SOURCE: '"En el Profundo Espejo del Deseo': Delmira Agustini, Rachilde, and the Vampire," in Revista Hispánica Moderna: Columbia University Hispanic Studies, Vol. XLVI, No. 1, 1993, pp. 51-63.

In the following essay, Bruzelius examines the figure of the vampiric female as portrayed in the works of Rachilde and Uruguayan author Delmira Augustini.

I have been faithful to thee,
 Cynara, in my fashion.

E. DOWSON

The nineteenth century fascination with the femme fatale may have reached its apogee in the figure of the Vampire—that marble white, silent woman with luxuriant hair, heavy lidded eyes and blood red lips. Her nocturnal invasion of the daylight world of patriarchal propriety is invoked by artists who wish to escape the deadly trammels of the bourgeoisie (Baudelaire, Swinburne), by those who wish to reaffirm its primacy (Bram Stoker), and by those who cannot make up their minds (Coleridge, who could never finish...