Abstract
As a result of the cultural hegemony of pangenesis (the belief that blood determines heredity), eugenics, and “eugenic love,” Elinor Leyton’s xenophobia and Doctor Phillips’s racism and sexism succeed at separating Harriet Brandt from her friend Margaret, her love interest Ralph Pullen, and her husband Anthony Pennell. This interruption of intimacies as a consequence of these ideologies or “science” marginalizes Harriet, a New Woman of color, to the point at which she commits suicide. However, I argue that Harriet’s laudable qualities (her kindness, beauty, talent, charitable nature, and mature disposition) call a British establishment that brings harm to its “Others” into question. Florence Marryat, the author of The Blood of the Vampire, wishes to include Harriet in society not banish her to its limits. This, in turn, shows support for a New Woman of color in British society rather than her condemnation to death.
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Macaluso, E.D. (2019). The Rise of Harriet Brandt: A Critique of the British Aristocracy in Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire. In: Gender, the New Woman, and the Monster. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30476-8_4
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