From 2009–17, the CW’s hit TV series The Vampire Diaries (TVD) kept millions of viewers enthralled, spawning vibrant fan communities and two successful spin-offs, The Originals (2013–18) and Legacies (2018–22). TVD arrived near the end of a vampire boom that swept teen media in the late ’90s and early ’00s, entering the broader Gothic literary tradition that harbors these monsters. Defined by supernatural elements, haunted houses, ghosts, secrets, and most of all fear, the Gothic uses these conventions to displace conflicts, anxieties, and desires into a far-away realm so that readers can grapple with them at a safe distance. Stories in this form have long appealed to women, as they can effectively broach taboo aspects of the female experience without alarming the male-dominated mainstream. Two subversive subsects of the Gothic, the Southern and the Female, use these conventions to expose oppressive realities of the American Old South and patriarchal expectations placed upon women, respectively. TVD adopts elements of these Gothic offshoots in its narrative, which takes place across two timelines in the town of Mystic Falls, Virginia: 1864, when vampire Katherine and witch Emily live; and 2009, where their respective descendants Elena and Bonnie remain haunted by draconian practices of the nineteenth century. TVD then introduces supernatural elements within these female characters as forms of resistance against that oppression, embodying what scholar Barbara Creed calls the “monstrous-feminine.”

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This study explores TVD’s use of Gothic tropes to portray teen girls’ bodies as they simultaneously confront quotidian adolescent challenges and monstrous transformations. I argue that season one of TVD uses the Southern and Female Gothic, as well as the monstrous-feminine, to suggest that in a patriarchal system which tries to contain teen girls’ bodies based on age, gender, race, sexual desire, and generational trauma, young women can exert agency by embracing their bodies’ transformations and acting on their bodily desires. I analyze Gothic precursors of the series written by authors of various gender, ethnic, and national identities that also employ the monstrous-feminine to inform my viewing of TVD: Edgar Allan Poe’s stories “Berenice” (1835) and “Ligeia” (1838), Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” (1959), and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). I then turn to TVD, conducting a narrative analysis and scene-by-scene examination of cinematography, sound, and mise-en-scène in the twenty-two episodes in season one. Grounding my study in the show’s physical setting, I incorporate firsthand accounts of my research trip to Covington, Georgia where it was filmed. 

Linking the series to mainstays of the Gothic evidences the relationship between the monstrous-feminine and women’s creative and sexual energies, illuminating how the acceptance of the former counters the repression of the latter. In a world where women have so few choices—the landmark reversal of Roe v. Wade (1973) with the Dobbs decision in 2022 is just one example—TVD allows its young audience to fantasize about being spoiled by them.​