Wild Tales of Foreign Parts: Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire”

Drawing on Melanie Klein’s ideas on the processes of incorporation, where often suckling has its corollary in biting and hollowing out, and on Kristeva’s concept of "abjection", this article analyses two short stories by Conan Doyle where Gothic imagery and conventions are deployed to explore issues relating to gender relationships, feminine sexuality and especially race, degeneration, and “othering”. While describing a whole set of deviant behaviours, such as destructiveness and jealousy, these tales show how in the late nineteenth century the Gothic tradition still proved influential in providing a wide-range of psychological and cultural anxieties. In both stories aggression and sadism are intermingled with desire signalling a dialectic of attraction and repulsion, thrill and horror which underscores ambivalent feelings towards the “Other” and femininity, equally portrayed as devouring and all-powerful.