Vampires are not simply just mythical creatures that people like to write about, I think that vampires are a dark mirror for humanity. As humans, we have been programmed by society to repress a large portion of our natural desires. If we were to act on every desire, a coherent, working society would not be able to exist. This was even truer during the Victorian Era, where sexual desires were even more repressed. Dracula embodies the desires that the English society did not want to admit. Lucy is held up as a paragon of virtue, but it is after she becomes a vampire that she becomes incredibly attractive and sexual. The men do not want to admit it, but they are attracted to what would have been considered a “fallen woman”. By forcing our desires onto an external “evil” creature, we can take pleasure in the forbidden, but we do not need to acknowledge them. Dracula holds the same kind of attraction for Buffy. He reflects the dark side of Buffy and she desires to be able to share in that darkness. He has knowledge and power that she wants. Dracula, however, is not simply a way for her to cope with her internal desires; he is her way to defeat the darkness within herself. She says that her fighting him is her “true nature” and it is. Because of Dracula, Buffy begins to understand that there is light and dark within everybody, but it is how a person deals with their own darkness that defines their true nature.
Your metaphor of vampires as mirrors a lot of sense to me. I like the irony in that vampires do not have reflections - perhaps because they are reflections themselves.
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