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mayhemchicken-varneyposting · 1 month

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Varney the Vampire, Chapter 4: Guys I Think It Might Be A Vampire

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Morning dawns, so bright and clear and beautiful you can practically hear the Peer Gynt suite in the background. Henry, who has been casting paranoid looks at the creepy portrait all night, is much relieved. Flora wakes up, and she's still freaked out from last night. Henry, after making a token attempt to comfort her, calls his mom in to deal with her Girl Feelings and leaves to confer with Marchdale.

Marchdale is finally willing to share his theory about what is going on. After building suspense for a full page or so, he finally reveals that he thinks it was...a vampire! Both him and Henry immediately agree that this is such a horrible thought that they're not even going to entertain the notion that it might be true, even though it fits the evidence better than any explanation they can think of. They then further agree that they must not tell George any of this, as he is of a delicate constitution and the very idea may just kill him.

George then enters the room, and tells them he's come to the conclusion that Flora was attacked by a vampire.

Henry and Marchdale are greatly upset by this, and make George swear he won't go around actually believing that, or talking about it to anyone. After all, if they tell their mother or Flora, the shock of such an idea may simply be too great.

Flora continues to show symptoms of major blood loss, so Henry rides into town to enlist the services of a medical gentleman, a man of drugs, or any other silly euphemism for "doctor" Rymer can think of. He then discovers that the servants have gossiped about the attack, and now literally everyone in the entire countryside is talking about how there's been a vampire attack. Frazzled, he goes to see the doctor, one Mr. Chillingworth, who tells him he's being crazy and ridiculous. Chillingworth agrees to come by later and have a look at Flora, and Henry rides home as fast as possible to prevent any more people from asking him about the vampire.

When he gets home, he finds out that Flora has also, independently, come to the conclusion that she was attacked by a vampire. Flora is still jumpy and paranoid, and she's heard of the idea that people who are bitten turn into vampires themselves, which isn't helping her mental state. She's also remembered a few more details from the attack, which she recounts vividly. Henry tries to reassure her with little success.

Then Dr. Chillingworth arrives, and proceeds to gaslight the hell out of Flora. First he tells her everything she experienced was a dream, and then after examining the wounds on her neck for two straight minutes pronounces them to be bug bites. Flora can tell this is bullshit, but is too exhausted to really argue with him.

Henry and Chillingworth go into another room, where Chillingworth shares his real opinion, which is that the whole situation is really weird and he has no idea what to make of it. It sure does seem like a vampire, huh! Haha Henry did you know that vampires are healed by the full moon, and that some legends say they prefer to hunt close to full moons so they'll be healed if they get hurt, and that tonight is a full moon? Wild. All obviously bullshit superstitions, of course. Don't even worry about it. Vampires aren't real. But if they were they would definitely attack you tonight. They won't though. Probably. Good night, Henry!

Oh my god this is a long chapter. Okay. Here we go.

The chapter opens with a little narrator soliloquy on the marvelous powers of daylight to sweep away the worries and fears of night. Rymer confidently asserts:

There must be a downright physical reason for this effect—it is so remarkable and so universal. It seems that the sun's rays so completely alter and modify the constitution of the atmosphere, that it produces, as we inhale it, a wonderfully different effect upon the nerves of the human subject. We can account for this phenomenon in no other way.

He uses dry sarcasm from time to time, but I think he might actually believe this.

Something I left out of my summary above is the sheer amount of time dedicated to Moving The Painting Logistics. While he stays up watching his sister, Henry spends several paragraphs examining the painting and trying to figure out how to move it, before eventually concluding that actually, there's no need to, because Flora's definitely going to want to change rooms after this. He will rehash his thought process in full to George and Marchdale later.

Speaking of which, Henry's conversations with the other men in this chapter introduce a fascinating and baffling idea which will be repeated throughout this book.

"He mentioned it to me; but we have both agreed to repudiate it with horror." "To—repudiate—it?" "Yes, George." "And yet—and yet—" "Hush, hush! I know what you would say. You would tell us that our repudiation of it cannot affect the fact. Of that we are aware; but yet will we disbelieve that which a belief in would be enough to drive us mad."

