Having just recently finished all the vampire books I am curious: Is it my imagination or does Anne Rice really NOT like women? It seems that all her females are either cold bitches or vacuous little whisps of smoke. NOT that any of her characters are truly three dimensional but her women seem to be the worst.
The only one I can think of that almost doesnt fit into the category is Bianca from Blood and Gold but even still she was a whore who killed repeatedly on orders from someone else.
Then there is Pandora who’s sole purpose seems to be to drift around looking pitiful and save Marius’ butt from a ton of ice. And five pages into Witching Hour I took a definate dislike to Rowan. Talk about unlovable… yeah just leave the man who sacrificed ALL to try to save you to drown… you’re a real sweetheart darlin.
I was all ready to jump to ole Anne’s defense, pointing out all the “strong” female characters in her books ; The Twins, Jessica, even Akasha, and especially Pandora (in her defense, she was extremely intelligent and crafty in surviving while still human as her family fell to the intrigues of the Roman senate)…
then I recalled a tasty lil tome called “The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty”, which she wrote as A. N. Roquelaure. I shant go into details, but Beauty is at her best when on her knees being spanked and being gratefully moist about it. Ok, those were some details, and her A.N.R. stuff is clearly “erotica”, but it does seem to shed light on the OP.
I bet theres a plethora of fan sites out there who go into lengthy diatribes on these subjects.
on a personal note, she’s yet to write a vampire book I didn’t find totally engrossing and compelling.
ISTR Anne Rice mentioning that she liked gay men, or that she identified with them. Of course I don’t know how that would equate with being anti-women, but there ya go!
aint gonna touch that one. There are definate undercurrents of male/male attractedness between Lestat and Louis of course.
FWIW many of my women through the years (er, before I settled down) have loved my gay friends and vice versa. Seems that if you take sex out of the picture people have an easier time dealing with each other. Lack of sexual tension perhaps, or maybe they’re all so looney they just don’t know any better.
btw , one of her latest vampire stories “Vittorio” really rocked.
She took a character who was totally unconnected with her previous characters, stuck him in renaisance Italy, and managed to teach me something of the art of the period while spilling buckets and buckets of blood, both vampiric and human.
Thats a beauty of the series, she can pick any epoch in history, stick in a lovely lad or lass, turn him into a vamp, and let the good times roll. She’s really opened up a large canvass upon which to work.
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty and its sequels involve a lot of domination, period, regardless of gender. There are plenty of men being enslaved, both by men and by women. I wouldn’t try to draw too much out of the gender roles in these books…the basic theme is one of sexual domination and control regardless of which sets of genitals any of the participants have.
YMMV, but that sexual ambiguity was one of the things that attracted me and mrs. snac to the series.
All of Anne Rice’s character’s are whiny, amoral, heartless or all three aren’t they? I can’t think of any from the Vampire Chronicles that aren’t. I really can’t see that the women are worse than the men. Maybe this is more to do with an assumption that women shouldn’t be heartless than it is with the characters.
Blake, I think one of the central themes in her vamp novels is the struggle between their morality, and the unnatural state they find themselves in. There are the odd “old ones”, and the girl-child who don’t question at all, but Lestat, Louis, Armand, Pandora, Vittorio, many many others have huge inner conflict/guilt about what their preturnatural hunger leads them to do and their sence of right and wrong.
When Lestat is in New Orleans, he takes only “wicked” men off the streets ----- for the most part. They are hardly “amoral”, they fight to reconcile their natures with their bloodlust.
Of course they’re whiny, that’s why the books are such good reads
I saw an interview once where she described hereself as “A woman trapped in a gay man’s body” or words to that effect. Made my head ache trying to work out how you she would know.
And Skillet38 I liked the vampire series (up to ‘Armand’, which just plain sucked). I also liked the characters. But that oesn’t amke the male characters any less ammoral and/or whiny and/or heartless.
Someone had to say it! Seriously, I can’t recall reading one of her works that I didn’t like. Witching Hour was engrossing, as were the Vampire Chronicles. It’s another, however, that really made me love her writing style and skill. She wrote a book called Belinda under the pen name of Anne Rampling, and it’s actually been one of the definitive books of my reading experience. I’ve worn out about four copies of it now, and finally resorted to “binding” the paperback covers with cellophane tape to keep it somewhat readable. It’s definitely worth picking up if you can find it.
It’s a rather beautiful story of art and love and youth and age and looking at things in a totally new light. I can’t give it enough props.
We have to bear in mind that gender-identity isn’t all that important to Ann Rice’s vampires (except Akasha, for ideological reasons) because they don’t have sex, not in any form that involves aroused genitals. Nor do they sexually reproduce; in fact they don’t reproduce at all, strictly speaking – all they can do is make a mortal into a vampire. They’re dead below the waist. They do find some erotic expression in that “vampire kiss” thing, which to hear Rice tell it is better than sex in the same way that sex is better than a glass of water. I’ve been waiting a long time for Rice to come up with a “vampire 69”: two vampires simultaneously bite each other’s wrists, or better still, femoral arteries in the groin, and drink each other’s blood at once. Probably the closest vampires could come to physical erotic intimacy.
Her son’s name is Chris and he is gay and a writer. I read his first two books (not sure if he has written anymore) and while both books focus on main characters who are gay they still don’t have the…same degree/focus on gayness (for a lack of a better term). Although he’s not nearly as sexual as his mother in his books so that probably has something to do with it.
As for her female characters, I notice she tends to focus more on her male vampires/characters but other than that I hadn’t noticed anything else about them. The first books of hers I read was the Witching Hour and it’s one of my favorites. It focuses more on female characters but several of them have few redeeming characters (Mona’s a whore, Rowan’s heartless, Deirdre is just plain crazy…).
That being said, I’d have to agree with most everyone else. Armand is definitely her worst. I got about halfway through it and then it took me almost a year to finish it. It was just plain boring.