Anne Rice and Sexual Politics: The Early Novels

by James R. Keller, Gwendolyn A. Morgan

From the vampires Lestat and Louis to a sexually liberated Sleeping Beauty, novelist Anne Rice has created a host of characters who are notable for their paradoxical combinations of the deviant and the conventional. Exit to Eden, for example, ends with the sado-masochistic protagonists embarking on a traditional monogamous heterosexual relationship, while the vampires often long to exchange their erotic immortality for "ordinary" mortal lives and loves. This scholarly analysis of the seemingly incompatible elements of the subversive and the socially acceptable in Rice's early work covers her career from the landmark Interview with the Vampire (1976) to Lasher (1993). Each chapter tackles a different aspect of Rice's conflicting portrayals of sexual issues, including homophobia, pedophilia, castration anxiety, and the vast array of gender stereotypes and roles that her novels so often interpret and exploit. This study is appropriate both for readers of Rice's writing and those intrigued by issues of sexual politics and the ways in which a popular author both embraces and repudiates some of the most shocking concepts of sexuality. An index and bibliography are included to aid research.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

181 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2000

Reviews

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years, I had been looking for nonfiction books that provide an academic analysis of the works of Anne Rice, and this text by James R. Keller is a fantastic resource. He discusses most of Rice's work including the Vampire Chronicles series, The Feast of All Saints as well as the erotica novels that Rice wrote under pen names. Topics discussed include power dynamics between characters, sexuality, tropes in fiction, family structures (especially in Interview with the Vampire), and so much more. I wish that there would be more recent scholarship to add to Rice's works that have come out since this book was published, because there's such a rich body of work to be examined and analyzed, especially with the film adaptations and recent television adaptation of Interview. In any case, Keller's text is an essential resource for those looking for academic sources on Rice's work.