This - this is a weird way of thinking. I could write entire essays on this idea, how it presents itself in the text, and just what the hell I think Rymer might be trying to say with it. To summarize my thoughts in brief, fear in Varney the Vampire is treated as a worse specter than any of the things that cause fear. The idea that is repeated over and over again throughout the narrative is that not believing in a horror which is provably real is better than acknowledging the horror exists. Why? Because the worst, most heinous thing any person can be is afraid. Fear leads to madness, hysteria, emasculation, and societal decline. On the flipside of this, lying and gaslighting are Good Actually so long as they're in the service of preventing fear.

...I would like to remind everyone at this point that vampires are a PROVABLY REAL FACTUAL ENTITY in this universe. This is like not telling people in Florida that a hurricane is about to hit because you don't want to scare them.

With this in mind, we ought to talk about Chillingworth. First, though, I would like to share this line from George that I thought was funny:

"As you please, brother, and as you please, Mr. Marchdale. I know I am a frail reed, and my belief is that this affair will kill me quite."

On to Chillingworth. Chillingworth plays the part of the dedicated skeptic, a role which he adopts, ironically, with a sort of religious fervor. More on that later. As a doctor, Chillingworth fills the Gothic literature archetype of the rational modern man, which means he is completely insufferable. When Henry comes to him with his story, he is openly rude and dismissive:

"I never in all my life heard a more circumstantial narrative in favour of so hideous a superstition." [...] "But the glaring facts of the case." "I don't care if they were ten times more glaring, I won't believe it. I would rather believe you were all mad, the whole family of you—that at the full of the moon you all were a little cracked."

With Flora he is even worse. He's gaslighting her from his very first words:

"Well, Miss Bannerworth," he said, "what is all this I hear about an ugly dream you have had?"

He dismisses what she has to say, insults and belittles her:

"Well, will you tell me what it was?" "Yes, sir, it was a vampyre." Mr. Chillingworth glanced at Henry, as he said, in reply to Flora's words,— "I suppose that is, after all, another name, Flora, for the nightmare?" "No—no—no!" "Do you really, then, persist in believing anything so absurd, Miss Bannerworth?"

When Flora brings up a valid counter to him - she, Henry, George, Mrs. B, and Marchdale all saw the vampire - he changes the subject. Then, after examining Flora, he gives a diagnosis which is utter bullshit - he KNOWS it's bullshit, too, because he tells Henry his real opinion later.

But all this is Fine and Good, actually, because Chillingworth's role in the story is to maintain Rationality and Truth, which means he can lie and gaslight as much as he wants. Yeah, that makes sense.

He isn't even effective at holding back the tide of superstition, either - in fact, he actively sabotages his own effort to maintain rationality. Not only does no one buy his bullshit explanations about nightmares and bug bites, but later in his conversation with Henry he happens to bring up a bunch of new vampire lore which only worsens Henry's own apprehensions. This is the lore, taken from Polidori's short story The Vampyre, that vampires can be revived by moonlight. In a sequence that is equal parts funny and maddening, he brings this up, along with mentioning that it's a full moon tonight, wouldn't it be funny, Henry, if the figure you shot was a vampire, and the reason you didn't find a body was - ah, but look at me, indulging these silly superstitions. Obviously this is all nonsense.

Not exactly quelling the anxieties about vampires, dude!

Chillingworth's ineffectuality, starkly highlighted in a later chapter, points to the final piece of the theme that runs like a nasty little Bolton Strid underneath the text of Varney the Vampire: fear itself is both powerful and frightening, and rational thinkers are often powerless to stop its effects. (The effects of fear, incidentally, are about a thousand times worse when the people affected are women and/or poor.)

Varney is not the villain of Varney the Vampire. People who are scared of him are. This isn't a metaphor, either. Just wait until we meet the Angry Mobs.

#varney the vampire #varney summary #henry bannerworth #flora bannerworth #george bannerworth #marchdale #mrs. bannerworth #dr. chillingworth #meta #this is a rymer hate blog #this one unlocked some Thoughts #i have SO MUCH to say about fear and concealment of the truth in varney #expect more on this theme in later chapters

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