Stalking the Vampire: Kipling's poem "The Vampire"

Preparing for the Victorian Vampire presentation, I have just reread Kipling's poem, "The Vampire," for what must be the hundredth time. Somehow through the artistry of his writing, I have always felt sorry for the male whom the speaker is telling us about --since he is the subject -- the main actor -- within the poem (And I, too, have burned with unrequited lust) while the "Vampire" is the object of his desire and action. Finally it struck me: isn't the "fool" we are being told about really, in essence, stalking this nameless female whom he tells us, and we believe, is a "vampire?" But why is she a "vampire?" Because she fails to appreciate the marvels he is "giving" her? Why should she? Just because he takes her out for dinner and drinks, need she spend eternity with him? What sort of social contract is that? Does that make her a "vampire?" Do note that it is a male poet telling us the male side of the situation.

I argue that there is textual evidence suggesting that Kipling's friend who is a "fool" is stalking the woman. (And name-calling on top of the stalking.) According to Mullen in "A Study of Stalkers1" there are five basic types of stalkers: "Rejected stalkers" who pursue their victims after the break up of a relationship. "Resentful stalkers" who are "motivated by the desire to frighten and distress the victim." "Intimacy seekers" who want so badly to establish a relationship with the victim that they will do anything to be with them. "Incompetent suitors" who seek to have relationships with women who are already taken. And finally "predatory stalkers" who spy on the victim preparatory to attacking them. I argue that Kipling's protagonist fits three of the stalking types.

Kipling tells us that his "fool" of a friend "was stripped to his foolish hide,/[...]/Which she might have seen when she threw him aside...." after the dissolution of the relationship. But he kept right on chasing the woman, refusing to acknowledge that she had moved on. He kept right on working and attempting to buy his way back into her life. "Rejected stalker" anyone?

Kipling plays his own role, as poet and writer in the retaliatory name calling of the "resentful stalker." The "vampire" is described as, "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair," after being called a vampire. Thus Kipling dehumanizes the female who has done his friend wrong by allowing him to buy her a few pretty unnamed and un-valued baubles. She is a no longer a flesh and blood woman, instead reduced to a skeleton ("bone") , unkempt hair unattached to a head, and a body covered by old, torn, smelly "rag[s]." Yet not only is she unattractive, she is the walking dead seeking to drink the "fool" dry while all the while being unaware that she is part of a parasitic relationship.

Arguably Kipling's "fool" is an "intimacy stalker," so desperate for affection and a close loving relationship with the nameless female that he will willing to do anything for her, short of treating her with the respect of a name. She has refused to acknowledge "the fool" again and again:

And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white-hot brand--
It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing, at last, she could never know why)
And never could understand!"

Kipling tells us. Yet does a woman who has dated a man a few times need to understand the reasons behind his refusing to let her go? Does she not have the right to live her life (unlife?) as she please; associating with those she wishes to and loving those she wishes to?

Yet history -- through Kipling's poem -- tells only the side of the abandoned, unwanted, used "fool." It tells us that, in Kipling's nameless narrator's opinion, the woman should have appreciated the attentions she was paid.

1. Mullen et al.. Stalkers and Their Victims. Cambridge University Press, 2000.