Slaying the Austen-Vampire Romance: Amy Elizabeth Davis’s Darcy Bites

In this millennium, two of the most popular literary cults have converged: those of Jane Austen and the vampire. Spurred by the runaway commercial success of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005-08), fans have turned the worlds of Austen’s novels into a fantasy space for vampire romance—especially Pride and Prejudice. Some have fully embraced the erotic impulses of a vampiric Mr. Darcy. Others have sought to complicate this post-Twilight romantic fantasy. Amy Elizabeth Davis’ Darcy Bites: Pride and Prejudice with Fangs (2015) might even be said to write back to Meyer’s Twilight—itself inspired by Austen’s famous romance—to redress its potentially regressive and individualist feminism as an erroneous interpretation of Austen’s values. This paper will examine Davis’ Darcy Bites from this perspective, and especially the relationships of the novel’s women with vampirism. It questions vampirism as a form of female empowerment, and instead presents it as an obstacle to Austen’s feminist and romantic ideals. In doing so, Davis’ mashup might be said to self-reflexively renounce the very Austen-vampire trend of which it is part.