epiphany for the champion that is simply a projection of his own unrecognized sacred sexuality.
The seductive prowess of the feminine vampire may be one of her most noteworthy aspects in the global vampire myth. Historically, feminine vampires were described as
"voluptuous and wanton, irresistible, heartlessly cruel. Like the male vampire she has full red lips-supposedly the result of sucking blood, but also traditionally regarded in folk belief as a sign of excessive sensuality. Even the pure must succumb to her macabre charms" (Farson I976, 42). Bram Stoker was well aware of the sexual allure of the feminine vampire, as evidenced by his sensual description of Jonathan's encounter with Dracula's wives and by his choice of names for the boat that bears Dracula home to Transylvania: Czarina Catherine, the notoriously promiscuous empress of Russia. More recently, the archetype of the feminine vampire surfaced in the 1920S, when she was described as "an adventuress who onto helpless men and sucked them dry of money and material possessions. Abbreviating her name to vamp, the cinema of the twenties offered a classic example of the feminine vampire in Theda Bara, an actress who took as her name an anagram of 'Arab Death' and who was photographed with skulls and bones to epitomize her victims" (Cooper 1974, 32). Given the potency of the feminine vampire's sexual deception and predation, it seems fitting that the only mention Jung makes of the vampire in his entire collected works is when he asserts that the vampire is the succubus of a man-that is, the feminine demon who comes upon him in his sleep to suck his semen and blood.
All of these images convey the blood-hot sexual power that throbs in the voice of the feminine vampire when she softly beckons her champion. Power, adoration, and
transcendent sex-all in a tidy package that lies in the vampire's lap. A perfect scenario . . . until the dark truth rudely thrusts itself into the charade. In the story of Oedipus, the dark
truth arrives in the form of his biological origins, but for most of us, the seductive duet between a champion and his adoring vampire tends to darken it quite another way. Here's how it went for one such couple.
In the beginning, the man was happy to rescue the pathetic damsel, who, coincidentally, had just one or two more little traumas that she hoped he would be kind enough to rectify.
Thus began a long series of heroic rescues, each of which was appreciated by the woman only long enough to resuscitate her hero before his next valorous deed. Eventually, the man could not shake off the growing suspicion that he was being used, and he began to simmer with resentment and anger. Of course, he did not want to wound the poor woman, so he tried in the gentlest way possible to regain a little of his power. But when the
woman's sugary tactics foiled his efforts, the former champion was transformed by his rage and frustration into a control-hungry abuser. On the receiving end of this ugly transformation was the vampiric damsel, who was reduced by the man's fury into an epitome of the long suffering though undeserving martyr. At the sight of her eloquent pain, the man was wracked with remorse and self-recrimination, and he vowed never again to turn on the pathetic creature whose rescue was his very purpose in life. The man submitted a humble apology to his beloved, then retreated into his original heroic
position, mumbling to himself that he was lucky to have such an appreciative, deserving audience.
But just because the man had apologized did not mean that the duet immediately reverted to its original form. His mate, skilled at this particular dance, realized that a whole new ration of blood could be sucked out of any remorseful champion who was attempting to apologize: as long as the woman refused to accept the man's apology, she could remain in the role of a righteous martyr whose suffering could demand any price in return for her gift of absolution. So the woman always maintained her injured, unmollifled state for as long as possible.
In the course of this guilt game, the woman used many strategies to extract her mate's life force, but her most effective tactic was to punish him with a siege of shunning. Anyone who has been subjected to the “silent treatment” knows the anguish that this tactic can induce. Our anguish is immobilizing because we know that nothing we can say or do will penetrate the wall of disdain we have unwittingly erected around our beloved with our own reprehensible behavior. We feel that, short of separating ourselves from our beloved completely, we have no choice but to linger alone near the wall of disdain, desperately performing acts of penance in the faint hope of winning back the vampire's “love.” We bleed our life force into our penance, right up to the moment when we are about to abandon the whole notion of earning the vampire's pardon. And then suddenly, just at the very last instant before we pack up our meager resources and leave, our pardon is handed down from the vampire's pinnacle of magnanimity, and we are permitted back into our beloved's arms.
A detailed picture of this shunning duet between a masculine victim and a feminine vampire occurs in The Glass Menagerie. Laura is not her mother's only victim. More nutritious, at least for as long as she can keep him by her side, is Amanda's son, Tom. By the time we meet the Wingfield family, mother and son have been dancing their vampiric duet for years. We can imagine that Tom originally tried to be his mother's champion
after his father abandoned the family. In those first few years, we can suppose, Tom tried to acquiesce to all that his damsel requested of him, for the pathetic images of feminine distress are burned deeply into Tom's psyche. At the end of the play, when he speaks across the time and space that separate him from Amanda and Laura, Tom still yearns to rescue his vulnerable sister. We can also see the traces of Tom's old heroic stance toward his vampiric mother as she tries, with increasingly obvious and unsuccessful tactics, to engage her son in the dance. For example, in one scene, Tom apologizes to his mother after he has leveled an explosion of frustration at her and she has subjected him to the silent treatment. But his peace is short-lived:
TOM: Mother. I-I apologize, Mother. [Amanda draws a quick, shuddering breath. Her face works grotesquely. She breaks into childlike tears.] I'm sorry for what I said, for everything that I said, I didn't mean it.
AMANDA: My devotion has made me a witch and so I make myself hateful to my children! . . . I've had to put up a solitary battle all these years. But you're my right-hand bower! Don't fall down, don't fail!
TOM: [gently] I try, Mother.
AMANDA: Try and you will succeed! Why, you-you're just full of natural
endowments! Both of my children-they're unusual children! Don't you think I know it!
I'm so-proud! Happy and-feel I've-so much to be thankful for. . . ! (Williams 1945,48-49)
Once Amanda has magnanimously admitted Tom back into her good graces, she pursues the scheme that underlies her "merciful" pardon:
AMANDA: I sent out your sister so that I could discuss something with you. . . . I mean that as soon as Laura has got somebody to take care of her, married, a home of her own, independent-why, then you'll be free to go wherever you please. . . . [catching his arm-very importunately; then shyly] Down at the warehouse, aren't there some---:
nice young men? . . . Find out one that's clean-living-doesn't drink and ask him out for sister! . . . To meet! Get acquainted!
TOM: Oh, my go-osh!
AMANDA: Will you? . . . Will you, dear?
TOM: Yes! (49-54)