Vampires and Gentiles: Jews, Mormons and Embracing the Other

Abstract

As Simon Bacon has noted in the previous essay, Judaism has been associated with the vampire for centuries, specifically and most prevalently through the ‘blood libel’ which accused Jews of kidnapping Christian children and draining their blood to make the Passover matzah. This evocation of ingesting human blood connects the Jewish celebration and ritual of Passover with vampire imagery in one of the most persistent anti-Semitic Gothic tropes. As H. L. Malchow observes, the figure of the Jew had a minor role in British literature until the late nineteenth century when the issue of Jewish immigration became a public concern: ‘sensational press accounts of alien immigrants in London, like bloodlibel stories in Hungary or fear of the plague in Hamburg, heightened public apprehension’ (Malchow, 1996, p. 153). Malchow also recognizes the similarity between the imagery Bram Stoker uses in his description of Dracula in his novel and that noted by Stoker in praise of Henry Irvine’s theatrical portrayal of Shylock. Stoker describes Irvine as Shylock thus:

the lips thickened, with the red of the lower lip curling out and over after the manner of the typical Hebraic countenance … the bridge of his nose … rose into the Jewish aquiline … the eyes became veiled and glassy with introspection — eyes which at times could and did flash like lurid fire. (Stoker cited in Malchow, 1996, p. 155)