The Gothic Louisiana of Charlaine Harris and Anne Rice

Abstract

Louisiana, ‘with its complex history of slavery, prejudice and discrimination’ is, according to Patricia Treble, ‘the perfect setting for a vampire mystery’ (Treble, 2008). The state is the location of the city at the heart of the Southern Gothic, New Orleans, and the delta of the river at the heart of American identity, the Mississippi. The southern states, and in particular Louisiana, are a complex site of contradictions, ‘a place in the New World which is nevertheless somehow older and more decadent than Europe, simultaneously “primitive” and sophisticated, a “mixture” of all kinds of peoples’ (Gelder, 1994, p. 110). Charlaine Harris’s fictional setting for her Sookie Stackhouse series, Bon Temps, appropriates the well-known Cajun call to pleasure — ‘Laissez les bon temps rouler’ (let the good times roll) — which reflects the ‘climate of psychological relaxation’ (May, 1976, p. 195) associated with Louisiana. Similarly, Anne Rice’s Louisiana landscapes in the Vampire Chronicles, particularly in Interview with the Vampire (1976), ‘draw[s] … upon the languid, decadent traditions of American plantation life’ (Lloyd-Smith, 2004, p. 62). Such imagery of relaxation, decadence and heat contrast sharply with the general American national identity of the moral Protestant with a strong work-ethic and makes the state a favoured location for blurring the boundaries of race, gender and sexuality. For all of these reasons, the novels of Rice and Harris and their subsequent film and television adaptations draw on the Gothic atmosphere of Louisiana to problematize their vampires.